Simon Kernick - The Murder Exchange

‘You make a mean Thai fish curry, I’ll give you that.’

‘Aye, I know, but …’ He thought about it for a minute, at the same time putting the stock to his shoulder and aiming at an imaginary target among the trees. ‘But it can never give you quite the same sort of buzz as a job of violence does. You know what I mean? You don’t get that sort of excitement out in the normal world.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, remembering the mad adrenalin rush I’d had when I’d been standing in the stairwell of Heavenly Girls, ripping holes out of Fitz and Big Mick. ‘Maybe you don’t.’

At 6.44 my mobile rang. It was Joe, and he was whispering. ‘He’s here. Looks like he’s alone.’

‘Thanks.’ I rang off, then dialled Holtz’s number. It was answered immediately. ‘Stand facing the “No Tipping” sign, five feet away from it.’

‘How do I know what’s five feet?’ he demanded angrily.

‘Just do it. Now turn ninety degrees to the left and start walking, keeping in a straight line. You’ll see the outlines of a path in front of you. Follow it.’

‘Where’s my son?’

‘I told you, he’s safe and he’s well. Are you on the path?’

‘Yeah, I’m on the path. When am I going to see my boy?’

‘If the money’s all there, you’ll see him first thing tomorrow morning. He’ll be dropped off somewhere in London, reasonably close to a telephone box.’

‘He fucking better be.’

‘Keep walking and stop speaking.’

From his vantage point in the undergrowth, Joe watched as Stefan Holtz turned away and began walking up the wooded incline in the direction of Max and Tugger. Holtz had a mobile to his ear and a large holdall slung over his shoulder. Within a minute he’d disappeared from view, and the forest was silent once again, except for the steady crackle of rain hitting the trees, and the distant hum of traffic. No one else had turned up to follow him and the car he’d been driving, the Merc, was empty.

He kept listening for a few moments, then, satisfied that Holtz had come alone, he slipped slowly and carefully out of his hiding place, crossed the track from which the Merc had appeared, and started up the path after Holtz, keeping as far back as possible.

Too late, he heard the noise behind him. The rustle of bushes, the sound of heavy footfalls on muddy ground, and then the terminal, gut-wrenching sensation of the hard metal gun barrel being pushed into the back of his head.

I saw Holtz emerge from the trees at the bottom of the slope, carrying the holdall. He was about a hundred and fifty yards away. ‘All right, keep walking,’ I told him, and switched off the mobile.

I turned to Tugger. ‘Here he comes.’ Tugger nodded, and we both pulled on balaclavas. I checked the Glock, gave Holtz another thirty seconds to get nearer, then pushed my way out of the bushes. Fifty yards now separated us.

Holtz saw me but didn’t quicken his pace, and we closed in on each other as casually as a couple of early-evening strollers. When we were ten feet apart, we both stopped. Holtz looked pissed off. The rain, which was pouring down now, had flattened his iron-grey hair and it was running freely down his grizzled, lined face and onto his khaki raincoat. I’d never seen a picture of him before (Holtz senior, like all his close cohorts, was very camera shy), but thought that he looked a lot like Karl Malden, the veteran actor from seventies cop show The Streets of San Francisco , even down to the bulbous round nose.

‘You’ve made a big fucking mistake doing this to me,’ he growled, making no effort to hand over the holdall.

‘And you made a big fucking mistake trying to kill me,’ I said, unable to resist letting him know who’d done this to him, even though it effectively meant exiling myself for life. Sometimes you just had to show that you hadn’t been intimidated.

‘I don’t even know who the fuck you are behind that poxy mask, so what makes you think I’ve been trying to have you killed? I’ll tell you something, though, you cunt. If I want someone dead, that’s how they end up. Dead. No fucker ever escapes from me.’

I thought about lifting my balaclava, but that really would have been stupid. But then it struck me that maybe he didn’t know who I was. Maybe I was that insignificant. ‘That holdall looks very heavy,’ I told him. ‘Why don’t I take it off your hands?’

Holtz managed the beginnings of a smile for the first time. It wasn’t a pleasant sight. ‘No, mate, it ain’t as easy as that. Before you get this cash, I want to see my son. So, get on the phone to whichever cunt’s holding him and get him to drive him down here. Now. Then we’ll see if it’s worth a trade.’

‘I don’t want to have to take that bag off you by force, Mr Holtz, but, believe me, I will.’

‘No you won’t, son,’ said Holtz, shaking his head. ‘No, you fucking won’t.’

Tugger had the rifle to his shoulder, the barrel pointing through a gap in a large evergreen bush towards Stefan Holtz. He could see him and Max talking, but Max was making no move to take the holdall. They used to say that Tugger Lewis had a nose for danger, could sense when something bad was going to happen. One time, years back in County Down, five of them had been patrolling in a Land Rover down remote country back roads when they’d seen a car parked in a layby up ahead. Afterwards, he’d said it was just something about the angle it was parked in, slightly skewed with the bonnet pointed towards the road, like someone had abandoned it too quickly, that had caught his attention. But it wasn’t that. He’d just felt it, known that something was going to happen. He’d told the driver to stop and turn round even though he’d only been a private and the driver was a lance corporal, and the road had been so narrow that any turn was going to require some serious manoeuvring, but something in his tone — the desperation, the sure-fire knowledge that they were driving straight towards their doom — convinced the driver to do what he said. Ten seconds later, while they were still turning round, the IRA man with the remote control, seeing that his targets were escaping, detonated the bomb in the car’s boot. Two of the men in the jeep had been slightly injured, but no one was complaining. If they’d been driving past it, the impact of the blast would have killed them all.

He had the same feeling now. It had started slowly, about an hour before, but had accelerated markedly when Stefan Holtz had appeared out of the woods below. Something was wrong. There was no escaping the fact. Something was definitely wrong. Max and Holtz were still talking, and Tugger thought he saw Holtz smile, but he might have been imagining things. Was this a set-up? His jaw tightened and his finger stroked the trigger. He was listening now, listening for any sound that was remotely out of place.

The faint rustle of leaves being trampled underfoot, could he hear that? Off to his left, not far away, coming from somewhere in the trees. He listened harder, couldn’t tell for sure, thinking, concentrating …

Then he swung round ninety degrees, still holding the rifle at shoulder height, and saw the figure creeping through the undergrowth, twenty-five feet away, gun in hand.

Reflexively, he pulled the trigger, firing off five shots in rapid succession, the angry bark of the weapon echoing through the undergrowth. Then he hit the deck as bullets came flying back in the opposite direction.

The loud crackle of gunfire startled us both. I clocked the first shots as coming from the M-16, which had to be Tugger’s, and then further shots from at least two other weapons. Holtz might have thought he had some cards up his sleeve but he obviously hadn’t expected anyone to start shooting. His eyes widened and he swung round to me with a look of suspicion mixed with panic. ‘What the fuck’s going on?’