by Blake Banner
I asked, “Who’s her father?”
“Lord Chiddester.”
Harry’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, Katie Ellison! Charles Ellison, Lord Chiddester’s daughter.”
Sarah gazed at him with glazed eyes. “Yes… Sorry. I thought you realized that.”
Dehan was frowning like she was getting a headache. “So is it Ellison or Chiddester?”
I said, “It’s a complicated system.” I looked at Sarah. “What is he, a marquis?”
“Yes, the Marquis of Chiddester.”
I turned back to Dehan. “Chiddester is a place in West Sussex. Charles Ellison is the Marquess of Chiddester, so he is known as Lord Chiddester.” I smiled. “His close friends probably call him Chiddester or Chiddie, though his given name is Charles and his surname is Ellison. His daughter didn’t have a title yet, so she was plain Katie Ellison. If she had inherited her father’s title, she would have become the Marchioness, Lady Chiddester.”
She nodded for a while and Sarah started to cry quietly again. Dehan reached out and took her hand. “So Katie’s dad is a marquis, and she was pumping him for information for an article—a scoop—that she was planning to sell to a major paper?”
Sarah nodded.
I asked her, “Have you any idea what the article was about? Did she tell you anything at all about it?”
She shook her head. “No. She was very tight-lipped about it. It was a huge adventure for her. Everything was. And she loved being secretive and mysterious. It’s going to be so strange without her around.”
“Have you got a telephone number where we can contact Lord Chiddester?”
She reached in the pocket of her pink shorts and pulled out an iPhone. She looked through her address book and found his private cell phone. Harry made a note and so did Dehan.
While they typed, I asked her, “What about her romantic life, Sarah? Did she have a boyfriend?”
“I don’t know.”
I was surprised and my face told her so. She gave a small laugh. “She had been going out with Mark, but that was nothing serious and they just stopped seeing each other a couple of months ago. She was getting more involved in what she called ‘her work’ and I think they just got bored of each other…”
I could sense there was more, so I asked her, “But…?”
“Well she had gone out on a few evenings recently, a bit more togged up than usual.”
Dehan looked at me. “Togged up?”
“Dressed up, looking smart.”
She nodded, then turned back to Sarah. “So you think she was meeting a guy?”
“Why else would you tog yourself up?”
Dehan shrugged and made a face. “To meet an editor?”
“It’s possible, but it was rather late at night and she was definitely going for sexy rather than motivated journalist. She’d also had a few phone calls that involved a lot of muttering and giggling, and she wouldn’t tell me afterwards who they were from, and when I tried to check her mobile, she was frightfully cross.”
“When was the last time you heard from Katie, Sarah?”
“Day before yesterday. She telephoned to say she was coming home. I was thrilled. I was beginning to miss her. She’d been away almost two weeks.”
“Did she say exactly when she was coming home?”
Sarah thought for a moment. “Well, she said, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ but she didn’t say what time or anything like that.”
Dehan nodded like she understood and asked, “Do you mind if we have a look around in her room?”
She told us she didn’t and we climbed the stairs to the bedrooms. It was clean but in the kind of mess you would expect from a young, single girl sharing a house. We found pretty much what I had expected to find, nothing. Anything of any interest would have been in the apartment. While Harry and Dehan snooped around, I stepped onto the landing, where Sarah was leaning with her back against the wall, crying silently.
I put my hand on her shoulder and she blinked tears at me. “Sorry.”
“Where did she work, Sarah?”
She pointed to the end of the landin,g where there was a small box room with a desk and a computer. I stepped in and had a look around. There was a tall, narrow bookcase against the wall beside the desk. I scanned the titles. There were a few on journalism, mostly relating to libel and how to avoid it, but the bulk of the titles were on political philosophy, the European Union, economic liberalism, Communism, the rise of the Far Right and Islam.
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:
