Simon Kernick - The Murder Exchange

‘Really?’ I said, and Merriweather immediately knew he’d made a mistake. You could see it in his eyes. ‘Two cheques from Dagmar Holdings totalling a grand total of nine thousand three hundred and twenty pounds were paid into a bank account belonging to your wife, one in February, another in June. You were also at the home of the company secretary of Dagmar Holdings when we arrested you.’

‘With an unlicensed firearm,’ added Knox for good measure.

‘As your representative, Jack, I advise you to make no further comment at this time.’

‘No comment,’ said Merriweather.

‘One way or another someone’s going down for this child murder, Jack,’ said Knox. ‘We’re not going to rest until we find the person responsible.’

‘And for some reason, you seem to be lying a lot during the course of this interview.’

‘And you’re connected very strongly to the house where we believe he died.’

‘Where’s Tony Franks, Jack?’

‘No comment.’

‘Did he kill Robert Jones, or did you?’

‘What did you kill him for, Jack? Did he see something he shouldn’t have done?’

‘No comment. I told you! No fucking comment!’ He turned to the brief. ‘Come on, Melvyn, tell ’em I’m not answering any more fucking questions about stuff I don’t know nothing about.’

‘You heard my client,’ said Carroll. ‘He’s saying nothing further at this time.’

Knox and I looked at each other and nodded. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘We’ll return you to your cells while we continue our enquiries. Before we finish, though, there’s one thing I’d also like to show you.’ I picked up another evidence bag, again seemingly empty. ‘It’s one of Robert Jones’s hairs, also found at Runmayne Avenue. Amazing what you can discover when you look hard enough, isn’t it?’

‘Not a very good clean-up job, was it?’ said Knox with a sympathetic smile.

Merriweather tried to stare us both down, tried to appear calm and aloof in the face of our threats, but it wasn’t working. A single bead of sweat ran down the middle of his forehead and onto the bridge of his broken nose. He was immediately aware of it, and knew we could see it. Knew we knew.

‘Interview terminated at twelve forty-five p.m.,’ I said, and switched off the tape. I stood up and smiled at Merriweather. ‘We’ll talk again soon,’ I told him.

When the two of us were safely ensconced in Knox’s office, along with Berrin, we discussed what we’d gathered from the interview.

‘It’s still tenuous, John. If he holds out, we’re in trouble. He’s consistently denying his involvement with the case, and the witness statements and that little bit of forensics are hardly enough to pin him for the murder. At the moment, all he’s down for is possession of an illegal firearm, which he’s denying. He says it belonged to Iversson. If it carries on like this, he could easily get bail. Is there no way we can get Iversson to talk and let us know what was happening there?’

Iversson had been captured after a short but dramatic chase through the streets of Clerkenwell, but he wasn’t co-operating either.

I sighed. ‘He’s even more of a no-comment merchant than Merriweather. Iversson’s linked with the massacre at the farm and the kidnapping of Krys Holtz, so I think he figures he’s got nothing to gain by talking, and nothing to lose by staying silent.’

‘What about Toms? Can’t we prise anything out of her?’

I shook my head. ‘She knows a lot more than she’s letting on but she’s not stupid. Her story’s that she was with Merriweather, whom she knows vaguely, when Iversson turned up and tried to rape her. He beat up Merriweather but somehow she managed to get his gun off him and shoot him in the shoulder. She claims it was self-defence and it’s a story she’s sticking by. Therefore, in the absence of Franks, who we can’t find anywhere, our best bet’s got to be Merriweather. He knows what’s going on, I’m sure of it, and he’s got the most to lose by not co-operating.’

‘But will he crack?’

‘No one wants to be labelled a child killer,’ I said, ‘especially a macho gangster type like him, and I don’t think he’s as much of a hardman as he likes to make out. Yes, in my opinion, he’ll crack.’

Ten minutes later, while we were still talking, the phone on Knox’s desk rang. He picked it up, listened for twenty seconds, smiled, and told the caller we’d be right down. He looked at me with the sort of expression my wife’s lover would pull if he’d just stumbled on a story that would put the prime minister out of a job. ‘It looks like you’re right, John,’ he said, and I think there might even have been some admiration in his voice. ‘He wants to talk to us.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Better than good. He wants to do it without his brief present.’

‘First things first. I want immunity.’

‘You haven’t told us anything yet, Jack,’ said Knox, lighting his cigarette for him.

‘I’ve got stuff, all right?’ he said, looking at us both in turn. ‘Stuff that’ll put people away, but if I help, I don’t want to fucking go down. I’m going to need the works. Immunity, new identity. All that shit. Understand?’

‘If what you tell us is the truth,’ said Knox, ‘and it’s a big if, and if you’re prepared to testify, then obviously special arrangements will be put in place for you. But no decision’s going to be made on that until we hear what you have to say.’

There was a long silence while Merriweather thought about what had just been said. ‘You know, I’ve never done nothing like this before,’ he said eventually. ‘I’m no grass, I’ll tell you that now. If it hadn’t been for that fucking kid — that’s when it all went wrong.’

‘What happened?’ I asked, unsure whether I felt excited or depressed that we were so close to the truth.

‘I wasn’t even there at the time, and that’s a fucking promise. I had nothing to do with it. I’d never kill a kid. I mean, I’ve got three of my own, haven’t I? I’m no fucking nonce.’

‘Let’s start at the beginning, Jack,’ said Knox. ‘What was the house being used for?’

He took a drag on his cigarette, then answered without looking at us. ‘Smuggling. A lot of the smack from eastern Europe went through that gaff. It used to get dropped by the couriers at sites in Kent and then Franks and whoever else he was using would go and pick it up and bring it back to the place for storage. We always reckoned it was the perfect cover because it wasn’t the sort of place you’d expect to find gear. You know, it was a nice posh area.’

‘And the gear was paid for by Stefan Holtz, right?’ I said. ‘It was his stuff?’

‘It belonged to the organization, yeah.’

‘So what’s this got to do with Robert Jones?’

‘Well, it wasn’t just smack that was being smuggled. You see, Tony Franks, me and him both report to Neil Vamen, and there was other sidelines Neil had going that the boss, Stefan, didn’t know about, because he wouldn’t have approved.’

‘What were they?’

‘Guns, that was the main one. And not just any guns either. All sorts. Grenade launchers, AK-47s, even anti-fucking-tank missiles. You see, Tony had been a mercenary or something over there, and he got us involved with the drug-smuggling routes through Bosnia. It was his idea to do guns because we had the route set up and the place was chock-a-block with firearms. Well, Stefan never liked that idea, he didn’t think we should be putting weapons in the hands of people who could use them against us, but Neil had contacts. Not just here but in Ireland, and he reckoned he could make a serious packet out of it, and there was no need to let the boss know, so that’s what we did.