McBride made a number of noises suggesting he was thinking hard but they weren’t particularly convincing. ‘He might have mentioned something once, about some girl he was seeing, but he didn’t really say anything about—’
‘Craig McBride, I’m arresting you on suspicion of possession of Class A—’
‘All right, all right, hold on. Don’t be hasty.’
‘What do you mean, don’t be hasty? I could grow a beard waiting for you to tell me anything.’
‘Look, I don’t want any of this getting back to me. Seriously.’
‘Any of what?’
McBride put his head in his hands, then removed them and exhaled loudly. ‘Any of what I’m going to tell you.’
I didn’t get too excited. ‘We’ll treat it as an anonymous source if it’s applicable,’ I said. ‘Now, I suggest you get on with it.’
‘Shaun had a girlfriend, a girl he’d been seeing for a few months, and her name was Jean, but I don’t know what her second name was. The thing was it was all really hush hush. I’m surprised anyone saw them together. He only told me about it one night after he’d had too much gear and drink. I think he wanted some advice.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, this girl, and I think it must be the same one, she was sort of already spoken for. She was seeing Shaun on the side.’
‘It happens,’ I said.
‘Not to Neil Vamen it doesn’t.’
Once again, Berrin and I looked at each other. This certainly put a new angle on the whole thing. The gentleman gangster. ‘You’re telling us she was Neil Vamen’s girlfriend?’
He nodded. ‘That’s what Shaun said.’
‘Christ,’ said Berrin. ‘No wonder he wanted it kept quiet. Do you think Vamen found out?’
‘I don’t know. Honestly.’
‘How did Shaun meet her?’
‘I heard she used to work as an escort girl for this agency Roy Fowler runs called Heavenly Girls. Maybe that’s how he met her.’ I raised my eyebrows. This was an interesting one. We hadn’t realized that one of Fowler’s sidelines was managing a brothel.
Berrin finished writing in his notebook and looked up. ‘Neil Vamen’s married, isn’t he?’
McBride shrugged. ‘Yeah, he is, and his missus is a looker too, but you know what blokes are like. Especially ones with money. Everyone knows he plays away from home.’
Berrin looked across at me, waiting to see what came next. It was difficult to know what more we could ask McBride, or whether what he’d told us was enough to get him off the hook.
‘One more question,’ I said. ‘Who did you buy these drugs from?’
McBride sighed, looked pained for all of about one second that he was about to betray someone, then gave us the name of a fairly well-known local dealer. I knew immediately he was lying. The drugs had almost certainly come from somewhere within Stefan Holtz’s organization. It was rumoured that Holtz himself strongly disapproved of drugs and, unlike many underworld figures, had never touched them himself. However, his people were responsible for importing one hell of a lot of the cocaine that passed through London every year, so his personal stand clearly didn’t prevent him helping to ruin the lives of plenty of other people.
I leant over, picked up the plate of dope and the individual wraps, and stood up. ‘If you hear anything, anything at all about the murder of Shaun Matthews, I want to hear about it.’ I handed my card to McBride who accepted it with a relieved expression on his face.
‘Course I will,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
‘Where’s the toilet in here?’ I asked, walking out of the room, with Berrin following.
‘It’s just on the left. What are you going to do with the gear? I’ll give it back, but the thing is I haven’t paid for it yet.’
I went up to the dirty-looking bowl and emptied the plate into the water, before chucking down the wraps. I gave it a healthy flush and watched as most of it disappeared.
‘Don’t take the piss, Mr McBride,’ I told the distraught-looking doorman as we left his flat. ‘We’ve done you a major favour here.’
When we were back in the car, Berrin gave me a worried look. ‘Was that such a good idea, Sarge? You know, letting him off like that. We could have got a lovely little collar there.’
‘And it would have just bogged us down in paperwork, and wouldn’t have done anything to hinder the Holtz supply chain. Sometimes you’ve got to let the small fish go so you can get hold of the big ones. But do me a favour and don’t say anything to anyone about it.’
‘Course not. Do you think it was worth letting him go like that, though? Did we get enough out of him?’
‘We’ve got other people with motive now, so it’s putting us further forward.’
‘All we’ve got to do is find them.’
‘That, my friend, is what it’s all about.’
Iversson
It was three o’clock in the afternoon when I buzzed Joe up and led him through to the lounge. It was a stinking hot day and all the windows were open. Outside, the traffic rumbled endlessly past.
‘Nice place for a hideout,’ he said, dropping on the floor a bag containing belongings he’d picked up from my flat. He sat down in one of the leather chairs, and put the four-pack of beers he’d also brought down on the glass coffee table. I went and got a couple of glasses and emptied the contents of two of the cans into them. ‘So, where’s the girl?’
‘She’s gone out,’ I said, sitting down opposite him. ‘She’ll be back later.’
‘And how long’s she going to let you stay here for? I mean, she doesn’t even know you, does she?’
‘I told you, I went to school with her.’
‘But, Max, you’re not eighteen. That was a long time ago now. You haven’t seen her in, what? Twenty years.’
I took a drink from my beer. ‘Not that long.’
‘But long enough. You’ve got to be careful. Time changes people. She might just run to the law.’
‘She won’t.’
‘Well, either way she’s going to want you out of here pretty soon, isn’t she?’
I nodded, not liking to think about that. After the sexual athletics of the previous night, I was in no hurry to go anywhere. ‘I suppose so.’
‘So we’ve got to discuss what you’re going to do. The police came round to see me this morning, asking about you. Questions like, what were you doing driving a car riddled with bullets? And why were you so keen to make a break for it when you were stopped for questioning, smacking two coppers in the process? That sort of thing.’
‘What did you tell them?’
‘What do you think? I didn’t tell them anything, just said I’d always thought you were pretty straight, and that I didn’t think you were involved in anything untoward.’
‘Do you reckon they believed you?’
He shrugged. ‘Difficult to tell. I think so, but you never know. It helps that you’ve never been in trouble before. But they’re definitely looking for you, Max, and that’s not good.’
‘You don’t think they followed you here, do you?’
He shook his head. ‘No, I was careful. Anyway, at the moment you’re probably not a big enough fish to waste that many resources on. I mean, there’s still no proof you’ve actually done anything other than deck a couple of coppers.’
‘Fowler bled over the back seat when he died. Not much, and I gave it a fair old scrub afterwards, but one of the coppers spotted the stain when they stopped me. I don’t know if they can trace it back to Fowler or not. What do you think?’
He pondered that one for a few moments. ‘I doubt it. If they don’t know who Fowler is and they haven’t got a blood sample of his, then I would have thought you’re in the clear.’
I took another drink from my beer. It was going down well. ‘What a fuck-up,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘So did you get anything on that bastard Tony? Anything that might explain what the fuck he thought he was doing?’
‘I talked to a fe
w people, other people he’d been doing work with, but no-one seems to have anything bad on him. He did some guarding work for Barry Unwin, looking after wealthy Arabs, and he even had a stint through Barry as a minder for Geri Halliwell, and everyone reckoned he did a fine job. And he’d been with Barry a while, too. More than two years.’
‘Well, something happened. Somewhere down the line he met someone who was willing to pay him big money to get involved in some very nasty shit.’
Joe seemed to notice his drink for the first time. He picked it up and took a healthy swig. ‘How about you? What did you get?’
I told him what Elaine had told me.
Joe rolled his eyes at the mention of the Holtzes. ‘Fucking hell, Max, that’s all we need. Let’s make sure we stay well clear of it if it’s anything to do with them. I don’t want to get into a confrontation with people like that.’
I knew he was right, and if a man like him was saying it, then it was best to listen. But the thought of not doing something to retaliate still pissed me off.
‘Joe, no offence, but I almost got my head blown off the other night. If I hadn’t been carrying, I’d probably be at the bottom of the Thames now. It’s sort of affected my viewpoint on all this. We also lost Eric, and no way did he deserve to go like that.’
‘I know he didn’t, and apart from anything else he’s going to be difficult to replace. And his ex-missus called in this morning.’
‘Shit.’
‘Yeah, my sentiments exactly. He was supposed to be looking after two of their grandkids today, only he hadn’t turned up. So she phones, asking me if we’ve seen him. Luckily she didn’t know he was working for us Thursday. I said we hadn’t clapped eyes on him since last week.’
‘How did she sound?’
‘Worried. She said it was totally out of character for him not to turn up, especially for his grandkids.’
‘It would have been. He was always our most reliable bloke. I can’t remember him ever missing a day. Did she sound like she was going to call in the law?’
‘Not yet, but she will do eventually, no question. And that’s going to pose a problem because it’ll give them a chance to make a link with you. We’ve just got to hope they don’t take it too seriously. I mean, it’s not like a kid going missing. This is a sixteen-stone ex-soldier in his fifties. They may just conclude he’s fucked off on some military adventure, but the problem is, it’s all a little bit coincidental.’
I had to agree with him on that one.
‘Anyway, the best thing we can do is forget about everything that’s happened and put it down to experience.’
‘It doesn’t seem right, letting them get away with it.’
‘This was a professional operation, Max. Three people dead, but no peep from the press, no sign of any bodies. No nothing. It’s like it never happened. Which is exactly the Holtzes’ style. Do you remember that jeweller out of Hatton Garden, Jon Kalinski, the one who did a runner with about a quarter of a million in diamonds? About three years ago?’
‘Yeah, I remember reading something about it.’
‘Well, I heard he didn’t do a runner at all. I heard it was the Holtzes who had a role in that particular disappearance. Apparently he owed Krys Holtz, Stefan’s boy, a lot of money, which was part of some scam they were both involved in, and Krys was worried they weren’t going to get much of it back. So he paid one of Kalinski’s girlfriends to phone him up and invite him round to her pad in Hampstead. When he turned up, Krys and a few of his associates were waiting for him. They took the keys to his safe, found out where every penny he’d stashed was, then killed him. And the girlfriend. Dismembered them both in the bath tub, cleaned everything up so there was no trace they’d even been there, then took the bits out in suitcases in the middle of the night. Then they went down to Kalinski’s place of business and cleaned him out of everything he owned, and everything he didn’t. Do you know how they got rid of the bits of the corpses?’
‘I’m surprised you do.’
‘Well, it might be bullshit, I don’t know, but it’s got a ring of truth to it.’
‘Go on.’
‘You ever wonder where all those thousands of maggots you get in fishbait come from?’
‘No. I can safely say it’s never crossed my mind once.’
‘Well, they come from maggot farms, places where they breed millions of the bastards in these big stinking rooms. One of the Holtz businesses is a maggot farm out in Essex. They chucked the body parts in there and then let the maggots eat them down to the bones. Then they ground down what was left into dust, and scattered it to the four winds. And that was that. No trace. Gone.’
‘If they’re so secretive, how come you heard about it?’
‘I heard it from a bloke who used to know people attached to them. A while back. I never thought about it too much at the time, not until now.’
‘And this bloke, isn’t it possible to ask him what all this stuff with Fowler’s about?’
Joe managed a humourless smile. ‘Not really. The bloke was Tony.’
‘Great.’
‘The point is, let’s just leave it.’
‘Don’t worry. I think you’ve convinced me.’
‘You’re going to need to get out of town for a bit, Max. Probably a couple of months at least. Until everything dies down.’ He reached into the pocket of his jeans and produced two thick rolls of notes, which he put down on the table. ‘There’s six grand there. The money from the job the other night. Use it to rent a place down by the coast or something.’
‘I can’t take it all, Joe. Three grand of it’s yours.’
‘And half of Tiger Solutions is yours. Forget it. It’s the least I can do. Let’s see how things go and then, if you need any more, I’ll try and pull some out of the business somehow.’
‘Shit, Joe, I don’t know what to say.’ I leant forward and picked up the money. ‘Thanks, mate. Thanks a lot.’
‘That’s what friends are for, Max. Remember it.’
And I did remember it. Would always remember it. Me and Joe went back a long, long way. We were like that, you know. We’d been in the paras together and, even though Joe had been an officer while I’d never risen above the level of colour sergeant, we’d always been mates in a way that rarely travels across the ranks of the British army. I owed him now – but then, to be honest with you, I’d always owed him. You see, a long time back I’d done something to him that to this day he didn’t even know about, but which meant that one way or another I was always in his debt.
Joe was two years older than me, and towards the end of his military career he got married to a German girl he’d met while we were stationed out there. Elsa, her name was; twenty-one, far too good-looking, and with an attitude to sex that you’d have to say was slap bang on the liberal end of liberal. Why she got married, I’ll never know. She just wasn’t cut out for making do with a one-dick-and-two-ball escort. But the problem with Joe was the same problem you get with a lot of blokes: he was just too smitten to notice. I’d heard stories about her knocking around with other squaddies all through the engagement, but decided it was best to keep quiet about it. In the end, it was none of my business. Joe had made his choice and that was that. I know that might sound a bit harsh, but in my experience no-one ever thanks the bearer of bad news, especially when the bad news is about his missus and her shenanigans.
Then, a few weeks after the wedding, I ran into her in a local bar. She was on her own as well, which was unusual for her. She was quite a looker, was Elsa. We got talking and she told me that she and Joe had had an argument. I didn’t mean for anything to happen, you know, but I offered to walk her home and one thing just led to another. We did it in a field full of bored-looking sheep (twice as well) and I knew I should have just left it at that and hoped nothing was ever said, but the thing was, Elsa had a way about her that could really reel a man in. She was addictive, that was the best way to describe her. We started to see each other regularly behind Joe’s bac
k, doing it whenever and wherever, including in their marital bed, which I know was a terrible liberty. I felt guilty about it, I really did, and jealous, too, because I knew I wasn’t the only one of her lovers. But I just couldn’t stop myself. That’s my only defence, if you can call it that. I just couldn’t help myself.
Then one day, no more than a couple of months after that fateful night in the sheep field, Elsa’s partly clothed body was discovered in the grounds of a local high school. Her head had been smashed to a pulp with a blunt instrument. There was a police investigation that initially focused on the army base and its occupants, particularly the husband, but quickly spread into the local community as other lovers came out of the woodwork. After only three days, an arrest was made. A nineteen-year-old local bloke, Dietrich Fenzer, had been seen arguing with her on the night she’d died, not far from where the body was found, and it was known that he was one of her lovers. He also had two prior convictions for crimes of violence. A search of his home revealed the murder weapon, a small lead-filled cosh, and he was promptly charged. Six months later he was convicted and sentenced to twenty years in prison, which I’d always thought was a bit lenient, especially as he’d probably be out in ten.
The whole thing was extremely hard on Joe, as you can imagine, but he held up well considering the humiliation of having your new wife’s numerous affairs aired in public. Thankfully for me, the police never did dig deep enough to find out about our little fling, so my friendship with him remained intact. But the reality was that it was the end of Joe’s army career. He felt that he couldn’t continue to command the respect of his men after what had happened, and he was probably right, especially since half of them had shagged her. Within a few months he’d left the military for good to begin a new career as a security consultant, or, more accurately in those early days, a gun for hire. For me, though, the guilt never completely disappeared, and from then on I always felt that I had a lot to do to make it up to Joe for betraying him in such an underhand way. And here he was doing all this for me. It fair choked me up, to tell you the truth.
Die Twice Page 40
