The Murder Exchange (21 page)

190
insulted, whoever it is doing the insulting. I told
him I was telling the truth and if he didn't believe
me that was his fucking lookout. Then I told him I
was leaving.'

What happened then?'

'He hit me. The bastard stood up and smacked
me right in the face.' She touched her cheek where
his fist had connected, and I felt the rage building.
'I couldn't believe it. No man's ever done that to me
before, not in my whole life. Then he came over and
picked me up by my hair, telling me I was going to
have to learn some fucking manners. The whole
thing happened so fast I didn't even have time to be
scared, so I called him a cowardly cunt and tried to
knee him in the balls, but he just stepped out of the
way. Then he started slapping me round the face
with one hand and half-strangling me with the
other, and all the time he kept saying that I was
going to have to learn some manners.' She stopped
for a moment, and I thought she might lose her
composure, but she held on, her voice quiet. 'At one
point, I think the dirty bastard must have started
getting turned on because he pushed me back onto
the desk and I could feel him getting all hard up
against me, and he was saying I was a fucking
whore and pawing me all over, getting really
worked up ... Christ, it was horrible. I tried to fight
him, Max, I really did, but he was so fucking strong.
I could hardly breathe with his hand round my
neck. I thought he was going to kill me.'

I went over and put my arm around her. I felt sick
to the gut. It was difficult to believe what I was
hearing. I wondered how much worse things could

191
get. 'Did he rape you?' I asked quietly, desperate for
the answer to be no.

She shook her head and removed her hands from
her face, but still didn't look at me. I felt relief that
lasted for all of about two seconds. 'He did other
things,' she whispered, her disgusted tone leaving
little doubt as to what those things might have
been. 'And when he'd finished, he just looked at me
like I was nothing and told me to fuck off. Like I
was nothing, Max. No-one ... no-one's ever done
that to me before.' She shook her head slowly like
she was trying to shake the memories out of her
head. She looked distant, and I thought then that I
didn't want to lose her. To be honest, amid all the
frustration and rage in my head, that was when I
sort of knew I loved her. A bit hasty, yes, but sometimes
these things really do happen.

We held each other for a long time. Five minutes,
ten minutes, it was difficult to tell. It could have
been longer. Eventually she sighed and took a drink
from the glass of brandy.

'I need a cigarette,' she said.

Till find you one.' I opened up the drawer of her
bedside table and found a pack and a lighter. I lit
two and passed one to her.

'Don't do anything, Max. For Christ's sake. I just
want to forget about it, that's all. At least now I've
left the club. I don't think anyone's going to expect
me to work my notice after that.'

'What? You're going to ignore the fact that a
piece of shit like Krys Holtz did that to you?' I
tried to keep my voice calm, knowing that she
could hardly be blamed for wanting to put an

192
incident like that behind her, but it was difficult.

'He's Stefan Holtz's son, for fuck's sake! What
can we do?'

I shook my head. 'Fuck that. I keep hearing about
these Holtzes and how fucking invincible they are,
but let me tell you something, no-one's invincible. I
might be on the run but I'm not going to leave
London with my tail between my legs. And I'm not
going to move one more fucking foot until I get this
sorted out.'

'It won't help anything.'

'It'll help me,' I said, and got up and went to get
the rest of the brandy from the kitchen. My blood
was up; I needed something to get it back down
d^ain. I poured myself a glass, then took the bottle
back to the bedroom and poured some more for
Hlaine. 'You know something, I've never met Stefan
Holtz or any of his extended family, never done a
fucking thing to any of them, but these people seem
to be doing everything in their power to fuck up
my life.'

They fuck up a lot of people.'

There's one way I can get back at them. And get
revenge for what happened to you. I can off that
arsewipe Krys.'

'Don't be stupid.'

'I'm a trained soldier, Elaine. I'm perfectly
capable of doing it. And it'll make me feel one hell
of a lot better.'

Then what happens? You'll be on the run for
ever.'

'I'm on the run anyway, so what's the difference?
And I'll have got them back, for me and for you.

193
if

Krys'll be dead, and his dad'll have to live with the J
fact that he's lost a son. And if I do it right, they'll
never know it was me.'

Something in her face hardened. 'He's not going
to be that easy to kill, Max. Someone like him's got
a lot of enemies. He's got bodyguards.'

I shrugged. The idea of killing bodyguards didn't
bother me either. I knew it could be done. I could
also see that Elaine was now coming round to the
idea. We both sat looking at each other for a few
moments, each of us wondering how far we were
really going to go.

'I hate that bastard for what he's just done to me,'
she said eventually, 'but I don't want to do anything
that's going to make things worse for you and
for us. Do you know what I mean?'

But the thing was, I'd made up my mind. 'He's
going to have to die, Elaine/ I said simply.

She took a drag on her cigarette and eyed me
closely through the bluish haze of smoke. Then, for
the first time since returning that night, her gloom
seemed to lift. There's a better way,' she said.

Gallan

Berrin remained off sick on Monday. The flu, or
whatever it was, had supposedly got worse. If the
truth be told, he'd picked a good day to be absent.
It was another stinking hot one and tempers in CID
were frayed. Knox chaired the meeting of the
Shaun Matthews murder squad, during which
the events of the weekend, including the death of

194
the possible witness McBride, were discussed, but
there remained a feeling that everything had
ground to a halt on the inquiry, and Knox was preoccupied
by other events. A thirteen-year-old girl,
just one year older than my daughter, had been
dragged onto wasteground in broad daylight by a
man in his thirties while walking home from
the park, and violently sexually assaulted. The
jrdeal had lasted as long as half an hour and the
attacker had also slashed her arm with a knife or a razor, even though she'd made no move to resist
him. This was a particularly nasty type of crime,
one that upset the public, and therefore one that
upset the Brass. Which meant immediate pressure
to get it solved. By nine-thirty that morning, there'd
also been two missing persons reports, one of them
a teenage schoolgirl, and Knox was being pushed
from above to reorganize his resources. This meant
cutting the size of the Matthews murder squad.
With the case nine days old, and other business
piling up all over the place, Knox reduced it to himself,
Capper, DC Hunsdon, myself and Berrin
(whenever he turned up for work again). However,
due to further staff shortages within CID, I was
informed that I was also going to have to work the
other missing persons case, that of a fifty-threeyear-old
ex-con and former soldier named Eric
Home, who'd been missing since the previous
Thursday.

At this point, the meeting became heated, and I'd
pressed, with a lot less diplomacy than I usually
exhibit in front of the boss, for far more serious
efforts to be made in tracking down Jean Tanner

195
since if she was alive she at least might be able to
help. I also brought up the Neil Vamen angle, undeterred
by how it had all gone the previous day, and
suggested that he too might have had some involvement.
'And surely, if we've got the opportunity, we
want to put someone like him behind bars?'

Knox attempted to answer my concerns as
thoroughly as possible, explaining that he would speak to his counterpart on the McBride case
straight away, and get what details he could,
although he added that the hunt for Miss Tanner
was not our responsibility since McBride had not
died on our patch. We would, said Knox, continue
to look at the possibility of Neil Vamen's own
possible motives, but he suggested that, with the
death of the one person who'd mentioned his name
in connection with the case, it was going to be
extremely difficult to prove any involvement on his
part, if indeed there'd been any. I think I must have
pulled a face because Knox shot me one of his
trademark dirty looks reserved only for people
who really pissed him off, but I was past caring. In
my opinion, the whole thing was becoming
a whitewash. If the Matthews case had been a
straightforward one, like most murders, and hadn't
had any connections to the complicated morass of
organized crime, then Knox would have been a lot
more interested. Instead, he'd clearly decided that
it was more hassle than it was worth, that the
chances of a conviction were too negligible to waste
time on. These days it was all about performance
league tables. Something like this, particularly
when the corpse belonged to a lowlife like Shaun

196

I;

*
f
Matthews, was always going to be put on the back
burner if there were other, easier crimes coming
along that could be solved. That was the long and
the short of it.

The meeting broke up at ten past ten and Knox,
after doling out orders to various individuals and
trying to solve a couple of minor grievances, one
involving Boyd and Capper and an alleged sexist
comment, called me into his office. Neither of us
was in the best of moods and the sweltering heat in
the office did little to help matters. Knox had two
desk fans blasting away but all they did was push
the hot air around the confines of the room.

'Look, John, I know you're pissed off because you don't think things are moving as quickly as
you'd like on this case, but you know how things
are.' I didn't say anything. 'I'm going to speak to
DCI Peppard, DI Burley's boss, later this morning
to see what information we can get from them. If
they pick up Jean Tanner, I'll make sure we get the
opportunity to question her about Matthews, and
see what she may or may not know. We'll also chase
them to find out how McBride died and whether
they've got any leads on who may have killed him.'

'DI Burley wasn't exactly helpful, sir.'

'He can be very brash, I admit.'

'He treated me like a criminal. We're meant to be
on the same side.'

Knox's face reddened. He had the look of a man
who's been given the job of counsellor without
actually wanting it. 'It's not like that. Burley's
territorial. He doesn't like people, even fellow
officers, muscling in on his patch.'

197
$°

'I was hardly muscling in. I was actually trying to
help him.'

Tm sure you were, it's just that that's not how he
interprets it. He's not very good sometimes around
younger officers. I think he thinks they're upstarts.'
He gave a reassuring and vaguely patronizing
smile as he said this - not that I thought there was
anything particularly amusing about it. I continued
to look at him stony-faced.

Seeing that he didn't seem to be making much of
an impression on his disgruntled charge, Knox
changed tack. 'Whichever way we look at it, Roy
Fowler still remains for me the prime suspect. He of
all people had a motive. Now, I'm not letting this
inquiry go, no way. What we need to do is to look
into Fowler's background much more deeply
because he is most definitely the key to all this.'
Warming to his theme in a way that had been conspicuously
absent in the meeting earlier, he
continued, occasionally banging his fist on the desk
for emphasis. 'He and Matthews were definitely
involved in the drug dealing. It's a lucrative business.
I'm sure they fell out about it, and it's very
likely that that fall-out somehow led to his death.
Why else would Fowler have disappeared? Unless
he's got something to hide. He's been gone, what?
Three, four days now. Which I would describe as
highly irregular. And didn't you and Berrin
tell him not to go anywhere during the course of the
inquiry?' I told him we had. 'So let's concentrate on
him. I want you to review the case notes, go back
and talk to his associates, particularly staff
members at the Arcadia, and Capper and Hunsdon s

198 <
are going to dig deeper into what he's been up to in
the past. What scams he was involved in, particularly
this brothel business. This Heavenly Girls.
That might give us some ideas. It's time for some
lateral thinking.'

'My lateral thinking would be helped a great
deal, sir, if I didn't have to worry about a missing
persons case as well.'

Knox sighed. 'I know it's not ideal, but you know
the problems we've got with manpower. I've got to
put bodies on that indecent assault yesterday. The
media are already sniffing around. She's a very
pretty girl, and, worse than that, her parents are
high-band council taxpayers with a lot of clout, so
we're going to need a fast result. No-one wants an
animal like that running loose, particularly when
he's doing everything possible to make his crime as
high-profile as possible, so we're going to have to
show plenty of faces. I've also got the Drugs Squad
breathing down my neck for help on some major
surveillance they're running. Operation Swift
Strike it's called, though swift it most certainly
ain't, and it's likely to take people out of the loop
for the next three or four days. You see what I'm
saying?'

'Of course I do, sir, and I appreciate the manpower
problems. We've always got them. But
you're paring back the murder squad to an absolute
minimum, and with Benin off sick, I think I should
really be concentrating my efforts on the case.' I
resisted the urge to add, 'You see what I'm saying?'
I still wanted to make DI again after all, and I'd
more than made my point today.