On the four-hundred-yard walk back to the car through the terraced backstreets of Barnsbury, we didn’t speak once. When we finally reached it, I looked across at Berrin, who still didn’t look too good. I couldn’t blame him. It had been a shit day all round. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked him.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, leaning against the bonnet. ‘I think I might be coming down with something.’
Berrin wasn’t the hardest worker in the world and he’d already had several short bouts of sick leave in the few months he’d been with CID, but this time I wasn’t going to begrudge him. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘I’ll take you home.’
He didn’t argue.
* * *
Two hours later I was still trying hard to keep a lid on my frustration but it wasn’t working. The humiliation of the meeting with Vamen, combined with the heat and the knowledge that nothing about the Shaun Matthews case was going right, including the way I was handling it, was serving to sever the last threads of my patience. I just knew that right now my ex-wife would be sat in the garden, the one I’d helped pay for, soaking up some rays alongside the man who had gone out of his way to wreck my life, while my daughter played happily in front of them, maybe even fetching him a nice cool beer to enjoy while he worked out whose balloon he was going to burst next. And the thing was, I could have handled it. I could have handled pretty much anything if I’d thought that by putting in all these extra hours on the job, hours I’d been putting in since I was eighteen years old, I was actually getting somewhere. But it just wasn’t happening. For every weak, staggering step forward we took, there always seemed to be a larger, more confident one backwards. And now I had to deal with an idiot like Capper, who seemed incapable of providing the remotest bit of help.
‘We need to be involved, sir. We interviewed the dead man yesterday and it was his testimony that led us to the flat today.’
Capper sat back in his chair, trying hard to look like he was sympathetic to my plight. The act didn’t work. ‘I’ll have to talk to the DCI about it, John, and that’s going to be tomorrow now. I don’t want to bother him at home. Not over this.’
‘With due respect, I think it’s important. I feel certain that this man’s death is linked to that of Shaun Matthews, and therefore—’
Capper raised his arms and waved them from side to side like opposing windscreen wipers, an annoying habit of his indicating silence to the individual being gestured at, in this case me. I forced myself to fall silent. ‘John, it’s DI Burley’s patch, so at the moment it’s his investigation. There’s nothing I can do about that. We’ll certainly be able to liaise with them if there’s a consensus that the two cases are linked.’
‘Which they’ve basically got to be.’
Capper nodded noncommittally. ‘There’s definitely a possibility there.’
‘More than a possibility. Two bouncers from the same nightclub, whose owner’s been missing for days, both murdered within a week of each other.’
‘Are we sure McBride’s was murder?’
‘Definitely. He was OK yesterday. For all we know, it could even be the same poison that killed Matthews.’
‘Could be, John, could be. But it’s also possible that it’s natural causes.’
‘How? He was in a cupboard.’
‘We’ve just got to wait and see what the autopsy reveals. What we’ll do is discuss what happened at the meeting tomorrow morning and then maybe the DCI’ll get on the phone to their nick and see if there’s any scope for information sharing. In the meantime, you need to bring all the records up to date. Where’s Berrin, by the way?’
‘I took him home. He was feeling sick.’
‘Again. That’s the third time since he’s been in CID. What’s wrong with him this time?’
‘I don’t know, summer flu or something. He’s been a bit under the weather these past few days,’ I lied.
Capper nodded with some scepticism, an annoyingly serene smile on his face. ‘Well, let’s hope he gets better soon,’ he said, sounding like he didn’t mean it at all.
‘Is that everything, sir?’ I asked, starting to get to my feet. I couldn’t hack any more of Capper than I had to.
‘Not quite, John,’ he answered, still wearing the smile. It made him look like a brain-damaged Buddhist. I stopped mid-crouch and waited for him to continue. ‘I got a call this afternoon from a Mr Melvyn Carroll. He says that you and DC Berrin were harassing his client, Neil Vamen. What on earth were you doing talking to Vamen?’
‘He’s a possible suspect in the Matthews case,’ I said, sitting back down.
‘Let me get this right. A man with a lengthy criminal record, now deceased, suggested that Vamen was the boyfriend of a woman who visited the home of Shaun Matthews, and was possibly, just possibly, Matthews’s girlfriend as well, and this makes him a suspect?’
‘Yes, it does. He’s certainly a possibility, so he was worth talking to.’
‘Neil Vamen. I trust you know who he is?’
‘Yes, and that’s another reason to consider him a suspect. He’s got the resources and the ruthlessness to kill Shaun Matthews and Craig McBride.’
‘He’s also someone who’s had years of practice in knowing how to cover his tracks, so he was never going to talk to you. Even if he is involved, which I doubt, because I don’t think he’s the type to get sentimental about a woman, it’s going to be extremely difficult to prove anything.’
‘That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.’
‘The point is, Vamen’s a big fish
