The Murder Exchange (15 page)

And that was the thing. I did. I wanted to find
out who thought they were clever enough to kill

135
Shaun Matthews and get away with it. I wanted to
prove them wrong.

It didn't seem as though too many of the squad
shared my wish, or were at least prepared to break
their backs over it, and the incident room for the
Matthews murder was empty for the second morning
in a row when I walked into it at just after half
past eight. Benin was expected in, as was DI Capper,
my immediate boss. It didn't surprise me that ^
neither had arrived. Benin had been particularly J
reluctant to work that day because he'd had to break i
a date, and had only had one day off in the previous
fourteen, so it was unlikely he was going to make it
in before nine. As for Capper, he was never on time
if his superiors weren't working. Which was the i
bloke all over. It was a testimony to his arse-licking
skills, and the talent he had for creating a wholly
false image of commitment and hard work, that he
had reached the level of detective inspector on the
back of having absolutely none of the skills required.
He was a detective who couldn't detect, a civil
servant who didn't like to serve, and a man manager
who truly couldn't manage. Every word he ever
uttered reeked of insincerity, and his habit of back
stabbing colleagues was legendary. He had the
luck of the devil, too. His predecessor in the DI's
post had been a guy called Karl Welland, by all
accounts a good no-nonsense copper who'd been
forced to retire after being diagnosed with terminal
cancer, paving the way for Capper to slip into his
shoes in the absence of any other suitable
candidates. Welland had been dead close to a year
now, and Capper continued to thrive in a role

136
he genuinely didn't deserve. Who said life was fair?

There was a message from Knox on my desk,
giving me the telephone number of one of the
station's former CID men, Asif Malik, now of SO7,
Scotland Yard's organized crime unit. Malik had
left months before I'd joined, but I knew of him.
L very one knew of him. He'd been the guy who'd
worked most closely with Dennis Milne, the part
time hitman. From what I heard, Malik had had
nothing to do with any of his former boss's many
crimes and was supposedly as straight as a die, but
after what had happened he'd found it difficult to
i ctiiain at the station, and had transferred to SO7 a
tew months later. Knox hadn't been keen initially to
get SO7 involved in the Matthews murder investigation
because he didn't want control of the case
taken away from him and CID. But when I'd
spoken to him the previous afternoon, he'd been
interested in the Jean Tanner/Neil Vamen lead and
had agreed that someone at SO7, one of whose jobs
it was to keep tabs on organized crime figures in
London, might at least be able to offer some
insights. He'd added on the message (Knox liked
his messages) that we were to continue to try to
locate Fowler and if necessary widen the search for
him, particularly in the light of his continued
absence.

I got myself a coffee and tried Malik's mobile. It
went straight to message so I left one, explaining
who I was and why I was calling, and asking if we
could meet up.

After I'd hung up, I reluctantly phoned my ex
wife. The live-in lover, Mr Crusader, answered,

137
sounding like he'd just woken up. 'It's the man
whose career you fucked,' I told him evenly. 'I'd
like to speak to Cathy, please.' He told me angrily to
try phoning later next time as Sunday was their day
for lying in. 'Just put her on/ I said. 'It's about
Rachel.'

Cathy came on the line sounding equally
knackered and I heard Carrier telling her in the
background that I'd sworn at him. You had to hand
it to the bloke, he was a born whistleblower. There
wasn't a tale he wouldn't tell. Cathy told me that
she thought we'd got over all the childish name
calling and I apologized, thinking that that would
be the easiest tactic, and asked whether I was still
having Rachel the following weekend.

'Well, can you fit it in round your work?' she
asked, with a hint of sarcasm in her voice. 'The last
time you were meant to have her--'

'I know, I know. I'll make sure I've got the time
off. I haven't seen her in close to a month. I won't
let her down.'

'You promise? I'm not having her looking forward
to seeing you and then you dashing her
hopes.'

'He can't be allowed to do that again,' said
Carrier in the background. 'Just because he's
unreliable.'

Not for the first time, I tried to understand what
Cathy saw in the bastard. I'd always thought of her
as a pretty decent judge of character, someone
who knew a creep when she saw one, so it was
doubly disheartening to have my view proved so
emphatically wrong.

138
'I promise/ I said wearily. 'I mean it. I'll come
and get her Friday everting and bring her back
Sunday.'

Thanks, that'd be nice. Come about six, can
you?'

'Sure, six is fine.' I started to say something else
but she cut me short, saying she wanted to get back
to sleep.

'See you on Friday/ she said, trying to sound
pleasant, and hung up, leaving me staring at the
phone and thinking that she never used to lie in
that late on a Sunday.

'Morning, John. Nice to see you in bright and
early.'

I looked up to see Capper come walking in, his
suit jacket slung jauntily over one arm, a cheesy
smile on his face. There were already sweat stains
appearing on the underarms of his faded yellow
shirt. It was, I thought, strange how unpleasant
people often had unpleasant side-effects to their
normal bodily functions. Perhaps it was some sort
of divine justice, a punishment from God. I liked to
think so.

TVIorning, sir.'

'Everything all right?' He motioned towards the
phone and I wondered if the bastard had been
listening in. Probably.

'Fine. And you?'

'Very well. Had a quiet evening in and an early
night for once. Done me the world of good.' He
dropped the jacket at his desk, and walked over to
the kettle. 'Do you want a coffee?'

'No thanks. I've just this minute finished one.'

139
Capper made general small talk as he prepared W
his coffee and waited for the kettle to boil, and I ^ played the game, sounding interested and
occasionally making comments of my own. The ~?
thing about Capper was that he was nice to you if I
he thought you were going to be useful to him and $
he clearly thought I had potential, that maybe I
wasn't going to be stuck under him for ever, which
I suppose was one good thing. I think he also
thought we got on well and, although I couldn't 4,
stand him, it suited me to remain cordial. One thing A I'd learnt in the Force was that you never make
enemies unless you have to. Pragmatism. That was J
what it was all about.

Capper grabbed a chair and sat down on the
other side of my desk with his coffee. 'How did it
go with the doormen yesterday?' he asked, after
explaining that his absence from duty the previous *
day had been down to a 'family matter', whatever w
that was meant to mean. Capper was a bachelor
who looked like the sort of person any right
minded sibling or parent would avoid like greasy
dogshit on the pavement. He sat there now with a
think-of-me-as-one-of-the-guys smile, showing
yellowing teeth, etched firmly on his face.

I gave him a brief rundown, explaining that we
hadn't got much that we didn't know already, but
mentioning the possible girlfriend lead, as well as
John Harris, the doorman who'd fallen out with
Matthews.

'Who's chasing Harris?' he asked.

"The DCI gave it to WDC Boyd. She's on it today,
apparently.'

140
He nodded, satisfied. I didn't tell him about the
Vamen/SO7 angle. Knox would probably bring it up
at the meeting the following day but for the moment
it could wait. I didn't want Capper sniffing round
and taking hold of leads I'd worked hard to build up
myself. 'No sign of Fowler yet, then?' he asked.

'Nothing at all. He might have a connection to
iius Jean Tanner, though.'

'How's that, then?'

'You know I said she was a prostitute?
Apparently she used to work at a brothel which
was or is supposedly run by Fowler.'

'Really?'

'A place called Heavenly Girls.'

Capper tried to hide it but I saw immediately that
he knew the name, and that for some reason he
wanted to keep that knowledge quiet. 'Hmm, that's
interesting.' His words tailed off, and we sat in
silence for a few moments. Where did you hear
about this brothel?' he asked eventually.

'From McBride, the one who gave us most of the
information.'

'I've never heard of the place,' he said, a little too
forcefully. 'Do you reckon he was telling the truth?'

I shrugged, not bothering to mention that we'd
effectively blackmailed the information out of him.
'I would have thought so. There'd be no point lying
about something like that, would there?'

Capper nodded, acknowledging this fact. 'No, I
suppose there wouldn't.'

At that moment, Berrin came in, looking
dishevelled but considerably better than he had the
previous morning.

141
'A bit late, Benin/ said Capper, getting to his feet. -5
Benin quickly apologized to both Capper and jg
me in that order, and took a seat. Capper told him *
bluntly to get his house in order and went back to *
his own desk. He might have thought that I was f
potentially useful, but he clearly didn't feel the -.*
same way about the younger officer. Plus, Benin * was a graduate, and, though he never said as much,
Capper didn't like graduates. Benin looked suitably
chastised for a couple of seconds, then pulled i a face at Capper's back, before sitting down in the
chair he'd just vacated. 7
As the two of us went over the day's itinerary, I j stole an occasional glance at the DI, who was now f
staring intently at his computer screen. I couldn't *
help but wonder what he knew about the Heavenly
Girls brothel and how much of a bearing his knowledge
might have on the investigation as a whole. >..

I
3?
Roy Fowler wasn't answering any of his numbers;
the Arcadia was closed; it was proving impossible
to locate any outfit called Heavenly Girls; and the
day was getting progressively hotter as Benin
brought the car to a halt about twenty yards short
of Jean Tanner's apartment building. According to
the Land Registry, she'd bought it in 1998, while it
was still being built, and now owned thirty per cent
of the equity, while the other seventy belonged to
her mortgage lender. According to them, she'd
never missed a payment. Obviously Jean was getting
quite a lot of money from somewhere, which
pointed perhaps to a relationship with a wealthy
gangster like Neil Vamen, who was going to have a

142
lot more cash than most of the punters she'd ever
been with. The question was whether he cared for
her enough to kill a possible love rival like Shaun
Matthews.

However, once again she wasn't responding as I
pressed the buzzer on the flashy-looking intercom
system for the third time.

'What do we do now?' asked Benin eventually.

What all coppers have to get used to doing/ I
told him. 'Wait.'

'She might have gone away. We could be waiting
for days.'

'Look, Dave, I'm not driving back out here again,
and I'm not phoning her and giving her advance
notice of us turning up just in case she's got some
Jung to hide, so, for the moment at least, we're
going to stay put.'

'But even if she is Vamen's girlfriend, where does
that leave us?' he asked, leaning back against the
wall of the porch. 'We don't even know if she was
seeing Matthews. And where does Fowler fit into
it?'

'I don't know is the short answer,' I said, thinking
that he had a point. 'But at least we can hear what
she has to say. If Vamen's got something to do with
it, and if she thought more of Matthews than he
deserved, then maybe she's feeling bad about it,
and we may be able to get her to talk.'

Benin nodded wearily. 'Fair enough. Shall we go
and get a cup of tea from somewhere while we
wait? I need to rehydrate.'

'Were you out again last night?' I asked him in
vaguely disgusted tones. I think I was jealous. He

143
1

told me he was. Out drinking in the West End with --
one of the station's more attractive WPCs. He
started telling me all about it, but I couldn't handle
that, not after a night alone in front of an excruciat- J|
ing edition of Celebrity Stars in their Eyes, so, on a * |
whim, I pressed the buzzer below Jean's. Three
seconds later a none-too-youthful male voice came
on the line. I told him who we were, pointing my
warrant card at the camera above our heads, and
asked if we could come up.

'Of course,' he said, sounding interested.

We were greeted at the top of the stairs by a very
short gentleman in his early seventies who had a
very wide head that was far too big for his spindly
body, giving him more than a passing resemblance
to ET. He had large amounts of fine white hair,
tinged with orange bits, and big black heavy- H j
rimmed glasses. A taller lady, about ten years *
younger, with a tent-like flowery dress on, stood ff
behind him. They both smiled as we approached.

'Good morning,' said the man, as we produced ||
our warrant cards. 'We're the Lackers. Peter and
Margaret.' He shook our hands formally with a
surprisingly firm grip.

'Would you like a cup of tea?' said Margaret
Lacker with an easy smile.

'Yes, thanks, that'd be nice,' I said, wishing there
were more people I dealt with like the Lackers.
Polite, accommodating, and not totally pissed off to
see you.

They led us into their richly decorated apartment
and motioned for us to sit down in their lounge, a
place that looked more like a drawing room of old.