The Bug House (11 page)

‘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.’

Father Meagher’s route from the pub to the community centre leads him through the heart of the Benwell council estate. The estate has been his ministry for more than twenty years now, yet still he cannot fathom any logic to its layout. Once, on a visit to the council offices, he saw an aerial photograph and it reminded him of a thumbprint: vaguely concentric but with random whorls, pointless diversions and inexplicable cul-de-sacs. The only constant is the uniformity of the houses, block after block of semi-detached brick squares, each with its postage-stamp garden at the front, each front door with its own concrete porch supported by twin metal uprights. His own house, on the other side of the estate, is exactly the same. He could walk blindfold into any of them and know precisely how many footsteps before the stairs (one), through the front room to the kitchen (another eight), and how many to the back door (three more).

He crosses the street and cuts the corner through a narrow tarmac playing area consisting of a swing-less iron frame and a defaced sign which once read
STRICTLY NO BALL GAMES
. Now he can see the church a hundred yards ahead: St Joseph’s, squat and modern with long rectangular windows of frosted glass and a truncated steeple made of asphalt panels. Beside it, across a short expanse of wasteland, is the flat-roofed community centre.

Pausing in the foyer to check that no one is looking, he unwraps a half Corona from his breast pocket and puts it to his lips. He hastily removes it as a young woman emerges from one of the internal rooms carrying a toddler. An older boy, maybe eight or nine years old, walks beside her, pushing a baby in a buggy.

‘Linda Gourlay!’ he exclaims. ‘And how are you?’

‘Fine, thanks, Father.’ She is painfully thin and white. The child in her arms has recently been crying and there is a patina of pale green snot between its nostrils and its top lip. Father Meagher pulls a tissue from his trouser pocket and swabs its face.

‘And how’s young Kaden?’ he asks, ruffling the older boy’s head. The youngster regards him dumbly. Father Meagher stoops to the other child in the pushchair. ‘And little . . . ?’

‘Shannon,’ says Linda.

‘Shannon. Yes, of course. How lovely.’ He stands, feeling a twinge in his back. ‘Anyway, nice to see you, Linda. God bless.’

Hurrying away, Father Meagher sighs with relief as he enters his cubbyhole office at the rear of the community centre. It is a haven from the world, a place he feels increasingly loath to leave these days. He slips the cigar into his mouth and fumbles in his jacket pocket for his lighter.

‘Afternoon, Father.’

Vos is sitting in a canvas-backed chair by the door, flicking through an old edition of
Auto Trader
.

‘Jesus, Mr Vos, you scared me,’ the priest says.

‘You forgot about our appointment?’

‘Not at all. But to be honest I’ve spent all morning avoiding parishioners who might take exception to a man of the cloth enjoying a good Cuban cigar. I feel like a fugitive.’

‘Well you’re among friends now,’ Vos says.

‘God be praised.’ Meagher goes across to his small, cheap desk and collapses in a chair to light his cigar.

‘You said you might have some information for me,’ Vos says.

‘Maybe I do. Or maybe it’s nothing. I’ll let you be the judge of that. This fellow you were asking about the other day.’

‘Okan Gul.’

‘That’s the one. Only I heard a whisper that somebody might have been entertaining friends from across the water, if you see what I mean.’

‘Anyone I know?’

The priest expels a perfectly circular smoke ring. ‘Oh, you know him all right,’ he says. ‘In fact there are some people who say you killed him, Inspector Vos.’

Mayson Calvert has spent a very agreeable morning at the forensic laboratory discussing the relative strength of aramid fibre compared to other man-made fibres, such as those made from polyethylene terephthalate and polypropylene, and in particular compared to human ligaments and cartilage. The conclusion he has reached with George Watson, not surprisingly, is that there is no contest – but it has been fun anyway.

On the screen in front of them is an electron-microscope image of the fibres, which are commonly used to make Kevlar vests, flame-resistant clothing, sailcloth, high-performance bicycle tyres and, in this case, the rope that was used to secure Okan Gul to the struts of the railway bridge by his left ankle. When the train hit, the impact immediately destroyed the weakest link in the chain, which was Okan Gul’s joints.

‘I suppose the good news,’ Watson says, ‘is that the rope
is
so unusual. Find out where it came from and you’re well on your way to finding your killer.’

Mayson Calvert is not so sure. Perhaps, he thinks, Watson is still under the impression that the only outlet for speciality products like aramid fibre ropes are speciality shops that keep handy receipts and records of purchasers. Perhaps, he thinks, Watson is forgetting that virtually any product is now freely available on the internet, from anywhere in the world, and that tracking down online sales – assuming there are legitimate records – is a process that could take thousands of man-hours to complete, even for a man like Mayson Calvert, who needs only four hours’ sleep a day.

No, Mayson thinks the aramid fibre rope, while certainly unusual, is not the key to identifying the killer of Okan Gul. He is far more interested in the electron-microscope images currently visible on a second screen at the other end of the laboratory bench. These are of particles no bigger than a speck of dust that were discovered on the dead man’s clothing and also on the aramid fibre rope. The particles have been isolated because of their unusual content and structure, which appears to be densely compacted organic material. Identify the particles, Mayson thinks, and you are getting somewhere.

Identify where the particles
came
from, and you may well catch a killer.

The picture attachment arrived in Vos’s inbox thirty seconds ago. Now his desk phone is ringing.

‘Do you have it, Inspector?’ says Chief Inspector Krelis Remmelink.

‘I have it,’ says Vos. ‘I’ve just opened it.’

‘One of my men said we should be holding this conversation on Skype so we can see each other.’

‘No offence, sir, but I prefer the telephone.’

‘Of course! We are men of the telephone generation! Besides, one must maintain a certain air of mystery. In your mind, perhaps, I am like James Bond, eh? Sitting here in my office in a dinner suit, sipping a martini?’

‘How did you guess?’ Vos says, although his mental image of the chief of the Amsterdam bureau of IPOL is more like some sort of crumpled Columbo figure, complete with grubby mac.

‘You have it now?’ Remmelink says.

‘I’ve got it.’

The picture attachment is a long-range surveillance photograph of three men sitting at a table in the window of a bar.

‘You recognize them?’

‘I recognize two of them,’ Vos says. ‘The man sitting next to Okan Gul is Jack Peel. He’s a local nightclub owner and wannabe gangster.’

‘You don’t sound surprised.’

‘Let’s just say it confirms information I have already received from a contact earlier today. Who’s the third guy?’

‘His name is Wayne Heddon. You have heard of him?’

‘I can’t say I have.’

‘He is from Manchester. I understand the people he represents were previously active in importing heroin from Hamburg, until the authorities there closed down the pipeline. It seems Mr Heddon has been looking for new outlets; the drug squad here in Amsterdam have had him on their radar for several months now.’

Wayne Heddon is a bull of a man with an intricate tapestry of ink down his bare arms.

‘When was this taken, Inspector?’ Vos says. When Remmelink tells him, he nods. ‘I should really print it out and give it to Jack Peel’s widow.’

‘Peel is dead?’

‘Yes. Two days after this picture was taken.’

‘A nice memento,’ Remmelink says. ‘The bar is on Stoofsteeg. This is a well-known thoroughfare in the red-light district.’

‘Do the police in Manchester know of your interest in Wayne Heddon?’

‘Oh yes,’ says Remmelink. ‘In fact our drug squad has been working closely with the CID in Manchester on this matter. You did not know?’

‘No,’ Vos says grimly. ‘I did not.’

The warehouse is situated in an industrial estate on the outskirts of Cramlington, north of Newcastle. It is an unassuming prefabricated building made of concrete and corrugated steel, identical in almost every way to the dozens of other units that surround it in the bleak complex. There is one significant difference, however: inside it is over £3 million worth of luxury cars, all of them stolen to order from locations across Tyneside, Wearside, County Durham and rural Northumberland over the last eighteen months.

‘Of course, nobody noticed all these flash cars going in and out on low-loaders,’ says Sam Severin. ‘Nobody thought it was a bit
odd
.’

‘They never do,’ Ptolemy says. ‘So how did you get on to the operation in the first place?’

‘One of the gang couldn’t stop his mouth flapping when he’d had a few drinks. An off-duty officer overheard him in some pub in North Shields telling everyone how he’d been driving a Humvee.’

‘He’ll be in trouble when it all comes out in court.’

Severin nods. Right now Delon Wombwell is on police bail in the General Hospital after being cut from the wreckage of the Porsche Cayenne back at Tiernan’s yard. But a broken leg will be the least of his problems once Tiernan and Philliskirk get to hear about the drunken indiscretion that led to Major Crime getting interested in the car-ringing operation. If they don’t get him in prison, they’ll certainly get him when they get out. In terms of time served, a probable three-to-five stretch for conspiracy to steal is nothing when you’ve got something to wait for.

But that’s Delon’s problem. Not Severin’s.

The stolen vehicles are parked up in neat rows that virtually fill the warehouse. The scene reminds Ptolemy of the inevitable news footage taken in some corrupt dictator’s lair after he’s been deposed; the gold Rollers, the Jags, the Porsches and the Aston Martins the tangible evidence of his vanity and acquisitiveness. Yet this is not Baghdad or Tripoli or some godforsaken African city; this is Newcastle.

‘Recession? What recession?’ says Severin, reading her thoughts. ‘It’s hard to have sympathy for the victims of crime on this occasion, isn’t it?’

‘How many are there?’ she says, running her finger along the glossy flank of a £130,000 Bentley Continental with personalized plates.

‘In here? Thirty-six. But we reckon Tiernan’s processed over two hundred since he got started.’

They climb a flight of metal stairs that in turn lead to an office overlooking the warehouse floor.

‘Welcome to Lost Property Central,’ Severin says. ‘This is WPC Millican. She’ll be helping you.’

Millican, who looks barely old enough to be out of school uniform, let alone wearing one that is police issue, smiles across the room.

‘Looks like we’re going to be busy, WPC Millican,’ Ptolemy says.

The floor of the office is covered with cardboard boxes, each containing bagged belongings salvaged from the stolen cars. It will be the job of Ptolemy and Millican to catalogue the contents of each one.

‘I suppose this is where you just disappear on another undercover job,’ she says to Severin.

Severin gives her a raffish grin through a face full of stubble. ‘The greatest trick I ever pulled was convincing the world that I exist,’ he says. ‘Have fun, Ptolemy – and if you find anything interesting, let me know.’

They meet on the Quayside near to the Swing Bridge. Vos gets there early and drinks coffee from a polystyrene cup as he stares out at the fast-moving river and waits for her to arrive. At 7 p.m. precisely she materializes beside him, her overcoat buttoned to her chin against the cold westerly wind howling down the Tyne.

‘I bought you one,’ he says, handing her a coffee. ‘From the van over the road.’ Anderson nods gratefully and clasps the cup in her hands for warmth. ‘I would have got you a kebab—’

‘I’m on my way out to dinner,’ she says.

‘That’s nice,’ Vos says. ‘Anyone I know?’

‘No,’ she says, ending that particular line of conversation. She brings the cup to her lips and blows steam from the surface of the scalding liquid. ‘OK. What have you got?’

‘Okan Gul’s contact in Newcastle was Jack Peel.’

‘You’re kidding me.’

‘It gets better. Peel was just the middleman. The KK were really looking to do a heroin deal with the Manchester mob using Newcastle as the entry point for their shipments.’

‘Nice to know we’ve got our uses,’ Anderson says sniffily.

‘So what happened? Why did Gul end up dead in Stannington?’

‘Well, Jack Peel died for a start.’

‘But that was two weeks earlier.’

‘So we have to assume that his death didn’t affect the deal,’ Vos says. ‘At least at first.’

‘They found another middleman?’

‘I’m guessing. I’m also guessing whoever it was wasn’t as good at international diplomacy as Jack Peel.’

Anderson nods. ‘Things went wrong and the Manchester mob killed Gul?’

‘Making sure to do it on our patch and with the minimum of discretion. Thereby sending a message to Amsterdam and Newcastle that you don’t fuck with the Mancs.’

A dredger passes serenely on its way downriver, and they watch its grimy wake splash against the stonework below them.

‘I never did like the Mancs,’ Anderson says. ‘Not since the ’99 Cup Final.’

‘Me neither,’ says Vos. ‘That second goal was a mile offside. And you’re not going to like this either: Greater Manchester CID knew all about the deal. They’d been following the operation for months, tailing a negotiator called Wayne Heddon.’