Snow Storm

by Robert Parker

  “In my line of work there are of course ample opportunities for dalliances shall we say?”

  “No doubt.”

  “There is a bit of pressure involved. You take your chances to blow off steam while you can. I’ve already had more than one affair inspector, and my wife isn’t stupid. She caught me out twice and gave me an ultimatum as no doubt you’d expect. I suppose that’s what the cycling was about as much as anything. Escapism.”

  “Hardly the same is it?” Burke heard himself say.

  Douglas laughed a hysterical cackle, holding his head with both hands as though he might otherwise fall from his perch.

  “No inspector, it isn’t. What is it they call us? Mamils? Middle aged men in lycra, an entire generation of men trying to recapture their youth by regressing to the age of twelve. At least some people have the balls to become born again bikers but no, that’s too dangerous. I learned that from my days in A&E. No, nowadays we all dress up like Lance Armstrong, and get our kicks peddling down hills like we did when we were pre-teens.” He laughed again. The hollow laugh of the slightly desperate man.

  “I suppose if nothing else it’s healthy.”

  “Didn’t work out so healthy for me though did it?” he almost shouted, before remembering himself, “caused me to spend the next few months in a blizzard of cocaine and whores.”

  “So this became a regular thing?”

  “It did, every Wednesday and Friday night. I told my wife these were training nights,” he scoffed to himself. “Gave me an excuse to come in wrecked and immediately take a shower. I kept it up, the training on Monday nights, just to keep my hand in, kept my story consistent if you see what I mean.”

  “Must have been hard work.”

  “Not really inspector. People rarely see what they don’t want to. It can be fairly easy to hide in plain sight.”

  “You think your wife knew?”

  “I assume she has more than an inkling. But knowing something deep down and being confronted with it are not the same thing, are they?”

  “It must have been expensive.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Really? In my admittedly limited and strictly professional experience, coke and prostitutes tend to take a bit of a toll on the bank balance Mr Douglas.”

  “Obviously, but I wasn’t exactly footing the bill.”

  “Mr Karpov was funding your leisure activities in full?”

  “He was.”

  “And what did he want in return?”

  Douglas looked thoughtful for a moment before shrugging.

  “Not sure I know. I think he was lonely.”

  “I see. Expensive way to get companionship isn’t it? Surely a Labrador, or at a push a Thai bride would actually work out cheaper in the long run.”

  “I don’t know inspector. I’ve already told you that.”

  “In any case, accepting all of what you say about your relationship with the now deceased Mr Karpov, what details can you actually give us regarding his murder?”

  “None to speak of.”

  “None?”

  “No, save to say that he was involved with a dodgy crowd.”

  “A dodgy crowd?”

  “Well the man did have a ready supply of drugs and hookers didn’t he?”

  “As did you sir.”

  “I’m hardly Pablo Escobar Inspector.”

  “But you suspected Mr Karpov of being some kind of kingpin?”

  “Well possibly, what did I know? It’s not like I asked, but he was of Lithuanian extraction and I’m not being racist but..”

  Oh here we go Burke thought to himself.

  “Eastern Europeans perhaps have a different view of that kind of thing, culturally speaking.”

  So it’s more a case of xenophobia then? Burke thought. “And yet you freely associated with him sir?”

  “Well no,” Douglas replied, now looking a trifle confused.

  “So he was coercing, perhaps blackmailing you in some way?”

  “No Inspector. No I suppose I did freely associate with him as you put it. We didn’t discuss work.”

  “Just took illegal drugs and had sex with prostitutes?”

  “Look I’m trying to be helpful here,” Douglas said holding his arms out to the side in the age old way suggested he had nothing concealed. I have been totally honest with you here. “I haven’t involved my solicitor as I came to you in good faith.”

  “So you know nothing else?” Burke summarised. He’d been here long enough. The air in the room was starting to taste bitter.

  “No.”

  “In which case that should be all for now.”

  “Meaning?”

  “We’ll be in touch.”

  “Am I what would you say immune from prosecution. Does this goes any further?”

  “We’ll be in touch.”

  “Can we keep this away from my wife? Inspector, I have tried to be reasonable in all of this. I am doing my best to be helpful in catching the criminals who did this to a friend and neighbour.”

  “It’s good of your sir.” And with that he was gone leaving Douglas to stew in his own juices. Funny how he seemed to think a medical degree gave him the right to flout laws as long as he did the big confession scene when it all went wrong. He must have been watching too much Oprah, much like his cycling hero.

  Doctor Brown had offered him coffee from a kettle he kept -probably against health and safety- in the lab but he always refused, feeling somehow that the stench of death might make its way into the water by osmosis or something.

  The ever downtrodden Brown was currently regaling him with a story about his recent golf holiday in the Algarve. Soon to be retired, he had squirreled away enough cold, hard cash over the years to set himself up a decent bolt hole out there and planned on living out the rest of his days in the relentless sunshine.

  “Until the start of the inevitable decline,” he pointed out. “There comes a point when one has to rely on the kindness of the NHS or whatever is left of it by the time they have all gone private. Had my teeth done while I’ve still got the readies.”

  He flashed a smile that was faultless and yet somehow just the right side of normal.

  “An implant here and a crown there should see me right till I shuffle off this mortal coil, eh Jim?”

  “My granny kept hers in a glass most of the time,” Burke volunteered before realising what he’d said.

  “I’m not quite as old as your grandmother yet,” came the response, “that said I’m always in the market for an older woman.”

  Brown flashed the teeth again as he nudged his young female assistant in the ribs causing her to roll her big blue eyes and shake her blonde head in protest.

  “And I’ve met some great grannies.”

  He was a walking HR issue. It was just as well he was close to retirement. Burke often wondered what the fabled Mrs Brown was like. The only description he’d heard from her husband consisted of the words battle-axe, harridan, harpy, fuhrer and managing director on the occasions he was inclined to be more charitable.

  “So I suppose we should get down to brass tacks. Can’t stand around listening to Jennifer’s gossip all day can we?” He nudged the assistant again before leading the way through to the autopsy room, which he referred to variously as his office or in more jovial moments his studio. As they gathered round the stainless steel slab, part operating table part sink, Brown was poised to pull back the plastic sheet covering the vast body of the ex-Oleg Karpov. “Interesting things were immediately obvious on the removal of the deceased’s shall we say tasteful kimono.” He lifted the sheet “I warn you this isn’t one of the more aesthetically pleasing autopsies I’ve had the fortune to perform,” he said in a tone of sincerity he occasionally deployed. He pulled back the sheet as far as the shoulders, showing a largely misshapen head caked in blood. The face was unrecognisable as the bullets had ripped their way through the top lip, right cheek, bridge of the nose and the entire left eyebrow. “Of course when the
bullet hit the eyebrow the upper part of the face caved in, giving him his distinctly Neanderthal appearance down one side.

  “Do we know this is him for sure?” Burke asked fighting back the urge he had to heave.

  He’d seen some gruesome things particularly over the last couple of days but there was something about the face, or the loss of its form that really hit home. It was, after all, how people gauged each other.

  “Oh yes. Thankfully he didn’t have quite as good a dentist or perhaps wasn’t so fond as squandering good cash as I. He had a partial denture consisting of the upper four incisors and the left canine. Despite the bullet it was still in very good shape so we were able to run it past his dentist in good time thanks to the feminine wiles of my glamorous assistant.” Jennifer blushed slightly and Burke wondered if the old boy had a particular way of saying inappropriate things that got him off scot free.

  “So unless he has company, we can assume he wasn’t sleeping.” Burke said almost to himself.

  “Unless he was really vain,” Jennifer added.

  “True,” Burke replied remembering a story about someone choking on false teeth.

  “Had he had sex recently,” he added.

  “Haven’t got quite that far yet Jim,” Brown replied, “but will have a look under the bonnet and let you know. Same goes for the tox screen and ballistics report. Obviously so far we’re quite chuffed we’ve managed to identify the bugger. Certainly no traces standing out under black light but you never know.”

  “Shouldn’t that kind of thing stand? I mean bodily fluids; doesn’t that normally show up fairly easily?”

  “Well there were a lot of bodily fluids but not in that particular area. He made have had a shower or something though. Are you worried he didn’t get any before he went?”

  “Something like that,” Burke replied, leaving them to draw their own conclusions.

  “And so to one of the more interesting pieces of the puzzle,” Brown declared, pulling back the covers to the corpse’s waist.

  Between the bullet holes were various tattoos giving the man’s upper body the appearance of the world’s biggest embroidered pin cushion.

  “Bit like join the dots,” Brown said as he stood back to give Burke some space to take it all in.

  “Welcome to my world.” Burke looked on in awe at the network of drawings on Karpov’s body. The images were distorted by the bullet holes across the length of his abdomen, with pieces missing and others stretched by the cushy lifestyle Karpov had clearly led in recent years and the fatty toll it had taken on his body.

  On his chest was what looked like a crucifix, this was the focal point about which all the other art work seemed to revolve.

  His right shoulder bore what seemed to be an epaulette and on his left just at the base of the neck was a dagger from which countless drops of draining blood made their way downwards. A star adorned the opposite shoulder and a church with multiple spires, -Burke counted ten- dominated the left side of his chest, and a rose with thorns appeared to ooze out of a deep wound on the right.

  The whole scene seemed at odds with the image of the respectable businessman Campbell had painted on his return from Karpov’s office.

  “Russian prison tattoos,” Burke suggested knowing fairly well that this was likely to be the case.

  “That would be my bet,” Brown agreed, “not for the health conscious anyway. They melt down a boot heel and mix the soot with urine then inject the nasty mix through the skin using a sharpened guitar string and a modified electric razor.”

  “Hardly Miami Ink is it?”

  “Not entirely sure what that is but I’ll take your word for it.”

  Burke thought about explaining it was a reality TV show but decided against it. He made his way back to the cop shop via Greggs getting stuck into a much needed steak bake. He’d fancied a sausage roll but when it came down to it couldn’t face the idea of pork after the sight of Karpov’s gargantuan inked form.

  14

  Davie and Andy eventually persuaded Colin into joining them on their reconnaissance mission. Davie had finally sussed Andy when the dog found him at the window and started barking. He’d almost started to think the ghost stories Colin had told him when they were kids had a grain of truth about them. It would be the first time anything he said made any sense, Davie had said.

  They rendezvoused at the brothers’ place, each of them wearing black. They donned the boot polish, ensuring they tried to outsmart each other. Davie for instance had “dick” written on his forehead following some ‘help’ from Colin.

  They synchronised watches and gathered supplies for sustenance in the form of two six packs and a couple of bags of Doritos. Colin wanted to take a couple of dips, a salsa one and a triple cheese one, but they told him it that it wasn’t a slumber party they were going to. “You say that like it’d be a bad thing,” He protested, probably picturing girls in pyjamas.

  They moved quickly, silently for once, along the side of the air strip that ran east to west; the now unused section. Time was they’d done auto testing down here in the summer months, the concrete proving the perfect surface doing handbrake turns and doughnuts before it had begun to look properly disused and gravelly. The land was starting to reclaim it now. Even concrete had a finite lifespan when going up against the natural world. Looking up to the light in the distance. He wondered how long it would take the soil to absorb Wigtown itself if they dropped a nuke tomorrow. Not long in the eternal scheme of things but for now the old county town glittered defiantly on its hilltop.

  Davie sparked up a fag making him visible at a distance as an orange dot bouncing along at a height of about six feet. Andy guessed he would be verging on bored already. He gave him ten minutes before he started moaning about it in the style of a kid demanding to know “are we nearly there yet” on a long car journey.

  He had the attention span of a goldfish, some of the same facial features too, or maybe it was just the red colour to him. There was a definite similarity in the gormless expressions of both. He could well imagine the big man circling around, seeing his reflection and remembering ‘I’m a goldfish’ every four seconds as his memory expired.

  They reached the crossover point, where the opposing strips intersected in the middle, and came to a halt. They were on open ground now and could see the perimeter wall. From memory, Andy didn’t think there had been a wall there before. As far as he could recall there had only been a knackered old fence where now there was an eight foot high wall in cast concrete.

  Light shone over the top of the wall from inside the complex indicating someone was still around. They squatted down on the balls of their feet in a dip where the concrete of the airstrip met the grass. Tradition, or at least the films they’d been brought up on, dictated that by now they should really be lying flat out on the grass viewing the scene through sniper sights, but the cold dictated that tradition was now null and void.

  “OK, so they’re most likely still in there,” Colin finally whispered. “So we need to split up.”

  “Eh? How?” Davie squealed, clearly not enamoured with the idea that he might have to hang out on his own for more than five minutes.

  “Think about it. When they actually leave we have no way of seeing where they go.”

  Davie nodded reluctantly. “Guess I’ll be going back to the car then.”

  “No sleeping though,” Colin added. “Andy, if you head over towards the entrance, but watch for any cameras down there I’ll stick around this area, make sure we’ve got a strong enough signal to relay the messages on these bad boys.” He produced three yellow walkie-talkies and dished them out to the other two. “Keep the channel clear,” he warned his brother. “When Andy sees them leave I’ll try and get to you and we’ll make chase.”

  “Fair play,” Davie replied, waking up to the fact he was going to get a comfy seat out of it. He tried hard to conceal the grin on his face as he fired up yet another fag.

  ********************

&nb
sp; Victor knocked back another shot. He couldn’t get the stuff they had at home but the Stolichnaya wasn’t bad. He told himself he should stop as his mouth began to water in the tell-tale sign of impending sickness but automatically gave the barman another nod before he realised what he was doing. He didn’t like to push it too far, didn’t like to lose control in any sense, but on a day like today he reasoned, needs must.

  The barman replenished his glass quickly, ever mindful of the likelihood of a large tip. Victor raised his gaze skyward and tipped his glass forward in a silent toast to his departed friend. He would ensure Oleg had a send-off befitting his status. He wasn’t a religious man but he was a fervent believer in the old ways. His position meant he had a duty as a trustee of tradition. Without the traditions, the rules, they might be no better than common criminals. With the rules they were a force to be reckoned with. They had codes, a moral compass, a noble cause and right on their side.

  Plans would have to be made now. Networks evolved and groups were consolidated with the passage of time. That was just the way of it in the life they had chosen. He was used to having to think fast and adapt on the go. His childhood and he supposed his father had served him well in that respect at least. Nonetheless, it was hard to see the old guard dying out. Life expectancy wasn’t one of the perks of their business.

  He looked around the bar for prying eyes and found none. At this time of night and even after this many glasses of the good stuff, even the old dog he had become began to get restless. His habits were set from life as a younger man who wanted to go places with a drink in him; a younger man who wanted to meet women. Even now he felt the ghost of the young man inside, trying to grapple with the controls.

  At least here there were places to go, not like the time and place he had called his own so many years ago. Karl Marx; what a buffoon. Did he not realise that human beings were animals? Instead of hunting for money they had simply hustled for power and as before, those without lived a life of miserable servitude they were punished for trying to escape. In truth wasn’t the life he chose more honest? Wasn’t the life of a thief a fairly noble thing? He at least survived on his wits and used the skills he was blessed with. He’d never settled for life as a slave to the ideological fallacy, never given in to the state that wanted to control its citizens in order to set them free.