Snow Storm (15 page)

He began at
one end of the track running along the side of the airstrip,
revving the engine and preparing with a few minor wheel-spins. When
he was ready, the music was turned up decisively and Kanye West
blasted from the back of the car, competing for attention with the
drilled exhaust pipe. He finally let the clutch out for the last
time, and starting with a triumphant wheel-spin that must have
extended several metres and taken several thousand miles off his
tyres, he made his approach.

From Andy’s vantage
point, out on the far side of the airfield, he watched as the light
show took shape. The blue lights under the car and the matching
bulbs he’d seen fit to install in the headlamps lit up the woods to
the other side. As the car tore along the side of the fence the
light spread out across the strip, distorting, flickering and
moving as Davie crossed each fence post, making the whole thing
look as though it was happening on black and white cine-film, even
if it was anything but silent.

He came to the end of his
run up, swerved to the right ready for the handbrake and
understeered, continuing in a straight line on the ice as the front
wheels failed to respond to their orders. Without warning they bit
properly and the car lurched forcefully in the desired direction
but he’d overdone it. Andy’s heart jumped into his mouth and all he
could do was stare. The car spun once, throwing light around the
whole area, and then again and again. Each time it looked as though
it should surely slow as the foreshortening took effect but each
time it continued headed towards an inevitable sickening crunch. It
never happened. The car finally came to a halt as all three
breathed a sigh of intense relief.

The words “Am OK,”
broadcast over the CB band confirmed all was well. He didn’t seem
to have any witticisms for once.

Andy shook
his head and wandered off down the strip towards the entrance to
the complex, feeling a surge in confidence brought about by the
idiot’s lucky escape and resolving to bite the bullet.

He moved slowly but
purposefully, leaving the Chuckle Brothers to dissect the events of
the past few seconds and pushing himself to get to the entrance
before common sense kicked in and he thought better of it. He made
it to the south side of the strip, passing the old wind sock which
hung limply, bogged down by the weight of ice crystals and began to
hear an engine. He marched faster now, all thoughts of common sense
banished from his mind, all thoughts of anything other than getting
a sneak peek at what was inside and where they were
going.

He reached the corner of
the new wall and the large gate he’d been unlucky at earlier in the
week and began what his father would call skulking. He saw the
lights coming as they reflected on the other side of the road and
dived for the protection of the fence.

“
Incoming,”
he rasped into the radio.

“
Eh?” came
the response.

“
They’re on
their way.”

“
Shit. I’m on
it,” Davie replied, as the lights from his car died down and he
could be heard wheel-spinning on to the road again, clearly
subscribing to the theory of brute force and ignorance in respect
to off-road driving, or at least getting back on to the
road.

“
Hold on, I’m
coming,” Colin shouted, as the Peugeot fell quiet again, waiting
now in whatever equivalent Davie had of stealth mode.

“
Move it
lady-boy,” was Davie’s response as Andy held his breath and
waited.

The lights from the
complex grew brighter until he was almost blinded by a mirror some
conscientious health and safety type had seen fit to install on the
other side of the road. He could make out the vehicle and the
silhouette of someone climbing into the passenger side. The car
accelerated towards the mirror before passing him as it rounded the
corner and roared off. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected but this
wasn’t it; a black possibly dark blue people carrier headed down
the road towards the side track where Colin and Davie waited. A new
people carrier just seemed all wrong somehow. They didn’t pay that
much in these places did they? Maybe it was the boss’s. In any
case, it wasn’t quite as strange as what he now saw before him.
Clearly they weren’t planning on going anywhere soon. They’d left
the gate open and the place lit up like Christmas.

“
Something’s
up,” he radioed the other two.

“
The chickens
have flown the coop,” Colin radioed back.

“
I’m
serious.”

“
Hang on,”
came the reply, as Andy saw the lights of the people carrier turn
down the track they were on and slowly pass the Peugeot.

“
Shit,” Colin
blurted into his handset. “There must be four of them in there and
they’re fucking massive.”

The people
carrier came to a halt and everything went quiet for a few
seconds.

“
OK man, were
gonna have to run but we’ll be back in five,” Colin said as he
heard the Peugeot rev up and drive away at speed.

They’d bottled it. Andy
felt a little let down, not to mention a little cold at the
prospect of hanging around here for much longer.

In the rounded mirror on
the other side of the road he could just see through the gate.
Light seemed to be coming from what looked like an industrial
porta-cabin in the middle of the nearest of the open sheds. He was
curious now. He decided a trip across to the ditch on the other
side might be a good call; better vantage point, better cover and a
better chance to see who came back in. They would be back soon
surely, must have got annoyed with the nutters driving up and down
the track bordering the company property and decided to go for a
bit of friendly intimidation. It seemed a bit full on
though.

Curiosity got
the better of him.
Fuck it, you’re only
young once,
he thought and ran across the
road, slipping on the ice and landing heavily with a sickening thud
on his elbow. He rolled into the ditch.

That had hurt. In his
experience it always hurt more when you’d been over-confident five
seconds before. He tried to inspect the wound. He could feel the
trickle of blood inside his sleeve but he quickly decided against
looking at it with the light on his phone when he heard the diesel
engine of the people carrier returning. He couldn’t see the
headlights due to the amount of light pollution inside the complex
which was now spread out in front of him. It was indeed a large
porta-cabin in the shed near the gate. No expense
spared.

He felt his elbow throb.
The blood ran down as far as his wrist as he yanked up his sleeve
but there was no time to think about that now. He really had the
urge to find out what was inside. He would just go for it. Why not?
He could shin over the wall afterwards. It hadn’t been the plan,
wasn’t the real point to them being here but it might be a laugh.
After all, there was no law of trespass in Scotland, was there? He
was considering this some more when he noticed the cameras and
remembered Colin’s warning, just as the people carrier rumbled
round the corner on its way back, just before it came to a halt and
the door slid open and just before he was asked if he wouldn’t mind
stepping inside.

What could you do? It
seemed rude to say no to a man with a Kalashnikov.

Victor thought it had
been a fairly simple request; “the sights.” He wanted to know where
the locals drank, enjoy a night he might otherwise not and try to
forget his woes. Clearly all Edinburgh’s residents lived a
lifestyle of decadence and liked to pay a high price for their
drinks or the small one, who he now had been ordered to call Billy
and the large one who was apparently called Keith had decided to
take him to the places he might like to drink in
Edinburgh.

“
Down that
George Street,” Billy had immediately suggested, causing Victor to
wonder if there was another.

“
Aye,” Keith
had added, giving weight, quite literally, to the
suggestion.

Victor acquiesced and
they made their way a couple of blocks along Prince’s Street,
crossed a large square and found themselves on the aforementioned
George Street. It seemed alive, even at this time on what he was
fairly certain was a Wednesday night. A group of girls walked past,
scantily clad for the season and he found himself wondering if it
was the junk food that kept them warm. Why weren’t they wearing
enough clothes? Was it some kind of act of bravado? It was colder
in Vilnius and people were probably harder but no one dressed like
that.

They made their way to
the bar. It was busy in here and the high ceilings gave the place
an echoing feel, the lack of any music serving to amplify this
further. Billy ordered them two double rum and lemonades each,
Captain Morgan’s finest apparently and they began drinking at a
steadily desperate pace.

Though Victor felt a duty
to drink them under the table on the grounds of patriotism, he
realised it might also be a good move to stand firm on the pace,
make them wait to order, stamp his authority on the situation. The
rum seemed moreish though and he racked up a few more during the
next hour, listening to stories of somewhere that sounded like it
was called Site Hell, but that couldn’t be right, surely, could
have been Sight Hill.

They moved on with each
round of drinks, refused entry here and there, on the grounds of
Billy’s appearance or manner as far as he could tell. The doorman
clashes seemed set to be a theme of the evening. He could see their
point in many ways. He was small, wiry and underweight, the type
that often felt they had something to prove, maybe liked to start
trouble. He’d seen it before; you looked a certain way and people
treated you a certain way. It was a self-perpetuating thing. Still,
it was strange, the way some people wore sportswear and looked as
though they were out for an afternoon run and others did the same
and looked like they were on the run. Not that he was one to
judge.

They ended up in the
Alexander Graham Bell, having walked the length of George Street.
They were hemmed in by a crowd of drinkers, young ones, clearly
intent on getting seasonally out of control.

That was where it
happened. Thinking about it later, he would have admitted that it
had been inevitable; a man with a bad attitude, a belly full of
drink and too many others in close proximity. It was a
tinderbox.

He was
telling a story about something, Victor wasn’t even sure what that
something was, and he went a bit too far with the accompanying arm
movements, spilling someone’s drink, a student perhaps, bigger in
stature but softer in nature than Billy. The boy looked at him with
the wrong facial expression for a fraction of a second but that was
enough. Billy snapped. All the pent up Napoleonic issues converged.
He’d been trying to impress. This was his day in the sun and now
this young man had offended him, inadvertently and unwittingly
bringing him back down to earth with a bump, in front of the big
boss as he saw it. He had lost face and so, in Billy’s mind at
least, it seemed right that the younger man should too, quite
literally, by way of a bottle.

There was no blood at
first, just sudden movement. And then the blood had caught up,
spilling out of the student’s mouth and down his nose. Billy looked
like he was making to leave as the student’s friends, the ones he
hadn’t thought about suddenly came into play.

Retribution was swift in
the form of a punch in the face from a big guy in a rugby shirt, at
which point Keith waded in and the whole place erupted. The tightly
packed crowd surged first one way and then the other and Victor
lost his footing, tripped on someone’s shoes, a girl he thought.
His body went out from underneath him as his feet became jammed
together and he started to list. He grabbed for something shiny, a
table maybe, but he couldn’t reach and then he felt his head move
suddenly, violently, in one place one second and another the next
with no discernable travel. Then the pain hit, along with the
realisation of what had happened.

After that it was over.
In time honoured fashion the red mist descended. He lost control
and before he knew where he was he’d taken down at least four men
thirty years his junior.

And now he found himself
in the back of a police van, cuffed, game over. When they’d taken
him or he’d let them, knowing it was check-mate, he realised he had
a broken wine bottle in one hand and a barmaid under his
arm.

“
Looks like
were in the shit now chief,” Billy volunteered, conspiratorially.
“Barry night though,” he added.

Victor wondered who this
Barry Knight was. Perhaps a cheap lawyer. In any case they were not
in this together. He dispensed a look that he knew would leave
Billy in no doubt about this and gleefully watched as he shrunk
back into his corner.

This was an error of
judgement, a potentially costly one. You never let your guard down.
Not when the stakes were this high.

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

Giles Herriot-Watt had
enjoyed a fairly pleasant evening, all things considered. Following
the press call for the boat launch, he had decided to do some
entertaining and invited Jennifer, the local reporter to
lunch.