Snow Storm (11 page)

She led him
through the wall of glass and blinds to a full-on open plan office.
A big sign taking up the wall of the entrance declared that this
was home to several companies all of which fell under the umbrella
of BCC Industries as denoted by the three letters in red blue and
green plastic over all other organisation names.

The PA who
introduced herself as Laura, led him into an office at the back of
the larger expanse. It was a fairly characterless room. The back
wall was plate glass and looked out onto the water of Leith. A
bland desk with a laptop sat in the corner, wires snaking off in
every direction. He took a seat on a plastic Ikea number and
waited. The water was fairly mesmerising. It must have been hard to
get much done here. He turned as he heard the faint sound of
footsteps on carpet.

A
business-like woman, probably early thirties greeted him as she
walked through the door and gestured for him to take a seat again.
She too, Campbell was pleased to note, was hot. She introduced
herself as Nicole Bannister, with a firm business like handshake
that seemed to match her pin-stripe suit.

“
I’m
Operations Director here. Oleg’s second in command if you like.”
She frowned and then her face was blank for a second or two. “Or I
was.”

“
Were you
close?” Campbell asked, pulling out his notepad.

She laughed
as she adjusted a lock of stray hair, replacing firmly behind her
ear.

“
In as much
as anyone was.”

“
How
so?”

“
Well Oleg,
wasn’t, well, wasn’t to say he wasn’t that kind of
person.”

“
In what
way?” Campbell asked, wondering as he did what was wrong with a man
who wasn’t close to her. Karpov clearly had more money than God.
That must have carried some leverage.

“
He didn’t
seem to have anyone or anything much in his life outside work,” she
replied.

“
No
family?”

“
Not that I
was ever aware of. He did have various connections back in
Lithuania but I was always led to believe they were mainly business
associates.”

“
No
friends?”

“
None I ever
met. He generally seemed to live for work, always here before I was
and still hard at it when I left. I tried to keep up with him in
the beginning but in the end, you know there’s just more to
life.”

“
So they tell
me,” Campbell replied. “Girlfriends?”

“
None I ever
heard about. I’m afraid it’s a bit of a dead end all of this. None
of us knew anything about him really. I just don’t think he cared
for much other than work.”

“
Surely a man
of means, he can’t have been too short of offers,” Campbell
mused.

“
He wasn’t
exactly George Clooney,” she replied, a small grin lighting up her
face briefly, “but I suppose some people like that power thing. No
one I know of though.”

“
Did he have
any dealings with anyone which may have resulted in ill will of any
kind? Was there anyone who may have made threats of that
kind?”

“
Well he was
in financial services not an industry known for its consideration
of our fellow man. I dare say he’d crossed swords with a few people
over the years, a deal gone wrong here or there, well, right for
him and wrong for someone else, but that’s the way it works.
Business men of Oleg’s calibre don’t tend to lose sleep over toes
they’ve inadvertently trampled on, do they? And they also don’t
tend to overreact and shoot each other. Not in my
experience.”

“
Depends what
business they’re in.”

“
I would
imagine so. However, to my knowledge no, there was no one in the
near past that bore Mr Karpov any serious ill will.”

“
No threats
then?”

“
None.”

“
Ok Miss
Bannister, that should be all for now. Oh you don’t happen to know
where Mr Karpov’s lap-top is?”

“
No. At home
I’d imagine. He’d be unlikely to leave it here. That might mean he
didn’t have all the answers at his disposal for more than five
minutes.”

“
Bit of a
control freak was he?”

“
You might
say that. Perhaps it would be more charitable to say that he had
issues around letting go...”

“
Of the
reins,” Campbell replied before he could stop himself.

She smiled
taking it in the humorous way he might have intended if he had
actually meant to say it.

“
Can I reach
you here if I need to?” he asked.

She produced
an expensive looking embossed card with her details and he briefly
felt like he’d won the lottery, before telling himself no he
mustn’t phone this one after a skin full. Not after what happened
last time.

He thanked
her for her time and made his way out of the office

He entered
the toilet across the hall and finding it suitably empty, proceeded
to chop out two lines of the finest product Columbia had to offer
onto a granite sink top before rolling a twenty and snorting the
whole lot in one u-shaped movement. Just a little pick me up. Who
was going to stop him? New suppliers were easy to find, it
seemed.

He had
thought of mentioning what his previous one had said about the
possibility of losing her head to Burke, but he wasn’t sure. The
boss had a way of disapproving of these things, along with a
curiosity about most things and it might be best to avoid
complicating the situation. It was hardly important info
anyway.

He looked at
his ornate surroundings. The perks of executive life.

Who was he
kidding? He tore up her card and threw it in the bin as he left the
building. Best not to go down that road.

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

Victor sat in the office
of his fallen comrade as he watched the police officer go. He
pushed the balls on the desk toy back and forth watching them knock
off each other, the two in the middle remaining static and the ones
on the outside doing all the work. He could think of no better
model for how the world of business worked.

Executive toys they used
to call them, this and the miniature pool tables, an assortment of
curiosities for the feeble minded. Executive toys. He preferred his
yacht. Now there was an executive toy. One for an executive in the
truest sense of the word when the occasion had required it. Oleg
was not feeble minded. Of course not. He would not have been
allowed to enter the brotherhood were it ever the case. He had
merely gone to seed in this place, which looking around this
office, it appeared to be easy to do in these God forsaken parts,
barely a sane one among them. A few months in the salt mines would
do them good. Let them starve for a while, see how quickly they
turned against one another

He breathed a heavy sigh
and returned to the view, catching a glimpse of his reflection as
he did and briefly not recognising the old man that stood before
him. Folds of skin had overtaken the youthfully sculpted jaw line
and wisps of grey now flashed out of his eyebrows. The bags under
his eyes sagged with the weight of the evil they’d seen and his
hair hung limp and colourless across his wrinkled brow. His body
was decaying. There was no fighting that. A nip and a tuck might
stave off the visuals for a time, but underneath the foundations
were beginning to perish.

He would live on in his
legacy and in his sons.

Just a few more pieces
had to fall into place. Some minor problems to be resolved and all
would be well.

Perhaps he
would live out his days by a river he considered, as he briefly
lost himself again in the water of Leith’s foaming torrent before
he bit his lip and forced himself back to reality.

Now was not the time.
There was work to be done still.

Andy had just about lived
down the humiliation he reckoned, though when it really came down
to it there was rarely any living down of any humiliation,
perceived or otherwise. People round here had long
memories.

It was a powerful
motivator. He needed some kind of revenge. Nothing major, nothing
too severe, but something at least to save face.

He’d asked
around a bit. Where did the guys working at Baldoon live? That kind
of thing. A team of workers arriving in a small town; someone
should know something. They would be staying in someone’s husband’s
granny’s daughter’s attic. Nothing. It seemed they were masters of
invisibility. They couldn’t be nowhere. There were only so many
places to go round here.

So he knew what he had to
do.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t
done stalking before. Of course he had. Not in an injunction
provoking restraining order demanding sort of way, he’d never been
a stalker of human form but he’d hunted down the odd deer. It
wasn’t really his thing, too much waiting around. Being a low
attention span child of the digital age didn’t really equip you for
the joys of lying around in cold grass on the slim chance you might
get a shot off.

He’d asked Davie for his
help, but the big man said no. He would be watching the golf from
Augusta he said. That was where his priorities lay ‘rather than
helping out a mate?’ Andy asked and in return he was granted a
lecture on the fact that he was ‘laying it on with a fucking
trowel’ and that ‘to be fair,’ Davie had ‘done a bit of bacon
saving already this week.’

He had a point, Andy
agreed. It was never wise to provoke him head on anyway, like most
people his size, he tended to assume he shouldn’t really be
questioned in any way. Probably true, best not to anger it or risk
incoming the wrath.

He knew what he had to do
and so in the spirit of adventure he got on with it.

He had to hunt through
the wardrobe for black clothes. He tended to wear rugby shorts or
boiler suits which he now knew were actually fairly bright. He may
have to rethink the wardrobe for next year he realised, maybe buy
some of the skinny jeans and what not just to fit in with the rest
of the students.

Then he had a bit of
inspiration and headed for his parent’s room feeling fairly chuffed
with himself. He remembered a photo of his dad from the late ‘70’s
or early ‘80’s trying to look like a young Tom Jones or
something.

He knew the auld yin
would be too tight to throw anything out and after a good old
rummage -which he would have admitted made him a bit anxious, as
you didn’t want to find anything too risqué in your mum and dad’s
possessions- he struck gold. There it was, the very same black polo
neck the old boy probably thought made him look French or something
back in the day.

He pulled it over his
head, bit tight and smelled a bit wardrobey but it would do. Next
he needed bottoms and again Pater did not let him down. At the
bottom of a box he found an old pair of faded black 501’s. Yes. He
was in business.

He donned the rest of the
ensemble, completing it with a pair of old trainers and made for
the kitchen, pursued by the delectable bouquet of mothball. He
raked through the cupboards in the utility room and came up trumps,
some black boot polish. Probably not the best for your skin, but
he’d used whatever there was of his mother’s makeup left in the
house while she was away and drawn a blank. He doubted colouring in
his face with mascara or eyebrow pencil was a goer.

He applied the polish in
a considered manner, using stripes in a left flowing down side in
order to look as much as possible like the SAS, or at least the
actors you saw made up to look like the SAS in films, as this was
the one place their existence was officially confirmed.

He topped it all off
–literally- with an old tourie from the utility room, selected the
necessary electrical equipment ensuring the buttons were up to
scratch, headed for the Landrover.

He parked just after the
road end. Diesel engines weren’t the best for stealth, but it was a
windy night and the sound should be deadened by this and the woods
he now carefully made his way through.

The moonlight made
everything fairly visible but stray clouds blew over every so often
making for a few misplaced footsteps.

The lights of the
buildings were soon closer providing some much needed assistance.
Emerging from the woods at a dry stone dyke, he ran along it
keeping as low as possible. He rounded the end of the biggest of
the barns and vaulted the dyke. Bastard. The motion sensor caught
him as he tried to head along the back wall towards the drive.
There was nothing else for it. He kept his head down low, sprinted
for the far corner of the barn and threw himself over the dyke on
the other side.

He lay in his stomach as
the damp started to seep through his makeshift saboteur outfit. He
waited for the light to go out.

He made his move and
dived over the wall onto the grass at the other side. As he
thought, he’d outrun the motion sensors, but he was further away
now. He reached into his backpack and pulled out the night sites.
They weren’t brilliant. He wouldn’t have relied on them in a
battlefield situation but what could you expect from Russian army
surplus?