Sarah had of course insisted it was all old hat. No one was called Rupert anymore she had informed him. He’d wanted to insist, wanted to put his foot down but after 23 hours of labour he was just too tired to argue and relented. And so the boy was called James. It would prove to be the thin end of the wedge.
In truth if he was properly honest with himself, and at a time like this he may as well, it had all begun and ended the night he met her. Right there and then he had lost every skirmish they would ever engage in during the war of attrition that was their marriage.
It had been vanity all along he knew. He had ignored the advice of family and friends. He had allowed himself this error of judgement instead of listening to advice, his conscience or reason of any kind.
He remembered the conversation with his brother now, just before he went to buy the ring. Miles had sat him down and over a large glass of 21 year old Macallan, extolled the virtues of the Volvo.
“You see a Ferrari is a fine thing Rupe, no doubt about that. It looks good, dangerous curves and all that and it’ll give you a good kick when you’re seen out and about with it and you’ll feel like a hero when you’re getting to grips with it.” Miles gave his older brother a knowing look. It might have seemed strange to anyone else, taking advice from a younger brother but Miles was a man who seemed to have crammed more living into his 25 years than many did in 75 and so it was not uncommon. “Thing is, they’re not cheap to maintain. Matter of fact they can be outright dangerous in the wrong hands and there isn’t much room for anyone else. No, they’re a dammed liability Rupe. Now consider, if you will, the Volvo estate. I know. It’s hardly a glamorous statement. You didn’t have a poster of one on your wall as a nipper but at the same time it’ll look just grand down the golf club. It won’t break down every three weeks and your life will be a lot more comfortable. Got to think about these things Rupe.”
“So Sarah’s the Ferrari is she?” he’d asked.
“Eh? Good God no. Where did you get that from?” Miles had asked, winking over the top of his whiskey glass and lighting a roll up.
Three days later Miles was killed in a head on collision with a lorry. A month after that Rupert proposed, shortly before buying a Volvo.
She’d wanted everything, and so much of it. The problem was she didn’t have a clue as to the cost of anything. She was the daughter of a minor aristocrat; a failed artist who subscribed to the traditional theory that a gentleman does not know what is in his bank account and it seemed to be in the genes. She was incapable of any kind of pragmatism but he couldn’t ever give her up.
His son of course did not go to Eton but was instead despatched to Fettes College in order to avoid cutting those golden apron strings. James’s tastes were equally expensive and Rupert found himself getting further and further off course, paying debts with worse ones, mortgaging the family pile and then doing it again knowing full well that one day soon he would have to quite literally pay the price.
And then one day, staring into the abyss, on the brink of foreclosure and the end of everything he had ever known there it was; a shining beacon, the solution to all his problems.
Farquhar and Donaldson had acquired a new client, one of epic stature. His dreams had come true it seemed. But as time would prove, these included his nightmares.
As he walked through the woods on this December morning however, all seemed strangely well. The winter sun split the trees and the leaves crunched satisfyingly under his feet. The office would be opening up now and he would normally have been at his desk reading the times and drinking a Virgin Mary.
He reached into his shooting bag and pulled out a length of rope, selected a fine stoical looking oak and in a dutiful orderly fashion with a minimum amount of fuss, hanged himself.
********************
Brown had called four times in the last hour. In the end he had relented, despite his predilection for avoiding answerphones at all costs and left a curt message requesting that Burke call him back at some stage. Burke rarely took these things personally when dealing with phones and the older generation despite his being of the take-things-personally persuasion.
He’d been in a meeting for the last hour discussing training needs for his team. The force was putting a particular emphasis on diversity awareness this year, much like the year before and the year before that. He wondered why this was even an issue anymore. Surely people should be past all that. Surely society should have moved on and these things should come down to common decency and common sense. More water torture was all he needed. Then he thought about Campbell and wondered again.
“As I thought, it was definitely some kind of garrotte. Stainless steel cheese wire is the most likely. Probably used without any supporting device though, not attached to a chair or anything. There’s too much trauma at the back of the neck. If a chair or similar device was used I’d have expected to see less there. That area would have been shielded by whatever they braced the wire against as they twisted it. Having said that the blood pattern suggests he was sitting or standing up as he bled out.”
Burke nodded at the other end of the phone realising as he did that it was a pointless gesture.
“He was a big chap, six three and wide too. No identification but his build would suggest he was of Afro-Caribbean descent. Other than that I’m not sure what to tell you. He was young so no glaringly obvious signs of wear and tear save for stained teeth which would suggest he liked to smoke but as to what he liked to smoke, as with our friend yesterday, we wait in anticipation of the tox screen.”
“Any news on the other one?”
“Not as yet I’m afraid. I’ll let you know when I do, assuming of course that I can get hold of you.”
John Campbell came back after lunch like a dog with two tails. He hadn’t turned up any connection to the garrotte apart from saying that it had been used by the British Executive Service Overseas during the war which definitely seemed to make him proud. He produced a picture showing an example; a two foot piece of stainless steel wire with a four inch length of brass bar at each end serving as handles. It satisfied Burke’s curiosity as to the mechanics of the kill at least.
“Thing is boss,” Campbell began, “while I couldn’t find any connection to any particular group for this, I did investigate curved blades a bit more.”
“Ok.”
Campbell pulled out a sheet of examples pointing to one in particular. “So there are a good few variations on the machete design but this one in particular, the panga machete or cutlass has a pretty serious curve to it.”
“Right.”
“I know, you’re thinking what the hell, Pirates of the Caribbean, that kind of thing but you’re actually not far not far wrong. These things are most popular in the Caribbean and parts of Africa.”
Burke nodded as he surveyed the blade. The swept up curve thickened towards the end before coming to a sharp point.
Campbell smirked exposing a row of crooked teeth. “Kind of backs up my theory no?”
Burke decided to put in a call to the Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency on a hunch and after two hours got call back from a DI Mike Edwards at the Drug Strategy Unit in Paisley.
He explained the situation and Edwards listened with interest.
“So what I wondered,” Burke concluded, “is if anyone might missing any ex Eastern Bloc players.”
“Well seeing as you ask,” Edwards replied, “we have lost Vlad the Inhaler.”
********************
They had no respect, these kids; no idea of the trials they had sidestepped, the brutal apprenticeship they had bypassed by virtue of being born to a particular generation.
Victor had to walk away from his luggage before the tall one; the one that looked like Lurch from The Adams Family on Prozac took the hint and picked it up. The short one seemed to be more interested in talking than anything else. They both knew he was just making noise in the hope something sensible would come out, trying to distract himself from jangling nerves. N
o strength of character.
He’d grown used to having this effect on people. It hadn’t always been this way. He’d earned it, paid for it in pounds of flesh, albeit other people’s flesh, those who’d met their demise at his behest.
What was this place? What kind of excuse was this for an international airport? He’d left home after noon, passing through a plush new terminal and arrived on the other side at this, a glorified goat shed. The west was on its knees, dying a slow lingering death.
The small one asked him a question about something; some kind of mindless small talk. He chose to dismiss it with a look and the man averted his gaze to the floor like a scolded dog, doubtless inwardly cursing.
They had brought a Mercedes four by four. Of course, why wouldn’t they? City cowboys; while they were swanning around the smooth city roads in something designed to tackle the Serengeti back home they were circumnavigating potholes the size of hot-tubs in battered saloons.
He missed his Maybach and he wanted some drugs. The pain behind his eyes had started to intensify. Maybe it was the small talk but he had a feeling they didn’t need to say very much to communicate their uselessness. From an evolutionary point of view they were surplus to the requirements of the species.
He checked his Blackberry. Nothing.
There had been a time when it all meant something, before the money and the gadgets, the cars, the villas and the women who stayed the same age as he greyed and sagged.
He’d been sent to the camp at fifteen. His excuse of a father had disowned him ten years before; some five years after his mother had died bringing him into the world. He’d been allowed to go feral, fallen in with the wrong crowd they said but the wrong crowd were at least something resembling family.
He started from the bottom, took the beatings when required and grew into dishing them out when need be. He’d become numb to it at home. He managed to find his way to the fringes of various rackets and found himself a niche “acquiring” things to order; what little there was to acquire back then.
They caught up with him eventually. He was no one and didn’t have the means to pay them off.
But there it all began. Sent away for 7 years, he was baptised in fire and Siberian ice, and reborn.
********************
The press conference was a hastily cobbled together affair. Gray described it as an outreach, a term Burke was fairly certain he was trying to make catch on. The man himself gave off a sombre air, with plenty of implied annoyance at having to do this, though it was obvious to anyone with the mental capacity to breathe and stand upright at the same time that he was loving it. He just lived for moments like these. Probably paced round his room in the small hours addressing the assembled masses from his own private version of the world stage.
Burke did not love it. Maybe it was a dim view of human nature brought about by too much time investigating the inherent flaws, but he got the sense the press were out for blood. He sat, sandwiched between Gray who proudly wore his best ill-fitting suit, and Superintendent Steele who was doing her best to look sombre, in tune with the mood of the day and not like someone who saw things largely in the form of figures and stats.
“Is there any truth in the rumour that the two killings are connected?” asked an ageless hack who looked a lot like the crazy frog.
“We’re keeping an open mind at this time,” Gray replied, looking to his superior for reassurance that this was what he was allowed to say. “Best to keep thinking outside the box.”
Pity the head hadn’t been found in a box, Burke thought. That would have scuppered him. He couldn’t resist a smile at this but was woken from his smug satisfaction by a glare from Steele. It would not have surprised him if it had burned.
“Is this connected to the large amount of cocaine that’s been hitting the streets?” asked a woman with a film crew in tow and an unmoving forehead.
“We are pursuing multiple lines of enquiry,” Gray parroted.
“Meaning, you don’t know where to start?” asked a nasal voice from a red faced white haired man in a corduroy jacket with an outstretched hand and a dictophone.
“Meaning,” Steele interjected forcefully, “we are pursuing multiple lines of enquiry.”
“Who is responsible for the spike in drug related crime in the city?” asked the woman with the botoxed brow.
“We’re ehm,” Gray began, looking at Steele like a dog might view its owner after ruining the carpet with one of its bodily functions “not here to discuss drug related crime. Best to stay on topic I think.” He took a deep breath, before evidently picking a spot on the wall behind the congregation of local media, focussing and beginning his sermon. “This isn’t necessarily about the well-publicised war on drugs. It isn’t about a crime wave or statistics or how well we’re doing and it isn’t about what a victim may or may not have done. In each case it’s about someone’s son, someone’s partner, possibly even someone’s father. It’s about stopping this happening again, not for the statistics or the clear up rates but for the safety of the public. If anyone knows anything or knows anyone who knows anything, no matter how inconsequential it might seem, we would ask that they please come forward and share this information with us as soon as possible. This could have been your partner, your father, your son and if we don’t sort this out and bring the perpetrator or perpetrators to justice it could be next time.”
Give me strength Burke thought as someone at the back of the room did a mocking hand clap.
Gray had his sound bite. Within a couple of hours it would be on the news in people’s living rooms as they chomped on their TV dinners. It may even put them off their TV dinners.
Address over, the boss rose from his seat, jerking his head forward in an affirmative manner and adjusting his jacket so it hung off him in a forwards direction before triumphantly leaving the room.
Burke caught Steele’s gaze as she made to exit and thought he saw her stifling an eye roll.
He followed the pair down the corridor as the media scrum headed out the door on the other side of the room. They regrouped in Steele’s office, neither man wanting to sit down as the Detective Superintendent stared out the window at the yellowing skyline, flanked by photos of her grandkids. Steele’s office at least had a degree of personality to it compared with Gray’s tribute to 90s utilitarianism.
“I feel that went well guys,” she finally said, attempting to adjust an unruly pot plant. “You were fairly conspicuous in your silence James, although I think we managed to fill that void
fairly well. I trust you were actually with us in there?”
“Yes Ma’am,” Burke replied.
“Good. It’s good practice for you, you know. Media experience is a thing you’ll need to progress in the modern force.” Steele raised the index and middle fingers on each hand forming quotation marks before adding, “Going forward” and Burke couldn’t help but like her a little more for it. “In the mean-time chaps, what exactly is the script? Are we really pursuing multiple lines of enquiry as you said? I really hope we know something about what’s going on here.”
“Well,” Gray, started awkwardly, “there is one theory doing the rounds.” He looked appealingly at Burke, who now realised the DCI did not know where he was going with this one and expected his subordinate to help him out and magic something out of the ether.
He dutifully obliged with all he had while inwardly cursing Campbell for expressing his opinions.
After a conversation which made him feel like he needed to take a shower, he headed to Moray Place.
He pressed the buzzer next to the brass name plates heralding the names of the many MBACPs present and was duly allowed over the threshold. He announced his presence to the receptionist who seemed fresh faced and chirpy in contrast to those in the waiting room. His dentist employed a more matronly type who looked at patients with the knowing sense of foreboding combined with a touch of sympathy only years of dealing with the afflicted could provide. Here they’d gone for the screa
ming of their own success by employing someone with the right shade of lip gloss approach, more traditionally deployed by advertising agencies.
He took a seat by the stack of magazines under an aesthetically questionable Jackson Pollock rip-off and checked his emails. Aside from the standard invitations to buy Viagra and Xanax and the many warnings from the many banks he had no dealings with regarding the security of his accounts there was nothing to report.
Reflex meant he would normally dig his hands deep into his pockets in a place like this but he forced himself not to and instead picked up a magazine about running and thumbed through. One day perhaps he would be able to run the length of himself. Until such time he could always read about it here, provided he could pick up the magazine.
The receptionist called his name and he made his way through, head hung low, to explain himself some more.
Dr Carr was probably around five years older than he was but had a face with an ageless quality.
“Morning,” Burke began, “or is it afternoon?” He checked his watch. Just before twelve. “On the cusp,” he concluded as he sat down awkwardly and she smiled patiently.
She always had this effect on him. In the two years or so he’d been coming here there was invariably this disjointed exchange with the cursory attempt at small talk on his side and what could have been called a gentle stone wall in response.
“So, how are you?” she enquired.
“Good. Good,” he fired back, emphasising the second good and looking at his Chelsea-booted toes before catching her gaze and the raised eyebrow that suggested doubt at this. Social convention meant he always felt the need to ask the same back but as with the magazine he forced himself to defy reflex.
She said nothing, knowing he would give in and fill the uncomfortable void with whatever poured out. He reasoned it must be like the psychiatrist’s ink blot. You saw what you wanted to see and blurted out whatever came to your head. In a similar way she was tapping into whatever filled his mind, willing him to trip up on his fear of the conversational lull, the resultant drivel filling in whatever blanks she still had in his psychological profile.
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