Simon Kernick - The Murder Exchange

‘I don’t think it should be kept for him,’ said Kalinski. ‘If he ain’t here, he ain’t here. We share it out between ourselves. That’s the only way.’

‘I thought you were only in it for the revenge.’

‘Well, I ain’t got my fucking revenge, have I? The cunt’s still alive and you’re saying we should release him tomorrow. Even though he fucked your missus.’

‘Watch what you’re fucking saying.’

‘If it was me, and he’d done that to my missus, I’d have fucking killed him.’

I took a step forward, feeling my temper boiling over. I’m a patient man, but this bastard Kalinski was pushing it big time.

Tugger put his hand out in front of me. ‘All right, boys, calm down. Let’s all take it easy, have a drink, and talk about it again tomorrow morning. How does that sound? We’re not getting nowhere like this.’

‘I think I should get a bigger share of the Russell,’ said Johnny. ‘You say I didn’t have to do too much but, what with all this lot, things ain’t never going to be the same for me again.’

I turned to him, wanting to re-establish control. ‘Bullshit. You’ve done your bit, and you’ve done it well, but nothing changes with the death of Holtz. No one knows who we are and no one’s going to be able to find us. As long as we keep calm and release Krys. I’ll hold the money until tomorrow. If Joe still isn’t here when we’re due to leave, then we’ll split his share evenly, but if he is alive, and he comes looking for it, then it’s got to be remembered that it’s his money, and it’s each bloke’s lookout if he doesn’t want to give it up. Now, let’s count this fucking stuff. Then we can divvy up.’

The atmosphere was tense, unpleasant. No one felt much like talking, or even eating. Beers were cracked open, as per Tugger’s suggestion, but there was no celebration even though every man in the room was significantly richer. It was all there, too, every last note. Half a million pounds in fifties, just as Holtz had been instructed, and that settled it for me. There was no way he’d been accidentally shot by one of his men who was trying to put a hole in me. However many times I went over it in my mind, one thing remained certain, and that was that he’d had every intention of paying up.

Before we retired for the night, I took some bread down to Krys and fed it to him without speaking. Eventually he asked me whether his old man had paid the ransom. He didn’t sound angry or defiant any more, just tired and uncomfortable. He’d pissed his trousers again but didn’t ask for them to be changed.

‘Yeah, your dad paid,’ I told him.

‘Are you going to let me go?’ he asked, his voice sounding strangely like a kid.

‘You’re going to be released tomorrow morning. Then it’ll all be over.’

‘Thanks,’ said Krys.

I didn’t say anything as I replaced the gag, thinking once again that I was glad we hadn’t killed him. He deserved it, no question, but you couldn’t feel too much hate for a person in his state.

As I came out of the cellar and locked it behind me, I looked at my watch. 10.50 p.m. The others had all gone upstairs. I could hear them moving around. Yawning, I picked up the holdall from the kitchen table, checked to see that no one had tampered with it, and went up to bed, noticing for the first time that it had stopped raining.

Iversson

My eyes snapped open and I listened hard for a second. Nothing. It was dark in the room; the alarm clock by the bed said 2.57. Something had woken me. I was a good sleeper, usually went straight through, couldn’t remember the last time my slumber had been interrupted naturally. I could see through the gap in the door that the landing light was on, but that was how I’d left it when I’d come into the bedroom. Maybe someone had got up to go for a leak. I sat up and waited for a few moments. Still nothing. I picked up the Glock from the side of the bed and checked that it was loaded — there was a round in the chamber — then lay back down again, thinking that I was getting paranoid. No great surprise, I suppose, when you’re in a house with half a million in cash and three men with less than scrupulous backgrounds.

I shut my eyes and thought of Joe. Joe Riggs, the man who’d been good to me down the years. The man I’d betrayed by sleeping with his missus, and now the man who was almost certainly dead as a direct result of me getting him involved in a dangerous scheme when all he’d wanted to do was run a business in peace.

There was a noise downstairs. Footsteps on the bare floorboards in the hall, faint but distinctly audible. Someone was moving around down there. This time I slid out of bed, pulled on trousers and a shirt, and picked up the gun. I paused and listened again. It had stopped. I decided to investigate, just in case. The holdall was under the bed but I made the decision to leave it where it was. I’d be back in a few moments. To hinder anyone who thought they could sneak in and take it, I removed the lightbulb from the main light and placed it under the pillow.

Slowly, I unlocked the door and opened it as quietly as possible, then stepped outside, straining against the silence. The other doors on the landing were all shut, and nothing moved. Flicking the safety off the gun, I crept over to the stairs. The lights at the bottom were all extinguished, just as I’d left them, but that meant nothing. Someone had definitely been creeping about down there and, whatever the reason was, I was sure there was nothing innocent about it. Could it have been Kalinski deciding to ignore his instructions and to finish off Krys? If he had, he hadn’t come back up the stairs again, nobody had. Maybe he’d taken his share and left. But then I would have heard a car start, and I hadn’t.

The hairs on the back of my neck pricked up, the second time they’d done that in just over a fortnight. The first had been in the minutes before Tony Franks had started shooting, and sent us all down the rocky road to where we were now.

I took a step onto one of the stairs and it creaked loudly, interrupting the night’s silence. I stood still for a moment, resisting the urge to call out the way they always do in horror films, just before they get sliced into salami by the killer. Is anyone there? If someone was, he didn’t want to be discovered. Hearing nothing, I took a second step, paused, then continued down the stairs as cautiously as possible.

When I was at the bottom, I concentrated on trying to pick up any sound that might seem out of place. Breathing, the shuffling of feet … but the dead silence remained. My eyes scanned the gloom, the darkness almost inpenetrable, only thin shafts of half-light coming through the kitchen windows.

I took two rapid steps forward and switched on all the lights to the hall, then turned and started. Because I spotted it immediately.

The cellar door was half an inch ajar. I’d definitely locked it, no question, and I’d also been the last person in there. Which meant one of two things, neither very good. Either he’d escaped, or …

I stepped forward, and pushed the door wider. It was silent, and the air smelt fetid, as it always did. Krys Holtz had been incarcerated in there for three days. He stank, no question. I put a foot on the cellar steps, took a quick look round to check there was no one behind me, and switched on the light.

I could see Krys’s feet. So he was still there. I moved down the steps, one at a time, trying to make as little noise as possible …

And froze.

Krys lay back in his seat, still bound and gagged, still wearing the clothes I’d left him in, but very very dead. His throat had been sliced through deeply. The head was hanging back in the seat at such a precarious angle that only the fact that it was leaning against the wall prevented it from toppling off altogether. Blood had turned the front of his shirt a deep crimson and it had run down onto the tops of his legs. The blindfold had been removed, too, and his eyes were wide and terrified. The killer, then, had given him advance warning of what he’d intended.