Snow Storm (4 page)

He remembered
the conversation with his brother now, just before he went to buy
the ring. Miles had sat him down and over a large glass of 21 year
old Macallan, extolled the virtues of the Volvo.

“
You see a
Ferrari is a fine thing Rupe, no doubt about that. It looks good,
dangerous curves and all that and it’ll give you a good kick when
you’re seen out and about with it and you’ll feel like a hero when
you’re getting to grips with it.” Miles gave his older brother a
knowing look. It might have seemed strange to anyone else, taking
advice from a younger brother but Miles was a man who seemed to
have crammed more living into his 25 years than many did in 75 and
so it was not uncommon. “Thing is, they’re not cheap to maintain.
Matter of fact they can be outright dangerous in the wrong hands
and there isn’t much room for anyone else. No, they’re a dammed
liability Rupe. Now consider, if you will, the Volvo estate. I
know. It’s hardly a glamorous statement. You didn’t have a poster
of one on your wall as a nipper but at the same time it’ll look
just grand down the golf club. It won’t break down every three
weeks and your life will be a lot more comfortable. Got to think
about these things Rupe.”

“
So Sarah’s
the Ferrari is she?” he’d asked.

“
Eh? Good God
no. Where did you get that from?” Miles had asked, winking over the
top of his whiskey glass and lighting a roll up.

Three days later Miles
was killed in a head on collision with a lorry. A month after that
Rupert proposed, shortly before buying a Volvo.

She’d wanted everything,
and so much of it. The problem was she didn’t have a clue as to the
cost of anything. She was the daughter of a minor aristocrat; a
failed artist who subscribed to the traditional theory that a
gentleman does not know what is in his bank account and it seemed
to be in the genes. She was incapable of any kind of pragmatism but
he couldn’t ever give her up.

His son of course did not
go to Eton but was instead despatched to Fettes College in order to
avoid cutting those golden apron strings. James’s tastes were
equally expensive and Rupert found himself getting further and
further off course, paying debts with worse ones, mortgaging the
family pile and then doing it again knowing full well that one day
soon he would have to quite literally pay the price.

And then one day, staring
into the abyss, on the brink of foreclosure and the end of
everything he had ever known there it was; a shining beacon, the
solution to all his problems.

Farquhar and
Donaldson had acquired a new client, one of epic stature. His
dreams had come true it seemed. But as time would prove, these
included his nightmares.

As he walked
through the woods on this December morning however, all seemed
strangely well. The winter sun split the trees and the leaves
crunched satisfyingly under his feet. The office would be opening
up now and he would normally have been at his desk reading the
times and drinking a Virgin Mary.

He reached
into his shooting bag and pulled out a length of rope, selected a
fine stoical looking oak and in a dutiful orderly fashion with a
minimum amount of fuss, hanged himself.

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

Brown had
called four times in the last hour. In the end he had relented,
despite his predilection for avoiding answerphones at all costs and
left a curt message requesting that Burke call him back at some
stage. Burke rarely took these things personally when dealing with
phones and the older generation despite his being of the
take-things-personally persuasion.

He’d been in
a meeting for the last hour discussing training needs for his team.
The force was putting a particular emphasis on diversity awareness
this year, much like the year before and the year before that. He
wondered why this was even an issue anymore. Surely people should
be past all that. Surely society should have moved on and these
things should come down to common decency and common sense. More
water torture was all he needed. Then he thought about Campbell and
wondered again.

“
As I
thought, it was definitely some kind of garrotte. Stainless steel
cheese wire is the most likely. Probably used without any
supporting device though, not attached to a chair or anything.
There’s too much trauma at the back of the neck. If a chair or
similar device was used I’d have expected to see less there. That
area would have been shielded by whatever they braced the wire
against as they twisted it. Having said that the blood pattern
suggests he was sitting or standing up as he bled out.”

Burke nodded at the other
end of the phone realising as he did that it was a pointless
gesture.

“
He was a big
chap, six three and wide too. No identification but his build would
suggest he was of Afro-Caribbean descent. Other than that I’m not
sure what to tell you. He was young so no glaringly obvious signs
of wear and tear save for stained teeth which would suggest he
liked to smoke but as to what he liked to smoke, as with our friend
yesterday, we wait in anticipation of the tox screen.”

“
Any news on
the other one?”

“
Not as yet
I’m afraid. I’ll let you know when I do, assuming of course that I
can get hold of you.”

John Campbell came back
after lunch like a dog with two tails. He hadn’t turned up any
connection to the garrotte apart from saying that it had been used
by the British Executive Service Overseas during the war which
definitely seemed to make him proud. He produced a picture showing
an example; a two foot piece of stainless steel wire with a four
inch length of brass bar at each end serving as handles. It
satisfied Burke’s curiosity as to the mechanics of the kill at
least.

“
Thing is
boss,” Campbell began, “while I couldn’t find any connection to any
particular group for this, I did investigate curved blades a bit
more.”

“
Ok.”

Campbell pulled out a
sheet of examples pointing to one in particular. “So there are a
good few variations on the machete design but this one in
particular, the panga machete or cutlass has a pretty serious curve
to it.”

“
Right.”

“
I know,
you’re thinking what the hell, Pirates of the Caribbean, that kind
of thing but you’re actually not far not far wrong. These things
are most popular in the Caribbean and parts of Africa.”

Burke nodded as he
surveyed the blade. The swept up curve thickened towards the end
before coming to a sharp point.

Campbell smirked exposing
a row of crooked teeth. “Kind of backs up my theory no?”

Burke decided
to put in a call to the Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency on a
hunch and after two hours got call back from a DI Mike Edwards at
the Drug Strategy Unit in Paisley.

He explained the
situation and Edwards listened with interest.

“
So what I
wondered,” Burke concluded, “is if anyone might missing any ex
Eastern Bloc players.”

“
Well seeing
as you ask,” Edwards replied, “we have lost Vlad the
Inhaler.”

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

They had no respect,
these kids; no idea of the trials they had sidestepped, the brutal
apprenticeship they had bypassed by virtue of being born to a
particular generation.

Victor had to
walk away from his luggage before the tall one; the one that looked
like Lurch from The Adams Family on Prozac took the hint and picked
it up. The short one seemed to be more interested in talking than
anything else. They both knew he was just making noise in the hope
something sensible would come out, trying to distract himself from
jangling nerves. No strength of character.

He’d grown used to having
this effect on people. It hadn’t always been this way. He’d earned
it, paid for it in pounds of flesh, albeit other people’s flesh,
those who’d met their demise at his behest.

What was this place? What
kind of excuse was this for an international airport? He’d left
home after noon, passing through a plush new terminal and arrived
on the other side at this, a glorified goat shed. The west was on
its knees, dying a slow lingering death.

The small one
asked him a question about something; some kind of mindless small
talk. He chose to dismiss it with a look and the man averted his
gaze to the floor like a scolded dog, doubtless inwardly
cursing.

They had brought a
Mercedes four by four. Of course, why wouldn’t they? City cowboys;
while they were swanning around the smooth city roads in something
designed to tackle the Serengeti back home they were
circumnavigating potholes the size of hot-tubs in battered
saloons.

He missed his Maybach and
he wanted some drugs. The pain behind his eyes had started to
intensify. Maybe it was the small talk but he had a feeling they
didn’t need to say very much to communicate their uselessness. From
an evolutionary point of view they were surplus to the requirements
of the species.

He checked his
Blackberry. Nothing.

There had been a time
when it all meant something, before the money and the gadgets, the
cars, the villas and the women who stayed the same age as he greyed
and sagged.

He’d been sent to the
camp at fifteen. His excuse of a father had disowned him ten years
before; some five years after his mother had died bringing him into
the world. He’d been allowed to go feral, fallen in with the wrong
crowd they said but the wrong crowd were at least something
resembling family.

He started from the
bottom, took the beatings when required and grew into dishing them
out when need be. He’d become numb to it at home. He managed to
find his way to the fringes of various rackets and found himself a
niche “acquiring” things to order; what little there was to acquire
back then.

They caught up with him
eventually. He was no one and didn’t have the means to pay them
off.

But there it
all began. Sent away for 7 years, he was baptised in fire and
Siberian ice, and reborn.

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

The press conference was
a hastily cobbled together affair. Gray described it as an
outreach, a term Burke was fairly certain he was trying to make
catch on. The man himself gave off a sombre air, with plenty of
implied annoyance at having to do this, though it was obvious to
anyone with the mental capacity to breathe and stand upright at the
same time that he was loving it. He just lived for moments like
these. Probably paced round his room in the small hours addressing
the assembled masses from his own private version of the world
stage.

Burke did not
love it. Maybe it was a dim view of human nature brought about by
too much time investigating the inherent flaws, but he got the
sense the press were out for blood. He sat, sandwiched between Gray
who proudly wore his best ill-fitting suit, and Superintendent
Steele who was doing her best to look sombre, in tune with the mood
of the day and not like someone who saw things largely in the form
of figures and stats.

“
Is there any
truth in the rumour that the two killings are connected?” asked an
ageless hack who looked a lot like the crazy frog.

“
We’re
keeping an open mind at this time,” Gray replied, looking to his
superior for reassurance that this was what he was allowed to say.
“Best to keep thinking outside the box.”

Pity the head
hadn’t been found in a box, Burke thought. That would have
scuppered him. He couldn’t resist a smile at this but was woken
from his smug satisfaction by a glare from Steele. It would not
have surprised him if it had burned.

“
Is this
connected to the large amount of cocaine that’s been hitting the
streets?” asked a woman with a film crew in tow and an unmoving
forehead.

“
We are
pursuing multiple lines of enquiry,” Gray parroted.

“
Meaning, you
don’t know where to start?” asked a nasal voice from a red faced
white haired man in a corduroy jacket with an outstretched hand and
a dictophone.

“
Meaning,”
Steele interjected forcefully, “we are pursuing multiple lines of
enquiry.”

“
Who is
responsible for the spike in drug related crime in the city?” asked
the woman with the botoxed brow.

“
We’re ehm,”
Gray began, looking at Steele like a dog might view its owner after
ruining the carpet with one of its bodily functions “not here to
discuss drug related crime. Best to stay on topic I think.” He took
a deep breath, before evidently picking a spot on the wall behind
the congregation of local media, focussing and beginning his
sermon. “This isn’t necessarily about the well-publicised war on
drugs. It isn’t about a crime wave or statistics or how well we’re
doing and it isn’t about what a victim may or may not have done. In
each case it’s about someone’s son, someone’s partner, possibly
even someone’s father. It’s about stopping this happening again,
not for the statistics or the clear up rates but for the safety of
the public. If anyone knows anything or knows anyone who knows
anything, no matter how inconsequential it might seem, we would ask
that they please come forward and share this information with us as
soon as possible. This could have been your partner, your father,
your son and if we don’t sort this out and bring the perpetrator or
perpetrators to justice it could be next time.”