Free The Bug House by Jim Ford

barely visible beneath folds of skin. She says nothing as she reaches out a hand and presses a buzzer on the counter, then turns back to the TV programme.
    The man in the shell suit pushes through a chain-link partition at the rear of the service area. He is twenty-seven years old, with a thick mane of black hair cropped and shaped into a style they call the Hoxton Fin. It does not suit his square face and stubby features. It was designed for thin, rat-faced white men.
    ‘Timmy,’ Huggins says genially. ‘Nice to see you again.’
    Timmy Kwok is as talkative and expressive as his mother.
    ‘I thought we had an appointment,’ says Fallow. ‘We waited, but you never showed.’
    ‘Something came up,’ Timmy says. He has a broad Geordie accent with an east London inflection. ‘I was going to ring you.’
    ‘Not to worry,’ Huggins says. ‘We’re here now. You got somewhere we can talk?’
    Timmy shrugs and lifts the hinged section of counter to allow the two detectives to pass through into the kitchens at the rear of the shop.
    ‘So this is where it all happens, eh?’ Fallow says, looking around at the small, tiled room with its stainless-steel workbench and grimy range. ‘Very bijou.’
    A couple of blackened woks are hanging from the ceiling, and on the floor, next to an open sack of rice, is a twenty-litre plastic vat of vegetable oil. Huggins selects one of the woks and smashes Timmy across the back of the knees with it. The Chinaman pitches forward and crashes against the workbench, sending utensils, metal bowls and Tupperware tubs of ready-mixed batter cascading to the floor.
    ‘I think you must be mistaking us for people who have nothing better to do than wait around all day for a piece of shit like you, Timmy,’ Huggins says. ‘When we arrange a time and a place for a rendezvous, we expect you to be there.’
    Timmy props himself against the range, rubbing the backs of his legs. ‘You fucking bastards,’ he says.
    Huggins hunkers down beside him and squeezes Timmy’s plump chin between his fingers. ‘Does your mother know you use language like that, Timmy?’ he says. ‘I bet she brought you up to be a good boy.’
    With an abrupt downward movement of his arm, Huggins pushes Timmy Kwok to the floor, pinning his head to the tiles with his hand.
    ‘Pass me the cleaver, Johnny-boy,’ he says, gesturing to a gleaming metal chopping knife suspended above the range.
    ‘For Christ’s sake, Phil,’ Fallow says.
    ‘Pass me the fucking cleaver.’
    Fallow does what he is told. Huggins grabs the handle and examines his reflection in the woven stainless steel. ‘Chinese proverb say: “Man who call police fucking bastards make very big mistake,” ’ he says. Then he raises the cleaver.
    ‘For fuck’s sake!’ Fallow says.
    But Huggins brings the blade down in a sweeping arc so that it wedges in the plastic vat of cooking oil. When he removes it, the glutinous contents begin to glug out across the floor.
    ‘Now I’ve got a question for you,’ Huggins says to Timmy Kwok. ‘Have you been doing any of your sordid little drug deals with a Turkish gang from Amsterdam?’
    Timmy is looking at the puddle of oil creeping inexorably towards his head.
    ‘Do I have to ask you again?’ Huggins says.
    ‘I dunno what you’re talking about,’ says Timmy. The oil is now soaking into his carefully sculpted hair and beginning to seep around the circumference of his head towards his face.
    ‘Do you
know
of anybody who is doing sordid little drug deals with a Turkish gang from Amsterdam?’
    The Chinaman is instinctively trying to move his face from the oil as the slick begins to lap against his nostrils, but when he does he feels the pressure of Huggins’s hand on his head.
    ‘I don’t know any fucking Turkish gang!’
    ‘Are you absolutely sure of that, Timmy?’
    ‘Yes!’
    ‘Because if I find out that you’re lying to me—’
    ‘I’m not lying! I’m not fucking lying!’
    ‘Good.’ Huggins