The Murder Exchange (14 page)

'You don't think they followed you here, do
you?'

He shook his head. 'No, I was careful. Anyway, at
the moment you're probably not a big enough fish
to waste that many resources on. I mean, there's
still no proof you've actually done anything other
than deck a couple of coppers.'

'Fowler bled over the back seat when he died.

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Not much, and I gave it a fair old scrub afterwards,
but one of the coppers spotted the stain when they
stopped me. I don't know if they can trace it back to
Fowler or not. What do you think?'

He pondered that one for a few moments. 'I
doubt it. If they don't know who Fowler is and
they haven't got a blood sample of his, then I would
have thought you're in the clear.'

I took another drink from my beer. It was going
down well. 'What a fuck-up/ I said, shaking my
head. 'So did you get anything on that bastard Tony? Anything that might explain what the fuck
he thought he was doing?'

'I talked to a few people, other people he'd been
doing work with, but no-one seems to have anything
bad on him. He did some guarding work for
Barry Unwin, looking after wealthy Arabs, and he
even had a stint through Barry as a minder for Geri
Halliwell, and everyone reckoned he did a fine job.
And he'd been with Barry a while, too. More than
two years.'

'Well, something happened. Somewhere down the
line he met someone who was willing to pay him big
money to get involved in some very nasty shit.'

Joe seemed to notice his drink for the first time.
He picked it lip and took a healthy swig. 'How
about you? What did you get?'

I told him what Elaine had told me.

Joe rolled his eyes at the mention of the Holtzes.
'Fucking hell, Max, that's all we need. Let's make
sure we stay well clear of it if it's anything to
do with them. I don't want to get into a confrontation
with people like that.'

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I knew he was right, and if a man like him was
saying it, then it was best to listen. But the thought
of not doing something to retaliate still pissed me

off.

'Joe, no offence, but I almost got my head blown
off the other night. If I hadn't been carrying, I'd
probably be at the bottom of the Thames now. It's
sort of affected my viewpoint on all this. We also
iujt Eric, and no way did he deserve to go like that.'

'I know he didn't, and apart from anything else
he's going to be difficult to replace. And his ex
missus called in this morning.'

'Shit.'

'Yeah, my sentiments exactly. He was supposed
Jo be looking after two of their grandkids today,
only he hadn't turned up. So she phones, asking me
if we've seen him. Luckily she didn't know he was
working for us Thursday. I said we hadn't clapped
eyes on him since last week.'

'How did she sound?'

'Worried. She said it was totally out of character
for him not to turn up, especially for his grandkids.'

'It would have been. He was always our most
reliable bloke. I can't remember him ever missing a
day. Did she sound like she was going to call,in the
law?'

'Not yet, but she will do eventually, no question.
And that's going to pose a problem because it'll
give them a chance to make a link with you. We've
just got to hope they don't take it too seriously. I
mean, it's not like a kid going missing. This is a
sixteen-stone ex-soldier in his fifties. They may
just conclude he's fucked off on some military

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adventure, but the problem is, it's all a little bit
coincidental/

I had to agree with him on that one.

'Anyway, the best thing we can do is forget about
everything that's happened and put it down to
experience.'

'It doesn't seem right, letting them get away with

it-'

'This was a professional operation, Max. Three
people dead, but no peep from the press, no sign of
any bodies. No nothing. It's like it never happened. fl
Which is exactly the Holtzes' style. Do you remember
that jeweller out of Hatton Garden, Jon
Kalinski, the one who did a runner with about a
quarter of a million in diamonds? About three years
ago?'

Teah, I remember reading something about it.'
'Well, I heard he didn't do a runner at all. I heard f
it was the Holtzes who had a role in that particular |
disappearance. Apparently he owed Krys Holtz,
Stefan's boy, a lot of money, which was part of some
scam they were both involved in, and Krys was
worried they weren't going to get much of it back.
So he paid one of Kalinski's girlfriends to phone
him up and invite him round to her pad in
Hampstead. When he turned up, Krys and a few of
his associates were waiting for him. They took the
keys to his safe, found out where every penny he'd
stashed was, then killed him. And the girlfriend.
Dismembered them both in the bath tub, cleaned
everything up so there was no trace they'd even
been there, then took the bits out in suitcases in the
middle of the night. Then they went down to

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Kalinski's place of business and cleaned him out of
everything he owned, and everything he didn't. Do
you know how they got rid of the bits of the
corpses?'

'I'm surprised you do.'

'Well, it might be bullshit, I don't know, but it's
got a ring of truth to it.'

'Go on.'

'You ever wonder where all those thousands of
maggots you get in fishbait come from?'

'No. I can safely say it's never crossed my mind
once.'

'Well, they come from maggot farms, places where
they breed millions of the bastards in these big stink
ii;g rooms. One of the Holtz businesses is a maggot
farm out in Essex. They chucked the body parts in
there and then let the maggots eat them down to the
bones. Then they ground down what was left into
dust, and scattered it to the four winds. And that was
that. No trace. Gone.'

'If they're so secretive, how come you heard
about it?'

'I heard it from a bloke who used to know people
attached to them. A while back. I never thought
about it too much at the time, not until now.'

'And this bloke, isn't it possible to ask him what
all this stuff with Fowler's about?'

Joe managed a humourless smile. 'Not really. The
bloke was Tony.'

'Great.'

The point is, let's just leave it.'

'Don't worry. I think you've convinced me.'

'You're going to need to get out of town for a bit,

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Max. Probably a couple of months at least. Until
everything dies down.' He reached into the pocket
of his jeans and produced two thick rolls of notes,
which he put down on the table. There's six grand
there. The money from the job the other night. Use
it to rent a place down by the coast or something.'
'I can't take it all, Joe. Three grand of it's yours.'
'And half of Tiger Solutions is yours. Forget it.
It's the least I can do. Let's see how things go and
then, if you need any more, I'll try and pull some
out of the business somehow.'

'Shit, Joe, I don't know what to say.' I leant forward
and picked up the money. "Thanks, mate.
Thanks a lot.'

That's what friends are for, Max. Remember it.'
And I did remember it. Would always remember
it. Me and Joe went back a long, long way. We were
like that, you know. We'd been in the paras together
and, even though Joe had been an officer while I'd
never risen above the level of colour sergeant, we'd
always been mates in a way that rarely travels
across the ranks of the British army. I owed him
now - but then, to be honest with you, I'd always
owed him. You see, a long time back I'd done something
to him that to this day he didn't even know
about, but which meant that one way or another I
was always in his debt.

Joe was two years older than me, and towards
the end of his military career he got married to a
German girl he'd met while we were stationed out
there. Elsa, her name was; twenty-one, far too
good-looking, and with an attitude to sex that
you'd have to say was slap bang on the liberal end

130
of liberal. Why she got married, I'll never know. She
just wasn't cut out for making do with a one-dickandtwo-ball
escort. But the problem with Joe was
the same problem you get with a lot of blokes: he
was just too smitten to notice. I'd heard stories
about her knocking around with other squaddies
all through the engagement, but decided it was best
to keep quiet about it. In the end, it was none of my
business. Joe had made his choice and that was
that. I know that might sound a bit harsh, but in my
experience no-one ever thanks the bearer of bad
news, especially when the bad news is about his
missus and her shenanigans.

Then, a few weeks after the wedding, I ran into
her in a local bar. She was on her own as well,
which was unusual for her. She was quite a looker,
was Elsa. We got talking and she told me
that she and Joe had had an argument. I didn't
mean for anything to happen, you know, but I
offered to walk her home and one thing just led to
another. We did it in a field full of bored-looking
sheep (twice as well) and I knew I should have
just left it at that and hoped nothing was ever said,
but the thing was, Elsa had a way about her that
could really reel a man in. She was addictive,
that was the best way to describe her. We started to
see each other regularly behind Joe's back, doing it
whenever and wherever, including in their marital
bed, which I know was a terrible liberty. I felt guilty
about it, I really did, and jealous, too, because I
knew I wasn't the only one of her lovers. But I just
couldn't stop myself. That's my only defence, if you
can call it that. I just couldn't help myself.

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Then one day, no more than a couple of months
after that fateful night in the sheep field, Elsa's
partly clothed body was discovered in the grounds
of a local high school. Her head had been smashed
to a pulp with a blunt instrument. There was
a police investigation that initially focused on
the army base and its occupants, particularly the
husband, but quickly spread into the local community
as other lovers came out of the woodwork.
After only three days, an arrest was made. A
nineteen-year-old local bloke, Dietrich Fenzer, had
been seen arguing with her on the night she'd died, ^
not far from where the body was found, and it was \ known that he was one of her lovers. He also had 1
two prior convictions for crimes of violence. A
search of his home revealed the murder weapon, a
small lead-filled cosh, and he was promptly ^ charged. Six months later he was convicted and
sentenced to twenty years in prison, which I'd
always thought was a bit lenient, especially as he'd
probably be out in ten.

The whole thing was extremely hard on Joe, as you
can imagine, but he held up well considering the
humiliation of having your new wife's numerous
affairs aired in public. Thankfully for me, the police
never did dig deep enough to find out about our
little fling, so my friendship with him remained
intact. But the reality was that it was the end of Joe's
army career. He felt that he couldn't continue to
command the respect of his men after what had
happened, and he was probably right, especially
since half of them had shagged her. Within a few
months he'd left the military for good to begin a

132
new career as a security consultant, or, more
accurately in those early days, a gun for hire. For
me, though, the guilt never completely disappeared,
and from then on I always felt that I had
a lot to do to make it up to Joe for betraying him in
such an underhand way. And here he was doing all
this for me. It fair choked me up, to tell you the
truth.

'Are you all right, Max?'

I nodded. 'Yeah, yeah. Just dreaming, that's all.
All this humidity's sending me into a trance.' I
pulled from my pocket a pack of cigarettes Elaine
had bought me that morning.

Joe gave me a dirty look. He was like that, always
v.-anting to make sure I stayed on the straight and
narrow. 'When did you get back on them?' he
asked, not worrying, however, about taking one off
me.

'Well, getting shot at by one of my best
employees started to break my resolve, but then,
after spending most of yesterday running away
from various members of the local law enforcement,
I thought, fuck it, lung cancer's the least of
my worries.'

We both laughed and drained our beers. 'Are you
in a hurry/ I asked him, 'or have you got time for
another one?' It was rare these days that we sat and
socialized, and now I had the feeling that we might
not get the chance for a long time to come. It
seemed important to make the best of things.

He nodded. 'Yeah, course I've got time.'

So I poured the other two beers and we sat back
and smoked and talked about the old days: people

133
r

*
we'd known, experiences we'd shared, places we'd II

served. Only once did things go quiet, when Joe %

mentioned Elsa and his eyes clouded over as he *

thought back to what could have been. And I felt & [

guilty again and hurried on to the next subject, »

maybe just a little bit too quickly. ||

It was early evening and Elaine had yet to reappear
by the time Joe said he had to go, and there was
something a bit gloomy about the formal handshake

we shared. As if we both knew that for some reason * '

nothing between us was ever going to be the same $. i

again. ~

134
Sunday, fourteen days ago

Gallan

The station was quiet that morning. The busiest
night of the week had come and gone and the cells
were slowly being emptied of the drunks, the
brawlers, the low-level dealers and anyone else
unlucky enough to have had their collar felt. It was
another glorious day. The weather woman on
the radio had announced chirpily that it was the
seventh in a row with more than ten hours of
sunshine. Temperatures expected to touch twenty
nine degrees Celsius, eighty-four by the old
measurement. No-one would be working who
didn't have to, even though crime often went up in
heatwaves. Tempers got more frayed, particularly
in an overcrowded city; domestic burglary
increased as people left their windows open at
night. So, too, did rapes, for exactly the same
reason. But who wanted to catch criminals on a hot
August Sunday?