The Murder Exchange (23 page)

All I had to do now was make sure the basics
were in place, and then we'd be ready to go.

209
Wednesday, eleven days ago

Gallan

When I arrived at the restaurant, Malik -1 assumed
it was him - was already there, sat at a table at the
far end. I could see why he'd picked this place: he
was the only customer in it, which didn't bode too
well. I don't usually get an opportunity to sample
restaurant fare while I'm on duty, so I hoped Malik
knew something the rest of the West End's
lunchtime trade didn't.

He stood up as I approached and we introduced
ourselves and shook hands. He was a young guy,
thirty tops, with a friendly smile and the air of
someone with a lot of self-confidence. He was
dressed in a dark grey suit that looked more
expensive than a copper's wage would allow, and a
natty-looking red tie. A bit formal for an eighty
degree day with high humidity, but he carried it
well. I thought he looked more like an up-and
coming executive than a copper, but there was
something genuine about him. A sense that you
could trust what he had to say. If he'd been selling,

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I'd have definitely been in the marketplace, and it's
not often I say that.

A waiter appeared almost as soon as I'd sat down
and asked if I'd like a drink. I saw that Malik was
on orange juice, but since the Met were paying and
I had a pack of peppermints in my pocket, I opted
for a beer. I'm not a man who has any problem
drinking alone.

'So, this case you're working on/ said Malik as
my drink arrived. What's it all about?'

I gave him a brief rundown of the Matthews
inquiry. 'It's going nowhere fast. There's still been
no sign of Jean Tanner - it's like she's vanished into
thin air - and the preliminary autopsy on Craig
McBride showed he died of a heroin overdose, of an things. Again, no signs of a struggle. Other than
that, we've got nothing. No new leads, and no joy
with any of the old ones. My hunch is that someone
from the Holtz organization is definitely involved,
because of the way everyone either ends up dead or
disappears, but I'm not in a position to do anything
about it.'

Malik nodded thoughtfully. 'I'm not sure how
much help I can be, John.'

I took another sip from my drink. 'I don't know
either, but I'm beginning to run out of options and,
you never know, you might have something that'll
move us forward. Basically, I want as much information
as you can give me on the Holtzes and
Neil Vamen. I know a little bit, but it's very patchy.'

'Let's order first,' he said. He picked up a menu
from the table and handed it to me. 'I particularly
recommend the saltimbocca.'

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'What the hell's that?'

'Escalopes of veal and parma ham cooked in a
marsala sauce and served with veg of the day and
sauteed potatoes. Bellissima!'

'It sounds like you're part-owner of the place.' I
gave the menu a cursory scan but nothing else leapt
out at me. 'OK, I'll go with the escalopes. In honour
of my ex-wife/

'She used to like them, did she?'

I allowed myself a malicious smile. 'No, she was
a strict vegetarian.'

'Clearly not an amicable separation.' He laughed.

'Are they ever?'

'Maybe more amicable than that. But who am I to
judge?' He waved the waiter over and gave our
order. 'Anyway,' he said when the waiter had gone,
'the Holtzes. I've been part of a team that's been
investigating them for getting close to eighteen
months now, and let me tell you, they are no easy
target. It's like trying to penetrate concrete.'

'Why's that?'

'A couple of reasons. One is they've been around
as an organization of sorts for getting close to thirty
years so they're very well established. The old man
Stefan's the lynchpin. He started out as a nasty little
thug and amateur boxer who got into debt collecting
on behalf of various scumbags before deciding
he'd be better off branching out on his own. What
differentiated young Stefan from a thousand other
lowlifes was that he had a brain, and a very sharp
one at that. He was, and is, a very good businessman.
I'd say he was wasted in crime but he
probably earns ten times more through that than he

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would do by being legit, and he's expanded
majorly over the years. Moved into gambling,
counterfeiting, armed robbery for a while, though
of course never getting his hands dirty himself. He
organized everything but he made sure he only
surrounded himself with people he could really
trust. That's why in many ways it's always been a
family outfit. His two brothers were heavily
involved with him in the early days, and then,
when they got old enough, his sons got into it as
well. They probably never would have been a
massive outfit, though, if it hadn't been for drugs.'
I allowed myself a wry chuckle. 'Same old story.'
'Always the same old story. Everyone's made big
cash out of drugs, no doubt about it, but for an out
nt like the Holtzes, with an infrastructure and good
underworld contacts already in place, the opportunities
have been huge. And they've taken them.
You know, the word is Stefan Holtz can't stand
drugs. Won't let any of his family touch them,
although of course they all do. But as an organization
they were into them from the outset. Dope,
amphetamines, coke particularly, even heroin. Over
the years they've forged alliances with numerous
other crime organizations both here and abroad
and now they're one of the biggest importers in
Britain. They also supply a lot of the gear, particularly
Ecstasy and coke, to Ibiza for the summer
season. So, if your nice middle-class teenage kid
goes over and drops a tab or snorts a line, the
chances are that some of the profits on that are
heading straight back to the Holtzes, and we're not
talking about small quantities here. Thousands of

213
people are taking millions of pounds' worth of gear
every night between May and October. And that's
just one part of their smuggling activities.

'But what sets them apart is their levels of
sophistication and the seniority of their contacts in
the criminal world. These days they get their
cocaine straight out of Cali in Colombia, no middle
men at all. And we believe they've set up a major
smuggling route through Bosnia and into western
Europe, not only for heroin from Pakistan and
Afghanistan but also for illegal immigrants, particularly
now the Mehmet Ulan/Raymond Keen
operation's out of business. They even smuggle in
ancient artefacts. There's nothing they won't touch.
If it makes money, they'll be there. And the sort of
money that comes their way is incredible. We don't
know exactly how much it is for sure, there are so
many front companies and money-laundering
operations, and Holtz employs an army of accountants,
but we reckon as a group they turn over in
excess of forty million sterling per year.'

I whistled through my teeth. 'No wonder they're
difficult to penetrate.'

'Exactly. That sort of money buys a lot of loyalty.
And, as I've said, they're well enough established
that the main players involved are all very well
known to one another, so they're not likely to start
grassing each other up, especially if there's no
obvious benefit to it. A guy from SO10 did get on
the periphery of the organization once but they
sniffed him out, found out where he lived, and sent
a couple of their people round to pay a visit to his
wife and baby.'

214
'Christ/ I said, wondering how I'd have reacted
ten years earlier if the same thing had happened to

me.

'They didn't hurt them or anything, just made
sure he knew that they could if they wanted to. It
spooked the guy so badly he left the Force. And that
was the closest anyone ever got. Having said all
that, we have had some successes against them, as
have other branches of the Met, and Tomas, Stefan's
oldest son, is currently doing a nine stretch for
possession of two kilos of cocaine and twenty-four
M-16 rifles.' I raised my eyebrows quizzically. 'Yes,
they also smuggle weapons as well, although that
was the first evidence we ever had of it, and of
course young Tommy denied knowledge of any
such enterprise and claimed that, like the gear, they
were a plant.' He smiled wearily, the standard
copper's reaction to such boring and uninventive
lies.

'What about contacts within the Force?' I asked,
thinking of that arsehole Burley. 'Have they got any?'

'We've never actually uncovered anyone, but you
know as well as I do there are coppers out there
susceptible to corruption.' He paused for a moment
as if he was waiting for me to make some mention
of his old boss, but I kept silent. 'Anecdotal
evidence suggests there's quite a few coppers on
the Holtz payroll,' he continued, 'and it would
stand to reason. But they've been good at keeping it
under wraps.'

'You said there were two reasons why they
were so hard to penetrate. One's the way they're
organized. Whaf s the other?'

215
Malik gave me a serious look. Their ruthlessness.
If you cross them, your days really are
numbered. Every criminal firm's prone to violence,
of course. I suppose you've got to be in that line of
business, especially these days with all the
competition, but the Holtzes take it one step
further. To them, killing's just another way of protecting
their investments. If you get in their way, or
do anything that might foul up the smooth operation
of their moneymaking, then you die. It's as
simple as that. We estimate they've been
responsible for something like thirty-five killings
since 1985 alone. Incredible when you think that
most people have never even heard of them. But
we've only ever recovered fourteen bodies which
could actually be linked to members and associates
of the family. Of those fourteen, not one has ever
resulted in a conviction. People don't go against the
Holt/es because the consequences are simply too
grim, and the rewards of staying onside simply
too great.'

'You make it sound like an impossible task to
bring them to justice.'

We'll get them in the end,' he said, and he
sounded like he truly meant it. I thought it was a
pity there weren't more coppers like Malik. 'We'll
pursue them to the ends of the earth if we have to,
but I'll be honest with you, it won't be easy. In the
eighteen months I've been with the team we've not
been able to secure anything above minor convictions,
and those have only been against the
lower-level players, but things are changing. The
government are getting very concerned about

216
criminal gangs supposedly running the country so
they're putting a lot of resources into the fight to
bring them down. We're not the only people
involved. ML5 are looking into them too. So are the
National Crime Squad, and even Customs & Excise
are involved, which is probably the most
frightening prospect of all from a criminal's point
of view. So they're feeling the squeeze. But I can't
ace them bursting just yet.'

The food arrived, and Malik was right, I wasn't
disappointed. As I ate, I stole occasional glances at
him and I had to admit to being impressed by his
overall demeanour. Here was a man whose immediate
boss and mentor had been uncovered as a
cold-blooded killer, an event that had placed Malik
under the microscope of the press and had led to
unfounded whispers about his own involvement. I
knew what it was like to have the media on your
back from my own experience, but the Dennis
Milne story had been a much bigger one than our
squalid little cover-up, yet Malik didn't portray the
remotest hint that it had adversely affected him. If
anything, it was quite the opposite. From what I'd
gathered from talking to people at the station
who'd known him in his time there, he'd been a
fairly quiet, unassuming guy, nothing like the
confident-looking individual sat in front of me now.

'So, Neil Vamen,' I said between mouthfuls. 'I
know a few things about him, none of them particularly
nice, but I'd like to hear anything you've
got.' I decided not to say anything about my visit to
him at the Seven Bells, since it didn't exactly place
me in a positive light.

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He sawed off a large chunk of veal and popped it
in his mouth, clearly savouring the taste. 'Sorry
about that/ he said when he'd finished chewing.
'Vamen's an interesting one. He joined the family
firm at a fairly low level back in the mid-seventies,
apparently as an enforcer. He's thought to have
committed at least one murder on Stefan Holtz's
behalf, in 1978 when he was twenty-one, but he's a
cunning bastard, and very shrewd, and he's moved
right through the ranks. Of people outside the immediate
family, he's easily the closest to Stefan, and
acts as his chief adviser, especially now that
Stefan's a virtual recluse. I suppose in many ways
Vamen's the most dangerous of all of them because
he's as intelligent as Holtz, if not more so, and he's
still got the drive. The other family members don't
cut the mustard in that respect. Stefan's two
brothers are both dead: one, Terry, died from a heart
attack ten years ago while he was in prison; the
other, Kas, got killed in a car crash last year. And of
the three sons, Tommy's in the nick, Robbie's not
interested, and Krys is too much of a nutter.'

'I've heard about Krys.'

'A real nasty piece of work, and in a way the
others aren't. Everyone connected with the Holtzes
is violent, some in the extreme, but in the main it's
just business. I'm not saying that that justifies it, of
course it doesn't, but at least there's a reason
behind it. With Krys, it's all about the enjoyment of
inflicting pain. He's the sort who likes pulling the
legs off spiders - you know the type. In fact, in
many ways he's probably their loosest cannon,
although such is the fear he inspires in people he's

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never been convicted of a thing. No-one would ever
testify against Krys Holtz.'