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

ties with DI Green, and you desist in your investigation into Katie Ellison’s death. This is not your jurisdiction, and it is none of your concern.” He paused. “If you do not honor this agreement, I will ensure—and believe me, I have the means—that your wife goes to prison for the rest of her life, or, that she dies a miserable, painful death, whichever is simplest. Do we have an understanding?”

I nodded, “Yeah, we have an understanding.” I took another pull on my whiskey. “Just tell me something.” I stared at him and shrugged, squinting my eyes. “Why’d you kill her?”

“Don’t be absurd! You’re drunk!”

“I’m not drunk! I want to know! How old was she, for God’s sake? She was practically a kid! Wasn’t there some other way? Couldn’t you have made a deal with her?”

“I don’t have to listen to this!”

He made to stand. I snarled, “Siddown! You want me to shout my questions across the bar?”

“This was not our agreement!”

“Well, I want to know!”

“Keep your voice down, for Heaven’s sake, man!”

I rasped a whisper at him. “I want to know! Why did you kill her? How dangerous could a kid like that be?”

“That is not your concern and I have no intention of answering your absurd questions. Now for God’s sake, get a grip, man!”

I scowled at him, took another swig and set my glass down. He watched me do it with distaste. “At least tell me this,” I said. “Was she your lover? Was it you she was seeing? Was it you Sadiq called a filthy Jew?”

His face flushed. “I don’t need to listen to this.”

“It was, wasn’t it? Where are your loyalties, Hastings?”

For a moment, there was a flash of real anger in his eyes. “I can assure you they transcend primitive, tribal allegiances to race and religion!”

I nodded. “Oh yeah, I can see that in the allies you choose. Nothing tribal or primitive about Sadiq. Good choice.”

He took another swig. His hand was shaking. “Thank you for the drink, Mr. Stone. I hope, for both our sakes, that we never meet again.”

He stood and I watched him walk out of the bar on stiff, angry legs. After that, I finished my whiskey and made my way up to our suite, with a slow burn in my belly. Dehan was in the shower again. I wondered for a moment whether she had washed the gunshot residue from her hands. Then I sat, called reception and asked for a courier to come and collect a parcel for immediate urgent delivery. I prepared the parcel and as I was finishing it, Dehan appeared in the bedroom doorway. She was wrapped in a towel and her wet, black hair was hanging around her shoulders. She had a comb in her hand. She watched me a moment.

“Is it done?”

I nodded, then added, “Harry hasn’t got our tickets yet.”

She started combing her hair. “Did Hastings agree?”

“I think so. We’ll have to wait and see.”

Our eyes locked for a moment, then she turned and went back into the bedroom to dress. Five minutes later, the courier arrived and I gave him the parcel with strict instructions. Finally, I went to shower and to dress for dinner.

In the dining room, we sat in a fairly somber mood, which was a shame, because not only is the Ritz dining room spectacular and the food exquisite, but Dehan was wearing a very simple, short black dress with long, silver earrings, and a silver chain around her neck that made her look like mortal sin on long, brown legs.

She caught me staring and gave me a rueful look across the table. “Bit of a mess, huh, Stone?”

I shook my head. “You know what? What the hell? It’s our last night. Chiddester and Scotland Yard are paying, so let’s have a dozen oysters and a bottle of champagne. The way you look right now, it would be a crime not to.”

She grinned. “And then the beef Wellington.”

I called the waiter and gave him our order. I let him choose the champagne, because I wasn’t paying, but told him I wanted a bottle of Vega Sicilia, Unico, from the Ribera del Duero region of Spain. The wine list told me it cost seven hundred and seventy pounds sterling, which was just over a thousand dollars. But I figured it was the only chance I was ever likely to get of drinking that legendary wine, so I thanked Chiddie in my heart and went right ahead and ordered it.

Dehan’s eyebrows had crawled almost all the way to her hairline. I shrugged. “The Duke of Wellington defeated Joseph Bonaparte at Vitoria, not far from where that wine is made. As we are eating beef Wellington, it seemed appropriate.”

She said quietly, “Have you lost your mind?”

“Possibly, but it’s your fault for wearing that dress.”

She lowered both her eyebrows and then raised just one of them again. She had a mobile face. “Well,” she said, “if you’re flirting with me, I guess you’ve forgiven me.”

“Forgiven you? I married you because you’re a badass, Dehan. You did the right thing.”

The oysters arrived, along with a bucket of ice and a bottle of champagne. We toasted, and as we ate and sipped the exquisite wine, our mood began to improve, and our optimism rose. With the beef and the Vega Sicilia, we became positively merry.

We finished the meal, complacent and over-fed, with a selection of British cheeses and a thirty-four year-old Teeling Irish single malt. By that time, we had spent a whole hour not talking about the Katie Ellison case, and I was feeling quite amused by the amount of other people’s money we had spent on our honeymoon.

That was when my cell buzzed in my pocket. I offered Dehan an apologetic smile and said, “I’ll be right