Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [classic children's novels txt] 📗

She was quiet for a long time, thinking.

“What about the girls? What about what they witnessed?”

I spread my hands. I felt genuinely helpless. “Dehan, I wasn’t able to protect you from Mick Harragan, either. How many kids have we failed to protect this year? If we start limiting our investigations because of the collateral damage we might do to a criminal’s family, we will end up completely paralyzed. Think what Sadiq would have gone through in prison. How do we protect his daughters from that?”

“It sucks.”

I nodded. “Yuh, that is reality, and don’t we know it!”

She smiled in a way you could call rueful.

“But Sadiq is not your dad, Mrs. Khan is not your mom, you are not those little girls, and I am definitely not Mick Harragan. For a start, I haven’t got four million bucks in an account in Belize.”

She looked at me and gave another rueful smile. She sat forward and put her hand over mine. “Sorry, partner. You’re a good man and I shouldn’t have doubted you. It was all a bit close to home.”

I put my hand over hers. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I got your back. What do you say, spaghetti Bolognese, bottle of wine, and an early start?”

She smiled. For a moment she looked really happy. She blinked a couple of times and I realized she was blinking away tears. She nodded, then got up and went quickly to the toilet. I watched her go and thought about all the male partners I had had over the years. I tried to remember any of them ever doing something like that. I was pretty sure none of them ever had.

Twenty-THREE

We arrived at noon, parked on Indiana Avenue, and walked a block back to the park. We had a look around. There were few people and nobody seemed to have any interest in us. At twelve forty, we found a place for Dehan to sit on the edge of the fountain, where she could cover the entrance to the park and the entrance to the Pavilion Café. Then I went inside and chose a table close by the glass wall where she could see me and I could see her.

She sat cross-legged, tied her hair into a knot at the back of her head and started looking at her phone. When I was a kid and used to go to the movies, she would have been reading a book or a newspaper, but Orwell’s nightmare of a screen for every human being had become a reality in a way he could never have imagined; that people would actually pay for their screens, and carry them around with them voluntarily.

Every few seconds, she looked up and scanned the area. At one o’clock precisely, she looked directly at me and then back at her phone. A few seconds later, a man in a suit appeared. He looked Indian, with olive skin and very black hair. He was in his late thirties or early forties.

He stepped into the café, saw me and came over. He sat and smiled.

“Don’t shake my hand. There is nothing unusual about our meeting here. I meet a lot of friends and acquaintances here.”

I leaned back in my chair. “That’s fine. Who do you think is watching you?”

He hailed a waitress and shrugged. “Maybe nobody, but in this city, in this job, you learn to be careful. Cappuccino please, Astrid.”

This last was directed at the waitress who had rolled over and was smiling at us. I smiled back. “And two double espressos.”

He grinned as the waitress rolled away. “Your friend on the fountain.” She had got off the wall and was pushing through the door. “She’s good. I almost missed her.”

She slipped into a chair.

“He came alone.”

He nodded. “I did. I came alone. Because I am the only person in the world who knows what I am about to share with you.” He smiled apologetically. “It sounds melodramatic, but it is the truth.” He laid both hands on the table and seemed to study them for a moment. “Sean and I didn’t actually know each other very long. We came from very different backgrounds and had very little in common, but we were both very idealistic.” He glanced at each of us in turn. “You understand, we both really wanted to make a difference.”

The coffees arrived and we were instructed by the waitress to enjoy them. Dehan gave a lopsided smile and said, “We’ve learned enough about Sean in the last few days to believe that much.”

“For me, it was always a question of making subtle changes from the inside. Get into the corridors of power and influence change from there.” He gave a laugh. “You know? The cynics are as mistaken as the idealists. Politicians are just like the rest of us, neither good nor bad, but somewhere in between. Most people would rather do good, if they can. Most people’s sin is not evil, but indifference.”

Personally, I prefer to get my philosophy from Hume and Locke than from a guy who spends too much time reading Facebook thought-bites. So I smiled and said, “You were telling us about Sean.”

“Yuh, sorry. I get carried away sometimes. Anyway, that was my approach, but Sean.” He got a far away look in his eyes, smiled and shook his head. “He was the fearless warrior. I don’t know if it was that Celtic fire in his blood or what it was, but he had to be reckless and bold, and meet his enemy in open battle. Nothing else would do for him. He was truly fearless.”

For a moment, the incongruity of it struck me. This fearless warrior, who was devout almost to the point of fanaticism, who must meet his enemy in open battle, had died on his knees. It somehow didn’t seem