The Butcher of Whitechapel

by Blake Banner

  I sighed. “I’d say he has experienced a reversal in his fortunes, wouldn’t you, Dehan?”

  She nodded at me, blinking, “Both accurate and witty, Stone. Droll, even.” She turned back to the upside-down face that had now started to sob. There was no sympathy that I could detect, either in her face or in my own feelings. She said, “You know the big difference between U.S. cops and U.K. cops, Sadiq? Shall I tell you what it is? British cops are highly trained in dealing with violence so that it does not escalate. They are trained not to respond to violence with violence, but to defuse it. I think that is an admirable trait, don’t you, Stone?”

  “I do, Dehan. It’s a shame we are not more like that.”

  “Us?” she went on. “Especially in places like the Bronx, we just shoot shit, don’t we, Stone?”

  “Mm-hm… some guy comes at you with a gun or a knife, or a bad attitude. You shoot him.”

  “Or a car.”

  “Or a car.”

  “So, Sadiq, you come at us, sneaking like a thief in the night, out of the shadows, with a gun, aiming to kill my husband, and his wife, on our honeymoon, what do you think we are most likely to do…?”

  She put the muzzle of the automatic against his temple and pulled back the hammer with a loud click. He started to cry in earnest.

  I said, “Hold on a moment there, Dehan. I’m just thinking, this hard-ass warrior here might actually be useful to us.”

  “Nah! C’mon! We’re going home tomorrow. Just blow his brains out and let the Brits sort it out.”

  Sadiq made a small whimpering noise, “No, no, he’s right, let me help, please, please don’t shoot me…”

  I stood. Dehan sighed. “Come on, Stone! Let’s just get the hell out of here! It’s not our problem!” Suddenly she grabbed the automatic in both hands and aimed. “I’m going to shoot the anti-Semitic son of a bitch!”

  I barked, “No! Wait! Just hang on. Jesus, Dehan! Don’t you ever get tired of shooting people?”

  I managed to pull the door open, drag the whimpering Sadiq out of the car and dump him on the ground while Dehan gave me a mouthful about saving the city a fortune in legal costs, all the while keeping Sadiq covered.

  I checked to see if he had anything broken. He didn’t, but he had some handsome bruises.

  “So.” I smiled at him. “Explain to my Jewish partner here, Sadiq, why she shouldn’t do the British taxpayer a big favor and save them the expense of a trial. How exactly are you more useful alive than dead?”

  Dehan shook her head. Her face twisted suddenly with savage rage and she snarled, “This son of a bitch is never going to be useful to anybody!” She aimed and pulled the trigger. The two rapid explosions echoed through the trees, and overhead a million terrified wings scattered through the leaves and the branches.

  I stared at Dehan in horror. “What the hell have you done…?”

  FIFTEEN

  We got back to London at eight that evening. While Dehan went up to our room, I explained to the concierge that we had been rear-ended by a large SUV with a French sticker, but the driver had taken off and we hadn’t been able to get his license plate. We sorted out the insurance, I signed the necessary papers, and went into the cocktail bar. I ordered a large Bushmills and went to sit in a quiet corner. There, I pulled out my phone and dialed a number. It rang half a dozen times and finally a pleasant, educated voice said, “Hello?”

  “May I speak to Nigel Hastings, please?”

  There was a pause, then he said, “May I ask who’s calling?”

  “John Stone.”

  There was another long pause. “Mr. Stone, I don’t believe… How can I help you?”

  “You were going to say you don’t believe you know me?”

  His voice hardened. “What is it you want, Mr. Stone?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then you think wrong. It will not be impossible to trace Sadiq back to you, Hastings. I have his cell, and I am guessing that even if the car is not directly traceable to you, if DI Green keeps following the money, it will not be long before your name pops up.”

  “I don’t know what fantasy you are living, Mr. Stone, but a meeting between you and me is simply not going to happen.”

  “What fantasy? I’ll tell you. It’s the fantasy where you haven’t hung up on me yet, it’s the fantasy where you panic because you hear through the grapevine that I have found Simon Clarence, it’s the fantasy where I discover that Dr. Peters is in fact Nigel Hastings, the man who, in 2003, was defense counsel advising Brad Johnson when he was wrongly accused of being the Butcher of Whitechapel, the fantasy where the Butcher was in fact Simon Clarence and you were appointed his legal adviser during his sectioning. Is any of this fantasy making sense to you, Hastings?”

  I took a sip of my whiskey. He didn’t say anything but he didn’t hang up.

  “It’s the same fantasy where the hit you ordered on me and my wife went wrong, Sadiq Hassan came off the road and my Jewish wife was driven beyond endurance and shot the bastard in the head. Now you and I both have a problem. So we need to talk. Am I getting through to you, Hastings?”

  He was quiet for a long time. He knew he had a big problem and he was trying to find a way out of it that did not involve talking to me. There wasn’t one, so eventually he said, “Where are you now?”

  “At the Ritz.”

  “Come to Villiers Road, in Willesden…”

  “Think again, pal. I was one and a half years with Scotland Yard, remember? I know Willesden and the only way I go there is with a handful of squad cars. No abandoned warehouses. Let me lay it on the line for you, Hastings. I go back to the States tomorrow. You set the cops hunting for me or my wife and you go down with us. We put the cops on your tail, our involvement in Sadiq’s death is your word against ours. So you come here, to the Ritz, and we talk.”

  “How do I know this isn’t a trap?”

  “At the Ritz? Seriously? In the cocktail bar at the Ritz?”

  “All right, give me half an hour.”

  “Make it fifteen minutes.”

  He hung up. I sat thinking, chewing my lip. It was a mess, and it was going to take a cool head and a hell of a lot of skill to sort it out. I called Harry. He sounded tense, but he tried to hide it. “John, what’s up, mate?”

  “Don’t give me any bullshit, Harry. I have no time to waste. I need a straight answer.”

  I could hear the frown in his voice. “Steady on.”

  “The sheets.”

  “What?”

  “The sheets from Katie’s apartment…”

  “Oh, now, John…!”

  “Don’t do it, Harry. I am more serious than you can imagine. Somebody just tried to kill us. Now give me a straight answer. The traces of DNA on the sheets. You took Sadiq’s DNA?”

  “Yes.”

  “The sheets were not a match, were they?”

  He hesitated.

  I snarled. “Just say yes or no, Harry! Grow a pair, for Christ’s sake!”

  “No! The profile’s not in the system.” Then he asked, “Who the hell tried to kill you? What have you been doing, for crying out loud?”

  I grunted. “What I should have done fifteen years ago. What we both should have done fifteen years ago. Listen to me…”

  We talked a little longer, then I hung up. I sipped my drink and ate peanuts, and fifteen minutes later a man, about six foot, average build, dark hair with a non-descript face, dressed in a charcoal gray, three-piece, Ede & Ravenscroft pinstriped suit, stepped into the bar. He saw me and approached.

  “Mr. Stone?”

  “You know damn well I am, Hastings. Sit down. And have a drink. You’re so damn inconspicuous you stand out like a whore at a bishop’s convention.”

  The waiter came over. Hastings glanced at him. “Beefeater and Schweppes.” Then he stared at me and I stared back. He said, “What do you want?”

  I leaned forward and scowled. “You sent that son of a bit
ch Sadiq Hassan to kill us. He already had my wife in his sights because she’s Jewish. So he was only too happy to do the job when you gave him the contract. But I have news for you, pal, she got him instead.”

  “Once again, Stone. What do you want?”

  “I want a guarantee that you will not come after us. We go back to the States tomorrow, we take what we know with us, and you forget we exist. I want every trace of evidence that you sent Sadiq to kill us erased. I want all and any connection between that bastard and my wife disappeared. Not a trace is to remain. You understand me?”

  “Perfectly.”

  I narrowed my eyes and shook my head. “I’m not hearing it, Hastings. All I’m getting is a British stone wall. What does ‘perfectly’ mean? You understand me but you’re going to try and fuck me anyway?”

  “Would you mind moderating your colorful, American language, please, Mr. Stone?”

  “I got shot at today, by a man you sent after me. I watched a slug pass within an inch of my wife’s head. I then watched her kill the bastard who shot at her. I am not about to moderate my language. What I am about to do is take this eight ounce whiskey tumbler and rearrange your face with it, if you don’t quit trying to be smart. Now, I have told you what I want. So I want to hear an unambiguous answer. Otherwise things start getting ugly. And let me tell you Hastings, if things get ugly, you go down for fifteen to life.”

  The waiter appeared and set Hastings’ gin and tonic in front of him. Then withdrew.

  He stared at his glass a while, then moved it directly in front of him and turned it around several times, like he was checking it for traps before taking a sip. He raised it to his lips, took a long pull, smacked his lips and set the glass carefully down again. He was a careful, meticulous man.

  “There is very little connecting Sadiq to me or to your wife. We are professional about this kind of thing. However, whatever little there is, I shall make sure it is destroyed. There will be no way at all of connecting him to her. Or to myself, for that matter. In exchange, you leave the country and you never return. You break off all ties with DI Green, and you desist in your investigation into Katie Ellison’s death. This is not your jurisdiction, and it is none of your concern.” He paused. “If you do not honor this agreement, I will ensure—and believe me, I have the means—that your wife goes to prison for the rest of her life, or, that she dies a miserable, painful death, whichever is simplest. Do we have an understanding?”

  I nodded, “Yeah, we have an understanding.” I took another pull on my whiskey. “Just tell me something.” I stared at him and shrugged, squinting my eyes. “Why’d you kill her?”

  “Don’t be absurd! You’re drunk!”

  “I’m not drunk! I want to know! How old was she, for God’s sake? She was practically a kid! Wasn’t there some other way? Couldn’t you have made a deal with her?”

  “I don’t have to listen to this!”

  He made to stand. I snarled, “Siddown! You want me to shout my questions across the bar?”

  “This was not our agreement!”

  “Well, I want to know!”

  “Keep your voice down, for Heaven’s sake, man!”

  I rasped a whisper at him. “I want to know! Why did you kill her? How dangerous could a kid like that be?”

  “That is not your concern and I have no intention of answering your absurd questions. Now for God’s sake, get a grip, man!”

  I scowled at him, took another swig and set my glass down. He watched me do it with distaste. “At least tell me this,” I said. “Was she your lover? Was it you she was seeing? Was it you Sadiq called a filthy Jew?”

  His face flushed. “I don’t need to listen to this.”

  “It was, wasn’t it? Where are your loyalties, Hastings?”

  For a moment, there was a flash of real anger in his eyes. “I can assure you they transcend primitive, tribal allegiances to race and religion!”

  I nodded. “Oh yeah, I can see that in the allies you choose. Nothing tribal or primitive about Sadiq. Good choice.”

  He took another swig. His hand was shaking. “Thank you for the drink, Mr. Stone. I hope, for both our sakes, that we never meet again.”

  He stood and I watched him walk out of the bar on stiff, angry legs. After that, I finished my whiskey and made my way up to our suite, with a slow burn in my belly. Dehan was in the shower again. I wondered for a moment whether she had washed the gunshot residue from her hands. Then I sat, called reception and asked for a courier to come and collect a parcel for immediate urgent delivery. I prepared the parcel and as I was finishing it, Dehan appeared in the bedroom doorway. She was wrapped in a towel and her wet, black hair was hanging around her shoulders. She had a comb in her hand. She watched me a moment.

  “Is it done?”

  I nodded, then added, “Harry hasn’t got our tickets yet.”

  She started combing her hair. “Did Hastings agree?”

  “I think so. We’ll have to wait and see.”

  Our eyes locked for a moment, then she turned and went back into the bedroom to dress. Five minutes later, the courier arrived and I gave him the parcel with strict instructions. Finally, I went to shower and to dress for dinner.

  In the dining room, we sat in a fairly somber mood, which was a shame, because not only is the Ritz dining room spectacular and the food exquisite, but Dehan was wearing a very simple, short black dress with long, silver earrings, and a silver chain around her neck that made her look like mortal sin on long, brown legs.

  She caught me staring and gave me a rueful look across the table. “Bit of a mess, huh, Stone?”

  I shook my head. “You know what? What the hell? It’s our last night. Chiddester and Scotland Yard are paying, so let’s have a dozen oysters and a bottle of champagne. The way you look right now, it would be a crime not to.”

  She grinned. “And then the beef Wellington.”

  I called the waiter and gave him our order. I let him choose the champagne, because I wasn’t paying, but told him I wanted a bottle of Vega Sicilia, Unico, from the Ribera del Duero region of Spain. The wine list told me it cost seven hundred and seventy pounds sterling, which was just over a thousand dollars. But I figured it was the only chance I was ever likely to get of drinking that legendary wine, so I thanked Chiddie in my heart and went right ahead and ordered it.

  Dehan’s eyebrows had crawled almost all the way to her hairline. I shrugged. “The Duke of Wellington defeated Joseph Bonaparte at Vitoria, not far from where that wine is made. As we are eating beef Wellington, it seemed appropriate.”

  She said quietly, “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Possibly, but it’s your fault for wearing that dress.”

  She lowered both her eyebrows and then raised just one of them again. She had a mobile face. “Well,” she said, “if you’re flirting with me, I guess you’ve forgiven me.”

  “Forgiven you? I married you because you’re a badass, Dehan. You did the right thing.”

  The oysters arrived, along with a bucket of ice and a bottle of champagne. We toasted, and as we ate and sipped the exquisite wine, our mood began to improve, and our optimism rose. With the beef and the Vega Sicilia, we became positively merry.

  We finished the meal, complacent and over-fed, with a selection of British cheeses and a thirty-four year-old Teeling Irish single malt. By that time, we had spent a whole hour not talking about the Katie Ellison case, and I was feeling quite amused by the amount of other people’s money we had spent on our honeymoon.

  That was when my cell buzzed in my pocket. I offered Dehan an apologetic smile and said, “I’ll be right back.”

  I stepped out into the lobby, put the phone to my ear and said, “Yeah, Stone.”

  “Chiddester here. We are on the brink of a major crisis.”

  “I know.”

  “You can’t leave before it’s settled.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Is it true, what I’m hearing?”

 
“I don’t know what you’re hearing, Chiddester.”

  “That Dehan…”

  “Is this line secure?”

  A hesitation. “…Yes.”

  “Then it’s true. But there is more to it than what you might have heard. Who has contacted you?”

  “I can’t say, but look, I really think you need to get over here.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Holland Park, number five.”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “Perhaps, I’m not sure. Shall I send a car for you?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “If you do, will we get there? Would it be smarter to get a cab, or ask Harry for a car?”

  He gave a small, humourless laugh. “Quite the contrary, dear chap. It’s no trouble at all. The Home Office provides men like me with cars that are bullet proof and bomb proof. Total waste of the taxpayer’s money, but I suppose they think it’s necessary. In this day and age, with the enemy living in our very midst, perhaps they’re right.”

  “I hear you. Yeah, then perhaps you should send a car.”

  I returned to the dining room and ordered coffee. It was my turn to smile ruefully. “Party’s over, kiddo. Chiddester is sending a car for us. Time to face the music.”

  SIXTEEN

  The waiter informed us that a car had arrived for us from Lord Chiddester. I took Dehan’s arm and we stepped out, through the lobby, to the front steps. The car was a Jaguar XE. It was by the door with the engine running and a uniformed chauffer holding the rear passenger door open for us. Both the car and the driver looked bulletproof.

  He drove fast and efficiently, with his eyes on the road and all three mirrors in rapid, successive glances. As we approached Knightsbridge, he said suddenly, “We’ve picked up a motorbike, sir. I’ll try and get rid of him, but if he’s still with us by the time we arrive, I’ll ask you to stay in the car till I give you the all clear. All right?”

  I nodded. “That’s fine.”

  I went to look out the back window, but he said, “Don’t look, please, sir. I’d like him to think we’re not aware of him.”