The Bug House Read Online Free PDF Page B

Lying in a hospital bed with a bullet in his spine and unlikely to walk again.
    ‘You want another ciggie, boss?’
    ‘No thanks,’ Vos says. ‘Let’s get back.’
    ‘Ptolemy?’ Huggins says. ‘What sort of name is that?’
    ‘Greek Cypriot.’
    Fallow looks at her in surprise. Her green eyes and pale, freckled complexion suggest Celtic ancestry, even if her accent is unadulterated Cumbrian.
    ‘My husband’s family are from Famagusta. He always said that by marrying him I would stand out from the crowd.’
    ‘He was right.’
    ‘So what does he do,’ Fallow says. ‘Your husband?’
    ‘Long-distance lorry driver.’
    ‘Must be hard.’
    ‘We get by,’ Ptolemy says.
    ‘How long have you been married?’ says Huggins.
    ‘Two years.’
    ‘And how old are you?’
    ‘Twenty-four. Is this an interrogation?’
    ‘We’re just wondering what the fuck you’re doing here, to be honest.’
    She looks at Huggins blankly. ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I mean, you’ve got a cushy number up there in – Alnwick, is it? Rounding up red-diesel thieves and sheep rustlers? Investigating burglaries at the golf club? Stick around long enough and you’ll be a DI before you’re thirty, a regular Sunday evening TV detective. Why the hell would you want to come here? To the Bug House?’
    Ptolemy fixes him with her pale eyes. ‘It wasn’t my decision,’ she says.
    ‘You didn’t put in a transfer request?’
    ‘The first I knew about it was when Detective Superintendent Anderson said I was being seconded.’
    Huggins and Fallow look at each other.
    ‘Christ, the boss is going to love that,’ Fallow says.
    Ptolemy is about to speak when her attention is caught by something on the TV screen. ‘Bloody hell,’ she says. ‘Rewind that.’
    Fallow, who along with Huggins was too busy interrogating the new recruit to pay attention to the screen, grabs the remote and scrolls back a few seconds.
    ‘There!’ Ptolemy says, pointing at the screen.
    As she speaks, the darkness is illuminated as something moves with great speed in the periphery of the picture – and suddenly, as if by some cinematic trick or time-lapse photography, there is a body lying on the lawn.
    Ahmed Doe has landed. In the world of Huggins and Fallow, it is 8.47 p.m. on Sunday evening.
    There is a fly in the window of the site office Portakabin bashing itself drunkenly against the plastic pane with a
tok-tok-tok
sound. Delon Wombwell stands poised beside it, his rolled-up newspaper raised in a white-knuckled fist, the red point of his tongue poking from his mouth.
    Tok-tok-tok
.
    WHUP!
    Delon brings the newspaper down onto the pane. The fly drops to the sill and spins spastically on its back.
    WHUP! WHUP! WHUP!
    ‘Fuck’s sake, Delon,’ Philliskirk says irritably. ‘I think it’s dead.’ He is sitting in the far corner of the rectangular box, his tin of rolling tobacco open on the table in front of him. Through the window behind him, a huge metal claw plunges into a stack of written-off cars and closes inexorably around the shell of a smashed-up Renault.
    Delon peers at the business end of his newspaper. The fly is smeared across the newsprint like black and red marmalade. Its limbs and wings are crushed into tiny colons, commas and full stops.
    ‘Fucking bastard,’ Delon remarks. He wipes the newspaper on his trousers and throws it on the floor.
    ‘Where the fuck is Tiernan?’ Philliskirk says.
    ‘He’s here.’
    Severin, standing at the window, watches a stocky, well-dressed man with white hair climb out of a dark-blue Range Rover and make his way across the yard. He says nothing. A moment later Tiernan stands in the doorway, one hand jabbed into the pocket of his expensive leather jacket, the other holding a slim case containing a laptop computer.
    ‘Afternoon, gentlemen,’ he says briskly.
    Delon jumps. Philliskirk reaches for his tobacco tin and papers and begins methodically constructing a cigarette.
    Severin points at his watch.