Snow Storm (28 page)

The spook nodded slowly
as he spoke and Burke knew he wasn’t telling her anything
new.

“
You’re right
of course, in a sense. He did get mixed up with the wrong people,”
she said with a sigh. “He was one of ours.”

He eventually
summoned the energy to take a trip out into the cold. He took a
skulking DC Jones who had been hanging around his peripheral vision
since this afternoons visitor had presented herself, presumably
wanting to know the script. She managed to skirt around the
subject, all the way from Gayfield Square to Karpov’s palatial home
in Bruntsfield. He wasn’t biting. She’d have to try harder than
that.

The
headlights shone on the dark hulk of a house now making it look as
if it had been abandoned for years, aside from the scene of crime
notices which were too bright to be anything but modern. They
entered via the front door, disabling the alarm system and fumbling
for the lights in the hallway. The place still reeked of
carnage

Something
moved to his left. He turned to see a figure emerge from the gloom
before it knocked him sideways. They burst through the front door
as he turned trying to follow but lost his footing. A crashing
sound behind told him there was a second intruder. He turned again
to see another figure in black run towards him. Jones tried to get
in the way but only managed a glance blow to the side of the
runner. The man let out a growl as he ran for Burke who stood his
ground knowing he had a weight advantage. His heart lurched as he
saw something glint in the black gloved hand. He held on for a
second more before shifting his weight sideways as the man threw
himself forwards, top heavy, swinging the blade. The knife caught
his left hand as it moved outwards to counter the side-step and he
let out a yelp as he swung the rest of his body back round,
catching his assailant with a well-placed blow to the side of the
head sending him staggering headfirst into the doorframe. The man’s
head made a sickening thump before his body gave way beneath,
collapsing into a tangled heap on the floor. He felt the sting in
his hand and he was only prevented from aiming an angry kick at the
slumped would be ninja by Jones, who got in the way in her efforts
to get the bastard cuffed.

Once he was
suitably restrained, they removed the balaclava from his head to
reveal the face of what could not have been more than a
teenager.

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

Andy woke again, hearing
the commotion outside. Had another plane landed? He’d heard trucks
come and go; feed trucks, oil tankers, the kind of thing that
wouldn’t normally cause him to bat an eyelid down here but now
everything seemed to have a double meaning. Every movement, noise,
flicker of disrupted light through the slatted wall, it all seemed
like a sign of something, and all of it gave cause for
alarm.

His life was now an
endless night punctuated by a succession of shocks and starts. He
was no longer sure what he’d dreamt and what was real at
points.

In his more
lucid moments he’d begun to take stock. His life played out before
him, not so much in a montage as they said it did before you died,
more like a very deliberate purge of hard drives. Every
misdemeanour, from the seemingly insignificant, like the time he
broke his mum’s favourite vase, to the gut wrenching, like the time
he slept with Davie’s ex and hadn’t had to blame anyone as it still
lay buried in the back of his conscience, unattended, along with
everything else. It wasn’t so much a closet full of skeletons as a
bone collection, like that church in Prague he’d read about at
school while he should have been studying for his higher history
exam. That was what he enjoyed above all else, apart from the sex
and the alcohol and the cheap thrills that were part of the human
condition. If they were to tell him he never had to work again,
that he’d won the lottery that was what he’d do, not for money but
just the sheer pleasure of it. He’d research the things he was
interested in; history, politics, world wars, the industrial
revolution, communism, fascism, capitalism and socialism, the rise
and fall of empires and everything else in between.

That was what they said,
wasn’t it? Work out what you would do to while away the hours if
money was no object. That was it. In between girls and beer he
would most like to find out about stuff.

But money would never be
no object, that was the point, and anyway it looked as though he
was going to end his days here. He’d have thought someone might
have missed him, but then the parents were still away and his
sister was at Vet school during the week. He wondered where Davie
and Colin thought he’d got to though. He’d have thought he could
have counted on those two, feckless arseholes that they were. In
the darkness and encroaching cold of the now nearly empty prison,
he had made himself a promise. If he ever did make it out of here
he would go and study history and politics. Not agriculture, as he
was sure would have made more sense, not business, which might have
given him a broader outlook career wise, but history and politics,
for the love of it and for the fact he had another shot and would
not waste it. Not in between beer and girls.

That had been hours ago,
maybe days ago for all he knew and it had kept him going since.
Planning, considering each possibility in depth. What if he became
a lecturer or a professor or something? Then he could nothing but
study the things that interested him for the rest of his days. Was
that even doable for a country bumpkin? Surely he had to have a
good knowledge of tweed jackets or speak in a certain way to get on
in that world. Did it pay well? Did it matter? They would probably
have to sell the farm anyway. His sister wasn’t planning on taking
it on and there wasn’t the income for both of them. The
possibilities though, they were something that he clung
to.

The commotion got louder
outside it sounded like the goon squad were trying to move
something. It almost sounded like livestock, like a struggling
sheep who didn’t fancy the idea of getting sheared or a cow that
didn’t want to go down the race to get its injections. A boom
echoed round the lifeless room as the ancient steel door came to
life on its rusty wheels. The winter sun had long since departed
and the room was flooded with white halogen light. Three
silhouettes emerged from the blazing artificial glow and he knew in
his heart his time had come.

He hunkered down as best
he could with his hands tied, keeping his eyes closed. He would not
give the bastards the satisfaction watching his terrified
expression as he waited.

But with the
intensity of the light he could still make out shapes and couldn’t
resist looking again at the three awkward forms. The one in the
middle, smaller than the other two seemed disjointed somehow,
struggling almost. They came only so far before one of outer pair
struck the middle one, knocking him to the ground. They then began
their advance once more, dragging the dizzied reluctant member of
their group to somewhere behind Andy. It was then he heard the
familiar sound of tightening cable ties and realised, with a guilty
sense of relief that he now had company.

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

The squad car
arrived ten minutes after the slicing of Burke’s hand and the
subsequent admirably professional restraint of his assailant by
Jones, who hadn’t used nearly as much unnecessary force as he would
have liked. But then she hadn’t been stabbed in the hand, a factor
that would have made all the difference.

There had been no blood
for what seemed like a few seconds, though in reality it was
unlikely to have been that long. He’d stared at the gaping white
wound before being roused from his state of confusion by the
distinctly red blood that began to flow rapidly, trickling down the
palm of his hand and up the sleeve of his shirt as he held it aloft
trying to unbutton the cuff. Multitasking had never been his
forte.

Jones
couldn’t help him, so he staggered through to the kitchen and began
rummaging through drawers for a tea towel of some sort. A more
sensible man might have gone looking for the kitchen roll but that
was not his strong point either. More sensible still, a woman might
have gone for the bathroom but he’d lost the energy, almost feeling
it drain out of him. He hadn’t lost that much blood but realised
there was maybe an element of shock in play. Eventually he found a
bunch of clean towels in an airing cupboard and slumped against the
worktop as he wrapped one around his hand and watched it change
colour. This wasn’t his favourite jacket. That was something. In
fact he was pretty sure Rachel would be glad to see the back of it
though he was fairly certain she wouldn’t be happy about the
stitches he was going to have to get.

He stood up and made his
way through to the hallway and its collection of stuffed animals. A
stag looked down on him, seemingly innocuous, giving away nothing
of its true purpose in the two cameras it concealed, one infrared
and one bog standard colour, allowing a view of both the surface of
a person and what lay underneath. No secrets in this house, other
than the ones kept by its owner.

They arrested the
intruder. Assault on a police officer was enough, never mind
whatever he might be doing in the house of a murder victim. He had
no ID and when asked his name, replied “your mother.” They sent him
on his way back to the station for arrangement of a duty solicitor
and all the other boxes that had to be ticked before they could
begin the grilling process.

“
Are you
ready for this?” Burke asked her when they were alone together in
the hallway.

“
Of course,”
she answered, shrugging her shoulders. “I’m not sure what you are
getting so excited about.”

“
That’s
because you don’t watch enough Bond films.”

“
I don’t
watch any Bond films.”

“
Exactly.” He
reached out to the bear’s head that now resided on a wall plaque
and turned it forcefully so that it now leaned to the left at a
jaunty angle. From inside the wood panelled wall there was a clunk
and as he reached across part of the wall gave way with the
slightest push, opening onto a dimly lit staircase.

“
Really?” He
asked, raising both eyebrows, “Secret passageways don’t in the
least bit interest you?”

“
It interests
me from the point of view that it may or may not lead to this case
being solved of course, but no, otherwise, in the outside world
it’s just a door that opens slightly differently.”

“
Then you
have no soul,” Burke replied, as he began cautiously down the
steps.

The light was faint, like
security lighting almost and he had to be careful not to trip on
what looked like very old steps. They weren’t old in the way the
steps in his tenement close were, those were more of a normal shape
and it was the faded mid-section that gave them away, countless
footsteps having eroded them over time. These hidden stairs were
older but relatively unused. The depth of them and the type of
stone seemed to suggest they predated the house. In a town this old
anything was possible.

“
Careful.
There might be more stabby teenagers down there,” Jones told him
with more than a vague hint of wishful thinking.

“
I’ll send
them your way if there are,” he replied, “As you were kind enough
to do last time.”

“
I tried to
stop him,” she protested. “Made an attempt at a rugby
tackle.”

“
I noticed
that. Where did you learn to play rugby? At a netball
lesson?”

“
Queen
Margaret Uni actually. Had quite a good women’s rugby team. I was
quite a handy wing forward.”

“
You don’t
look big enough to be a flanker.”

“
Not
anymore,” she replied with a sense of triumph.

“
Did you
forget that for a second when you tried to take down your mother,
or was it my mother?”

“
I may have
done,” she admitted.

The stair ran along the
wall before turning sharply to the right. Brick merged with stone
in a mish-mash that displayed a good couple of centuries of
architectural reorganisation. The corner didn’t go far and the
emerged at a heavy wooden door that looked like it belonged to a
church rather than one of Bruntsfields Victorian Villas.

He keyed a
code into the pad in front of him, 9-10-49, Karpov’s birthday. As
the lock clicked releasing the door he kicked it open, standing
back ready for any possible onslaught. A vast room emerged before
them. There was a swimming pool, Jacuzzi, massive couches and what
looked like a home cinema at the other end.

They walked through the
room taking in the scene. The place was still lit up like a
cathedral. Champagne flutes lay discarded with traces of white
powder on a large glass coffee table, a bar was littered with
snacks and at one end a home cinema still seemed to be showing the
main feature.

“
We’ll get
DNA swabs from those glasses and maybe something off the food.”
Burke said, as he turned to see the biggest plasma screen he’d ever
seen, still on and still showing the image of the hallway, just as
Douglas had said. “Most important thing is finding out what that
thing connects to. Otherwise, glove up and make sure that you don’t
touch too much. I’m thinking the SOC team need to see this pretty
quick.”