Simon Kernick - The Murder Exchange

I whistled through my teeth. ‘No wonder they’re difficult to penetrate.’

‘Exactly. That sort of money buys a lot of loyalty. And, as I’ve said, they’re well enough established that the main players involved are all very well known to one another, so they’re not likely to start grassing each other up, especially if there’s no obvious benefit to it. A guy from SO10 did get on the periphery of the organization once but they sniffed him out, found out where he lived, and sent a couple of their people round to pay a visit to his wife and baby.’

‘Christ,’ I said, wondering how I’d have reacted ten years earlier if the same thing had happened to me.

‘They didn’t hurt them or anything, just made sure he knew that they could if they wanted to. It spooked the guy so badly he left the Force. And that was the closest anyone ever got. Having said all that, we have had some successes against them, as have other branches of the Met, and Tomas, Stefan’s oldest son, is currently doing a nine stretch for possession of two kilos of cocaine and twenty-four M-16 rifles.’ I raised my eyebrows quizzically. ‘Yes, they also smuggle weapons as well, although that was the first evidence we ever had of it, and of course young Tommy denied knowledge of any such enterprise and claimed that, like the gear, they were a plant.’ He smiled wearily, the standard copper’s reaction to such boring and uninventive lies.

‘What about contacts within the Force?’ I asked, thinking of that arsehole Burley. ‘Have they got any?’

‘We’ve never actually uncovered anyone, but you know as well as I do there are coppers out there susceptible to corruption.’ He paused for a moment as if he was waiting for me to make some mention of his old boss, but I kept silent. ‘Anecdotal evidence suggests there’s quite a few coppers on the Holtz payroll,’ he continued, ‘and it would stand to reason. But they’ve been good at keeping it under wraps.’

‘You said there were two reasons why they were so hard to penetrate. One’s the way they’re organized. What’s the other?’

Malik gave me a serious look. ‘Their ruthlessness. If you cross them, your days really are numbered. Every criminal firm’s prone to violence, of course. I suppose you’ve got to be in that line of business, especially these days with all the competition, but the Holtzes take it one step further. To them, killing’s just another way of protecting their investments. If you get in their way, or do anything that might foul up the smooth operation of their moneymaking, then you die. It’s as simple as that. We estimate they’ve been responsible for something like thirty-five killings since 1985 alone. Incredible when you think that most people have never even heard of them. But we’ve only ever recovered fourteen bodies which could actually be linked to members and associates of the family. Of those fourteen, not one has ever resulted in a conviction. People don’t go against the Holtzes because the consequences are simply too grim, and the rewards of staying onside simply too great.’

‘You make it sound like an impossible task to bring them to justice.’

‘We’ll get them in the end,’ he said, and he sounded like he truly meant it. I thought it was a pity there weren’t more coppers like Malik. ‘We’ll pursue them to the ends of the earth if we have to, but I’ll be honest with you, it won’t be easy. In the eighteen months I’ve been with the team we’ve not been able to secure anything above minor convictions, and those have only been against the lower-level players, but things are changing. The government are getting very concerned about criminal gangs supposedly running the country so they’re putting a lot of resources into the fight to bring them down. We’re not the only people involved. MI5 are looking into them too. So are the National Crime Squad, and even Customs amp; Excise are involved, which is probably the most frightening prospect of all from a criminal’s point of view. So they’re feeling the squeeze. But I can’t see them bursting just yet.’

The food arrived, and Malik was right, I wasn’t disappointed. As I ate, I stole occasional glances at him and I had to admit to being impressed by his overall demeanour. Here was a man whose immediate boss and mentor had been uncovered as a cold-blooded killer, an event that had placed Malik under the microscope of the press and had led to unfounded whispers about his own involvement. I knew what it was like to have the media on your back from my own experience, but the Dennis Milne story had been a much bigger one than our squalid little cover-up, yet Malik didn’t portray the remotest hint that it had adversely affected him. If anything, it was quite the opposite. From what I’d gathered from talking to people at the station who’d known him in his time there, he’d been a fairly quiet, unassuming guy, nothing like the confident-looking individual sat in front of me now.

‘So, Neil Vamen,’ I said between mouthfuls. ‘I know a few things about him, none of them particularly nice, but I’d like to hear anything you’ve got.’ I decided not to say anything about my visit to him at the Seven Bells, since it didn’t exactly place me in a positive light.

He sawed off a large chunk of veal and popped it in his mouth, clearly savouring the taste. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said when he’d finished chewing. ‘Vamen’s an interesting one. He joined the family firm at a fairly low level back in the mid-seventies, apparently as an enforcer. He’s thought to have committed at least one murder on Stefan Holtz’s behalf, in 1978 when he was twenty-one, but he’s a cunning bastard, and very shrewd, and he’s moved right through the ranks. Of people outside the immediate family, he’s easily the closest to Stefan, and acts as his chief adviser, especially now that Stefan’s a virtual recluse. I suppose in many ways Vamen’s the most dangerous of all of them because he’s as intelligent as Holtz, if not more so, and he’s still got the drive. The other family members don’t cut the mustard in that respect. Stefan’s two brothers are both dead: one, Terry, died from a heart attack ten years ago while he was in prison; the other, Kas, got killed in a car crash last year. And of the three sons, Tommy’s in the nick, Robbie’s not interested, and Krys is too much of a nutter.’

‘I’ve heard about Krys.’

‘A real nasty piece of work, and in a way the others aren’t. Everyone connected with the Holtzes is violent, some in the extreme, but in the main it’s just business. I’m not saying that that justifies it, of course it doesn’t, but at least there’s a reason behind it. With Krys, it’s all about the enjoyment of inflicting pain. He’s the sort who likes pulling the legs off spiders — you know the type. In fact, in many ways he’s probably their loosest cannon, although such is the fear he inspires in people he’s never been convicted of a thing. No one would ever testify against Krys Holtz.’

‘Do you think it’s feasible that Neil Vamen could be behind the murder of Shaun Matthews?’

‘Be realistic, John. What have you got? The word of a dead man.’

‘So, the name Jean Tanner doesn’t actually mean anything to you, then?’

He shook his head. ‘Not off the top of my head, no.’

I refused to give up. ‘I don’t see why McBride would have been bullshitting. He said it was well known that Neil Vamen played away from home. Would that be right?’

‘Well, it’s certainly well known that Vamen has mistresses, but, like everything else in his life, he likes to keep them as secret as possible. We put him under surveillance whenever resources allow, and we’ve photographed him with a number of women other than his wife, but as far as I’m aware we’ve only positively identified two, neither of whom goes by the name Jean Tanner. What I’ll do, though, is go through what we’ve got back at HQ and I’ll email over the information, including any photos we have of the women.’