Snow Storm (25 page)

Burke
presented the pair with coffees extracted from a nasty vending
machine this time, rather than the Starbucks diabetes in a cup he’d
used to undress Andreyevich. Douglas looked grateful in a
despondent sort of way and Burke caught a whiff of what he knew
through hard won experience was vodka. Of course, the choice of the
drinker who didn’t want anyone to know he’d been
drinking.

He set up the
tape and sat back Campbell accompanied him on this occasion. He’d
have preferred Jones if he was honest, more sympathetic perhaps. A
woman’s more attuned soft skills might be the order of the day when
dealing with such delicate matters. She’d gone AWOL for some
reason. He’d catch up with her later but for now he was stuck with
the second choice of minion who was doubtless busy sneering at the
man on the other side of the table. Not that it mattered. They were
here to get information, regardless of hurting anyone’s
feelings.

“
So?” He
asked. The ultimate open question.

Douglas looked at his
brief for some kind of reassurance and got a look in return that
seemed to say get on with it. The lawyer knew he could phone this
one in. It wasn’t as if they were really going to do Douglas for
drug taking and the use of prostitutes, not in a city where the
former happened everyday much as it did everywhere else and the
latter was unofficially condoned by the city council in the form of
saunas or massage parlours.

“
Well,”
Douglas began fitfully, “I, well that is, we,” he looked at the
brief again who urged him on. “I take it we can come to some kind
of deal?”

The brief gave him
another prod with his eyes, causing Douglas to look more stressed,
obviously feeling that he was taking the heat from two sides
now.

Burke looked at him
without saying anything. Really he should give Dr Carr some kind of
commission for upping his interrogation game with minimal effort,
not that it earned him much in the way of results, or actual
money.

“
What my
client wants to know is,” the lawyer began, hesitating slightly,
“you’re not likely to charge him with anything are you? He is of
course fully prepared to cooperate with this investigation but he
is also very concerned about his reputation as a professional. I
have advised him he is under no obligation to say
anything.”

“
Of course.
And I am not concerned with the fact that he clearly likes to
indulge in cocaine and rent boys.”

Douglas’s
head fell at this.

“
However, I
am rather concerned with the fact he is clearly not being
forthcoming. He is hindering a police investigation. Also, I must
ask myself questions in relation to just how deeply your client was
involved with Mr Karpov, concerning his business activities,
particularly with respect to his involvement in serious organised
crime. How involved are you with the Russian Mafia Dr
Douglas?”

Douglas’s
eyes widened briefly and he looked as though he might throw up on
the table. His face disappeared behind his hands as he tried to rub
away the stress from his brow. He at least had access to Botox,
Burke thought.

The lawyer
looked at Douglas pitifully, like he wanted to wash his hands of
the whole affair. Clearly this wasn’t his bag at all. Give him a
drink driver or a sleazy divorce case and he would be as happy as a
pig in someone else’s mud but this was not looking good for his
client all of a sudden. Not that Burke believed for one minute that
Douglas was guilty of anything other than being a twat with a spine
that didn’t seem to be doing its job properly. He put Burke in mind
of a kid at school who’d been caught keying someone’s car or
something equally juvenile and denied it when it came to court,
which would have been fine if he hadn’t actually been standing next
to an officer of the law when he’d done it. Too spineless to stand
up and admit to something even when he’d been caught fair and
square, far too keen on pleading mitigating circumstances. While
Douglas hadn’t been caught doing anything wrong and had admitted to
other things, he knew things that could be valuable and yet was
unwilling to help unless he was saving his own skin.

For a minute Burke
thought he may have overplayed it. Maybe his threats or implied
ones had actually caused the surgeon to clam up and sent him
further towards the catatonic state he seemed destined
for.

“
I don’t know
anything about that Inspector,” he eventually said. “We never
discussed work. I told you that. It wasn’t like I actually could
talk about what I did. Doctor patient privilege you know. I’m not
allowed to discuss anything, legally.

Burke had the urge to
tell him he wasn’t allowed to do quite a lot of the things they did
together legally, but managed to suppress it.

“
I mean there
are some names, you know, none I can mention, but local celebrities
certainly, who require a certain amount of discretion. I mean, take
the example of a former TV presenter, now a respected local
businessman who’s had certain procedures done to lessen the
subcutaneous fat from his middle and pump up the girth elsewhere
shall we say. If that got out I’d be in trouble.”

“
Indeed,”
Burke replied, thinking it kind of just had but that it would be
unlikely to injure James Lindsay’s career after the sex scandal of
the previous year had killed it stone dead.

The lawyer sank a little
lower in his cheap plastic chair.

“
Of course,
you could be in bother client wise if and when this comes to court.
Although admittedly it’s unlikely to bother the client you seem to
be talking about,” Burke added.

Douglas laughed the
hollow laugh of a man who knew he had been beaten. “What do you
want to know Inspector? You’re going to have to give me a starting
point because frankly I can’t think straight anymore.”

“
Were you
there on the night Oleg Karpov died?”

“
I
was.”

“
Did you kill
Oleg Karpov?”

Douglas snorted through
his tears. “What do you think?”

“
I think I’d
like you to answer the question for the benefit of the tape. I’m
old fashioned like that.”

“
No
Inspector, I didn’t kill Oleg Karpov. I am not a killer. I may have
lost the odd patient back in the days before I specialised but I
did my damndest to get them back. I’ve taken the Hippocratic Oath
and I didn’t have my fingers crossed. It would go against the grain
somewhat.”

“
It’s not
like you would be too squeamish for it though.”

Douglas shook his head.
“I suppose not, but I’ve always considered myself a sculptor rather
than a butcher. I certainly couldn’t have killed Oleg.”

“
As you say,
you were close.”

“
About as
close as two human beings can be but I suppose that says more about
me than anything.”

“
How
so?”

“
I don’t
think I’ve ever been terribly close to anyone.”

“
Really?”

“
I blame my
parents more than anything, but of course don’t we all. I’m sure my
kids will have plenty to say about me given time. It’s very
fashionable these days. You’re not allowed to accept blame
yourself. I can see why it sells.”

“
So were you
alone?”

“
Not
initially. There were other guests. And yes, paid ones before you
ask.”

“
Could any of
these paid guests have harboured any grudges against Mr
Karpov?”

“
Doubtful. He
was always more than generous as far as I could tell. In any case
Inspector, it wasn’t any of them.”

“
How can you
be so sure?”

“
They were
quite the wrong shape. The kind of people who frequented Oleg’s
place were of a slight build. Not much to them.”

“
You saw the
killers?” Burke demanded, as his blood pressure surged.

“
I did,”
Douglas replied coldly like he was recounting something much more
mundane.

“
What did
they look like?” Burke asked, wanting to dive across the table and
grab Douglas by the throat but reining himself in, trying not to
think about the man hours wasted on this because some chinless
wonder didn’t have the guts to come forward.

Douglas smiled as he took
a deep breath and emitted a long drawn out sigh. “I didn’t see
their faces Inspector. They were dressed like terrorists or
something.”

“
In what way
precisely? What do terrorists dress like exactly?”

“
They were
head to toe in black and wearing balaclavas. You know, the ones
with the holes for eyes. Where do they get those from anyway? Some
kind of terrorist shop? Anyway that’s all I could see on the
screen.”

“
On the
screen?”

“
He had a
hefty security system, but surely you know that. The front door and
the hallway were both on the big screen at the touch of a
button.”

“
Which big
screen?”

“
The massive
one, the one you can’t miss. That basement’s wired for
everything.”

“
What
basement?” Burke had a sudden sinking feeling.

Douglas
laughed now, “The one I was cowering in Inspector, the one Oleg
liked to have his parties in.” He laughed again. “And the one you
so clearly haven’t found.”

Burke didn’t know what to
say to this so he focussed on the questions at hand. “What did you
see while you were cowering in the basement?” He asked as calmly as
possible.

“
Oleg went to
the hallway. He was the worse for wear you might say, so he didn’t
really think about who might be there.” Douglas’s eyes seemed to
glaze over as he thought about this from what was now presumably a
safe distance in his mind’s eye. “I heard the rumbling from
upstairs so I checked on the big screen and there it was all
happening in front of me. I couldn’t believe my eyes at first.
There were three of them, all in black, guys obviously, presumably.
They were all large, one particularly rotund, probably older, and
all had guns, AK47’s I think.”

Burke tried to keep him
focussed. “Was there any kind of conversation?”

“
Not that I
saw, if anything they were ruthlessly to the point.”

“
How do you
mean?”

“
Once he was
in the hallway they just shot him. I say they, it was the middle
one, the fat one who shot him. The others were just there for, well
I don’t know what but they just trashed the place after
that.”

“
You think
they were AK47’s you say?” Burke asked, allowing a break from
Douglas’s grim narrative.

“
I could
pretty much guarantee that,” Douglas replied.

“
You know a
lot about guns?”

“
Not
especially, but I know an AK47 when I see one.”

“
How?”

Douglas sniffed. “Oleg
had one proudly attached to the wall in a display case in the
basement, which you would know if you’d discovered it.”

“
Or if you’d
come forward earlier,” Burke added, probably anything but
helpfully, but sometimes you had to say what you were
thinking.

“
Of course,”
said Douglas. “If you didn’t discover the basement, and Oleg’s
other life which is all down there you wouldn’t have known anything
about me and I wouldn’t ever have needed to come
forward.”

Burke couldn’t resist a
wide smile at this. “No you wouldn’t. Good of you to go out of your
way to do that though.”

“
Just get the
bastards will you?”

“
Bastard
getting does tend to be what I do,” he confirmed, before adding “in
the meantime sir don’t go anywhere too far.”

The spook
arrived pretty much unannounced, circumventing the front desk by
means of her rank and the accompanying awe that inspired. She’d
more or less materialised at the side of Sam Jones’s old desk, a
talent which was no doubt handy in her line.

She
introduced himself as Sarah Armstrong with a firm handshake that
seemed to fit a little incongruously with her slight
demeanour.

“
I hope you
don’t mind. I’m going to have to keep this brief. I’m due on a
flight back to London in under an hour,” she said with a quick
glance at an expensive watch.

“
You sure
you’ll make it?” John McKay asked. “Traffic’s murder this time of
day.”

“
Ways and
means,” she replied, before asking to see his senior
officer.

McKay informed her that
Detective Inspector Burke was in fact in an interview at
present.

“
I think
you’d better go and get him just the same,” she said, in the manner
of a woman who was not used to being told no.

McKay knocked on the door
to find Burke winding up the interview with the surgeon.

“
Who is it?”
Burke asked, probably put out at the loss of a chance to go off and
hide somewhere for a bit.

“
Says she’s
from Whitehall,” McKay replied. “Security services.” He mouthed
“MI5” so neither the surgeon nor his brief would get too much wind
of it.