Simon Kernick - The Murder Exchange

I stood up, wondering what the fuck had gone wrong and how we could have been betrayed so completely. Eric had three kids, all grown up, and four grandkids too. But he was also long since divorced. This meant that it was unlikely anyone close to him would know where he was that night. I was in a difficult position. If I went to the law and told them what had happened, I’d be leaving myself open to all kinds of questions, particularly regarding the shooting of Tony, and the unlicensed firearm I’d been carrying. I could end up going down for years if my story wasn’t believed, and, to be honest, who would believe it? The alternatives, it has to be said, were almost as bad. Drive out of there in a damaged vehicle registered in my own name and leave behind three bodies in the hope that no one would ever connect them to me. Or hide the bodies somewhere and deprive Eric of a proper burial. That was, of course, on the basis that they remained hidden.

It was at times like this that I needed a cigarette. It wouldn’t have done a blind bit of good but somehow smoking had always helped me think straight. I tried to fathom out what Tony’s plan had been. Kill us all and get rid of the corpses, I assumed. Then what? Joe knew that he’d been there with us so he could hardly just walk around as if nothing had happened. Perhaps he’d had plans to disappear. But that still didn’t help to supply any sort of motive.

One thing, however, was certain. This wasn’t something he could have put together on his own, and whoever else was involved might well be in the vicinity. I decided that by hanging around I was putting myself in needless danger.

I went round to the rear passenger side of the Range Rover and opened the door. Fowler’s crumpled body tumbled out, landing in an ungainly heap on the floor. He was very definitely dead, and, if he hadn’t been, I’d have killed the bastard myself. Whatever else might have been a mystery, I was pretty damned sure that Fowler had been the architect of his own demise. A slimy bastard like that was always going to make enemies.

I thought about moving the body somewhere less conspicuous, but without gloves it wasn’t an option. I was just going to have to leave all three of them there and front it out. It was the only thing I could do, at least for the moment. Maybe Joe would have some ideas.

The damage to the car was superficial: two small holes in the window, surrounded by spider-web cracks. I could knock the whole thing out and replace it easily enough. Fowler had bled inside a little bit but not as badly as might have been expected.

I shut the door, went round switching off all the lights, then walked back round to the driver’s side. The keys were still in the ignition so I got in and backed out of the warehouse, before dragging the two doors shut and hoping above hope that no one opened them again for a long, long time.

Now there was only one thing left to do. I jumped back in the car and drove slowly down the road, following the route we’d come in on, until I got to the bush in front of Canley Electronics where Fowler had hidden the briefcase. I stopped the car and, leaving the engine running, jumped out. This was one mystery I could at least solve. I paused for a moment and listened. Still no sound, bar the continued hum of city traffic and the odd call of a night bird. High in the sky a three-quarter moon stared impassively down, unmoved by the events below.

I jogged up to the bush and knelt down where Fowler had been only minutes earlier, then reached into the foliage and felt about, knowing that I was in the right place because I’d been careful to watch him earlier.

My hand touched something solid. A handle. Bingo. I pulled it out, feeling an irrational excitement. I had to know what was so important that men I knew, men I liked, had had to die for it. I stood up, located the two catches on either side of the handle, and went to press them.

Which was when I heard the sound: a scrape of a shoe on gravel behind one of the two parked cars in front of the Canley Electronics building, only ten yards away. I thought I saw something move. I looked more closely, feeling myself tense. And then I saw him, a man in dark clothing and a baseball cap, face obscured by a scarf, moving about in the shadows. Those were the only details I can remember. I was too busy looking at the rifle nestled against his shoulder, the rifle that was now pointing straight at my head.

There was a hiss as a bullet flew above me, almost parting my hair, and struck something behind with a metallic clang. Immediately, I ducked down behind the hedge and ran, crouching, round to the driver’s side of the car as more rounds spat through the air. As I pulled open the door, I chucked the briefcase into the passenger seat, accidentally biting my tongue as a bullet passed right through the car and out the open driver’s-side window before ricocheting off the wing mirror. I ripped the Glock out of my waistband and cracked off my last two shots at him as he came round the front of the hedge and into view.

I was sure they’d both missed their target but they forced him to dive behind the bush and temporarily out of sight. Without waiting for him to reappear, I jumped into the car, rammed it into gear, and drove out of there as fast as I could, not bothering to look round or stop when I came to the barrier. I hit it full-on, broke it in two, and carried on going.

I reckon I’d only gone a matter of a few hundred yards when the intense curiosity I was feeling got the better of me. Even though I could hear the sound of sirens closing in in the distance, even though I knew I was taking a huge and needless risk, I couldn’t resist pulling over and picking up the briefcase. Once again, I located the catches and this time got the opportunity to press them. They both clicked satisfyingly and the case came open.

I stared for maybe three, four seconds, feeling confused, unable to fully comprehend what I was seeing.

Because, you see, after all that, the fucking thing was empty.

Gallan

The murder of Shaun Matthews, thirty-one, of the Priory Green Estate in Islington was an odd one from the start. Matthews had enemies, there was no doubt about that. Three months before his death he’d been threatened by two men he’d thrown out of the Arcadia nightclub in Holloway where he worked as chief doorman. One of the two, later identified as twenty-eight-year-old Carl Voen, had claimed that he was going to come back and blow Matthews’s head off. This might not have been taken seriously had it not been for the fact that Voen had a previous conviction for possession of a firearm and two further convictions for grievous bodily harm. He was, by most accounts, a man with a short fuse. He was also, unfortunately, a man with a watertight alibi for the time of death. For at least twelve hours either side of the point at which Matthews had shuffled off his mortal coil, he’d been in custody undergoing questioning about an armed robbery, with the questioning being carried out by two of the detectives who were now investigating the murder.

Shaun Matthews was also a drug dealer. According to anecdotal evidence collated by investigating officers, he supplied Ecstasy, cocaine and, on at least one occasion, heroin to Arcadia clubgoers (apparently in collusion with the club’s management), as well as to individuals visiting his flat. According to more than one source, he had also earned himself something of a reputation for selling below-par products, particularly when operating off the premises. There was a story doing the rounds that one unlucky punter had challenged Matthews about an especially poor batch of cannabis he’d sold him only to have Matthews dangle him by the ankle from the third-floor balcony of his flat while simultaneously slashing his buttocks with a Stanley knife. The punter had needed more than forty stitches on his behind and he, too, had left the hospital muttering words of dark revenge against the man who’d made it so difficult for him to sit down in comfort for months to come.