The Murder Exchange (10 page)

I pulled open the door to the toilets four seconds
after he'd gone inside, turned left, and headed into
the urinals area. There were half a dozen people
in the place, all relieving themselves, while at the
far end of the room in front of an open window was
Iversson. He looked like he was just about to jump
up and try to get out through it. Eight yards
separated us.

He turned and saw me and I put my hands up to
indicate that I wanted things to end peacefully,
which I did. 'All right, police. Come along now,
Max.' And then, of course, the standard police cliche: ft
Tou're in enough trouble as it is without adding resist- *
ing arrest to the charges.' I took a couple of slow steps
forward, careful not to agitate him.

Iversson nodded and added his own cliche: 'It's a
fair cop, guv/ he said, taking a step towards me. s Then, without warning, he grabbed an unlucky
punter by the back of his shirt and flung him bodily
in my direction. The poor sod was still in the
process of taking a leak and I had to jump out of
the way to avoid the spray, sliding over in a
suspect-looking puddle as I did so. I banged my
right knee jarringly hard and the mobile flew out of
my hand. Iversson immediately turned, heaved
himself up to the window with an agility that made

88
me look even more like a Keystone Kop, and began
squeezing himself through.

The bloke he'd pushed at me was first to react.
Putting himself away amid a welter of curses, he
turned, ran up to the window, and grabbed one of
Iversson's flailing legs with both hands. It was a
stupid move. The other leg bent, tensed, then
lashed out, all in one split-second movement,
striking the bloke in the side of the temple and
sending him crashing into the communal urinal.
His head hit the wall with an angry thud. Iversson's
legs then began to disappear like spaghetti being
dragged into a giant mouth. Ignoring the mobile
phone, I jumped to my feet and ran towards them,
managing to grab hold of one of his shoes just as it
started to go out of the window. It came off in my
hand and I was suddenly left standing looking at a
fashionable-looking khaki moccasin while he made
good his escape. I heard him land on the other side,
then get to his feet and start running, impaired but
hardly disabled by the fact that he now only had
one item of footwear.

I looked at the semi-conscious bloke moaning on
the floor, then at the handful of other punters who
stood watching me in slightly amused silence, then
finally at my watch.

It was twenty to twelve. Way past my bedtime.

Iversson

I was waiting when she arrived back at her
Clerkenwell apartment. I watched her get out of the

89
taxi and pay the driver from across the street, then
as he pulled away and she turned towards the
entrance, I crossed the road and jogged up behind
her.

'Elaine/

She turned round quickly, saw it was me, and
narrowed her eyes. 'Well, well, well. The wanderer
returns. What happened back there? You didn't tell
me the police were after you.'

I stopped in front of her. 'I couldn't tell you anything
in there. It was too bloody loud.'

'You'd better come in/ she said, fishing in her
handbag for a key. 'I think we've got a fair bit to
talk about, don't you?'

'You can say that again.'

'How did you find out where 1 lived?' she asked
when we were inside her first-floor apartment.

'You're in the phone book/ I told her.

'So are plenty of other people with the name
Toms/ she said, leading me through to a nicely
furnished lounge with comfy-looking black leather
chairs. She slung her jacket over one of the chairs
and turned to me, waiting for an answer.

'Not as many as you'd think. I narrowed it down
to five, then phoned Johnny Hexham. He said he
thought you lived in Clerkenwell and there was
only one E. Toms in Clerkenwell. Maybe you
should think about being ex-directory.'

'I'll bear it in mind.' She looked down at my dirty
sock. 'I won't ask/ she said.

'The police. They don't just want collars any
more. They want everything.'

She smiled. 'Do you want a coffee?'

90
'Yeah, please.'

Five minutes later, when we were sitting in the
leather chairs facing each other, she asked me what
had happened with Fowler, and how come the
police were after me. There was no point holding
back, not if I wanted her to open up to me, so I told
her everything, bar the bit where I shot Tony, which
she didn't really need to know. In the account I
gave Tony escaped and I never saw what happened
to him.

She sat back in her chair and rubbed her hand
across her temple. It was a gesture vaguely similar
to one of Fowler's. 'Shit,' she said, which just about
summed it up. 'I can't believe it. Dead. Poor old
Roy.' Which I thought was a bit rich. Fowler had
asked for it, I hadn't.

'What happened after I got out tonight?'

'Two vanloads of Plod turned up, and this
detective who was already in there, the one chasing
you, he started asking me a load of questions about
what you were doing there.'

'What did you tell him?'

'I said I didn't have a clue who he was talking
about. He didn't push things.'

'So, who are the people Fowler was having
trouble with? I think I owe them after what they've
done to me and one of my best employees.'

She leant forward and gave me a cold stare. 'Max,
I'm telling you now. Do not get involved. Consider
yourself lucky you're still in one piece and leave it
at that.'

'Just tell me, Elaine.'

Tou don't want to know. Honestly.'

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Till be the judge of that.'

She paused, then, seeing that I wasn't going to
give up, started talking. 'Roy's been under a lot of
pressure lately and he's fallen in with some of
the wrong people. He was getting into debt
with the club.'

'How did he manage that with those prices? I'd
have thought he'd be a millionaire.'

'He's a big spender and he's got a nasty coke
habit that's been eating away at his finances.
Anyway, he started borrowing money from people
he should have kept well away from, and it didn't
take long for them to start calling for their money
back. And that's when he really fucked up. He
allowed them to start dictating to him how he
should do business. They wanted to sell their drugs
in Arcadia with Roy overseeing things.'

'From what I hear the club's always had a drugs
problem.'

'There's always been some dealing there, yeah,
but not as much as some people seem to think. The
place got raided a couple of times before I joined
but that was a long time back and they never found
nothing. But this was different. This was organized
dealing.'

'When did it start?'

'I don't know exactly. At the time Roy didn't say
anything to me about it. He was done in the past for
importing gear, back in the eighties, and he was
inside for four years, so it wasn't something he
wanted to repeat. The dealing was all very underhand
and if you'd come in there any night, like you
did tonight, you wouldn't have seen it going on.' I

92
nodded. That was true enough, although plenty of
people had been off their faces. 'But there was stuff
in there and if you'd asked the right people you'd
have got coke, E, whatever you wanted. There's a
few who do the deals, mainly the doormen, and
they've never got much on them at any one time, so
even if you were an undercover copper, you could
only do them for possession. They never deal in big
quantities. Roy kept the bulk of the stuff hidden in
the place but I never knew where.

'Anyway, a week or two back, Roy starts acting
really strange. Turning up late, shutting himself in
his office, not getting involved in the running of the
business. I asked him what was wrong but he just
brushed me off. Then a few days back our chief
doorman dropped dead, and it turns out he was
poisoned.'

'Poisoned? I'd forgotten you killed people like
that.'

That's what the law said. And when Roy heard
about it, it really set him off. He was jittery enough
before, but after that he was all over the place, like
he was next or something. But still he didn't want
to talk about it.

Then one night after we'd shut, I found him in
his office, drunk or coked up or something. I told
him he was going to have to tell me what was
wrong, that he couldn't carry on like he was, and
that's when I think he realized he was going to have
to say something to someone. So he told me. He
told me all about the dealing, how it was organized,
what was going on. He sounded really gutted, like
he didn't want to be involved.' Lying bastard, I

93
thought, but didn't say anything. 'But the thing
was, that wasn't the worst of it. He was skimming
them. These associates of his. Taking more than his
cut of the profits. A lot more.'

'How the hell did he think he was going to get
away with that?'

She shook her head. 'He told me he was using the
money to invest in something - and he wouldn't
tell me what that something was - that would
double or triple the cash he put in. Then, with that
other cash he'd made from it, he'd pay these people
what he owed them and get them out of his hair for
ever.'

'Except it didn't work.'

'No. The investment never came through and
they found out about the skimming before Roy
made his cash. On the night I talked to him in his
office, he'd been told by them that they knew what
he'd been doing and that they wanted the money
back with a hundred per cent interest, or they
wanted the club. Roy was scared shitless. He didn't
have the readies and he didn't want to give up the
club. It would have left him with nothing. He'd
asked them for an extension on the debt so that he
could get himself sorted out, but they weren't
interested. They're not the sort of people who
specialize in being helpful.'

The bet they're not.'

'When he talked to me he said they'd given him
three days to come up with one or the other. The
club or the money. He told me that even if he
handed over the deeds to Arcadia, he still reckoned
there was no guarantee they wouldn't break his

94
legs for fucking them about. Or even kill him. He
said that if he was going to go and see them, then
he wanted back-up, but didn't know where he was
going to get it from. He didn't know who out of the
door staff would stand up for him and wasn't going
to count on any of them. So he asked me if I knew
of anyone independent, some security company
;vho could be relied upon to provide him with a
decent escort.'

'Why did he ask you?'

She shrugged. 'I don't think he knew where else
to turn. We've worked together a while and I think
he trusted me.'

I finished my coffee and put it on the glass coffee
U;ble next to me. 'And you said you'd see what you
could do?'

She took a pack of cigarettes out of her handbag
and offered me one. It had been a month since I'd
quit but for the last few hours I'd known it was
never going to last. The way things were going,
living to a ripe old age with healthy lungs was the
least of my concerns.

'Cheers,' I said, and took one.

She lit it for me with a thin black lighter, then lit
her own and sat back in her seat, crossing her
shapely legs and blowing smoke towards the
ceiling. The dress rode up provocatively and I tried
hard, but without much success, to ignore it. 'What
choice did I have?' she asked. 'I didn't want to get
involved, course I didn't, but he's been good to me
since I've been working for him, and the least I
could do was try to help out. So I spoke to Johnny
and he spoke to Roy and it sounds like he put Roy

95
I

in touch with you. I'm sorry about what happened
but, you know, I had no idea it would end like this.'

'Forget it. It wasn't your fault. But I've got to be
honest with you, there's a serious ring of bullshit
about what he was telling you.'

'Look, I--' '=*

Teah, I know, I know. You're telling me the
truth.'

'I am.'

I'm sure you are, but there's got to be a lot more
to it than that. If Fowler was carrying the deeds to
the club in the case he took to that meeting, then
why kill him before he's signed them over? And, in
fact, why kill him at all? Particularly when he's got
people with him. There's a lot of unanswered
questions.' I was silent for a moment. 'But at least
there's one you can answer.'

'I've told you, Max. Don't get involved. It's not
worth it.' She stared me down as she spoke, in the
way my mum used to do. The expression said:
Don't argue. I thought she'd have probably made a
good Miss Whiplash, and a lot of judges and
politicians would have paid good money to be
dominated by someone as good-looking as her,
but I really wasn't in the mood to be told what to
do.

'I want to know who killed my friend, Elaine.
And who tried to kill me.'

'Why? It won't help you. I promise you, there's
nothing you can do.'

'Just tell me.'

She stared straight at me. The Holtzes.'

That stopped me dead.

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'You know who they are, don't you?'

'Yeah, I know the Holtzes.'

Everyone who was anyone in that part of town
loiew the Holtzes, or who they were anyway. Led
by their reclusive founder, Stefan, who was now on
the wrong end of middle age, they were one of
north London's premier crime families, rulers of a
criminal empire that was worth tens of millions.
And evil bastards, too. Word had it that they'd been
involved in dozens of murders as they'd fought to
stay at the top, but, even after years of police
attention, they remained intact. If anyone could
have staged what had happened the previous
night, it was the Holtzes.

Flaine sighed. 'So, now you see why I said don't to,.i involved.'