Matthews’s body was taken away for a post-mortem, and this was when things got interesting. For all his strength and build, in actual fact he probably didn’t have long to live. He had a serious heart condition, thought to have been brought on by an addiction to steroids. There were traces of nandralone in his blood, as well as cocaine and alcohol, and injection marks on his left arm. Initially, the pathologist thought that he’d had a heart attack, but unfortunately such a diagnosis didn’t explain the strange internal injuries Matthews had suffered. There’d been extensive internal haemorrhaging as well as a cloudy swelling in the cells of a number of organs, particularly the kidneys. Somewhat baffled, the pathologist had carried out further tests. These showed significant traces of an extremely potent neurotoxin that would have resulted in these injuries and were, almost certainly, the cause of death. And this was the thing. The poisons department at Guy’s Hospital were called in and quickly identified the neurotoxin as elipadae, or cobra, venom.
Snake poison. Hardly the work of your average lowlife thug, the type Shaun Matthews specialized in upsetting. Which left what? The neighbours all agreed that Matthews received a fair number of visitors which, given his alleged trade, wasn’t particularly surprising, and it was felt that one of them was the likely perpetrator. Where your average small-time drugs buyer was likely to have got hold of cobra venom, however, was anyone’s guess.
The case was an odd one, and as far as I was concerned odd equalled interesting, and interesting equalled challenging, which these days can be something of a rarity. Never underestimate the stupidity of criminals. Most of them’ll make every effort imaginable to get caught. In the last murder investigation I’d been involved in, ten weeks earlier, the murderer, a seventeen-year-old carjacker named Rudi, had stabbed an unfortunate BMW owner to death when he’d had the gall to try to prevent his car being taken. Rudi had been arrested three days afterwards when a passing patrol car had spotted the vehicle parked outside his mum’s flat. Further investigation had unearthed Rudi’s prints all over the interior, as well as those of two of his mates. The knife he’d used, still complete with somewhat telltale blood-stains, had turned up under his bed hidden in a PlayStation box. I reckon the paperwork took up more time than the detective work. Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t even have bothered getting out of bed, and who could blame him?
But this was different. A poisoning opened up all sorts of possibilities. It suggested interesting motives. It suggested intelligence, or at least creativity, on the part of the poisoner, but also an incredible naivety. Poisoning was, in general, a pretty foolish method of committing murder. It was too easily traceable these days which meant its one great advantage — that it could make the victim’s death look like an accident — no longer held true. Having said this, however, the case was now six days old (or at least the murder was) and had yet to throw up any real clues of note, or anything that pointed to one particular person.
It was a fine sunny morning, the fifth day of what passes for an English heatwave, and DC Dave Berrin was driving as we pulled into the walled car park at the rear of the Arcadia nightclub, an imposing post-war structure on the Upper Holloway Road which dominated the corner on which it stood, and parked in a bay marked STAFF ONLY.
Not surprisingly, the club was closed at this time in the morning, but we were expected and walked right in through the double doors at the front. The interior was dark and spacious with tables facing down on to the dance floor on three sides. At the opposite end of the room was a long bar lined with stools. A woman stood on the serving side of it with a pen in her hand, looking down at some papers in front of her. She appeared to be the only person in the place. She looked up when she heard our footfalls on the wooden floor.
‘Sorry, we’re closed,’ she shouted out, going back to her papers. ‘We open at twelve for lunch.’
‘We’re police officers,’ I said loudly, crossing the dance floor with Berrin in tow. ‘Here to see Mr Fowler.’
‘He’s not here,’ she shouted back.
‘He should be. He’s expecting us. We’ve got an eleven o’clock meeting.’
‘Well, he’s not here.’
I strode up the steps to the bar and stopped in front of her. She carried on making notes on the papers on the bar. ‘Perhaps, then, you can tell us where he is.’
She looked up with a faintly bored expression on her face. ‘I don’t know. He should have been here more than an hour ago.’
This one had an attitude, all right. I gave her a quick once-over. Early thirties, slim with well-defined features, a nose that was maybe a little too sharp, and a vaguely Mediterranean appearance, particularly the olive-coloured eyes. She was definitely attractive — very attractive — but in a hard, don’t-mess-with-me kind of way, with the cynical confidence of someone who’s not afraid of a fight. If we’d been Nazi stormtroopers, we wouldn’t have intimidated her. My ex-wife’s all-time favourite film is Gone with the Wind and I think that says something about her (though I’m not quite sure what). This girl looked like hers was Scarface.
‘Is he likely to be at home?’ I asked her.
‘I told you, I don’t know where he is.’
I sighed ostentatiously. ‘But I presume you’ve got his home phone number?’ She nodded. ‘Well, I’d appreciate it if you’d phone him then and tell him we’re here.’
‘Look, I’m very busy.’ She motioned to the notes in front of her.
‘So are we, Miss …?’
‘Toms. Elaine Toms. I talked to a couple of your officers the other day.’
‘Well, we’re very busy too and it would be greatly appreciated if you could phone Mr Fowler and see if he’s at home for us. It won’t take a minute.’
My tone was even but firm, the kind that says I’m going to keep going until I get some co-operation. It always works in the end, but you’d be amazed how many people take a long time getting the message.
Without a word she turned and walked over to a telephone pinned to the wall in the corner, and dialled a number. I was a bit pissed off because I’d been preparing for this interview for close to a day now. We’d talked to Fowler once but only briefly to ascertain his position within the nightclub, what his relationship was with the deceased, and whether he could throw any light on what had happened. He’d come across as very keen to appear as helpful and as friendly as possible, but hadn’t actually managed to tell us a great deal. Predictably, he’d denied knowing anything about Matthews’s involvement in drug dealing. He’d claimed that as Arcadia’s owner he didn’t tolerate drug use on the premises but was aware that it did occur. ‘I’m looking at ways to combat it,’ he’d said, and had talked about installing cameras in the toilets. ‘That’s where most of it goes on, I’m sure,’ he’d added — a fairly logical assumption. Neither Berrin nor I had found the interview very helpful, mainly because there was something not quite authentic about Fowler’s answers, and since then it had come to light that he had a conviction for conspiracy to supply Class A drugs in the late 1980s and that one of his co-conspirators at the time had been Terry Holtz, the late brother of a notorious local crime figure. He’d also been done for driving under the influence of cannabis a couple of years back, and the club had been raided on two separate occasions by the Drugs Squad in an effort to take out suspected dealers, the last time eighteen months ago, although it had to be said that on neither occasion was any contraband found. More promisingly, there was also a rumour doing the rounds that, although Fowler’s name was on the deeds of the club, he wasn’t what you’d call the real owner. That man, it was claimed, was one Stefan Holtz, the same local crime figure whose brother Fowler had once been involved with.
The feeling in the station’s CID was that the motive for this murder was almost certainly drug-related and that it might possibly be something to do with a disagreement between Fowler and Matthews. Since Fowler apparently owned the club, and was almost certainly lying when he said he didn’t tolerate drugs on the premises, and Matthews appeared to have been the chief dealer, it was probably down to an argument about something mundane like the split of profits. All this was conjecture, of course, but DCI Knox, the head of the investigation, specialized in conjecture. Me, though, I wasn’t so sure, not least because I didn’t think Fowler would have used an obscure poison to rid himself of a troublesome business partner. But I did think there were plenty of questions he could provide an answer for, particularly regarding the possible involvement of the Holtzes, and I was keen to hear them.