‘Look, I insist…’
I stepped out of the car, ignoring his pleas. I’m pretty good with the punters usually, to tell you the truth, but it wasn’t as if I was going to get any repeat business from this prick, plus I already had the money, so basically there was no need to play along with him. Particularly when it was so obvious that there was a lot more to this meeting than he was letting on. Fucking people around was a game two could play.
I stretched my legs, then walked casually towards the door in the far corner, keeping one eye on the boxes overhead. Eric’s story had given me the spooks a lot more than I’d ordinarily like to admit. It seemed to have done the same to him too because he stepped out of the car and leant back against the bonnet, lighting another cigarette and watching the boxes like a hawk.
I reached the door and tried it. Locked. So, who the hell had come here and switched the lights on? And where were they now? I turned back towards the car.
Eric looked across at me. ‘Nothing?’
I shook my head. ‘Locked.’ I walked across to the open doors and stepped outside into the warm breeze. Over on the horizon the distant lights of the West End glowed pink. The road was quiet and I listened hard for any sound of a car coming through the estate, but there was nothing bar the distant rumble of traffic. Maybe they just liked to be fashionably late.
It was 10.16 and I was edgy. I decided to go back and question Fowler in a little more detail about exactly what was in that briefcase of his, the one he’d been so reluctant to bring into the warehouse.
I turned round.
* * *
In the car, Roy Fowler was still fretting as he waited to get everything over and done with. Ten more minutes, he kept telling himself. Just ten more minutes, and he’d be a rich man.
Tony gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. ‘Look, Mr Fowler, calm down. It’s going to be OK.’
Fowler exhaled heavily and turned to Tony. His face was taut with tension. ‘I’m all right. I just wish they’d get here, that’s all.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about that,’ said Tony encouragingly. ‘They’re already here.’ He motioned towards the front doors where Iversson stood with his back to them.
Fowler wriggled round in his seat and looked out of the rear window. ‘Where?’
‘Here,’ said Tony, and pushed the silencer hard against Fowler’s head, just in front of his ear.
Before Fowler even had a chance to react, Tony pulled the trigger. Fowler let out a sharp sigh and the passenger window behind him cracked as the bullet passed through it. He slumped in the seat, and rolled round so he was facing his killer, allowing Tony to press the weapon against his forehead and give him one more, just for good measure.
The front driver’s door opened and Eric, having heard the noise of breaking glass, shoved his head in, completely unaware of what had just happened. He spotted Fowler immediately, dead in his seat, blood dripping down his face in thin rivulets and onto his sweat-stained shirt.
‘What the fuck’s going on?’ he demanded.
‘I shot him,’ said Tony, pulling the gun up from his side and aiming it at his colleague’s face. Eric’s eyes widened and his body tensed as he tried to come to terms with the sight in front of him.
‘Tony, don’t do—’
Tony fired twice, both bullets striking Eric in the face. The big man staggered backwards, and Tony leant forward to fire two more shots into his upper body. His legs buckled and went from under him, and he fell heavily to the ground, moaning and clutching wildly at his face and chest.
Tony, meanwhile, threw open the car door and came out looking for the man who until two minutes ago had been his boss.
* * *
I was still in the process of turning round as Roy Fowler died. It took a couple of seconds to take in the muffled noises and the movement in the back of the Range Rover, by which time Eric was turning round, still holding onto his cigarette, and hurriedly pulling open the door. I took a step forward as Eric said something to Tony, then a series of popping sounds came from inside the car and Eric’s head snapped back and he lost his footing, stumbling like a drunk man.
I knew immediately that he’d been shot, but still not by whom. It didn’t make sense. I stopped dead in my tracks, confused by the sudden turn of events, and fumbled in the back of my waistband for the gun.
At the same time, Tony stepped almost casually out of the car, gun in hand, and turned towards me. He raised the weapon, that eerie little half-smile flickering across his face, and prepared to fire. For some reason, the first thought that crossed my mind was how fucking annoying that look was. It made the bastard appear really cocky, which was something I’d never noticed before. The second thought I had was that I’d always liked Tony.
Then my military training took over and I hit the deck, rolling over and pulling out the Glock. The silencer spat twice as Tony came forward, closing in for the kill, and bullets hissed quietly through the air, ricocheting up from the concrete, feet from where I was rolling.
Tony came round the back of the Range Rover, taking aim again, but this time it was his turn for a shock. Without warning, I stopped rolling and leapt to my feet, locating and flicking off the safety in what was close to a reflex action. His face froze in disbelief like he couldn’t believe I’d be so cheeky as to pull a gun on him, and then I was firing, the bullets exploding round the enclosed space of the warehouse in an angry cluster of noise. Tony pulled the trigger too, and I felt a bullet whistle past my left ear, but time was moving so fast that I didn’t even think about it, just kept firing, two-handed, concentrating on keeping the weapon level, emptying the magazine.
Tony stumbled back as he was hit in the shoulder of his gun arm. A second round struck him in the throat, then a third in the face, knocking him sideways. The next thing I knew, he was falling to the floor, the gun flying out of his grip and clattering out of reach. Immediately, he tried to lift himself up, his face registering another look of disbelief as he realized he was dying. Blood so dark it was almost black poured from the wounds on his face and throat, turning his white polo shirt a deepening horror-film colour. He held the position with his head a foot above the floor for about three seconds, then fell backwards with a thud, choking heavily.
I walked over to him, still gripping the Glock hard. He rolled himself into a ball, coughing and retching as his mouth filled with blood. Well, one thing was for sure: I wasn’t going to get any answers out of him now. Once in Africa, a long time back, I’d seen a man take a bullet in the throat. It had taken him close to ten minutes to die, choking and gasping on his own blood. There was nothing that could have been done. As soon as the bullet had struck him the outcome was inevitable. It was inevitable now, but I didn’t think I could just let it happen. Like I said, I’d always liked Tony.
I ejected the magazine and checked the bullets. There were three left. Pushing it back in, I leant down, chambered a round, and pulled the trigger, blowing Tony’s brains across the dirty floor. The body juddered a couple of times, then lay still.
I stopped for a moment, looking about the warehouse and listening for any suspicious sounds. Nothing, bar the faint sound of light breathing coming from Eric. I walked over to him, holstered the gun, and knelt down. He was lying on his back, his hands laid across his chest in full funeral style. His face was twisted and bloody with the entry wounds of Tony’s bullets clearly visible. One was just below his right eye, the other on his lower left cheek, an inch above the jawline. A dark red pool was forming on the floor beneath his head and his eyes were shut. I felt his neck for a pulse. There was something there but it was very faint; and even as I held my finger on it, it faded away until it was gone altogether.
Eric. He’d been a good man. Reliable, professional, all the things you wanted in business. Not someone you could take liberties with, not someone who was afraid of using force when it was necessary, but nevertheless someone whose heart was in the right place. The poor sod had even bought me a bottle of whisky th
e previous Christmas, which might have been a small gesture but was the sort I appreciated. It made me feel guilty that I’d only intended to pay him three hundred quid for the night’s work. It didn’t seem a lot to die for.
I stood up, wondering what the fuck had gone wrong and how we could have been betrayed so completely. Eric had three kids, all grown up, and four grandkids too. But he was also long since divorced. This meant that it was unlikely anyone close to him would know where he was that night. I was in a difficult position. If I went to the law and told them what had happened, I’d be leaving myself open to all kinds of questions, particularly regarding the shooting of Tony, and the unlicensed firearm I’d been carrying. I could end up going down for years if my story wasn’t believed, and to be honest, who would believe it? The alternatives, it has to be said, were almost as bad. Drive out of there in a damaged vehicle registered in my own name and leave behind three bodies in the hope that no-one would ever connect them to me. Or hide the bodies somewhere and deprive Eric of a proper burial. That was, of course, on the basis that they remained hidden.
It was at times like this that I needed a cigarette. It wouldn’t have done a blind bit of good but somehow smoking had always helped me think straight. I tried to fathom out what Tony’s plan had been. Kill us all and get rid of the corpses, I assumed. Then what? Joe knew that he’d been there with us so he could hardly just walk around as if nothing had happened. Perhaps he’d had plans to disappear. But that still didn’t help to supply any sort of motive.
One thing, however, was certain. This wasn’t something he could have put together on his own, and whoever else was involved might well be in the vicinity. I decided that by hanging around I was putting myself in needless danger.
I went round to the rear passenger side of the Range Rover and opened the door. Fowler’s crumpled body tumbled out, landing in an ungainly heap on the floor. He was very definitely dead, and if he hadn’t been, I’d have killed the bastard myself. Whatever else might have been a mystery, I was pretty damned sure that Fowler had been the architect of his own demise. A slimy bastard like that was always going to make enemies.
I thought about moving the body somewhere less conspicuous, but without gloves it wasn’t an option. I was just going to have to leave all three of them there and front it out. It was the only thing I could do, at least for the moment. Maybe Joe would have some ideas.
The damage to the car was superficial: two small holes in the window, surrounded by spider-web cracks. I could knock the whole thing out and replace it easily enough. Fowler had bled inside a little bit but not as badly as might have been expected.
I shut the door, went round switching off all the lights, then walked back round to the driver’s side. The keys were still in the ignition so I got in and backed out of the warehouse, before dragging the two doors shut and hoping above hope that no-one opened them again for a long, long time.
Now there was only one thing left to do. I jumped back in the car and drove slowly down the road, following the route we’d come in on, until I got to the bush in front of Canley Electronics where Fowler had hidden the briefcase. I stopped the car and, leaving the engine running, jumped out. This was one mystery I could at least solve. I paused for a moment and listened. Still no sound, bar the continued hum of city traffic and the odd call of a night bird. High in the sky a three-quarter moon stared impassively down, unmoved by the events below.
I jogged up to the bush and knelt down where Fowler had been only minutes earlier, then reached into the foliage and felt about, knowing that I was in the right place because I’d been careful to watch him earlier.
My hand touched something solid. A handle. Bingo. I pulled it out, feeling an irrational excitement. I had to know what was so important that men I knew, men I liked, had had to die for it. I stood up, located the two catches on either side of the handle, and went to press them.
Which was when I heard the sound: a scrape of a shoe on gravel behind one of the two parked cars in front of the Canley Electronics building, only ten yards away. I thought I saw something move. I looked more closely, feeling myself tense. And then I saw him, a man in dark clothing and a baseball cap, face obscured by a scarf, moving about in the shadows. Those were the only details I can remember. I was too busy looking at the rifle nestled against his shoulder, the rifle that was now pointing straight at my head.
There was a hiss as a bullet flew above me, almost parting my hair, and struck something behind with a metallic clang. Immediately, I ducked down behind the hedge and ran, crouching, round to the driver’s side of the car as more rounds spat through the air. As I pulled open the door, I chucked the briefcase into the passenger seat, accidentally biting my tongue as a bullet passed right through the car and out the open driver’s-side window before ricocheting off the wing mirror. I ripped the Glock out of my waistband and cracked off my last two shots at him as he came round the front of the hedge and into view.
I was sure they’d both missed their target but they forced him to dive behind the bush and temporarily out of sight. Without waiting for him to reappear, I jumped into the car, rammed it into gear, and drove out of there as fast as I could, not bothering to look round or stop when I came to the barrier. I hit it full-on, broke it in two, and carried on going.
I reckon I’d only gone a matter of a few hundred yards when the intense curiosity I was feeling got the better of me. Even though I could hear the sound of sirens closing in in the distance, even though I knew I was taking a huge and needless risk, I couldn’t resist pulling over and picking up the briefcase. Once again, I located the catches and this time got the opportunity to press them. They both clicked satisfyingly and the case came open.
I stared for maybe three, four seconds, feeling confused, unable to fully comprehend what I was seeing.
Because, you see, after all that, the fucking thing was empty.
Friday, sixteen days ago
Gallan
The murder of Shaun Matthews, thirty-one, of the Priory Green Estate in Islington was an odd one from the start. Matthews had enemies, there was no doubt about that. Three months before his death he’d been threatened by two men he’d thrown out of the Arcadia nightclub in Holloway where he worked as chief doorman. One of the two, later identified as twenty-eight-year-old Carl Voen, had claimed that he was going to come back and blow Matthews’s head off. This might not have been taken seriously had it not been for the fact that Voen had a previous conviction for possession of a firearm and two further convictions for grievous bodily harm. He was, by most accounts, a man with a short fuse. He was also, unfortunately, a man with a watertight alibi for the time of death. For at least twelve hours either side of the point at which Matthews had shuffled off his mortal coil, he’d been in custody undergoing questioning about an armed robbery, with the questioning being carried out by two of the detectives who were now investigating the murder.
Shaun Matthews was also a drug dealer. According to anecdotal evidence collated by investigating officers, he supplied Ecstasy, cocaine and, on at least one occasion, heroin to Arcadia clubgoers (apparently in collusion with the club’s management), as well as to individuals visiting his flat. According to more than one source, he had also earned himself something of a reputation for selling below-par products, particularly when operating off the premises. There was a story doing the rounds that one unlucky punter had challenged Matthews about an especially poor batch of cannabis he’d sold him only to have Matthews dangle him by the ankle from the third-floor balcony of his flat while simultaneously slashing his buttocks with a Stanley knife. The punter had needed more than forty stitches on his behind and he, too, had left the hospital muttering words of dark revenge against the man who’d made it so difficult for him to sit down in comfort for months to come.
Nothing about any of this was odd, of course. There are plenty of criminals out there who fail to recognize or abide by even the most rudimentary facets of capitalism, and insist on riding roughshod over their custom
ers and making enemies as casually as old ladies make cups of tea. Sometimes, inevitably, they end up dead, and usually the people doing the killing are those they’ve wronged, but in Matthews’s case there appeared to be more to matters than initially met the eye.
For a start, it had taken two days to conclude that he’d been murdered. Matthews was what a tabloid report might describe as a ‘strapping’ young man: six feet two, sixteen stone of mainly muscle, very fit (at least superficially) as a result of his daily visits to the gym, and no history of medical problems. Therefore when he was found dead in his bed one morning by police officers who’d been called by a colleague from the Arcadia who was concerned that he hadn’t turned up at work two evenings running, it came as something of a shock to all concerned. Not, perhaps, that he was dead but more that there didn’t appear to be any obvious cause. There were no external injuries and no sign of any kind of a struggle. Matthews was lying on his back, with the covers half off him, and his head tilted to one side. The expression on his face was what the first officer on the scene had described as restful. Not fearful, angry, or even shocked. Just restful. His arms were stretched out to his sides with the fists lightly clenched, and he was naked. It looked like death by natural causes, or possibly some sort of drugs overdose.
Matthews’s body was taken away for a post-mortem, and this was when things got interesting. For all his strength and build, in actual fact he probably didn’t have long to live. He had a serious heart condition, thought to have been brought on by an addiction to steroids. There were traces of nandralone in his blood, as well as cocaine and alcohol, and injection marks on his left arm. Initially, the pathologist thought that he’d had a heart attack, but unfortunately such a diagnosis didn’t explain the strange internal injuries Matthews had suffered. There’d been extensive internal haemorrhaging as well as a cloudy swelling in the cells of a number of organs, particularly the kidneys. Somewhat baffled, the pathologist had carried out further tests. These showed significant traces of an extremely potent neurotoxin that would have resulted in these injuries and were, almost certainly, the cause of death. And this was the thing. The poisons department at Guy’s Hospital were called in and quickly identified the neurotoxin as elipadae, or cobra, venom.
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