The Murder Exchange (18 page)

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'We've already told you who we are/ I said.

'Benin, 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 Benin, 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 meeting 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
I murderer who'd become rich by ignoring the laws

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m

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
Benin 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 Benin, who still didn't look too

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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.'

He didn't argue.

Two hours later I was still trying hard to keep a lid
on my frustration but it wasn't working. The
humiliation of the meeting with Vamen, combined
with the heat and the knowledge that nothing
about the Shaun Matthews case was going right, including
the way I was handling it, was serving to
sever the last threads of my patience. I just knew
that right now my ex-wife would be sat in the
garden, the one I'd helped pay for, soaking up some
rays alongside the man who had gone out of his
way to wreck my life, while my daughter played
happily in front of them, maybe even fetching him
a nice cool beer to enjoy while he worked out
whose balloon he was going to burst next. And the
thing was, I could have handled it. I could have
handled pretty much anything if I'd thought that
by putting in all these extra hours on the job, hours
I'd been putting in since I was eighteen years old, I
was actually getting somewhere. But it just wasn't
happening. For every weak, staggering step forward
we took, there always seemed to be a larger,

165

m i

more confident one backwards. And now I had to |f
deal with an idiot like Capper, who seemed in- f
capable of providing the remotest bit of help.

'We need to be involved, sir. We interviewed the
dead man yesterday and it was his testimony that
led us to the flat today.'

Capper sat back in his chair, trying hard to look
like he was sympathetic to my plight. The act didn't
work. Till have to talk to the DCI about it, John, and
that's going to be tomorrow now. I don't want to
bother him at home. Not over this.'

'With due respect, I think it's important. I feel
certain that this man's death is linked to that of
Shaun Matthews, and therefore--'

Capper raised his arms and waved them from
side to side like opposing windscreen wipers, an ,
annoying habit of his indicating silence to the individual
being gestured at, in this case me. I forced
myself to fall silent. 'John, it's DI Burley's patch, so
at the moment it's his investigation. There's
nothing I can do about that. We'll certainly be able
to liaise with them if there's a consensus that the
two cases are linked.'

'Which they've basically got to be.'

Capper nodded noncommittally. 'There's
definitely a possibility there.'

Tvlore than a possibility. Two bouncers from the
same nightclub, whose owner's been missing for
days, both murdered within a week of each other.'

'Are we sure McBride's was murder?'

'Definitely. He was OK yesterday. For all we
know, it could even be the same poison that killed
Matthews.'

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'Could be, John, could be. But it's also possible
that it's natural causes.'

'How? He was in a cupboard.'

'We've just got to wait and see what the autopsy
reveals. What we'll do is discuss what happened
at the meeting tomorrow morning and then maybe
the DCI'll get on the phone to their nick and see if
there's any scope for information sharing. In the
meantime, you need to bring all the records up to
date. Where's Berrin, by the way?'

'I took him home. He was feeling sick.'

'Again. That's the third time since he's been in
CID. What's wrong with him this time?'

'I don't know, summer flu or something. He's
been a bit under the weather these past few days/ I
jucci.

Capper nodded with some scepticism, an annoyingly
serene smile on his face. 'Well, let's hope he
gets better soon,' he said, sounding like he didn't
mean it at all.

'Is that everything, sir?' I asked, starting to get to
my feet. I couldn't hack any more of Capper than I
had to.

'Not quite, John,' he answered, still wearing the
smile. It made him look like a brain-damaged
Buddhist. I stopped mid-crouch and waited for him
to continue. 'I got a call this afternoon from a Mr
Melvyn Carroll. He says that you and DC Berrin
were harassing his client, Neil Vamen. What on
earth were you doing talking to Vamen?'

'He's a possible suspect in the Matthews case/ I
said, sitting back down.

'Let me get this right. A man with a lengthy

167
It
criminal record, now deceased, suggested that *'

Vamen was the boyfriend of a woman who visited the home of Shaun Matthews, and was possibly,
just possibly, Matthews's girlfriend as well, and this
makes him a suspect?'

'Yes, it does. He's certainly a possibility, so he
was worth talking to.'

'Neil Vamen. I trust you know who he is?'

Tes, and that's another reason to consider him a
suspect. He's got the resources and the ruthlessness
to kill Shaun Matthews and Craig McBride.'

'He's also someone who's had years of practice in
knowing how to cover his tracks, so he was never
going to talk to you. Even if he is involved, which I
doubt, because I don't think he's the type to get
sentimental about a woman, it's going to be
extremely difficult to prove anything.'

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try.'

The point is, Vamen's a big fish and it's SO7
and the NCS who are responsible for building
prosecution cases against him and his associates.
They're not going to take kindly to you throwing
your weight about with him. I thought you were
meant to be talking to SO7 about the case.'

'I am. I'm waiting for a call back from Asif Malik.'

'Well, go that route, then.'

'Look, I was doing the right thing--'

The arms started swinging from side to side
again and once more I forced myself to button it.
'You're a good copper, John/ he said, talking to me
like I was an office junior rather than one rank and
only a handful of years below him, 'and we're all
pleased with your progress here, but don't start to

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get ahead of yourself. You'll end up causing problems
both for yourself and for CID. Understand?'

I sighed, knowing that he was right and that it
was a mistake to go to see Vamen, but longing for the moment when I was a DI again and didn't have
to report to him. /Yes/ sir/ I said reluctantly.

'In future I don't want you going to see Neil
Vamen or any of his associates without speaking to
me about it first. OK? I don't want to sound like I'm
not supporting you, but I think it's the best way.'

I nodded, but didn't bother responding. The conversation
over, I stalked back to my desk and began
the torturous task of bringing everything up to
date. Only once did Capper interrupt me, to ask if
we were still trying to get hold of Fowler. I said that
,, e were but that we were still having no luck.

'He's the one we've got to concentrate on/ he
said, nodding his head as if he was agreeing with
himself - another of his annoying habits, most
likely brought about by the fact that no-one else
did. I didn't bother to comment.

At exactly five o'clock, Capper left for the day,
telling me helpfully that I shouldn't work too hard.
'You need to unwind sometimes/ he said with
another irritating smile. That way it won't all get
on top of you.'

I didn't bother telling him that it was a little too
late for that. Instead, I put my head down and felt
glad for the opportunity of some space and quiet.

Paperwork can be a therapeutic process. It's
repetitive and it's mundane, but when there's
plenty of it to do, the person doing it can sometimes

169
lift himself spiritually from the pile in front of him
and reach an almost Zen-like state where the hand
simply writes automatically and the brain sails
away to calmer, happier waters where there are no
interruptions and no will-sapping and pointless
confrontations.

I'd reached that point and was probably wearing
a serene smile as idiotic as Capper's when the door
to the incident room opened and WDC Boyd
walked in. Now, I liked Boyd. She was my kind of
woman: attractive, amusing, but definitely no
push-over. We got on well, too. I think that if it
hadn't been for the fact that we worked together, I
would have definitely fancied her, and might even
have tried my luck - not that I tended to have a
great deal of it where love was concerned. She
appeared to be a bit worn out and hot, but her short
black hair, cut into a cute bob, looked like it had
come straight out of a cheesy shampoo ad, and her
grey trousersuit was spotless. For a woman who'd
been out tramping the dirty, sweating streets of
London, she carried herself remarkably well.

It was ten past six. She smiled, looking genuinely
pleased to see me. 'Hello, John, you still around?'

'I could ask the same question/ I said, looking
up. 'Did you manage to get hold of John Harris?'

'Ah, the elusive Mr Harris, former stud of the
Arcadia. I found him all right/ she said, sighing
theatrically. 'Eventually.'

'And?'

She wandered over and sat on her desk a few
yards away from mine. 'And, I don't think he's our
man.'

170
'Why not?'

'Because he's been in hospital for the past ten
days. He was working the door at a place in
Clapham on their garage night and he got caught
in the crossfire of somebody else's argument.'

'That's south London for you.'

Too right. It's bandit country down there/ she
added, winking at me. 'Anyway, he got shot in the
stomach. Apparently the bullet passed straight
through him and hit one of the glass collectors
inside. That was three days before Matthews was
murdered. What a waste of a day. It took me more
than four hours to find that out when I could have
been sat out in the park sunbathing.'

I almost said that that would be a sight I
. v'ouldn't have minded seeing, but settled instead
for a cliched, Thaf s the way it goes sometimes,
Tina.'

She took off her jacket and turned on her PC.
'How was your day anyway?'

I grunted. 'I think I can safely say it was probably
even worse than yours.' I gave her a detailed rundown
of all the disasters that had befallen Benin
and me since we'd arrived for work that morning.
She laughed when she heard about his slow dance
with McBride's corpse but her look had turned to
sympathy by the time I'd finished.

'Blimey, John, you don't mess about, do you?
Marching in and interrogating Neil Vamen?'