Simon Kernick - The Murder Exchange

I nodded. ‘Yeah, I do know. I’ll do a better job of keeping you in the loop in future.’ He nodded, acknowledging the fact that I was indirectly apologizing, and I hoped we could leave it at that.

I picked up the phone and tried Malik’s number. Amazingly enough, he actually answered, though he informed me he was in a hurry.

‘This Krys Holtz thing’s turning into a nightmare,’ he explained.

‘How come?’

‘Well, no one’s co-operating, as usual. The family say they don’t know what we’re talking about and apparently Krys is fine, just not around at the moment, and now suddenly all the staff at the brothel are retracting their statements. Plus, we’ve got no intelligence on the ground as to who might be behind it.’

‘I’m sorry to bother you, Asif, but did you find out anything about this company, Dagmar Holdings?’

‘I haven’t had time. I’ll get something sorted for you by tomorrow, I promise. Have you tried Companies House for any information?’

‘Yes, I have. The company exists all right. They sent me pages of stuff but nothing that really tells me very much.’

‘I’ll see what I can come up with. Can you give me your mobile number again?’

I reeled it out and Malik said his goodbyes, saying he had to go.

I flicked off the phone and stared at the pile of accounts for Dagmar Holdings Ltd in my in-tray. I really needed to give them a closer look. I looked at my watch. Ten to twelve. It could wait until later.

‘Do you fancy a drink and a bite to eat?’ I asked Berrin.

He nodded and grinned. ‘I could do with both.’

‘Then let’s get out of here,’ I said, and we got to our feet, once again leaving the Matthews incident room empty and silent.

Iversson

Tugger Lewis cooked supper that night. Thai fish curry with noodles and stir-fried veg. Very nice. Apparently he’d been working as a trainee chef for the previous six months, and whatever they’d been teaching him seemed to have done the trick because it was one of the best meals I’ve had in years. It gave me renewed faith in the British education system, to tell you the truth. The only thing spoiling it was Johnny, who’d been moaning pretty much non-stop ever since he’d discovered who the owner of the ‘Elvis barnet’ was. As I finished my last mouthful, he was just starting up again, like a stuck CD.

‘I’ve got to earn some more out of all this,’ he told the rest of us as we sat round the kitchen table. ‘That’s Krys bark-at-the-fucking-moon Holtz we’ve got down there, known affectionately as the Barnsbury Torturer, and that’s by his mum. The one geezer in the whole of north London you don’t want to get on the wrong side of, and I’m part of the team that’s kidnapped him. It’s all right for you lot. You’re all making a decent wedge out of this. I’ve got to make do with fuck all.’

‘That’s because you haven’t had to do fuck all, Johnny,’ I told him. ‘All you did was drive the car. We had the hard work.’

‘I’ve had to put my Niagaras on the line, Max, just like everyone else, even though no one asked me if I wanted to. And I’ve got to live round this fucking city for the rest of my life, permanently wondering if I’m going to end up making a one-way visit to Krys’s workshop.’

‘No one’s going to find you out,’ said Joe, taking another mouthful.

‘I nicked the cars, remember? The coppers could get some sort of lead that puts them on to me and then I’m fucked. I might get nicked for something I didn’t even want a part in, and then it’ll get back to the Holtzes, which is far worse.’

‘You worry too much,’ I told him. ‘Take the money you’re going to get, be pleased with it, and leave it at that. You never know, tomorrow might be your last day on earth. Don’t spend it crapping your pants about something that’ll probably never happen.’

‘It’s easy for you to say. You’ll have enough so you can fuck off wherever you want.’

‘Ah, stop being so fucking gutless.’

It was Kalinski who spoke, his tone contemptuous. He was wearing a black polo-neck sweater with three thick gold chains over it, and his greying hair was slicked back. It made him look like a gangsta version of the Milk Tray man. He’d pushed his plate to one side, having eaten less than half the food he’d been given, and was puffing on a Rothmans.

‘You think you know fear?’ he said, pointing his cigarette at Johnny. ‘Eh?’ Johnny didn’t say anything. He looked like he was an expert in it. ‘You don’t know shit. I’ll tell you that now. Fear’s when you’re standing on the street with no fucking cover and the Filth, them bastards from SO19, are taking potshots at you with sighted rifles, and your best mate, the one you did the job with, is lying dead on the pavement in a pool of blood, inches from your feet, and you know that in two, maybe three fucking seconds you’re going to go exactly the same way.’ Kalinski stared Johnny down. ‘That, boy, is fear.’

‘What happened?’ asked Johnny, eyes wide.

‘You mean, why am I still here? I took a bullet in the gut and one in the leg. I was in hospital for six weeks and the cunts still charged me afterwards. I got fourteen years for armed robbery and attempted murder, because I managed to hit one of their fucking blokes as well. My only regret about the whole thing was that I didn’t kill the bastard.’

To be honest with you, I wouldn’t get too carried away about Kalinski’s role in the gunfight at the OK Corral. From what I’d heard, he’d only ever fired one shot in anger during his long criminal career, and that had been into a sub post office ceiling. And he wasn’t exactly Papillon either. According to what Joe had told me, he’d only ever done a couple of short stretches inside, which was another of the reasons we’d hired him. It showed he was careful. Something smelled a little fishy, and it wasn’t just Tugger’s curry.

Johnny sighed and put his head in his hands. ‘What am I fucking doing here?’ he said to no one in particular.

‘Being gutless,’ snarled Kalinski.

‘Give him a break, Mike,’ I said. ‘The poor sod’s had a bad week. His missus is bisexual.’

‘What the fuck’s wrong with that?’ said Tugger. ‘Nothing better than a bit of three-in-a-bed experimentation.’

‘Not if the third one doesn’t want fuck all to do with you.’

Tugger patted him on the back sympathetically. ‘Shit, Johnny, is that right? Does her lover not swing to the beat of the phallic drum?’

‘Look, fuck off, will you?’ said Johnny, brushing off Tugger’s hand. He turned and gave me the evil eye. ‘That was private what I was telling you, Max.’

‘I had a session with a couple of lesbians once,’ said Kalinski. ‘Porn stars they were, American. Candy and Brandie they was called. Brandie’s been in loads of stuff.’ He shook his head in awe. ‘They knew what they was fucking doing, I can tell you. Could have sucked ballast through a straw, both of them. Did it in a penthouse in the Savoy.’

If Kalinski had been Pinocchio, he’d have had my fucking eye out. This bloke could bullshit for England.

I got up from the table. ‘I’d better give Krysy boy something to eat.’

Kalinski glared at me. ‘Fuck that, let him starve.’

‘I tried him this morning,’ said Joe, ‘and he told me to fuck off. So I did. We’re releasing him Sunday morning. If he wants to lose weight in the meantime, let him. He’s had some water so he won’t die.’

‘He’s been here nearly two days and he hasn’t touched a thing. I’ll just check on him.’

‘You just want a chance to give him another kicking,’ said Joe, with something close to a smile.

Which was partly true, I did. Krys, like Johnny, had been a pain in the arse from the start. When we’d dragged him out of the van and into the farmhouse on the first night, he’d gone absolutely apeshit, kicking like a donkey and screaming all sorts of uncalled-for insults. Me and Kalinski had been forced to give him the beating of his life, just rewards for past wrongs, Kalinski taking particular pleasure in stamping repeatedly on his bollocks until Joe pulled us both off, fearful we’d kill him. When I’d tried to feed him the following morning, he’d spat in my face and told me I was a dead man, which had been a pretty fucking stupid move on his part and had cost him a broken nose, but he still resisted any effort at co-operation and in those increasingly rare moments when his gag was removed he was full of bluster and threats. In the end, I had no choice but to award him a grudging respect. He was a champion arsehole and about as pleasant as a skidmark, but he was no coward. It made me think, too, that this was a much better way of dealing with him than shooting him outright. This way we broke him down, humiliated him, but we didn’t kill him in cold blood. I’m not a bad lad, to be honest with you, and I don’t think I’m capable of just executing someone outright without them having a chance to fight back. Plus, this way we made money out of it, so it seemed to me to be a pretty decent sort of revenge all round, really.