The Bug House (16 page)

‘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?’

‘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.

Jimmy Rafferty has always been a nasty bit of work. An in-built sadistic streak combined with a hair-trigger temper – never a good combination.