by Blake Banner
I nodded. “Mm-hm…”
“We’d do the same, if a British cop came over and did that…”
I laughed. “Depends. I can think of some PDs where they might offer to hold the suspect down while Inspector Watkins gives him a damned good thrashing, what!”
She laughed at my attempt at an English accent. Then her laugh trailed off. “Still, he was under a lot of pressure…”
“Drop it, Dehan. It’s not our case. We’ll telephone Chiddester and…”
As I was saying it, my phone started to ring. It was a London landline.
“Yeah, Stone.”
“Detective John Stone of the NYPD?”
“This is he,” I said, rather grandly, and smiled at Dehan.
“I am calling from Justin Caulfield MP’s office. He was wondering if you would be kind enough to come in for a chat. We would be happy to send a cab for you.”
I drew breath to say that I was afraid we couldn’t, but heard my voice saying, “Yeah, sure, but we are on the clock, so it would have to be right now.”
“I’ll have a taxi pick you up in ten minutes, Detective Stone.”
“That’ll be fine.”
Dehan spread her hands and made a ‘What?’ face.
“Justin Caulfield’s office. Would we mind popping in for a chat?”
* * *
Justin Caulfield’s office was two hundred yards around the corner from where we had seen Lord Chiddester the day before. It was a similar, terraced, Georgian house in dark gray brick with modest white stucco around the door and windows. We were met by a young man in a double-breasted suit who led us up a flight of stairs to a broad landing, where he tapped on a door and then pushed in without waiting for a reply. “Detectives Stone and Dehan, Mr. Caulfield.”
He nodded, turned to us and gestured us in. It was a spacious office, sparsely furnished, and it clearly wasn’t his. There was a modest, wooden desk beside a closed, white door, a couple of chairs, a bookcase with anonymous volumes on law and parliamentary procedure, and a complete absence of anything personal like photos, paintings, ornaments or trophies. He stood as we came in and came around the desk to greet us.
He was tall, reedy, with un-brushed, short, graying hair. He had a scraggy beard, a tweed jacket and no tie, but a glance at his shoes told me they cost him at least three hundred bucks. He held out his hand, a man of the people.
“John, Carmen, may I? I am always more comfortable on first name terms.”
Dehan took his hand. “Well, that depends, Mr. Caulfield, on why you invited us here. Why don’t you tell us that, and then we’ll see about what we call each other.”
He threw back his head and laughed loudly. You got the impression he was observing himself doing it and approved of his own bluff, rugged honesty: a man’s man who was sensitive enough to be a woman’s man too.
He gestured us to the chairs at the desk and spoke as he sat. “One of the things I find so refreshing about America. The directness and the honesty…”
I offered him a sweet, honest American smile and said, “That’s funny. I was reading in the paper only yesterday that you had had just about enough of our American hypocrisy.”
“Taken out of context, I promise.”
“I am sure it was. But I am wondering, Mr. Caulfield, what a shadow cabinet minister wants with two cops from the Bronx spending more than they can afford on their honeymoon.”
“Congratulations. Even if it is an outmoded institution, it has its romantic charm. But I have to say, that is not an entirely accurate description of your position here at the moment, is it?”
Dehan said, “You’re talking about the fact that DI Harry Green asked us to consult on the Katie Ellison murder?”
He nodded.
“How is that any of your business?”
He looked startled.
Dehan spread her hands. “Forgive my direct American honesty, Mr. Caulfield. I don’t mean to be rude, I am genuinely asking. If I were back home and a congressman called me into his office to ask about a homicide I was investigating, I’d ask him the same question. What the hell are you doing calling me into your office to ask me about an ongoing investigation?”
He blinked a few times.
I smiled and said, “I was going to ask the same thing, but Detective Dehan is so much more direct and succinct.”
He leaned back in his chair and frowned. “And absolutely correct, of course. Which is why I have not called you into my main office in the Commons, but rather invited you to this far less formal, unofficial office. I certainly did not mean the invitation to be inappropriate in any way.”
“That’s good to hear. So how can we help you, Mr. Caulfield?”
“Well…” He nodded a few times with his fingers laced across his belly. “There are rumors going around Westminster that the murder of this poor girl might be linked somehow to an MP. If that were the case, clearly there would be a serious national security issue, and I am afraid the government is not always as forthcoming or transparent as it ought to be when it comes to sharing information with the opposition.”
Dehan frowned and suddenly grabbed her hair and tied it at the back of her neck, like she was sending it to the naughty mat. “I still don’t understand, Mr. Caulfield. I can see that the Home Secretary, or his aides, might have access to information about an ongoing investigation, but how would you be entitled to that information?”
He blinked again, several times, and almost looked embarrassed. Finally, he said, “If it were a matter of national security, then the shadow Home Secretary might be entitled to have sight of that information…”
I nodded, frowning like that made sense and putting him at his ease. “I am curious,” I said, “as to what makes you think there might be a national security issue in this case.”
Now he was on safer ground again. “Well, that is what I was hoping you would tell me, as everybody else seems to be very tight-lipped about it. All we are getting is rumors that Lord Chiddester’s daughter might have been involved with people who might have had ties with terrorists.”
I frowned deeper, like this was news to me. “May I ask you who suggested that idea to you?”
“I am not at liberty to say.”
Dehan laughed and shook her head. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You want us to share confidential information with you about an ongoing investigation, when we are only guests in this country, but you won’t tell us the source of your rumors?” She shrugged and spread her hands. “Forgive me but, what’s in it for us? Why would we play this game with you?”
He sighed. His face said he was regretting having called us. “Westminster is full of people who share information. Sometimes it’s to curry favor, sometimes it’s a trade, sometimes it’s a sale, for hard cash…” He paused, looking first at me and then at Dehan. “And sometimes it is out of loyalty and idealism. Even if I were to give you names, they would mean nothing to you. It is the vine, the bush telegraph of Westminster. All I can tell you is that, if the rumors are true, it would mean a very serious breach of security within the establishment.”
I leaned forward and put my elbows on my knees. Then I looked him squarely in the eye. “So you want to know if Katie Ellison was involved with somebody who posed a threat to British national security?”
His breathing quickened barely perceptibly. “Yes…”
“We haven’t found any indication of that, Mr. Caulfield. But I can tell you that I, personally, know who killed her, and why. And I am closing in on him. So be reassured, there is no threat to your national security, and her killer will soon be behind bars.” I glanced at my watch. “I’m afraid we have to go. You take care now.”
I stood and Dehan stood with me. He watched us and his jaw went slack. We crossed the room, gave him a nod and let ourselves out. I closed the door and his secretary looked up at us and smiled. “Leaving so soon?”
I nodded. “Yeah, you take it easy.”
I crossed the floor to the landing, then
stopped like I’d forgotten something and crossed back to Caulfield’s office. His secretary half stood, looking alarmed. I frowned, shook my head at him and opened the door.
The white door behind Caulfield’s desk was open. Caulfield was standing, staring at me. His expression was one of anger. Opposite him was a slim, dark-haired man of about forty-eight, in a pinstriped suite. I nodded at Caulfield. “Sorry, I thought I forgot my hat, but I didn’t bring one.”
I closed the door and Dehan and I made our way down the stairs to the street. Once outside, it was good to feel the river breeze on my face in the muggy heat. Dehan stood, squinting up at me. “What was that about, Sensei? Going back like that?”
I looked up at the low ceiling of gray clouds, then frowned down at her. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure.”
TWELVE
We were standing in the Victoria Tower Gardens, just beside the Houses of Parliament. We were leaning on the wall, in the shade of the giant chestnut trees, looking out over the Thames. Overhead, the seagulls had stopped laughing at me and instead seemed to be screaming, “Oh God!” to the heavens in their ugly, squawking voices.
“I noticed the door,” I said to Dehan. “The whole office was obviously improvised. That whole area: Little College Street, Great College Street, Cowley, Barton, they’re all given over to the use of back bench MPs, to run campaigns, meet delegations…”
She was nodding. “A spillover from the main government offices in the Houses of Parliament.”
“Exactly. He wanted to meet us unofficially, so it made sense to use an office one of his minions was probably using for something else. But it struck me when we went in that it was an odd place to have the desk. It was kind of awkward, right by a door, when it would have made more sense to have it closer to a window.” I spread my hands. “Better light, nice view… It just kept nagging at me, and in the end I decided he had somebody on the other side of the door, listening.”
“And that’s why you went back? To see who it was?”
I nodded out at the river. A barge hooted at me.
“So who was it?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer. Finally, she asked me, “Are you going to answer?”
I sighed. “I don’t know how to. I have no idea who it was. It was a man in a charcoal gray, pinstriped, single-breasted three-piece suit. It was a nice suit, well cut, understated. Other than that, he was non-descript: dark hair, medium build, five eleven, maybe six foot.”
I frowned at myself because I knew there was more to it than that, but I wasn’t sure what. Dehan managed to frown and raise an eyebrow at the same time, which takes skill. “You seem to have noticed his suit more than him.”
She was right, and I nodded a lot. “Yes, because somehow, Dehan, and this is going to sound crazy, but somehow, the suit was more important than he was.”
She made a face and shrugged. “No, yeah, I can see how you would think that sounds crazy. That’s because it is crazy, Stone!” She turned to face me and slapped me gently across the back of my head. “How can the guy’s suit be more important than he is? Come on! I gotta get you home before you start turning as crazy as these Brits! I think you’re reverting to your ancestral madness!”
I laughed. She took my left arm in both of hers and started walking me back toward Abingdon Street. “Now, there are two places you are going to take me, which I heard are ‘Must-Sees’ in London. One is a pub that used to be the Bank of England. You got to hand it to these people, they know what to do with an old building. Turn it into a pub. That is genius. The second is an ancient bar called El Vino.”
I nodded as I pulled my cell from my pocket. “I know both of those places very well. They are both on the same street. Just give me a second.”
I made a call while Dehan hailed a cab. It answered on the third ring. A black cab pulled over and as we climbed in, I said into the phone, “Manuel, I am going to e-mail you a file. Can you print it for me and have it ready for when I arrive back, in an hour or two? Keep it in the safe till we get in, will you? Thanks.”
The cab did a U-turn and we headed east toward Parliament Square. I leaned forward and said, “Can you drop us at the Temple Gardens? We’ll walk from there.”
“Lovely walk,” he said, and didn’t stop talking till we got there. By the time he dropped us off and I’d paid him, we knew all about his missus, where his kids went to school, why the country was going to the dogs and how immigration had brought the country to its knees. I figured that was one vote for Chiddester.
We walked through the Temple Gardens Gate and up Middle Temple Lane. For my money, it is one of the most bizarre and lovely places on the planet. The roads are cobbled, every building is between three and five hundred years old and still inhabited by lawyers who wear black gowns and wigs. We walked among the colonnades and flagged paths, through Pump Court and came out at the Inner Temple, with the great dining hall on the right, beside the library, and the Temple, the ancient church itself on the left.
I pointed to it. “The Magna Carta had its first reading right in there. It was a Templar church back then. An Englishman’s right to trial by jury, his right to legal representation, all date back to this place in the twelfth and thirteenth century.” I smiled at her. “You’re looking at the taproot of our own constitution, Dehan. The Rule of Law, an equitable legal system, innocence till proven guilty, it all starts right here.”
She leaned her head on my shoulder. “So when we have a son of a bitch in custody and he lawyers up…”
I ignored her. “Thomas Hayward, Thomas Lynch, Edward Rutledge… There are over a dozen signatories of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution who were members of either the Inner Temple or the Middle Temple, who learned their law right here.”
As I said it, I thought of Brad Johnson, lying on the floor of his apartment, with his bloodied face and his broken leg. The rule of law, innocent till proved guilty…until it’s your own wife or your own child. Suddenly, I felt oddly uncomfortable among those ancient buildings; suddenly they seemed to be glaring at me, like the vengeful ghosts of ancient jurists. I put my arm around her and moved toward Dr. Johnson’s Buildings.
“C’mon, Dehan,” I said. “Let’s get some lunch at the Bank.”
Dr. Johnson’s Buildings is a narrow, flagged alley that leads to an ancient, Tudor gate onto Fleet Street. Directly opposite is Chancery Lane, and slightly to the left of that is the Old Bank of England, vast, elaborately elegant in 18th Century style and packed to the gunnels with noise lawyers holding pints of beer and glasses of wine.
We elbowed our way through the crowds to one of the alcoves at the back where they had tables set for lunch. We had two pints of bitter and two steak and kidney pies, and pretended to ignore the Katie Ellison case. Just once, Dehan, with her mouth full of pie and a second pint of bitter in her hand, said, “Tho, wha’ chou hab de ’oncierge primp?”
“What did I have the concierge print?”
She nodded.
“The original Butcher file.”
She swallowed “Why?”
I shrugged. “For my records.”
“You can’t print it for your phony, non-existent records back in New York? We have to carry a ton of paper in our luggage instead? You’re lying. Remember, the penalty for cutting me out is…”
“OK, don’t threaten me on a full stomach. I want to see why that suit is so important.”
“You’re out of your mind. You, John Stone…” She pointed at me with her fork. “Are officially insane.”
A girl in a French maid’s uniform came to take our plates and I asked her for two Bushmills and some Stilton cheese. She said prettily that she would bring that for me right away and vanished.
Dehan drained her glass and tried unsuccessfully not to belch.
“It’s moments like these,” I said, “I am reminded why I married you.”
“Seriously, Stone, A: how are you going to see why a suit is important by going through a fifteen-y
ear-old case file; B: how can a three-piece pinstriped suit be remotely relevant to anything, and C: we are off the case and going home to the ‘Bwonx’ tomorrow. You solved your wife’s murder. Let it go.”
“A: I don’t know; B: I don’t know and C: OK.”
We had our whiskey and Stilton and, feeling slightly overfed, stepped out into the early afternoon heat. The clouds had largely cleared overhead and, though the humidity had lessened, it was still in the high nineties. We decided to give El Vino a miss and instead turned up Chancery Lane, intending to get the Metro—or the Underground—to Piccadilly and crash for an hour or two in our suite before packing in the afternoon.
On the way up, we passed Ede & Ravenscroft, the oldest tailor in London. Dehan guided me toward the large, dark wood window display and said, “1689, that’s a good run for any business. That the kind of suit your guy was wearing?”
It was. It was exactly the kind of suit he was wearing. And it was as though she had dropped a pinch of yeast into my brain and it had started fermenting. I nodded. “Exactly. It’s important, Dehan. It’s the missing link we have been looking for, and I can’t think why. What the hell does it mean?”
She frowned up at me. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Yeah…” I pointed through the glass at the dummy: his crisp white shirt, the collar held on with studs, the charcoal gray, single-breasted jacket, waistcoat and pants, the high-gloss black shoes. It was the key, and somewhere inside my brain I knew why, but it wouldn’t come to me. Every time I tried to grasp it, it dissipated, like charcoal gray mist. “That suit, right there. That is the answer.”
She shook her head. “I don’t see it, Sensei.”
“Neither do I, Little Grasshopper. In this case, Sensei trury brind.”
She grabbed my arm and pulled me away. “Come on! I am sleepy. Let’s get a cab. I don’t feel like traveling in a tube today.”
