Snow Storm (27 page)

“
Team run,”
Edwards declared, forcing Burke to conclude that he didn’t rate his
detection skills highly as he surveyed them all with their lycra
compression gear, MP3 player arm bands and red faces.

Burke nodded to this all
the same, unable or unwilling to say anything in return. They were
on his turf, in his man cave and he resented the
interruption.

“
Thought we’d
get some cardio in before heading to the billet,” Edwards added,
seemingly feeling this wasn’t obvious either.

Burke felt the
unmistakeable sensation of a penny dropping inside his
head.

Edwards jumped as a phone
rang on his arm, deafening him through the adjoining headphones. He
tapped the microphone attached, barked his name at whoever was on
the other end and fell into a silence for the next few seconds. His
face sank as though someone had let the air out of it and then,
when all the animation had left it, his lower lip slowly began to
curl. “Ok,” was all he said in the end, leaving the other three in
the room wondering awkwardly if the call was over.

“
Everything
ok?” Burke finally asked, hoping on some level that everything was
far from ok and knowing deep down that it was childish.

“
We’re having
to let him go,” he answered in a monotone.

His two minions made a
great show of being disappointed, mass outpourings of breath being
their initial method of communicating this, followed by the old
shake your head and look at the floor when you don’t want to look
someone in the eye technique. He particularly loved that old
chestnut.

“
How?” Burke
asked, somewhat perplexed himself, wondering at the greatest effort
at escape since Houdini or possibly The Scarlett
Pimpernel.

Edwards rubbed his eyes
and let out a big sigh. “It seems none of the witnesses saw
anything. All of them have checked out of hospital and the CCTV in
the bar seems to have been corrupted in some way. There’s nothing
on the disk it’s stored on.”

“
Magnet?”
Burke suggested automatically.

“
Cold hard currency more like,” Edwards snapped. “And now
we’re going to have to let him go due to a lack of any evidence
whatsoever. I don’t suppose we’ve got
anything
to link him to the
murders?”

“
Nothing so
far,” Burke replied, wanting to add “sir,” bristling somewhat at
the fact that Edwards had used the word “we,” implying that this
was somehow his investigation, which, all things being equal, it
probably was but he was damned if he was going to have it
underlined to him by a man wearing tights, even if they did have a
Nike swoosh on them. “We were going to check the CCTV in town and
cross reference it with the drop off zone at the airport, see if we
could find out what kind of vehicle he left in and attempt to track
it, see where he was dropped off, assuming he didn’t hire a car. It
seems unlikely he’d be involved in a revenge execution personally,
although we don’t fully know the depth of his connection to
Petrovsky. Would he have got his hands dirty?”

“
He might
have, if it was an act of revenge,” Black suggested. “Obviously we
were letting you run with the whole getting him to reveal his
deepest darkest secrets by using an attempted murder rap as
leverage plan.”

Burke resisted the urge
to point out that this was neither his plan nor something he
personally attempted. This must be how it worked around Edwards,
palm the blame off onto someone else if results were not
forthcoming. Interesting department culture. No matter. The
interview tapes confirmed the contrary.

“
And it might
have worked if he wasn’t so connected to everything,” Edwards
snapped, bringing Black to heel.

“
I thought he
was just an interloping drug dealer,” Burke replied.

Edwards
scoffed. “If only. This guy’s a one stop crime shop. He’s into
things the rest of the criminal fraternity haven’t even thought of
yet. He’s running drugs, arms, counterfeit fags and booze. He’s
trafficking girls from most of Eastern Europe with the promise of
the western life and the end result that they wind up working it
off in one of his knocking shops. He’s got waiters and shop
assistants, employees in airlines and banks, anyone with access to
cards getting your details and feeding them back to his cyber bods.
He’ll sell you anything you like at a knock down rate, which in
this harsh economic climate goes down a storm. He’s got contacts in
the mother country who get him access to IP addresses in deepest
darkest Siberia so he can bring down whatever the hell he likes and
the Ruskies just say nothing because he knows who to pay to turn a
blind eye. You name it, he’s into it and that’s fine, but not on my
turf. Not on my watch.”

Burke was torn between
rising irritation and confusion at the lack of communication
regarding the size of Edwards’ operation and the hilarity of his
last statement. It reminded him of Tony Blair trying to sound
Churchillian. “Nice to be kept in the loop.”

“
Need to know
basis,” Edwards replied, “but yes, there’s a lot more going on than
you know.

“
I’m sure,
but with all of this going on there can only be more opportunities
to catch him at it.”

“
Of course,
but we have a tight window of opportunity. How long before he
leaves the country? He’s only here for a finite time. We’ve got to
make something stick but I’m fucked if I know what.”

“
You must
know something,” Burke probed.

“
I know
dealers connected to him have got hold of a large amount of pure
coke from somewhere, really pure stuff, but no one knows where the
hell it’s coming from. You’d expect to see an increased volume
stopped at border controls at least. The coastguard, or customs or
the ports units should be expected to pick it up but everything’s
been very quiet of late. Surprisingly so.”

“
And you
haven’t picked up anything from the competition say, if as the
theory goes, they’re involved in some kind of chemical arms
race.”

“
No sign of
that either.”

“
Could they
be in this together, using the same supply chain maybe?”

“
Unlikely,”
Edwards replied with a patronising grin, “but say that were the
case, it’s too big an operation and there would conceivably be too
many people involved to not have someone caught along the way. It
only takes someone using a yacht too many times on the same route
to cause suspicion.”

“
Maybe the
competition are trying to corner the market with other things, if
Andreyevich is spreading himself too thinly. Might create a gap in
the market they might want to shoehorn themselves into.”

“
Perhaps.”

Burke said nothing more,
letting the thought hang in the air for a few seconds.

“
There was
one episode, a few years back,” Edwards began, causing the
beginnings of a smile to form at the corners of Burke’s lips. “Some
yardies took it upon themselves to try and kick off a bit of a
switch selling scheme.”

Giles was not
used to being ordered around like this. His superiors at the firm
had always been respectful, to the lawyers at any rate. Those in
polite society at least regarded professionals as having some kind
of social standing, even in this dire age of waning formality,
where everyone was required to address one another by first name
only, lest anyone be allowed to get on in the world and be
respected for it.

His client
had said very little, made no attempt at thanking him for services
rendered and the accompanying risk to the integrity of his bollocks
which had been placed well and truly on the line. A substantial
Christmas bonus was in order. He was being well rewarded for this,
naturally. That was everything to these new money types. They
hadn’t had time to acquire the necessary tastes or interests to
spend it properly. He would concede that Andreyevich knew how to
travel though. Not for him the driving three hours or catching the
three trains and bus it would take to get to their final
destination.

He’d wanted
to head back to the flat in Morningside, the place he was now
starting to think of as a
second
home. He wanted to climb into the shower and wash
away the scummy residue the day’s events seemed to have left on him
and then down half a bottle of Remy Martin and fall into a comatose
state.

There had been no
discussion on the subject. His presence was mandatory as far as the
client was concerned. End of story. He’d been shown to the car
outside the cop shop in Gayfield Square and driven to the airfield
at high speed. He hadn’t felt the time to protest present itself.
There was a time and a place to raise certain objections with
clients, draw a line now and again but he was starting to doubt
that was the case here. No one said no to Victor.

They sat at
some kind of a cruising height in the Cessna now, four of the six
seats filled by himself, his client and two heavies who looked like
they meant business but said very little, certainly nothing to
contradict the vibe their collective demeanour gave off. For his
part, Andreyevich seemed to stick with a similar theme. He may have
been like this all the time. How would Giles know after all? He’d
only just met the man. Perhaps all of this; the meting out of
casual brutal violence to unsuspecting members of the public,
followed by bribery of witnesses, the hacking into Lothian and
Borders Police servers to tamper with evidence and locate those
witnesses and the owners of the premises, finding an employee
willing to assist in the destruction of all CCTV footage and then
ensuring the correct pressure was exerted at the correct level to
secure his timely release after due consideration of all these
facts, then flying off with what could only realistically be
described as mercenaries to some God forsaken outpost to do God
knew what that required the services of a frankly inexperienced
lawyer, maybe all this was just mundane to him. Maybe this was just
another day at the office.

At least the weather
wasn’t as extreme as it had been on the way up. Clear skies it
seemed, and so far no turbulence. How often did you get to fly like
this?

He was just
asking considering that when finally the client turned to him with
a look of contemplation. “So maybe now you know quite a lot,” he
said with a sigh.

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

Edwards had
properly thrown the rattle out and made for the nearest exit. His
two minions had hung around for a short time, seemingly none too
sure what to do with themselves and probably more than a little
embarrassed for their boss, like he was a slightly tipsy parent or
a babbling older relative whose mental capacity they were starting
to doubt. But then it seemed fitting, dressed as they were like
overly preening teenagers most of the time.

“
Something
funny sir?” Wilson asked, before looking down, probably realising
again that she was admonishing a senior officer.

“
Nothing
really,” he replied, enjoying her discomfort.

Sarah
Armstrong worked for “a very particular department in Whitehall”
she had said, with a knowing grin.

She could
have been late forties, given her unhurried confidence, but he
wouldn’t have put money on it. Burke considered himself a
reasonable judge of character but all that went out the window when
dealing with certain types of people, specifically the type that
specialised in knowing all and telling nothing. This made her all
the more intriguing.

“
What can I
do for you?” he asked, with the sense of trepidation you got from
dealing with someone you knew could have you in a body bag with a
phone call, legally, without having to bury you in the woods or
explain themselves to the likes of him.

“
I’d say in
this case Detective Inspector, it’s more a case of what I can do
for you.”

“
Really?” he
asked, wondering if he looked like he needed put down.

“
Really,” she
confirmed. “And don’t look so nervous. I’m not planning on having
you fitted for concrete boots or anything.

“
The thought
hadn’t entered my head.”

She smiled her knowing
smile once more and continued. “What do you know of Leon
Williams?”

He let this sink in for a
second, taking time to respond. How did GCHQ, MI5 or whoever else
know what they were investigating?

“
Not a great
deal,” he said finally, deciding there wasn’t much to give away.
“He is the subject of an ongoing murder investigation, given the
fact he has a spot in our city morgue.”

“
Quite, but
what do you actually know about him?”

“
I’m not sure
where this is going. What is it you want to know? Is there a reason
you’re investigating him?”

“
In a sense
yes,” she replied. She was probably a good poker player, Burke
decided.

“
In all
honesty we don’t know a hell of a lot,” he admitted. “Ex-marine
commando, injured in Afghanistan, seemingly got mixed up with the
wrong people after he left the forces and wound up here. We’re not
sure what he got mixed up in but it looks like some kind of drug
war.”