The Murder Exchange

Yesterday

Iversson

I got the call at 6.26 p.m. ‘He’s here,’ growled Kalinski into the phone. ‘Just pulled in now. Driving a matt-black Merc.’

‘Does it look like he’s alone?’

‘I can’t see anyone else.’

‘No one’s pulled in behind him or anything?’

‘No one. He’s definitely on his own.’

‘All right. I’ll talk to you shortly.’

I rang off and pulled the cap down over my head. It was raining hard again, and you had to think the gods were smiling on us as far as the weather was concerned. Usually there were plenty of walkers in Epping Forest, the only serious stretch of woodland this close to London, but tonight I had the feeling that most would be staying away. Tugger and I had taken up position at the edge of the treeline looking down across a slightly inclined grass clearing about a hundred yards long and fifty wide. It led down to more woodland from which Stefan Holtz would emerge, once we guided him to the spot. There was no one else in the vicinity that we’d seen, and I was confident the transaction could be made without fuss.

Tugger sat on a thick branch, his feet resting on a log, an M-16 in his hands. Purely precautionary, but always worth keeping, just in case. ‘He’s there, then?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, he’s there.’ I pressed the button to dial Holtz’s mobile and waited while it rang.

He answered with an angry grunt.

‘Mr Holtz, I’m glad you made it.’

‘Where’s my son?’

‘He’s safe and he’s well.’

‘How do I know that?’

‘Listen to this.’

I flicked on the short tape we’d got Krys to make that morning in exchange for changing his trousers and allowing him to use the toilet in privacy. It was short and to the point: he gave the date and the time, and said that he was OK and was being treated well. He hadn’t wanted to add this last bit but I’d suggested that he ought to unless he wanted Kalinski to stamp on his bollocks again. Krys might have been no coward but he was no fool either, and had done what he’d been told.

I switched off the tape. ‘Satisfied?’

‘He’d fucking better be all right.’

‘Don’t threaten me, Mr Holtz,’ I told him coldly. ‘You really haven’t got much of a bargaining position. Now, have you got the money?’ Holtz grunted that he had. ‘Good. Now, when we finish this conversation, drive out of the car park and turn right, crossing the M25.’ I then gave him a short set of further instructions, about where he should turn off the main road and how he should proceed from there. ‘When you get to the sign that says “No Tipping”, stop and park up the car on the bank. That whole journey should take you fifteen minutes. I’ll call you then. Let me tell you something else as well, something very important. Do not bring anyone else with you. When you park the car, you’re going to be watched. If anyone else is with you, the whole thing’s off, and that’ll be the last you hear from your boy.’

Holtz started shouting something but I rang off. I wasn’t prepared to listen to threats.

‘Christ, Max,’ said Tugger with a laugh. ‘You were almost scaring me then. You’d make a great film villain, I tell you.’

‘Alan Rickman’s got nothing on me, mate. Anyway, you’ve got to be harsh, haven’t you? I don’t want him thinking he’s dealing with amateurs.’

I called Kalinski back and told him to be at the rendezvous point at 6.45 sharp, then phoned down to Joe. ‘I’ve made contact,’ I told him. ‘He’s driving a black Merc and he’ll be with you in fifteen minutes.’

‘No problem,’ said Joe. ‘If there’s anyone else with him, I’ll let you know. Otherwise I’ll follow him up, then peel off when it’s sorted, and meet you at the rendezvous.’

The call ended. Everyone knew what they were doing. Now it was simply a matter of waiting.

‘It’s a long time since I’ve used one of these,’ said Tugger, stroking the rifle like it was some sort of cuddly toy. It was one Joe had brought back from the Gulf War in ’91. ‘I think Bosnia was probably the last time, and, Christ, that was years back. A good weapon, though. I can see why the Yanks like it.’

‘I think I prefer the AK if I was to be given the choice. Less prone to jamming.’

‘You know, Max,’ he said, loading and unloading the rifle’s magazine, ‘I do like chefing, and I reckon I could make a lot of money out of it, especially if I can afford to open up my own place.’

‘You make a mean Thai fish curry, I’ll give you that.’

‘Aye, I know, but …’ He thought about it for a minute, at the same time putting the stock to his shoulder and aiming at an imaginary target among the trees. ‘But it can never give you quite the same sort of buzz as a job of violence does. You know what I mean? You don’t get that sort of excitement out in the normal world.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, remembering the mad adrenalin rush I’d had when I’d been standing in the stairwell of Heavenly Girls, ripping holes out of Fitz and Big Mick. ‘Maybe you don’t.’

At 6.44 my mobile rang. It was Joe, and he was whispering. ‘He’s here. Looks like he’s alone.’

‘Thanks.’ I rang off, then dialled Holtz’s number. It was answered immediately. ‘Stand facing the “No Tipping” sign, five feet away from it.’

‘How do I know what’s five feet?’ he demanded angrily.

‘Just do it. Now turn ninety degrees to the left and start walking, keeping in a straight line. You’ll see the outlines of a path in front of you. Follow it.’

‘Where’s my son?’

‘I told you, he’s safe and he’s well. Are you on the path?’

‘Yeah, I’m on the path. When am I going to see my boy?’

‘If the money’s all there, you’ll see him first thing tomorrow morning. He’ll be dropped off somewhere in London, reasonably close to a telephone box.’

‘He fucking better be.’

‘Keep walking and stop speaking.’

From his vantage point in the undergrowth, Joe watched as Stefan Holtz turned away and began walking up the wooded incline in the direction of Max and Tugger. Holtz had a mobile to his ear and a large holdall slung over his shoulder. Within a minute he’d disappeared from view, and the forest was silent once again, except for the steady crackle of rain hitting the trees, and the distant hum of traffic. No one else had turned up to follow him and the car he’d been driving, the Merc, was empty.

He kept listening for a few moments, then, satisfied that Holtz had come alone, he slipped slowly and carefully out of his hiding place, crossed the track from which the Merc had appeared, and started up the path after Holtz, keeping as far back as possible.

Too late, he heard the noise behind him. The rustle of bushes, the sound of heavy footfalls on muddy ground, and then the terminal, gut-wrenching sensation of the hard metal gun barrel being pushed into the back of his head.

I saw Holtz emerge from the trees at the bottom of the slope, carrying the holdall. He was about a hundred and fifty yards away. ‘All right, keep walking,’ I told him, and switched off the mobile.

I turned to Tugger. ‘Here he comes.’ Tugger nodded, and we both pulled on balaclavas. I checked the Glock, gave Holtz another thirty seconds to get nearer, then pushed my way out of the bushes. Fifty yards now separated us.

Holtz saw me but didn’t quicken his pace, and we closed in on each other as casually as a couple of early-evening strollers. When we were ten feet apart, we both stopped. Holtz looked pissed off. The rain, which was pouring down now, had flattened his iron-grey hair and it was running freely down his grizzled, lined face and onto his khaki raincoat. I’d never seen a picture of him before (Holtz senior, like all his close cohorts, was very camera shy), but thought that he looked a lot like Karl Malden, the veteran actor from seventies cop show The Streets of San Francisco, even down to the bulbous round nose.

‘You’ve made a big fucking mistake doing this to me,’ he growled, making no effort to hand over the holdall.

‘And you made a big fucking mistake trying to kill me,’ I said, unable to resist letting him know who’d done this to him, even though it effectively meant exiling myself for life. Sometimes you just had to show that you hadn’t been intimidated.

‘I don’t even know who the fuck you are behind that poxy mask, so what makes you think I’ve been trying to have you killed? I’ll tell you something, though, you cunt. If I want someone dead, that’s how they end up. Dead. No fucker ever escapes from me.’

I thought about lifting my balaclava, but that really would have been stupid. But then it struck me that maybe he didn’t know who I was. Maybe I was that insignificant. ‘That holdall looks very heavy,’ I told him. ‘Why don’t I take it off your hands?’

Holtz managed the beginnings of a smile for the first time. It wasn’t a pleasant sight. ‘No, mate, it ain’t as easy as that. Before you get this cash, I want to see my son. So, get on the phone to whichever cunt’s holding him and get him to drive him down here. Now. Then we’ll see if it’s worth a trade.’

‘I don’t want to have to take that bag off you by force, Mr Holtz, but, believe me, I will.’

‘No you won’t, son,’ said Holtz, shaking his head. ‘No, you fucking won’t.’

Tugger had the rifle to his shoulder, the barrel pointing through a gap in a large evergreen bush towards Stefan Holtz. He could see him and Max talking, but Max was making no move to take the holdall. They used to say that Tugger Lewis had a nose for danger, could sense when something bad was going to happen. One time, years back in County Down, five of them had been patrolling in a Land Rover down remote country back roads when they’d seen a car parked in a layby up ahead. Afterwards, he’d said it was just something about the angle it was parked in, slightly skewed with the bonnet pointed towards the road, like someone had abandoned it too quickly, that had caught his attention. But it wasn’t that. He’d just felt it, known that something was going to happen. He’d told the driver to stop and turn round even though he’d only been a private and the driver was a lance corporal, and the road had been so narrow that any turn was going to require some serious manoeuvring, but something in his tone — the desperation, the sure-fire knowledge that they were driving straight towards their doom — convinced the driver to do what he said. Ten seconds later, while they were still turning round, the IRA man with the remote control, seeing that his targets were escaping, detonated the bomb in the car’s boot. Two of the men in the jeep had been slightly injured, but no one was complaining. If they’d been driving past it, the impact of the blast would have killed them all.

He had the same feeling now. It had started slowly, about an hour before, but had accelerated markedly when Stefan Holtz had appeared out of the woods below. Something was wrong. There was no escaping the fact. Something was definitely wrong. Max and Holtz were still talking, and Tugger thought he saw Holtz smile, but he might have been imagining things. Was this a set-up? His jaw tightened and his finger stroked the trigger. He was listening now, listening for any sound that was remotely out of place.

The faint rustle of leaves being trampled underfoot, could he hear that? Off to his left, not far away, coming from somewhere in the trees. He listened harder, couldn’t tell for sure, thinking, concentrating…

Then he swung round ninety degrees, still holding the rifle at shoulder height, and saw the figure creeping through the undergrowth, twenty-five feet away, gun in hand.

Reflexively, he pulled the trigger, firing off five shots in rapid succession, the angry bark of the weapon echoing through the undergrowth. Then he hit the deck as bullets came flying back in the opposite direction.

The loud crackle of gunfire startled us both. I clocked the first shots as coming from the M-16, which had to be Tugger’s, and then further shots from at least two other weapons. Holtz might have thought he had some cards up his sleeve but he obviously hadn’t expected anyone to start shooting. His eyes widened and he swung round to me with a look of suspicion mixed with panic. ‘What the fuck’s going on?’

These were the last words Stefan Holtz ever spoke. Before I could even open my mouth to answer, his left eye seemed to burst out of his face, and he fell forward, still clutching the holdall. I dived to the ground and pulled out my gun. Suddenly, shooting seemed to be coming from everywhere. I could see a figure armed with a rifle, kneeling down on the other side of the clearing about thirty yards away, partially concealed by the foliage. I knew straight away that he was the one who’d gunned down the gang leader. The shooter fired again, and blood sprayed up from one of Holtz’s thighs as the round struck. I scrambled down behind his body, then, using it as cover, leant over and clattered off five rounds from the Glock in the shooter’s direction, knowing that my chances of hitting him were slim but wanting to put him under pressure. He fired two shots back, both whizzing close by, then slipped back into the trees.

But now shooting was coming from behind me, and coming close, too. Clumps of mud flew up from the ground only feet from where I was lying. I whirled round and fired three shots in the general direction of their source, unable to see my assailant; then, knowing that I was a sitting duck as long as I stayed where I was, I jumped up and pulled the holdall from Holtz’s dead fingers. I hauled it over my shoulders, surprised at the heavy weight, then started running for the nearest trees, keeping as low as possible. From behind me I heard the rifleman who’d taken out Holtz cracking off shots at my exposed back, and in front of me I could make out the second shooter behind some bushes. He had what looked like a shotgun balanced over a branch and he was steadying himself to fire. I didn’t give him a chance. As I charged towards him, I lifted the Glock and pulled the trigger, bang bang bang. It was a battle of nerves and he lost it, jumping out of the way and dropping the weapon.

I zigzagged wildly, teeth clenched in anticipation of a striking bullet, and at the last second half-dived, half-slid into the treeline and out of sight of the shooter behind me. The second gunman, only partly visible through the undergrowth, swung his shotgun round in my direction, pulling the trigger at the same time. The weapon kicked and he took a stumbling step back, the shot passing way over my head. I fired twice in return and at least one of the rounds hit him. I heard him yelp in shock and drop to one knee; then, without even pausing for breath, I jumped up with the holdall and ran in a crouch in the direction of the spot where I’d left Tugger, keeping within the trees. The branches and bushes battered and scratched me as I charged through them, every sense and nerve-ending homed in on my surroundings, knowing we’d been set up and that there were bound to be more of them about. As if to confirm it, an unseen round whistled by a few feet above my head, letting out an angry crack as it struck a thick branch and ricocheted off into the gloom. I couldn’t see the shooter and doubted that the shooter could see me.

Without warning, a figure appeared out of the trees in front of me, no more than ten feet away, running and stumbling in my direction. He had a gun in one hand and was holding an injured leg with the other. I didn’t recognize him, and that meant he was the enemy. He didn’t even see me until the last second, which was a fatal mistake. Without dropping my pace, I raised my weapon, stretched out my arm so the barrel was no more than three feet from its target, and shot him straight through his open mouth. He died with an expression of confused shock on his face and I was already five yards beyond him by the time the body hit the ground. A staccato burst of automatic weapon fire rattled through the trees somewhere off to my right, but it sounded like there was more hope in it than judgement, and I kept running, undeterred, hoping that Tugger was OK and had followed the instructions should things go wrong, which were to head straight back to the place where Kalinski was picking us up from. The last thing I needed now was for him to hold his ground and take a potshot at me as I came over the brow of the hill. Unlike the rest of these blokes, he’d always been a good shot.

But Tugger wasn’t there when I passed the spot, and there was no sign of blood or anything else to suggest that he’d taken an injury. So I kept going, charging through the trees down the other side of the hill, feeling that terrible exhilaration danger always brings, even though it was tempered by another, far more worrying thought. What the fuck had happened to Joe?

The back of the van was open and the engine running when I came out of the trees and onto the road. I threw the holdall inside and jumped in after it. Tugger was already inside, but there was no sign of Joe.

‘What the fuck happened, Max?’ he demanded, still clutching the M-16. ‘What the fuck went wrong?’

‘I don’t know,’ I panted between breaths, finding it difficult to think. ‘Somehow Holtz fucked us up, but Christ knows how. We had everything planned down to a tee.’

‘Do you think they got Joe?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘There were a lot of them. They could easily have taken him out.’

I leant out the back door and looked up towards the trees. Nothing moved up there. I punched Joe’s number into the mobile. It rang. Five times, six, seven. No answer. I kept staring at the trees. No sign. No answer. Eight rings, nine. He would have picked up by now if he was all right. The longer we stayed there the more dangerous our predicament became.

‘We’ve got to move, Max. They could be on us any minute. And the Old Bill could have been called by now. That was some fucking gun battle in there.’

Ten rings, eleven, twelve. Still nothing. Tugger was right, I knew he was. But to leave, to desert my mate. It was a big call to make. We’d agreed to meet back at the farmhouse if it became impossible for any one of us to make the rendezvous, but still I was reluctant to make the decision to move.

Thirteen, fourteen.

‘Come on, Max, we’re soldiers. We can’t stop everything because one man’s missing, you know that. We’re endangering the whole operation by staying here. Come on! Think about it!’

‘What the fuck’s going on in the back there?’ came Kalinski’s muffled but frantic voice. ‘Let’s get out of here!’

Fifteen, sixteen. I cursed, then closed up the back doors, knowing I had no choice. I leant over and banged the panel twice. ‘All right, go!’

Kalinski hit the accelerator like he had lead boots on and we were on our way in a screech of tyres.

As we drove, I holstered my gun, wiped sweat from my brow and, with a deep breath, opened the holdall, wondering exactly what was going to be in there.

It was full. Crammed full with tightly packed bundles of used fifty-pound notes. So Holtz had been genuine. Which begged a major fucking question.

Why had they started shooting?

Gallan

I had a takeaway curry that night. Chicken tikka masala, pilau rice, two poppadoms and an accompaniment of sag aloo. I knew I wouldn’t finish it all, that’s a lot of food, but I thought I’d at least give it a try. What I couldn’t eat, I’d have cold tomorrow. I’d also purchased a four-pack of Fosters and rented a video. It might have been a Saturday night and I might have been on my own but I was determined to enjoy myself. The lounge was comfortable, the telly — a twenty-eight-inch Sony widescreen bought on hire purchase — was on, and all the worries of the world had been relegated to beyond my front door.

I was sitting on the sofa in my dressing gown, warming up for the video by watching a Denis Nordern pastiche of out-takes and bloopers on ITV, and was just about to tuck into the food when my mobile rang. It was ten to nine. I thought about leaving it. I was hungry and I was sure it could wait, but habit got the better of me. I’ve always been the curious type. I put down my food, went over to the kitchen top, and picked it up.

‘John? Asif Malik here.’ He sounded breathless, and the line wasn’t too good.

I walked out of the kitchen with the phone to my ear and back into the lounge. ‘Asif, how are you?’

‘Not good. I suppose you haven’t heard the news, then?’

‘What?’

‘Stefan Holtz. He’s been shot, up in Epping Forest. That’s where I am now. It looks like whoever kidnapped Krys got Stefan out of that fortified house of his, lured him here, and blew him away.’

I was shocked but not sorry. ‘So, it looks like some sort of takeover, then?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Malik. ‘That’s what we think,but there’s absolutely no intelligence coming from any quarter that gives us a suggestion as to who’s behind it.’

‘Will his death make your job any easier?’

Malik managed a humourless laugh. ‘I doubt it. Now they’ll all be fighting over the scraps. It means we’ve probably got to end up watching ten big villains instead of one. It never gets easier, John, you know that. Now, before I forget. This Dagmar Holdings-’

‘I feel bad hassling you about them when you’ve got so much else on.’

‘Sure you do. To be frank, I don’t know how much help I’m going to be. They are a company suspected of links with the Holtzes but no major associate of theirs sits on their board, so it’s going to be extremely difficult to connect Dagmar to individuals, unless you can lean on the board members, see what they know.’

‘But they won’t be inside players?’

‘There are three people listed as being on the board. They’ll all be known to the Holtzes, but no, as far as we’re aware, they’re not inside players. But they might be worth talking to. I’ve got their addresses if you want them.’

I went back into the kitchen and grabbed a pen and paper from one of the drawers. ‘I do. Thanks.’

Malik read out the name and address of the chairman, then the managing director. When he said the name of the company secretary, I froze. ‘Are you sure that’s the name?’

‘Definitely,’ said Malik.

I took the address, thanked him, then rang off. I looked around, then found the statement of accounts on Dagmar Holdings I’d brought home the previous night. Then I checked the surnames and first initials of the board members, listed at the bottom of the first page. Malik was dead right. How the hell had I missed that?

I looked at the address he’d given me. It might lead to nothing but I knew I was going to have to give the place a visit.

I looked at my watch again. Too late now. I’d go in the morning.

Iversson

‘Whichever way you want to read it, it was a setup,’ I said, looking at the other three in turn.

We were standing round the kitchen table, all grim-faced, the holdall containing the money open in front of us. There was no sign of Joe. The clock on the wall above the cooker said that it was five to nine. Outside, it was raining even harder than it had been earlier.

‘It had to be a set-up. How the fuck did Holtz get all those people to the drop point without some sort of inside knowledge that it was going to be where it was? There were at least three other shooters there, minimum, and probably more, because somehow they managed to take out Joe as well. So someone fucking talked.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Tugger. ‘They could have put a tracking device on his car, something that helped them locate it.’

‘No way. They were on us within minutes of Holtz arriving. If they’d been tracking the car they’d never have had a chance of getting into position in that length of time. I don’t care what anyone says, they were already there. And the way Holtz was talking to me, it sounded like he knew his men were in the vicinity. He was way too cocky for a man delivering a ransom.’

‘Yeah, but you said yourself he was shocked when the shooting started,’ said Tugger. ‘I mean, Christ, they shot him, didn’t they?’

‘But it was you who fired first.’

‘There was some fucking bloke creeping up on me with a gun! What the fuck was I supposed to do? Wave to him?’

‘Shit,’ said Johnny, who was having difficulty keeping his eyes off the money. ‘I can’t fucking believe this. Do you think they popped him by accident when they were trying to shoot you?’

‘Fuck knows,’ I said. ‘Maybe.’ I turned to Kalinski. ‘No one followed him into the car park, right?’ He glared at me, then shook his head firmly. ‘And you drove out when he left and no one was following him then?’

‘I’m no fucking fool,’ he snarled. ‘I know what I’m doing. I followed him and there was no other car, and no other people with him. When he turned off the main road, he turned off on his own.’

‘Well then, they were already there. There’s no other explanation, is there?’

‘No one fucking talked,’ said Kalinski firmly.

‘Then you’re going to have to explain how the shooters got there that fast. So far, you haven’t.’

‘I don’t have to explain nothing.’

‘Fuck it, Max,’ said Tugger in exasperation. ‘It could have happened. Of course it could. It doesn’t take a huge great battle plan to arrive, advance up both sides of a clearing so they’re flanking their boss, and confront us. And what’s the alternative? That one of us was talking to them? Who? It wasn’t Joe. Christ knows what’s happened to him, but it doesn’t look good. It wasn’t me. I’d never even heard of Stefan fucking Holtz before last week. And Kalinski here … hardly. Holtz’s people murdered his brother.’ Kalinski grunted in agreement. ‘And Johnny. You had to virtually pressgang him to get him involved. If someone talked, that only leaves you.’

‘Or your missus,’ said Kalinski.

‘She didn’t know any of the details,’ I snapped. I didn’t like the way this conversation was going.

‘Are you sure?’ Tugger sounded suspicious.

‘Of course I’m fucking sure. I never told her anything about the drop-off, where it was going to be, how we were going to do it. So leave her out of it.’

‘She might have overheard you talking,’ said Kalinski accusingly. ‘You know what women are like. I had a bird once-’

‘No way. No fucking way. You’re right up the wrong tree. I was always careful to keep her out of all the planning, and that’s the God’s honest truth.’

‘Well, that doesn’t leave us with anyone, does it?’ said Tugger.

I stopped and exhaled loudly. Tugger was right, of course, there wasn’t really anyone who could have talked, but I still wasn’t convinced. Something had happened out there, something that hadn’t been planned for either by us or Stefan Holtz, and somebody somewhere knew a lot more than they were letting on. I looked at them each in turn, trying to keep the deep suspicion I felt off my face. They all looked back with various expressions: Kalinski glowering; Johnny nervous; Tugger calm but concerned.

‘We may as well finish off the boy downstairs,’ said Kalinski. ‘He’s no use to us or anyone now.’

‘No way,’ I said. ‘This whole thing’s been fucked up enough as it is without us adding another reason for the Holtzes or the cops to come after us. He can’t recognize anyone, we’ve got the money, so we keep our side of the bargain. That means we stay the night here, wait to see if Joe turns up, and release Krys and go our separate ways in the morning. Just like we originally planned.’

‘Joe ain’t going to turn up now,’ said Kalinski.

I knew Kalinski was pretty much on the button there, but I didn’t need to hear it from him. ‘He may, he may not. We don’t know. Anyway, we stay here. Now, let’s count this fucking money. We’ll divvy up each man his due and I’ll look after Joe’s share.’

‘I don’t think it should be kept for him,’ said Kalinski. ‘If he ain’t here, he ain’t here. We share it out between ourselves. That’s the only way.’

‘I thought you were only in it for the revenge.’

‘Well, I ain’t got my fucking revenge, have I? The cunt’s still alive and you’re saying we should release him tomorrow. Even though he fucked your missus.’

‘Watch what you’re fucking saying.’

‘If it was me, and he’d done that to my missus, I’d have fucking killed him.’

I took a step forward, feeling my temper boiling over. I’m a patient man, but this bastard Kalinski was pushing it big time.

Tugger put his hand out in front of me. ‘All right, boys, calm down. Let’s all take it easy, have a drink, and talk about it again tomorrow morning. How does that sound? We’re not getting nowhere like this.’

‘I think I should get a bigger share of the Russell,’ said Johnny. ‘You say I didn’t have to do too much but, what with all this lot, things ain’t never going to be the same for me again.’

I turned to him, wanting to re-establish control. ‘Bullshit. You’ve done your bit, and you’ve done it well, but nothing changes with the death of Holtz. No one knows who we are and no one’s going to be able to find us. As long as we keep calm and release Krys. I’ll hold the money until tomorrow. If Joe still isn’t here when we’re due to leave, then we’ll split his share evenly, but if he is alive, and he comes looking for it, then it’s got to be remembered that it’s his money, and it’s each bloke’s lookout if he doesn’t want to give it up. Now, let’s count this fucking stuff. Then we can divvy up.’

The atmosphere was tense, unpleasant. No one felt much like talking, or even eating. Beers were cracked open, as per Tugger’s suggestion, but there was no celebration even though every man in the room was significantly richer. It was all there, too, every last note. Half a million pounds in fifties, just as Holtz had been instructed, and that settled it for me. There was no way he’d been accidentally shot by one of his men who was trying to put a hole in me. However many times I went over it in my mind, one thing remained certain, and that was that he’d had every intention of paying up.

Before we retired for the night, I took some bread down to Krys and fed it to him without speaking. Eventually he asked me whether his old man had paid the ransom. He didn’t sound angry or defiant any more, just tired and uncomfortable. He’d pissed his trousers again but didn’t ask for them to be changed.

‘Yeah, your dad paid,’ I told him.

‘Are you going to let me go?’ he asked, his voice sounding strangely like a kid.

‘You’re going to be released tomorrow morning. Then it’ll all be over.’

‘Thanks,’ said Krys.

I didn’t say anything as I replaced the gag, thinking once again that I was glad we hadn’t killed him. He deserved it, no question, but you couldn’t feel too much hate for a person in his state.

As I came out of the cellar and locked it behind me, I looked at my watch. 10.50 p.m. The others had all gone upstairs. I could hear them moving around. Yawning, I picked up the holdall from the kitchen table, checked to see that no one had tampered with it, and went up to bed, noticing for the first time that it had stopped raining.