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

looked mad. “This isn’t some Third World banana republic, you know. Our legal system is second to none…”

I sighed. “Come on, Harry! You know that’s not the reason. In fact, it’s almost the opposite of the reason…”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Dehan spoke up again. “He means your courts are too lenient. If he is tried in his home state of Arizona, the death penalty will be available. It has been applied thirty-seven times in the last sixty years. And even if he doesn’t get the injection, life, for a murder involving rape and torture, will mean life.”

He looked embarrassed.

I shrugged. “You know as well as I do, Harry, here he could be out in seven years. You were there. You know what he did to her. You saw the ME’s report. He has to pay for that. Then I… we… me and Dehan, can put this behind us and get on with our lives.”

He was quiet for a while, then finally said, “I can understand that. It’s not up to me. It’s up to the Home Office and the courts. I just hope you’re right, and this does give you closure.” He managed half a smile. “Come on, let’s go and talk to this knob.”

SEVEN

We were shown into Lord Chiddester’s office by his secretary. The room was more like a Georgian drawing room than an office. There was a lot of oak, none of it less than three hundred years old, and a lot of well-preserved stucco of about the same age. It was wall to wall carpeted, which most British aristocrats frown upon, but it was Wilton and very dark blue with a touch of gold, so I guess that was OK. One wall was taken up by an imposing bookcase with leaded glass panes, and the other walls had prints of horses.

For a moment, as we stepped into the room, I had the surreal sensation that Lord Chiddester was part of the furniture. He was seated behind a magnificent, dark oak desk in a magnificent dark burgundy leather chair, staring at us, immobile from under his brows. He didn’t say anything, he just watched us approach his desk and scowled.

Harry cleared his throat. “My Lord, thank you for agreeing to see us. I wonder if you would be prepared to answer a few questions…”

“Well, I didn’t invite you here to discuss the weather, Inspector. What do you want to know?”

Harry loosened his collar. “I understand, sir, that your daughter was writing an article…”

“Probably. What of it?”

“I understand it may have been quite a controversial article and that she may have approached you for some, er…”

“Some what, Inspector? Good lord, man! Spit it out! Is this the best Scotland Yard can come up with? No wonder the bloody country is overrun with damned Islamic terrorists!”

I saw Harry flush and start speaking again. “I understand she may have approached you for some guidance and information, sir?”

Chiddester frowned at him. “Where’d you get that idea? Who told you that?”

“Um, Miss Ellison’s housemate, sir, Sarah.”

“What else did she tell you?”

Dehan turned and looked at me. She had that expression on her face, where she narrowed her eyes and you knew she was getting mad and wouldn’t be able to keep her mouth shut. She spoke in a loud voice as she tied her hair in a knot at the base of her neck.

“You know what, Stone? My dad always brought me up to believe there was nothing so fine and elegant as an English gentleman. ‘They are never,’ he used to say to me, ‘boorish, ill mannered or crude. Especially the aristocracy.’ That’s what he used to say to me. ‘They would never, for example, stay sitting down while there was a woman standing.’ What do you think of that, Stone?”

I pulled a face and shook my head. “I think he was living in the past, Dehan. Those were the good old days, when England was England, before the European Union, and all the Muslim immigrants. What do you say, Lord Chiddester? Is the English gentleman a dying breed?”

He ignored me and kept his eyes on Dehan. Harry had closed his. Chiddester stood. “Madam, forgive me. That was unforgivable. Will you please sit?” He turned a baleful glare on Green and on me and gestured to two more chairs. Dehan sat and we followed suit. Chiddester scowled at Harry. “Are you going to introduce these people, Inspector?”

“Detectives John Stone and…”

Dehan cut in, “Detective Carmen Dehan, we are from the NYPD consulting on your daughter’s case.”

He sat back. “Dehan?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are of Jewish ancestry?”

“Is that a problem?”

He gave a small laugh. “You are obviously not familiar with U.K. politics at present, Detective Dehan. You will find plenty of anti-Semitism among the Marxists in the Labour Party, but none in my office. I sometimes wonder if those cretins realize that Marx was Jewish.” He turned back to Harry, who was looking very confused. “Why is the NYPD being consulted on my daughter’s murder, Inspector?”

I sighed noisily while Harry hesitated. Then I got bored and spoke. “Katie’s murder, sir, fit the MO of four murders that were committed in Whitechapel fifteen years ago. I was involved in that investigation because I was on an exchange program between the NYPD and Scotland Yard. I think it’s fair to say, Lord Chiddester, that nobody knows more about those murders than I do.”

“I see.”

“And I can tell you that your daughter was not murdered by the same man who killed those four girls.”

“You know this how?”

“The man who killed those girls all those years ago was probably an American, and he was most certainly obsessed with Don McLean, a singer from the ’70s.”

“I know who Don McLean is, Detective.”

“The man who killed your daughter was English, and not familiar