by Blake Banner
I turned and called, “Harry!” He poked his head out the bedroom door. I gestured with my head at the bookcase. “Have a look. I think we have some idea what the article was about.” He came in and while he was gazing at the titles, I said, “Maybe you should get your forensic IT team to have a look at the computer. Two gets you twenty there’s at least one rough draft on there.”
He nodded and pulled out his cell. Dehan came out of the bedroom, holding a sheet balled up in her hands. She smiled at Sarah. “Have you got a plastic bag I can put this in?”
Sarah looked a little uncertain, but went downstairs to get a bag anyway. Dehan held up the sheet.” Maybe I’m wrong, but I have a feeling this is going to tell us who replaced Mark.”
Harry spoke into his cell. “Yeah, DI Green here, I need a SOCO team at Oakley Gardens, in Chelsea, number seven. Correct, I also need an IT team. I’ll meet them outside.” He hung up and spoke to Sarah. “Do you need us to call anybody? Have you got somebody who can stay with you?”
She gave a wet smile. “It’s OK, I…” She hesitated and looked embarrassed. “I’ve called Mark. He’s devastated. He’s coming over now.”
We stepped out into the early evening. Summer evenings are long and light in England, and dusk was still a couple of hours away. Dehan trotted down the stairs two at a time and rested her ass on the hood of Harry’s car as she watched us come down the stairs. Harry was shaking his head. “We’ll have to muzzle the media. I don’t like where this is going.”
I offered him my right-handed lopsided grin and said, “It’s going where the evidence takes it, remember?”
“Nothing is ever simple with you, is it, John?” He turned to Dehan. “Any other copper picks up a murder and it’s jealousy, or rape or burglary got out of hand.” He jerked his thumb at me. “Get this git involved and before you know it, you have political conspiracies involved.”
Dehan made a guttural noise like, “Mhmhmhm…” which I figured was some kind of laughter. I shrugged.
“It was never going to be jealousy or burglary. Right from the start, you had the murderer trying to frame a fifteen year-old serial killer. That tells you straight off it was not only premeditated but very carefully planned. And smart. If that killer had four unsolved murders under his belt, the chances were good a fifth would get shelved right along with the other four.”
He nodded and I went on. “You don’t plan something this elaborate out of jealousy. You know that as well as I do. Most planning in that kind of killing comes after the event: how to cover it up? This kind of forward planning…”
He sighed and stared down at his feet. “It usually comes with a non-sexual motive, usually money: inheritance, avoiding a divorce settlement, getting rid of an awkward business partner…”
Dehan crossed her arms and added, “Or somebody who is trying to blackmail you. So what do you know about Lord Chiddester?”
He eased himself up onto his toes, then slowly lowered himself again while chewing his lip. “Conservative Member of Parliament for Chiddester.” He glanced at Dehan. “The equivalent in the States would be a Republican congressman, but without the flat Earth religious fundamentalism.”
She raised an eyebrow at him.
He hurried on. “He is somewhat to the right of the Conservatives, notorious for his anti-Islamic stance, very vocal against immigration, campaigned for Brexit, very liberal free-marketeer. Very supportive of Israel. Gave up his seat in the Lords so that he could take a seat in the commons. In the running as a future Prime Minister.” He puffed out his cheeks and blew. “Speaking of which, I need to give him a call. Excuse me.”
We watched him walk away down the sidewalk, holding the phone to his ear. After a moment, he stopped and began to talk quietly.
I looked at Dehan. “What do you make of it?”
She hugged herself with her arms and narrowed her eyes. “I want to make a big graph and draw in all the bits and try to connect them.”
I nodded.
She went on, “We have a serial killer who killed four women over a period of…?”
“Fourteen months.”
“Fourteen months, fifteen years ago. He stops, suddenly, for no apparent reason. Fifteen years later, another murder is committed, identical to those four in every detail except one: the spelling of whiskey is anglicized. So the new killer is very familiar with the old crimes, but not familiar with the song, American Pie, and not familiar with how Americans spell whiskey. He is an Englishman who is very familiar with the case.”
“We need to make an initial list of who those men might be.”
She ignored me and carried on. “OK, so that’s one corner of our graph, up here.” She indicated a large, imaginary graph in the air and pointed to it in the top left corner. “Meanwhile, down here…” she indicated the middle, “We have the victim, romantically, or at least sexually, involved with a new and mysterious man.”
“Or woman.”
“Or woman, and highly motivated to pursue her career, or adventure, as an investigative journalist. And it looks very much as though she had identified a subject to investigate…” She paused and pointed at me with her finger, like a gun. “Oh, Lord! I am beginning to talk like you.”
“Stay with it, Grasshopper, you’re doing well.”
“Her father is a right-wing politician who is very outspoken and is tipped by some as a future Prime Minister. We don’t know what his relationship with his daughter is like, but it seems she turned to him for help in her research. Whether she got any help, and what that help was, could be important.” She looked at me. “What else?”
“Just over two weeks ago, she told Sarah she was going on holiday. Did she go? We don’t know, but it would seem she went instead to Whitechapel and shacked up in that small apartment. Question: was she there the whole two weeks?” I sighed. “We need the bedding from the apartment tested and the results compared with the sheet you took from here.”
Down the road, Harry hung up and started walking back toward us. He looked drawn and tired. He spoke as he walked. “He’s on his way to the morgue now to identify the body. I asked if he’d mind answering a few questions, but he said it was out of the question. He had to go and inform his wife down in West Sussex, and be with her.”
Dehan frowned and exploded, “Doesn’t he want his daughter’s killer caught?”
Harry stared at her a moment, then said, “Well, you’ll have to ask him that, Carmen. He said we could go and talk to him tomorrow morning at his offices in Little College Street, opposite the Houses of Parliament, at half past ten.” He frowned a moment. “Don’t be too harsh on him. People deal with grief in different ways. For some people, the only way they can deal with it is to act as though it had never happened and bury their feelings. We’re a bit like that over here.”
Her cheeks flushed and she glanced at me. I smiled at the sight. You didn’t often see Dehan embarrassed.
In that moment, an unmarked car and a police van turned into the street. Harry raised his hand to them and the driver of the car saw us and pulled up outside Sarah’s house with the van just behind him. They started climbing out and assembling their equipment, and Harry made to move toward them. I held out my hand and smiled. “Keys, Harry. You owe me a car. You want me to drive you anywhere?”
He shook his head. “I’ll get a ride with the IT lads. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Ten o’clock sharp at the Yard.”
He tossed me the keys and I handed them to Dehan. “You drive, I read.” I showed her the file on Hattie. “See you tomorrow, Harry.”
He sighed and as I climbed in the passenger seat, I heard him say. “I have a bad feeling about this…”
I always said he was intuitive.
As we pulled away, I opened the file. I knew exactly what I was looking for and I ignored the photographs, and the description of the crime scene. I didn’t want to know about any of that. Not yet. I’d been there. I’d seen it. I wanted to know if she had fought. I knew her temperament. I knew her
character. I knew that she could well have fought. That she would surely have fought.
She had.
They had recovered organic material from under her nails. They had gotten a DNA profile, but there had been no match on the database. I nodded and tossed the file in the back of the car. That was all I had wanted to know.
SIX
I didn’t sleep that night. I lay staring at the ceiling till two. Then I pulled a chair over by the window overlooking Green Park and, by the filtered light of the street lamps on Picadilly, I read the file that had been haunting me for fifteen years. My worst fears about how she had died were realized. Everything I had dreaded was true. It had all happened a decade and a half in the past, but in my mind, in my emotions, it was still happening, it was still real, and it was like a fever.
At seven, Dehan awoke and swung her legs out of the bed. She sat staring at me with sleepy eyes. “Have you been there all night?”
I nodded.
She came over on long, unsteady legs and gave my head a hug. Then she went to have a shower. While she was gone, I called Harry’s office, knowing he wouldn’t be there. A girl’s voice answered after the third ring and said, “Detective Inspector Harry Green’s office.”
“Good morning, this is Detective John Stone, I am consulting on the Katie Ellis case…”
“Oh yes, good morning, Detective Stone. Up bright and early! How can I help you?”
“I’m preparing for a meeting with Harry and Lord Ellis this morning. I meant to get a copy of the case file yesterday but everything was so rushed, I was wondering if you could e-mail it to me.”
“No problem. Just give me your email and I’ll send it right over.”
I told her, thanked her and hung up. A minute later, the email arrived on my phone. I opened up the attachment and filed through it until I found Brad Johnson’s address. 11, Raddington Road, just off the Portobello Road.
I took a sheet of the hotel notepaper and scrawled a note on it.
Just popped out. Back in half an hour.
S
Then I called down and had them bring the car out front. It was seven twenty and the traffic was not heavy yet. I took Park Lane, Bayswater Road and Ladbroke Grove, and a drive that should have taken me twenty minutes took fifteen. I turned into Portobello Road, accelerated, made the tires complain as I turned into Raddington, and skidded to a halt outside his block. It was a small apartment building with four stories, and his was the top floor.
When you’ve spent almost thirty years working as a cop in the Bronx, you learn something about picking locks. A Swiss Army knife and a tough heel to your hand is one of the most efficient methods I know, and I know a few. Thirty seconds and I was climbing the stairs to his apartment.
I gave his front door the same treatment: rammed the small screwdriver in the lock, hammered it hard with the heel of my hand and turned. As I pushed open the door and walked into the narrow, dark hallway, he was stepping out of his kitchen in his shorts, holding a mug of coffee and frowning. “What the…?”
I said, “Don’t worry, I have a warrant.”
He made a face like brain-ache and said, “Huh? Where?”
It was a stupid question. I smiled and said, “Here,” and smashed the heel of my hand into his face. His mug went flying and he staggered back against the doorjamb. Before he could recover, I grabbed the back of his head with my left hand and slammed the heel of my right into his nose. Then I hit him again in the mouth, and then I couldn’t stop and kept hammering at him till his face was a bloody mess. After that, I let him drop to the floor, knelt on his chest and spoke softly to him.
“You raped, tortured and murdered an innocent woman, the woman I loved. We were married just a few weeks and you tortured and killed her. I am not going to allow you to ruin the rest of my life, or my wife’s. I am done chasing you—almost.”
I’m not proud of what I did next, but I like to tell myself it was out of necessity, not revenge. Maybe I’ll never know. I stood and rammed my heel hard on his right knee, breaking it. His scream is something I will never forget. There was a human part of me that felt compassion, and that is the part of me I want to say is the real me. But there was another part, a diabolical side, that was in indescribable pain, and hungry for revenge. That part found satisfaction in his scream.
I went and thoroughly washed my hands and the sink. Then I called Harry.
“Morning, John. How are you this bright day?”
“Harry, listen, I came to talk to Johnson at his apartment. I found the door open and he’s been badly beaten. I think he has a broken leg. He’s going to need hospitalization, can you arrange an ambulance?”
He was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was real serious. “John, tell me you haven’t…”
I interrupted him. “I haven’t. This guy needs help, fast. We can talk about what happened afterwards.”
“All right. It’s on its way.”
I hung up. Johnson had passed out. I went to the bathroom and found some cotton wool. From the kitchen I got a couple of freezer bags. Then I mopped up the gore from his face, making sure I saturated each bud as thoroughly as I could with blood and mucus, and filled the two bags.
After five minutes, I heard the sirens approaching outside. I stood and left the apartment, ran down the stairs, climbed in the car and drove away. I didn’t go back to the hotel. I drove fast down Ladbroke Grove and turned left at the end into Notting Hill Gate. I parked outside the UPS store, then pushed into the WH Smith stationers a few doors down. I bought a padded manila envelope and a notepad. Then I went back to the car, put one of the bags of cotton wool into the envelope and wrote a note:
To Inspector John Newman
Sir, I will be able to confirm later today that this blood and mucus was recovered from the man who raped, tortured and murdered my first wife. He is an American national, resident in Arizona. I want him extradited and tried there. They have jurisdiction.
By the time you receive this I will have emailed you the results of the DNA comparison.
John
I sealed the envelope and addressed it as private and highly confidential. Then I went in and sent it to be delivered the next morning. I knew I was playing a high risk game, but in that moment I didn’t give a damn.
I drove back to the hotel and was told by the concierge that Mrs. Stone was having breakfast in the dining room. I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to nine.
She watched me cross the large, elegant dining room with narrowed eyes. As I sat, she raised an eyebrow at me. I was rescued by a waiter who asked if I would be having breakfast. I told him I’d have black coffee and a couple croissants.
When he’d gone, Dehan said, “I can tolerate anything, put up with anything and will forgive anything, except infidelity, which carries the death penalty, and being cut out, which carries a penalty worse than death.” She paused and gave me a horrible smile. “Make me happy again while I am still joking.”
I nodded a few times. “You’re right. I want you to understand that what I am going to tell you, I never told you. I have never done anything like this before, and I hope I will never do anything like it again. But I don’t regret it. The law is fine, Dehan, for generalities, but occasionally there is a particular, some unique situation, that the law cannot cover.” I shook my head. “I am not justifying anything, Carmen. I don’t care if the world approves or not. I did what I did and I would do it again, though I pray I never have to.”
She waited a moment. “What did you do, Stone?”
The waiter brought my coffee and a couple of hot croissants in a basket. I took one and broke it open.
“Dehan, there is an important difference between the British legal system and our own. It’s one, I think most cops would agree, where the Brits got it right. Back home, illegally obtained evidence is ruled inadmissible…”
She frowned at me and spoke through a mouthful of croissant. “Hereishnomph?”
“Here it is not. Here it is as
sessed on its probative value. If the judge deems it probative of either the prosecution or the defense’s case, it is admitted.”
She started to nod approval, then the meaning of my words dawned on her. She swallowed and said, “Oh my God, Stone, what have you done?”
“I read in Hattie’s file that she fought her attacker. She clawed at him while he raped and tortured her. They recovered his DNA from under her fingernails and ran a profile, but there was no match in the system. So I went to his apartment this morning. His address is in the Katie Ellison file. I broke in, I beat him to a pulp and saturated several cotton buds with his blood. I sent half of them to the Inspector, back home. I want him to pull strings, do whatever he has to do. Johnson has to stand trial in Arizona.”
She shook her head. “You’re crazy. Even if you pull it off, he won’t wait to be extradited. He’ll bolt. Anyway, Arizona hasn’t got jurisdiction over a murder committed in the U.K.”
“Wrong on both counts. U.S. courts have jurisdiction over any American who commits a crime anywhere in the world. And as for him bolting…” I shook my head. “He’s going to be in hospital for at least a month.”
Her expression was one of horror. “What the hell did you do to him, Stone?”
“I broke his leg. He won’t be running anywhere.”
“Stone! You could go to prison.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I got there, I wanted to ask him some questions about his non-alibi, and found the door open. I saw him lying in the kitchen doorway, bleeding badly. I immediately called Harry, cleaned him up a bit and left as soon as I heard the ambulance arriving. It had slipped my mind we had a meeting with Lord Chiddester, and I didn’t want to be late.”
“You really think Harry is going to believe that?”
“No, but he doesn’t need to believe it. He needs to prove it’s a lie, and he can’t. And he won’t want to.”
She sighed.
