The Murder Exchange (43 page)

He shook his head slowly. 'I don't know nothing
about anything like that. Never heard of the bloke.'

'You've never heard of Robert Jones, the paperboy
who got murdered six months ago?'

'Oh yeah, yeah, that. I heard about it, but I don't
know nothing about it. Why should I?'

That's a good question,' said Carroll. 'What has

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the murder of a paperboy got to do with the
charges my client is being questioned in connection
with?'

We think Mr Merriweather may be able to throw
some light on the child's murder/ said Knox,
emphasizing the word 'child'.

'Look, don't try to fit me up with something like
that!'

'No need to shout, Jack,' said Knox.

'I'm surprised you thought you hadn't heard of
him/ I continued, 'because it was, and is, a very
high-profile case, and the last place he was seen
alive, before he was so brutally murdered, was
Runmayne Avenue where an associate of yours,
Tony Franks, has a house--'

'Never heard of him.'

'And where you were seen by witnesses on a
number of occasions, including only two weeks
ago, when you were emptying out the property and
claiming you were Mr Franks's brother.'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'And I don't know where this is leading/ Carroll
interjected. 'I'm going to have to ask you to
desist with this line of questioning. It's completely
irrelevant.'

I bent down beside my chair and picked up an
evidence bag. I held it in front of Merriweather's
face. 'Guess what this is.'

Merriweather squinted. 'I can't see anything.'

'Look closer.' I pointed my finger at something
almost intangible in the bag. 'It's a fibre, Jack, or
two fibres to be precise. They came from the coat
Robert Jones was wearing on the day he died, and

401

guess what? We found them in the house you were
emptying the other week. What do you think of
that, then?'

'There must be some mistake.' There was no
doubting the fear on his face now. Carroll also
looked wrong-footed by this unwelcome new
development. 'I don't know anything about a dead
kid.'

'Are you sure about that, Jack?' asked Knox.

'Course I'm fucking sure.'

'How do you explain it, then?' I asked. 'How
they got there.' 4

'It's nothing to do with me. I didn't live there.'

'Why were you emptying out the place, then?'
Knox said.

'Where's Tony Franks, Jack? We can't seem to
find him.'

'I don't know a Tony Franks.'

'Why were you emptying out his house, then?'

'I wasn't--'

'We've got a witness who says you were. She
even spoke to you.'

'Fuck this, I don't want to answer any more
questions.'

'I think my client would like a break in proceedings,'
said Carroll.

'We haven't finished yet,' snapped Knox.

'I've fucking finished/ said Merriweather, folding
his arms and making a great play of looking
away.

'Don't you want to have a look at this photo?' I
asked, taking it out of my pocket and sliding it
along the table towards Merriweather. 'It's the last

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one ever taken of Robert. Christmas Day lunch
last year, six weeks before he died. If s a good one,
isn't it?'

Merriweather continued to look away, but I
could see that his jaw was quivering.

'I really must protest about these methods. My
client has already said he doesn't want to answer
any more questions on this matter. I am therefore
requesting, in the strongest possible terms, that you
terminate this interview.'

'Were you aware, Jack, that a company called
Dagmar Holdings paid the rent on Tony Franks's
house?'

'I've never heard of Dagmar Holdings.'

'Really?' I said, and Merriweather immediately
knew he'd made a mistake. You could see it in his
eyes. Two cheques from Dagmar Holdings
totalling a grand total of nine thousand three
hundred and twenty pounds were paid into a bank
account belonging to your wife, one in February,
another in June. You were also at the home of the
company secretary of Dagmar Holdings when we
arrested you.'

'With an unlicensed firearm/ added Knox for
good measure.

'As your representative, Jack, I advise you to
make no further comment at this time.'

'No comment,' said Merriweather.

'One way or another someone's going down for
this child murder, Jack,' said Knox. 'We're not going
to rest until we find the person responsible.'

'And for some reason, you seem to be lying a lot
during the course of this interview.'

403

'And you're connected very strongly to the house
where we believe he died.'

'Where's Tony Franks, Jack?'

'No comment.'

'Did he kill Robert Jones, or did you?'

'What did you kill him for, Jack? Did he see
something he shouldn't have done?'

'No comment. I told you! No fucking comment!'
He turned to the brief. 'Come on, Melvyn, tell 'em
I'm not answering any more fucking questions
about stuff I don't know nothing about.'

'You heard my client/ said Carroll. 'He's saying
nothing further at this time.'

Knox and I looked at each other and nodded.
'OK/1 said. 'We'll return you to your cells while we
continue our enquiries. Before we finish, though,
there's one thing I'd also like to show you.' I picked
up another evidence bag, again seemingly empty.
'It's one of Robert Jones's hairs, also found at
Runmayne Avenue. Amazing what you can discover
when you look hard enough, isn't it?'

'Not a very good clean-up job, was it?' said Knox
with a sympathetic smile.

Merriweather tried to stare us both down, tried to
appear calm and aloof in the face of our threats, but it
wasn't working. A single bead of sweat ran down the
middle of his forehead and onto the bridge of his
broken nose. He was immediately aware of it, and
knew we could see it. Knew we knew.

'Interview terminated at twelve forty-five p.m./1
said, and switched off the tape. I stood up and
smiled at Merriweather. 'We'll talk again soon/ I
told him.

404

When the two of us were safely ensconced in
Knox's office, along with Benin, we discussed what
we'd gathered from the interview.

'It's still tenuous, John. If he holds out, we're in
trouble. He's consistently denying his involvement
with the case, and the witness statements and that
little bit of forensics are hardly enough to pin him
for the murder. At the moment, all he's down for is
possession of an illegal firearm, which he's denying.
He says it belonged to Iversson. If it carries on
like this, he could easily get bail. Is there no way we
can get Iversson to talk and let us know what was
happening there?'

Iversson had been captured after a short but
dramatic chase through the streets of Clerkenwell,
but he wasn't co-operating either,

I sighed. 'He's even more of a no-comment
merchant than Merriweather. Iversson's linked
with the massacre at the farm and the kidnapping
of Krys Holtz, so I think he figures he's got nothing
to gain by talking, and nothing to lose by staying
silent.'

What about Toms? Can't we prise anything out
of her?'

I shook my head. 'She knows a lot more than
she's letting on but she's not stupid. Her story's
that she was with Merriweather, whom she knows
vaguely, when Iversson turned up and tried to rape
her. He beat up Merriweather but somehow she
managed to get his gun off him and shoot him in
the shoulder. She claims it was self-defence and it's
a story she's sticking by. Therefore, in the absence
of Franks, who we can't find anywhere, our best

405

bet's got to be Merriweather. He knows what's
going on, I'm sure of it, and he's got the most to lose
by not cooperating.'

'But will he crack?'

'No-one wants to be labelled a child killer/1 said,
'especially a macho gangster type like him, and I
don't think he's as much of a hardman as he likes to
make out. Yes, in my opinion, he'll crack.'

Ten minutes later, while we were still talking, the
phone on Knox's desk rang. He picked it up,
listened for twenty seconds, smiled, and told the
caller we'd be right down. He looked at me with
the sort of expression my wife's lover would pull if
he'd just stumbled on a story that would put the
prime minister out of a job. 'It looks like you're
right, John,' he said, and I think there might even
have been some admiration in his voice. 'He wants
to talk to us.'

"That's good.'

'Better than good. He wants to do it without his
brief present.'

'First things first. I want immunity.'

'You haven't told us anything yet, Jack,' said
Knox, lighting his cigarette for him.

'I've got stuff, all right?' he said, looking at us
both in turn. 'Stuff that'll put people away, but if I
help, I don't want to fucking go down. I'm going to
need the works. Immunity, new identity. All that
shit. Understand?'

'If what you tell us is the truth,' said Knox, 'and
it's a big if, and if you're prepared to testify, then
obviously special arrangements will be put in place

406

for you. But no decision's going to be made on that
until we hear what you have to say.'

There was a long silence while Merriweather
thought about what had just been said. 'You know,
I've never done nothing like this before/ he said
eventually. 'I'm no grass, I'll tell you that now. If it
hadn't been for that fucking kid - that's when it all
went wrong.'

'What happened?' I asked, unsure whether I felt
excited or depressed that we were so close to the
truth.

'I wasn't even there at the time, and that's a fucking
promise. I had nothing to do with it. I'd never
kill a kid. I mean, I've got three of my own, haven't
I? I'm no fucking nonce.'

'Let's start at the beginning. Jack/ said Knox.
'What was the house being used for?'

He took a drag on his cigarette, then answered
without looking at us. 'Smuggling. A lot of the
smack from eastern Europe went through that gaff.
It used to get dropped by the couriers at sites in
Kent and then Franks and whoever else he was
using would go and pick it up and bring it back
to the place for storage. We always reckoned it was
the perfect cover because it wasn't the sort of place
you'd expect to find gear. You know, it was a nice
posh area.'

'And the gear was paid for by Stefan Holtz,
right?' I said. 'It was his stuff?'

'It belonged to the organization, yeah.'

'So what's this got to do with Robert Jones?'

'Well, it wasn't just smack that was being
smuggled. You see, Tony Franks, me and him both

407

report to Neil Vamen, and there was other sidelines
Neil had going that the boss, Stefan, didn't know
about, because he wouldn't have approved.'

'What were they?'

'Guns, that was the main one. And not just any
guns either. All sorts. Grenade launchers, AK-47s,
even anti-fucking-tank missiles. You see, Tony had
been a mercenary or something over there, and he
got us involved with the drug-smuggling routes
through Bosnia. It was his idea to do guns because
we had the route set up and the place was chock-a
block with firearms. Well, Stefan never liked that
idea, he didn't think we should be putting weapons
in the hands of people who could use them against
us, but Neil had contacts. Not just here but in
Ireland, and he reckoned he could make a serious
packet out of it, and there was no need to let the
boss know, so that's what we did.

'It worked pretty well, too - so well that Neil
began to get this idea that maybe things would be
better if he ran the organization rather than Stefan.
He used to say that Stefan was too traditional in the
way he did business, that he didn't think big
enough. A couple of years back he even got us to
plant a load of rifles on Tommy Holtz to get him
put away. I think Neil's idea was to start taking out
the Holtzes one by one. Anyway, things were going
nice, Tony's doing most of the work, I'm just checking
up on him now and again, and then suddenly I
get a call one morning last February from Tony saying
he's got a problem. A big problem. I get round
there and I can't fucking believe what I see. I still
can't fucking believe it. There's this kid, this Robert

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Jones, and he's laid out on the floor with his paper
bag, and he's dead, and Tony's standing over him
with this geezer, Shaun Matthews, who used to
help him out sometimes, and they're saying what
the fuck are we going to do?'

He dragged hard on the cigarette, shaking his
head, reliving the scene. Tirst things first, I ask them
what the fuck's happened, and Tony says that they
was unloading some boxes in the front room full of
rifles they'd taken delivery of when they heard a
noise round the back. Tony goes out to take a look
what it is and catches this kid, who's been looking in
the window at what they've been doing. Fuck knows
what he was up to. Maybe he saw them taking stuff
out of the van and got suspicious, and just decided to
have a butcher's. It was a stupid thing to do,
whatever it was.

'So Tony nabs him and drags him inside, but now
they don't know what to do with him. They
know they can't let him go because he's bound to
tell someone, and then that someone'll tell you lot,
and you'll come sniffing round asking questions,
and even if they get rid of the stuff and it's their
word against the kid, Stefan'll probably find out,
and it'll look bad on them. As it happens, I think
they just panicked a bit as well, and Matthews, he
admitted it was him, took a knife to the kid and
killed him. Then they're wondering what to do
with the body so they call me. Can I have another
fag, please?'

Knox pushed the pack over to him and we
watched as he pulled one out with shaking hands,
put it to his lips, and lit it. Jackie Slap Merriweather,