Simon Kernick - The Murder Exchange

She took the card I gave her with my number on it. ‘So, have you got any suspects?’

‘We’re working on a number of leads,’ I answered, using the stock detective’s line which was basically a euphemism for ‘No’, and she obviously recognized it for what it was because she turned away with another of those half-smiles. The discussion was over.

When we were back in the car, Berrin turned to me with an expression of concern. ‘I don’t think I did too well in there,’ he said. ‘You handled it a lot better than me.’

Berrin’s young, he’s a graduate, and, like most of us, he’s still got a lot to learn. Unlike most of us, he recognizes it, and it means he’s not as confident as he could be. He’d only been promoted out of uniform three months earlier, and apart from Rudi, the casual killer and carjacker, this was his first murder case. It was also the first time we’d worked together.

I shrugged. ‘I’ve been in the game a lot longer, which makes it a lot easier to handle people like her. Remember, you’re the one who’s the boss. With the cocky ones it can be easy to forget.’

He nodded thoughtfully. At that moment, he reminded me of a contestant from that TV programme Faking It . One month to turn a good-looking Home Counties college boy into a Met detective. He was working hard to master the ropes, to make a good impression, but he didn’t look a natural.

He turned to me, the concern replaced by determined zeal, the kind you sometimes see on the faces of door-to-door missionaries. ‘I let her get me on the wrong foot. That was the problem. I didn’t do enough to make her show me respect. It won’t happen again.’

‘I know it won’t,’ I said, patting him on the shoulder. ‘You work with me, you’ll be Dirty Harry in no time.’

He pulled out of the parking space. ‘Yeah, right.’

Roy Fowler lived in a modern, showy-looking development complex near Finsbury Park. It’s what these days they like to call a gated community, although there usually tends to be very little community-wise about them. We were stopped at the main gates by a uniformed doorman who was well past retirement age and looked like he’d have trouble stopping a runaway skateboard let alone a shadowy intruder. We showed him our credentials and were waved into the car park in front of the five six-storey buildings that were arranged in a semi-circle around the well-kept, if rather dull, communal gardens. Fowler lived in apartment number 12 which was in the second building on the left.

But if he wasn’t at work, he wasn’t at home either. We buzzed on his intercom for several minutes but didn’t get an answer. I phoned the Arcadia and double-checked the address with Elaine Toms. It was the right one. Fowler still hadn’t turned up at the club either, a fact that was beginning to irritate me and her.

We sat in the car and waited for ten minutes without result, then decided to make our way back to the station. It had been an unproductive morning and Berrin was beginning to look depressed, as if it had only just dawned on him that life in CID was a lot less interesting than it looked on the telly.

It was as we were coming out of Fowler’s complex that I saw it. A dark blue Range Rover driving by just in front of us. It only passed our field of vision for a couple of seconds at most but I noticed straight away that it had holes in the paintwork and industrial taping over two of the windows. It kept going and I memorized the number plate as Berrin pulled out, heading the other way.

‘Did you see that car?’ I asked him.

Berrin is not the most observant man in the world. ‘What car?’ was his reply.

I thought about it for a few seconds. Who’d be daft enough to be driving around in a bullet-ridden Range Rover in broad daylight? But those holes didn’t look like they’d been made by anything else — what else could have made them? — and, as I’ve said before, you should never underestimate the stupidity of criminals. It was probably wasting someone’s time but I took my mobile from my pocket and phoned the station to report a suspicious vehicle, giving its location and possible route.

‘Do you want to turn round and go after it?’ said Berrin, looking like his depression was lifting.

‘It’s probably nothing. Let’s leave it for the uniforms. I need to get something to eat.’

‘What do you think? Do you reckon he’s flown the coop?’

The loud, confident voice belonged to DCI Knox, the big boss. No question of him ever losing control of an interview. Berrin and I were sat in his office, on the other side of his imposing desk, explaining the position regarding the lack of intelligence as to Roy Fowler’s whereabouts.

‘We don’t know,’ said Berrin. ‘He was certainly aware that we were meant to interview him this morning.’

‘It seems odd, though,’ I said. ‘Him disappearing off so soon. It’s like an admission of guilt, but, if we’re honest, we haven’t really got anything on him.’

Knox nodded in his sage-like way. ‘True. But then where is he?’

It was a good question. ‘Maybe he had more pressing engagements and thought we could wait,’ I said eventually.

Knox snorted. ‘Well, he’s wrong if he thinks that. We’ll put out an alert. Any patrol that sees him, they can pick him up and bring him in for questioning. I don’t like the way these small-time villains think they’re royalty these days.’

We both nodded in general agreement. It was always good to agree with Knox, always fatal to pick holes in his pronouncements. Unlike Berrin, he was not one of life’s listeners, whatever he liked to claim. ‘My door’s always open’ was one of his favourite mantras, which might have been true literally, but that was about it.

‘What about the list of bouncers? I don’t suppose we’ve got that then, have we?’

I shook my head. ‘No. We spoke to the manager, a Miss Toms, and she told us that a company called Elite A supplied all the casual door staff they used.’

‘I wonder if she’s involved in the drugs scene at the Arcadia,’ mused Knox.

‘Has she got a record?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, but that doesn’t mean anything, does it? There was definitely dealing going on down there and it’s almost certain that it originated on the door. So the manager’s probably in on it. You’ll need to check up on this Elite A. I don’t suppose whoever runs them’s whiter than white.’ Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Berrin nodding in agreement. Cheeky sod. A politician already. ‘Now,’ continued Knox, ‘we’ve talked to three of the other doormen at Arcadia who all worked there on a permanent basis, so we only really need to catch up with the temporaries who’ve been there the last six months, although that could be quite a few. They’re a busy club. I’ll leave you two to do that. Try to get to talk to them all by Monday p.m. at the latest. We need to tie up all the loose ends on this.’

‘And these other doormen haven’t told us anything useful?’

‘No. They all knew Shaun Matthews to varying degrees but none said they’d ever seen him selling drugs of any description and, of course, they all denied selling any themselves. When confronted by witness statements testifying to his extra-curricular activities, they all expressed varying degrees of surprise.’

‘Perhaps we should offer some sort of reward,’ I suggested. ‘That might persuade them to give us some information we could use.’

‘It’s a possibility if we still don’t get anywhere, but budgets are tight and I’m not sure I’d feel right doling out much-needed money to solve the murder of a violent drug dealer.’ Once again, I caught Berrin nodding.

‘It might get us a result.’