The Bug House
Jim Ford
has been a journalist for 25 years. Born and bred in the North-east, he began his career in Newcastle and has since worked for national newspapers, magazines and broadcasters.
Read more about Jim Ford and the Bug House series at
www.bughousefiles.com
.
The Bug House series
The Bug House
Punch Drunk
In Vitro
Jim Ford
Constable & Robinson Ltd.
55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
First published in the UK by C&R Crime,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2014
Copyright © Jim Ford, 2014
The right of Jim Ford to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-47211-204-0 (ebook)
Typeset by TW Typesetting, Plymouth, Devon
Cover copyright © Constable & Robinson
Special thanks to Krystyna Green for getting it and Marcus Trower for making sense of it.
For my girls
ONE
It is 9 a.m. Friday morning, and in a joyless room in central Newcastle two men sit opposite each other. One is Detective Chief Inspector Theo Vos. The other is a trauma assessment counsellor.
‘You know, maybe I’m not cut out for this job,’ Vos says.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I can’t help thinking I lack the requisite baggage.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, I don’t have a drink problem.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘I’m not depressed.’
‘And?’
‘And I fucking hate jazz.’
The counsellor gives a watery smile. ‘But you’re talking to me, Mr Vos,’ he points out.
‘Only because I’ve been told I have to.’
‘You wouldn’t have come otherwise?’
‘No.’
‘It’s been two weeks. You haven’t felt the need to talk to somebody about what happened?’
‘Like who?’
‘Friends? Colleagues?’
‘No.’
‘What about family?’
‘What about them?’
‘You have a son, yes?’
‘He’s sixteen years old. We talk about cars and girls.’
‘What about your wife?’
‘
Ex
-wife,’ Vos says. ‘I forgot about her. Maybe I do fit the profile after all.’
‘Do you ever speak to her about your work?’
‘She lives with a dentist in Orlando. We don’t speak, as a rule.’
‘What about when you were married?’
‘She made it perfectly clear she wasn’t interested in my work when she divorced me.’
The counsellor sips from a glass of water on a table beside him and studies Vos carefully. From the file in his lap, he knows his subject is forty-two years old and has held the rank of detective chief inspector with Northumbria Police for three years. But the details seem patchy to him; it looks like pages have been carefully excised from the file, leaving only the bare bones of his career.
‘I understand Mr Peel fell from the roof of a warehouse?’
‘No,’ Vos says. ‘He fell from the fire escape of a casino.’
‘But it is correct to say that just before he fell, you were chasing him.’
‘Your point is?’
‘How does that make you feel?’
Vos considers this. ‘Pissed off.’
The counsellor sits forward. ‘Go on.’
‘Pissed off that I wasn’t able to catch him first.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he made a hell of a mess on the pavement.’
The counsellor eases back in his chair. He taps the end of his pen against his teeth. ‘And your colleague Detective Sergeant Entwistle. I understand he was badly injured during the same incident?’
‘A thug called Terry Loomis shot him in the back with a .22 pistol,’ Vos says. ‘It’s unlikely he’ll walk again.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah. Me too. And Vic’s daughter isn’t too happy about it either. He was supposed to walk her up the aisle next year.’
The counsellor’s eyes light up again. ‘Would you say, then, that you feel
anger
about what happened to DS Entwistle?’
‘Of course I feel anger. Wouldn’t you?’
‘Has it affected you in any other way? Have there been any physical repercussions? Anxiety? Sleeplessness?’
‘No.’
‘But the fact that you feel anger about DS Entwistle shows that you
are
capable of emotional response,’ the counsellor insists. ‘I’m just interested to discover why those responses appear muted when it comes to Mr Peel’s death.’
‘Look,’ Vos says, trying to keep the weariness out of his voice, ‘Jack Peel was a villain. He made a lot of people’s lives miserable. I won’t be losing sleep over the fact he died while evading arrest.’
‘Leaving aside Mr Peel’s alleged background—’
‘There’s nothing
alleged
about it.’
‘Leaving that aside for a moment, the fact remains that a man died. That you saw him fall to his death, Mr Vos. Some people might have issues about this.’
‘Issues?’
‘Feelings of remorse. Guilt, even.’
Vos stares at him balefully. ‘You’re determined to pin some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder on me, aren’t you?’
‘Not at all. I—’
‘Is that why I’m here? Because I’m supposed to have
issues
about Jack Peel’s death?’
‘Do you?’
‘Listen,’ Vos says. ‘That bastard hit the ground ten feet from a young WPC. His brains went all over her trousers. I’m no expert, but I’d say
she
has some issues. It’s her you should be talking to, not me.’
‘The counsellor seems to think you may have a borderline antisocial personality disorder,’ says Detective Superintendent Mhaire Anderson, area commander of the Major Crime Unit, peering at the report on her desk through a pair of cheap half-moon spectacles. She’s only recently started wearing them. They give her a professorial air that is not in keeping with a hard, thin face, and she does not look comfortable using them. ‘He suggests you continue with the sessions.’
‘I’ve had two,’ Vos reminds her. ‘That’s the obligatory number, isn’t it?’
‘He seems to think you’re an interesting case.’
‘I’m flattered.’
‘I wouldn’t be if I was you.’
‘Are you ordering me to go?’
‘I couldn’t give a damn if you go or not, as long as it’s on your own time,’ Anderson says. ‘I’ve got a department to run.’
‘It doesn’t bother you that one of your senior detectives shows signs of an antisocial personality disorder?’
A thin smile. ‘The whole
country
has got an antisocial personality disorder, Theo. What makes you so different?’ Behind her, beyond the grimy pane, it is raining from a sky the colour of dishwater. ‘Peel’s people are agitating for an independent inquiry.’
‘Peel’s
people
?’
‘His lawyer. His friends.’
‘So let them agitate.’
‘I would. However I don’t know if you’ve noticed recently, but we are living in the age of recrimination. You step on a crack in the pavement and there’ll be an inquiry about it.’
‘Well, good luck to them,’ Vos says. ‘I’ve got nothing to hide.’
‘Good, because the IPCC are sending an investigator to ask you a few questions.’
Vos shakes his head. ‘You’ve got to be fucking joking, guv’nor! I was already cleared by the internal inquiry.’
‘At this stage they’re only interested if there’s a case to answer,’ Anderson says. Then her expression hardens. ‘Which is why you’re going to play this absolutely by the book, Theo. You’re not going to give Peel’s lawyer or the IPCC any leverage. I will expect you to cooperate fully with the investigator. And if I was you, I would keep your visits to the counsellor to yourself. It won’t look good if they find out the last person to see Jack Peel alive has an antisocial personality disorder.’
‘
Borderline
,’ he reminds her. Then he throws his hands in the air. ‘Dah, this is bullshit.’
‘Do you want me to suspend you?’
‘
Suspend me
?’
‘Because believe me there are people with bigger hat badges than me at headquarters who would like that very much.’
‘But that’s precisely what Peel’s “people” want!’
‘No, Theo, they want the moral high ground. And I don’t give a damn how inconvenient it is for you or this department or the brass, I am not prepared to give them it.’ She sighs and sits back in her chair. ‘You know as well as I do that Jack Peel was always going to come back and bite you in the arse sooner or later.’
Vos picks at the stitching on his shoe like a recalcitrant child. ‘How long will this last? The squad’s a man down as it is.’
‘I’m aware of that. I’ve just had the latest medical report on Vic Entwistle. It doesn’t look good.’
‘Does the IPCC know this?’ Vos says venomously.
‘The point is, Theo, with Bernice Seagram stepping up to acting DS, you’re going to need a replacement in the ranks.’
‘So give me someone from one of the other squads.’
‘I wish I could. But they’re all stretched tighter than the Chief Constable’s wallet.’
‘So what do you suggest, guv’nor?’ Vos says drily. ‘
Britain’s Got Talent
?’
‘I was thinking more along the lines of a spot of mentoring. A bright young DC from the sticks who is looking for a more exciting life.’
A deep, ugly silence descends on Anderson’s office once again. ‘Now you
are
fucking joking.’
‘Mentoring, Theo, not babysitting.’
‘There’s a difference?’
‘You really are a miserable bastard,’ Anderson says. ‘Is it so long since you were wet behind the ears?’
‘I was only saying. Who is he?’
‘There are a couple of candidates I’ve got in mind.’
‘With respect, guv’nor, the Bug House is hardly the place for some greenhorn from the sticks.’
Anderson smiles thinly. ‘You never know, you might enjoy it. A captive audience to regale with all your old war stories.’
‘I’m forty-two years old, guv. You make it sound like I’m an old man.’
‘The average age of a detective constable on this force is twenty-five,’ Anderson points out. ‘As far as they’re concerned, you are.’
Vos lives in a thin three-storey town house at St Peter’s Basin, an inlet of the Tyne just east of the city centre that was optimistically developed as a marina during the height of the housing boom. The house has no garden, but screwed to the balcony outside Vos’s bedroom is a rectangular mat of artificial grass that he inherited from the previous owner, a bonds trader with one of the London finance houses that set up shop in Newcastle at around the same time as they were building St Peter’s Basin. From here the bonds trader used to fire golf balls across the river with a 3-wood, attempting to reach the Gateshead side. Apparently it helped to relieve the stress of his high-pressure job, although it could not
save
his job, which he lost when the finance house went bust. Vos keeps the mat because he enjoys the feel of the bristles on his bare feet when he drinks his morning coffee or his late-night whisky. He’s installed an old foldaway picnic chair and he can spend hours sitting there like some mild eccentric, staring out at the empty marina.
It’s Monday, a crisp autumn morning today in contrast to what has felt like a month of unbroken drizzle. On the street below a gang of teenage kids dawdle idly past on their way to school. Vos watches them, calculating that it is maybe thirty feet from the balcony to the pavement – about half the distance Jack Peel fell. He can see Peel’s florid face now, the arrogance draining from it as he realizes that there are just two of them, that nobody else is coming, and that Vos cannot be bought.
‘Oi, mister!’
One of the kids, scrawny and tousle-haired, with the arse of his jeans slung down to his knees, looks up and flicks Vos the bird, much to the amusement of his friends. Vos grins back and throws the dregs of his coffee over the little bastard. Then he turns to the sliding door leading to his bedroom and enters the house.
‘What is it with jeans that make it look like you’ve shit yourself?’
Alex Vos looks up from his breakfast and stares at his father across the kitchen. ‘What?’