Die Twice

by Simon Kernick

  ‘Look, this is just a friendly little chat, following up on a lead. We’re just using some initiative, that’s all.’

  We stopped outside the pub, a small, old-fashioned place with grimy windows and a battered door that fitted in snugly in the quiet, slightly run-down street of terraced housing just off the southern end of the Caledonian Road. The windows were open and we could hear the steady buzz of conversation and the occasional clinking of glasses. It’s a sound I usually like because it’s welcoming, but I had a feeling the welcome here wasn’t going to get much above frosty. We’d both taken off our jackets in deference to the intense midday heat but now put them on again. It was best to be formal.

  ‘I’ll do the talking,’ I said, thinking that at that moment Berrin looked like a student in a suit at his first job interview. ‘You just stand up straight and don’t look too queasy.’

  ‘They’re not likely to try to rough us up, are they?’ he asked, showing a worrying naivety. Sometimes I couldn’t help but think that it was only the shortage of detectives in the Met that had put Berrin in plain clothes, and that he’d been promoted above his experience. In the fight against crime, you didn’t like to think that the front line was made up of too many men like him.

  ‘He might be a nasty bastard, Dave, but he’s still a businessman. He won’t want to do anything that brings him unwanted attention. Now, come on.’

  I stepped inside with Berrin following. The interior was deceptively large and seemed to go back a long way, as is often the way with London pubs. It was split into two bars, the right-hand one near enough empty except for a handful of old geezers in caps smoking pipes and generally not taking too much notice of one another. Two of them were playing cribbage and they were the only ones who looked up as we arrived.

  The other bar, in contrast, was a lot younger and a fair bit livelier, although it was still early so nowhere near crowded. A jukebox played one of the numerous covers of the Righteous Brothers’ ‘Unchained Melody’ and three or four groups of people – mainly men, but some women – milled about in a way that suggested they all knew one another. Most of them were in their thirties and forties, and at the far end of the bar, closely watched by Jack Merriweather and two powerfully built bodyguards, stood Neil Vamen. He was talking to another of the groups – two middle-aged men and their younger, pneumatic blonde partners – who were hanging on to his every word. Vamen was smiling broadly and I got the feeling he was telling a joke.

  That all stopped as soon as we stepped inside. In fact, everything stopped, bar the music, the singer continuing to warble boringly while the whole bar gave us what I can only describe as the evil eye. I suppose we just looked like coppers. The barman studiously ignored us and for a couple of seconds I simply stood there, thinking that it might actually have been a big mistake coming here.

  Confidence. It’s all about confidence. You can command the respect of anyone, even a room full of gangsters, if you walk like you know the walk. So, trying to ignore the fact that I was sweating, I ambled casually through the crowd, Berrin behind me, and stopped when I reached Neil Vamen. His bodyguards tensed but made no move. Jackie Slap’s lip curled in an expression of distaste, as if the very presence of police officers caused him to experience an allergic reaction, which it probably did. Vamen, meanwhile, eyed me with a mixture of mild contempt and idle curiosity, his turquoise eyes twinkling playfully. I could almost feel the stares of every other person in the place on my back, and I hoped Berrin didn’t do anything stupid, like faint.

  ‘Hello, Mr Vamen. My name’s DS Gallan and this is DC Berrin.’ I produced my warrant card and saw out of the corner of my eye Berrin produce his. ‘I believe we’ve met before.’

  Vamen made a casual gesture. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘We’d like a word with you in private, if we may.’

  ‘No.’

  And that was that. The word wasn’t delivered rudely but there was a finality about it I really should have expected. Behind me, I heard one of the pneumatic blondes snigger.

  ‘Any particular reason why not?’

  He smiled. ‘Because I’ve got nothing to say to you.’

  It’s difficult when you rely on the authority that comes with your position to coerce people into doing things, and then come up against someone who has no fear of it or you. Particularly when they’re on their home territory and you’re a long way from yours.

  ‘If you don’t talk to me, I might have to conclude that you’ve got something to hide,’ I told him, meeting his gaze.

  That made him laugh. ‘Your lot have been concluding that for the past twenty years.’ Further laughter reverberated around the bar, and someone shouted, ‘You tell him, Neil.’

  ‘Ain’t you got nothing better to do?’ sneered the Slap. He was wearing a black New York Yankees baseball cap to cover up what he hadn’t got. I ignored him. At that point, I didn’t have to be told that I was losing this one.

  ‘Fine. We’ll talk here, then. Your girlfriend, Jean Tanner. We found a man dead in her apartment and we want to know where she is. Any ideas?’

  Vamen’s face hardened and his eyes lost their playfulness. For two, maybe three seconds the silence was deafening. When he spoke next, his voice was calm and slow, but dripping with menace. ‘I don’t know what you’re fucking talking about, or where you’re getting your information from, but I’m telling you this: it’s bollocks. Now, you want to discuss anything with me, you go through my lawyer. His name’s Melvyn Carroll. You might have heard of him.’ I had. The Holtz family brief. As crooked as a busted rib. ‘Otherwise, unless you’re arresting me – which you’re not, are you?’ He paused for a moment to let me answer.

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘Well, then, unless you’re arresting me, you can fuck off out of here and leave me alone. And if you don’t, DS Gallan … is that right? Gall-an?’

  ‘Gallon of what?’ some wag called out.

  ‘That’s right, John Gallan,’ I said, determined to hold my own.

  ‘And what’s your name again, sonny?’ He aimed the full force of his personality at Berrin, who was probably now wishing he’d taken the advice of his university careers adviser and joined an insurance company.

  ‘We’ve already told you who we are,’ I said.

  ‘Berrin, 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 Berrin, 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 murderer who’d become rich by ignoring the laws 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 alm
ost 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 Berrin 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 Berrin, who still didn’t look too 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, 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?’