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

was in fact Simon Clarence and you were appointed his legal adviser during his sectioning. Is any of this fantasy making sense to you, Hastings?”

I took a sip of my whiskey. He didn’t say anything but he didn’t hang up.

“It’s the same fantasy where the hit you ordered on me and my wife went wrong, Sadiq Hassan came off the road and my Jewish wife was driven beyond endurance and shot the bastard in the head. Now you and I both have a problem. So we need to talk. Am I getting through to you, Hastings?”

He was quiet for a long time. He knew he had a big problem and he was trying to find a way out of it that did not involve talking to me. There wasn’t one, so eventually he said, “Where are you now?”

“At the Ritz.”

“Come to Villiers Road, in Willesden…”

“Think again, pal. I was one and a half years with Scotland Yard, remember? I know Willesden and the only way I go there is with a handful of squad cars. No abandoned warehouses. Let me lay it on the line for you, Hastings. I go back to the States tomorrow. You set the cops hunting for me or my wife and you go down with us. We put the cops on your tail, our involvement in Sadiq’s death is your word against ours. So you come here, to the Ritz, and we talk.”

“How do I know this isn’t a trap?”

“At the Ritz? Seriously? In the cocktail bar at the Ritz?”

“All right, give me half an hour.”

“Make it fifteen minutes.”

He hung up. I sat thinking, chewing my lip. It was a mess, and it was going to take a cool head and a hell of a lot of skill to sort it out. I called Harry. He sounded tense, but he tried to hide it. “John, what’s up, mate?”

“Don’t give me any bullshit, Harry. I have no time to waste. I need a straight answer.”

I could hear the frown in his voice. “Steady on.”

“The sheets.”

“What?”

“The sheets from Katie’s apartment…”

“Oh, now, John…!”

“Don’t do it, Harry. I am more serious than you can imagine. Somebody just tried to kill us. Now give me a straight answer. The traces of DNA on the sheets. You took Sadiq’s DNA?”

“Yes.”

“The sheets were not a match, were they?”

He hesitated.

I snarled. “Just say yes or no, Harry! Grow a pair, for Christ’s sake!”

“No! The profile’s not in the system.” Then he asked, “Who the hell tried to kill you? What have you been doing, for crying out loud?”

I grunted. “What I should have done fifteen years ago. What we both should have done fifteen years ago. Listen to me…”

We talked a little longer, then I hung up. I sipped my drink and ate peanuts, and fifteen minutes later a man, about six foot, average build, dark hair with a non-descript face, dressed in a charcoal gray, three-piece, Ede & Ravenscroft pinstriped suit, stepped into the bar. He saw me and approached.

“Mr. Stone?”

“You know damn well I am, Hastings. Sit down. And have a drink. You’re so damn inconspicuous you stand out like a whore at a bishop’s convention.”

The waiter came over. Hastings glanced at him. “Beefeater and Schweppes.” Then he stared at me and I stared back. He said, “What do you want?”

I leaned forward and scowled. “You sent that son of a bitch Sadiq Hassan to kill us. He already had my wife in his sights because she’s Jewish. So he was only too happy to do the job when you gave him the contract. But I have news for you, pal, she got him instead.”

“Once again, Stone. What do you want?”

“I want a guarantee that you will not come after us. We go back to the States tomorrow, we take what we know with us, and you forget we exist. I want every trace of evidence that you sent Sadiq to kill us erased. I want all and any connection between that bastard and my wife disappeared. Not a trace is to remain. You understand me?”

“Perfectly.”

I narrowed my eyes and shook my head. “I’m not hearing it, Hastings. All I’m getting is a British stone wall. What does ‘perfectly’ mean? You understand me but you’re going to try and fuck me anyway?”

“Would you mind moderating your colorful, American language, please, Mr. Stone?”

“I got shot at today, by a man you sent after me. I watched a slug pass within an inch of my wife’s head. I then watched her kill the bastard who shot at her. I am not about to moderate my language. What I am about to do is take this eight ounce whiskey tumbler and rearrange your face with it, if you don’t quit trying to be smart. Now, I have told you what I want. So I want to hear an unambiguous answer. Otherwise things start getting ugly. And let me tell you Hastings, if things get ugly, you go down for fifteen to life.”

The waiter appeared and set Hastings’ gin and tonic in front of him. Then withdrew.

He stared at his glass a while, then moved it directly in front of him and turned it around several times, like he was checking it for traps before taking a sip. He raised it to his lips, took a long pull, smacked his lips and set the glass carefully down again. He was a careful, meticulous man.

“There is very little connecting Sadiq to me or to your wife. We are professional about this kind of thing. However, whatever little there is, I shall make sure it is destroyed. There will be no way at all of connecting him to her. Or to myself, for that matter. In exchange, you leave the country and you never return. You break off all