Simon Kernick - The Murder Exchange

Capper grabbed a chair and sat down on the other side of my desk with his coffee. ‘How did it go with the doormen yesterday?’ he asked, after explaining that his absence from duty the previous day had been down to a ‘family matter’, whatever that was meant to mean. Capper was a bachelor who looked like the sort of person any right-minded sibling or parent would avoid like greasy dogshit on the pavement. He sat there now with a think-of-me-as-one-of-the-guys smile, showing yellowing teeth, etched firmly on his face.

I gave him a brief rundown, explaining that we hadn’t got much that we didn’t know already, but mentioning the possible girlfriend lead, as well as John Harris, the doorman who’d fallen out with Matthews.

‘Who’s chasing Harris?’ he asked.

‘The DCI gave it to WDC Boyd. She’s on it today, apparently.’

He nodded, satisfied. I didn’t tell him about the Vamen/SO7 angle. Knox would probably bring it up at the meeting the following day but for the moment it could wait. I didn’t want Capper sniffing round and taking hold of leads I’d worked hard to build up myself. ‘No sign of Fowler yet, then?’ he asked.

‘Nothing at all. He might have a connection to this Jean Tanner, though.’

‘How’s that, then?’

‘You know I said she was a prostitute? Apparently she used to work at a brothel which was or is supposedly run by Fowler.’

‘Really?’

‘A place called Heavenly Girls.’

Capper tried to hide it but I saw immediately that he knew the name, and that for some reason he wanted to keep that knowledge quiet. ‘Hmm, that’s interesting.’ His words tailed off, and we sat in silence for a few moments. ‘Where did you hear about this brothel?’ he asked eventually.

‘From McBride, the one who gave us most of the information.’

‘I’ve never heard of the place,’ he said, a little too forcefully. ‘Do you reckon he was telling the truth?’

I shrugged, not bothering to mention that we’d effectively blackmailed the information out of him. ‘I would have thought so. There’d be no point lying about something like that, would there?’

Capper nodded, acknowledging this fact. ‘No, I suppose there wouldn’t.’

At that moment, Berrin came in, looking dishevelled but considerably better than he had the previous morning.

‘A bit late, Berrin,’ said Capper, getting to his feet.

Berrin quickly apologized to both Capper and me in that order, and took a seat. Capper told him bluntly to get his house in order and went back to his own desk. He might have thought that I was potentially useful, but he clearly didn’t feel the same way about the younger officer. Plus, Berrin was a graduate, and, though he never said as much, Capper didn’t like graduates. Berrin looked suitably chastised for a couple of seconds, then pulled a face at Capper’s back, before sitting down in the chair he’d just vacated.

As the two of us went over the day’s itinerary, I stole an occasional glance at the DI, who was now staring intently at his computer screen. I couldn’t help but wonder what he knew about the Heavenly Girls brothel and how much of a bearing his knowledge might have on the investigation as a whole.

Roy Fowler wasn’t answering any of his numbers; the Arcadia was closed; it was proving impossible to locate any outfit called Heavenly Girls; and the day was getting progressively hotter as Berrin brought the car to a halt about twenty yards short of Jean Tanner’s apartment building. According to the Land Registry, she’d bought it in 1998, while it was still being built, and now owned thirty per cent of the equity, while the other seventy belonged to her mortgage lender. According to them, she’d never missed a payment. Obviously Jean was getting quite a lot of money from somewhere, which pointed perhaps to a relationship with a wealthy gangster like Neil Vamen, who was going to have a lot more cash than most of the punters she’d ever been with. The question was whether he cared for her enough to kill a possible love rival like Shaun Matthews.

However, once again she wasn’t responding as I pressed the buzzer on the flashy-looking intercom system for the third time.

‘What do we do now?’ asked Berrin eventually.

‘What all coppers have to get used to doing,’ I told him. ‘Wait.’

‘She might have gone away. We could be waiting for days.’

‘Look, Dave, I’m not driving back out here again, and I’m not phoning her and giving her advance notice of us turning up just in case she’s got something to hide, so, for the moment at least, we’re going to stay put.’

‘But even if she is Vamen’s girlfriend, where does that leave us?’ he asked, leaning back against the wall of the porch. ‘We don’t even know if she was seeing Matthews. And where does Fowler fit into it?’

‘I don’t know is the short answer,’ I said, thinking that he had a point. ‘But at least we can hear what she has to say. If Vamen’s got something to do with it, and if she thought more of Matthews than he deserved, then maybe she’s feeling bad about it, and we may be able to get her to talk.’

Berrin nodded wearily. ‘Fair enough. Shall we go and get a cup of tea from somewhere while we wait? I need to rehydrate.’

‘Were you out again last night?’ I asked him in vaguely disgusted tones. I think I was jealous. He told me he was. Out drinking in the West End with one of the station’s more attractive WPCs. He started telling me all about it, but I couldn’t handle that, not after a night alone in front of an excruciating edition of Celebrity Stars in their Eyes , so, on a whim, I pressed the buzzer below Jean’s. Three seconds later a none-too-youthful male voice came on the line. I told him who we were, pointing my warrant card at the camera above our heads, and asked if we could come up.

‘Of course,’ he said, sounding interested.

We were greeted at the top of the stairs by a very short gentleman in his early seventies who had a very wide head that was far too big for his spindly body, giving him more than a passing resemblance to ET. He had large amounts of fine white hair, tinged with orange bits, and big black heavy-rimmed glasses. A taller lady, about ten years younger, with a tent-like flowery dress on, stood behind him. They both smiled as we approached.

‘Good morning,’ said the man, as we produced our warrant cards. ‘We’re the Lackers. Peter and Margaret.’ He shook our hands formally with a surprisingly firm grip.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ said Margaret Lacker with an easy smile.

‘Yes, thanks, that’d be nice,’ I said, wishing there were more people I dealt with like the Lackers. Polite, accommodating, and not totally pissed off to see you.

They led us into their richly decorated apartment and motioned for us to sit down in their lounge, a place that looked more like a drawing room of old. ‘So, how can we help you?’ asked Peter Lacker, sitting down in a chair opposite. ‘I hope there’s nothing wrong.’

‘Nothing at all,’ I said, smiling. ‘We’re just interested in one of your neighbours, a Miss Jean Tanner. I understand she lives on this floor.’

‘That’s right. Next door. She’s all right, isn’t she?’

‘I certainly hope so. We need to speak to her in connection with a matter she might have some information on.’ Suitably vague, I thought. ‘We called yesterday but she wasn’t at home and she doesn’t appear to be at home now. Do you know if she’s gone away anywhere?’

‘I don’t think so. She was definitely there last night. We heard her.’

‘Heard her?’

He looked a bit embarrassed. ‘Jean’s a good neighbour, don’t get me wrong, please, but she does have male visitors and sometimes she can have disagreements with them. There were some loud voices last night.’