Free The Murder Exchange by Simon Kernick Page B

not if you want anything
left at the end of it.
    Four hundred yards up the Holloway Road, just
past the Liverpool Road turning, the traffic slowed
H^ht down as a large group of maybe twenty-five
or thirty people standing outside a pub suddenly
spilled out into the road. Seconds later there were
shouts and the sound of glass smashing, and a
group of five of them split off from the rest in
what looked like a wild dance. Others ran over to
nile in and the whole scrum of them lumbered
_.Uj the middle of the road, breaking apart and reforming
as half a dozen individual battles were
fought, oblivious to the cars driving by. A bottle
sailed lazily through the air, bouncing off the
roof of the vehicle in front of us before ending up
unbroken in the bus lane on the other side of the
street.
    'Fucking kids,' said the taxi driver in a voice that
was half-snarl, half-sigh, as the group, most of
whom looked no more than twenty, swirled back
towards the pavement. One of them went down,
putting up his arms in a vain effort to protect himself
as he disappeared beneath a rapid-fire welter of
kicks from at least three others. A girl screamed
something unintelligible and rushed out of
the watching crowd to intervene, wading into the
kickers, handbag aloft. The one on the ground,
sensing an opportunity, jumped to his feet and got
    79
out of the firing line. He was holding his head and
bleeding from the nose.
    The taxi driver accelerated and we left them
behind to their fighting. 'Fucking kids/ he said
again. "They get worse and worse.' I nodded and
mumbled something in reply, thinking that that
was the thing with London. One minute you were
drinking in the ambient atmosphere of a laid-back
summer evening, the next you'd stepped unwittingly
into an ugly battlezone. I suppose that's
why some people like it so much. The variety.
    There was a long queue of revellers, mainly
under-twenty-fives, snaking back along the street
from the entrance to the Arcadia. I got the cab to
stop directly outside, paid the driver in full, and
tipped him a quid. 'Enjoy yourself/ he said, with a
wave, as he drove off. Probably about ten years too
late for that, I thought, but you never knew.
    I walked to the head of the queue where a group of
four male and one female door staff were frisking the
waiting punters. One of them turned to me as I
approached and gave me the same sort of funny look
the cab driver had, like what on earth was a bloke in
his mid-thirties in a suit he looked like he'd been
wearing all day doing coming to a trendy joint such
as this. Teah?' he said, by way of greeting.
    I produced my warrant card and thrust it in his
face. 'Police. I'm here to see Mr Fowler.' I was
getting deja vu now.
    He inspected the card, then looked back at me. 'I
don't think he's here tonight/ he said.
    'Well, Miss Toms'll do/ I said, and walked past
him.
    80
There was a line of four further doormen in the
foyer just inside the main entrance and I walked
past them, showed my warrant card to a very thin
young lady with big hair at the desk, and asked her
to phone up to Fowler. She reiterated what the
doorman had said about him not being in, but I
insisted. She let the phone in his office ring for
about thirty seconds before telling me he wasn't
there. Next she tried Elaine Toms, who apparently
was in, but wasn't answering either. I had no great
desire to enter the club proper but it didn't look like
I was going to have any choice. I thanked her and
headed through the door in front of me.
    The place was heaving, as befitted a Friday night,
with the majority of the youthful crowd packed
onto the dance floor. The music was loud, repetitive
and boring, the kind my daughter's thankfully too
young to like. At the bar at the far end, I noticed a
few older people, mainly men in their thirties, and
even one or two in their forties, clustered together
against the noise. Some of them were wearing suits,
though none of them looked like office workers,
and I wondered who they were.
    My eyes