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

in that it was an odd place to have the desk. It was kind of awkward, right by a door, when it would have made more sense to have it closer to a window.” I spread my hands. “Better light, nice view… It just kept nagging at me, and in the end I decided he had somebody on the other side of the door, listening.”

“And that’s why you went back? To see who it was?”

I nodded out at the river. A barge hooted at me.

“So who was it?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer. Finally, she asked me, “Are you going to answer?”

I sighed. “I don’t know how to. I have no idea who it was. It was a man in a charcoal gray, pinstriped, single-breasted three-piece suit. It was a nice suit, well cut, understated. Other than that, he was non-descript: dark hair, medium build, five eleven, maybe six foot.”

I frowned at myself because I knew there was more to it than that, but I wasn’t sure what. Dehan managed to frown and raise an eyebrow at the same time, which takes skill. “You seem to have noticed his suit more than him.”

She was right, and I nodded a lot. “Yes, because somehow, Dehan, and this is going to sound crazy, but somehow, the suit was more important than he was.”

She made a face and shrugged. “No, yeah, I can see how you would think that sounds crazy. That’s because it is crazy, Stone!” She turned to face me and slapped me gently across the back of my head. “How can the guy’s suit be more important than he is? Come on! I gotta get you home before you start turning as crazy as these Brits! I think you’re reverting to your ancestral madness!”

I laughed. She took my left arm in both of hers and started walking me back toward Abingdon Street. “Now, there are two places you are going to take me, which I heard are ‘Must-Sees’ in London. One is a pub that used to be the Bank of England. You got to hand it to these people, they know what to do with an old building. Turn it into a pub. That is genius. The second is an ancient bar called El Vino.”

I nodded as I pulled my cell from my pocket. “I know both of those places very well. They are both on the same street. Just give me a second.”

I made a call while Dehan hailed a cab. It answered on the third ring. A black cab pulled over and as we climbed in, I said into the phone, “Manuel, I am going to e-mail you a file. Can you print it for me and have it ready for when I arrive back, in an hour or two? Keep it in the safe till we get in, will you? Thanks.”

The cab did a U-turn and we headed east toward Parliament Square. I leaned forward and said, “Can you drop us at the Temple Gardens? We’ll walk from there.”

“Lovely walk,” he said, and didn’t stop talking till we got there. By the time he dropped us off and I’d paid him, we knew all about his missus, where his kids went to school, why the country was going to the dogs and how immigration had brought the country to its knees. I figured that was one vote for Chiddester.

We walked through the Temple Gardens Gate and up Middle Temple Lane. For my money, it is one of the most bizarre and lovely places on the planet. The roads are cobbled, every building is between three and five hundred years old and still inhabited by lawyers who wear black gowns and wigs. We walked among the colonnades and flagged paths, through Pump Court and came out at the Inner Temple, with the great dining hall on the right, beside the library, and the Temple, the ancient church itself on the left.

I pointed to it. “The Magna Carta had its first reading right in there. It was a Templar church back then. An Englishman’s right to trial by jury, his right to legal representation, all date back to this place in the twelfth and thirteenth century.” I smiled at her. “You’re looking at the taproot of our own constitution, Dehan. The Rule of Law, an equitable legal system, innocence till proven guilty, it all starts right here.”

She leaned her head on my shoulder. “So when we have a son of a bitch in custody and he lawyers up…”

I ignored her. “Thomas Hayward, Thomas Lynch, Edward Rutledge… There are over a dozen signatories of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution who were members of either the Inner Temple or the Middle Temple, who learned their law right here.”

As I said it, I thought of Brad Johnson, lying on the floor of his apartment, with his bloodied face and his broken leg. The rule of law, innocent till proved guilty…until it’s your own wife or your own child. Suddenly, I felt oddly uncomfortable among those ancient buildings; suddenly they seemed to be glaring at me, like the vengeful ghosts of ancient jurists. I put my arm around her and moved toward Dr. Johnson’s Buildings.

“C’mon, Dehan,” I said. “Let’s get some lunch at the Bank.”

Dr. Johnson’s Buildings is a narrow, flagged alley that leads to an ancient, Tudor gate onto Fleet Street. Directly opposite is Chancery Lane, and slightly to the left of that is the Old Bank of England, vast, elaborately elegant in 18th Century style and packed to the gunnels with noise lawyers holding pints of beer and glasses of wine.

We elbowed our way through the crowds to one of the alcoves at the back where they had tables set for lunch. We had two pints of bitter and two steak and kidney pies, and pretended to ignore the Katie Ellison case. Just once, Dehan, with her