Snow Storm (20 page)

“
I certainly
would.”

“
OK,” he
said, without actually explaining that he didn’t know how much he
was supposed to check for. His fingers shook as he fumbled with the
worn notes. He looked up to see Chan regarding at him with a look
of bemusement.

“
I take it he
didn’t tell you how much to expect then?”

“
Nevertheless, I have confirmed the amount for my records Mr
Chan,” he replied curtly, in an attempt to reassert some control
over the situation.

Chan dipped his head in
confirmation and snapped a set of giant Bose cans over his ears
before turning his back. “You’ll hear from me when I know
everything.”

“
How will you
know how to get in touch?”

“
Because
you’re about to write your number down. Or do I have to spend an
extra two minutes getting that from Lothian and Borders Police’s
server as well?”

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

Burke was not
having a good day all told. First of all, it had not been the most
productive of interviews, but Edwards was not one to give up at the
mere silence of the suspect.

He had
attacked it from several angles before the brief even arrived. When
the brief did arrive he appeared a little nervous, but to give him
his due, he did have a good go at putting a brave face on it,
attempting to counterbalance the nerves with an air of smugness
that didn't quite ring true. He was young and, maybe late 20s,
wearing a suit that might just as easily have been worn by a man 20
years his senior and accessorising it with an accent to match,
probably a corporate lawyer drafted in for effect, young,
inexperienced and easily shoehorned into whatever Andreyevich
wanted.

There was something
nagging at Burke's subconscious though; his spidey sense was giving
him grief and he couldn't work out why.

Edwards was
really going for it, laying it on with a trowel. Andreyevich used
only the phrase “no comment”, though most of the time he just
shrugged, leading Edwards to repeatedly say “for the benefit of the
tape Mr Andreyevich is shrugging his shoulders.”

After a while
Burke was ready to confess to anything himself just to get him to
button it.

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

Daryl couldn't raise Leon
on the phone. He left countless voicemail messages for the first
day, reasoning that it was more than likely he'd run out of credit
and couldn't call back; probably got lucky was the thought that
stuck his head. After the first 36 hours the phone didn't ring and
went straight to voicemail. He began to wonder if he'd been
abducted by a woman. On day three he began to wonder if he hadn't
been abducted by someone else.

He wouldn't
have done a runner, Daryl felt confident about that. He had faith
in Leon. He was the linchpin, although more and more lately the
worry was that he was becoming a kingpin. He just seemed to have
the answers the other two didn't. Under pressure he always seemed
to be the confident one. Not a bad asset for a boy they'd met when
he helped them out of a stand-off in a club a year before. Handy
type to have around, knew what to do without causing too much
unnecessary damage, apart from that night two months ago when he
cut that girl without a hint of remorse. Some dark shit going on
between his ears.

He tried again. For
fuck’s sake. All he had to do was find one of those charging booth
things and stick a quid in it. But Leon probably didn't know that.
He didn't seem to know his way around tech stuff, like he’d just
breezed in from the ice age or something. Come to think of it, with
what they were cooking up it was more like he was about to breeze
into the next ice age; one of his own creation.

Daryl smiled to himself.
Optimism; that was what was required here. Soon enough he'd have
them all on the pipe, and then to start making some serious
cheese.

Gus was
asleep as usual. He seemed to like waking up in time for the six
o'clock news, like he cared what was going on in the outside world.
It wasn't like he was a citizen or anything. None of that shit
affected him in anyway. Their business was thankfully tax exempt.
Say what you like about the Tories, at least they only taxed honest
people, the ones that opted into society, hadn't managed to dodge
that particular bullet; the mugs.

He'd give it another hour
and then you put some feelers out back in the Brum, see if he’d
been spotted or heard of anywhere. Not too loudly of course, it
didn’t do to look like you were losing control of things at this
end. Word of a screw loose might set off some kind of takeover bid
these days, what with all the young ones coming up.

Maybe he’d give it two
hours, see what Gus had to say on the matter when he woke up. Just
as long as he didn’t recommend shooting him again. Reckless
fucker.

The plastic surgeon
looked decidedly more nervous than last time they’d had the
pleasure, like someone living on stimulants. Took one to know one
Burke reckoned, but this was a man who hadn’t been spending much
time in the land of nod lately.

He seemed to shrink quite
a lot outside the confines of his secure domain. No oak panelled
solidity here, no comfortable conforming Chesterfields to slouch
on, no, just the nasty cheap cleaning product smell of a well-used
interview room.

They’d asked
that he came to the station this time, for the benefit of the tape
as he’d grown so fond of hearing throughout the duration of the
morning. He had appeared within the hour. Nipping and tucking was
clearly not too popular at the present time. Maybe it was a
seasonal thing; no point getting lipo in the run up to Chrimbo on
the off chance it just might tear your stitches and leave you with
an abdomen like a burst couch.

“
Is it true
that if you get liposuction on your man boobs and pot-belly that
you can suffer from fat knees if you over indulge?” he asked
Douglas now, almost unintentionally.

“
Ehm, yes. I
suppose so,” Douglas replied, wrong-footed slightly by this.
“Anywhere you’re likely to store fat other than the area you’ve had
the procedure on. Obviously we’re genetically predisposed to store
fat in different places and hormones play a significant role, so in
men the classic middle aged spread results from the way
testosterone makes the body store fat on the abdomen and neck,
whereas women are more likely to store it on the hips and of course
the gluteus maximus. Doubtful it would be the knees first though.
If I were to say remove the fat from your lower abdomen the
remainder of the fat cells on your chest would be the most likely
area to bear the brunt of the enlargement. Similarly if I were to
remove the fat from your chest your neck would be the most likely
area and so on. So you might have to do a fair bit of sculpting to
get the desired effect on your knees.”

This was the
first question Burke asked and he allowed Douglas to continue in
this vein. “So if I were to do the right amount of lipo-sculpting
and eat the requisite amount of lard, is theoretically possible to
have the body of Marilyn Monroe?”

The doctor sighed and
shook his head. "I suppose so, but wouldn't that be an expensive
way of doing it when you could probably do the same with
hormones?"

"Indeed."
Burke agreed, before adding "were you actually having an affair
with Oleg Karpov, or merely taking advantage of the many rent boys
you say he brought round?"

Douglas's
head dropped and he began to sob at which point Burke ran out of
things to say and looked imploringly at Sam Jones for anything she
had. She put some tissues on the desk and handed them to
Douglas.

"How did you
know?" he asked as he blew his nose loudly.

"Tattoos,"
Jones replied. Clearly she selected the good cop role for herself
and this routine.

Douglas laughed resigned
silent laugh. "Of course."

"Did you know what all of
them meant?" Burke asked.

"Not one,"
Douglas answered, laughing again and shaking his head before
sniffling some more and dabbing his eyes with the
tissue.

"Well one in particular
gave away his particular preferences."

"The eyes?" Douglas
asked.

"Correct,"
Burke answered.

"A bit cold. But then my
comparison with the other artwork really not so much."

"And you sure
you don't know what any of it meant?" Jones asked.

"Not at all. He always
refused to discuss it."

"So presumably you were
close?" Burke asked

"I suppose so. I mean I
don't think he was as close to anyone else, but how close can you
really be to someone when you don't divulge anything about their
life to anyone. I have no real clue what he did."

"Despite the Russian
prison tattoos?"

"Is that what
they were? I had an inkling but as I say it was never
discussed."

"You sure
about that?" Burke asked, "I mean he didn't mention anything about
it while you're indulging in your illegal class A drugs or the
illegal services provided by possibly very young sex
workers?"

Douglas's face was very
pale all of a sudden. He had begun to look like a weight had been
lifted from the shoulders, but now he was carrying it once more. "I
can assure you inspector, they were fully above the age of
consent."

Burke felt mildly
uncomfortable at this and decided to move it along. "Where were you
on the night Mr Karpov was murdered?"

"Ah, well that's the
thing. I was trying to tell you and I wish I had inspector but if
I'm honest my nerves got the better of me somewhat."

"You were
there weren't you?" Jones interrupted in a sympathetic
tone.

"I'm rather afraid I
was." Douglas confirmed, raising what seemed to be an apologetic
smile.

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

Andy had spent most of
the morning, or what he assumed was the morning, drifting in and
out of consciousness. The girl had stopped waking him know,
obviously deciding that he wasn't going to die from concussion. His
head told a different story.

He still felt sick when
he tried to move too much. That was yet another doing over he owed
the big guy he now knew must be Georgian.

He pretended
to be asleep when they came in and dropped food and water for the
numerous bodies in the shed. They'd delivered it in what looked
like stainless steel dog bowls.

One of the girls said
something to the two hulks they clearly understood and didn't agree
with, reasoning that the correct response was to quite literally
slap her down.

He wanted to
do something, felt ashamed that he didn't, couldn't. He wasn't used
to feeling so fucking helpless, like a dog with his tail between
his legs.

A couple of the other
girls tried to soothe her, but this seemed to cause an argument
more than anything, which again made his head hurt. Much as he
normally enjoyed the idea of girls fighting, it wasn’t the same
when you couldn’t understand what was actually going on.

What now? Was
he actually going to eat from a bowl, like their dog or something?
At what point would his pride give out? And what were the bastards
planning on doing with him anyway? He wondered if there was a way
he could persuade them to call it quits, let him go on his way in
exchange for his silence about whatever fucked up shit was going on
here. Like hell. Not after he’d been put in a shed full of the
girls they were trafficking. More likely he’d be taking a dirt nap
or getting put to work in some kind of sweat shop along with them
if he was lucky. He’d seen the documentaries, admittedly while
doing other things. They were on in the background because the old
man was genuinely interested in what was going on in the outside
world, despite never really getting to see any of it for real. Not
that he was missing out on much if this was the kind of shit they
could pull right under the noses of everyone in even their quiet
little corner of the world.

At least they
couldn’t put
him
to work in one of their brothels. He doubted he’d make them
much, what with the nose that had been broken so many times it was
starting to look like it was made of papier mache and the ears that
were becoming more cauliflower like by the day. He had a face that
had seen the inside of too many scrums.

His eyes had fully
acclimatised to the darkness now. Any more and he would probably
start to look like a mole. He could see the dust floating in the
air in the shafts of light created by the holes in the building’s
ageing, once temporary fabric. Movements outside caused a strobing
effect. Whenever someone passed by it caused a sense of panic he
wouldn’t have thought possible after such a length of
time.

One of the girls, she
said her name was Ania, tried to feed him and he gathered enough
energy to refuse enthusiastically, but eventually gave in as she
poured the concoction, soup he thought, down his throat. His head
pounded with every miniscule movement, like a bad hangover. He was
surprisingly hungry all things considered. He managed to finish the
contents of his dog bowl before thanking her.