Текст книги "The Bug House"

Автор книги: Jim Ford

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 10 страниц)

FIFTEEN

There are six beds in ward 26A of Newcastle General Hospital. The one occupied by Delon Wombwell is positioned between an elderly man crazed by a bladder infection and another man in his thirties, with pancreatitis, who does nothing but lie on his front all day moaning with pain. Delon is trapped, unable to move due to the fact that his shattered right leg has been bolted to a metal frame, which is in turn suspended from an intricate gantry arrangement above his bed. To take his mind off his predicament, he listens to Slipknot and Metallica on his iPod and stares blankly at the subtitled daytime shows on the flatscreen TV on the wall at the end of the ward.

The hours blend into one on ward 26A, delineated only by mealtimes and bed baths. But Delon, numbed by pain medication, lost track of time long ago. When Severin and Ptolemy arrive shortly after lunch, he is asleep – but only because his body clock still works independently of his brain.

‘Wakey-wakey,’ Severin says, tickling Delon’s bare foot with his fingernail while Ptolemy draws the privacy curtain around the bed.

Delon stirs and his eyelids flicker. ‘Fuggov, Sammy,’ he says dreamily. Then his eyes snap open and terror freezes his features. He knows all about Sam Severin by now. Knows he is polis; knows what happens to people who talk to the polis. ‘Sammy?’ He tries to shift backwards but succeeds only in clanging the back of his skull against the iron rungs of the bedstead.

And now he emits a tiny yelp of fear and pain as Severin grabs his big toe between finger and thumb and begins to twist it.

‘DC Ptolemy and I don’t have long, Delon,’ Severin says calmly. ‘That’s why we’ve come to see you instead of Philliskirk – or Mr Tiernan for that matter.’

Half-formed thoughts smash against each other in the void behind Delon’s eyes. ‘What do you want, Sammy?’

‘I want you to tell me about a 1986 Jaguar XJ6.’

‘Wha—?’

‘It was stolen last week. I want to know where from.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

‘Of course you know, Delon. You were the designated driver for all of Tiernan’s crews.’

‘I don’t remember,’ Delon says.

‘Delon,’ says Ptolemy in her sweetest voice. ‘Do you know what will happen when Mr Tiernan goes to court? DC Severin here will be called to give evidence, and the first question they will ask him is, “Who tipped you off about Mr Tiernan’s operation?” Do you know what he will say?’

‘I’ll say it was you, you fucking halfwit,’ Severin says, giving Delon’s toe another painful tweak. ‘And Mr Tiernan will be sitting in the court when I say it – and he’ll be looking at you, Delon. He’ll be looking at you and working out just how soon he’ll be able to break every other bone in your body.’

‘But—’

‘No buts, Delon,’ says Ptolemy.

‘So think again, my man,’ says Severin. ‘Think nice and hard, and maybe I’ll say it was Philliskirk who was pissed and running his mouth off in that pub. Where was the XJ6 taken?’

Delon needs no more encouragement. He blurts out the location.

‘There now,’ says Severin. ‘That wasn’t so hard, was it? And now I’ll get the nurse to bring the bedpan, shall I?’

*   *   *

In a smart house in the sprawling Newcastle suburb of Heaton, Alex Vos is staring at the gently smoking neck of a glass bong being held under his nose by his best friend, Chris.

‘Come on you fucking dweeb,’ Chris says. ‘Get your lips around it.’

His words are met with a murmur of approval from the three other teenage boys sprawled in Chris’s attic bedroom.

‘I’ll be sick,’ Alex says.

‘So you’ll be sick,’ says one of the other boys. ‘So fuck?’

‘Everybody’s sick, Alexei,’ says Chris. ‘That’s why you’ve got to do it.’

‘That’s not terribly logical, C.’

‘Fuck logic, you tool! Who the fuck are you? Mr Spock?’

Another boy, who happens to have brought the weed to the party, makes a stoned lunge for the bong, but Chris flaps him away.

‘It’s Alex’s turn,’ he says firmly. Then he pushes the bong even closer to Alex’s face. ‘It’s your turn,’ he says.

With a deep sigh of resignation, Alex takes the bong in both hands and brings it to his lips. He takes a hit of the tangy smoke and immediately begins coughing.

Chris grins, taking back the bong and patting his friend on the back. ‘You da man,’ he says. ‘Now let’s go out.’

In the Bug House meeting room, the incident board is now dominated by a blown-up image of Jimmy Rafferty. Beside it is a photograph of the 1986 Jaguar XJ6.

‘Do you really fancy this kid for Okan Gul’s murder, Theo?’ says Mhaire Anderson. She is sitting in a chair facing the board, peering at it over the top of her new spectacles.

‘He’s not a kid, guv’nor,’ Vos says. ‘He’s a violent offender. Four years ago he was a whisker away from being a murderer. Plus the rope that was found in his car is a match to the rope used on Okan Gul, the stun gun has his fingerprints all over it, and there are fibres from Gul’s clothes in the boot. Which perhaps explains why he never bothered to report the car stolen and why he has subsequently vanished off the face of the Earth. You want more?’

‘You know me,’ Anderson says. ‘I always want more.’

‘Rafferty’s Jag was stolen to order from a car park in Morpeth the day after Gul was killed less than four miles away at Stannington. So in answer to your question, yes, I fancy him for the murder.’

‘OK. But what’s the connection with the Turkish mob?’

‘We’re assuming there is a connection.’

‘Jesus, Theo! You said it yourself: Gul was kidnapped, zapped with a stun gun and tied to a railway bridge,’ Anderson points out. ‘You can’t tell me that this was a random killing. That Jimmy Rafferty did this because Gul happened to spill his pint.’

‘All I’m saying is we’ve looked into his history,’ Vos says. ‘There is absolutely nothing to connect him to Jack Peel or the Manchester mob.’

Anderson takes off her glasses and polishes them on the lapel of her jacket. ‘So what’s his motive?’

‘I don’t know. But you’re right: there’s nothing random about this. It’s totally premeditated. I just think we’re being distracted by this big heroin deal. Don’t forget, Gul’s last visit to Tyneside took place when Heddon and the KK head-bangers were meeting in Amsterdam. So why was he here? Who was he meeting?’

‘Well, I don’t imagine it was a cultural visit.’

‘Me neither. I’d bet the house he was setting up another import deal, only this time with one of the Newcastle gangs. And not necessarily heroin. The KK are capable of supplying anything from cheap coke to cheap fags. They’re the Matalan of illicit, smuggled goods.’

‘Anyone in mind?’

Vos shrugs. ‘You know this city as well as I do. Timmy Wong, Ma Breaker, the Tunstalls, the Gilotis – take your pick. Or maybe it was all of them. And maybe that’s what got Okan Gul killed. In Amsterdam he’s a big-time gangster. Used to getting his own way. Maybe he just pissed someone off. Someone who decided to teach him a lesson.’

‘Then how do you want to play it, Theo?’

‘We have to go back to the tried-and-trusted methods, guv’nor,’ Vos says. ‘We need to rattle some cages.’

At the Excelsior Bingo Hall on Shields Road, Ma Breaker has five cards on the go and a blotting pen in each hand.

At Aspers Casino on Stowell Street in the heart of Newcastle’s Chinatown district, Timmy Wong has three grand on red at the roulette table.

At Sandro’s Ristorante on the quayside, Sandro Giloti and his brother Italo have opened a second bottle of Sangiovese and Sandro is pouring it into the glasses of two attractive escorts who have been hired for £1,000 each from an agency in central Newcastle.

At Close House Country Club on the outskirts of Newcastle, Eddie Tunstall is watching football on a flatscreen TV in the members-only bar and drinking mineral water on his doctor’s advice.

And by the end of the evening, all of them will have had their evenings’ entertainment unceremoniously interrupted by members of the Major Crime Unit.

Meanwhile, in a bar on a side street near the river chosen specifically for its cheap alcohol and its less than scrupulous policing of the under-eighteen drinking regulations, Alex Vos walks with as much dignity as he can to the nearest toilet, where he locks himself in a cubicle and throws up.

When he emerges, several minutes later, there is a girl standing by the door, leaning on the beer shelf. Alex recognizes her as the same girl who has been smiling across at him all night. She is blonde and beautiful, and he does not for one second think that she is waiting for him until she smiles again to reveal perfect white teeth and says, ‘Hi.’

‘Hi,’ Alex says, aware of his vomit breath and of his friends sitting over in the far corner of the bar, laughing heartily at something – at him? No, they can’t see him because of the throng at the bar, and they can’t hear him either, because Dexys Midnight Runners are singing ‘Come On Eileen’ on the jukebox and the music is so loud he can hardly hear the girl when she leans over to him and says, ‘Do you want to go somewhere quieter?’

And then he doesn’t know what time it is or where his friends have gone, but he is with the girl and they are walking along the Quayside, where the evening is just beginning; the dwindling pub crowd has been boosted with a transfusion of clubbers, and the late-night bars are open for business. He is weaving along the pavement, his footsteps dipping in and out of tempo with the thudding bass-drum beat from bars on either side, and he can hear the girl’s laughter, although he cannot understand what she is saying. Faces come and go like streetlights in his peripheral vision, their words cut-and-pasted in his mind, then instantly deleted. He pauses to be sick once again in an alleyway, and when he staggers back into the streetlights a white van is parked by the side of the road with its engine running; and the girl – the girl with kaleidoscope hair? – is gesturing for him to get in; and he tells her where he lives and she smiles and laughs and gestures and says, ‘Come on, get in, I’m heading that way anyway.’

And by four in the morning even the clubbers have called it a day, and an unnatural calm has fallen over the city.

In his flat overlooking Jesmond Dene, Mayson Calvert, soothed by Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor and by the pulse of his own thoughts, is bathed in the glow of his laptop computer. He is working on a theory, one that he has worked on for several hours, one that has involved a great deal of research on the internet, trawling through sites so obscure and specialist that they would not even register on a popular search engine.

And now, after chasing up several blind alleyways, he has found the answer. Or at least he has found an answer. What it means is not clear at all, but Mayson knows that in his experience, answers are merely the catalyst to more questions.

But he has time. It is 4.15 a.m. and everybody is asleep.

By the time they are ready to begin the day, he may well have worked out what it all means.

SIXTEEN

The buzzing of Vos’s phone is insistent. He opens his eyes and is confronted by the sight of an empty whisky bottle and a full ashtray next to his chair on the balcony. He cannot remember coming to bed but is cheered by the fact that he obviously did. After a night’s excess, any evidence of good sense is a triumph.

He reaches for the phone on the night stand. The number on the display is Seagram’s. The time is 7 a.m.

‘Bernice,’ he says.

‘Morning, boss. Didn’t wake you, did I?’

He detects the mischief in her voice. ‘What have you got for me?’

‘Put the kettle on and I’ll tell you.’

Vos gets out of bed and goes out to the balcony. Seagram is standing on the pavement opposite, grinning up at him. One hand presses her phone to her ear, the other is waving a bacon sandwich.

‘I’ll be down in a minute,’ he says, pulling on a dressing gown.

‘Couldn’t sleep?’ he says. He waves her through to the kitchen. ‘Or have you found Jimmy Rafferty?’

‘We did a tour of the usual suspects last night,’ Seagram says. She places something on the counter and sheds her coat onto the back of a stool. ‘Of course nobody had heard of him, but we let it be known in the strongest possible terms that we were very keen to speak to him.’

Vos fills the kettle. ‘So what’s up?’

‘Mayson Calvert called me just before six. I was passing, so I thought I’d give you the heads up before he started blinding you with science in the office.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘He says he’s worked out what the dust particles are.’

He regards her blearily. ‘Dust particles?’

‘On the rope. On Okan Gul’s clothing. In Jimmy Rafferty’s car.’

‘Tea or coffee?’ Vos says, opening the cupboard.

‘Compressed wood pellets,’ Seagram says. ‘They’re a type of man-made fuel made from compacted sawdust. They’re very popular now that gas and electric prices have gone through the roof, apparently. Oh, and coffee please. Do you have decaf?’

‘You must be fucking joking.’

‘About the coffee or the wood pellets?’

‘Both,’ Vos says, shovelling granules into two mugs. He sees the object on the counter. ‘What’s this?’

‘It was on the doorstep,’ Seagram says. ‘You must have dropped it when you were trying to get your key in the lock last night. Anyway, Mayson was terribly excited, although I think he was more excited about beating George Watson to the punch.’

‘On the doorstep?’ Vos says. He picks the object up. It is a wristwatch with a cheap rubberized strap with the words BOCA RATON printed on it. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah.’

‘This is Alex’s. His mum gave it to him last time she was over.’

‘Thought it must be,’ Seagram says. ‘He must have dropped it . . .’

Vos takes the stairs two at a time. He opens Alex’s bedroom door. His son’s bed has not been slept in.

‘Everything all right, boss?’ Seagram shouts up the stairs. ‘The kettle’s boiled.’

‘Did you see anyone hanging around outside, Bernice?’

‘No. Why?’

In the bedroom, Vos grabs his mobile and dials Alex’s number, but it is switched off. He returns into his son’s room. His movement is calm and unhurried, but his mind is racing. What the fuck is Chris’s surname? Swedish-sounding. Johanssen? Jorgenssen? He scans the room for a contacts book or a directory or something where Alex might have kept a list of numbers. Don’t be fucking stupid. Kids keep all their numbers in their phones these days.

‘You sure you’re all right, boss?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

And Alex is fine too. He’s crashed at Chris’s. He dropped his watch as he was leaving the house last night.

Except Alex would never do anything like that. He’s far too precise.

Precise. Where has he heard that word recently?

He rips open Alex’s desk drawer. Right up against the corner at the back, almost hidden among the piles of paperclips and thumb tacks, is an old Nokia handset. Alex’s first phone, only a couple of years old but already centuries out of date to any technologically savvy teenager. Vos grabs the phone and goes downstairs.

‘The batteries have gone on this,’ he says, handing the phone to Seagram. ‘How the hell do I get it working to open the contacts book?’

Seagram looks mystified. ‘Have you got a power adaptor?’

‘Probably. Somewhere. Let’s just assume that I don’t.’

‘I’ve got a Nokia phone. Maybe I can switch the SIM cards.’

She forces the back off Alex’s phone, picks out the SIM and places it in the slot at the back of her own phone. She activates the Power button, waits for it to spring to life and then goes to her contacts book.

‘There you go,’ she says, smiling uncertainly. There’s a look on the boss’s face that seems close to panic.

‘Look up Chris Jorgenssen. Or Johanssen. Or something Scandinavian.’

Seagram scrolls down the list of names. ‘Jesperssen?’

‘That’s it.’

Vos grabs the handset and presses the Call button. Presently someone answers with a grunt.

‘Chris, this is Theo Vos. Alex’s dad.’

‘Uh, oh yeah. Hi, Mr V.’

‘Is Alex there?’

‘Alex? Uh, no.’

‘You mean he’s left?’

‘Uh, no. He’s not at home?’

In the pit of his stomach, Vos feels tremors of unease growing steadily. ‘You mean he didn’t stay at yours?’

‘No.’

‘What about the other guys?’

‘They stayed here.’

Vos takes a breath. ‘Listen to me carefully, Chris: what happened to Alex last night?’

‘I dunno. We were in this, er—’

‘Look, I know you were out drinking. Just tell me what happened.’

‘We kind of lost him.’

‘You kind of lost him?’

‘Yeah. He was a bit pissed and I think he went to the toilet and then I think he must have just left. We looked for him, but he’d gone.’

‘What time was this?’

‘Half ten, something like that.’

‘Which pub were you in?’

‘The Ship.’

‘And you didn’t see him after that? He didn’t call or leave a message?’

‘No. What’s going on, Mr V? Is Alex all right?’

‘Chris, I want you to think very carefully. Was Alex wearing his watch last night?’

‘His watch?’

‘His watch from Florida. Orange strap with BOCA RATON written on it.’

There’s a pause and then another grunt. ‘Yeah. Now you mention it. There was this girl he was talking to in the pub who took a bit of a shine to it. Took a bit of a shine to him, actually.’

‘I need you to think, Chris,’ Vos says. ‘Can you remember the girl’s name?’

‘Nah, Mr V,’ Chris says. ‘They were only talking for a minute. We were at the other end of the bar.’

Vos can feel the his fingernails digging into his palm. ‘What did she look like?’

‘Blonde. Fit-looking. Yeah. Really fit-looking.’

‘Did he leave with her?’

This time there is a bark of derisory laughter. ‘Nah, man. She was with some big guy. Like a cage fighter type, you know? Biggest scar you ever saw on his face.’

Vos’s blood runs cold. ‘What sort of scar, Chris?’

‘Like he’d been knifed or something.’

Vos closes his eyes. ‘S-shaped? From his neck to his left ear?’

‘Yeah!’ Chris says. ‘That’s it. Why? Do you know him, Mr V?’

SEVENTEEN

‘It’s Jimmy Rafferty,’ Vos says. ‘Jimmy Rafferty’s got him.’

‘You can’t be sure of that, Theo,’ Mhaire Anderson says.

‘Yes I can.’

‘But why?’

‘Because it’s fucking payback, that’s why. Because my people were rattling cages all over Newcastle last night. Because we’ve been rattling cages ever since this Okan Gul thing happened. Or maybe it’s for Jack Peel? How the fuck should I know, guv’nor? All I know is Rafferty’s got my boy.’

Anderson runs her fingers through her short hair. She looks tired, beaten down. The rain is drumming against her office window again and even though it is now 8 a.m., it’s still as gloomy as first light outside.

‘You need to calm down,’ she says. ‘Think about this rationally, Theo. These people aren’t stupid. Okan Gul is one thing, but going after a copper’s family? All that will achieve is to bring a whole world of shit down on everyone’s head.’

‘You really think there’s still this mythical golden rule out there?’ Vos says. ‘This unspoken code between coppers and villains? Do me a favour, guv’nor. They don’t give a shit any more.’

‘Enough!’ Anderson smashes her fist on the desk. ‘Enough, Theo. This is getting us nowhere, and it’s certainly not helping to find Alex.’

Vos feels the anger drain out of him, replaced by a deep, throbbing despair. But Anderson is right. Arguing the toss over the whys and wherefores is no use at all. They will only have a chance of finding his son if they can find Jimmy Rafferty.

‘What about CCTV from the pub?’ Anderson says.

‘It’s a drinking hole, not a city centre bar. The nearest camera is five hundred yards away and pointing in the wrong direction.’

‘Witnesses?’

‘Huggins and Fallow are on their way round to Chris Jesperssen’s with Rafferty’s mug shot, see if they can confirm it was him last night.’

‘And what about the girl?’

‘All we’ve got is a description. Blonde, good-looking, young.’

‘OK. Well let’s work those angles and see what we can get. Meanwhile it might be worth reminding the criminal fraternity of the consequences of holding back on this one.’

‘I’m on it.’

‘Not you, Theo.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m putting every available detective on the street. But I want you back at the Bug House.’

Vos stares at her. ‘Why? You think I might not be able to control myself? That someone might take a dive off a fire escape during the course of questioning? After all, I’ve got a reputation to uphold.’

‘Damn right you’ve got a reputation to uphold, DCI Vos,’ Anderson says. ‘You’re the best fucking detective I’ve got – which is the only reason I’m letting you within a hundred miles of this case.’

The shakedown begins in earnest within ten minutes of Vos leaving Anderson’s office. Within an hour every known villain in the city is in no doubt of the seriousness of the situation, having either been approached personally or having had the message relayed to them by their associates. It’s like water being dripped into a balloon: sooner or later the balloon is going to burst. It’s just a matter of time.

But in his office in the Bug House, Vos knows that time is the one thing he does not have.

Shortly before 11 a.m. Seagram arrives outside the offices of AAA Taxis and pushes the buzzer.

‘Where to?’ says the disembodied voice.

‘It’s me, Jean,’ Seagram says.

Ma Breaker is sitting behind her desk, face like thunder. Ryan, her youngest and stupidest son, is slumped on the leather settee looking decidedly uncomfortable.

‘First of all,’ she says, ‘I am not very happy with you, Bernice.’

Seagram shrugs. ‘What can I say, Jean?’

‘I appreciate you’ve got a job to do, but there’s a time and a place for everything, and the bingo night at the Excelsior is not one of them.’

Seagram notices that Ma’s fingers are still stained with red ink from the blotting pens.

‘Jean, I really don’t have much time.’

The old woman raises her hand and then points an accusatory finger at her son. ‘Tell her what you told me.’

‘Aw, mother!’ Ryan says.

‘Tell her!’

Ryan twists like a fish on a line. ‘Jimmy Rafferty, yeah?’ he mumbles.

‘What about him, Ryan?’

‘Well I don’t know him that well, right? But I sometimes see him about.’

‘Do you know where he is, Ryan?’ Seagram says.

Ryan shakes his head earnestly. ‘No. Honest. Like I say, I just sometimes see him about.’

‘Tell him about the lass, Ryan,’ Ma says ominously.

‘He’s seeing this lass,’ Ryan says. ‘He said it was a secret, that nobody was to know, but—’

‘But you’ve got a gob like the mouth of the Tyne,’ Ma says disparagingly.

‘Who is she, Ryan?’ says Seagram.

‘I don’t know her name. Honest, he wouldn’t tell me her name. Only that she’s posh. Rich, like.’

‘What’s a toerag like Jimmy Rafferty doing with a posh rich girl, Ryan?’

‘I dunno. He met her at this club in town a couple of weeks ago. He says she likes a bit of rough. Says she’s always gagging for it off him . . .’ Ryan stops himself, conscious of his mother’s disapproving glare.

‘Go on, Ryan.’

‘Yeah. Well, Jimmy’s well smitten. He was on about how he would do anything for her, you know? That they were going to run off together.’

‘But he didn’t say who this girl was?’

‘It had to be a secret, he said.’

Seagram stares at him, repulsed by his eager eyes and his damp red lips.

‘When did you last see Jimmy Rafferty, Ryan?’

Ryan hangs his head. ‘About a week ago.’

‘Where?’

‘Snooker hall on Byker Road.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘I dunno. Can’t remember.’

A stapler flies from Ma Breaker’s hand and strikes her son in the chest with a hollow thud. ‘Tell the police officer, Ryan, or so help me God I’ll rip your ears off.’

‘He said it was going to happen,’ Ryan says sullenly, rubbing his chest.

‘What was going to happen?’ Seagram says.

‘They were going to be together. He said things had changed and he’d done what she asked and now they were going to be together and nothing was going to stop them.’

Seagram goes across to the settee, and Ryan Breaker flinches like a whipped dog as she hunkers down in front of him.

‘That’s very good, Ryan,’ she says, smiling icily. ‘You’ve been a big help. Now I need you to think: what had Jimmy done?’

Ryan’s face is contorted by his natural instinct not to say a word to the police and by his total and complete fear of his own mother.

‘There was this bloke. Foreigner. Friend of her dad’s.’

‘Go on, Ryan.’

‘She told Jimmy that he’d tried it on with her. Feeling her up and that. She wanted Jimmy to sort him out for her.’

‘And?’

‘He did,’ Ryan Breaker says. ‘Jimmy sorted him out.’

Seagram stares at him. ‘The girl, Ryan. I need you to remember everything Jimmy told you about her.’

‘He didn’t say much—’

‘Everything, Ryan.’

Ryan Breaker sighs. Seagram can almost hear the gears clanking in his thick skull. Then he looks up, and there is a light burning dimly behind his eyes.

‘The club where he met her; Jimmy was working on the door that night. That’s why he was so pleased with himself when she started chatting him up.’

‘I don’t understand, Ryan.’

There is a pause while Ryan assembles his thoughts. Then he licks his lips and nods. ‘The club was Aces High. Down on the Quayside.’

‘Yes, I know it,’ Seagram says.

‘The girl was – well, Jimmy never knew this, it was one of the other bouncers that told him afterwards.’

‘What about the girl, Ryan?’

Ryan looks at her in triumph. ‘It was her dad that owned it,’ he says.

Ptolemy is staring at the wall map of Northumberland when Vos finally emerges from his office. He’s been there all morning, hidden behind drawn blinds, and she can only imagine what sort of personal hell he must be going through as the minutes tick by with no word about Alex. Part of her wants to go in and see him, to offer him at the very least the consolation of human contact, but she knows that the best thing she can do for Vos now is to help find his son.

‘It’s a big place when you look at it like that,’ Vos says, nodding at the map.

‘Yes, sir,’ she says.

Vos goes across to Mayson Calvert’s desk. On it is a plastic sack marked EGROS WOOD PELLETS. He dips his hand in and scoops up a pile of cylindrical pellets no more than a centimetre in length.

‘So this is Mayson’s elusive wonder fuel, is it?’ he says, letting the pellets trickle through his fingers into the sack.

‘I’ve had the full rundown this morning,’ Ptolemy says. ‘Apparently their high-density, low-moisture content allows them to be burned with a far higher combustion efficiency than traditional fossil fuels. I can even tell you the chemical compound if you like, sir.’

‘No, thanks,’ Vos says. ‘Where’s Mayson now?’

‘He went out for a sandwich.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’m OK.’

‘You’ve got to eat.’

‘I kind of got sidetracked, sir.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘I was thinking about those pellets, and why the dust ended up on the victim and on the rope and in Jimmy Rafferty’s car. And then I saw them – and I remembered that when I was a kid I used to help with the mucking out at the stables down the road. The woman who ran the stables used pellets just like these as bedding for the horses. And then there’s the rope; I checked it out online and aramid rope is used for securing horses in transport boxes. It’s flexible, but it’s also incredibly strong.’

Vos frowns and sits on the edge of the desk. ‘So what are you getting at, Ptolemy?’

‘Jimmy Rafferty’s car was stolen from Morpeth. Okan Gul was killed at Stannington, just down the road. But Jimmy’s from North Shields. What’s he doing all the way out there? How come he knows the area so well? And then I thought about the horse connection and – oh, I don’t know, sir. It’s probably nothing.’

But Vos has now gone across to the map. He traces his finger north along the line of the A1 motorway first to Stannington, then to Morpeth. ‘Go on, Ptolemy.’

‘Stables, sir,’ she says. ‘Livery for horses.’

‘What about them?’

‘There are only three working stables within a twenty-mile radius of Morpeth,’ Ptolemy says, joining him at the map. ‘I rang them and none of them use wood pellets. But then there’s this one, sir.’ She puts her finger on an otherwise barren expanse of map midway between Morpeth and Stannington. ‘High Plains, on the outskirts of Tranwell Woods. It closed down five years ago.’

Vos stares at the map. The only features he can see are the rudimentary green tree symbols of the wood, and, bisecting them, a spidery road that meanders southeast for about five miles until it joins the more substantial B-road running parallel to the East Coast Main Line past Stannington.

‘Have you got directions to this place?’ he says.

‘The website’s still up, sir. There’s a map.’

‘Print it out, Ptolemy. I’ll meet you at the car.’

Severely hung over, Chris Jesperssen and the rest of Alex’s friends have nevertheless identified the mug shot of Jimmy Rafferty as the man from the pub the previous night.

‘Good work, men,’ Huggins says brightly, casting his eye over the four sorry teenagers sitting in the Jesperssens’ well-appointed front room. ‘You can go for a pint now. You look like you could use a hair of the dog.’

Chris looks at him with a wretched expression. ‘What’s the news on Alex?’ he says. ‘You think he’s had a run-in with this cage-fighter guy?’

‘We’re just making a few routine enquiries. Meanwhile, if Alex gets in touch with any of you boys, I want you to call me straight away, understand?’

There’s a general murmur of assent.

Fallow hurries in from the garden, where he’s been taking a call from Seagram. ‘One more thing,’ he says. ‘You know the girl you saw Alex with? The one with the blonde hair? Is this her?’

He hands his phone to Chris.

‘What are you doing, John?’ Huggins mutters out of the side of his mouth.

‘Seagram got something from Ma Breaker,’ Fallow whispers as the phone is ceremoniously passed from one boy to the next. ‘She got Una to send the pic through.’

Presently a consensus is reached.

‘Yeah,’ Chris says, ‘that’s her.’

‘You sure?’

‘She’s a babe,’ Chris says. ‘You don’t forget babes like that.’

‘Oh, she’s a babe all right,’ Fallow says, handing the phone to Huggins. ‘Don’t you think?’

Huggins stares at the face on the display.

‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,’ he says.