Read Online The Murder Exchange by Simon Kernick - Free Book Online Page B

non-existent as it was, I decided to stay
late in the incident room and catch up on paperwork.
Benin wasn't so keen and took off bang on
five-thirty, something I duly noted. There was an
all-units out on the car I'd spotted with the bullet
holes in it. Two of the station's uniforms had
stopped it and there'd been an altercation with the
driver, who'd fled the scene on foot, having
    71
assaulted and injured both officers. Suspected
bloodstains had been found in the vehicle, which
was registered in the name of Max Iversson, an ex
soldier with no previous record, who matched
witness descriptions of the driver. Thankfully, it
was nothing to do with me any more, but I was
pleased that my observance had paid off, even if
the uniforms who'd done the stopping and who
were now off sick probably weren't.
    It was ten to nine when I left the station. I went to
a cheap Italian off Upper Street I occasionally frequent and had a bowl of pasta and some garlic
bread, washed down with a couple of welcome
bottles of Peroni now that I was off duty. I suppose
you could say it was a lonely way to spend a Friday
evening, and you'd be right, it was, but I was beginning
to get used to it. This time barely a year ago, it
had all been a lot different. I'd been a DI at another
station south of the river, heading up through the
ranks in the direction of the DCI slot, with three
commendations under my belt. Crime down there
was bad, the hours were tough ... Paradise it
wasn't. But it wasn't a bad life and, unlike a
lot of my colleagues, I still had a stable domestic
situation. A wife of fifteen years, an eleven-year-old
daughter, a decent house in an area where the
weekly mugging tallies were still in single
figures...
    Then, on the night they brought in Troy Farrow, it
all changed.
    Troy Farrow was a seventeen-year-old street
robber who specialized in making victims of
schoolkids my daughter's age, relieving them
    72
of their mobile phones and pocket money, and old
ladies, who he liked to pick off on pension day,
sometimes breaking a few frail bones in the
process. He had nine convictions altogether but had
only spent a total of three months inside, so the law
didn't exactly have him shaking in his Nike
trainers. He was shouting and cursing and
threatening all sorts as the arresting officers booked
him in for what was likely to be his tenth conviction:
the violent removal of a mobile phone from
the ear of a young secretary foolish enough to have
been walking down a busy street early evening
without keeping her wits about her. Unfortunately
for him, the street was under surveillance by
-Hirers in plain clothes and he was caught within
minutes. I was detailed to interview him, along
with a DC, because we were interested in getting
information from him regarding the near gang rape
of an eleven-year-old by a group who'd also robbed
her of her mobile and the bag of sweets she was
carrying. We didn't think Farrow had been
involved - it wasn't his style to molest his victims,
and the suspects had been described as being aged
between twelve and fourteen - but we were pretty
sure he would know who was. There wasn't much
that went on in Farrow's estate, crime-wise, that he
wasn't aware of, and kids like that would almost
certainly have bragged about what they'd done.
    Farrow calmed down as he was taken down to
the interview room by two of the arresting officers,
with me and the DC following a few yards behind.
What happened next is still something of a mystery.
As Farrow and the arresting officers turned and
    73
I
    entered the room, he turned and said something to jg
    one of them that I didn't quite catch but which I IT
    was told later went along the lines of 'You pussies "W
    can't do nothing with me'. The officer had then £
    made a fatal mistake. He'd let his frustration with ^
    the legal system and the cocky criminals who fre- f <
    quented it get the better of him, and had apparently *
called Farrow 'a black bastard', causing a further,
much more violent