Souvenirs of Murder (30 page)

The bouncer closed in, grabbed the pair of them, hauled them to their feet, crashed them together like cymbals, got them by their collars and, before anyone, watching or otherwise, could draw breath he then shoved them in front of him down the steps and kicked open the door of the club. It slammed shut like the gates of Hell after them.

This, obviously, was not part of the plan. I did as people might expect: ran down to the basement entrance and battered on the door with both fists, not imagining for one second to be let in. I carried on banging on the door and when it suddenly opened, almost fell in. A blare of jazz met me.

‘Get out of my way!' said a man right behind me, not waiting for me to move and violently shoulder-charging me from his path. He hurried in, together with a few others and I heard him snarl, ‘I'm a member and these are my guests, fool! Shift your ugly carcass!' presumably to the bouncer.

I picked myself up from where I had ricocheted off a wall, ricked my ankle and landed on the floor. The bouncer appeared, ignored me completely, slammed the door again and locked it before striding out of my sight. Over the music I heard him say to someone quite close by, ‘In a moment. First I'm calling the cops to take away those two who were fighting outside. You don't want to lose your licence, do you?'

‘Make it quick. Beckovic isn't happy when he doesn't get the red-carpet treatment,' another voice said.

‘Well, you go and lick his arse then.'

‘Don't speak to me like that! I only agreed to let you have the job for one night as a favour.'

I rounded a corner and saw, tucked away in the opposite direction to the entrance into the main area, a tiny office. The bouncer almost filled the doorway, blocking my view of the person to whom he was speaking.

‘What do
you
want?' said the bouncer, noticing me.

‘You've got my man,' I snivelled.

‘They're in the gents. Sod off.'

Patrick and James were indeed in the gents, the former wincing as he rubbed his shoulder, the latter seemingly endeavouring to untwist something wrong with his back.

‘What?' I hissed, ‘Is going on?'

‘He's not pleased,' Patrick whispered grimly.

‘Well, you've been well and truly rumbled. What now?'

‘We wait.'

‘Beckovic has just arrived. He shoved me out of the way.'

‘He's here!' Patrick exclaimed, only quietly.

‘Yes, I heard a man who must be the owner of the club say so.'

‘Was he alone?'

‘No, at least, he came in with several men but that doesn't mean they were actually together.'

A few minutes went by during which time I had to retreat into the corridor as men entered. Then came a thundering on the outer door.

‘Well, of course I locked it,' I heard the bouncer call over the jazz band. ‘You didn't want them doing a runner, did you?'

The two then did just that, dashing past me into the club, and, hard on their heels, I saw that it was packed. Patrick has always said that war is organized chaos and this is precisely what happened: war. Tables were overturned, the jazz band routed, chairs were thrown over the bar, glasses and bottles smashed.

I had not seen the face of the individual who had knocked me aside in the doorway but I saw him now as he jumped to his feet, recognized him even though his hair was styled differently to that in the photograph. A surprisingly slight figure given his strength of shoulder, he was with two cronies. I fought my way towards them through the clubbers stampeding for the exit. Then I saw that one of the men was grabbing into an inside pocket of his jacket. In the mêlée Patrick must have seen the movement too for when I next glimpsed him he was right upon him, only coming from behind. Moments later the man had disappeared, presumably felled and on the floor.

Patrick and Beckovic stood face to face, the surviving henchman apparently having been turned to stone.

‘You!' the man bawled above the turmoil of people falling over furniture as they scrambled to leave. ‘You're in custody for murder!'

I arrived in a clear space near a wall – people seemed to be finding their way out through an emergency exit – and stayed there, able to hear what was being said and aware that James Carrick was not far away either.

‘As you can see,' Patrick said with one of his stock-in-trade nasty smiles. ‘Not so.' He commenced to sway slightly from side to side, staring fixedly at the man he was talking to and although I could not see from where I was standing I knew his eyes were like crazy, living pebbles. It makes the recipient, frankly, shit-scared.

‘You phoned me and pretended to be a friend of Zoran! You lied!' For all the shouting and bluster he was a weedy sort of man, his lips specked with spittle as he yelled.

‘I do sometimes if it catches murderers,' Patrick said in a bored voice.

A forefinger was pointed accusingly. ‘What's that supposed to mean? You're some kind of hit man for God's sake! You were working for
her
! Just the sort to go off your head and blast the lot of them to hell!'

‘Yes, and I'm a cop,' Patrick said. ‘Just like you.'

I edged a bit closer. Even in the poor lighting I saw the colour drain from the other's face.

‘No!' he yelled, his hands shaking. ‘You can't be! That's what you said when I doped you, but you're lying! You killed those people! I saw you, you were staggering all over the place!'

‘How did you see me?'

‘I was on watch farther down the street.'

‘No, you weren't. Keeting was on his own. You saw me because you were in Pangborne's house.'

‘No! It's your word against mine. No court would ever believe you after you'd had a gutful of that whisky.'

‘I had no whisky. What whisky?'

‘You did. Someone poured some in your drink – what looked like orange juice. The Scotch was doctored to make them all unconscious.'

‘How do you know about that? Nothing's been said about that by your mob because Rundle's still waiting for the full written report on that and blood samples from the murder victims.'

The henchman suddenly came to life and decided to leave, walking backwards, the second person that evening to do so and find himself cannoning into the bouncer, who had silently approached. This time the big man, without shifting his concentration away from what was being said, contented himself with chopping the invader of his space neatly across the neck and heaving the untidy result to one side.

‘You're under arrest,' Patrick said to Beckovic.

Beckovic panicked, completely, and before I had had a chance to move lunged forward and grabbed me by one wrist in a vicious heave that almost dislocated my shoulder. Then a knife was held across my throat, I actually felt the edge of the blade slit my skin. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Carrick, who had the Smith and Wesson, had drawn it.

‘You killed that child,' Patrick said through his teeth and might have said a lot more if the bouncer, actually Michael Greenway, had not shouted first.

‘Release the woman!'

‘She dies, just like that Serbian bitch deserved to die if you try to stop me!' Beckovic frantically shouted almost right in my ear. ‘Move aside and let me through!'

Whereupon this woman decided she did not want to die right now and I threw myself backwards, stamping heavily on his feet with my heels as I did so. He yelled in pain and we both crashed to the floor. I was cast aside and, when I had stopped rolling over and over, I saw him start to bolt from the room. Then, he turned and flung the knife, straight at me.

Instinctively, I curled, with my hands over my head, but was far too slow. All I heard was a single, sharp metallic clang, a bit like a small clock striking one, and then a clatter. No agonizing stab of pain. Perhaps you don't feel anything when a knife first buries itself in you, the thought went through my mind. I looked up.

Two knives were on the floor, still shivering from their collision.

‘Bloody hell,' Greenway whispered. And then to Patrick. ‘You're wasted in SOCA. You should get a job in a circus.'

Mladan Beckovic had run into a wall of cops in the entrance hall.

It would be a long day for Patrick and me tomorrow; statements, interviews, but for now, at one thirty in the morning, we rested. I think Patrick and James had just about forgiven Greenway for the battering together he had subjected them to, authenticity or no, but Patrick, I knew, was ready to drop and functioning on will-power alone. At least we were taking it easy in a very pleasant VIP lounge at HQ while we waited for the Commander to tie up a few loose ends before we could all go our various ways for a few hours' sleep.

‘It was a complete fluke,' Patrick said, discovering that my gaze was upon him and not for the first time in a few minutes. I think I was in a state of mild shock: I could have so easily been in hospital with a horrible injury.

The knife was ruined, a nick in the blade, and had taken its place in the investigation, no doubt as Exhibit Z.

No, it wasn't a fluke.

Greenway breezed in, still wearing the horribly tight suit – the only suitable attire he had been able to lay his hands on in the time available – he had suffered in all night with the green shirt and pink tie. Muttering something he wrenched himself out of the jacket and hurled it overarm into a corner. The tie followed.

I said, ‘If you really want to get comfortable I can . . .'

He gave me a big grin. ‘No, I can survive for a few more minutes, thank you, Ingrid.' He surveyed us all gleefully. ‘Well, he's singing his heart out already. It was all Hulton's fault, who was in it with him. That's a lie. Someone threatened to kill him if he didn't top the lot of them. That's a lie. He'd contacted the Pangborne woman before she came to this country, asked for a job so he could infiltrate her mob and she turned him down flat after a short meeting on the grounds that he was a wimp. That might not be a lie. It was all for Zoran, who was his best chum. That's probably partly true too. Personally, I think the man's raving mad.'

The Commander had already told us that he had made a few more plans after we had left, not entirely trusting his ‘adviser' to stick to what had been decided. He himself had thought it wise to turn up an hour before the agreed time and make sure he had back-up, just in case. He had told no one that he intended to be right in the middle of things and had had a quiet word with the usual doorman, one of Rundle's undercover people, to phone in saying he was ill but recommending a ‘friend'.

I had not actually been present when Greenway had conducted a debriefing with Patrick and Carrick and had rather received the impression when the Commander had lured me into this room with coffee and a plate loaded with chunks of iced fruit cake that if I attended then it would cramp his style, in other words, he would be forced to moderate his language. The three had joined me after twenty minutes or so, the one nearest to my heart ashen, but giving me a rueful smile. I had refuelled them with coffee and cake.

‘So this was all purely for revenge?' I said.

Greenway nodded briskly, with a mouthful. Then, ‘We don't know yet what connection there was with that shoot-out in Hilik all those years ago but there must have been one or why write the name of the place on the wall? Nor do we know if there was monetary gain to be had in it for him. The shrinks will talk to him and I'm no expert but it might be something to do with knowing that he
is
a bit of a wimp, not at all like his father who Patrick informs me was physically a big man who carried a lot of clout locally. So if the son could lead a double life, fool the Metropolitan Police and use the data that was available to him in order to track down the killer of his friend that might have boosted the little rat's ego.'

‘But why kill Hulton?' I said.

‘We don't know that yet either.'

To Patrick I said, ‘So it was Beckovic and the men he was with who broke into your flat and doped you.'

‘And as it would appear that I'd been slipped some of that whisky after all it would explain why I didn't know who the hell it was.'

Greenway turned to Carrick. ‘Whatever I said just now, James, I want you to know I very much appreciate your help. I know you understand that nothing can appear in official records about your off-piste presence on this case but want you to know that if there's anything I can do to help you in the future then just give me a call.'

‘Thank you, sir,' Carrick said quietly. ‘I'll have a couple of hours' sleep then I must go home and find myself a murderer in Hinton Littlemoor.'

‘Well, you'll just have to apply the three Oracles of Murder: motive, means and opportunity,' Greenway said jokingly.

‘Yes, but everyone hated the victim's guts. I have around a hundred suspects.'

‘Then who stands to gain?'

TWENTY

It was established, but much later, at his trial, that Beckovic himself had been the ‘insider' who had leaked the story to the media of someone working for SOCA being involved in the shootings as a ploy to draw any possible suspicion away from himself. The coincidence he had created of there being only one police officer watching the house, to be taken seriously ill – he had introduced a few drops of juice from putrid raw prawns into Philip Keeting's morning coffee – had worried him.

Beckovic finally admitted having planned to gun down Pangborne, plus anyone who got in his way, breaking into the house while everyone slept. Watching and biding his time nearby that night, waiting for it all to go quiet, he had seen Patrick leave the house at around four thirty in the morning and, wondering why he was still on his feet, decided to follow him, calling upon two friends, the pair with him in The Last Gasp, who were also hanging around in the area in case they were needed. They had burst into the bedsit, taking Patrick by surprise mainly on account of his having consumed a small amount of the whisky, and jabbed him with truth drug. It was never established why he had told Patrick that he planned to sell Leanne to a paedophile ring, or even that he had pretended to be Hulton. They had left him semi-conscious and returned to Park Road where they had discovered everyone unconscious. Beckovic had sent his henchman away and, quite forgetting that he had doctored the whisky earlier – to do this he had entered through the back door, kept right out of Pangborne's way and told those he met he was a neighbour – had taken a couple of mouthfuls from one of the whisky bottles. He had woken in a bedroom just after ten the following morning not knowing how he had got there.