The Murder Exchange Page 10

  ‘Jack Merriweather.’

  ‘Well, well, well.’

  Jack Merriweather. Better known, at least behind his back, as Jackie Slap, on account of his shiny Mekon-style bald pate, itself the result of a sudden teenage attack of alopecia. The story went that at the age of sixteen young Jackie had been forced to share a cell in a detention centre with a powerfully built homosexual named Lennie, and such had been the stress of having to fend off Lennie’s unwanted advances that he’d lost all his hair. At the time it had made the news, because there was a lot of controversy over the ‘short sharp shock’ method of teenage incarceration. One wag had suggested renaming it the ‘short sharp slap’, and for Jackie at least the name had stuck.

  Nobody took the piss out of Jack Merriweather any more though. Not now he was a part of Stefan Holtz’s crime organization. It also answered at least one question about who really ran things at Arcadia. Merriweather worked directly for Neil Vamen, who was one of Holtz’s closest associates, in many ways his eyes and ears in the outside world now that the big boss had become something of a recluse. I’d met Vamen once a few months earlier when we’d interviewed him after his name had come up in connection with a box of twelve Kalashnikov rifles that had been discovered at Gatwick Airport. A short, barrel-bodied individual with thinning hair and striking turquoise eyes, he was good-looking in a thuggish sort of way. And very polite, too, I remember that. Someone in CID had once said that Neil Vamen put the manners back into murder, and, I had to admit, there was definitely something charismatic about him. But, like all these blokes, you had this feeling that if you crossed him you’d pay dearly for it, and he’d been linked to more than one murder, including that of a young female accountant who knew a little too much (nothing ever proved, of course, he was far too canny for that), which to me sort of took a bit of the gloss off the image of Raffles, the gentleman gangster. It fitted with his way of doing things that he used Merriweather to collect the money. The truly successful criminals never get their hands dirty.

  ‘I presume you’re aware that Jack Merriweather works for the Holtzes?’

  ‘I’ve heard that, yeah.’

  ‘So it’s probably safe to assume that the Holtzes own Elite A and therefore almost certainly own Arcadia, isn’t it?’

  ‘Are you asking me or telling me?’ he said, using the same phrase Elaine Toms had used the previous day.

  ‘Don’t fuck us about, McBride,’ I told him coldly. ‘We’re only talking in your front room because at the moment we’re giving you the benefit of the doubt. However, so far you’ve told us absolutely nothing that we didn’t know already, so you’re still looking at a nice long spell in the nick. Now, answer my question unless you want to continue this interview down the station.’

  ‘All right, yeah, I suppose it’s safe to assume. I didn’t know for sure he owned the place … both places … but there were rumours. I don’t like to ask too many questions about that sort of thing. You know, I don’t want to get on the wrong side of Stefan Holtz.’

  I changed tack. ‘How well did you know Shaun Matthews? Honestly.’

  ‘I got on all right with him. I knew him a bit, you know.’

  ‘Did you ever socialize with him outside work?’

  McBride paused before answering, at the same time breaking eye contact with me. ‘A couple of times, yeah,’ he said eventually. ‘We was both ex-army so I think he thought we had something in common. Most of the other blokes didn’t really like him much.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Berrin.

  ‘Well, like I said, he rated himself. Threw his weight about a bit, and he could get nasty if he thought anyone was holding back on money owed to the club.’

  ‘Did he ever upset one particular person more than any of the others? Enough to give them a motive for killing him?’

  ‘He had a run-in with one geezer, one of the permanent doormen, John Harris. John was getting a blowjob in the bogs from one of the punters when he should have been out on the floor. I don’t think it would have mattered – you know, that sort of thing goes on a lot. The birds are attracted to door-men, aren’t they?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ I said, hoping my daughter would never flutter her eyelashes at a lowlife like McBride.

  ‘But the thing was, he did it quite a lot. He was always poking the punters, sometimes two at a time, and the thing was he had, you know, staying power, so he could be at it for fifteen, twenty minutes, sometimes even longer. Which I suppose is why they liked him. Anyway, Shaun had just had enough that night so he went charging into the Gents, kicked open the door, and dragged John out by his dick. John didn’t know what had hit him – you know, element of surprise and all that – and he got a fair old slap. Broken nose, couple of black eyes. Nothing serious, but I think it was the humiliation of it. Shaun marched him through the whole club with his trousers still half hanging down, and booted him out the door. Told him to come back when he’d got his sex drive under control.’

  ‘And did he come back?’

  ‘Not after that. Well, you wouldn’t, would you? Not after someone’s taken those sort of liberties with you.’

  ‘When did this incident take place?’ asked Berrin.

  McBride shrugged noncommittally. ‘A couple of months back. Something like that.’

  Berrin and I looked at each other. We hadn’t heard about this run-in with John Harris, but then no one at Arcadia was going out of their way to be of help. Berrin made a note in his notebook. We’d track down the sexually energetic Mr Harris later.

  ‘Did Shaun Matthews ever discuss with you any problems he had with anyone, problems that might have resulted in someone wanting to kill him?’

  McBride shook his head. ‘I know he dealt a fair bit on the side, and I don’t think he had too much in the way of respect for the punters buying off him. He told me a couple of times that he used to mix his gear pretty heavily, but he never seemed to worry too much that anyone’d come back and give him any grief about it. He said he’d just tell them to fuck off if they did. That was the thing with Shaun: he wasn’t really scared of no one. He always thought he was hard enough to get himself out of any shit that came his way. You know what I mean?’

  I knew exactly what he meant. Plenty of criminals are like that, too cocky to realize they’re walking on quicksand. Matthews was only the latest in a long line of those who found out too late, if they found out at all, that they weren’t as invincible as they’d thought. ‘We’re aware of one particular incident where he dangled a man by the ankles over the balcony of his flat. Do you know anything about that?’

  McBride tried without success to stifle a laugh. ‘Yeah, I remember him saying something about that one. I think the geezer was a student or something. Shaun sold him some stuff that was meant to be skunk but he’d got it cheap off some Moroccan geezer because it was so shit. Apparently, all it did was give you a sore throat. The bloke tried to get his money back and Shaun demonstrated his refunds policy. I don’t think he came back again.’

  ‘Have you got a name for this student?’ asked Berrin.

  He shook his head. ‘No. He just told me the story when we was out one night. I think he said the bloke might have gone to City and Islington, but I couldn’t say for sure.’

  ‘Did Matthews ever say anything to you about ripping off the Holtzes?’

  McBride gave me a withering look. ‘Shaun might have been a bit of a headcase, and a bit of a wanker if you’re honest about it, but he wasn’t totally fucking stupid. He wouldn’t have ripped off people like the Holtzes, and if he had, he wouldn’t have said nothing about it. Not to no one.’

  I sat forward in my seat and stared hard at him. I don’t like getting withering looks from small-time crooks who’ve got little but not-so-fresh air between their ears. ‘You’re still not helping us much, Craig. And you’re not giving us any reason to walk out of here and forget that you’re sitting on a pile of dope that most assuredly is not for personal consumption. Are you?’

  ‘Look,
I don’t know who killed him. Honest. You know, what the fuck can I do about that? I can’t make it up, can I?’

  ‘Several witnesses reported seeing Matthews with a woman with short blonde hair on a number of occasions. We think they may have been romantically linked. She certainly used to visit him at his flat. We’ve now identified her as Jean Tanner. Here’s a photo of her. Not the most flattering one, but mugshots never are.’ I took it out of my pocket and handed it to him. He looked at it quickly, then handed it back, shaking his head. ‘I’d like to think, for your sake,’ I continued, ‘that you can tell me what her relationship was with Mr Matthews.’

  McBride made a number of noises suggesting he was thinking hard but they weren’t particularly convincing. ‘He might have mentioned something once, about some girl he was seeing, but he didn’t really say anything about—’

  ‘Craig McBride, I’m arresting you on suspicion of possession of Class A—’

  ‘All right, all right, hold on. Don’t be hasty.’

  ‘What do you mean, don’t be hasty? I could grow a beard waiting for you to tell me anything.’

  ‘Look, I don’t want any of this getting back to me. Seriously.’

  ‘Any of what?’

  McBride put his head in his hands, then removed them and exhaled loudly. ‘Any of what I’m going to tell you.’

  I didn’t get too excited. ‘We’ll treat it as an anonymous source if it’s applicable,’ I said. ‘Now, I suggest you get on with it.’

  ‘Shaun had a girlfriend, a girl he’d been seeing for a few months, and her name was Jean, but I don’t know what her second name was. The thing was it was all really hush hush. I’m surprised anyone saw them together. He only told me about it one night after he’d had too much gear and drink. I think he wanted some advice.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, this girl, and I think it must be the same one, she was sort of already spoken for. She was seeing Shaun on the side.’

  ‘It happens,’ I said.

  ‘Not to Neil Vamen it doesn’t.’

  Once again, Berrin and I looked at each other. This certainly put a new angle on the whole thing. The gentleman gangster. ‘You’re telling us she was Neil Vamen’s girlfriend?’

  He nodded. ‘That’s what Shaun said.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Berrin. ‘No wonder he wanted it kept quiet. Do you think Vamen found out?’

  ‘I don’t know. Honestly.’

  ‘How did Shaun meet her?’

  ‘I heard she used to work as an escort girl for this agency Roy Fowler runs called Heavenly Girls. Maybe that’s how he met her.’ I raised my eye-brows. This was an interesting one. We hadn’t realized that one of Fowler’s sidelines was managing a brothel.

  Berrin finished writing in his notebook and looked up. ‘Neil Vamen’s married, isn’t he?’

  McBride shrugged. ‘Yeah, he is, and his missus is a looker too, but you know what blokes are like. Especially ones with money. Everyone knows he plays away from home.’

  Berrin looked across at me, waiting to see what came next. It was difficult to know what more we could ask McBride, or whether what he’d told us was enough to get him off the hook.

  ‘One more question,’ I said. ‘Who did you buy these drugs from?’

  McBride sighed, looked pained for all of about one second that he was about to betray someone, then gave us the name of a fairly well-known local dealer. I knew immediately he was lying. The drugs had almost certainly come from somewhere within Stefan Holtz’s organization. It was rumoured that Holtz himself strongly disapproved of drugs and, unlike many underworld figures, had never touched them himself. However, his people were responsible for importing one hell of a lot of the cocaine that passed through London every year, so his personal stand clearly didn’t prevent him helping to ruin the lives of plenty of other people.

  I leant over, picked up the plate of dope and the individual wraps, and stood up. ‘If you hear anything, anything at all about the murder of Shaun Matthews, I want to hear about it.’ I handed my card to McBride who accepted it with a relieved expression on his face.

  ‘Course I will,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Where’s the toilet in here?’ I asked, walking out of the room, with Berrin following.

  ‘It’s just on the left. What are you going to do with the gear? I’ll give it back, but the thing is I haven’t paid for it yet.’

  I went up to the dirty-looking bowl and emptied the plate into the water, before chucking down the wraps. I gave it a healthy flush and watched as most of it disappeared.

  ‘Don’t take the piss, Mr McBride,’ I told the distraught-looking doorman as we left his flat. ‘We’ve done you a major favour here.’

  When we were back in the car, Berrin gave me a worried look. ‘Was that such a good idea, Sarge? You know, letting him off like that. We could have got a lovely little collar there.’

  ‘And it would have just bogged us down in paperwork, and wouldn’t have done anything to hinder the Holtz supply chain. Sometimes you’ve got to let the small fish go so you can get hold of the big ones. But do me a favour and don’t say anything to anyone about it.’

  ‘Course not. Do you think it was worth letting him go like that, though? Did we get enough out of him?’

  ‘We’ve got other people with motive now, so it’s putting us further forward.’

  ‘All we’ve got to do is find them.’

  ‘That, my friend, is what it’s all about.’

  Iversson

  It was three o’clock in the afternoon when I buzzed Joe up and led him through to the lounge. It was a stinking hot day and all the windows were open. Outside, the traffic rumbled endlessly past.

  ‘Nice place for a hideout,’ he said, dropping on the floor a bag containing belongings he’d picked up from my flat. He sat down in one of the leather chairs, and put the four-pack of beers he’d also brought down on the glass coffee table. I went and got a couple of glasses and emptied the contents of two of the cans into them. ‘So, where’s the girl?’

  ‘She’s gone out,’ I said, sitting down opposite him. ‘She’ll be back later.’

  ‘And how long’s she going to let you stay here for? I mean, she doesn’t even know you, does she?’

  ‘I told you, I went to school with her.’

  ‘But, Max, you’re not eighteen. That was a long time ago now. You haven’t seen her in, what? Twenty years.’

  I took a drink from my beer. ‘Not that long.’

  ‘But long enough. You’ve got to be careful. Time changes people. She might just run to the law.’

  ‘She won’t.’

  ‘Well, either way she’s going to want you out of here pretty soon, isn’t she?’

  I nodded, not liking to think about that. After the sexual athletics of the previous night, I was in no hurry to go anywhere. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘So we’ve got to discuss what you’re going to do. The police came round to see me this morning, asking about you. Questions like, what were you doing driving a car riddled with bullets? And why were you so keen to make a break for it when you were stopped for questioning, smacking two coppers in the process? That sort of thing.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘What do you think? I didn’t tell them anything, just said I’d always thought you were pretty straight, and that I didn’t think you were involved in anything untoward.’

  ‘Do you reckon they believed you?’

  He shrugged. ‘Difficult to tell. I think so, but you never know. It helps that you’ve never been in trouble before. But they’re definitely looking for you, Max, and that’s not good.’

  ‘You don’t think they followed you here, do you?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I was careful. Anyway, at the moment you’re probably not a big enough fish to waste that many resources on. I mean, there’s still no proof you’ve actually done anything other than deck a couple of coppers.’

  ‘Fowler bled over the back seat
when he died. Not much, and I gave it a fair old scrub afterwards, but one of the coppers spotted the stain when they stopped me. I don’t know if they can trace it back to Fowler or not. What do you think?’

  He pondered that one for a few moments. ‘I doubt it. If they don’t know who Fowler is and they haven’t got a blood sample of his, then I would have thought you’re in the clear.’

  I took another drink from my beer. It was going down well. ‘What a fuck-up,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘So did you get anything on that bastard Tony? Anything that might explain what the fuck he thought he was doing?’

  ‘I talked to a few people, other people he’d been doing work with, but no one seems to have anything bad on him. He did some guarding work for Barry Unwin, looking after wealthy Arabs, and he even had a stint through Barry as a minder for Geri Halliwell, and everyone reckoned he did a fine job. And he’d been with Barry a while, too. More than two years.’

  ‘Well, something happened. Somewhere down the line he met someone who was willing to pay him big money to get involved in some very nasty shit.’

  Joe seemed to notice his drink for the first time. He picked it up and took a healthy swig. ‘How about you? What did you get?’

  I told him what Elaine had told me.

  Joe rolled his eyes at the mention of the Holtzes. ‘Fucking hell, Max, that’s all we need. Let’s make sure we stay well clear of it if it’s anything to do with them. I don’t want to get into a confrontation with people like that.’

  I knew he was right, and if a man like him was saying it, then it was best to listen. But the thought of not doing something to retaliate still pissed me off.

  ‘Joe, no offence, but I almost got my head blown off the other night. If I hadn’t been carrying, I’d probably be at the bottom of the Thames now. It’s sort of affected my viewpoint on all this. We also lost Eric, and no way did he deserve to go like that.’

  ‘I know he didn’t, and apart from anything else he’s going to be difficult to replace. And his ex-missus called in this morning.’