The Murder Exchange Read online

  ‘No, I know.’

  ‘Plus, I think he was lying. He was good at it, but I reckon he was definitely giving us the runaround. Especially that bit when he let slip about the murder.’

  ‘Do you think he knows what’s happened to Fowler, then?’

  He nodded, thinking about it. ‘I got the impression he does. What about you?’

  ‘What I’m thinking is that every time we talk to someone about this case we seem to come up against a brick wall, with no one willing or able to help and not enough evidence to break the thing apart. I think it’s time we tried a new approach.’

  ‘What kind of new approach?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I told him, but I was beginning to get an idea.

  Iversson

  I was in bed with Elaine when the phone rang. It was five past two in the afternoon and we were taking a short break from one of those sex marathons you sometimes have when you’ve met a girl you’re really into and you’ve still got the sex drive to do something about it. To be honest with you, it had been like that all week. Great fun, yes, but parts of me were beginning to feel the strain. I was absolutely fucking cream crackered, and still only just past the panting stage from the last bout when Elaine picked up on the fourth ring and handed me the receiver. ‘Joe,’ she said.

  ‘All right, Joe, where are you calling from?’

  ‘A phone box in Tufnell Park, no trace possible. I’ve got two interested parties for our arrangement, men I think we can trust.’

  ‘That was quick.’

  ‘I had a good idea where I was going to look.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. You see plenty of people owe our man big time, which is what happens when you spend your days throwing your weight about and upsetting people.’

  ‘So, who are they?’

  ‘You know I told you about that jeweller, Kalinski, and his business arrangement with our man? The one who ended up at the maggot farm with his girlfriend? His brother Mike’s an ex-armed robber and someone with a grudge.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s a good idea to use someone we don’t know?’

  ‘I’ve got it from decent sources that he’s reliable. Plus, he’s greedy. Plus, they chopped up his brother, and they’re a close family. That’s enough pluses, as far as I can see.’

  ‘Fair enough. Who’s the other one?’

  ‘Iain Lewis, remember him?’

  ‘Christ, yeah. I didn’t think he was still alive.’

  ‘Alive, well, and short of money.’

  Iain Lewis, Tugger to his mates for a reason best not gone into, was a Geordie ex-marine and mercenary who’d served with me and Joe on some of our more exotic overseas tours, and who’d been wounded in Bosnia fighting against Serb forces back in the early nineties. He’d be useful on this sort of job because the potential calibre of the opposition wouldn’t faze him.

  ‘Where’s he living now?’

  ‘Down in Swansea of all places, but he’ll be up here tomorrow. How are you getting on with your end of things? Have you talked to your mate Johnny yet?’

  ‘I saw him last night. He’s in already. I’ve dropped him five hundred in expenses and he’s going to sort out the vehicles. He’s meant to be calling me back later.’

  ‘But he doesn’t know anything about the targets?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘Good. Have you taken a look at any possible locations for storage?’

  ‘I drove out to Essex yesterday and visited a couple of letting agents.’

  ‘What cover did you use?’

  ‘I said I was a writer looking for a short let somewhere nice and isolated so I could complete my first novel in the peace and tranquillity I needed. It’s a thriller apparently.’

  I heard Joe sigh down the phone. ‘Look, we’ve got a problem. The police have traced the stain on the seat of your car back to Fowler.’

  This was bad news. ‘So?’ I said all casually, keen not to worry Elaine.

  ‘So now they’re really after you, although they still don’t have a clue about what’s happened. The thing is, if anyone who rents you out a place sees a picture of you anywhere, it could put the whole thing in jeopardy.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I wore specs, and I’ve got a bit of a beard now, so I don’t know how easy it’d be to make the connection.’

  ‘It’s still too risky, Max. You’re not exactly a master of disguise.’

  ‘I thought I looked quite good.’

  ‘I’m sure you did, but I’d better take over on that side from now on. Did they show you any suitable properties?’

  ‘There were two I liked the look of. One’ll be empty next week, the other’s empty now. Both farmhouses. I said I’d get back to them but I wanted to run the details past you first. See if there was one you preferred.’

  ‘All right, I’ll come over and get the stuff off you, and then I’d better do the booking. I’ll need some of that money back.’

  ‘No problem. Come over now.’ Elaine pulled a face. It looked like she wasn’t finished with me yet. Much more of this and I was going to have to find some bromide to stick in her tea.

  ‘I’ll be there in an hour,’ he said.

  ‘One last thing,’ I said, ‘before you go. The tools we’re going to need for the job …’

  ‘I’ve got enough. Don’t worry about that.’

  ‘I’ll see you in an hour, then.’

  I rang off and forced myself to smile at Elaine. I was trying to take in the news that I was now a suspect for a murder. One more reason, I reckoned, to make sure everything went to plan with the Holtz snatch.

  She sat up in the bed and lit a cigarette. ‘So, things moving along then, are they?’ she asked.

  ‘Everything’s going peachy,’ I said, but there must have been something in my tone.

  ‘But?’

  What is it about women? They can always see through your lies. I gave her a quick rundown of our conversation, mentioning about the police being on to me.

  ‘What are you going to do about it?’

  I shrugged. ‘Not a lot I can do, really. It’s a pain having them on my back, but if I keep my wits about me, then that’s all it’ll be. Not enough to mess up any of the plans.’

  ‘It’s suspicion of murder, Max, not unpaid parking tickets, so they’re going to be making an effort to find you.’

  I nodded. She was right. ‘I’ll be careful, don’t worry.’

  She took a drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke up towards the ceiling. ‘What are you going to do when this is all over?’

  ‘I’m going to get out of the country for a while. I know a bloke who puts together perfect-quality fake passports, and I’ll have money as well, so I’ll be able to survive. Anyway, everything’ll die down in a few months. I mean, they haven’t got any other evidence against me on the Fowler thing, and they’re never going to find the body, not if the Holtzes have done their bit, so it’ll end up gathering dust in the unsolveds. I’ll just come back in a while and tell them it was nothing to do with me.’

  ‘What about me, though?’ she asked.

  I thought about that one for a moment. ‘Do you want to come with me? We’ll both have cash, and there’s nothing keeping you here any more.’ I might have only known Elaine for a few days but sometimes you can just tell when they’re right for you. My mum and dad had got engaged after only two weeks, so whirlwind romances obviously ran in the family. They’d lasted close to five years, too. Not that I fancied getting hitched just yet.

  ‘Do you want me to?’ she asked, her expression serious. I knew then that she felt the same way. Sometimes, with her, it had been difficult to tell. She could be a bit distant on occasion, to be honest with you, and it had made me wonder more than once whether I was maybe outstaying my welcome.

  I nodded. ‘Yeah. I do.’

  ‘Have you got anywhere in mind?’

  ‘As long as it’s not Sierra Leone, I don’t much care.’

  She smiled. ‘How about Bermuda? I’v
e always fancied going there.’

  I shrugged, thinking that whoever said money didn’t buy happiness was badly fucking mistaken. ‘Sure, Bermuda it is.’

  ‘Let’s have a little celebration, then. Fancy a beer?’

  Life doesn’t get much better than that, does it? A beautiful naked woman with a devil tattooed on her shapely rear offering to go and get you a nice, cool lager while you lounge idly on her bed.

  ‘Yeah, I’d love one,’ I said, getting myself comfortable and lighting a cigarette of my own.

  I watched as she breezed out of the bedroom, thinking that this time in a week I’d either be the happiest man on earth, or dead. And if I was dead, none of it was going to matter anyway. High stakes, yes, but then that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? That’s what made it all the more exciting. I remembered a phrase someone had quoted to me when I was out in Africa. It was something a French general had said to his men back in the nineteenth century when they were defending a town from the British. ‘The enemy have vastly superior numbers. They are coming at us from three sides. Soon their encirclement will be complete. Our right flank is collapsing, casualties are high, our forces are in retreat. Situation perfect. Attack.’ And that’s the thing. Half the joy is facing superior odds and winning. I might have thought I wanted the quiet life, but in the end, like all true soldiers, I longed for that old call to arms. Even better when there was a pot of gold at the end of it that would set me up for ever.

  When Elaine returned with the beers, I had a grin on my face the size of China.

  Friday, nine days ago

  Gallan

  I was in court all Friday afternoon giving evidence in the case of a child molester. He’d been accused of abusing young boys at the swimming club he helped run for inner-city kids with limited access to leisure facilities. It was something I’d worked on months before but, as everyone knows, the wheels of justice turn incredibly slowly. The defence barrister gave me as hard a time as possible in the stand, taking full advantage of the fact that forensic evidence was limited and that most of the case against his client rested solely on the words of children, several with learning difficulties, who could easily be lying. But I’m no pushover and I held my ground firmly and with barely concealed contempt for the man in front of me. The defendant already had three previous convictions for exactly this type of offence – not that the jury were aware of that – so, as far as I could see, the defence barrister had to be pretty damned sure the man he was defending was guilty. In which case, he was helping to put a dangerous man back on the street so that he could continue to prey on the kind of people least able to stop him. You can couch it how you want it, spout all this bullshit about everyone being entitled to a proper defence, but it was still wrong. As far as I was concerned, to put the rights of someone who abused children for his own enjoyment above those of the same children to live their lives free from these kinds of assaults was probably the single most perverted aspect of the British justice system, and one of the few things that made me doubt my own role in upholding the law. That well-educated, supposedly respectable men and women were paid sums of money vastly out of proportion to their talent to help keep this situation going, and from the public purse as well, only served to spawn that doubt.

  The best way to combat this, however, is to beat them at their own game, and in that particular battle I knew I’d done just that, constantly staring my enemy down and using just the right levels of sarcasm in my answers to make him look foolish in front of the jury. It was a small victory – after all, the lawyer still went home with a nice fat sum of money for his efforts, if you can call them that – but it was a victory nonetheless, and I felt confident that a conviction was on the cards which, ultimately, was the most important thing.

  So I was in good cheer when I escaped at just after five (the wheels of justice are not only incredibly slow but also work, with rare exceptions, to office hours) and took the DLR south of the river to pick up my daughter for the weekend. I hadn’t seen her in close to a month, so I was looking forward to it, and so it seemed was she, still being of the age where she can appreciate her dad’s company. We travelled back by Tube and I took her to the Pizza Express on Upper Street for an evening meal during which I caught up with everything in her life: school, fashion, friends, boyfriends, all that hair-raising stuff that makes you think kids grow up far too fast these days, while at the same time being careful to avoid the topic of her mother and the boyfriend. She mentioned him once, telling me about some clothes he’d bought her, but I changed the subject. I really didn’t want to hear about him. In the early days after I’d left, Rachel would ask me when I was going back home, and would say how much she missed me. She’d tell me how much she disliked Carrier and how he could never take my place, and it used to break my heart because I could do nothing about it. Over time, though, she’d complained about him less and less, and, although she always said she missed me, and would always give me an enthusiastic hug whenever we met, she talked less and less about me going back there, as if she’d finally got round to accepting the situation, and Carrier had finally got round to convincing her that he wasn’t such a bad bloke after all. Even though the bastard was.

  During our meal that evening she talked just like a happy, well-adjusted kid leading a happy, well-adjusted life. It seemed I’d become somewhat surplus to requirements.

  We didn’t get back to my flat until quarter past nine, and it was gone ten by the time I finally shut the door to the bedroom and left her sleeping. I’d forgotten how tiring kids can be.

  I wanted to sit down and veg out in front of the TV but things were still bugging me on the case, and I’d promised myself I’d try a new angle, so I cracked open a beer and booted up my rarely used PC. It was time to see what the Internet had to offer as an investigative tool.

  First of all I went through the ritual of checking my emails, which didn’t usually take very long as I rarely received any, and immediately saw that there was one from Malik entitled ‘Information as requested’ which came with a load of attachments. It appeared to have been sent that morning and had been copied to my PC at work.

  The first set of attachments comprised photographs, mostly surveillance ones, and short biographies of known or suspected associates of Neil Vamen. There were nine of them in all and they included Jackie Slap Merriweather and several others I recognized. The biographies contained the criminal records of the nine, which encompassed a whole variety of offences with a particular emphasis on ones of violence, and a summary of each of their relationships with Vamen. I blew each photo up to full size and printed them off one by one so they could be shown to the neighbours of Shaun Matthews and Jean Tanner, in the hope that they might be familiar.

  The second set of attachments contained details and photographs of three women suspected of being Vamen’s mistresses. One of them, as suggested by McBride and missed initially by Malik, was Jean Tanner. According to the records, Vamen had been seen visiting her home in Finchley on a number of occasions. He’d also taken her for a long weekend to his luxury apartment in Tenerife back in March with one of his other mistresses in tow. The report confirmed that she was a prostitute with two previous convictions, but said nothing else of note. Out of curiosity, I looked at the files on the other two mistresses and was vaguely interested to see that both women were very different. The one who’d accompanied Jean and Vamen to Tenerife was a glossy-looking nineteen-year-old former dental nurse, now full-time plaything, while the other was an attractive forty-six-year-old psychotherapist who’d fallen for his charms while she’d been reviewing his progress during his only stint in prison (drugs and weapons offences). They’d apparently been enjoying an on–off relationship for the past twelve years, ever since he’d been released, and I wondered idly if she was pleased with the way he’d come on.

  But nothing really stood out, so I sent a quick message back to Malik, thanking him for his help, and moved on to the net proper. I started by finding a search engine and typ
ed in the words ‘snake poison’, which I thought ought to give me some hits. It did, far too many, most of which were totally irrelevant. I tried different search engines, then narrowed the hunt down, putting in ‘venom’, ‘snake venom’, ‘elapid venom’ and, finally, ‘viper venom’. I reeled through the dozens of hits I picked up, switched search engines constantly, and went back over Boyd’s notes on the subject, all the time racking my brains for ideas that could actually move me forward.

  I’d been at it well over an hour, and was already beginning to agree with Boyd’s assertion that the Internet was a hopelessly overhyped means of uncovering information, when something caught my eye. The intro line read: ‘Snake Venom part of Mujahidin Arsenal’ and referred the reader to what looked like an eastern European media website. I yawned and double-clicked. Outside, I could hear the rain tumbling down, and the ominous rumble of thunder.

  The article from which the intro line came had been written in October 1995 and concerned the socalled mujahidin, foreign Islamic fundamentalists who were fighting alongside fellow Muslims in Bosnia Herzegovina. It seemed they had become an integral part of the conflict, being both well organized and well financed, with extensive backing from a number of Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia. According to the article, they were also using some interesting weapons in their fight, one of which was snake venom. Vials of venom from the Egyptian viper, or asp, had been used by their spies within the enemy camps to poison senior enemy officers. In one cited instance three Bosnian Croat officers, including a colonel, had had the venom slipped into their food by a female Muslim cook posing as a Croat (an easy thing to do since they were essentially the same ethnic group) and all had died before the plot had been uncovered. The article didn’t say what had happened to the cook but stated that the poisons definitely existed and had originated with the mujahidin and, in particular, an Arab officer with the nom de guerre Tajab.