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

She said, “I’m sorry, Stone. He’s your friend.”

“After today, I’m not so sure. I think I have strained that friendship pretty much to breaking point. I think we may soon get thanked politely and invited to return to New York.”

She grimaced. “Is that my fault?”

I shook my head. “No, what I did this morning was beyond the pale. I knew it would be, but I had to do it. This was just the cherry on the cake. I was surprised. Fifteen years ago, he would have taken Chiddester apart.”

She squinted at him down the road, where he was talking to the dispatch rider. The breeze caught her hair and for a moment I thought how lucky I was to have this second chance. “I guess it’s easy to be brave when you’re young, and you haven’t much to lose. Maybe he’s married.” She looked up at me. “Maybe he has kids, school fees, a mortgage, all those things that sap your heroism and make your boss so powerful.”

I nodded. Maybe she was right. I had no idea.

He turned and started walking back toward us. I didn’t know if he had married, if he had kids or a mortgage, and it struck me as ironic that I knew so much about the man whom I hated, who had killed my wife and almost destroyed me, and yet I knew so little about the man I had once considered my closest friend.

“Right, chaps,” he said. “That’s on its way. We’ll have the results this evening. They’ll email me. Good enough?”

“Superb.”

“Shall we go an’ see this ‘grubby little fellow’ then?”

We climbed in the car and slammed the doors. He fired up the engine, and as he pulled away, I said, “We’ve been here over two weeks, and the only times we’ve seen you have been when somebody got murdered. We should get together before we leave and have a meal.”

He nodded and smiled. He knew what I was doing, and it was OK. “That’d be nice.”

“You married? We lost touch. I don’t know what you’ve been doing these past years.”

He was silent for a moment, then burst out laughing. He pointed a finger at me. “You are forbidden from speaking for the rest of the day. Do not open your mouth again! Every time you open your mouth, you put your sodding foot in it!”

“What did I do?”

He shook his head. “She’s talking about divorce. I’m telling her not to. The kids are at a critical age, twelve and thirteen. We married just after you left. It’s a time when a lot of couples go through a difficult patch. I want us to see it through. We still like each other, you know. We have a lot to fight for…” He paused. We pulled out onto Milbank and headed west. “But she complains about the job, the hours, she has no support… She’s right. She has a point. But what can I do? I can’t be in two places at the same time, and I can’t just magically go into another job that pays double and is half as demanding, can I?”

He looked at me as though he thought I might have an answer. Dehan’s voice came from the back. “Boy, you are on fire today, Stone.”

I made a face. “That’s why I married a cop.”

He didn’t answer. I knew what he was thinking: ‘Not the first time, you didn’t.’ And I wondered, what would have happened to my ideal love affair, to my perfect marriage, if she had lived? If she hadn’t been murdered? Would we have made it? Or would the stresses and tensions of time and work have started to show, and tell? Would children and long hours have come between us? Would that romantic passion of being in love have faded over time and become mere love, and then friendship, and then not even that, but simply the bonds of familiarity—even contempt? Would she have met someone else? Would I have met Dehan? And if I had…

I blinked. None of that happened, because she was killed. And then I met Dehan—and her attitude. I said, “If you feel it’s worth fighting for, Harry, fight for it. Woo her, romance her, rekindle the fire, sacrifice the job if you have to, get transferred to a nine till five desk. Nothing is more important than your family.”

I saw him glance in the mirror at Dehan. I heard her say, “He’s right, Harry. Family is where it’s at.”

And we moved on along the river, toward Whitechapel, and Sadiq Hassan.

EIGHT

We arrived shortly before lunch time. He had a small, two story house on the corner of Duckett Street and Bale Road, opposite a large building site that sported a billboard written entirely in Arabic. In the window, there was a large red poster showing a fist clenching a sickle. In black letters it said ‘Whitechapel Marxist Party.’ Harry rang the bell and I saw a figure peer through the window. A moment later, the door opened halfway and a young man in his mid twenties peered out. He looked Mediterranean, with thick black hair, dark eyes and olive skin. He was unshaven and barefoot, in black jeans and a black T-shirt with the same logo as his poster, only in white.

Harry said, “Sadiq Hassan?”

“Who are you?”

He had an accent, but it wasn’t strong. Harry showed him his badge. “Detective Inspector Henry Green, these are Detectives Stone and Dehan, who are accompanying me. Are you Sadiq Hassan?”

“What if I am?”

“If you are, then we’d like to ask you some questions, sir.”

“What about?”

“Well, sir, if you’re not Sadiq Hassan, that’s none of your business, is it? So once again, are you Sadiq Hassan?”

Five seconds of silence