Free The Bug House by Jim Ford Page A

lifts his hand and stands up, just as the puddle of oil threatens to reach his own shoes. ‘If you do hear anything, be sure to let us know.’
    The owner of AAA Star Taxis is a woman called Jean Breaker, known as Ma Breaker because she has three sons – Craig, Kyle and Ryan – all of whom have done time for various offences, including drug peddling, possession of firearms, assault, burglary and kidnap. Ma Breaker has never done time herself, partly because she has her sons to do her dirty work for her, but mainly because she is far too clever to put herself in potentially compromising situations.
    Bernice Seagram has known Ma for many years. Indeed one of her first cases as a detective was an investigation which led to Syd Breaker, Ma’s no-good husband and father of her three sons, being put behind bars for life for stabbing someone to death in an argument over a round of drinks. Of course nobody saw anything and Syd might have got away with it had it not been for Ma, who saw an opportunity to be rid of him for good and willingly testified to his guilt. Seagram could still vividly remember the ghostly smile on her leathered face as Syd, shouting abuse at her across the courtroom, was led down to the cells to begin his sentence.
    The taxi office is in a narrow cobbled alley running alongside a railway viaduct near Central Station and is one of a series of drab lockups and workshops built into the sooty Victorian arches. It has a reinforced door and a frosted window with wire mesh over the front, and it faces onto the back of an old bottling plant, and the only clue to its purpose is an intercom on the wall with the words PRESS FOR TAXI printed above it.
    ‘
Where to?
’ a woman’s voice says.
    ‘It’s me, Jean,’ Seagram says.
    The door buzzes and Seagram enters an unlit vestibule with a concrete floor and recently plastered partition walls that still feel damp to the touch. To the left is a tiny kitchen and toilet; ahead is a plywood door on swing hinges. She pushes through into a room that smells strongly of cigarette smoke, damp and inexpensive perfume.
    Ma is sitting at a desk beneath a large street map of Newcastle. She is a plain woman in her fifties who has never cared much for her own appearance, despite the fortune she is thought to have accrued since taking over Syd’s half-baked crime enterprise and turning it into a slick money-making operation.
    ‘Hello, Bernice,’ she says. ‘How are you doing, pet?’
    ‘I’m very well, Jean. How about you?’
    ‘Can’t complain.’
    She picks up a pen and throws it at a man sitting on a battered sofa on the other side of the room. He is in his mid-twenties, thin-faced with receding hair shaved down to a rash of dark stubble. He is wearing jeans and a leather jacket and reading a copy of
Viz
. This is Ryan Breaker, the youngest and stupidest of Ma’s three boys. He looks up and regards Seagram and his mother through slightly squint eyes.
    ‘Don’t just sit there,’ Ma snaps. ‘Go and put the kettle on.’
    With a loud, petulant tut Ryan throws down his paper and skulks through to the kitchenette that is attached to the office.
    Ma watches him with barely concealed contempt, then turns and gives Seagram a snaggle-toothed smile. ‘Sit down, love. What can I do for you?’
    ‘Do you know this man?’
    Ma looks long and hard at the mug shot of Okan Gul. ‘Should I?’ she says.
    ‘He’s part of a Turkish gang from Amsterdam. Apparently they’ve been doing some business over here.’
    ‘That’s news to me, darling,’ she says. Then her voice hardens as she hands the photograph back. ‘What sort of business?’
    ‘We’re not sure. But Mr Gul’s most recent visit was cut short. He’s currently in the morgue at the General Hospital.’
    Ma looks interested now. ‘Really? How did it happen?’
    ‘Let’s just say our investigations are ongoing.’
    Seagram knows full well that criminals are worse than fish-wives when it comes to gossip, and she