The Bug House Read Online Free PDF Page A

on the squad.
    Huggins and Fallow are in Vos’s office, spooling through CCTV footage from the four security cameras erected around Enrico Cabaljo’s house. The footage they are most interested in is from the camera positioned on the corner of the building, overlooking the rear patio, the koi carp pond and, hopefully, enough of the garden to see a man of Middle Eastern appearance plummeting to the ground at around 8.45 p.m. on Sunday night. This will at least confirm the theory that he was indeed hit by the train bound for Edinburgh.
    The main problem is that it was pitch-black at 8.45 p.m.
    Huggins and Fallow have commandeered the digital recordings from a company called Arctos SecuriVision, who have a lucrative contract to provide remote household security for all of Newcastle United’s millionaire superstars. The managing director is a former Special Branch detective who now drives an Aston Martin and lives in Darras Hall, where most of the millionaire footballers live.
    ‘Aren’t there any security lights at the back of the house?’ Huggins had asked the ex-detective.
    ‘Of course,’ he’d said. ‘But it’s all about sensor coverage. How far from the house did this bloke land?’
    ‘Fifty, sixty feet,’ said Fallow. ‘It’s a big garden.’
    ‘Well, you might be in luck. We fit all our properties with 150-watt Steinels with twelve-metre coverage. Then again, sometimes the agency turn them off to save electricity when the house is not being used. We warn them not to, but they’re fucking tight.’
    In the Bug House, Huggins and Fallow are watching the TV screen. In their world it is now 8.35 p.m. on Sunday evening. All being well, ten minutes to touchdown.
    ‘Where were you at 8.35 p.m. on Sunday night, Johnny-boy?’ says Huggins, gazing blankly at the TV monitor in Vos’s office.
    ‘Having supper with Shirley, I expect.’
    ‘Finger food from M&S? Nice bottle of Pinot Grigio before you settled down for
Downton Abbey
?’
    Fallow shrugs. ‘And I suppose you were jetting back from Monaco after your weekend on the yacht.’
    ‘Cap Ferrat, actually,’ says Huggins. He stretches his long frame and emits a roar. On the TV monitor the darkness suddenly explodes into light, and Fallow sits forward expectantly. A fox pauses for a moment, white-eyed in the full glare of the 150-watt Steinels, then pads insouciantly across the patio. A few moments later the light winks out again.
    ‘That’s what “Vos” means in Dutch, you know,’ Huggins says. ‘ “Fox”. Mayson told me.’
    Fallow looks disbelieving. ‘The boss is Dutch?’
    ‘Obviously not. But we all have ancestors, Johnny-boy. “Fallow” is Norwegian for One Who Is Pussy-Whipped by His Wife, so make of that what you will.’
    ‘Fuck off,’ Fallow says.
    They watch the darkened screen in silence for a while longer, then Huggins levers himself out of his chair and grabs a
pain au chocolat
from a bag on Vos’s coffee table.
    ‘Where the hell is everyone this morning?’ he says.
    ‘Bernice and the boss are down at the morgue,’ says Fallow.
    ‘And what about Mayson?’
    ‘Christ knows,’ says Fallow. ‘Probably discussing aerodynamics and terminal velocity with his pals at the university.’
    Huggins goes to the glass window that makes up one wall of Vos’s office. ‘Who’s that with Una?’ he says through a mouthful of pastry.
    Una Cattrall’s name is not on the portrait, but since she has run the squad’s outer office for as long as anyone can remember, she is therefore arguably its single most important component. She is a blowsy-looking woman with peroxide hair and a spray tan who is aged anywhere between forty and sixty. Huggins watches her walking across the deserted squad room with her familiar urgency, her brawny arms folded over her sizeable bosom. Behind her, having to half trot in order to keep up, is a slender, blonde-haired woman wearing a dark suit.
    ‘Una, my dear,’ says Huggins, holding open the door. ‘Top of