by Blake Banner
She sighed.
I said, “You said you could forgive anything except infidelity and cutting you out. Can you forgive this?”
She sagged back in her chair and put something that was related to a smile on her face. She gestured at me with both hands. “What? What am I supposed to do? Or say? You know as well as I do that if I had found Mick Harragan alive, back when we first met, I would have blown his brains out without a second thought.” She stared at her cup. “And I could never have brought Maria in. It’s like you say, Stone. Sometimes the law doesn’t cover the details.[3]”
I gave a small laugh and stuffed half a croissant in my mouth. “The crazy thing is, I don’t believe in that. It shouldn’t be that way.”
“I know. But it is. Sometimes you have to believe something, even when you don’t believe in it. Because…” she wagged her finger at me across the table. “Morality, Stone, is a human construct. Let’s go.”
I drained my coffee, stood, and we headed for the lobby.
Outside, it was already getting warm. The U.K. was caught in a heat wave that the oil industry had given up pretending had nothing to do with climate change. If the planet wasn’t getting hotter, England sure was.
We made it to New Scotland Yard through heavy, grinding traffic and got there by nine thirty. Harry was waiting for us on the sidewalk. He didn’t look happy. I pulled up beside him and lowered the window. He didn’t smile.
“Get out. I’ll drive. Carmen, you get in the back. I need to talk to this character.”
We played musical chairs for a bit. Dehan climbed in the back and I got in the passenger seat. He got behind the wheel and we took off slow down the Victoria Embankment, following the same route we had followed the day before.
“I am not going to mince words with you, John. And believe me, if it weren’t for the years of friendship we have, and because of what happened to Hattie, you would be on the next flight out of here back to New York. But you are going to hear what I bloody well have to say to you and you are going take it, or you can fuck off back home.”
He turned to look at me. I gave him the dead eye and he carried on.
“We do not have gun law in this country. We do not allow coppers to go around beating up civilians. We like it that way and if we catch a copper trying to take the law into his own hands we come down on him, or her, like a ton of fucking bricks! Whether he is a friend or not. In this country the law is the law, for Brad Johnson, Hattie Stone, you, me and Lord Chiddester. No exceptions! Step over the line once more, John, and I will have you! Is that understood?”
I nodded. “Perfectly, Harry, and I appreciate that you had to lay it on the line like that. And, believe it or not, in ninety percent of the U.S.A., it’s the same.” I spread my hands. “However, I want you to be able to look your bosses in the eye and tell them, with a clear conscience, that it went down the way I said. I had questions for him about his alibi. I felt if we spoke in his apartment rather than in the middle of an exhibition hall, he might be more willing to speak. The door was open, and he was lying on the floor, semi conscious. I called you, cleaned him up a bit, and left when I heard the sirens because I was aware my presence could be an embarrassment to your department.”
He scowled at me a moment, then sighed. “Fair enough. Sorry about chewing you out. But, it can’t happen, you know?”
“Hey, I would have done the same if you’d come over to the Bronx and started beating up some of my hard cases.” I reached in my pocket and pulled out the freezer bag with the cotton wool in it. I showed it to him and, without cracking a smile, I said, “I asked him if he would mind providing a sample and he said that was fine. I am willing to testify to that, if necessary.”
He shook his head. “You son of a bitch,” he said, then burst out laughing. “You dirty son of a bitch!”
Dehan spoke up from the back. “I’ve been checking on Google. You have a private clinic in South London that will do same day private DNA profiles. Then it’s just a matter of comparing the profile that was done fifteen years ago, from the skin under Hattie’s fingernails, and the profile we get from this clinic.”
He was quiet for a good two or three minutes. Finally, he said, “This is damn close to vigilante behavior. I don’t like it. I don’t condone it. But I’ll have a bike come over and collect the stuff and deliver it to the clinic. And you promise me, you give me your word, that this is the end of it.”
I nodded. “You have my word, Harry, but you need to know something. Johnson is not your man for Katie Ellison’s killing. You know that as well as I do. And he isn’t your man for the other four either.”
“What’s your point?”
He pulled in to Little College Street and parked opposite a tall, elegant, Georgian house. He killed the engine and turned to face me.
“I have asked my Inspector to pull strings back home and have Johnson extradited. I want him tried in Arizona. U.S. law says it has jurisdiction over any U.S. citizen who commits a crime, anywhere in the world.”
He was frowning and looked mad. “This isn’t some Third World banana republic, you know. Our legal system is second to none…”
I sighed. “Come on, Harry! You know that’s not the reason. In fact, it’s almost the opposite of the reason…”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Dehan spoke up again. “He means your courts are too lenient. If he is tried in his home state of Arizona, the death penalty will be available. It has been applied thirty-seven times in the last sixty years. And even if he doesn’t get the injection, life, for a murder involving rape and torture, will mean life.”
He looked embarrassed.
I shrugged. “You know as well as I do, Harry, here he could be out in seven years. You were there. You know what he did to her. You saw the ME’s report. He has to pay for that. Then I… we… me and Dehan, can put this behind us and get on with our lives.”
He was quiet for a while, then finally said, “I can understand that. It’s not up to me. It’s up to the Home Office and the courts. I just hope you’re right, and this does give you closure.” He managed half a smile. “Come on, let’s go and talk to this knob.”
SEVEN
We were shown into Lord Chiddester’s office by his secretary. The room was more like a Georgian drawing room than an office. There was a lot of oak, none of it less than three hundred years old, and a lot of well-preserved stucco of about the same age. It was wall to wall carpeted, which most British aristocrats frown upon, but it was Wilton and very dark blue with a touch of gold, so I guess that was OK. One wall was taken up by an imposing bookcase with leaded glass panes, and the other walls had prints of horses.
For a moment, as we stepped into the room, I had the surreal sensation that Lord Chiddester was part of the furniture. He was seated behind a magnificent, dark oak desk in a magnificent dark burgundy leather chair, staring at us, immobile from under his brows. He didn’t say anything, he just watched us approach his desk and scowled.
Harry cleared his throat. “My Lord, thank you for agreeing to see us. I wonder if you would be prepared to answer a few questions…”
“Well, I didn’t invite you here to discuss the weather, Inspector. What do you want to know?”
Harry loosened his collar. “I understand, sir, that your daughter was writing an article…”
“Probably. What of it?”
“I understand it may have been quite a controversial article and that she may have approached you for some, er…”
“Some what, Inspector? Good lord, man! Spit it out! Is this the best Scotland Yard can come up with? No wonder the bloody country is overrun with damned Islamic terrorists!”
I saw Harry flush and start speaking again. “I understand she may have approached you for some guidance and information, sir?”
Chiddester frowned at him. “Where’d you get that idea? Who told you that?”
“Um, Miss Ellison’s housemate, sir, Sarah.”
“What else did she tell
you?”
Dehan turned and looked at me. She had that expression on her face, where she narrowed her eyes and you knew she was getting mad and wouldn’t be able to keep her mouth shut. She spoke in a loud voice as she tied her hair in a knot at the base of her neck.
“You know what, Stone? My dad always brought me up to believe there was nothing so fine and elegant as an English gentleman. ‘They are never,’ he used to say to me, ‘boorish, ill mannered or crude. Especially the aristocracy.’ That’s what he used to say to me. ‘They would never, for example, stay sitting down while there was a woman standing.’ What do you think of that, Stone?”
I pulled a face and shook my head. “I think he was living in the past, Dehan. Those were the good old days, when England was England, before the European Union, and all the Muslim immigrants. What do you say, Lord Chiddester? Is the English gentleman a dying breed?”
He ignored me and kept his eyes on Dehan. Harry had closed his. Chiddester stood. “Madam, forgive me. That was unforgivable. Will you please sit?” He turned a baleful glare on Green and on me and gestured to two more chairs. Dehan sat and we followed suit. Chiddester scowled at Harry. “Are you going to introduce these people, Inspector?”
“Detectives John Stone and…”
Dehan cut in, “Detective Carmen Dehan, we are from the NYPD consulting on your daughter’s case.”
He sat back. “Dehan?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You are of Jewish ancestry?”
“Is that a problem?”
He gave a small laugh. “You are obviously not familiar with U.K. politics at present, Detective Dehan. You will find plenty of anti-Semitism among the Marxists in the Labour Party, but none in my office. I sometimes wonder if those cretins realize that Marx was Jewish.” He turned back to Harry, who was looking very confused. “Why is the NYPD being consulted on my daughter’s murder, Inspector?”
I sighed noisily while Harry hesitated. Then I got bored and spoke. “Katie’s murder, sir, fit the MO of four murders that were committed in Whitechapel fifteen years ago. I was involved in that investigation because I was on an exchange program between the NYPD and Scotland Yard. I think it’s fair to say, Lord Chiddester, that nobody knows more about those murders than I do.”
“I see.”
“And I can tell you that your daughter was not murdered by the same man who killed those four girls.”
“You know this how?”
“The man who killed those girls all those years ago was probably an American, and he was most certainly obsessed with Don McLean, a singer from the ’70s.”
“I know who Don McLean is, Detective.”
“The man who killed your daughter was English, and not familiar with Don McLean. It seems like a trivial detail, but put in context, it is irrefutable.”
He stared at me for a long moment. Then Dehan spoke up again. “Sir, with the greatest respect in the world, we are not going to solve your daughter’s murder by answering your questions. We already know the answers to the questions you’re asking us. We are going to solve this murder by asking you questions, and by you getting on board and answering them.”
I smiled and watched Harry turn white. Chiddester turned to face her and raised an eyebrow. “Quite so,” he said.
“So, did Katie ask you for help relating to an article she was writing?”
He sucked his teeth and drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “She called me about three weeks ago. I don’t remember exactly. She was very enthusiastic about a project she had. She was mad about the idea of becoming a journalist. She was staunchly right wing, and keen to do something about the sad state of affairs in this country. We talked, I can’t remember exactly what about, this and that, the Brexit fiasco, the problem of Islam… the usual stuff.”
“Did she ask you, can you remember, did she ask you for help or advice?”
He kept his eyes on the desk. “Not that I can recall, no.”
I said, “She had been dating a young man called Mark…”
He sighed. “On and off, yes. Bit of a drip, long hair, always apologizing. Good family, but no guts. You know the sort.”
I nodded like I knew the sort. “But recently she had stopped seeing him. Were you aware of any other romantic involvement in her life?”
His cheeks colored and there was no mistaking the building rage in his eyes. “Yes!” he said. “And I suppose there is no way around this. She had got herself a Muslim boyfriend. I told her she was insane, for any number of reasons, but she told me she was certain he had ties to God knows what, and she was going to use him to get information for her project, as she called it. I told her again and again that she was playing with fire. And here we are.” He glanced at me. I realized I was making a face of skepticism. He said, “You disagree?”
“I don’t know. It just seems odd that a Jihadist would go to the trouble of disguising the murder of a British Lord’s daughter to make it look like a fifteen year-old serial killing. It’s not only unlikely that he would know the details of those killings, but you’d think the propaganda value would have him and his associates falling over themselves to claim responsibility.” I gestured at him. “Especially as you are known in this country for your anti-Islamic stance.”
He thought for a moment. “I take your point. It is a good point.”
“What’s this guy’s name?”
“Sadiq Hassan.” He flipped open a diary on his desk, scrawled something on a piece of paper and slid it across to me. It was an address. I handed it to Harry, who took it without speaking.
Chiddester went on. “She assured me she wasn’t sleeping with the grubby little fellow, but just wanted to get information out of him. She had the idea he was some kind of terrorist. A refugee, not born here. She wanted me to have MI5 look into him. Perhaps I should have. She was still a child at heart. Poor Katie…”
There was a spasm of pain across his face, but it vanished as soon as it appeared. Then he frowned at Dehan. “You married?”
She pointed at me. “To that man over there.”
I smiled blandly. “This is our honeymoon.”
He grunted. “Pity,” he said ambiguously. “Where are you staying?”
“The Ritz.”
His eyes went wide. “The Yard is putting you up at the Ritz?” He turned to stare at Harry. “No wonder the country is going to the dogs!” He turned back to me. “But if I need to contact you, I can find you at the Ritz, can I?”
I muttered something about it being a long story and handed him my card. “You have my cell phone there, and my email.”
“If I think of anything, I’ll let you know. Meantime, you should talk to that Hassan chap. He’s your man.”
We were being invited to leave. We stood and he stood with us. “My secretary will see you out.”
We didn’t speak on the way out, but Harry pulled his cell from his pocket and made a call. As we stepped into the humid heat of the gray midmorning, he started to talk.
“Yeah, DI Harry Green here. I need a dispatch rider, Little College Street. Going to Union Road, SW8. Very urgent.”
Dehan sat on the hood of his car, looking at him. A brief gust of cool wind came in off the river and far off a barge moaned. He gave us a humorless smile and said, “Well, that went well, didn’t it?”
Dehan shrugged. “I’m sorry, Harry. I knew he was sympathetic to the Israelis. He was being a pain in the ass and we were getting nowhere. I thought it was worth a shot. Guys like that, sometimes you have to bust their balls a bit.”
“No, you’re quite right. I let him walk all over me. I invited you to consult on this case because you’re good. I can’t really complain when you, um… do your thing, can I?”
I looked up at the seagulls wheeling overhead under the gray sky and asked, “What do you want to do next? You want to see this Sadiq guy alone?”
He gave a small sigh. “No, I think I’d rather like to let Carmen loose on him.”
We all managed a smi
le and a short while later, the police dispatch rider pulled into the street. Harry went to talk to him and give him the bag of cotton wool buds, and I gave Dehan a smile that was rueful.
She said, “I’m sorry, Stone. He’s your friend.”
“After today, I’m not so sure. I think I have strained that friendship pretty much to breaking point. I think we may soon get thanked politely and invited to return to New York.”
She grimaced. “Is that my fault?”
I shook my head. “No, what I did this morning was beyond the pale. I knew it would be, but I had to do it. This was just the cherry on the cake. I was surprised. Fifteen years ago, he would have taken Chiddester apart.”
She squinted at him down the road, where he was talking to the dispatch rider. The breeze caught her hair and for a moment I thought how lucky I was to have this second chance. “I guess it’s easy to be brave when you’re young, and you haven’t much to lose. Maybe he’s married.” She looked up at me. “Maybe he has kids, school fees, a mortgage, all those things that sap your heroism and make your boss so powerful.”
I nodded. Maybe she was right. I had no idea.
He turned and started walking back toward us. I didn’t know if he had married, if he had kids or a mortgage, and it struck me as ironic that I knew so much about the man whom I hated, who had killed my wife and almost destroyed me, and yet I knew so little about the man I had once considered my closest friend.
“Right, chaps,” he said. “That’s on its way. We’ll have the results this evening. They’ll email me. Good enough?”
“Superb.”
“Shall we go an’ see this ‘grubby little fellow’ then?”
We climbed in the car and slammed the doors. He fired up the engine, and as he pulled away, I said, “We’ve been here over two weeks, and the only times we’ve seen you have been when somebody got murdered. We should get together before we leave and have a meal.”
He nodded and smiled. He knew what I was doing, and it was OK. “That’d be nice.”
“You married? We lost touch. I don’t know what you’ve been doing these past years.”