Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

anyhow. Whatever job he did, it entitled him to more than a cubicle and a partition. He lowered himself into his black leather swivel chair and jerked his thumb at the window. “View’s not up to much, but at least I won’t get shot by a sniper.” Before I could ask him if that was likely to happen, he pulled over a file and a couple of A4 manila envelopes and handed them to me. Then he pulled open a drawer and took out a bottle of Bushmills and three glasses. The file was Hattie’s. While he poured, I opened the envelopes. They were the scans of the notes that had been left pinned to each victim.

I borrowed a pen from the pot on his desk and wrote the date of each note in the top right margin of each scan. Then I left all five scans on my right and took the glass of Bushmills that he was handing me.

“Cheers!”

We toasted and sipped. Before he could speak, I said, “Have you any more information on Katie?”

“Not much. No match for her fingerprints or her DNA in the system. Our ME says the cause of death was the stab wound to the heart. All the mutilation was post mortem, just as in the other cases.” He frowned. “Curious thing, the clothes she had in her wardrobe were all expensive, but also very good quality…”

Dehan gave a laugh that sounded like a gurgle. “So it wasn’t expensive trash?”

He nodded. “Exactly. You’ll find that people who come into money suddenly will buy indiscriminately, shopping for labels. People who have grown up with money all their lives are less impressed by labels and are more interested in quality.”

I said, “Savile Row versus Armani.”

“Precisely. Now the clothes we did find there, as I say, were very good and very expensive, some of them from bespoke tailors, but there was very little of it. That made me examine her hair and her nails…”

Dehan was nodding. “Expensive manicure and haircut.”

“Yup.”

“But she’s shacked up in a dive in Whitechapel.”

“Odd, isn’t it? Now, we have a possible lead. We started looking into missing persons reports and there is a girl reported missing from her home in Chelsea, name of Katie Ellison. General description seems to fit. So I thought I’d wait for you and we could go and see her flatmate together.”

Dehan looked at me. “Flatmate? Is that like a roommate?”

“Yup.”

“So if her real home is this place in Chelsea, that would explain why she had so few clothes at the dive, but it begs the question, what was she doing there?”

Harry was nodding. “Precisely so. So shall we go and see if her flatmate can tell us?”

I said, “Was she English?”

“Yes.”

I nodded and raised a finger, indicating he should wait. I reached across the table and took hold of the bottle of Bushmills. Harry smiled, but there was the faintest hint of irritation in his eyes. I said, “Don’t worry. I haven’t become an alcoholic.” I put the bottle in front of Dehan and pointed to the label where it said, ‘Single Malt’ and beneath it, ‘Irish Whiskey’.

She nodded, then shook her head. “What?”

I turned the bottle and showed it to Harry, who was frowning. Then I took the scans of the messages pinned to Cindy Rogers, Sally-Anne Sterling, Kathleen Dodge and Amy Porter and laid them out. I said, “Are they all the same?”

They both leaned forward and stared at them:

And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye…

Dehan shrugged. “Yeah, why?”

Harry got to his feet, bending over them with his fists on the desk. He looked up at me. “What are you getting at, John?”

I dropped the note that was pinned to Katie on top of the others. “How about this one?”

And them good ole boys were drinking whisky and rye…

They stared at it in silence. Dehan muttered, “Holy cow…” Harry closed his eyes and sat slowly down.

I scratched my chin. “It was the first thing I noticed. The Scots, the Canadians and the English spell whisky like that, without the ‘e’. We spell it the Irish way. And in Don McLean’s song, American Pie, it’s spelled the way it’s spelled in those four notes, with an ‘e’. Harry, I hate to be a pain in the ass, but the guy who killed Katie Ellison, if that’s who she is, is English. They guy who killed the other four isn’t.”

He sighed, nodded slowly, then gave his head a shake. “God, you’re an awkward bugger.”

I put my cell on the desk. “That song is central to those murders. He pinned it to their eyes. You don’t get much more central than that. He was telling us, back then, ‘This phrase is what it’s all about’. This phrase is why I am killing these women. So it’s a fair bet that Don McLean means something to the killer. Do we agree on that?”

He spread his hands. “It is, as you suggest, self-evident.”

“This is Brad Johnson, on the subject of Don McLean. Please remember, over the last fifteen years I have studied Brad Johnson in some depth. He is a white supremacist who believes that gays and Jews have a special place in hell.”

I pressed ‘play’.

“OK, Brad, we’re going. Just one question before we do.”

“What?”

“You know Don McLean’s song, Pride Parade?”

“What?”

“Don McLean. You know who Don McLean is?”

“Yeah, I know who fuckin’ Don McLean is. What I don’t know is what the fuck you are talking about. You want to get the hell out of here? I’m trying to promote my business.”

“Bear with me, Brad. Don McLean recorded a song in 1972 called the Pride Parade.”

“So what?”

“What did you think of it?”

“Nothing. I didn’t think anything of it. I don’t know the