Snow Storm (17 page)

On this occasion he was
rather enjoying being hurled around the back seat of the Ford S-Max
as it accelerated, braked and was thrown into corners this way and
that. Trust; that was the thing. You trusted hired, what was the
word, mercenaries? Henchmen? He liked the idea of henchmen.
Whatever, you trusted the fact they had certificates in shooting
people in the face while being kicked in the legs, surviving
ambushes and driving at the limit. It was entertaining watching a
professional at work. Perhaps most of all this was because it was
at his bidding. He was effectively running the show right now. He
was capo-di-tutti-capo as the Italians would say, boss of all
bosses. Admittedly this wouldn’t be for long, depending on how good
he was at his job, and he was good at his job, but for now he had
the wheel.

Law, he reflected, had
been a good choice; another good decision in a long line. Some may
say it was easy when you had a head start in life but he’d happily
counter that it did in fact largely come down to breeding. He was a
subscriber to the theory of genetic memory and so in a roundabout
way, he felt he should congratulate himself all the more. Not that
he had blind faith in his abilities. That would be a tad remiss but
a realistic belief in ones innate abilities and intellectual
superiority in most situations wasn’t too much in the way of
confidence.

Looking at the two
knuckleheads in the front he had to admit he’d be unlikely to last
long if the clock suddenly went back to zero and they were all
cavemen again. Physically they could undoubtedly wield a club with
more finesse than he’d manage if it came down to it. He’d even
concede that given such re-allotment of historical period he’d
probably wind up being their bitch but then he’d probably also
discover fire or the secret thereof thus turning the tables. His
genes had lasted this long and it wasn’t for nothing. The ancestors
must have had something going for them and now, at the turn of this
new millennium, his genes were having their time. They were the
master race. Love it or hate it, these Neanderthals had more or
less had their time. Still, they were here to do his bidding. That
was the crucial thing. He was in charge and the power was
something.

The booze was taking its
time in wearing off and he knew he would have to sober up quickly.
They sped down the track to the airfield. A small twin-engine
Cessna was visible on the left, its navigation lights on, ready for
the off, as they headed for the gate to the complex. He wasn’t fond
of being in the actual buildings themselves. It brought everything
home a bit too much, sent a shiver down the spine. Not that he was
directly involved normally. He liked to keep a safe
distance.

As they entered the main
gate, he thought better of it. “The plane’s over there. I’ll walk,”
he said willing them to stop the car.

From his
position in the passenger seat, Alexei turned round, his menacing
bulk intensified by a lack of hair. “There’s something else,” he
said and Giles realised he was having problems with his T’s, and
that he was now missing some of his front teeth, at least two, but
he didn’t like to count too obviously.

“
Yes?” Giles
replied in a tone reminding the goon who was in charge.

The driver eyed Giles in
the mirror with a look of trepidation. “We have a bit of a
situation you might say.”

Burke sat at
his desk, enjoying -if he could be enjoying anything this week- an
early morning stare. There wasn’t much to look at through the
window, only a wall in fact, but there was a certain joy to be had
in just defocusing the eyes and letting them do whatever the hell
they wanted.

It had been an eventful
evening’s work and he had a good few nuggets of info to dispense to
the team at this morning’s briefing. He could also pass some of
this on to Gray. He was probably overdue for a good ear bending
session about how much pressure the boss was under. At times Burke
wished he was more the old school shouty superior officer, rather
than one who like to nag and appeal to your better nature. His
first headmaster had been a shouter and admittedly he got results,
whereas his secondary head had been one of these modern types, and
truth be told, merely got on everyone’s tits. It was hard to
respect anyone who regularly told you about the hard time they were
getting and that they hoped you would live up to the faith they’d
put in you with doe eyes.

He stared at the frost
patterns on his window, the one no one had wanted so he’d accepted.
Anything for a quiet life really. Not that he’d had much choice in
the matter, he’d been the new boy when they were
rearranging.

And now they
were rearranging again. Lothian and Borders Police was to become
just a small cog in the larger machine called Police Scotland,
rebranding, repackaging, consolidating power in one place. A
government intent on independence and decentralisation of power
centralising the police force and fire brigade. Decentralisation
was all well and good, as long as it was flowing your way he
supposed. Now there was a bit if nervousness about the whole place,
people jostled for position, not wanting to get left behind,
wanting to be part of this brave new world. Redundancies would
follow he supposed, cuts in the smaller areas people didn’t think
about. Now all the village bobbys were gone and the local cop shops
were just cheap property for investors and first time buyers. No
more knowing the name of your local beat cop. Not that he was a
Luddite, he had no desire to see things stay the same. There was
always room for improvement, just there was always room for someone
to fuck it up too.

His phone went off with a
volume that nearly emptied his coffee over his leg as the surprise
made him squeeze the plastic cup.

“
Good morning
James,” he heard the confident tones of Mike Edwards chime. “Good
to see you’re up and on the case so to speak.”

“
Always,”
Burke replied in a way that suggested the opposite. He wasn’t
really in the mood for Edwards this early on. He’d only met the man
once and his forced enthusiasm was starting to grate. “What can I
do for you?” He asked envisaging several scenarios whereby he did
various things to him with an axe.

“
Oh I’m sure
you know what I’m after.”

He was stumped. “I’d
suggest a big bust relating to the drug trade,” he replied, nothing
like giving a deliberately vague answer on the off chance people
thought you might actually know what you are talking
about.

“
You don’t
have a clue do you?” Edwards concluded.

“
None at
all,” he confirmed.

There was a pause at the
end of the line as Edwards clearly enjoying this to some degree. He
seemed the type. Smug bastard. “Should you have the time to check
in your custody suite, you will find that you have residing in one
of your room, one Victor Andreyevich.”

“
Really?”

“
Indeed, I’ll
pretend you don’t know who he is to refresh your memory. Lithuanian
business man, interests in several firms around the globe, many of
them shell companies, others encompassing mining, construction,
property, and more problematic we believe, pharmaceuticals of the
type not approved for prescriptions or over the counter
sales.

“
I see, and
yet he’s in our cells for?”

Another pause. “Assault,
breach of the peace, probably several counts of attempted murder
when it comes down to it. He decided it might be rather fun to take
his frustrations out on a pub full of Wednesday night revellers and
finished up overdoing it slightly.”

“
I see,”
Burke replied.

“
This is a
golden opportunity James.”

“
Really? And
how does this relate to me?”

“
Well, he
does rather tie up with one, or two, or now I hear three corpses
you’ve been looking into.”

“
Really,”
Burke asked, knowing that this was probably the point where Edwards
reminded him he owed him one.

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

Andy found it hard to
breathe. He’d never been a panicker but he was making up for it
now. The balled up socks or rag or whatever it was they’d stuck in
his mouth wedged his jaw unnaturally open. Saliva gathered at the
back of his throat, forcing him to swallow every two seconds and
that was difficult when he felt like he would choke on the contents
of his mouth every time.

This wasn’t an aspect of
hostage life they covered in the movies; the sheer terror regarding
basic bodily functions or the fact that inevitably there were no
toilet breaks in this game. He’d tried holding it in for so long
but eventually given in after remembering a horror story about the
contents of the bladder being able to back up into the
kidneys.

Now he knew what it would
be like to be old. He’d tried laughing at this but it hadn’t helped
on a practical level. It was always a source of embarrassment,
remembering something funny in public and struggling to stop
yourself smirking or laughing out loud in case people thought you
were a nutter. That was something he was used to, having that sense
of humour, but he’d happily trade the public beamer for the snort
of laughter that ended with him trying not to choke on a pair of
socks. Or whatever it was. He hoped to god they were clean socks,
couldn’t cope with the thought that he might get some kind of foot
rot in his mouth or that his breath would forever more smell like
some other bugger’s rancid hoof. He’d seen something on the
Discovery Channel about things like that happening, something about
a Japanese guy picking his nails with a chicken bone, breaking the
skin and then having to cope with smelling of poultry for the rest
of his days. Not a good way to spend your time, though it occurred
to him that it might be a good idea to try out on Davie if he ever
got out of here. This made him laugh again until he thought he was
going to be sick which stopped him in his tracks. In this
situation, that would be the end.

They’d come for him
around three. Probably. Not that he was wearing a watch anymore.
What he wouldn’t give for a Bond watch right now, one with a laser
beam, or a retro turning timer that doubled as a circular saw, like
in The Spy Who Loved Me. He’d heard their footsteps echoing round
the building, heard wheels rolling along behind him. He’d tried to
look round but couldn’t quite stretch far enough and had a feeling
they wouldn’t like that anyway so he’d given up and waited. The
wheels grew nearer, rattling along with their increasing hollow
metallic sound until everything moved with a jerk as he heard the
clang of metal hitting the pallet he was sitting on, followed by a
pumping sound as he was lifted, then pulled backwards with a force
almost certainly designed to wake him up. The pallet swung round
violently and he realised he was on a pallet truck, a miniature
forklift, like some meat delivery at a supermarket.

There were
three of them. The operator of the pallet truck was the toothless
one, who now stood, arms folded, in front of him, grinning
regardless of the aesthetic this created. Another taller guy stood
on the far left, standing at ease in the same way they’d taught
Andy to in the Boy’s Brigade. He got the impression that wasn’t
where this guy had learned it though, as he stood there with a
puffed up chest, staring down the length of a broken nose and
raised chin in Andy’s general direction. His eyes bulged out of his
skull making him look fit to burst with ‘roid rage.

These two were evidently
just the goons. The big chief, or in this case emaciated looking
chief, stood in the middle, head back in the style of goon number
two, but more in a misguided attempt at posturing. Suited and
booted to the max, this didn’t look like the manager of a livestock
feed store. The hair alone probably had to be maintained on an
hourly basis, just to keep the right air of importance. His eyes
were nervous and red. He had the myxomatosis look usually displayed
by the hung over. He looked around, unsure of himself for a few
seconds, before looking Andy squarely in the eye, confidence
replenished from somewhere. “So you’ve been sneaking around have
you?” he asked, obviously attempting to make some kind of matey
small talk or just buy enough time to think of something more to
the point, considering they all knew the answer to that one
anyway.

“
Yes,” Andy
replied, wondering as he did if this boy was actually wanting an
answer but at the same time realising too late that he’d said it
like it was a question and finished up sounding sarcastic. He was
happy with that but they definitely weren’t. The next sound he made
was a squeal, as he felt the dull thud, followed by the sharp pain
of an assault rifle hitting the side of his head. He’d only ever
heard a dog make that sound; a sort of unconcealed helpless anguish
when he’d accidentally trapped its paw in a door.

He felt a tear roll down
his left cheek as the anger and frustration came to the surface and
he couldn’t help but look at his interrogator with a defiant sneer
he knew he would come to regret as he bit his own
tongue.

The man looked to the
floor, refusing to make eye contact and at the same time enjoying
his captive’s discomfort. Perhaps he was composing his next
brilliant question. “Any particular reason?” he eventually
asked.