The Murder Exchange Read online

  ‘It’s not an everyday occurrence, thank goodness,’ I told him, thinking that it was a rare day anyone said they were full of admiration for me. ‘If it was, I don’t think I’d be able to handle it.’ And I wasn’t sure if I would have been. The longer you’re in the job, the more you become hardened to the horrors around you, but the sight of Craig McBride’s stiff, lifeless body, sucked dry of personality, of everything, depressed me in a way I find difficult to describe. Particularly as the previous day I’d been holding a conversation with him. It might not have been a very pleasant one, but that was hardly the point. He’d been alive, now he was gone. Permanently.

  I stepped out of the way so Mr Lacker could see Craig’s face. He looked quickly, then looked away, still standing a few feet back. ‘Take your time,’ I told him. ‘There’s no hurry.’

  He stayed where he was for a couple of seconds, then steeled himself, took a couple of steps forward, and looked again. ‘Yes, I’ve seen him before,’ he said, turning away. ‘On two or three occasions.’

  ‘Thank you for that,’ I said, leading him back towards the front door.

  At that moment, there was a commotion from outside, the front door opened, and a giant of a man about ten years my senior, dressed in an illfitting black suit, stepped inside. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ he barked. ‘This is a crime scene. Who are you?’

  ‘I’m DS John Gallan,’ I said, stopping in front of him. ‘And this is Peter Lacker, the neighbour.’

  ‘Well, I’m DI Burley and I’m taking over from here. And you two are contaminating a crime scene. Have you touched anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, get out then. SOCO are going to be here in a few minutes and we’ve got to seal everything off.’

  He motioned bluntly towards the door with his head, and we stepped past him into the hall where several uniformed officers were standing. Burley followed us out. After I’d led Mr Lacker back into his own flat, he put a large, hairy hand on my shoulder and half-pushed me over to the top of the stairs. I was going to tell him that as far as I was aware we were on the same side, so he could ease up if he liked on the tough-guy routine, but I never got the chance. He was talking before my lips even parted.

  ‘What were you doing back in there with the neighbour? Seeing if you could fuck up the crime scene as much as possible? Have you forgotten what the procedures are, or did you just never bother to learn them?’

  ‘Did you get out of bed the wrong side or are you always this charming?’

  I thought he was going to pick me up then and chuck me down the stairs. I’m not a small bloke – I’m close to six feet tall – but there was no questioning the fact that he could have managed it. His sharp little eyes, by far the daintiest features on his long, heavy-jawed face, blazed angrily. ‘That’s another thing you obviously haven’t learnt then, that a DI’s a superior officer to a DS and therefore a DS should speak to a DI with a measure of fucking respect, and address him as sir. And apologize when he fucking forgets that.’ His words were spoken in a loud hiss through teeth that looked like they usually spent their time gritted, and whether I liked it or not (and I didn’t, I can assure you), what he was saying was correct. I took solace in the fact that a man as rude, angry and clearly stressed as DI Burley was not going to live to a ripe old age, surrounded by loving relatives hanging on to his every word of wisdom.

  ‘I was just doing my job, sir,’ I told him, emphasizing the sir. I held his gaze, knowing that the only way a person gets intimidated is if he lets himself. I’d done way too many miles for that to happen.

  ‘Well, you’re not doing very fucking well. So, I understand you know who the corpse is, is that right?’

  ‘That’s right. His name’s Craig McBride. We spoke to him yesterday in connection with a murder.’

  ‘But he doesn’t live here?’

  ‘No, the apartment belongs to a Jean Tanner. We came here to see her, but she wasn’t here. He was.’

  ‘What were you interested in her for?’

  I explained what we knew in short, sullen sentences, giving him more of an overview of the Matthews case than the bastard deserved. As I was finishing, Berrin came over to join us. Burley turned round and saw him. ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you?’ he said. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Not used to stiffs, then?’

  ‘I’m all right,’ said Berrin belligerently.

  ‘Well, I want you both to know that we’re taking over this case now. This is our patch and we’re investigating it. Thanks very much for alerting us to yet another fucking suspicious death in the division, but we won’t be needing any more help from you. So, if you’ll excuse us …’

  ‘Hold on,’ I said, ignoring the murderous glare he shot me. ‘We need to speak to Miss Tanner regarding the Shaun Matthews murder case. It’s important. Sir.’

  ‘When we locate her, Sergeant, you’ll be given the necessary access to question her about your own case, if you follow the procedures. Now, we’re very fucking busy so I’d like it if you could be on your way before you mess anything else up. I’ll inform your superiors when and if we have her in custody.’

  ‘I’d also like access to the results of the postmortem on McBride.’

  ‘You’ll get the information when we have it,’ he said. ‘Now, goodbye.’ He turned and stalked back towards the open door of Jean’s apartment, leaving the two of us standing there like lemons.

  Sometimes you genuinely wonder why you bother. When even your own people don’t seem to want to help you, then you really are kicking a lead door. I’ve met plenty of coppers like Burley – far too many, if the truth be told – and, like him, they’re generally the older guys with too many years on the Force who’ve never quite done as well as they think their talents deserve, and who hold a grudge because of it. They’re also the ones who are most prone to corruption. I wondered briefly whether there was more to Burley’s eagerness to get us off the premises than he was letting on. It also seemed strange that he’d got here so fast. As if he’d been waiting just round the corner.

  ‘Where to now?’ asked Berrin with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

  I sighed, forcing down the frustration. When one avenue fails, try another one. ‘Let’s go and see Neil Vamen,’ I told him.

  ‘Are you sure this is a good idea, Sarge?’ said Berrin. He still looked sick. Sick and nervous.

  It was twelve-thirty and we were walking towards the Seven Bells, a pub in Barnsbury which, according to the profile we had on him, was supposedly the Sunday lunchtime haunt of Neil Vamen. The place, no doubt, where he felt most at home among ‘his people’. Barnsbury, the traditionally working-class, now partly gentrified district of south Islington that encompasses the area between the Caledonian and Liverpool Roads north of Pentonville, was in many way the spiritual home of the Holtz organization, since it was there that all the senior members had grown up and plotted their first scams together. Most had long since moved out to larger, more ostentatious properties in the suburbs, including Vamen, but he apparently still retained a special affection for the area, not least because his mother still lived there, and he visited regularly.

  It probably wasn’t a good idea to go and see him. After all, I didn’t expect him suddenly to blurt out everything he knew about the death of Shaun Matthews and Craig McBride, as well as the whereabouts of his alleged girlfriend, Jean Tanner. As Berrin had pointed out more than once this morning, he might have known nothing about any of it, but I wasn’t so sure. Jean had been linked to him by a man who was now dead. She’d been seeing another man who was also now dead. At least one of those deaths, and almost certainly both, were not from natural causes, and now Jean was missing. I didn’t have any particular theory of what Vamen’s involvement might be, it was still too early for that, but at least by turning up out of the blue we might be able to rattle him. Particularly if he thought we knew more than we actually did.

  ‘I don’t honestly know if it’s a good idea or not but I don’t see any alternat
ive. I mean, who else is there left to talk to? We’ve got a murder inquiry where everyone we want to interview is either missing or dead. Have you thought about that? Fowler’s nowhere to be seen, McBride talks, then twenty-four hours later he’s dead, and now Jean Tanner’s disappeared into thin air. At least Vamen’s still capable of opening his mouth.’

  ‘I’m not criticizing, Sarge, but don’t you think we ought to have checked it out with Capper first?’

  ‘Look, this is just a friendly little chat, following up on a lead. We’re just using some initiative, that’s all.’

  We stopped outside the pub, a small, old-fashioned place with grimy windows and a battered door that fitted in snugly in the quiet, slightly run-down street of terraced housing just off the southern end of the Caledonian Road. The windows were open and we could hear the steady buzz of conversation and the occasional clinking of glasses. It’s a sound I usually like because it’s welcoming, but I had a feeling the welcome here wasn’t going to get much above frosty. We’d both taken off our jackets in deference to the intense midday heat but now put them on again. It was best to be formal.

  ‘I’ll do the talking,’ I said, thinking that at that moment Berrin looked like a student in a suit at his first job interview. ‘You just stand up straight and don’t look too queasy.’

  ‘They’re not likely to try to rough us up, are they?’ he asked, showing a worrying naivety. Sometimes I couldn’t help but think that it was only the shortage of detectives in the Met that had put Berrin in plain clothes, and that he’d been promoted above his experience. In the fight against crime, you didn’t like to think that the front line was made up of too many men like him.

  ‘He might be a nasty bastard, Dave, but he’s still a businessman. He won’t want to do anything that brings him unwanted attention. Now, come on.’

  I stepped inside with Berrin following. The interior was deceptively large and seemed to go back a long way, as is often the way with London pubs. It was split into two bars, the right-hand one near enough empty except for a handful of old geezers in caps smoking pipes and generally not taking too much notice of one another. Two of them were playing cribbage and they were the only ones who looked up as we arrived.

  The other bar, in contrast, was a lot younger and a fair bit livelier, although it was still early so nowhere near crowded. A jukebox played one of the numerous covers of the Righteous Brothers’ ‘Unchained Melody’ and three or four groups of people – mainly men, but some women – milled about in a way that suggested they all knew one another. Most of them were in their thirties and forties, and at the far end of the bar, closely watched by Jack Merriweather and two powerfully built bodyguards, stood Neil Vamen. He was talking to another of the groups – two middle-aged men and their younger, pneumatic blonde partners – who were hanging on to his every word. Vamen was smiling broadly and I got the feeling he was telling a joke.

  That all stopped as soon as we stepped inside. In fact, everything stopped, bar the music, the singer continuing to warble boringly while the whole bar gave us what I can only describe as the evil eye. I suppose we just looked like coppers. The barman studiously ignored us and for a couple of seconds I simply stood there, thinking that it might actually have been a big mistake coming here.

  Confidence. It’s all about confidence. You can command the respect of anyone, even a room full of gangsters, if you walk like you know the walk. So, trying to ignore the fact that I was sweating, I ambled casually through the crowd, Berrin behind me, and stopped when I reached Neil Vamen. His bodyguards tensed but made no move. Jackie Slap’s lip curled in an expression of distaste, as if the very presence of police officers caused him to experience an allergic reaction, which it probably did. Vamen, meanwhile, eyed me with a mixture of mild contempt and idle curiosity, his turquoise eyes twinkling playfully. I could almost feel the stares of every other person in the place on my back, and I hoped Berrin didn’t do anything stupid, like faint.

  ‘Hello, Mr Vamen. My name’s DS Gallan and this is DC Berrin.’ I produced my warrant card and saw out of the corner of my eye Berrin produce his. ‘I believe we’ve met before.’

  Vamen made a casual gesture. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘We’d like a word with you in private, if we may.’

  ‘No.’

  And that was that. The word wasn’t delivered rudely but there was a finality about it I really should have expected. Behind me, I heard one of the pneumatic blondes snigger.

  ‘Any particular reason why not?’

  He smiled. ‘Because I’ve got nothing to say to you.’

  It’s difficult when you rely on the authority that comes with your position to coerce people into doing things, and then come up against someone who has no fear of it or you. Particularly when they’re on their home territory and you’re a long way from yours.

  ‘If you don’t talk to me, I might have to conclude that you’ve got something to hide,’ I told him, meeting his gaze.

  That made him laugh. ‘Your lot have been concluding that for the past twenty years.’ Further laughter reverberated around the bar, and someone shouted, ‘You tell him, Neil.’

  ‘Ain’t you got nothing better to do?’ sneered the Slap. He was wearing a black New York Yankees baseball cap to cover up what he hadn’t got. I ignored him. At that point, I didn’t have to be told that I was losing this one.

  ‘Fine. We’ll talk here, then. Your girlfriend, Jean Tanner. We found a man dead in her apartment and we want to know where she is. Any ideas?’

  Vamen’s face hardened and his eyes lost their playfulness. For two, maybe three seconds the silence was deafening. When he spoke next, his voice was calm and slow, but dripping with menace. ‘I don’t know what you’re fucking talking about, or where you’re getting your information from, but I’m telling you this: it’s bollocks. Now, you want to discuss anything with me, you go through my lawyer. His name’s Melvyn Carroll. You might have heard of him.’ I had. The Holtz family brief. As crooked as a busted rib. ‘Otherwise, unless you’re arresting me – which you’re not, are you?’ He paused for a moment to let me answer.

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘Well, then, unless you’re arresting me, you can fuck off out of here and leave me alone. And if you don’t, DS Gallan … is that right? Gall-an?’

  ‘Gallon of what?’ some wag called out.

  ‘That’s right, John Gallan,’ I said, determined to hold my own.

  ‘And what’s your name again, sonny?’ He aimed the full force of his personality at Berrin, who was probably now wishing he’d taken the advice of his university careers adviser and joined an insurance company.

  ‘We’ve already told you who we are,’ I said.

  ‘Berrin, wasn’t it?’ he said, ignoring me and eyeing him closely, like he was probing for signs of weakness, and doubtless unearthing many. ‘Well, DS John Gallan and DC Berrin, if you harass me like this again with no good reason, and I can tell you now you do not have a good fucking reason, then my brief will be paying your superior a visit, and he will then be kicking your flimsy little arses for upsetting a well-established local businessman instead of doing what you’re paid to do, which is catching fucking criminals, of whom there are plenty a-fucking-bout. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘That you don’t want to co-operate with us? Yes, you do. Crystal.’

  He gave me a look like I was something annoying stuck between his teeth, then turned his back. At the same time one of his bodyguards, who was a good four inches taller and probably a foot wider than me, stepped between us and stared blankly down at the top of my head. The other one then joined him, forming a wall that effectively blocked off all contact. Jackie Slap stayed where he was, a nasty grin on his face. I could have tried to push them out of the way, hassle Vamen a bit more, let him know I wasn’t fazed, but in the end there was no point. He had the run of me and he knew it. I knew it, too. The important thing now was to find Jean. Then, possibly, we could move forward. For now, the meeti
ng was over and I had to work hard to overcome the sense of impotence I felt in the sure knowledge that Neil Vamen was a criminal and a murderer who’d become rich by ignoring the laws I was supposed to uphold, who could pay my mortgage off a hundred times over, and yet, when it came to a confrontation between the two of us, he was the one who held all the cards. Some people say there’s no justice in the world. If they say it in front of me, I tell them they’re wrong, that the bad almost always get what they deserve in the end, even if the wait’s long. But at that moment in time, standing in a room where everyone was revelling in our powerlessness, I didn’t really believe it.

  ‘Gentleman gangster, my arse,’ I said in Vamen’s general direction. I looked up at the wall of flesh in front of me. ‘And you need to change your aftershave, mate.’ Puerile, but at least it made me feel a bit better. Like I’d salvaged something from the wreckage of this meeting.

  Jackie Slap continued to grin, but I resisted addressing him by the name he allegedly hated. It would have reeked too much of desperation. Instead, I turned on my heel and motioned for Berrin to lead us out of there. He bumped into one of the blondes who’d deliberately positioned herself in front of him, and mumbled some sort of apology. She, for her own part, made some snide comment regarding the poor quality of his eyesight, which he ignored. She started to say something to me but I told her not to bother and kept walking, trying hard to ignore the catcalls and victory whoops that accompanied our exit.

  On the four-hundred-yard walk back to the car through the terraced backstreets of Barnsbury, we didn’t speak once. When we finally reached it, I looked across at Berrin, who still didn’t look too good. I couldn’t blame him. It had been a shit day all round. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, leaning against the bonnet. ‘I think I might be coming down with something.’

  Berrin wasn’t the hardest worker in the world and he’d already had several short bouts of sick leave in the few months he’d been with CID, but this time I wasn’t going to begrudge him. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘I’ll take you home.’