by Blake Banner
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.”
“OK…”
There was the usual traffic at Knightsbridge, but it wasn’t heavy, and as we moved toward Kensington Road, up ahead the lights turned to amber. Instead of slowing, the driver accelerated fast, with his eyes on the mirror and a nasty smile on his face. The biker, fearing he might lose us if we jumped the lights, hit the gas too. Twenty feet from the lights, our driver braked hard. There was a squeal of tortured rubber and, through the windshield, I saw all the people waiting to cross at the lights stare in horror, wince and put their hands to their mouths. Behind us, there was another squeal of brakes, a loud thump and the car shook. Everybody ran to help the biker and our chauffer slipped across the red lights and continued on toward Holland Park. After a moment, he said, “It’s all right, sir. I think we lost him.”
Dehan smiled. “You think?”
Holland Park is short, and runs in a slight curve from Holland Park Avenue to Abbotsbury Road. There are no more than twenty or thirty houses on it, and one of those is the Greek Embassy. The rest are huge, white, double-fronted Victorian mansions set back from the sidewalk behind five-foot balustrades. We pulled up outside one of those mansions, about a third of the way down, and while the driver got out and opened the door for Dehan, I got out on the other side.
He scanned the street with his right hand behind his back under his jacket and opened the gate for us. “Make it snappy,” he said, and we walked fast down the path that cut through the front lawn to the front door, which opened as we arrived.
A man in a black suit wished us a good evening and ushered us into a large entrance hall. It was elaborately Greco-Roman, the way the Victorians liked it, and was painted mainly white and cream, though a deep burgundy carpet covered the hall and climbed a sweeping, white marble staircase to the upper floors. Large, white doors with brass knobs stood on either side of the hall.
We had no coats to give him, so he gestured us to follow him across the hall to the door on the right. He tapped, stepped in and said, “Detectives Stone and Dehan, sir.” Then he stood back for us to enter.
Chiddester was standing by the Victorian fireplace. He looked worried as he watched us come in and the door close behind us. The room was furnished with comfortable, modern furniture. The chairs and sofa were flanked by tables and attractive lamps.
Sitting in two of the large, comfortable armchairs were Nigel Hastings and Justin Caulfield. I can’t say I was surprised, it was what I had expected. Chiddester came forward.
“My dear Dehan.” He took her hand. “I am so sorry that all of this has happened during your honeymoon. Please do sit. Can I offer you a drink?”
She told him she was fine, winked at him and sat. He shook my hand, frowning at me like he wasn’t sure what to make of me. I told him I didn’t want a drink either. I sat on the arm of Dehan’s chair and smiled at Hastings.
“For a man who never wanted to see me again, Hastings, you didn’t take long to arrange it.”
He managed to put sneering, contempt, hatred and triumph all into his face at the same time, and screw it up into an ugly smile. “Did you really think that I would allow you to come swaggering into our country, like some sad, old cowboy, shooting and murdering British citizens? Well, perhaps you can get away with that in Mexico and Panama, or whatever other countries you exploit, but not here! Here we have a little thing called accountability. And here, you face the music.”
I shrugged almost apologetically. “Well, it wasn’t really me.” I pointed at Dehan. “It was her. She has a really bad attitude. She’s known for it. But to be honest, Hastings, it did kind of look like self-defense.” I frowned then at Caulfield. “However, I am a little confused. We have here a shadow cabinet minister, we have the man who a cou
ple of hours ago said he hoped for both our sakes we would never meet again, we have, as far as I can see, no policemen…” I spread my hands. “What’s going on, Lord Chiddester?”
Caulfield raised his hands and rested them gently on his lap. “Perhaps I had better explain, as it is in fact I who arranged this meeting. Nigel came to me with this rather bizarre story and I have to say I was a little alarmed. Much as I enjoy seeing the government embarrassed, and especially my honorable friend Lord Chiddester, I do not enjoy seeing my country embarrassed. So I called him and suggested that, before this whole thing becomes an international incident, we talk it through and make sure everything is, so to speak, kosher.”
Dehan raised an eyebrow at him. “Seriously?”
“Mrs. Stone, why don’t we begin with you telling us exactly why you shot and killed Sadiq Hassan?”
Chiddester watched her. He looked distressed. Dehan crossed her long, mortally sinful legs and said, “I have a better idea. Why don’t we start at the beginning, and you explain why you have ties to terrorist organizations that employ assassins to kill foreign nationals on British soil?”
Chiddester’s face turned to stone and he shifted his stare from Dehan to Caulfield. He looked troubled. “Steady,” he said. “In the first place I don’t owe you any explanations for how we run the Labour Party. That is absolutely none of your concern. In the second place, I am afraid that the accusations you’re making sound like little more than right-wing extremist hysteria.”
I chuckled amiably and did my best imitation of Yosemite Sam. “I ain’t sayin’ that us an’ the boys down the Gun Club don’t enjoy huntin’ us a few gay Marxist mus-leems at the weekend, but that they-er akazay-shun weren’t no hysteria, boy.”
Caulfield narrowed his eyes at me like he was trying to work out what was going on in my head. Meanwhile, Hastings was staring as though I had just spoke to him in ancient Greek.
“If you think this is some kind of joke…”
“It’s not a joke, Hastings. You are. And I already warned you that you are playing a very dangerous game.” I turned to Caulfield. “I’m just wondering how much of this you know, and how much of it is going on behind your back.”
He snapped, “How much of what, exactly, Mr. Stone? I have to tell you that you are not endearing yourself to me with this cavalier, gunslinger attitude of yours.”
I shook my head. “Oooh, no you don’t, Mr. Caulfield. The only gun slinging that has gone on here has been from your pals at the Whitechapel Marxist Party, under the orders of your fixer, Mr. Hastings here.”
“Again, Mr. Stone, I hear a lot of vague, unsubstantiated…”
I interrupted him. “Detective Dehan and I went down to Goodnestone Park earlier today, to talk to Simon Clarence…” I waited, watching. Caulfield’s face was a blank. Hastings had gone white. I went on. “Simon Clarence, with dual American and British nationality, otherwise known as the Butcher of Whitechapel. On the way back, in a remote area of woodland, a dark blue Audi came up behind us at speed, and as it overtook us, the driver fired a gun at us. The bullet missed my wife by inches. I rammed him in self-defense. His car overturned. When I went to get him out, to ensure that he was all right, a struggle ensued and, in self-defense, Detective Dehan shot her intended assassin. He ambushed us and we defended ourselves.” Caulfield drew breath but I talked over him. “That man was Sadiq Hassan, of the WMP.”
I could see Hastings’ hands trembling in his lap. Caulfield looked confused. He turned to face his aide. “Is this true? Did you know about this?”
He shook his head. “It’s not the way he is telling it. Sadiq went to try and…”
“So you do know this Sadiq Hassan?”
Hastings licked his lips. “The Party has unofficial ties with various left-wing groups…”
Caulfield turned in his chair to face Hastings more directly. Chiddester was staring hard at both of them. “So would you kindly explain to us all, Nigel, what this has to do with us, and in particular me. Why was this Hassan character apparently assaulting Mr. and Mrs. Stone?”
Hastings took a deep breath and stared hard at his boss. “Sir, they were going to interview Simon Clarence. The file on Simon Clarence was sealed, and we thought it advisable to discourage Mr. and Mrs. Stone…”
“By shooting at them, Nigel? These are police officers working in the service of our closest international ally!”
I was getting bored. I said, “Allow me to cut surgically through the bullshit, Mr. Caulfield.” He stared at me with serious distaste expressed on his slightly hairy face. I ignored him and went on. “A few nights ago, Lord Chiddester’s daughter was murdered. You both know that. The MO used by the killer was almost identical to the MO used fifteen years ago by the Butcher of Whitechapel. I had various reasons for suspecting that Katie had not, in fact, been killed by the same man as those original victims fifteen years ago. In other words, I did not believe she had been killed by the Butcher of Whitechapel. For a start, she did not quite fit the profile for his victims: she was not American and she was a little too short. More compelling was the fact that the killer had misspelled whiskey on the note he had left.”
They were both frowning hard. Caulfield said, “You’ve lost me.”
“The Butcher always left a note with a quote from the song, American Pie. In it the word whiskey is spelt the Irish and American way, with ‘e’ before the ‘y’. But in the note we found at Katie’s murder, the word whiskey was spelt the English way, with no ‘e’. That was enough to convince me, but not DI Green, that this was a different killer. And that got me wondering where the original killer had been for the last fifteen years, and what had happened to the investigation after I had returned to the U.S.A.
“I won’t go into the details, but I soon discovered that the Butcher of Whitechapel had pretty much surrendered himself to the authorities, and was being held, at Her Majesty’s leisure, at Goodnestone Park.” I paused and shook my head. “Very, very few people knew that, because the file had been sealed to protect Simon Clarence’s identity. One of the only people who did know that was the man employed as his counsel, to protect his interests during the hearings in chambers, when he was sectioned. That happened to be the same man who acted as Brad Johnson’s counsel when he was Scotland Yard’s prime suspect in the case. Perhaps that was why he was chosen, because he had that specialized knowledge. In any case, that man was…” I pointed at him. “Nigel Hastings.”
Caulfield turned to him. “Nigel…?”
Nigel was sweating like a vicar in a sauna full of nuns. “It is true, in substance, but it proves—and means—nothing!”
I barged right on. “We’ll come to what it proves and what it means in a bit. But the fact is that as we were leaving that meeting, an associate of Hastings’ tried to kill us.”
Caulfield raised his hands again. “Just slow down a bit, Stone, will you! You keep going on about this connection between Nigel and this Hassan character. But in fact we have nothing but your word for that!”
Dehan said, “Really? Let me ask you a question, Hastings. Suppose I got on Google and started researching your family history. Suppose I got a pro to do it? Suppose, even better, a couple of days ago, when Stone saw you at Caulfield’s phony office on Little College Street, suppose I had got a private investigator to do some research into your family? What would he have found?”
“I have no idea what you’re driving at and I find this line of questioning deeply offensive!”
“Would he have found, perhaps, that you have Jewish ancestry that you try to keep secret?”
A quick spasm of anger flashed across Caulfield’s face. “What has this to do with anything? Hastings is an ancient English name!”
“As far as I am aware, Caulfield, there have been Jews in England for almost a thousand years, almost as long as there have been Normans. How can you make that distinction?”
His jaw worked but no sound came out. Finally, he said, “What has this to do with anything?”
&n
bsp; I shrugged. “Just that when we talked to Sadiq the first time, he said that Katie was involved with a Jewish guy. He called him a lot of other things too, but in essence it boiled down to the same thing, Sadiq was mad at her for having what he called a Jewish boyfriend. But as much as we asked, nobody, except Sadiq, knew who he was. So I kept wondering who this guy could be. And, like a lot of men who try to stay anonymous, Hastings just kept popping up all over the place.”
Hastings was shaking his head like a wet dog. “No, no, no! You have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that I was in any kind of relationship with Lord Chiddester’s daughter. None! You can’t even show that I knew her! Let alone had a relationship with her! This is all the wildest, must unsubstantiated surmise! It is outrageous!”
Sometimes in life, things happen right on cue. Most times they don’t, and this was one of those times when they didn’t. So I had to take a long shot.
“When Katie was killed, DI Green, Dehan and I all agreed that it was important to test Katie’s sheets for DNA residue.” I shook my head and smiled at Dehan. “Remember when we told Sadiq we planned to do that?”
She smiled at Hastings. “We thought he was going to have a seizure. We took that to mean we were going to find his DNA. But he was going on and on about this Jewish guy who had been seeing Katie…” She shook her head. “It was very confusing. Especially as he was the only person who seemed to know who he was.”
I spread my hands. “We rushed the tests through private clinics, thanks to Lord Chiddester’s resources, and when the results came in they showed, to our surprise, that Sadiq had not been sleeping with Katie.
“But, did you know? Israel has been using certain genetic profiles to determine who has a right to claim Israeli citizenship for some years. And let me tell you, the guy who had been sleeping with Katie, has that right. He is not, perhaps, of the Jewish faith, but he is nonetheless genetically of Jewish descent.”