The Bug House (18 page)

Alex
.

He crawls across to his son and cradles his head in his hands. The smooth skin is warm, the breathing heavy but regular.

Thank God
.

Alex is alive.

Beer-gutted, red-faced and with a fine set of side whiskers, the duty sergeant at Keswick police station could have been dreamed up by some shrewd marketing expert at the Cumbria Tourist Board. There is a reassuringly old-fashioned look about him that puts visitors in mind of the idealized, chocolate box Lake District of Beatrix Potter and William Wordsworth. Every year thousands of holidaymakers flock to the Lakeland town to walk in the hills, camp by the shores of Derwentwater, sail on the lake or just wander round in the tea rooms and gift shops – and, if he was so inclined, the sergeant could make more than a few quid on the side posing for photographs with the tourists.

Except the sergeant hates tourists. Tourists clog up his narrow roads like silt. They leave their chip wrappers in his hedgerows. They get pissed up and have fights in his pubs.

In other words they cause him grief.

Like the bloody idiot in the holding cell right now. The one who walked in off the street not half an hour ago demanding to be locked up. Spouting all sorts of nonsense about being in fear of his life. Unshaven, dishevelled, stinking of drink, looking like he hadn’t slept for a week.

Of course the sergeant had been civil at first. He’d politely informed the gentleman that it was not Cumbria Police policy to go around locking up members of the public for no reason. At which point the man had picked up a chair in the waiting room and thrown it with all his might against the reinforced glass screen erected around the reception desk.

Once he was in the cell, the man had become noticeably calmer, as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He’d pulled out a business card from his wallet, scribbled a name and number on it, and asked if it would be possible for the sergeant to contact that person on his behalf. And the sergeant could not help but be intrigued.

Now he is in the back room, tapping the number into the telephone on his desk.

‘This is Sergeant Stamper from Keswick station,’ he says when his call is answered by a switchboard operator. ‘Could you put me through to a Detective Chief Inspector Vos, please?’

‘I don’t think life as a fugitive suits you, Al,’ Vos says.

Al Blaylock has been transported ninety miles from Keswick in the back of a Cumbria Police patrol car and is now sitting nursing a mug of Northumbria Police coffee in an interview room at West End station. Even though he has combed his hair he looks like shit.

‘ “Fugitive” suggests I have done something illegal,’ he says primly. ‘I assure you I haven’t.’

‘Well let’s not argue over semantics. Where have you been?’

‘My soon-to-be ex-mother-in-law has a caravan on the shore at Ullswater. I thought it would be a pleasant enough place to spend some time, but that was before the rain. Have you read about the rain in Cumbria, Vos? About the floods that washed everything away? It was fucking biblical. I spent two nights trapped in a village hall with the rest of the refugees before I could get to Keswick.’

Vos cannot help but laugh.

‘I’m pleased you think it’s funny,’ says Blaylock. ‘I most certainly don’t.’

‘OK. So what’s going on? Why the moonlight flit to the Lake District? I’ve been worried about you.’

Blaylock regards him through bloodshot eyes. ‘If you’ve been worried about me, then I think you know precisely what’s been going on.’

‘Are we talking about Jack’s Turkish friend?’

‘Of course we are.’

‘So tell me all about it, Al. I’m all ears.’

Blaylock takes a deliberate sip of coffee and winces as the scalding, bitter brew sluices his tastebuds. ‘I assume you know about the Manchester connection by now,’ he says.

‘I know about Wayne Heddon. I know that Jack was the middleman in the negotiations to turn Newcastle into Heroin Central. And I assumed that
you
knew all about it, because I know Jack needed help to tie his own shoelaces.’

Blaylock shrugs. ‘The fact is Jack was never a practical man. He enjoyed the glory but never considered the possible consequences.’

‘He was out of his depth, you mean.’

‘I counselled against getting involved in the deal.’

‘You
counselled against it
? That sounds rather grand, Al.’

Blaylock waves away the insult. Now he is safely in custody he has recovered much of his poise. All he needs, Vos thinks, is a shave, shower, a good night’s sleep and one of his £1,500 suits and he’ll be the Al Blaylock of old.

‘After Jack died, they approached me to act as middleman. I refused. A bunch of psychopaths from Manchester doing a drug deal with a bunch of psychopaths from Amsterdam? That was never going to have a happy ending. And so it proved.’

‘Okan Gul was murdered, you mean.’

Blaylock nods wistfully. ‘I quite liked Okan; he seemed very professional. But Wayne Heddon was a loose cannon.’

‘Either way, when I told you about Gul you panicked,’ Vos says. ‘You thought the deal had gone bad, that the Manchester mob had killed Gul, and that you were next for the chop.’

‘Wouldn’t you? You saw what those animals did to the Turk. You saw what message they were trying to send. It was a declaration of war – and in war there are always casualties.’

Vos smiles at him. ‘Well, it’s nice to have you back, Al. For a while I was seriously worried about you.’

‘I’ve told you all I know,’ Blaylock says. ‘All I ask in return is some police protection until this matter is sorted. You’re right, Vos – I’m not the fugitive type.’

‘We can certainly arrange that. I know for a fact that Greater Manchester Police Drug Squad will be very keen to keep you safe. Any information you can give them about Wayne Heddon would be gratefully received.’

The lawyer looks up from his scalding coffee. ‘Greater Manchester Police?’ he says suspiciously.

‘Yes, they’ve had an eye on your operation for several months. I can see you’re surprised, Al. It was news to me as well.’

‘I’m not going to fucking Manchester,’ Blaylock says.

‘I’m afraid officers from Greater Manchester CID are already on their way to pick you up.’

‘Aren’t you going to tell him?’ Mhaire Anderson says.

‘No,’ Vos says. ‘I’ll leave that to Maguire. Although it would be nice to see his face when he finds out who really killed Okan Gul.’

They are standing at the window of his office, looking down over the car park two floors below, where Al Blaylock is being led, with as much remaining dignity as he can muster, into the back of a police car that will take him to the nearest custody suite.

‘In any case,’ Vos continues, ‘he’d probably insist on representing Melody. He’s got his faults has Al, and his biggest is loyalty to Jack Peel and his family.’

‘That’s the problem with loyalty,’ Anderson says. ‘It’s always blind. Look at Jimmy Rafferty: he thought Melody loved him, but all the time he was just her hit man. Then again she’s Jack Peel’s daughter. What do you expect?’

‘She’s smarter than Jack ever was,’ Vos says. ‘Believe me, she’s smarter than the lot of us.’

‘Maybe so, but she’s also a deeply disturbed individual, Theo. She ordered Okan Gul killed because he groped her.
She invited him over from Amsterdam to his own execution
.’ Anderson sighs and turns away from the window and slumps in a chair next to Vos’s desk. ‘Anyway, she’ll have plenty of time to reflect on how smart she is when she’s behind bars.’

Vos can see the scars on his face reflected in the glass. He’s not so sure. When they apprehended Melody Peel she was in the middle of a spa treatment at her health club in Newcastle. She is now downstairs in the interview room where, despite twenty-four hours’ questioning, she has repeatedly denied all knowledge of Jimmy Rafferty, of asking him to kill Okan Gul and Alex Vos, and apart from Rafferty’s word, there’s nothing to prove otherwise. Even the positive identification by Alex’s friends will be swatted away by Melody’s expensive defence team on the grounds of alcohol and narcotic impairment. The rest of the evidence is just circumstantial.

In less than an hour they will have to make the decision to charge her or let her go.

No, she
’
s smart all right
, Vos thinks, running his finger along the crisp ridge of stitches running down his cheek. And somehow he doesn’t think he’s seen the last of Melody Peel.

‘They say he was a Satanist, you know,’ Phil Huggins says.

‘Really?’

‘Oh, yeah. He may have been the father of the Newcastle City Police, but he had a cellar full of virgins and regularly indulged in midnight orgies on the Town Moor.’

Ptolemy looks appraisingly at the stern, patrician features of W James Buglass. ‘Then I’d say he’s right at home,’ she says.

‘For Christ’s sake, Phil,’ Fallow says. ‘Give her the bloody pen.’

From behind his back, Huggins produces a black marker pen and solemnly offers it to Ptolemy. He looks at Fallow, Seagram, Mayson Calvert and Sam Severin, all of whom are standing in a semicircle in front of the battered old portrait.

‘What do you think, guv?’ he says to Seagram. ‘Can she sign the sideburn?’

‘I think so,’ Seagram says. ‘Welcome to the Bug House, Kath.’

Nine a.m. Monday 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.

‘So how is he?’ says the counsellor.

‘Alex?’

‘Yes. How do you think he’s coping? Be honest.’

‘Better than I would. He’s a strong kid.’

‘No nightmares? Flashbacks?’

‘He’s more concerned about getting to the next level of
Call of Duty
.’

‘And what about you?’

‘Me? I’m fine.’

The counsellor chews thoughtfully on the end of his pen. He has interviewed dozens of police officers in this room during the course of his work and knows that by nature they are a taciturn, emotionally retarded breed. Yet he has never come across anyone quite like Vos, no one as genuinely opaque. He looks into those dark eyes and he genuinely sees nothing behind them. Vos’s defences are total.

‘I’m sorry that you didn’t want to continue with our sessions,’ he says. ‘I thought we were making genuine progress.’

‘You make it sound like I
need
therapy.’

‘Well, therapy can be an emotive term. But we all need someone to talk to, surely?’

‘I talk to people every day of my life,’ Vos says. ‘Sometimes it’s just nice to sit and look at the view.’

‘And what view do you see?’

‘Depends. Sometimes I see me and Alex having a laugh. Father-and-son stuff. Sometimes I see him when he’s my age. Sometimes I see his mother with that stupid fucking dentist in Florida and I wonder what might have happened if we’d stuck it out.’

The counsellor sits forward. ‘Go on.’

‘Sometimes I see Vic Entwistle lying there in a pool of his own blood on the floor of Jack Peel’s casino. I see Peel bleating for his miserable life on that fire escape. And sometimes I see myself throwing him off.’

The counsellor has a startled expression. He swallows hard.

‘
Did
you kill him, Mr Vos?’ he says.

Theo Vos says nothing. Outside the rain is beating against the windowpanes again.

‘You’re the counsellor,’ he says presently. ‘You tell me.’