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

mouth full of pie and a second pint of bitter in her hand, said, “Tho, wha’ chou hab de ’oncierge primp?”

“What did I have the concierge print?”

She nodded.

“The original Butcher file.”

She swallowed “Why?”

I shrugged. “For my records.”

“You can’t print it for your phony, non-existent records back in New York? We have to carry a ton of paper in our luggage instead? You’re lying. Remember, the penalty for cutting me out is…”

“OK, don’t threaten me on a full stomach. I want to see why that suit is so important.”

“You’re out of your mind. You, John Stone…” She pointed at me with her fork. “Are officially insane.”

A girl in a French maid’s uniform came to take our plates and I asked her for two Bushmills and some Stilton cheese. She said prettily that she would bring that for me right away and vanished.

Dehan drained her glass and tried unsuccessfully not to belch.

“It’s moments like these,” I said, “I am reminded why I married you.”

“Seriously, Stone, A: how are you going to see why a suit is important by going through a fifteen-year-old case file; B: how can a three-piece pinstriped suit be remotely relevant to anything, and C: we are off the case and going home to the ‘Bwonx’ tomorrow. You solved your wife’s murder. Let it go.”

“A: I don’t know; B: I don’t know and C: OK.”

We had our whiskey and Stilton and, feeling slightly overfed, stepped out into the early afternoon heat. The clouds had largely cleared overhead and, though the humidity had lessened, it was still in the high nineties. We decided to give El Vino a miss and instead turned up Chancery Lane, intending to get the Metro—or the Underground—to Piccadilly and crash for an hour or two in our suite before packing in the afternoon.

On the way up, we passed Ede & Ravenscroft, the oldest tailor in London. Dehan guided me toward the large, dark wood window display and said, “1689, that’s a good run for any business. That the kind of suit your guy was wearing?”

It was. It was exactly the kind of suit he was wearing. And it was as though she had dropped a pinch of yeast into my brain and it had started fermenting. I nodded. “Exactly. It’s important, Dehan. It’s the missing link we have been looking for, and I can’t think why. What the hell does it mean?”

She frowned up at me. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Yeah…” I pointed through the glass at the dummy: his crisp white shirt, the collar held on with studs, the charcoal gray, single-breasted jacket, waistcoat and pants, the high-gloss black shoes. It was the key, and somewhere inside my brain I knew why, but it wouldn’t come to me. Every time I tried to grasp it, it dissipated, like charcoal gray mist. “That suit, right there. That is the answer.”

She shook her head. “I don’t see it, Sensei.”

“Neither do I, Little Grasshopper. In this case, Sensei trury brind.”

She grabbed my arm and pulled me away. “Come on! I am sleepy. Let’s get a cab. I don’t feel like traveling in a tube today.”

At the hotel, Manuel collected the printed file for me and we went up to our suite. There we showered and Dehan fell onto the bed and went immediately to sleep. I sat by the open window and worked my way steadily through the old file. Much of it I remembered—at least the broad strokes, the overall shape, the main characters and players. But there were also many details I had forgotten. I had blurred in my mind how central Brad Johnson had been to the case. I remembered as I read how blinded Harry and his colleagues had become by Johnson. They were certain he was their man, and I knew for a fact that he wasn’t.

Then everything had happened at once. Hattie had been killed. I had gone to pieces. Inexplicably, the Crown Prosecution Service had dropped Johnson overnight as their prime suspect in the Butcher investigation. I had been shipped back to the States and the whole thing had gone cold.

I had never understood why the CPS dropped Johnson, but Harry and I had lost touch and I guess, as I had never believed he was guilty of those particular murders, I never saw the point in looking into it.

But now I wondered. Now it began to nag at the back of my mind, along with the pinstriped suit: the kind of suits that the CPS wear. In fact, Ede & Ravenscroft were exactly that, tailors to the Bar. That was their specialization. They made suits for barristers.

So where did that get me? I heaved a sigh, stood and paced about for a bit. Nowhere. It got me exactly nowhere. I went and stood looking out of the window at Green Park. A suit. A pinstriped suit.

Then I had a thought. Fifteen years earlier, cooperation between British and American law enforcement was in its infancy. That was one reason why I had been there in the first place, and I had often thought since that there was something I should have done—we should have done—which we never did. Partly because to begin with, the team was so sure it was Johnson, and then because I had left and the case had gone cold.

I pulled out my cell and called Bernie at the Bureau. We had been friends for over ten years and he had often helped out when I needed to cut through red tape.

“Stone, you back already? How was it? You divorced yet?”

I laughed. “Almost. Actually, I’m still here. Listen, I’ve been meaning to ask you this for about fifteen years.”

“I didn’t think we knew each other that long. Either way, Stone, I’m straight and even if I wasn’t, I am scared of your wife.”

“Shut up, Bernie, and