The Murder Exchange

by Simon Kernick

  She glared at me. ‘We don’t. Now, if you’ve finished …’

  ‘Does Stefan Holtz own this place?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Stefan Holtz. You must have heard of him.’ She shook her head. ‘He’s a well-known local businessman, to use the term very loosely.’

  ‘Look, as far as I’m concerned, Roy Fowler owns this place. That’s who hired me and that’s who pays me.’

  ‘Are you sure the name Stefan Holtz means nothing to you?’ asked Berrin.

  ‘Oh, it speaks,’ she said with a smirk.

  Berrin looked slightly embarrassed. ‘Just answer the question,’ he persisted, trying not to be intimidated by her, but not making a particularly good job of it.

  She slowly turned her head, faced him down, took a breath, then spoke. ‘Yes, I’m sure.’ She turned back to me. ‘I don’t know a Stefan Holtz.’

  ‘Mr Fowler was going to get us a list of casual door staff who’ve worked here over the past six months,’ I continued, ‘but so far we haven’t received it.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said with a cheeky half-smile.

  ‘You’re the manager,’ said Berrin. ‘Can you provide us with that information?’

  The smile disappeared rapidly. ‘I haven’t got time. You’ll need to speak to Mr Fowler about it.’

  ‘We would do if he was here,’ I said, thinking that this was one of the great problems with policework. That most of the time you were constantly trying to get blood out of a stone. ‘Just tell us the name of the company who supplies the doormen, then,’ I added, not wanting to waste any more time with Elaine Toms, ‘and we’ll contact them.’

  She paused, and the reason she paused was simple. If there were any dodgy ownership issues, then they would spread to the company who supplied the doormen because with nightclubs that’s how things work. She wouldn’t want to give out the information but I knew she couldn’t lie about it either, in case Fowler had already given us the name and I was just testing her.

  ‘It’s an outfit called Elite A,’ she said eventually. Berrin wrote the name down. ‘But I don’t know how much they’ll be able to tell you. I don’t think they’re too hot on the paperwork front.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘You know what these security firms are like. They use freelancers.’

  ‘Did Shaun Matthews come via Elite A?’

  ‘I think so, originally, but it was before my time so I couldn’t say for sure. The papers said something about him being poisoned.’

  ‘That’s what we believe.’

  She shook her head as if she couldn’t comprehend such an end for him. ‘What’s the world coming to, eh?’

  ‘To the same place it’s always been, Miss Toms. Full of not very nice people doing not very nice things to each other.’ I resisted adding that with Shaun Matthews’s demise there was at least one fewer of them. ‘If you hear from Mr Fowler, please ask him to get in touch with us immediately.’

  She took the card I gave her with my number on it. ‘So, have you got any suspects?’

  ‘We’re working on a number of leads,’ I answered, using the stock detective’s line which was basically a euphemism for ‘No’, and she obviously recognized it for what it was because she turned away with another of those half-smiles. The discussion was over.

  When we were back in the car, Berrin turned to me with an expression of concern. ‘I don’t think I did too well in there,’ he said. ‘You handled it a lot better than me.’

  Berrin’s young, he’s a graduate, and, like most of us, he’s still got a lot to learn. Unlike most of us, he recognizes it, and it means he’s not as confident as he could be. He’d only been promoted out of uniform three months earlier, and apart from Rudi, the casual killer and carjacker, this was his first murder case. It was also the first time we’d worked together.

  I shrugged. ‘I’ve been in the game a lot longer, which makes it a lot easier to handle people like her. Remember, you’re the one who’s the boss. With the cocky ones it can be easy to forget.’

  He nodded thoughtfully. At that moment, he reminded me of a contestant from that TV programme Faking It. One month to turn a good-looking Home Counties college boy into a Met detective. He was working hard to master the ropes, to make a good impression, but he didn’t look a natural.

  He turned to me, the concern replaced by determined zeal, the kind you sometimes see on the faces of door-to-door missionaries. ‘I let her get me on the wrong foot. That was the problem. I didn’t do enough to make her show me respect. It won’t happen again.’

  ‘I know it won’t,’ I said, patting him on the shoulder. ‘You work with me, you’ll be Dirty Harry in no time.’

  He pulled out of the parking space. ‘Yeah, right.’

  Roy Fowler lived in a modern, showy-looking development complex near Finsbury Park. It’s what these days they like to call a gated community, although there usually tends to be very little community-wise about them. We were stopped at the main gates by a uniformed doorman who was well past retirement age and looked like he’d have trouble stopping a runaway skateboard let alone a shadowy intruder. We showed him our credentials and were waved into the car park in front of the five six-storey buildings that were arranged in a semi-circle around the well-kept, if rather dull, communal gardens. Fowler lived in apartment number 12 which was in the second building on the left.

  But if he wasn’t at work, he wasn’t at home either. We buzzed on his intercom for several minutes but didn’t get an answer. I phoned the Arcadia and double-checked the address with Elaine Toms. It was the right one. Fowler still hadn’t turned up at the club either, a fact that was beginning to irritate me and her.

  We sat in the car and waited for ten minutes without result, then decided to make our way back to the station. It had been an unproductive morning and Berrin was beginning to look depressed, as if it had only just dawned on him that life in CID was a lot less interesting than it looked on the telly.

  It was as we were coming out of Fowler’s complex that I saw it. A dark blue Range Rover driving by just in front of us. It only passed our field of vision for a couple of seconds at most but I noticed straight away that it had holes in the paintwork and industrial taping over two of the windows. It kept going and I memorized the number plate as Berrin pulled out, heading the other way.

  ‘Did you see that car?’ I asked him.

  Berrin is not the most observant man in the world. ‘What car?’ was his reply.

  I thought about it for a few seconds. Who’d be daft enough to be driving around in a bullet-ridden Range Rover in broad daylight? But those holes didn’t look like they’d been made by anything else – what else could have made them? – and, as I’ve said before, you should never underestimate the stupidity of criminals. It was probably wasting someone’s time but I took my mobile from my pocket and phoned the station to report a suspicious vehicle, giving its location and possible route.

  ‘Do you want to turn round and go after it?’ said Berrin, looking like his depression was lifting.

  ‘It’s probably nothing. Let’s leave it for the uniforms. I need to get something to eat.’

  ‘What do you think? Do you reckon he’s flown the coop?’

  The loud, confident voice belonged to DCI Knox, the big boss. No question of him ever losing control of an interview. Berrin and I were sat in his office, on the other side of his imposing desk, explaining the position regarding the lack of intelligence as to Roy Fowler’s whereabouts.

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Berrin. ‘He was certainly aware that we were meant to interview him this morning.’

  ‘It seems odd, though,’ I said. ‘Him disappearing off so soon. It’s like an admission of guilt, but, if we’re honest, we haven’t really got anything on him.’

  Knox nodded in his sage-like way. ‘True. But then where is he?’

  It was a good question. ‘Maybe he had more pressing engagements and thought we could wait,’ I said eventually.


  Knox snorted. ‘Well, he’s wrong if he thinks that. We’ll put out an alert. Any patrol that sees him, they can pick him up and bring him in for questioning. I don’t like the way these small-time villains think they’re royalty these days.’

  We both nodded in general agreement. It was always good to agree with Knox, always fatal to pick holes in his pronouncements. Unlike Berrin, he was not one of life’s listeners, whatever he liked to claim. ‘My door’s always open’ was one of his favourite mantras, which might have been true literally, but that was about it.

  ‘What about the list of bouncers? I don’t suppose we’ve got that then, have we?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. We spoke to the manager, a Miss Toms, and she told us that a company called Elite A supplied all the casual door staff they used.’

  ‘I wonder if she’s involved in the drugs scene at the Arcadia,’ mused Knox.

  ‘Has she got a record?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, but that doesn’t mean anything, does it? There was definitely dealing going on down there and it’s almost certain that it originated on the door. So the manager’s probably in on it. You’ll need to check up on this Elite A. I don’t suppose whoever runs them’s whiter than white.’ Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Berrin nodding in agreement. Cheeky sod. A politician already. ‘Now,’ continued Knox, ‘we’ve talked to three of the other doormen at Arcadia who all worked there on a permanent basis, so we only really need to catch up with the temporaries who’ve been there the last six months, although that could be quite a few. They’re a busy club. I’ll leave you two to do that. Try to get to talk to them all by Monday p.m. at the latest. We need to tie up all the loose ends on this.’

  ‘And these other doormen haven’t told us anything useful?’

  ‘No. They all knew Shaun Matthews to varying degrees but none said they’d ever seen him selling drugs of any description and, of course, they all denied selling any themselves. When confronted by witness statements testifying to his extra-curricular activities, they all expressed varying degrees of surprise.’

  ‘Perhaps we should offer some sort of reward,’ I suggested. ‘That might persuade them to give us some information we could use.’

  ‘It’s a possibility if we still don’t get anywhere, but budgets are tight and I’m not sure I’d feel right doling out much-needed money to solve the murder of a violent drug dealer.’ Once again, I caught Berrin nodding.

  ‘It might get us a result.’

  ‘We’ll have to see. We’ve got pretty much our whole allocation resting on the Robert Jones case. If we have to pay out on that then we’re not going to be able to offer a reward on anything until 2010.’

  I baulked at the mention of Robert Jones. Always did. It was one of the few cases that had truly disturbed me in all my time in the Met. Robert was a thirteen-year-old schoolboy who’d disappeared while doing his morning paper round six months earlier. His body had been found a few days afterwards buried in a shallow grave in woodland out in Essex. He’d been stabbed three times in the chest and his clothing had been tampered with, indicating some sort of sexual assault. I’d had to break the news of the discovery to the parents, along with the WPC who’d been their liaison officer. They’d been a pleasant, ordinary middle-class couple who’d only let Robert do the round because he’d been keen to save up enough money to buy a new bike. I’d watched, unable to do anything to help, as they’d crumbled in front of me, while the WPC had comforted his little sister when she’d appeared in the doorway, too young to understand what was going on. Robert had been their only son, his family’s pride and joy. What had got me the most was the total and utter injustice of it all. A young boy from a good home, never been in trouble – unlike so many of the little bastards we had to deal with – seeking to better himself, only to be struck down in the space of a few moments by someone who probably had no idea of the terrible damage he was inflicting. It was such a waste and, six months on, we were no nearer bringing the killer to justice, even though a reward of twenty-five thousand pounds had been offered for information leading to a conviction: fifteen thousand from the police and ten thousand from a local businessman. Unlike Robert Jones, his killer had had all the luck.

  ‘What about the poisoning angle?’ I asked. ‘Any more news on that?’

  Knox furrowed his brow into deep, craggy lines. ‘Well, it’s coming along,’ he said without a huge amount of conviction. ‘WDC Boyd’s been liaising with the poisons department at Guy’s and doctors from the Home Office about this substance and its possible source, as you know, but I’m not sure how much help it is. I mean, it’s not as if you can pop into the pharmacy, pick some of this stuff up, and sign the Poisons Register. It’s cobra venom, for God’s sake.’

  ‘So there’s no place you could get it in this country?’

  Knox shook his head. ‘Not officially, no. As far as anyone seems to know, the only place you can find it is in the mouth, or whatever, of the cobra. And as far as I’m aware, none of them lives within five thousand miles of here. You’ll have to talk to Boyd about all that, though. She’s now our resident toxins expert. The thing is, I don’t know how much help either she or anyone else can be. We haven’t got a clue where you actually get it from in a usable format, where this particular batch may have originated, or anything like that. All we know is that somehow someone came into possession of enough of the stuff to kill three people, and somehow got the opportunity to inject the whole lot into the left arm of a sixteen-stone bouncer without him noticing, or getting any sort of opportunity to seek medical help.’

  DC Berrin exhaled slowly and thoughtfully. ‘It’s a mystery,’ he said. A statement of the obvious if ever there was one, but which pretty much summed things up.

  Iversson

  The lunchtime traffic was heavy and I was paranoid. Not surprising when you’re driving at speeds a two-legged dog could muster in a car that looks like it’s been used in an Arnie Schwarzenegger film, even down to the blood-stains on the back seat, and you know that most of the bullets wedged in the exterior were meant for you. But what choice did I have? The Range Rover was registered in my name and I needed to stash it somewhere where it was not going to receive undue attention. I was therefore on my way now to the abode of one Gary Tyler, a bloke who did occasional work for us, and who had the invaluable asset of a lock-up over in Silvertown that I could use for storage purposes until I worked out what to do. I looked at my watch. It was five to one. What a twenty-four hours.

  There’d been no news on the shootings the previous night. Not a dickie bird. Whoever had organized our little warehouse reception – and some bastard most definitely had – was as efficient as he was ruthless. Three bodies left behind in an industrial estate in the heart of north London amid a load of gunfire, and not a peep about it in the press or on the TV, and I’d checked enough times that day. When I’d spoken to my partner Joe Riggs on the blower earlier, he’d been shocked (although not half as shocked as I’d been when one of our most reliable employees had started taking potshots at me), and it was only when he’d asked me whether I’d managed to pick up the money in advance that I knew the tight bastard was all right. In the end, we’d decided not to say anything about Eric’s death. It was unfair to the family, no one was denying that, and it was a decision that could easily come back to haunt us, but what was the alternative? At least by keeping stum, we’d hopefully avoid a lot of unwanted attention.

  But it was Tony’s role in the whole thing we found the hardest to understand. I suppose we both thought we’d known him pretty well. He didn’t work for us so much these days, less and less over the past couple of years, but that didn’t mean a thing. He was still someone we thought we could depend on, and right up until the previous night he’d never let us down once. So what had made him suddenly turn a gun on me and Eric, as well as a man he’d never even met before, just like that? This was the big question.

  We’d left it that I would see what I could dig up on Fowler while
Joe would do the same with Tony, and we’d meet up the following day. In the meantime, I needed to be rid of this motor, and Fowler’s briefcase, which was still on the front seat.

  The lights up ahead turned red and I came to a halt in the nearside lane, the third car back. In front of me was a black BMW with tinted windows blasting out a thumping bass so powerful that it was making me shake in my seat. When I’d been a kid, punk had been the big thing, and my mum had constantly droned on about how the music sounded terrible and you couldn’t understand a word the singers were shouting, and I’d thought what the fuck did she know? Now I knew it was a generational thing. This stuff, this garage shite that had suddenly become all the rage, it was a pile of dung, to be honest with you. There weren’t even any tunes as such, just some bloke bragging about how hard he was, and how much the ladies rated him. Kids these days – they’ve got no taste.

  I saw the flashing lights in the rear-view mirror and cursed, because I knew straight away that I was trapped. The lane next to me was full of traffic and the lights were still red. The cop car put its hazards on and two uniforms got out, donning their caps. I was just going to have to front it.

  They came round either side of the Range Rover and the one nearest me tapped on the driver’s-side window.

  ‘Afternoon, officer,’ I said as jauntily as possible.

  ‘Can you turn your engine off, sir, please?’ he asked, giving me the standard copper’s-in-control, I’ll-know-if-you’re-guilty-don’t-try-to-hide-it gaze. He was about twenty-five and not particularly big. Rosy cheeks, too. About as menacing as Tony Blair.

  The lights were still red, and on a main road as well. I couldn’t believe it. No wonder London had traffic problems. That was the fucking mayor for you. A coma victim could have done a better job. Seeing as I had no choice, I switched off. The other copper, who was even younger, looked to be inspecting the bullet holes on the other side.