Текст книги "The Bug House"

Автор книги: Jim Ford

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 10 страниц)

EIGHT

Paralysed from the chest down, Vic Entwistle lies in an intensive-care ward while a heart monitor pulses and peaks silently on a wheeled trolley by the bed and fluid from his chest cavity is siphoned into a plastic container. The noise reminds Vos of someone sucking the last dregs of Coke from a paper cup with a straw. The lower half of Entwistle’s waxen face is obscured by the fogged mask over his nose and mouth. He turns his head slightly so that he can see Vos and rolls his eyes in almost good-humoured resignation at his predicament.

‘Got some good news for you, mate,’ Vos says, pulling up a chair next to the bed.

Entwistle raises his hand and pushes the mask to one side. ‘Oh yeah?’ They have only recently removed the tracheal intubator from his throat and his voice is still little more than a rasping whisper.

‘There’s a guy on ward six who wants to buy your slippers.’

Entwistle smiles. ‘Fuck you, Theo.’

‘Actually I just talked to the nurse. She says they’ll be moving you out of intensive care in the next couple of days. And I got Alex to look up C7 spinal injuries on the internet. Apparently the paralysis can sometimes be temporary. The nerves in the spinal cord are traumatized and—’

Entwistle raises his hand again, this time to stop Vos from talking. ‘The good thing about the doctors in here is that they don’t bullshit you,’ he says. ‘I’m fucked, mate. My dancing days are well and truly over.’

‘Jesus Christ, Vic—’

‘You got to look on the bright side,’ Entwistle says. ‘They brought a young kid in here yesterday who’d come off his Kawasaki at a hundred miles an hour. Poor bastard’s dead from the neck down. At least I can still wipe my own arse. How is Alex anyway?’

‘He’s OK – in a nerdy sort of way. I’m still waiting to catch him staggering home pissed or smoking dope in his bedroom like any normal teenager. What was Jules like when she was sixteen?’

‘The same.’

‘What’s wrong with kids these days? They’re all so fucking serious.’

‘I know, I know. Pass me a glass of water, will you?’

Vos fills a plastic cup from a jug on the night stand.

‘How’s the Ahmed Doe investigation going?’ Entwistle asks. ‘Well, we’ve got a name.’

Vos fills him in on all the details. Entwistle listens without interruption, and even as he’s speaking Vos feels a sudden ache in his chest that his friend and colleague is not part of the case, that he’s trapped in his hospital bed, when he should be marching around the Bug House, his mind whirring as he processes all the details of Okan Gul’s murder.

‘There’s something else,’ he says. ‘Gul was a frequent flyer. Mayson’s isolated CCTV footage of him going through border control at Newcastle Airport on six separate occasions, each time using the same false passport.’

A low whistle. ‘Six visits in as many months. And we still don’t know who he was visiting?’

The use of the word ‘we’ is not lost on Vos. ‘The usual wall of silence,’ he says.

‘Well somebody killed him,’ Entwistle says. ‘We find out who hung him from that bridge, we find out who he was working with.’

‘I know, I know. But I’m getting a bad feeling about this, Vic. You see, I can’t think of one single Newcastle villain that a mob like the KK would even think twice about doing business with.’

‘That’s not very patriotic.’

‘Maybe not, but it’s true. We’ve shaken up Timmy Wok and Ma Breaker and half a dozen more of Tyneside’s finest, and when we’ve told them about the Turks they’ve all looked as if we’re talking about space aliens. Even Father Meagher hasn’t got a clue.’

‘So what are you thinking?’

‘I’m thinking that we might just be navel-gazing,’ Vos says. ‘That it’s bigger than we thought. In other words—’

‘You haven’t got a clue.’

Vos laughs. ‘Well at least you can see nothing changes in the Bug House.’

‘Yeah, but we get our man in the end, don’t we?’

‘That’s the theory.’

Entwistle reaches out his hand and grips Vos’s arm. ‘It’s good to see you, mate. I’m going fucking mad in here. I’d swop that morphine feed for a fix of gossip any day. What’s new in the BH?’

‘We’ve got a new girl,’ Vos says, instantly cursing himself for doing so.

Entwistle smiles. ‘A replacement, you mean?’

‘Temporary,’ Vos says. ‘She’s a nice kid. I’ve got her doing leg-work for Sam Severin on the car-ringing job. Breaking her in gently.’

Entwistle raises one eyebrow. ‘Tits?’

‘I never noticed, Vic.’

‘ ’Course you did.’

‘I’m old enough to be her father, for Christ’s sake.’

‘That’s no longer a valid excuse,’ Entwistle says. ‘You’re old enough to be the father of any girl under the age of twenty-six.’

‘Whatever. If you’re interested, I suggest you ask Phil Huggins’s opinion. In any case, she’s married.’

‘You’re no fun any more. So what else is fresh?’

‘I’m under investigation by the IPCC,’ he says. ‘I spent all day yesterday locked in mortal combat with some fat ex-superintendent from South Wales.’

Entwistle frowns. ‘IPCC? What for?’

‘Peel’s people want an inquiry.’

‘Into what?’

‘They’re still claiming I pushed him off that fire escape.’

‘For Christ’s sake!’

‘That’s what I said. But Anderson wants to play it by the book. Hence the grilling. It’s nothing. They’re just fishing to see if there’s any grounds for a full inquiry. But I thought I’d tip you off in case a fat Welshman comes calling.’

‘Let him come,’ says Entwistle. ‘Even if you did push Peel off the fire escape, I wouldn’t tell him. Good riddance to bad rubbish if you ask me. Have they fixed a trial date for Terry Loomis yet?’

‘They’re waiting until they’re sure you’re fit to testify.’

‘Tell them I’m ready, Theo. I want to look that bastard in the face when they send him down.’

Vos nods, but he knows that Entwistle won’t be giving evidence against the man who paralysed him for a while yet. He looks gaunt, shrunken somehow, and there is an ominous yellowish tinge to his skin – the result, the doctors say, of the damage to his internal organs that nearly killed him.

‘Hey, Dad.’

Entwistle’s drawn face brightens as his daughter Julia enters the room. ‘Hey, sweetheart!’

Vos stands and hugs the girl – although she’s no longer a girl. Julia Entwistle is twenty-five years old and about to be married. It seems only minutes ago that he and Vic were getting good and drunk at her head-wetting party. ‘Good to see you, Jules,’ he says.

‘And you, Uncle Theo,’ she says, and although she is smiling as if everything is fine and under control, Vos feels her fingers digging into him as if she daren’t let him go.

It’s late when Alex Vos gets home. He opens the front door and hears the TV and sees lights on in the living room. His father is slumped in an armchair, snoring erratically, a whisky still gripped in his hand. The packet of Doritos he’s been eating has tipped off the armrest and spilled into his lap.

‘Dad.’

Vos emits a loud snort and jerks awake. Alex swoops down to remove the whisky glass before it falls on the carpet.

‘Hello, son. Everything OK?’

‘I thought you were dead.’

‘So did I. What time is it?’

‘Half ten.’

Wakefulness gradually asserts itself. ‘Where have you been?’

‘Out.’

Vos straightens, and the sound of crunching alerts him to the corn chips between his legs. ‘Jesus,’ he mutters, scooping up the biggest shards and depositing them in the bag. When he looks up again, Alex has gone through to the kitchen and is raiding the fridge. ‘There’s some cheese in there if you want to make a sandwich.’

‘Right,’ Alex says, noting that there is no bread. He’s already taken the precaution of buying a pasta salad from the 24-hour garage. ‘You want anything?’ he says, grabbing a Coke.

‘You could bring me a beer.’

He returns to the living room, dropping the beer like a bomb on his father’s belly before throwing himself down on the sofa. ‘What are you watching?’

Vos stares at the screen uncomprehendingly. ‘Last time I looked it was the end of a Clint Eastwood film.’

‘Well it’s Celebrity Big Brother highlights now,’ Alex says, jabbing his fork into a glutinous mound of cold macaroni. With one stockinged foot he flips the remote control off the coffee table and drags it towards him, then presses the Channel Menu button with his big toe.

‘Look at that—’ Vos begins.

‘ “Six hundred channels and nothing on any of them”,’ Alex says wearily. ‘And to think there were only three when you were my age, Dad.’

Vos scowls. ‘Watch it, you. One of the few privileges of old age is being able to sound like a broken record. Anyway, where have you been?’

‘Round at Chris Jesperssen’s.’

‘Oh yeah? How’s he getting on?’

‘OK. You know he’s just started at art college?’

‘I seem to remember . . .’

‘He says it’s great.’

‘I’m sure it is. But the answer is no.’

‘Dad—’

‘The world is full of unemployed art-school graduates, son.’

Alex says nothing. He knows there is no point in arguing. For the next few minutes they sit and watch two people talking in a whirlpool bath. Then the commercials come on and Alex prods the Mute button.

‘Mum called today,’ he says.

‘Oh yeah? How is she?’

‘Trey’s youngest son is in jail.’

Vos looks over with an expression of wonderment. ‘Why?’

‘He got wasted at a party. Drove his car into a tree.’

‘That is the best news I’ve heard all day,’ Vos says truthfully.

‘Thought you’d like it,’ Alex says.

‘Trey will be devastated.’

‘Apparently he is. The kid was driving his car.’

A squawk of unalloyed joy. ‘It gets better and better.’

The commercial break ends and Alex prods the remote with his toe one more time.

‘I’m going to bed,’ he says. ‘What about you?’

‘Yeah, I’ll be up in a minute.’

‘Are you going to sit in that deckchair all night again?’

Vos gives him a stern look. ‘And if I do?’

‘Chris was telling me about his dog. It’s a Labrador, thirteen years old, spends all its time lying in the boot of his dad’s car, growling at people. Apparently that’s what they do when they get old.’

‘Well in dog years I’m nearly three hundred,’ Vos says. ‘I’ve also got a lot on my mind.’

‘Chris says they’re going to have to get the dog put down,’ Alex says. ‘The vet thinks it’s lost its mind.’

Then he finishes his pasta and goes to bed, leaving his father watching five people in a kitchen saying nothing to each other. Eventually it becomes too much to bear and he switches the TV off.

Upstairs in the bedroom Vos opens the sliding door and steps out onto the balcony. There’s an autumnal chill to the air tonight; he can feel it on the breeze scudding down the Tyne. Soon enough if he wants to sit out here he’s going to need one of those Arctic survival suits. But it’s not too cold just yet. He takes his whisky and his tin of Café Crème cigars and lowers himself into the camping chair. For a while he watches the lights dancing on the calm water of the marina; above the silhouettes of the terraces is the orange glow of the city. He lights one of the cigars and smokes it like a cigarette, with rapid, addictive puffs. Then he lights another.

Maybe Alex is right, he thinks. Maybe he is becoming like an old, ornery dog that just wants to be left alone to die in peace. Then again, he thinks, he’s only forty-two. He could have another fifty years left – although he doubts it. But then that’s the trouble with forty-two: you never know if you’re middle-aged or on the cusp of death. Forty-two has none of the certainty of twenty-two or even thirty-two.

Vos does not care for uncertainty, and right now there is too much of it in his life. Uncertainty about the Okan Gul case, uncertainty about his career.

He drains his whisky. It is now officially too cold to be sitting out here. He takes a last drag of his cigar, then flips it over the rail with his finger and thumb and watches the ember floating like an orange firefly into the black water below.

Part Two

NINE

Severin is late again, but Ptolemy is used to it now. Every day for the last week she has been at the supermarket car park at the appointed time, watching the colleagues milling around the entrance of the store, waiting for the doors to be opened, but without fail it’s thirty, forty minutes before the black Ford comes hurtling through the entrance. There is never any apology; there is barely a word spoken as they exchange packages, and then he is gone to wherever it is he goes.

Today it’s different, though. Today she is in Vos’s car, parked up on an access road next to a scrap-metal yard south of the river. Fifty yards further on is an unmarked Transit van containing a dozen officers from the Police Support Unit. Nearby, out of sight of the road, another van with a dog-handling team.

‘You OK?’ Vos asks.

‘Yes, boss.’

‘Here he comes.’

Ptolemy glances in the wing mirror. A fat-wheeled Porsche Cayenne has turned onto the access road and is approaching at a rapid clip. She instinctively lowers herself in her seat as it flashes past, raising her head in time to see it swing in through the gates of the scrapyard.

‘All units, wait for my signal,’ Vos says calmly into a comms handset.

Ptolemy wishes she had just a small amount of his self-assurance. Her heart is thumping and right now there is a part of her that wishes she was back at her desk in the Bug House, sifting through paperwork and listening to Mayson Calvert’s humming.

Delon Wombwell brings the Cayenne to a halt outside the site office Portakabin and his two passengers climb out. Philliskirk removes a hand-rolled cigarette from behind his ear, jams it in his mouth, lights it greedily and blows the smoke high into the air, where it drifts like mist between the teetering stacks of wrecked cars. He turns and looks at the vehicle appraisingly, gently running his finger along the lines of its roof.

‘Fucking nice motor,’ he says. ‘Wouldn’t mind one of these myself. No doubt destined for some yummy mummy in Essex, though.’

‘Keep your grubby hands off it,’ Severin says sharply.

Philliskirk looks wounded. ‘OK, OK, keep your fucking hair on. I don’t know what’s up with you today. Time of the month, is it?’

Delon giggles at that one. But then Delon giggles at anything Philliskirk says.

‘I was out with the North Shields crew the other day,’ Delon says. ‘We got an Alfa. Fucking nice cars, Alfas.’

‘You should ask Tiernan if you can have it,’ says Philliskirk. ‘As a thank-you for all your hard work driving car thieves around Tyne and Wear.’

Delon’s eyes widen below the bill of his baseball cap. ‘You think he would?’

‘Course I don’t, you fucking muppet.’ Philliskirk sucks down the smoke. ‘Personally I’d just settle for the commission. Did you talk to him about the commission, Sammy?’

‘You’ll get your money,’ Severin says.

‘How much do you reckon we’ll get for this one, Sammy?’ Delon says.

Severin looks at the Cayenne. It’s new, barely out of the showroom when they stole it this morning. Eighty, ninety grand of precision German engineering. What’s a quarter of a per cent of that? Two hundred quid between the three of them? Not bad for two minutes’ work, when you include first cloning the key and installing the GPS tracker. He has to hand it to Tiernan: he has a bloody good racket going here. Had he kept away from the luxury car market and stuck with ordinary motors, he might well have stayed under the radar.

But of course he didn’t.

People like Tiernan never do.

Here he is now, sweeping into the yard in his Range Rover. He gets out, spits onto the dirt, then saunters round with his hands in his pockets, nodding appreciatively at the Cayenne. He’s wearing a fetching pink V-neck pullover today. He must be off to the golf club once his business here is concluded, Severin thinks. Eighteen holes with the great and the good, then back to his big house in Darras Hall. Meanwhile the Cayenne will be on its way to the warehouse, then on the back of a low-loader to its new owner, complete with forged paperwork from a similar vehicle exported to Cyprus a month ago, and Delon and Philliskirk will be getting mortal on their commission.

Everybody’s happy.

At least that’s the plan.

‘Never liked Cayennes,’ Tiernan says, smoothing the paintwork with a monogrammed handkerchief. ‘Nice ride for the ladies, but if you’re going to drive a Porsche it’s got to be a Carrera. What do you think, Sammy? Are you a Cayenne or a Carrera man?’

‘I don’t give a shit either way, Mr Tiernan. They’re both way out of my price range.’

‘You could have one if you really wanted.’

‘I’m happy with the car I’ve got,’ Severin says. ‘Do you want me to put this one with the others?’

‘That’s it,’ Vos says in to the comms handset. ‘Let’s go.’

‘What the fuck?’ Philliskirk says.

‘It’s the polis!’ Delon exclaims.

Tiernan says nothing. He just turns and runs.

The others have already seen the Transit van speeding through the gate. Philliskirk is scrambling back towards the Cayenne, where Delon, gripping the wheel, is frantically pumping life back into the ticking engine. There’s a roar and the big SUV is suddenly careering towards the gate, Philliskirk cursing and hanging on to the open door briefly before cartwheeling to the ground in a heap. Up ahead the Transit has screeched to a halt, blocking the exit as it disgorges its cargo of police officers. They fling themselves to the ground as the Cayenne spears into its front end, then skews round on two wheels and smashes against one of the stacks of mangled cars.

Ptolemy and Vos arrive on foot in time to see the topmost layer of cars shear off the stack like boulders from a crumbling cliff face and land with a deafening crash on the bonnet of the Porsche.

Jesus . . . Ptolemy thinks, staring at the scene of carnage in the scrapyard.

A uniform is staggering blindly from side to side towards them, cursing, his face covered in blood. Another is sitting on the floor beside the open rear doors of the Transit, staring stoically at the way his leg is twisted at right angles from his knee. Two others are wrestling a pair of cuffs onto the flailing Philliskirk, who squeals with indignation as his right arm is shoved up between his shoulder blades so the hand almost reaches the nape of his neck.

‘Get your hands off me, you bastards,’ Severin snarls as he is led away to a waiting custody van by two officers.

Vos watches him go impassively. ‘Get to the cabin,’ he says to Ptolemy. ‘I’ll see what’s happened to Tiernan.’

Ptolemy runs through the dust and the noise and the chaos. The cabin door is open. She steps inside, sees a desk with a computer screen and a shelf full of box files, a black metal filing cabinet and a printer, invoices stacked in in-trays, trade books, mechanical manuals, a copy of the Evening Chronicle. Her job is to collect up all the paperwork, seize the computer hard drive, ensure that she has anything that might incriminate Tiernan.

Outside she hears men shouting and the barking of dogs.

*   *   *

Tiernan is running, but he won’t get far. The chain-link perimeter fence is ten feet high and topped with barbed wire.

‘Come on, Dale,’ Vos calls out, using the Christian name he knows Tiernan hates. ‘It’s over. Let’s not fuck about any more than we have to, eh?’

He pauses. Listens. Sighs. Tiernan is clearly intent on dragging this out as long as possible. In the distance Vos can hear the dogs barking. Six months’ undercover work and it has come to this: a squalid game of hide-and-seek.

‘The dogs are coming, Dale,’ he says. ‘There’s no way out of this.’

The scrapyard is a labyrinth of twisted metal, with the huge crusher at its heart. Towering above it are two cranes with claw attachments. Vos pauses beside one of the caterpillar treads, waiting, listening. The noise has receded now; all around is a supernatural calm, as if he is in the eye of a storm.

Suddenly there’s a noise like tearing fabric and before Vos can react a muscular, flat-headed dog explodes from a gap between two cars. It gets to within a foot of his throat before the heavy chain securing it to the axle of one of the cars snaps taut around its neck and jerks the animal in the air. It lands on its back in the dirt but scrabbles to its feet and, eyes bulging white with impotent fury, continues to lunge at Vos.

‘Is this what you’re looking for, sir?’

Vos looks up to see one of the uniform squad sergeants standing nearby with a smirk on his face. Beside him is Tiernan, cuffed and on his knees, his face as furious as the dog’s.

‘Found him hiding under a Datsun,’ the sergeant says. ‘The fat bastard was wedged tight.’

‘That’s what they always say about Datsuns,’ Vos says, gingerly getting to his feet out of range of the dog. ‘No gut room.’