resulted in someone wanting to kill him?’
McBride shook his head. ‘I know he dealt a fair bit on the side, and I don’t think he had too much in the way of respect for the punters buying off him. He told me a couple of times that he used to mix his gear pretty heavily, but he never seemed to worry too much that anyone’d come back and give him any grief about it. He said he’d just tell them to fuck off if they did. That was the thing with Shaun: he wasn’t really scared of no one. He always thought he was hard enough to get himself out of any shit that came his way. You know what I mean?’
I knew exactly what he meant. Plenty of criminals are like that, too cocky to realize they’re walking on quicksand. Matthews was only the latest in a long line of those who found out too late, if they found out at all, that they weren’t as invincible as they’d thought. ‘We’re aware of one particular incident where he dangled a man by the ankles over the balcony of his flat. Do you know anything about that?’
McBride tried without success to stifle a laugh. ‘Yeah, I remember him saying something about that one. I think the geezer was a student or something. Shaun sold him some stuff that was meant to be skunk but he’d got it cheap off some Moroccan geezer because it was so shit. Apparently, all it did was give you a sore throat. The bloke tried to get his money back and Shaun demonstrated his refunds policy. I don’t think he came back again.’
‘Have you got a name for this student?’ asked Berrin.
He shook his head. ‘No. He just told me the story when we was out one night. I think he said the bloke might have gone to City and Islington, but I couldn’t say for sure.’
‘Did Matthews ever say anything to you about ripping off the Holtzes?’
McBride gave me a withering look. ‘Shaun might have been a bit of a headcase, and a bit of a wanker if you’re honest about it, but he wasn’t totally fucking stupid. He wouldn’t have ripped off people like the Holtzes, and if he had, he wouldn’t have said nothing about it. Not to no one.’
I sat forward in my seat and stared hard at him. I don’t like getting withering looks from small-time crooks who’ve got little but not-so-fresh air between their ears. ‘You’re still not helping us much, Craig. And you’re not giving us any reason to walk out of here and forget that you’re sitting on a pile of dope that most assuredly is not for personal consumption. Are you?’
‘Look, I don’t know who killed him. Honest. You know, what the fuck can I do about that? I can’t make it up, can I?’
‘Several witnesses reported seeing Matthews with a woman with short blonde hair on a number of occasions. We think they may have been romantically linked. She certainly used to visit him at his flat. We’ve now identified her as Jean Tanner. Here’s a photo of her. Not the most flattering one, but mugshots never are.’ I took it out of my pocket and handed it to him. He looked at it quickly, then handed it back, shaking his head. ‘I’d like to think, for your sake,’ I continued, ‘that you can tell me what her relationship was with Mr Matthews.’
McBride made a number of noises suggesting he was thinking hard but they weren’t particularly convincing. ‘He might have mentioned something once, about some girl he was seeing, but he didn’t really say anything about-’
‘Craig McBride, I’m arresting you on suspicion of possession of Class A-’
‘All right, all right, hold on. Don’t be hasty.’
‘What do you mean, don’t be hasty? I could grow a beard waiting for you to tell me anything.’
‘Look, I don’t want any of this getting back to me. Seriously.’
‘Any of what?’
McBride put his head in his hands, then removed them and exhaled loudly. ‘Any of what I’m going to tell you.’
I didn’t get too excited. ‘We’ll treat it as an anonymous source if it’s applicable,’ I said. ‘Now, I suggest you get on with it.’
‘Shaun had a girlfriend, a girl he’d been seeing for a few months, and her name was Jean, but I don’t know what her second name was. The thing was it was all really hush hush. I’m surprised anyone saw them together. He only told me about it one night after he’d had too much gear and drink. I think he wanted some advice.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, this girl, and I think it must be the same one, she was sort of already spoken for. She was seeing Shaun on the side.’
‘It happens,’ I said.
‘Not to Neil Vamen it doesn’t.’
Once again, Berrin and I looked at each other. This certainly put a new angle on the whole thing. The gentleman gangster. ‘You’re telling us she was Neil Vamen’s girlfriend?’
He nodded. ‘That’s what Shaun said.’
‘Christ,’ said Berrin. ‘No wonder he wanted it kept quiet. Do you think Vamen found out?’
‘I don’t know. Honestly.’
‘How did Shaun meet her?’
‘I heard she used to work as an escort girl for this agency Roy Fowler runs called Heavenly Girls. Maybe that’s how he met her.’ I raised my eye-brows. This was an interesting one. We hadn’t realized that one of Fowler’s sidelines was managing a brothel.
Berrin finished writing in his notebook and looked up. ‘Neil Vamen’s married, isn’t he?’
McBride shrugged. ‘Yeah, he is, and his missus is a looker too, but you know what blokes are like. Especially ones with money. Everyone knows he plays away from home.’
Berrin looked across at me, waiting to see what came next. It was difficult to know what more we could ask McBride, or whether what he’d told us was enough to get him off the hook.
‘One more question,’ I said. ‘Who did you buy these drugs from?’
McBride sighed, looked pained for all of about one second that he was about to betray someone, then gave us the name of a fairly well-known local dealer. I knew immediately he was lying. The drugs had almost certainly come from somewhere within Stefan Holtz’s organization. It was rumoured that Holtz himself strongly disapproved of drugs and, unlike many underworld figures, had never touched them himself. However, his people were responsible for importing one hell of a lot of the cocaine that passed through London every year, so his personal stand clearly didn’t prevent him helping to ruin the lives of plenty of other people.
I leant over, picked up the plate of dope and the individual wraps, and stood up. ‘If you hear anything, anything at all about the murder of Shaun Matthews, I want to hear about it.’ I handed my card to McBride who accepted it with a relieved expression on his face.
‘Course I will,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
‘Where’s the toilet in here?’ I asked, walking out of the room, with Berrin following.
‘It’s just on the left. What are you going to do with the gear? I’ll give it back, but the thing is I haven’t paid for it yet.’
I went up to the dirty-looking bowl and emptied the plate into the water, before chucking down the wraps. I gave it a healthy flush and watched as most of it disappeared.
‘Don’t take the piss, Mr McBride,’ I told the distraught-looking doorman as we left his flat. ‘We’ve done you a major favour here.’
When we were back in the car, Berrin gave me a worried look. ‘Was that such a good idea, Sarge? You know, letting him off like that. We could have got a lovely little collar there.’
‘And it would have just bogged us down in paperwork, and wouldn’t have done anything to hinder the Holtz supply chain. Sometimes you’ve got to let the small fish go so you can get hold of the big ones. But do me a favour and don’t say anything to anyone about it.’
‘Course not. Do you think it was worth letting him go like that, though? Did we get enough out of him?’
‘We’ve got other people with motive now, so it’s putting us further forward.’
‘All we’ve got to do is find them.’
‘That, my friend, is what it’s all about.’
Iversson
It was three o’clock in the afternoon when I buzzed Joe up and led him through to the lounge. It was a stinking hot day and all the windows were open. Outside, the traffic rumbled endlessly past.
‘Nice place for a hideout,’ he said, dropping on the floor a bag containing belongings he’d picked up from my flat. He sat down in one of the leather chairs, and put the four-pack of beers he’d also brought down on the glass
