Snow Storm (13 page)

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.

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.

********************

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.

No, whichever way it had
turned out, Victor would take his chances every time. He chose life
over existence and he would choose death over it also.

He motioned to the barman
again and the younger man made for the vodka bottle, stopping as
Victor interrupted him, asking instead for the bill to be charged
to his suite. He left a sizeable tip on the bar and made his way to
the foyer. He had yet to see this town and there was no time like
the present.