Simon Kernick - The Murder Exchange

‘Any sign of the bodies? Franks and the others?’

‘We’re still searching that maggot farm but I’m not optimistic. The maggots will have eaten all the flesh and apparently the bones were ground down afterwards. It seems they’ve done it with a few people.’

‘I bet they have. What about the knife in the Robert Jones murder?’ Merriweather had told us that Joe Riggs had been at the Fowler murder scene that night, and had retrieved the knife and the tape from Fowler’s briefcase while the night-club owner was being murdered. He had then weighed down the objects in a strongbox, and chucked them in the Thames.

‘Nothing yet, but we’re still looking.’

‘I think that’s my only regret in all this,’ I said, ‘that we didn’t get a chance to bring either Franks or Matthews to trial for the killing.’

‘In a way it’s better this way, isn’t it? There wasn’t a huge amount of evidence against them. They could easily have got off, and then the family would have been devastated. At least now they know that the people who took their son away have paid a pretty heavy price.’

I wasn’t so sure. All we had was Merriweather’s word for that. Maybe he’d been more heavily involved than he’d let on, which would have explained why he’d co-operated so quickly when it had become obvious to him that the police were on the scent. If so, he was going to get off scot-free.

Malik asked me if I’d kept the family informed of what had been going on. ‘I have as much as possible. I think they realize now that no one’s ever going to go to prison for the murder but, like you say, maybe it’s better this way.’ Not that I really believed it.

‘I’m going to have to buy you lunch sometime soon,’ said Malik. ‘When things have settled a bit. I’ll give you a call, OK?’

‘Sure,’ I said, doubting if I’d be eating a slap-up meal on SO7 for a while yet. ‘That’d be nice.’

We said our goodbyes, and I walked into the hospital entrance.

Iversson

I was sitting up in bed in my hospital room and thinking about how I was going to get out of this situation. It didn’t look good. They had two armed coppers guarding me in shifts round the clock. I was obviously a real VIP. Very Important Prisoner, that is. One thing was for sure, I wasn’t going to be fighting my way out. Not only was I absolutely fucking exhausted, I also had a minor blood infection, and the wound in my shoulder was making the use of my right arm next to impossible. I was just going to have to front it and hope for the best. I’d thrown the Glock into a wheelie bin in Clerkenwell while I was on the way back to Elaine’s apartment on that final, fateful day when the bitch had finally showed her true colours, so at least there was no way that could be used against me. Most of my co-conspirators were dead, and if Elaine and whoever the gunman with her was didn’t break (and I had no reason to think they would), I might just be able to scrape through unscathed. I’d been taught anti-interrogation techniques back in my army days so I was reasonably confident I could hold my own, even in my weakened state. As the days had passed and my wounds had slowly healed, so my pecker — battered so badly (quite literally) by my experience with Elaine, and Joe’s betrayal — was finally going back up again. I will tell you something about me: I am nothing if not resilient.

I’d almost escaped, too, even after all the shit those bastards had put me through. While Gallan had been occupied by Elaine and the bloke with her, I’d grabbed the holdall with the money, opened up the window, and chucked it onto the roof of a parked Audi before jumping out myself and landing arse-first on the holdall and the roof. Unfortunately, in my haste, and due to my somewhat disorientated state, I’d neglected to put any clothes on and, though I’d made a manful bid for freedom, limping naked along the street with near enough half a million quid on my back, I was always going to look a little bit too conspicuous to be able to melt, commando-like, into my surroundings. I did manage about two hundred yards, though, with half a dozen coppers chasing me Benny Hill-style on foot, before a vicar, of all fucking people, who was cycling to his morning church service, had leapt from his environmentally friendly transport and rugby-tackled me from behind. That was it, then. I’d had enough. With even men of the cloth against me, I knew it was the end of the road.

But since then I’ve perked up. You know what they say: it ain’t over till it’s over. Believe it.

I leant over and picked up the book I was reading: How to Get Ahead in Business . You see, I was thinking of opening my own survival school, and after all that had happened there weren’t going to be many people better placed to teach survival than me. It was going to have to be from scratch, of course, now that the ransom money from the Holtz job had been lifted by the forces of law and order, but I knew it could be done.

There was a knock on the door and I looked up. It was Gallan again, looking quite spruced up by his standards, a smile on his face.

I tell you, I didn’t trust that bastard one inch.

Gallan

‘Hello, Max,’ I said, entering the room. I stopped at the end of the bed. ‘The doctors say you’re healing fast. Should be out of here in a few days.’

‘That’s right, and when I do, I don’t want you lot on my back. I’ve co-operated as much as possible and I’m not saying anything else, apart from I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about with all this kidnapping and killing lark. Is that clear?’

I smiled, used to Iversson’s clumsy attempts at putting me in my place. ‘Clear as a bell.’

‘Because I’ve got bigger fish to fry now.’ He showed me the book he was reading. How to Get Ahead in Business. Somehow I didn’t think Richard Branson would be quaking in his boots. ‘I’ve always been legit, and that’s how I intend to stay. I’ve held up my hands to that assault on those coppers who stopped me, but I was under duress at the time. So, I’m hoping to get bail, and to start again.’

‘I don’t think that’s going to happen, Max.’

Iversson’s expression hardened. It wasn’t a pretty sight. ‘Why the fuck not? I haven’t done anything. If it’s about that money, I had nothing-’

I held up my hand to quieten him. ‘It’s nothing to do with the money you were carrying.’ Looking surprised, he stopped speaking. ‘Max Iversson, I’m here to inform you that you are under arrest at the request of the German federal authorities who wish to question you with regard to the murder on the twenty-sixth of February 1993 of Elsa Kirsten Danziger.’

Iversson looked at me in utter disbelief, then seemed to slump in the bed. ‘I don’t believe this. You’ll be blaming me for John F. fucking Kennedy next.’

He really looked put out, and I might even have been tempted to believe him if I hadn’t already heard that the sample of DNA taken from him in the hospital a week earlier had been confirmed as matching that of the killer. He was one of the better liars I’d come across.

I turned slowly and walked away, thinking it was ironic that we would probably never solve the Matthews case, yet its investigation had almost single-handedly provided the clues that had successfully concluded so many others. As I thought about Neil Vamen languishing in a cell of his own design, it also proved my point that crime might have been a viable short-term business opportunity, but as a long-term career it was always the wrong move. And as the technological aids open to the police become more and more advanced, so even the crimes of the short-timers will come back to haunt them. Be sure your past will always find you out, as a preacher might say.