The Murder Exchange

by Simon Kernick

  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, more confident one backwards. And now I had to deal with an idiot like Capper, who seemed incapable 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. ‘I’ll 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.’

  ‘More 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.’

  ‘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 lied.

  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 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?’

  ‘Yes, 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 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 we 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 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.’

  ‘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 wouldn’t have minded seeing, but settled instead for a clichéd, ‘That’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 Berrin 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?’

  I sighed and shook my head. ‘It was a stupid move. You know, I was thinking this morning how naive Berrin was in the way he dealt with people, but I was far more naive than him over this. I really thought I could rattle Vamen, but in the end I’ve achieved absolutely nothing, except maybe to alert him to the fact that I might know something about what’s going on. And he’s already made a preemptive strike to get me off his back.’

  ‘You did your best,’ she said, giving me a supportive smile. ‘Which is a lot more than a few of the people round here.’

  ‘Well, it didn’t work,’ I said, feeling sorry for myself.

  ‘So, what do you think happened? What’s your theory on Matthews and McBride?’

  I’d thought about that a fair amount that day but had yet to come up with anything concrete. ‘I don’t know, Tina. If I had to indulge in a bit of conjecture I’d say that Jean Tanner was Neil Vamen’s mistress and that she was also seeing Matthews on the side. Vamen found out about what was going on and had Matthews killed.’

  ‘And what about McBride?’

  ‘This is where it starts not to make much sense. From what the neighbours were saying, McBride had visited Jean on a number of occasions, so it makes me think that maybe he was seeing her as well.’

  ‘So she was seeing three of them? She gets around a bit.’

  I shrugged. ‘Well, that’s what it looks like.’

  ‘And you think Vamen found out about McBride as well?’

  I spread my arms wide in a gesture of defeat. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Because that all seems a bit coincidental, doesn’t it? Him killing off two of his love rivals in the space of a week. All over one woman who’s hardly a picture painting, is she?’

  ‘You know what they say,’ I said lamely. ‘Love’s blind.’

  ‘Not that blind.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever come across a murder case as complicated as this one. One where nothing seems to really lead anywhere. Do you know what I mean? There’s no logic in any of it. I mean, what about Fowler? If he’s got nothing to do with it, then where is he?’ There followed a long silence. We were a long way from any answers. ‘You know,’ I said eventually, ‘it’s been such a long day, I can’t even be bothered to think about it any more.’

  ‘Do you want to go for a drink? Finish up here and grab a beer somewhere?’

  I pondered her suggestion for all of one second. The paperwork could wait. ‘Why not? I could do with one.’

  We wandered round the corner to the Roving Wolf and I ordered the first round: a pint of Pride for me, a pint of Fosters for her. That was another thing I liked about Boyd, she didn’t have any airs and graces. She might have been a college girl like Berrin but she was still one of the lads. The interior of the pub was quiet at this hour with most of the hardened drinkers and passing trade sat at tables outside on the street, so we found ourselves a table away from the bright rays of evening sunshine streaming through the windows and chatted a while, enjoying the fact that the working day was over and there was nothing and no one to pressurize us. She bought the second round and I realized I was enjoying things just a little too much. She was good company, and single, too. I couldn’t help but think that maybe I ought to make an exception to the rule I’d placed on myself never to have an office fling. That had been after an affair I’d had with another WDC ten years earlier, when Rachel had been little more than a baby and I’d been getting the married man’s yearning for something new. It had all got very messy. The WDC had demanded I choose between Cathy and her, and I’d done the inevitable and chosen Cathy. The atmosphere between the WDC and me, and in CID as a whole, where everyone knew what had been going on, had been sour for more than a year afterwards until she’d finally asked for a transfer and got it, much to my relief. I might not have been married any more but I still thought it best to keep to the rule, remembering all too well the hassle of having to work with someone you’d pay good money to avoid.

  So when Boyd asked if I fancied grabbing a curry somewhere, I was pretty torn. But with the grim memories of the previous night and Celebrity Stars in their Eyes still fresh in my mind, I concluded that life was definitely too short to say no. Boyd suggested a curryhouse she liked down near King’s Cross station and, while I would have preferred the continental ambience of Upper Street to the dodgier end of the Euston Road, I didn’t make a fuss. To be fair to her, I ended up pleased with the choice. The food was good, which I suppose it would have to be given its location, and I found myself relaxing in a way I hadn’t in female company for a long time.

  As they cleared away the remains of the food, I told her about Capper’s reaction to my mention of Heavenly Girls. ‘Do you think he’s been paying recreational visits down there? He definitely knew the place.’

  She pulled a face. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me. He’s the sort you can imagine visiting toms. He’s got that perverted look about him, don’t you think? Like the sort of bloke you’d find in a peep show. I bet he gets them to spank his arse.’

  I laughed. ‘That’s your boss you’re talking about. I hate to think what you say about me.’

  ‘Oh, it’s worse. Definitely worse.’

  ‘I bet it is as well. But I can tell you quite categorically that no one’s ever spanked my arse. Even my mum was against corporal punishment.’

  ‘There’s always a first time,’ she said, with a coy smile. The woman was definitely flirting. I wasn’t sure whether to be worried or pleased. She took a packet of Silk Cut out of her handbag. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  I watched as she lit one and took a long, relaxed drag that gave me a fleeting reminder, even years later, of how good a cigarette tastes after a decent meal. ‘What you’ve got to remember’, she said, blowing the smoke out above my head, ‘is that if Capper was, or is, a customer down there, then it’s possible that he knows Fowler.’

  ‘I was thinking about that earlier, but I don’t really go for it. He’s too keen for us to find him. He keeps going on about it.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, taking another drag (it’s amazing how elegant
a woman smoking can look), ‘but there’s always the possibility that he might have been put in a compromising situation. If someone down there found out he was a copper, then they might have been able to use it against him, and perhaps it’s that someone who wants to find Fowler.’

  ‘And who do you think that someone might be?’

  She shrugged. ‘God knows.’

  I shook my head. This was one complication too far. ‘No, I think it’s more likely he’s just a pervert.’

  She blew more smoke over my head. ‘So do I, but nothing’s set in stone, is it? Maybe it’d be worth-while watching what you say around him.’

  I nodded, thinking that it was funny how when you’re talking to another copper, even one who’s female and attractive, you always end up back on the subject of work. For once, I just wanted to forget about it. I wanted to talk more about her. What she was interested in. What made her tick. What she looked for in a man. And whether she really was flirting.

  But the opportunity had passed, and a couple of minutes later she stubbed her cigarette out and said that she ought to be getting back. We split the bill fifty-fifty and headed outside. Night was falling and the lowlifes who inhabit King’s Cross after dark were coming out of the cracks in the pavement and looking round for customers and victims. I suggested we share a cab back but she told me she was perfectly capable of getting herself back on the Tube. ‘I am a police officer, you know, John,’ she said dismissively.

  ‘Don’t say that too loudly round here.’

  ‘And don’t keep going on.’ Her face broke into a smile. ‘Look, I had a good time tonight. We’ll have to do it again sometime.’

  I nodded. ‘Definitely.’

  We had an awkward moment when we thought about shaking hands, but didn’t quite go through with it, and then she said goodbye and headed off towards the Underground, while I looked around for a cab that would take me back to Tufnell Park.

  Part of me thought that maybe I should have tried to kiss her, or at least shown that I was interested, but the other part kept telling me that by taking a little pain now I was avoiding a lot more down the line.