Simon Kernick - The Crime Trade

‘What the hell’s happening?’ I asked.

From out of the melee stepped DCI George Woodham, who was in temporary charge of the case in Flanagan’s absence. A big man with an immense walrus moustache, he was wearing a grin that spanned the moustache’s entire length as he put an arm through the sleeve of his raincoat. ‘We were just coming down to get you both,’ he said. ‘The bloke you’re talking to definitely isn’t our man. Your girl Tina’s done a good job. She’s located the one we’re after. He owns a Megane, was in possession of a credit card used to buy one of those suits, and apparently matches the description of the killer perfectly.’

I felt a real surge of pride. Don’t ever doubt Tina Boyd. ‘It’s not the accountant she went to see, is it?’ I asked.

‘No, it’s the guy the accountant lent the card to while he was away. Someone called Trevor Murk. Tina’s on her way over to his place now. She’s going to wait for us there.’

Tina turned her car into Milford Avenue, a quiet road of reasonable-sized one- and two-storey semi-detached houses a few hundred yards west of Barnet High Street. It was here that Bernard Stanbury and Trevor Murk lived, four doors away from each other. According to Stanbury, Murk was a friendly young man who didn’t appear to work for a living but was never short of money, and could often be found drinking in the Red Lion public house, not far from where they both lived. Stanbury had told Tina that he occasionally popped into the Red Lion for a pint on the way home after work on a Thursday and Friday night, and that was how the two had got to know each other.

One night the previous summer they’d got talking, and somehow Stanbury had opened up more than usual, and had let on that he was heavily in debt. Murk had told him not to worry. ‘It’s all about playing the system,’ he’d explained. ‘There’s always plenty of money to be had, it’s just knowing how to coax it out.’ He’d then told the accountant about a scam he had going whereby he would get an acquaintance to rent him one or more of his credit cards which he would then use up to the maximum before giving the nod to the acquaintance, who would then report it or them stolen. Nobody, except the big bad credit companies, lost out. Stanbury had told Murk about a long weekend he was taking with the family, and it was arranged that Murk would have use of one of his cards for the duration for a fee of?300.

Murk, it seemed, had made merry with the card, spending more than three grand on it, and in the process making the mistake that would go a long way towards putting him in the frame for murder.

Tina slowed up as she passed Stanbury’s house. At the same time, the front door four houses down opened and a good-looking guy in his late twenties with wavy black hair stepped out, carrying a Nike holdall in his hand.

She carried on driving, keeping an eye on him in her rearview mirror as she looked for somewhere to pull up. There was a space to her left about thirty yards further up the road and she reversed into it, only just managing to get in. She looked in her mirror again but Murk had disappeared temporarily from sight.

Then she saw him on the other side of the road, throwing the holdall into his Renault Megane before getting inside, and she experienced a burst of adrenalin. This was what it was all about. The hours, the days, of mundane statement-taking and hunting for the tiniest clues had finally been rewarded. Tina was proud of herself at that moment, and rightly so. It was her persistence that was going to nail a man who’d killed at least three times, and on each occasion in cold blood. John was going to have to buy her a magnum of champagne now. For the moment, though, it was important to make sure she didn’t let Murk out of her sight, or get rid of whatever it was that was in the bag.

He started the engine and pulled into the road, and Tina bowed down in her seat, making out that she was looking for something in her handbag. As he passed, she counted to three, then pulled out after him, pressing redial on the mobile and telling the controller at the other end that the suspect was on the move.

Neil Vamen knew that many people considered him a violent, murderous criminal of the worst kind, but it wasn’t how he saw himself. He was a businessman, an entrepreneur; a man in pursuit of the type of financial rewards and peer respect that plenty of other people pursue every day. Yet he was the one being punished, simply for following a well-worn path. Yes, he’d used violent methods in his business dealings, and a good many people had had their lives cut short on his orders, but it was a hard world out there, and in his line of business — the supply of those goods and services the ruling powers had decreed the populace couldn’t have — violence was a necessary prerequisite for getting the job done. Neil Vamen didn’t believe that any of the people he’d had executed in the course of his long and colourful career had been wholly innocent. Some, of course, had been less guilty than others, but one way or another all had made their livings in the same nefarious underworld he operated in, and therefore had to be prepared to face the consequences.

It wasn’t even as if, by putting him behind bars, the ruling powers — those faceless bastards who made and enforced the laws — actually achieved their goal. If anything, they made the situation worse. Did crime in his manor suddenly stop the day they arrested him and broke up his powerbase? Of course it didn’t. It just meant that a dozen other young bucks — more violent because they had something to prove, and less time to prove it in — came looking for the scraps. And none, it seemed, was more violent than Nicholas Tyndall. Vamen knew Tyndall — in passing, anyway. They’d met several times when there’d been talk of a business deal involving Vamen supplying Tyndall with coke, but nothing had ever come of it. Vamen hadn’t liked him, hadn’t trusted the bastard, although even he was impressed by the way he’d moved in so quickly after the break-up of the Holtzes and his own arrest, and how quickly he’d come to dominate the manor.

In fact, Tyndall could have probably enjoyed a reasonably successful criminal career if it hadn’t been for one thing: he was up against the best. Neil Vamen might be in prison, cooped up in a cramped cell deep in the maximum security of Parkhurst, but he still knew how to pull the strings and influence events many thought beyond his control. Already Nicholas Tyndall was paying the price for trying to step into a bigger man’s shoes. Soon enough he was going to have the Colombians after him for fucking up their deal. And that was going to be the least of his worries.

As Vamen sat there now, enjoying a Montecristo cigar and a cup of Nicaraguan coffee while peering through the cell window into the morning’s spring sunshine, he felt freedom beckoning. The case against him was weak. It rested on one man. One man who so far had avoided the long reach of Vamen’s revenge, who’d escaped the attempts on his life carried out in Belmarsh, but who was now about to pay the price for attempting to save his own skin at the expense of others.

Jack Merriweather had hours to live, no more than that. Vamen wouldn’t regret his passing. They’d known each other a long time, but disloyalty was a crime more heinous than any other. Grassing to the coppers, giving evidence on their behalf. . there could only be one punishment. And with Merriweather gone, the case would collapse and he’d be released, his reputation cemented for ever as the man who could do anything.

He’d have to be careful, of course; couldn’t get too cocky. The powers-that-be would want him now, and want him badly. He’d be public enemy number one. But it didn’t matter. He was too clever for them. Always had been. And he remembered perfectly the old adage: let them hate me, as long as they fear me.