The Murder Exchange (40 page)

Before we retired for the night, I took some bread
down to Krys and fed it to him without speaking.
Eventually he asked me whether his old man had
paid the ransom. He didn't sound angry or defiant
any more, just tired and uncomfortable. He'd
pissed his trousers again but didn't ask for them to
be changed.

'Yeah, your dad paid,' I told him.

'Are you going to let me go?' he asked, his voice
sounding strangely like a kid.

'You're going to be released tomorrow morning.
Then it'll all be over.'

'Thanks,' said Krys.

I didn't say anything as I replaced the gag, thinking
once again that I was glad we hadn't killed him.
He deserved it, no question, but you couldn't feel
too much hate for a person in his state.

As I came out of the cellar and locked it behind
me, I looked at my watch. 10.50 p.m. The others had
all gone upstairs. I could hear them moving
around. Yawning, I picked up the holdall from the
kitchen table, checked to see that no-one had
tampered with it, and went up to bed, noticing for
the first time that it had stopped raining.

372

Today

Iversson

My eyes snapped open and I listened hard for a
sprond. Nothing. It was dark in the room; the alarm
cio^k by the bed said 2.57. Something had woken
me. I was a good sleeper, usually went straight
through, couldn't remember the last time my
slumber had been interrupted naturally. I could see
through the gap in the door that the landing light
was on, but that was how I'd left it when I'd come
into the bedroom. Maybe someone had got up to go
for a leak. I sat up and waited for a few moments.
Still nothing. I picked up the Clock from the side of
the bed and checked that it was loaded - there was
a round in the chamber - then lay back down again,
thinking that I was getting paranoid. No great
surprise, I suppose, when you're in a house with
half a million in cash and three men with less than
scrupulous backgrounds.

I shut my eyes and thought of Joe. Joe Riggs, the
man who'd been good to me down the years.
The man I'd betrayed by sleeping with his missus,

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and now the man who was almost certainly dead as
a direct result of me getting him involved in a
dangerous scheme when all he'd wanted to do was
run a business in peace.

There was a noise downstairs. Footsteps on the
bare floorboards in the hall, faint but distinctly
audible. Someone was moving around down there.
This time I slid out of bed, pulled on trousers and a
shirt, and picked up the gun. I paused and listened again. It had stopped. I decided to investigate, just
in case. The holdall was under the bed but I made
the decision to leave it where it was. I'd be back in
a few moments. To hinder anyone who thought
they could sneak in and take it, I removed the light
bulb from the main light and placed it under the
pillow.

Slowly, I unlocked the door and opened it as
quietly as possible, then stepped outside, straining
against the silence. The other doors on the landing
were all shut, and nothing moved. Flicking
the safety off the gun, I crept over to the stairs. The
lights at the bottom were all extinguished, just as
I'd left them, but that meant nothing. Someone had
definitely been creeping about down there and,
whatever the reason was, I was sure there was
nothing innocent about it. Could it have been
Kalinski deciding to ignore his instructions and to
finish off Krys? If he had, he hadn't come back up
the stairs again, nobody had. Maybe he'd taken his
share and left. But then I would have heard a car
start, and I hadn't.

The hairs on the back of my neck pricked up,
the second time they'd done that in just over a

374

fortnight. The first had been in the minutes before
Tony Franks had started shooting, and sent us all
down the rocky road to where we were now.

I took a step onto one of the stairs and it creaked
loudly, interrupting the night's silence. I stood still
for a moment, resisting the urge to call out the way
they always do in horror films, just before they get
sliced into salami by the killer. Is anyone there? If
comeone was, he didn't want to be discovered.
Hearing nothing, I took a second step, paused, then
continued down the stairs as cautiously as possible.

When I was at the bottom, I concentrated on trying
to pick up any sound that might seem out of
place. Breathing, the shuffling of feet ... but the
dead silence remained. My eyes scanned the gloom, :':-j darkness almost inpenetrable, only thin shafts
of half-light coming through the kitchen windows.

I took two rapid steps forward and switched on
all the lights to the hall, then turned and started.
Because I spotted it immediately.

The cellar door was half an inch ajar. I'd definitely
locked it, no question, and I'd also been the last
person in there. Which meant one of two things,
neither very good. Either he'd escaped, or ...

I stepped forward, and pushed the door wider. It
was silent, and the air smelt fetid, as it always did.
Krys Holtz had been incarcerated in there for three
days. He stank, no question. I put a foot on the
cellar steps, took a quick look round to check there
was no-one behind me, and switched on the light.

I could see Krys's feet. So he was still there. I
moved down the steps, one at a time, trying to
make as little noise as possible ...

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And froze.

Krys lay back in his seat, still bound and gagged,
still wearing the clothes I'd left him in, but very
very dead. His throat had been sliced through *
deeply. The head was hanging back in the seat at
such a precarious angle that only the fact that it was
leaning against the wall prevented it from toppling
off altogether. Blood had turned the front of his
shirt a deep crimson and it had run down onto the
tops of his legs. The blindfold had been removed,
too, and his eyes were wide and terrified. The killer,
then, had given him advance warning of what he'd
intended.

I moved closer to the body and touched the forehead.
Still warm. The flow of blood had stopped
and it was coagulating rapidly round the throat
region, so it was unlikely he'd been killed in the
last few minutes, but it hadn't been hours ago
either.

I hurried back up the steps, switched the light off,
listened for a few moments to check that no-one
was waiting at the top for me, and then stepped
out. I walked back into the hallway, then round to
the front door. It was locked. I doubled back and
checked the back door of the house, which led
into the utility room. Also locked. I went back
through the hallway and into the kitchen, holding
the Clock tightly, and went to check on the kitchen
door, the last means of entry into the house.

It was unlocked. I couldn't remember if I'd
checked it earlier or not, but thought I had. I'd been
security conscious these past few nights, even more
so since we'd taken ownership of all that money,

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but so much had happened that I couldn't recall
anything for sure.

I stopped for a moment and thought about it.
Who knew we were here? Who wanted Krys Holtz
dead? Who would have bothered to remove his
blindfold before he killed him? Only someone who
had a personal reason for wanting him dead.
Kalinski. It had to be Kalinski. I was going to have
fr> wake the others. I turned round.

A shadow suddenly filled the doorway. I started,
then brought up the gun instinctively, finger
tensing on the trigger.

'What the fuck's going on?'

It was Tugger. I felt myself relaxing. 'Something
vpry fucking bad/ I said, approaching him.

Tagger retreated, and I saw that he too was holding
a gun by his side, though where he'd got it from
I didn't have a clue. He lifted it so it was pointing
in my direction. 'Hold on, stop there. What are you
talking about?'

I stopped. 'I think Kalinski's snuffed Krys. I
heard some movement down here; it woke me up.
I came down, saw that the cellar door was open,
and went to take a look.'

Tugger didn't move. 'Where were you going just
now?'

'I was checking the doors to see whether they
were locked.'

'And are they?'

That one isn't,' I said, motioning towards the
kitchen door. 'Look, you can put the gun down
now, Tugger. I'm not the one who's offed Krys.'

'You put yours down, then.'

377

I did. 'Look, Tug, how long have we known each
other? A long time, right? I'm telling you the truth.
If you don't believe me, take a look. Krys is dead
and there's no way I'd want to kill him.'

He stepped over to the cellar door, and peered
down, switching on the light as he did so. He
watched me carefully out of the corner of his eye as
he put his foot on the first step. It was funny what
a lot of money did to people's personalities.

'I'm going to check on Kalinski,' I said. 'See if
he's done a runner.'

At that moment, the sound of a car starting came
from out front. Tugger jumped back through the
cellar door. 'What the fuck?'

'Go see who it is/ I snapped. Till see if Kalinski's
gone.'

Once again, he gave me a suspicious look, then
turned and hurried out to the kitchen door. I ran up
the stairs, wondering why Johnny hadn't surfaced
by now, and tried Kalinski's door. It opened immediately
and I knew he'd gone, an assumption
that lasted as long as it took me to reach for the light
switch and flick it on.

Kalinski lay on his back under the covers of his
bed, his eyes open and staring at the beamed ceiling.
The pale sheets covering him were stained with
blood around the chest area, and he didn't seem to
have made any attempt at a struggle. I stepped
forward and pulled them back. Three deep knife
wounds an inch to the right of his left nipple
suggested that death had been instantaneous, the
result of stab wounds to the heart. Whoever had
killed him had known what he was doing. But then,

378

I already knew that, because he'd left two people
dead with hardly a sound. My bedroom was right next door to Kalinski's, and I'd been lying no more
than ten feet away from him while the knife was
going in. And I hadn't heard a fucking thing. My
luck was still holding, but only just. Whoever was
trying to kill me - to kill us all - was getting closer
and closer.

The thought I heard a shout from outside and it was
at that point that I made a decision: something had
gone badly wrong and I needed to get out of there
with the money, and fast. I flung the sheets back
over Kalinski, turned and ran back to my own
room, knocking on Johnny's door as I passed but
no*- bothering to wait around for an answer. The
wandered whether the Holtzes had the place
surrounded and who among us was the one feeding
information to the other side.

I pulled on some shoes, grabbed the holdall from
under the bed, and went back out onto the landing.
Johnny wasn't responding. I knocked again, then
opened the door. Even in the gloom, I could see that
the bed was empty. What the fuck did that mean?
Was Johnny the traitor? All kinds of thoughts were
flying through my mind, clouding an issue that was
already as murky as a peat bog. But there was no
time to stand around and analyse, so I ran down the
stairs and pulled open the front door.

The van we'd used for the ransom pick-up was
about ten yards away in the middle of the driveway.
It was in the exact spot where Kalinski had
parked it earlier but the lights were on and the
engine was idling. I stepped outside and looked for

379

lugger, but he was nowhere to be seen. The thick
walls of trees on both sides of the driveway were
silent and empty, but who knew what or who was
behind them.

Clutching the gun in one hand and the holdall in
the other, I jogged up to the driver's side of the van,
keeping my head down and turning round every so
often, just to check I wasn't being followed, and
pulled open the door.

Johnny Hexham's body tipped out unceremoniously
and I had to jump out of the way to
avoid being knocked over.

'For Jesus's sake ...'

Johnny stared blankly up at me, glassy-eyed and
dead, his throat, like Krys's, ait from ear to ear. But
this time the wound was fresh and bubbling, the
blood still dripping down onto his shirt. Blood
dribbled out of the sides of his mouth like something
out of a horror film. For a moment I couldn't
move, so stunned was I by the turn of events. I'd
been set up, and set up beautifully, and I still didn't
have a clue why, or by who. Johnny lay dead in
front of me, probably murdered only a couple of
minutes ago, if that, and his killer was almost
certainly still in the vicinity. And where the fuck
was Tugger? Had he taken out Krys and been coming
after me when I'd turned round and spotted;
him? But there'd been no blood on his clothes. Still,
that didn't mean anything. He could have changed.
Could have stood out of the way of the blood's*
trajectory as it spurted from the wound. And what I
had he been doing creeping around down there?

I chucked the holdall across the driver's side and!

380

onto the passenger seat of the van, then went to

jump in-
Which was when I saw the front tyre. A deep
slash ran all the way down it. I looked at the back
tyre. The same. Set up perfectly, absolutely perfectly.
I'd never been in a situation like this, one
where I was so alone, so utterly out-thought, facing
an enemy I couldn't see, let alone identify, and who st-r-rned to know every step I'd take before I'd even
taken it. At that moment in time I was the most
frightened I'd ever been in my life, and the most
certain that this was a situation I wasn't going to
get out of alive.

I stopped for a few moments to compose myself,
to ralm down so I could take stock of the situation.
Bu, johnny's dead eyes continued to stare up at me
like something out of some murderous, madness
inducing dream and I was forced to use every
ounce of self-discipline to stop myself from falling
into a blind panic.