Snow Storm (7 page)

They’d
arrived at the offices after around forty five minutes. After being
shown into Oleg’s private suite, Victor resolved to make it is own
for the time being. “Where did you get these?” he asked, tilting
his head towards his escorts.

“
Saughton,”
the large one said in a squeaky voice as the small one kicked him
in what was obviously intended to be a subtle gesture.

“
I did not
ask you,” he replied putting the large one in a state of unease.
Victor guessed he was not used to being spoken to this way, given
his size; probably a gentle giant prone to the weakness of loyalty.
Not that loyalty was necessarily a weakness in the right
circumstances but this was not the brotherhood. This was loyalty to
his sidekick, or the weasel like man who it seemed considered him
the sidekick.

“
What is
Saughton?” he fired at Oleg in their native tongue.

“
Local
prison,” he replied. “They did some time with an
associate.”

Victor nodded. He knew
something of this kind of association. “Nonetheless, you should
have at least sent some of our people,” he replied in English,
knowing reprimanding Oleg in front of his goons was a loss of face
to the man; unorthodox to say the least.

“
I thought
you would have wanted our people with Sacha and Boris.”

Victor nodded again. He
was inclined to agree. “It is not your place to presume to know
what I want,” was all he said.

“
Of course,”
Oleg replied.

“
And stop
sweating.”

“
Right
away.”

“
You may go,”
he informed the two body guards, and they awkwardly made their
exit, shuffling and nodding deferentially.

“
You’ve let
yourself go old friend,” he told Oleg as he helped himself to a
whiskey from a well-rounded minibar. Something he did know of this
country was the 25 year old Glenlivet in his glass. Oleg made some
good decisions.

He took in the older
man’s appearance. He’d grown fat and redder of face. His hair stuck
matted to his head, held in place by stress and sweat. “If it isn’t
bad booze I can only assume it’s bad food.”

“
You can say
that again,” he agreed, pouring himself a large measure.

The scotch
grounded him, biting the back of his throat and warming everything
on the way down, focussing him fully on the here and now for the
first time in hours. He was now very aware of the plate glass wall
behind him. A river meandered past the building; the banks and
everything on them seasonally cold and dead, a husk of what they
had been a short time ago.

“
So,” he
began, recovering his train of thought, “What do we
know?”

Campbell had
sunk one too many now. Earlier, with Sam and the boss, it had all
been fine, just a social thing, a morale booster, but now he’d
crossed a line, gone via pleasantly inebriated to drunk and he
needed a pick me up.

The bar maid,
Sophie, had given him her number after a campaign he’d waged
ceaselessly. She probably had to endure idiots giving her bad chat
all the time, so he’d seen it as a challenge. He’d circumvented her
defences by not being that guy, by just talking in a non-look-at-me
way to the point of sympathising when other punters who were that
guy made their drunken approaches. He’d played the nice guy and now
he had her number.

He deleted it
from his phone, adding it to the countless numbers he’d deleted and
thrown away before.

His supply
was running out. It had been good stuff. He wasn’t sure where this
stuff was coming from but it was pretty potent. They hadn’t been
too stingy when they cut it.

He had the
number in his phone. Risky yes but some contacts were invaluable
and there were some things you needed to get you through. In any
case the number was stored under “Boots” on account of the
supplier’s ready access to all things chemical and medicinal. He’d
thought about putting it in as ICI but that might require more
explaining if anyone went through his phone.

He made the
call, took a cab to the foot of Leith Walk and walked along Great
Junction Street until he saw her, standing outside the Tam O’
Shanter, smoking a Marlborough Light. She was out of context down
here, dressed like a successful business woman in a long black coat
and a trouser suit. She stood out here, but not in the places she
frequented on a regular basis. Whatever her surroundings it was
unlikely anyone knew that her brief case contained the various
stimulants and sedatives she supplied to the great and the good,
those with the money to pay a bit more for the sanitised
well-mannered and well turned out version of the drug
dealer.

“
What’s with
the cloak and dagger stuff?” he asked, shooting her an
intentionally wide grin as he walked towards her.

“
Walk,” she
replied in an icy tone as she fell in step with him, continuing
along the road.

“
Ok,” he
said, doing as he was told but wondering where this was going. “Are
you going to tell me where?”

She shoved
him left, and he braced for what he thought was a wall but
staggered instead into an alleyway, his senses swimming in booze.
She launched at him again, pinning him to a bin and he struggled,
pushing her away. She was deceptively strong. “Don’t you think I
watch the news?” she demanded.

“
Wha…”

She lurched
forward again, shoving her hands deep inside his suit jacket,
frisking him for all he was worth. “Are you wearing a wire? Is that
it?”

“
No. What?
How long have we been doing business? We go back a long
way.”

“
Not that
long,” she replied. “I know all about entrapment you
know.”

He held his
hands up. “Ok, it’s a fair cop. So you know who I am. I like to
keep that on the down low, that’s all. There’s nothing suspicious
going on here. Just calm down.”

She looked at
him angrily and he decided she could probably take him if it came
to a fight, through sheer determination alone.

“
Now can I
please purchase some of that fine produce of yours?” Campbell
laughed nervously hating himself for it. “I can’t not have that
stuff in my life.”

“
Forget it,”
she said, throwing her arms in the air. “You’ve had that. How can I
trust you now? You’re too big a risk. Do you know what they’d do to
me?” Her eyes narrowed as she regarded him with utter
contempt.

“
What who’d
do to you?” he asked.

“
Nice
try.”

“
Hey. Surely
we can work this out.”

“
Not likely,”
she scoffed, turning on her heels. “I’d rather not end up with my
head in a bag.”

He watched
her walk away, before pulling out his phone and deleting yet
another number.

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

Burke sat in
Gray’s office staring at his feet as he allowed his toes to do the
fidgeting, unseen.

The DCI was holding forth
on the importance of figures. “It’s a numbers game James, you know
that.”

“
Yes
sir.”

“
I mean we
live and die by our clear up rate, which is why I’m only too happy
for you to palm this one off to SCDEA. Let Edwards brush it under
the carpet as he obviously intends to. Oh I know, I dare say at
your age I would have been keen to get my teeth into it. Make no
mistake about that, but you always have to keep one eye on the
politics if you want to get on. And during these stark financial
times, God knows everyone wants more bang for their
buck.”

“
Indeed.”

“
These are
just the realities you have to contend with in this
game.”

That and mastering the
dodgy handshakes, Burke thought as he watched Gray stare out of the
window in a manner he probably thought conveyed a contemplative
general surveying the field of battle, despite the fact the view
was of a car park.

Why the DCI thought he
had to sell him on this he had no clue, but he’d go along with the
charade anyway, just to indulge him. It paid to look keen while
silently chalking these things up to experience.

“
You’re
married, aren’t you Jim?”

“
I am,” Burke
replied. “Three years.”

“
Early days,”
Gray chuckled. “Tell me about it when it's been 20.”

Burke reflected that he
hadn't in fact brought it up.

“
You know, my
brother-in-law’s in the car trade.”

“
Really?”

“
Yes, does
all right out of it too. Not sure there hasn't been the odd dodgy
dealing and there at times if you know what I mean, and he's picked
up more than a few tricks along the way. In fact I think he could
well put Derren Brown to shame.”

“
I'm
sure.”

“
Once told me
a story about a time he got a dodgy Triumph Stag from the auctions,
just in the early days as he was starting out. He had a mechanic
who looked the car over and discovered the suspension was shot.
Well, then they decided the only thing they could do was to prop
the whole thing up with bits of wood from an old pallet and punt
the thing through an ad in one of the trade papers.” Gray chuckled
to himself again. “Met the guy down a dark alley or in a layby
somewhere so there were no comebacks, flogged it and legged it.” He
laughed some more, taking a moment to bask in the glory of what he
doubtless thought was a well told anecdote.

“
Really,”
Burke replied, in a manner he hoped was just the right side of
sarcastic.

“
Yes,
really,” the DCI replied, remembering himself, before nervously
clearing his throat and continuing. “Anyway, the thing he always
says, and I mean always, at any given opportunity at pretty much
every family gathering once he gets a few too many G&Ts into
him, is that most cars are not sold to men.”

“
I see.” Much
as Burke appreciated the words of wisdom, he found it unlikely he
would be selling Vauxhall Astras anytime soon.

“
Ah but you
don’t Jim.” Gray pressed on, “And you won’t until you reach a later
stage of the syndrome. My brother in law rarely sells a car to a
man, well not one that’s married or otherwise cohabiting at any
rate. Even if it’s the husband looking and on the surface buying,
you always sell the car to the wife. She makes the decisions
everywhere, and I mean everywhere. That’s the point.”

“
I hear
that.” Burke said absent-mindedly.

“
Sorry?”

“
Imagine
that.”

“
You might
well imagine it James. Clearly you still harbour some illusion of
control, but that’ll fade once, Rachel is it?”

“
Yes.”

“
Once Rachel
has worn you down.”

“
Right.” Was
Gray trying to justify something he had done at the bidding of his
wife, some crime he was about to fess up to following his segue
into the mind of the car buying and indeed it seemed general
mind-set of the married man?

“
Eventually
you’ll know what it is to be beaten down.”

“
Doubtless.”

“
Anyway,
that’s my point.”

“
I see.
Sorry…” Burke struggled to find his words and instead found himself
merely squinting as though an altered visual field would allow some
new light to shine on the situation as spelled out by his superior,
giving some kind of grasp of the situation.

Gray let out a long sigh.
“The divisional commander’s wife says we’re not allowed to pass
this on to the SCDEA so you’re stuck with it.”

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

They sat round Davie’s
kitchen table draining cups of tea which were swiftly refilled from
a giant pot sitting on top of the Aga. Davie’s mum treated him well
it had to be said. Legend had it he didn’t know how to make tea and
didn’t even choose his own clothes in the morning; just turned up
at the Aga where they were waiting, folded over the rail, primed
for the boy wonder to fill them.

Andy stared
at the sugar bowl, trying to make out his reflection in the dull
tarnished concave surface of the teaspoon, anything really to avoid
eye contact with the other two. It had all happened before he'd
known about it. The toothless Polish guy had recognised him about
the time he had done the same. The fact that he was already hanging
out of the cab of the John Deere was the thing that really went
against him. The guy grabbed him by the lapels of his boiler suit
and in one smooth movement Andy was no longer in the cab. The giant
jerked back suddenly as he over did it and lost his footing. Andy
was thrown further out. He saw the gatepost heading towards him and
felt his heart jump, right before everything went black. Everything
after that was a bit hazy. He had pieces; some kind of flashback of
another voice in a foreign tongue, giving the first one a hard
time. He could remember being angry as they tried to move him. He
just wanted to be left alone.

He was back
in the John Deere when he came to what was left of his senses.
They'd filled the trailer with feed. He was on the road to the side
of the airstrip, neatly parked up. He was groggy and his head hurt.
He staggered down the steps of the tractor and threw up on the
grass. He sat for a while trying to muster the wherewithal to get
moving, fired up the tractor, knocked it into gear and let out the
clutch. He made it to the end of the side road, looked sideways at
the junction and got overtaken by a wave of nausea.