Simon Kernick - The Murder Exchange

When I’d finished making the baby half-presentable, the kid and I hunted round for a clean nappy, finding a bag of them in the corner. ‘Have you ever changed your sister before?’ I asked him.

‘Course I have,’ said the kid.

‘Good. What’s her name?’

‘Karen.’

We cleared a place on the floor, then I lifted her out of the cot and put her down gently on her back. ‘OK, Karen. Your brother’s going to change you now, while I go and sort myself out.’

I found the poky little bathroom and washed my hands thoroughly in the dirty sink. There were a load of hairs clogging up the plughole — hopefully from heads, but it wasn’t that easy to tell — and I thought that this woman and her partner deserved absolutely no sympathy whatever. They behaved worse than animals — which was fine if that’s how they wanted to live, but to ruin their kids’ lives too, that for me was unforgivable.

I went back into the bedroom and helped the kid with the rest of the nappy. Then we both put Karen back into her cot. She was still crying.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked him.

‘Dean,’ he said.

‘I think Karen might be hungry, Dean. You go to bed now, and I’ll sort out some feed for her.’

The kid disappeared without a word and I walked wearily back down the stairs, thinking that he didn’t really have a chance with parents like that. Neither of them did. The ambulance had arrived for the mother and they were tending her wounds in the lounge while WPC Farnes looked on. The mother was wailing drunkenly and I found it hard not to hate her for her selfishness.

‘Your baby needs feeding,’ I told her. ‘I presume she’s on bottled milk.’

There was a commotion outside the front door and Berrin walked inside, talking excitedly to PC Ramsay. He saw me and immediately came over. ‘Sarge, we’ve got an all units out. There’s been a shooting.’

‘You’d better wait here until social services arrive,’ I told Farnes. ‘And sort out the baby’s feed, can you?’ Farnes tried to say something but I wasn’t listening. ‘Where’s this shooting at?’

‘Heavenly Girls.’

Iversson

It’s true I stood to make a lot of money from the abduction of Krys Holtz, but I’ll tell you this, I was going to earn every fucking penny of it.

It was our third night in a row outside Heavenly Girls, and tempers were fraying, particularly mine. It was Johnny Hexham. He was driving me mad. After two nights stuck in the back, I’d finally decided to risk sitting in the front where it was a lot more comfortable. I now had a full beard, and with a cap on and a pair of specs, I looked a lot different than I had two weeks back. In fact the look quite suited me, to tell you the truth. Showed my intellectual side.

But unfortunately there was no escaping Johnny, who’d spent the night constantly trying to weasel information out of me about what we were doing on this street, and coming up with all these theories, some of which veered dangerously close to the truth. Not to mention the complications of his love life, which he insisted on going on and on about even though I wasn’t in the least bit fucking interested. Apparently, his ex-girlfriend Delia was pregnant, the result of a flying visit by Johnny to pick up some CDs he’d left there, but she was already shacked up with some seventeen-stone black bloke who thought the baby was his and who was going to have something of a shock come the happy day. Delia wanted to run away with Johnny, who it turned out she still felt something for, and was threatening to tell the boyfriend Johnny had raped her if he didn’t. But Johnny, not surprisingly, wanted nothing further to do with her, and was getting worried that any day now he was going to receive a leg-breaking visit from half a dozen of the boyfriend’s mates. Also, he had another serious girl now, Amanda, who he’d met at Arcadia some weeks before, and who he was really smitten with. Matters were further complicated, if you could believe it, by the fact that Amanda was vigorously bisexual and wanted Johnny to share her with her other lover, German student Beatrix.

‘The problem is, Beatrix is, like, a full-on Magnus.’

‘A what?’

‘Magnus Pike, dyke. She wouldn’t touch a dick if her life depended on it, so there’s no way of, you know, having a bit of fun with both of them together, which would definitely have helped to numb the pain of having to share her. But I don’t want to lose Amanda. I don’t know what I’d do if she pulled the plug on it. But it’s a bit of an odd fucking way to run a relationship, isn’t it?’

‘You know, Johnny,’ I said, taking a swig from my bottle of mineral water, ‘you are the only thirty-four-year-old I know who complains that he gets laid too much.’

‘It’s not like that, Max. Honest. I really love her, but I know what’s going to happen. Beatrix is going to make her choose between us.’

‘So buy her some flowers or something. Get in there first.’

‘No, Max, you don’t understand.’

‘I know I fucking don’t.’

‘Amanda says there’s something special about girl-on-girl love. It’s more gentle than the stuff you get with a bloke, more sort of tender. Do you know what I mean?’

‘Not really, Johnny, no. I’ve never really thought about it, to tell you the truth. I’ve seen women at it with each other in porno films, though, and they always seem to be enjoying themselves.’

‘I tell you, Amanda swears by it. Says it’s the only way for her to achieve a multiple orgasm. There’s no way she’s going to turn down that sort of action, is there? Which means it’ll be me who gets the old heave ho. It’s making my life a fucking misery, it really is.’

‘I’m sure there are millions of blokes out there who really sympathize.’

I turned away and stared out the window in the direction of Heavenly Girls, a hundred yards away down the road. It was raining steadily again, which at least was helpful. We’d been parking on the same stretch of road night after night, so we had to be careful about the amount of attention we attracted. Every wasted night increased the risks, not to mention the stiff-legged, claustrophobic boredom of it, blunting our senses and making reaction times just that little bit slower — something that could prove fatal in this sort of operation.

Johnny continued to rattle on about Amanda, Beatrix, Delia and all his other birds, but I was blanking him totally now. I had enough worries of my own. The waiting around was beginning to lead to the first rumblings of discontent from the others. Kalinski had suggested that snatching him froma place he only visited periodically, and with no obvious advance warning, was tempting fate, which was true I suppose, but there were no other suitable venues. Joe hadn’t helped matters either by remarking, after we’d finished a frustrating four-and-a-half-hour stint the previous night during which Kalinski had stunk the place out by shitting in a Tesco carrier bag, that maybe it might be an idea to knock the whole thing on the head. I knew Joe was feeling a bit spooked thanks to his almost daily visits from the Law, but I hoped it was just the frustration talking. If he — or, to be honest, any of us — pulled out then the whole thing was bolloxed and I’d be back to square one. On the run, skint, and with the near rape of my girlfriend unavenged.

I took another swig from the water as Johnny recounted how Beatrix was the dominant partner in the lesbian relationship even though she wasn’t good-looking at all, and was, in his opinion, bullying Amanda into dropping him. ‘She’s got whips and chains and everything,’ he explained, shaking his head. ‘Apparently, her gaff’s like a fucking torture chamber. She’s even got a selection of butt plugs. How’s Amanda meant to resist?’ In the back of the van, I could hear movement as they shuffled about trying to make themselves comfortable.