The Murder Exchange (5 page)

41
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.

42
Friday, sixteen days ago

Gallan

The murder of Shaun Matthews, thirty-one, of the
i'riory 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

43
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.

Nothing about any of this was odd, of course.
There are plenty of criminals out there who fail to
recognize or abide by even the most rudimentary
facets of capitalism, and insist on riding roughshod
over their customers and making enemies as
casually as old ladies make cups of tea. Sometimes,
inevitably, they end up dead, and usually the
people doing the killing are those they've wronged,
but in Matthews's case there appeared to be more
to matters than initially met the eye.

44
For a start, it had taken two days to conclude that
he'd been murdered. Matthews was what a tabloid
report might describe as a 'strapping' young man:
six feet two, sixteen stone of mainly muscle, very fit
(at least superficially) as a result of his daily visits
to the gym, and no history of medical problems.
Therefore when he was found dead in his bed one
morning by police officers who'd been called by a
colleague from the Arcadia who was concerned
that he hadn't turned up at work two evenings running,
it came as something of a shock to all
concerned. Not, perhaps, that he was dead but
more that there didn't appear to be any obvious
cause. There were no external injuries and no sign
of any kind of a struggle. Matthews was lying on
his back, with the covers half off him, and his head
tilted to one side. The expression on his face was
what the first officer on the scene had described as
restful. Not fearful, angry, or even shocked. Just
restful. His arms were stretched out to his sides
with the fists lightly clenched, and he was naked. It
looked like death by natural causes, or possibly
some sort of drugs overdose.

Matthews's body was taken away for a postmortem,
and this was when things got interesting.
For all his strength and build, in actual fact he
probably didn't have long to live. He had a serious
heart condition, thought to have been brought on
by an addiction to steroids. There were traces of
nandralone in his blood, as well as cocaine and
alcohol, and injection marks on his left arm.
Initially, the pathologist thought that he'd had a
heart attack, but unfortunately such a diagnosis

45
didn't explain the strange internal injuries
Matthews had suffered. There'd been extensive
internal haemorrhaging as well as a cloudy
swelling in the cells of a number of organs, particularly
the kidneys. Somewhat baffled, the
pathologist had carried out further tests. These
showed significant traces of an extremely potent
neurotoxin that would have resulted in these
injuries and were, almost certainly, the cause of
death. And this was the thing. The poisons department
at Guy's Hospital were called in and quickly
identified the neurotoxin as elipadae, or cobra,
venom.

Snake poison. Hardly the work of your average
lowlife thug, the type Shaun Matthews specialized
in upsetting. Which left what? The neighbours all
agreed that Matthews received a fair number of
visitors which, given his alleged trade, wasn't particularly
surprising, and it was felt that one of them
was the likely perpetrator. Where your average
small-time drugs buyer was likely to have got hold
of cobra venom, however, was anyone's guess.

The case was an odd one, and as far as I was concerned
odd equalled interesting, and interesting
equalled challenging, which these days can be
something of a rarity. Never underestimate the
stupidity of criminals. Most of them'll make every
effort imaginable to get caught. In the last murder
investigation I'd been involved in, ten weeks
earlier, the murderer, a seventeen-year-old car
jacker named Rudi, had stabbed an unfortunate
BMW owner to death when he'd had the gall to try
to prevent his car being taken. Rudi had been

46
arrested three days afterwards when a passing
patrol car had spotted the vehicle parked outside
his mum's flat. Further investigation had
unearthed Rudi's prints all over the interior, as well
as those of two of his mates. The knife he'd used,
still complete with somewhat telltale bloodstains,
had turned up under his bed hidden in a
PlayStation box. I reckon the paperwork took up
more time than the detective work. Sherlock
Holmes wouldn't even have bothered getting out of
bed, and who could blame him?

But this was different. A poisoning opened up all
sorts of possibilities. It suggested interesting
motives. It suggested intelligence, or at least
creativity, on the part of the poisoner, but also an
>::credible naivety. Poisoning was, in general, a
pretty foolish method of committing murder. It was
too easily traceable these days which meant its one
great advantage - that it could make the victim's
death look like an accident - no longer held true.
Having said this, however, the case was now six
days old (or at least the murder was) and had yet to
throw up any real clues of note, or anything that
pointed to one particular person.

It was a fine sunny morning, the fifth day of what
passes for an English heatwave, and DC Dave
Berrin was driving as we pulled into the walled car
park at the rear of the Arcadia nightclub, an imposing
post-war structure on the Upper Holloway
Road which dominated the corner on which it
stood, and parked in a bay marked STAFF ONLY.

Not surprisingly, the club was closed at this time
in the morning, but we were expected and walked

47
right in through the double doors at the front. The
interior was dark and spacious with tables facing
down on to the dance floor on three sides. At the
opposite end of the room was a long bar lined with
stools. A woman stood on the serving side of it
with a pen in her hand, looking down at some
papers in front of her. She appeared to be the only
person in the place. She looked up when she heard
our footfalls on the wooden floor.

'Sorry, we're closed,' she shouted out, going back
to her papers. 'We open at twelve for lunch.'

'We're police officers,' I said loudly, crossing the
dance floor with Benin in tow. 'Here to see Mr
Fowler.'

'He's not here/ she shouted back.

'He should be. He's expecting us. We've got an
eleven o'clock meeting.'

'Well, he's not here.'

I strode up the steps to the bar and stopped in
front of her. She carried on making notes on the
papers on the bar. 'Perhaps, then, you can tell us
where he is.'

She looked up with a faintly bored expression on
her face. 'I don't know. He should have been here
more than an hour ago.'

This one had an attitude, all right. I gave her a
quick once-over. Early thirties, slim with well
defined features, a nose that was maybe a little too
sharp, and a vaguely Mediterranean appearance,
particularly the olive-coloured eyes. She was
definitely attractive - very attractive - but in a hard,
don't-mess-with-me kind of way, with the cynical
confidence of someone who's not afraid of a fight.

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If we'd been Nazi stormtroopers, we wouldn't have
intimidated her. My ex-wife's all-time favourite
film is Gone with the Wind and I think that says
something about her (though I'm not quite sure
what). This girl looked like hers was Scarface.

'Is he likely to be at home?' I asked her.

'I told you, I don't know where he is.'

I sighed ostentatiously. 'But I presume you've got
j,,v home phone number?' She nodded. 'Well, I'd
appreciate it if you'd phone him then and tell him
we're here.'

'Look, I'm very busy.' She motioned to the notes
in front of her.

'So are we, Miss ... ?'

'Toms. Elaine Toms. I talked to a couple of your
ui.ics_rt> the other day.'

'Well, we're very busy too and it would be
greatly appreciated if you could phone Mr Fowler
and see if he's at home for us. It won't take a
minute.'

My tone was even but firm, the kind that says I'm
going to keep going until I get some co-operation. It
always works in the end, but you'd be amazed how
many people take a long time getting the message.

Without a word she turned and walked over to a
telephone pinned to the wall in the corner, and
dialled a number. I was a bit pissed off because I'd
been preparing for this interview for close to a day
now. We'd talked to Fowler once but only briefly to
ascertain his position within the nightclub, what his
relationship was with the deceased, and whether he
could throw any light on what had happened. He'd
come across as very keen to appear as helpful and

49
as friendly as possible, but hadn't actually
managed to tell us a great deal. Predictably, he'd
denied knowing anything about Matthews's
involvement in drug dealing. He'd claimed that as
Arcadia's owner he didn't tolerate drug use on the
premises but was aware that it did occur. 'I'm looking
at ways to combat it,' he'd said, and had talked
about installing cameras in the toilets. That's
where most of it goes on, I'm sure/ he'd added - a
fairly logical assumption. Neither Berrin nor I had
found the interview very helpful, mainly because
there was something not quite authentic about
Fowler's answers, and since then it had come
to light that he had a conviction for conspiracy to
supply Class A drugs in the late 1980s and that one
of his co-conspirators at the time had been Terry
Holtz, the late brother of a notorious local crime
figure. He'd also been done for driving under the
influence of cannabis a couple of years back, and
the club had been raided on two separate occasions by the Drugs Squad in an effort to take out suspected
dealers, the last time eighteen months ago,
although it had to be said that on neither occasion
was any contraband found. More promisingly,
there was also a rumour doing the rounds that,
although Fowler's name was on the deeds of the
club, he wasn't what you'd call the real owner. That
man, it was claimed, was one Stefan Holtz,
the same local crime figure whose brother Fowler
had once been involved with.

The feeling in the station's CID was that the
motive for this murder was almost certainly drug
related and that it might possibly be something to

50
do with a disagreement between Fowler and
Matthews. Since Fowler apparently owned the
club, and was almost certainly lying when he said
he didn't tolerate drugs on the premises, and
Matthews appeared to have been the chief dealer, it
was probably down to an argument about something
mundane like the split of profits. All this was
conjecture, of course, but DCI Knox, the head of the
investigation, specialized in conjecture. Me,
though, I wasn't so sure, not least because I didn't
think Fowler would have used an obscure poison to
rid himself of a troublesome business partner. But I
did think there were plenty of questions he could
provide an answer for, particularly regarding the
pncsible involvement of the Holtzes, and I was
keen to hear them.