The Bug House (10 page)

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.

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.