Snow Storm (33 page)

Victor was leaving. They
would not shoot him with this boy. They valued life too highly. He
was going to walk out that gate and he was going to take the extra
helicopter that stood waiting for him. That was what was going to
happen.

They had destroyed
everything here but they would not claim him as a scalp.

The tank tailed him
slowly so he dragged the boy behind. They would not risk the damage
likely to be caused by the exploding bullets from its
gun.

Slow and sure. That was
the way.

Then the wall exploded.
Then the policeman was there on the ground and he dropped his guard
and the boy.

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

They were going to have
to beat a retreat, Burke thought. There was no way they were
gaining any ground here. “Maybe if he makes it to the wall we could
pick him off if we had a marksman here,” he suggested.

The eye in the sky
advised that the targets were headed their way but that the
marksmen were pinned down at the other side of the complex dealing
with the others.

He turned to check for
some kind of response from Edwards and was met with a cold
gaze.

“
You know,
don’t you?” Edwards asked.

Burke had never had much
of a poker face. On this occasion it failed him again. He did
indeed know. “Why?” he asked before he could stop
himself.

“
You know
why,” Edwards said. All trace of expression had left his
voice.

“
It can’t be
for you career. It can’t mean that much to you.”

“
Can’t mean
that much to me,” Edwards barked back, “try going through what I’ve
been through and tell me your career means so little. Try watching
people under your command getting gunned down or blown to bits in
front of you and coming out the other side the only one lucky
enough to make it out and tell me that doesn’t mean something, and
that you don’t feel you have to make everything count for the ones
that didn’t make it.”

“
I have,”
Burke said. “But you knew that.”

“
Of course.
But I don’t think it’s the same thing is it? Losing your team
because you weren’t up to handling a firearms incident on a council
estate.”

“
No.”

Neither man said anything
for a few seconds as all hell continued to break loose around them.
Burke had been trained to deal with people on the edge but this was
one they didn’t cover in negotiation techniques, getting the
homicidal nut job out of the firefight in one piece while at the
same time maintaining your own structural integrity.

“
Why Leon
Williams?” he finally asked, playing for time.

Edwards smiled at this.
“Luck of the draw I’m afraid. Collateral damage. Had to look after
the operation and ensure targets were met. Had to pull rank. But I
think it’s all shaping up nicely.” He cast an arm round at what
they could see of the scene.

Another hail of bullets
from the fire fight hit the wall and filled the air with concrete
dust. Burke’s clumsiness was another great failing. He felt the
shove before he actually knew what had happened. The air left his
lungs as he hit the floor. He couldn’t breathe and the blood began
to spurt everywhere.

He realised he needed
time. There was no time. He gasped for air but there was none of
that either. He had to move but couldn’t. And then it was all
over.

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

The policeman had burst
out from behind the shed in the corner causing the old man to
hesitate. He must have thought his number was up. He dropped Andy,
and Big Al who was never the steadiest in a combat situation,
always dropped the ball if he got it out of the scrum, just a bit
too trigger happy really, overreacted. They would later conclude it
was like he’d thought he was trying to herd a bull with a quad
bike. He’d just jammed both sides of the tank full on forward and
didn’t stop, not until they were over the would-be kidnapper,
through the breezeblock wall and on the airstrip facing a wall of
coppers.

It had been
an accident of course. No one really wanted to plough some old git
down with a tank, no matter what they said in the pub about
pensioners being worth fifty points in the car.

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

The air
ambulance was swift in attendance, having been put on standby in
preparation. Casualties were low, all things considered; one dead
Lithuanian businessman it was doubtful anyone would miss, which was
just as well, as an open casket funeral was well and truly out of
the question given the very extensive crushing injuries not to
mention familiar stripy pattern caused by the hopefully not too
protracted death that came as a consequence of being mangled by a
tank, one dead mercenary with a hole in his throat and some missing
teeth who probably knew the risks, one heavily concussed lawyer who
also had fractured ribs and collarbones but seemed alert and
willing enough to confess to all sorts, one teenager with a broken
arm who was pretty grateful about that and whose parents were
unlikely to be worried about him going off to university in the
city and the relatively tame dangers that involved, and last but by
no means least, one detective inspector whose carotid artery had
been shredded upon impact with the hollow point bullet from an AK47
assault rifle and whose resultant blood loss had meant not only
Edwards’s death but also the irrevocable staining of Burke’s
favourite North Face fleece.

He’d tried to stop the
fucker bleeding to death but there wasn’t much to work with.
Plugging a hole might be one thing but this was more of a burst
pipe. Edwards though, would doubtless consider it a small mercy,
avoiding the consequences of his actions as he now had.

It was Burke’s clumsiness
that had saved him, that and his dodgy ankle. He’d lost his
footing, and Edwards, overdoing it, had overextended and followed
suit, turning himself into a human shield in the process, a duty he
had performed admirably.

He knew it might be
arrogance, knew some would interpret it that way, but it did all
fit. It had been Edwards’ own use of language that had given him
away.

Billet was
not a word used by many these days to describe their bed, generally
only those of a military disposition. At first he’d discounted the
public school accent and the fact it didn’t generally tally with
that of a Glaswegian detective inspector, but then the Sarah
Armstrong had turned up, concerned about the death of one of her
operatives who had been on an undercover operation to flush out
drug dealing networks by attempting to set up a fake one. Leon
Williams, was not a real yardie and although posing as one and
indeed living as one was unlikely to have gone about killing
supposed rivals. The whole thing had started to fall apart under
scrutiny and began to look a wee bit stage managed. And when he
guessed the military connection, and took a long shot it had all
started to make a modicum of sense.

They had
served together in Helmand, in the Royal Marines. Leon Williams was
a serving Marine and Edwards his commanding officer. Williams
probably recognised Edwards, more likely than vice versa. Maybe
he’d confronted him, maybe not but his old CO had clearly offed him
in time honoured special-forces style.

The
Lithuanian, Vlad, had come to a well-orchestrated end, and that was
the thing that made Burke feel slightly arrogant and slightly
insulted. Edwards knew about the shooting. He’d done his research.
He’d staged this on his patch, partly due to circumstance but at
least partly knowing he would join the dots, work out the
significance of the machete and come to the right conclusion. But
the cheeky bastard thought he could fool him, get him to draw the
picture he wanted. That was the bit that stuck in his
guts.

It had worked
to an extent though. Edwards had drawn Andreyevich out of his
hideaway, leaving the head of an associate outside his kids’
school. That would make anyone lose their cool.

Then Andreyevich had gone
on to kill Karpov. That must have confused the hell out of Edwards.
But the fact that it was an AK47 had given it away to an extent.
The ultimate mark of respect for a fellow member of the
brotherhood.

He supposed they would
put it all down to Andreyevich now though, now there was no
suggestion of anything to the contrary.

He should
have kept his cool really, Edwards. They might never have found the
murder weapon anyway. Paranoia - that was his undoing. He’d gone
and overthought it and in the process proved himself guilty. Burke
had called off the search for murder weapons in his house and car.
No one would ever know. What good would it do? The family would
receive all honours and cash due for a death in the line of duty.
The kids would be proud of their father. All pomp and circumstance
would be observed.

Burke knew the truth,
which was fine. Because that was the big thing for him, the one
thing that made any sense. Now he could see the bigger picture. Now
he could see all the angles, how it all fitted together, a clean
equation, a balanced calculation in a world that was anything
but.

He looked at
the horizon as the Campsies came into view and checked his
phone.

His stomach
tightened when he saw the text. “Is there any way you could get me
near the Princess Royal Maternity Hospital?” He asked the
pilot.

He hadn’t made it. Not
for the actual conscious bit, the bit where she actually needed
him.

She was in theatre when
he arrived and was ushered through after being draped in
scrubs.

And as he saw his son
being brought into the outside world, wrenched from the womb and
hauled into the bright lights of the sterile theatre, he swore that
he would change. They deserved better, his family, and he could be
better surely.

As he held the child in
his arms he hoped he meant it for all their sakes.

When she woke she was
blunt. Not in a way that meant she’d get over it. It wasn’t the
anaesthetic or the hormones or any of the million other things he
could happily have blamed it on while deep down knowing better.
This was real, as real as it got.

There was no softness in
her tone, only a cold hard ultimatum. “Them or us.”

He sat now
looking at the sunset as the snow began to fall, a Glenfiddich
Havana Reserve in one hand, a burning Montecristo in the other. As
the smoke climbed, a tear fell.

The familiar
jangling clang of a Fender Jagstang echoed along with one man’s
voice singing another’s words.

He sat in the shrink’s
office again, having summarised the week’s events as best he could,
to the same unemotional conditioned responses as always. Nothing
was ever committal from her side. She would never give anything
away about how she personally felt in relation to the events and
feelings as they were described by the subject in front of
her.

He often wondered what
she really thought. Was there a level of disgust at it all? Did she
even have any personal feelings on the subject, other than a
professional enthusiasm for an unusual case?

“
You’ve had a
busy week,” she said, in conclusion, drawing a line under it in an
effort to move things on.

He knew it was coming. He
knew the drill, but that didn’t stop the sense of dread, like
knowing he had to get out of bed on a cold morning.

“
And are we
alone today?” she asked, finally.

“
Yes,” he
answered, like a kid who’d been asked if he’d done his homework. He
hated this.

“
You’re
sure?”

“
Quite.”

She waited,
letting him calm a little. “And where are Jones and
Campbell?”

“
Gone,” he
replied, before adding “for now at least.”

She nodded, looking at
the window to her left. “You know they were gone over a year ago
James?” she asked.

“
Of course,”
he confirmed.

“
They were
shot and killed. You were there.”

“
I’m quite
aware of that,” he snapped, taking a deep breath. Did they have to
go through this every time? He felt bad enough without
it.

“
I know you
are,” she agreed. “If I didn’t...” she stopped herself.

“
If you
didn’t you’d have me in a padded cell. I’m quite aware of that
too,” he growled.

“
My only
concern is that you know who is there and who isn’t, and of course
who you are and who you aren’t. If you feel you can manage that
then you’re not…”

“
A danger to
myself and everyone else. You’ve said.”

She smiled, putting her
pen down. “Until next time then.”

Detective
Inspector Burke will return in How the Other Half Die.