Snow Storm

by Robert Parker

  Burke had the urge to tell him he wasn’t allowed to do quite a lot of the things they did together legally, but managed to suppress it.

  “I mean there are some names, you know, none I can mention, but local celebrities certainly, who require a certain amount of discretion. I mean, take the example of a former TV presenter, now a respected local businessman who’s had certain procedures done to lessen the subcutaneous fat from his middle and pump up the girth elsewhere shall we say. If that got out I’d be in trouble.”

  “Indeed,” Burke replied, thinking it kind of just had but that it would be unlikely to injure James Lindsay’s career after the sex scandal of the previous year had killed it stone dead.

  The lawyer sank a little lower in his cheap plastic chair.

  “Of course, you could be in bother client wise if and when this comes to court. Although admittedly it’s unlikely to bother the client you seem to be talking about,” Burke added.

  Douglas laughed the hollow laugh of a man who knew he had been beaten. “What do you want to know Inspector? You’re going to have to give me a starting point because frankly I can’t think straight anymore.”

  “Were you there on the night Oleg Karpov died?”

  “I was.”

  “Did you kill Oleg Karpov?”

  Douglas snorted through his tears. “What do you think?”

  “I think I’d like you to answer the question for the benefit of the tape. I’m old fashioned like that.”

  “No Inspector, I didn’t kill Oleg Karpov. I am not a killer. I may have lost the odd patient back in the days before I specialised but I did my damndest to get them back. I’ve taken the Hippocratic Oath and I didn’t have my fingers crossed. It would go against the grain somewhat.”

  “It’s not like you would be too squeamish for it though.”

  Douglas shook his head. “I suppose not, but I’ve always considered myself a sculptor rather than a butcher. I certainly couldn’t have killed Oleg.”

  “As you say, you were close.”

  “About as close as two human beings can be but I suppose that says more about me than anything.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been terribly close to anyone.”

  “Really?”

  “I blame my parents more than anything, but of course don’t we all. I’m sure my kids will have plenty to say about me given time. It’s very fashionable these days. You’re not allowed to accept blame yourself. I can see why it sells.”

  “So were you alone?”

  “Not initially. There were other guests. And yes, paid ones before you ask.”

  “Could any of these paid guests have harboured any grudges against Mr Karpov?”

  “Doubtful. He was always more than generous as far as I could tell. In any case Inspector, it wasn’t any of them.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “They were quite the wrong shape. The kind of people who frequented Oleg’s place were of a slight build. Not much to them.”

  “You saw the killers?” Burke demanded, as his blood pressure surged.

  “I did,” Douglas replied coldly like he was recounting something much more mundane.

  “What did they look like?” Burke asked, wanting to dive across the table and grab Douglas by the throat but reining himself in, trying not to think about the man hours wasted on this because some chinless wonder didn’t have the guts to come forward.

  Douglas smiled as he took a deep breath and emitted a long drawn out sigh. “I didn’t see their faces Inspector. They were dressed like terrorists or something.”

  “In what way precisely? What do terrorists dress like exactly?”

  “They were head to toe in black and wearing balaclavas. You know, the ones with the holes for eyes. Where do they get those from anyway? Some kind of terrorist shop? Anyway that’s all I could see on the screen.”

  “On the screen?”

  “He had a hefty security system, but surely you know that. The front door and the hallway were both on the big screen at the touch of a button.”

  “Which big screen?”

  “The massive one, the one you can’t miss. That basement’s wired for everything.”

  “What basement?” Burke had a sudden sinking feeling.

  Douglas laughed now, “The one I was cowering in Inspector, the one Oleg liked to have his parties in.” He laughed again. “And the one you so clearly haven’t found.”

  Burke didn’t know what to say to this so he focussed on the questions at hand. “What did you see while you were cowering in the basement?” He asked as calmly as possible.

  “Oleg went to the hallway. He was the worse for wear you might say, so he didn’t really think about who might be there.” Douglas’s eyes seemed to glaze over as he thought about this from what was now presumably a safe distance in his mind’s eye. “I heard the rumbling from upstairs so I checked on the big screen and there it was all happening in front of me. I couldn’t believe my eyes at first. There were three of them, all in black, guys obviously, presumably. They were all large, one particularly rotund, probably older, and all had guns, AK47’s I think.”

  Burke tried to keep him focussed. “Was there any kind of conversation?”

  “Not that I saw, if anything they were ruthlessly to the point.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Once he was in the hallway they just shot him. I say they, it was the middle one, the fat one who shot him. The others were just there for, well I don’t know what but they just trashed the place after that.”

  “You think they were AK47’s you say?” Burke asked, allowing a break from Douglas’s grim narrative.

  “I could pretty much guarantee that,” Douglas replied.

  “You know a lot about guns?”

  “Not especially, but I know an AK47 when I see one.”

  “How?”

  Douglas sniffed. “Oleg had one proudly attached to the wall in a display case in the basement, which you would know if you’d discovered it.”

  “Or if you’d come forward earlier,” Burke added, probably anything but helpfully, but sometimes you had to say what you were thinking.

  “Of course,” said Douglas. “If you didn’t discover the basement, and Oleg’s other life which is all down there you wouldn’t have known anything about me and I wouldn’t ever have needed to come forward.”

  Burke couldn’t resist a wide smile at this. “No you wouldn’t. Good of you to go out of your way to do that though.”

  “Just get the bastards will you?”

  “Bastard getting does tend to be what I do,” he confirmed, before adding “in the meantime sir don’t go anywhere too far.”

  27

  The spook arrived pretty much unannounced, circumventing the front desk by means of her rank and the accompanying awe that inspired. She’d more or less materialised at the side of Sam Jones’s old desk, a talent which was no doubt handy in her line.

  She introduced himself as Sarah Armstrong with a firm handshake that seemed to fit a little incongruously with her slight demeanour.

  “I hope you don’t mind. I’m going to have to keep this brief. I’m due on a flight back to London in under an hour,” she said with a quick glance at an expensive watch.

  “You sure you’ll make it?” John McKay asked. “Traffic’s murder this time of day.”

  “Ways and means,” she replied, before asking to see his senior officer.

  McKay informed her that Detective Inspector Burke was in fact in an interview at present.

  “I think you’d better go and get him just the same,” she said, in the manner of a woman who was not used to being told no.

  McKay knocked on the door to find Burke winding up the interview with the surgeon.

  “Who is it?” Burke asked, probably put out at the loss of a chance to go off and hide somewhere for a bit.

  “Says she’s from Whitehall,” McKay replied. “Security services.” He mouthed “MI5”
so neither the surgeon nor his brief would get too much wind of it.

  Burke made his way back to the main office, without saying a word. Maybe he didn’t actually know what to say and he was thinking up different scenarios. It was hard to tell at the best of times just what went on in the young guy’s head.

  The PC who’d been in the interview escorted the surgeon and his lawyer to the front entrance.

  McKay nearly managed to catch up with Burke as he rounded the corner into the main body of the office but he was too quick. By the time the boss had shaken the spook’s hand and moved her off into his own broom cupboard, evicting Edwards’ bam pot entourage, he’d been left behind in the rush.

  He stared through the glass partition into Burke’s office as the two chatted seemingly calmly, Burke nodding in a way that suggested the spook was imparting some serious information.

  McKay found himself wishing his lip reading skills were better.

  ********************

  Andy had managed to spend the whole day in a trance. He’d previously thought this would only be possible following a heavy night on the booze, chemically anaesthetised. Now he realised concussion was more than capable of the job.

  The girls chatted amongst themselves in whichever language it was. He realised he had no clue which language was actually spoken in Georgia, or the Ukraine, or most places if he thought about it. Ignorant really, just assuming everyone with an Eastern European accent had to be Polish, but then that was the most likely possibility round here. A good few Polish people had moved into the area to find work and this being Wigtownshire there weren’t many people here, let alone different nationalities. It was always more of a gene puddle than a pool really, not surprising that anyone vaguely different stood out like the proverbial sore thumb.

  He got the sense that something was up and the girls knew more about it than he did. The urgency of their whispered tones made him nervous. If they thought they had problems, chances were, he was fucked.

  He heard another plane land. You couldn’t miss it in the quiet night. He wondered what this time. The last one seemed to have been taking off, the accelerating engine, sounding like a wayward petrol lawnmower, one of these ones middle aged men sat on that looked like toy tractors and gave the retired accountant an hour of fun every second Sunday pretending to be Old McDonald.

  This time it sounded like the engine was slowing, killed at the last minute, before the screech of tyres on the tarmac, as presumably the plane touched down. It couldn’t be good news at any rate, unless this was the cavalry being flown in to rescue him, or better still, some dozy lawnmower owner who’d got lost and had actually killed the engine before executing a handbrake turn or a doughnut. He’d probably be happy with that, especially if it distracted his captors and gave him the chance to bolt.

  He tried to get the girls attention but they were still too busy talking at each other. There was a lot of background noise but he didn’t fancy shouting. Funny how a hostage situation felt somehow like being back at school. One thing was for sure, he wouldn’t be getting Stockholm Syndrome for these boys anytime soon. That’s if they let him live for any length of time.

  He couldn’t be sure of the girls though. They might be well far along with the whole assimilation into the cult thing. There must be a way out of here. He couldn’t get the cable ties undone himself, he knew that. But it wasn’t like they were actual hand cuffs, they should be easy enough with the right thing, something sharp or flammable. He twisted his wrists as he thought about it, trying to find any give where he knew there was none. He could try scraping them on the pallet, but that wouldn’t work in a short enough time, i.e. before they decided to dispose of him.

  Eventually he managed to get their attention by whistling. The high pitch cut through both the noise from outside and their whispered scheming.

  “What do you want? Water?” Ania asked as she made her way across the room in a quiet way. Maybe there were cameras in here he thought.

  “Is there any way you can let me loose?” he asked her. Better to die trying than face the end having done nothing and wondering what might have been.

  She shook her head slowly.

  “You have nothing sharp?” he asked slowly, like a tourist who thinks his lack of language skills can be rendered unimportant by close adherence to the principles of vocal projection. “Nothing that burns?”

  Again she shook her head. Of course, what was he expecting her to say? ‘Oh here have this sulphuric acid/laser beam/plasma cutter we forgot about’?

  “What about your friends?” he asked, clutching at straws in a way only the doomed knew how.

  “They have nothing,” she replied, looking at the floor before looking back at him with concerned eyes and touching the side of his face with an icy hand that somehow, despite all odds, felt warm.

  He tried rubbing the cable tie on the upright bar of the pallet he sat on again, frantically this time, but nothing. He kept going until the sting in his wrists grew too much and he could feel the warm trickle of blood drizzling down his hand.

  There must be a way. He would not die here. He wouldn’t allow it. It was too stupid a way to go. Held by a bunch of nutters on the basis that you decide to play a practical joke, one that wasn’t even on them really. The joke was more just one between him, Davie and Colin, pretending to be master surveillance experts and professional saboteurs. Well, the punch line had gone down like a lead balloon and now no one was laughing.

  He heard footsteps approaching and the door was thrust open, flooding the inside of the shed with light, practically blinding him and his fellow inmates. The girls huddled together in the corner as two of the Georgians made their way purposefully towards them.

  They seemed to huddle and scatter in turn, like sheep, the last five or so in a field, difficult to move or pin down or keep together in any kind of cohesive group but tough to separate in order to pick them off one by one. In this case they didn’t have to as one of the girls was on the ground convulsing suddenly, before lying still. The others focussed on her like a car crash.

  It was then he saw the wires connecting the girl’s body with something in the toothless, bald one’s hand. It was then he couldn’t help himself.

  “Leave them alone you bastards!” He shouted quite unintentionally, wanting to do anything he could to protect the hostage girl on the ground, so far from home and away from those who loved her.

  He was now the target but wouldn’t be for long. The giant made his way towards Andy, a smile spreading across his gaping black hole of a mouth.

  “Fuck you,” Andy spluttered. The anger was in charge now. “You can’t go one on one and you can’t even move a lassie without using a tazer, fucking useless meat head arsehole.”

  The man towered above, looking down on him, moving his neck from side to side and swivelling his shoulders clearly relishing this, ready for the sensory release of knocking seven bells out of this mouthy teenager.

  When he moved it was instant, unthinking and terrifying.

  Andy braced as best he could for the blows that were coming, at least the girls would take less. At least he’d done something good. At least he’d done something.

  When enough time lapsed and nothing happened he opened his eyes to see that gurning face level with his, breathing its foul stench in his. The giant tapped his face gently with a sweaty palm before laughing and walking away to continue with the task in hand.

  Then, he was alone. The plane had departed with its cargo, which had been replaced in his prison by actual cargo in wooden boxes.

  He felt cold and he hoped the end would come soon. The dread that filled his mind left him wondering why they’d kept him alive. He knew it couldn’t be good.

  ********************

  Victor lay in his cell waiting. He’d done waiting, in ways lesser men could not hope to imagine. This was nothing, a blip on an otherwise steadily up-sweeping curve towards his ultimate destiny. Some would say his ambitions were unjust but he’d entered
a way of life all those years ago in the frozen wastes, a covenant that required honouring. Some of his brethren had parted ways with the true path, sold out as they liked to say here. They had positions of authority, titles and responsibilities, all of which served to uphold the values of an unjust society, a society that was corrupt, rotten to the core and had forgotten its own.

  The communists had come to power promising to free those imprisoned by indentured servitude, only to trap them in their own version of the daily grind, less time spent in the duties of serfdom, more in the bread queue.

  They had called on the brotherhood for help in their war, only to betray them when it mattered and send them back from where they’d taken them to rot once more. Later they had tried to extinguish them with the help of those with ambitions beyond bars and so the time they called the bitch wars had begun.

  He and his kind had survived all of this but now they had been brought to the brink of extinction. Now they were a dying breed and all because of their own failings; their lust for individual power and the trappings of success and above all some form of acceptance by the very thing that had abandoned them in the beginning, this thing they called society, their need to be treated like vulgar celebrities, nothing more than performing bears, by the very people they had sworn to despise.

  He had done waiting and could wait some more, forever if need be. He would live on through his sons and the empire he’d created.

  He laughed at himself and his train of thought. Such thoughts of negativity were pointless. Plans were in motion. All would be well.

  28

  Burke was alone in his office at last. It had been a busy day and it wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down. He placed his feet up on the desk and leaned back in his chair letting the blood run towards his head, feeling his eyes bulge before sitting back up when he felt suitably distracted. He’d read somewhere that people did this for inspiration, hanging upside down with gravity boots to get the extra oxygen into the grey matter. He could see the reasoning, liked the theory even, but couldn’t get over the fact that they recommended the same thing for baldness. If they’d found a genuine cure for that, he decided, it would have been well documented. Nonetheless, the sensation made him feel something other than tired and bedraggled, which was refreshing in itself.