Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street (23 page)

‘You know I don't.'

‘You tell yourself that you've got the job on your own merit, and that when you get promoted
that
will be on merit too, and not just because you've paid a bribe. And then you meet somebody like Flynn – who so obviously really
has
risen on merit – and you begin to ask yourself if you'd even be a
sergeant
if you didn't have Daddy behind you.'

And that's when it becomes important to you that
your
theories on the case are the right ones, Blackstone thought.
That's
when it becomes vital that you solve the case
unaided
– because it's the only way you think you can convince yourself you're up to the job.

‘You're the one who paid for Flynn's private room at the hospital, aren't you?' he asked.

Meade nodded. ‘Yeah, I am.'

‘Because you felt guilty?'

‘Maybe.'

‘Then you have to be careful not to let that guilt get in the way of your doing good police work,' Blackstone said sternly.

‘Is that what I'm doing?'

‘I think so – otherwise you'd see I was right about Flynn's theory.'

‘
Prove
to me that you're right!' Meade demanded.

‘All right, I will,' Blackstone agreed. ‘Put yourself in Big Bill's shoes, Alex. You learn from a contact in the District Attorney's office that you're about to be subpoenaed – and that an arrest is likely to follow. What do you do?'

‘Grab all the money I can lay my hands on and make a run for it.'

‘Exactly! What you
don't
do is draw more attention to yourself than you have to, by, for example, staging your own kidnapping.'

‘Holt could have thought that the kidnapping would throw us off the scent for a few days,' Meade pointed out.

‘He didn't
need
to throw us off the scent,' Blackstone argued. ‘Flynn said it would have been at least another week before the subpoena was served.'

‘So?'

‘So what was the most sensible course of action for Big Bill to follow? Was it to take the money and run, knowing that, because he hasn't been seen for years, no one was going to miss him until the subpoena
was
served? Or was it to do something that involved the death of two Pinkerton agents, which would mean that if he was eventually caught, he'd not only be charged with fraud, but prosecuted for murder as well?'

Meade sighed heavily. ‘You're right, Sam. Inspector Flynn's theory makes no sense at all.'

‘Big Bill probably
was
planning to make a run for it,' Blackstone said, ‘but the kidnappers struck before he'd had time to get it properly organized.'

‘So where,
exactly
, does that leave us?' Meade asked despondently.

‘In a deep, dark hole,' Blackstone said. ‘Our best chance of solving this case was to get our hands on Mad Bob and Jake. Once we had them behind bars, we could have sweated them for the name of whoever hired them. But the kidnappers realized that they were the weak link in the chain, too – and that's why they had them gunned down.'

‘Maybe if we could catch the killers . . .' Meade began.

But there was no chance of that – and they both knew it.

The men who had murdered Bob and Jake had been professionals, and had carried out their work with the same cold-blooded detachment as butchers in an abattoir. It was unlikely they'd known – or cared – why the two men had to die, and just as unlikely that they knew who wanted them dead. Even if the police managed to arrest them – and that would be a big ‘if' even in London, where the coppers actually saw it as their
job
to solve crime – it was unlikely to lead the investigation anywhere.

Meade sighed again. ‘What's our next move?' he asked.

What indeed, Blackstone wondered.

‘We could go to the Cornell University Medical School, and pick up Fanshawe's autopsy report,' he suggested.

‘Why would we bother?' Meade asked. ‘We know
how
he died.'

‘And we think we know
why
he killed himself,' Blackstone said. ‘But what if we're wrong? What if, for example, he was totally innocent of the kidnapping, but had some incurable disease?'

‘Then why wait until the place was swarming with police before topping himself?'

‘Maybe because he found the additional strain of the investigation just too much to take?' Blackstone drew a deep breath. ‘Listen, Alex, I'm not saying it's probable that he had a disease. The most
likely
explanation is that he
was
involved in the kidnapping, and hanged himself because he thought he was about to be arrested. But we can't say that
definitively
until we've eliminated all the other possibilities. And the autopsy report will help us to eliminate at least a few of them.'

‘You're clutching at straws, Sam,' Meade said.

‘You're right,' Blackstone agreed. ‘And I'm sure you have at least a dozen
much
better ideas about what do next – so why don't you tell me what they are?'

Meade thought about it for a moment. ‘Why don't we go and pick up Fanshawe's autopsy report?' he suggested.

TWENTY

T
he clerk sitting at the main desk of the Cornell University Medical School was a pretty girl in her mid-twenties. She had intelligent, expressive eyes and once they laid sight on Alex Meade, they said quite clearly that she was smitten.

‘Is there anything I can do for you?' she asked, in a voice which suggested that the services she offered might well extend far beyond those available in the hospital complex.

‘We've come for the autopsy report on Robert Fanshawe,' Meade said, his own voice perhaps slightly higher than it normally was.

The clerk checked her records. ‘I don't have it,' she admitted. She examined a second list. ‘Oh, that's the reason – it's being performed right now in Lecture Theatre Three.'

‘It's being done in a
lecture theatre
?' Blackstone exploded.

‘Sure, this is a teaching hospital,' the clerk said, looking at Meade again. ‘There'll be students there to watch.'

‘The hospital
has
been informed Robert Fanshawe was involved in a murder inquiry, hasn't it?' Blackstone asked.

The clerk glanced briefly down at her notes again. ‘It says here that it was a suicide.'

He was being unreasonably bad-tempered, Blackstone realized. Fanshawe
had
taken his own life, so did it really matter that he was being cut up in front of an audience, when the autopsy was likely to give them
nothing
?

Even so, he could not help hearing a mocking voice in the back of his mind – a voice, furthermore, which sounded uncannily like Inspector Flynn's – say, ‘Now why give the body to our simple Coney Island doctor, when you can have a big shot in New York slice through him for the instruction and delectation of all his runny-nosed trainee sawbones?'

‘You can go and see the process yourselves, if you want to,' the clerk said helpfully.

‘We can?' Meade asked.

‘Sure, there's a gallery above the lecture hall. It's only supposed to be for doctors, but sometimes
our
doctors bring guests with them.' She winked. ‘And those guests, I have to say, look as if they're loaded.'

‘Drunk?' Meade asked.

‘Rich,' the clerk replied. ‘But sometimes drunk
as well
,' she added. ‘I suppose people can do what they like with their money, but even if I had a fortune, I still wouldn't pay to watch anything as gruesome as an autopsy.'

Standing in the gallery, Blackstone and Meade looked down at the lecture theatre. There was only one person there at that moment, and he was lying on an operating table at the centre of the theatre, covered with a white sheet, bathed in a brilliant white light – and quite dead.

‘This is kinda weird,' Meade admitted.

‘Is this your first autopsy?' Blackstone asked.

‘Hell, no, but at all the others I hadn't met the guy until
after
he'd died. This is somebody I actually talked to – and who talked back – and, like I said, it feels kinda weird.'

A lab technician entered the theatre, pushing a trolley on which knives, saws and tweezers were neatly laid out. He parked the trolley beside the operating table, stepped back to see if it was properly aligned, and then left.

The students arrived next. There were a dozen of them, all wearing surgical gowns, masks and caps. Whilst trying not to appear to do so, they jostled for position around the operating table, though none of them crossed the line which – though invisible – was clearly understood by them to exist.

Now all we're waiting for is the star of the show – the great doctor, Blackstone thought.

The doctor arrived right on cue. He was a small man – at least a head shorter than any of his students – yet even from the gallery, he seemed to have a presence about him which almost made it appear as if was towering over them.

He reached the table, and walked around to the top of it, from where he could see all his students.

‘Well, gentlemen, here we all are, so let's get to work shall we?' said a voice from behind the doctor's mask that Blackstone knew all too well.

‘Good God! It's Ellie!' he gasped.

‘Ellie?' Meade repeated, mystified.

‘Ellie Carr!'

‘You mean
your
Ellie?'

‘Exactly,' Blackstone agreed, although he was not at all sure that she was – or ever would be –
his
Ellie.

Not after what had happened between them in London.

‘
You do understand that I'm not offering you a lifetime of love, don't you?' she says.

‘
Yes, I do understand.
'

‘
I'm not even offering you companionship – at least, not beyond one single night. But if companionship for that single night would suit you, then it's there for the taking.
'

It should be every man's dream, but instead of agreeing to it immediately, he says, ‘If you'll excuse me, there's a phone call I have to make.
'

‘
Listen, Sam,' she says the moment he has identified himself – and
before
he has had time to say why he called, ‘I think I may have found the source of that poison of yours, but it's far too early for me to be able to give you any definite results, so don't even bother to ask.
'

‘
I wasn't going to ask.
Forget
work.
'

‘
I beg your pardon?
'
Ellie retorts, as if he's suddenly started speaking in a foreign language.

‘
Forget work
,'
he repeats, with just a hint of a plea in his voice. ‘Give it a rest for tonight. It's still a couple of hours until the pubs close. I could meet you outside the hospital and we could go and have a drink somewhere.
'

‘
The kind of work that I'm involved in at the moment can't just be dropped whenever I feel the inclination,' she answers, talking slowly, as if to an idiot.

‘
What does that mean?' he demands. ‘That you
can't
stop? Or that you
won't
stop?
'

‘
A little of both, I suppose,' she says honestly – because she
is
always honest, except when it is only herself she is fooling.
‘
I think I may be breaking new ground here, and it's very difficult to tear yourself away from something like that.
'

‘
Is it?
'
he says, the plaintive tone more evident now – at least to him!
‘
Even if I asked you to? Even if I say that I'm feeling low, and would
really
appreciate your company tonight?
'

‘
For heaven's sake, Sam, stop being so difficult. If you want company, why don't you give Sergeant Patterson a ring?
'

‘
It wouldn't be the same.
'

‘
No, since he's a man and I'm a woman, it would obviously be somewhat different
,'
Ellie says, with maddening scientific logic.
‘
But Patterson can keep you amused tonight, and, once the investigation's over, I'll find a way to make it up to you.
'

‘
You really
don't
understand, do you?
'

‘
Understand what? I understand that you want the results from my tests. You
do
still want them, don't you?
'

‘
Yes, but . . .
'

‘
So I'm doing my level best to get them for you as soon as possible. And I promise you this, Sam – in the morning you'll be glad that at least one of us has shown some self-discipline.
'

‘
Who
knows
how I'll feel in the morning,' he says.
‘
Goodnight, Ellie.
'