up with the temporaries who’ve been there the last six months, although that could be quite a few. They’re a busy club. I’ll leave you two to do that. Try to get to talk to them all by Monday p.m. at the latest. We need to tie up all the loose ends on this.’
‘And these other doormen haven’t told us anything useful?’
‘No. They all knew Shaun Matthews to varying degrees but none said they’d ever seen him selling drugs of any description and, of course, they all denied selling any themselves. When confronted by witness statements testifying to his extra-curricular activities, they all expressed varying degrees of surprise.’
‘Perhaps we should offer some sort of reward,’ I suggested. ‘That might persuade them to give us some information we could use.’
‘It’s a possibility if we still don’t get anywhere, but budgets are tight and I’m not sure I’d feel right doling out much-needed money to solve the murder of a violent drug dealer.’ Once again, I caught Berrin nodding.
‘It might get us a result.’
‘We’ll have to see. We’ve got pretty much our whole allocation resting on the Robert Jones case. If we have to pay out on that then we’re not going to be able to offer a reward on anything until 2010.’
I baulked at the mention of Robert Jones. Always did. It was one of the few cases that had truly disturbed me in all my time in the Met. Robert was a thirteen-year-old schoolboy who’d disappeared while doing his morning paper round six months earlier. His body had been found a few days afterwards buried in a shallow grave in woodland out in Essex. He’d been stabbed three times in the chest and his clothing had been tampered with, indicating some sort of sexual assault. I’d had to break the news of the discovery to the parents, along with the WPC who’d been their liaison officer. They’d been a pleasant, ordinary middle-class couple who’d only let Robert do the round because he’d been keen to save up enough money to buy a new bike. I’d watched, unable to do anything to help, as they’d crumbled in front of me, while the WPC had comforted his little sister when she’d appeared in the doorway, too young to understand what was going on. Robert had been their only son, his family’s pride and joy. What had got me the most was the total and utter injustice of it all. A young boy from a good home, never been in trouble — unlike so many of the little bastards we had to deal with — seeking to better himself, only to be struck down in the space of a few moments by someone who probably had no idea of the terrible damage he was inflicting. It was such a waste and, six months on, we were no nearer bringing the killer to justice, even though a reward of twenty-five thousand pounds had been offered for information leading to a conviction: fifteen thousand from the police and ten thousand from a local businessman. Unlike Robert Jones, his killer had had all the luck.
‘What about the poisoning angle?’ I asked. ‘Any more news on that?’
Knox furrowed his brow into deep, craggy lines. ‘Well, it’s coming along,’ he said without a huge amount of conviction. ‘WDC Boyd’s been liaising with the poisons department at Guy’s and doctors from the Home Office about this substance and its possible source, as you know, but I’m not sure how much help it is. I mean, it’s not as if you can pop into the pharmacy, pick some of this stuff up, and sign the Poisons Register. It’s cobra venom, for God’s sake.’
‘So there’s no place you could get it in this country?’
Knox shook his head. ‘Not officially, no. As far as anyone seems to know, the only place you can find it is in the mouth, or whatever, of the cobra. And as far as I’m aware, none of them lives within five thousand miles of here. You’ll have to talk to Boyd about all that, though. She’s now our resident toxins expert. The thing is, I don’t know how much help either she or anyone else can be. We haven’t got a clue where you actually get it from in a usable format, where this particular batch may have originated, or anything like that. All we know is that somehow someone came into possession of enough of the stuff to kill three people, and somehow got the opportunity to inject the whole lot into the left arm of a sixteen-stone bouncer without him noticing, or getting any sort of opportunity to seek medical help.’
DC Berrin exhaled slowly and thoughtfully. ‘It’s a mystery,’ he said. A statement of the obvious if ever there was one, but which pretty much summed things up.
Iversson
The lunchtime traffic was heavy and I was paranoid. Not surprising when you’re driving at speeds a two- legged dog could muster in a car that looks like it’s been used in an Arnie Schwarzenegger film, even down to the blood-stains on the back seat, and you know that most of the bullets wedged in the exterior were meant for you. But what choice did I have? The Range Rover was registered in my name and I needed to stash it somewhere where it was not going to receive undue attention. I was therefore on my way now to the abode of one Gary Tyler, a bloke who did occasional work for us, and who had the invaluable asset of a lock-up over in Silvertown that I could use for storage purposes until I worked out what to do. I looked at my watch. It was five to one. What a twenty- four hours.
There’d been no news on the shootings the previous night. Not a dickie bird. Whoever had organized our little warehouse reception — and some bastard most definitely had — was as efficient as he was ruthless. Three bodies left behind in an industrial estate in the heart of north London amid a load of gunfire, and not a peep about it in the press or on the TV, and I’d checked enough times that day. When I’d spoken to my partner Joe Riggs on the blower earlier, he’d been shocked (although not half as shocked as I’d been when one of our most reliable employees had started taking potshots at me), and it was only when he’d asked me whether I’d managed to pick up the money in advance that I knew the tight bastard was all right. In the end, we’d decided not to say anything about Eric’s death. It was unfair to the family, no one was denying that, and it was a decision that could easily come back to haunt us, but what was the alternative? At least by keeping stum, we’d hopefully avoid a lot of unwanted attention.
But it was Tony’s role in the whole thing we found the hardest to understand. I suppose we both thought we’d known him pretty well. He didn’t work for us so much these days, less and less over the past couple of years, but that didn’t mean a thing. He was still someone we thought we could depend on, and right up until the previous night he’d never let us down once. So what had made him suddenly turn a gun on me and Eric, as well as a man he’d never even met before, just like that? This was the big question.
We’d left it that I would see what I could dig up on Fowler while Joe would do the same with Tony, and we’d meet up the following day. In the meantime, I needed to be rid of this motor, and Fowler’s briefcase, which was still on the front seat.
The lights up ahead turned red and I came to a halt in the nearside lane, the third car back. In front of me was a black BMW with tinted windows blasting out a thumping bass so powerful that it was making me shake in my seat. When I’d been a kid, punk had been the big thing, and my mum had constantly droned on about how the music sounded terrible and you couldn’t understand a word the singers were shouting, and I’d thought what the fuck did she know? Now I knew it was a generational thing. This stuff, this garage shite that had suddenly become all the rage, it was a pile of dung, to be honest with you. There weren’t even any tunes as such, just some bloke bragging about how hard he was, and how much the ladies rated him. Kids these days — they’ve got no taste.
I saw the flashing lights in the rear-view mirror and cursed, because I knew straight away that I was trapped. The lane next to me was full of traffic and the lights were still red. The cop car put its hazards on and two uniforms got out, donning their caps. I was just going to have to front it.
They came round either side of the Range Rover and the one nearest me tapped on the driver’s-side window.
‘Afternoon, officer,’ I said as jauntily as possible.
‘Can you turn your engine off, sir, please?’ he asked, giving me the standard copper’s-in-control, I’ll-know-if- you’re-guilty-don’t-try-to-hide-it gaze. He was about twenty-five and not particularly big. Rosy cheeks, too. About as menacing as Tony Blair.
The lights were still red, and on a main road as well. I couldn’t believe it. No wonder London had traffic problems. That was the fucking mayor for you. A coma victim could have done a better job. Seeing as I had no choice, I switched off. The other copper, who was even younger, looked to be inspecting the bullet holes on the other side.
‘How can I help you, officer?’
‘Can I just take these for a moment?’ he asked, leaning in the window and removing the keys from the ignition.
‘What’s the problem? I’m in a bit of a hurry, to tell you the truth.’
He gave the interior a bit of a nose and spotted the two dark stains on the back seat where Fowler had bled. I’d given them a clean-up earlier that morning, but they still looked a bit suspicious. I’d never been much cop at
