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

in a conversation is a long time. He took at least that long to stare at each one of us. He took a couple of seconds longer with Dehan before he answered, and echoed Chiddester’s question, but with a different tone to his voice.

“Dehan?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Yeah, it’s Irish.”

He opened the door the full way and leaned on the jamb. “I am Sadiq Hassan. So, what?” His eyes strayed to Dehan again and he gave her the once over.

Harry ignored his manner and asked him, “Do you know a young lady, name of Katie Ellison?”

He didn’t answer. He looked at Harry’s shoes, then his pants. His face said they were the most disgusting shoes and pants he’d ever seen. Then he looked at his shirt in the same way, and finally at his face.

“Why you askin’ me about this fuckin’ bitch?” I felt Dehan stiffen and put my hand on her arm. “You come to my house, askin’ about this whore? Why you come to my house askin’ about this whoring bitch?”

“Why don’t we do something, Mr. Hassan? Why don’t I ask the questions, and you provide the answers? Now, once again. Do you know Katie Ellison?”

He curled his lip and nodded. “Yeah, I know Katie Ellison. She is a fuckin’ whoring bitch. What else you want to know?”

Harry pulled out a notebook and a pencil. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“Week ago.”

“Where did you see her?”

“At a meeting of the WMP. The lying bitch said she wanted to be a member and get involved. She was fuckin’ lying, innit?”

I scratched my chin. “How do you know she was lying?”

“I looked in her bag. She had a digital recorder, with interviews on it. She’d been recording our fuckin’ meetin’s. She was writin’ some kind of fuckin’ article, innit? Some kind of fuckin’ exposé.” He turned his head and looked Dehan in the face. “Plus she was fuckin’ some Jew. Dirty bitch. How any woman can fuck a Jew, she must be a filthy whore, I tell you.”

I kept my voice real quiet. “You better keep a civil tongue in your head, Sadiq.”

He smiled. “Oh yeah? The big American, coming here threatening the Arabs again. What you gonna do? Bomb my house? Fuck you!”

Harry spoke loudly. “Where was this meeting, Mr. Hassan?”

“In my house.”

“Was there an altercation?”

Sadiq was quiet and still for a long moment.

“Do you understand the question, Mr. Hassan? Did you have a…”

“Yeah! I understand the fuckin’ question! I told her to get out! I tried to take her recorder, because I reckon the stuff on it was mine and belonged to me, innit? But she fought me and Bernard, some English piece of shit secretary of the party held me back and she left. That was the last time I seen her. You should go and get the fuckin’ recorder from her, if you was proper police!”

“Have you got an address for her?”

“Yeah, Halcrow Street.”

Harry nodded. “That’s just up the road, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you go and visit her afterwards, to try again to get the recordings back?”

Sadiq frowned. “No. Why?”

“We are almost done, Mr. Hassan. Just one more question. Are you familiar with the Butcher of Whitechapel?”

Sadiq’s eyes narrowed. He spoke cautiously. “Somethin’, why?”

Harry put the notebook and the pencil back in his pocket. “Why?” he said. “Why? Because Katie Ellison was found raped and murdered yesterday, Mr. Hassan, in her flat on Halcrow Street. And I’m wondering if you would be willing to give us samples of your DNA and fingerprints, so we can compare them with samples found at the scene. What do you say, Mr. Hassan?”

His face had turned a pasty gray. He was shaking his head. “No, no… No way. This is harassment because I’m a Muslim…”

Harry sighed. “We will be back with a warrant, Mr. Hassan. If we are going to find your DNA and prints at the scene, you’re better off telling us now and explaining why. Lies won’t help you.”

His eyes were swiveling from me to Dehan and back to Harry again. “OK, come in, but just the living room. You cannot go anywhere else. That is my family in there. You stay away from them.”

He led us into a small, dingy living room with a TV, two cheap sofas and a shelf with two books: Islamic Marxism and the Koran. Sadiq sat on the sofa opposite the TV. Harry and I sat on the other and Dehan remained standing with her arms crossed.

“We was seein’ each other for a couple of weeks, right? So I went to her place a couple of times and we had sex. So you’re going to find my prints and my DNA there, most likely. But I didn’t kill her.” His face kind of twisted and he said, “It would be no crime if I had, in Sharia. And you will incorporate Sharia into British law, you’ll see. She said she converted, but it was a lie, and she was havin’ sex with a Jew while she was saying she was my woman. She deserved to die for that, in the eyes of Allah! But I didn’t kill her.”

I saw Harry’s face flush. “Unfortunately for you, Mr. Hassan, this country doesn’t operate Sharia law. And under the laws of the United Kingdom, you can convert as often as you like to whatever religion you like, and you can have sex with whomever you please. We’ll leave it to the jury to decide whether you killed Miss Ellison or not.” He stood and I stood with him. “I’ll be back with a warrant for your DNA.”

He stared at us with wide eyes as we moved toward the door. As we were stepping out, Dehan looked at him like he was crazy. “Do you know