Snow Storm

20

As Andy’s eyes slowly opened he began to grow accustomed to the darkness unfolding before him. His neck hurt from the awkward unnatural way he’d been forced to sleep. At first he woke every time his chin hit his chest, but eventually his body had given in as it had to when in such dire need of sleep. Now the back of his neck ached in a way that made him think his upper vertebrae were all out of line permanently. This was probably the kind of thing that made you walk around with your head tilted forward for the rest of your days, turned you into a hunchback or something. He couldn’t imagine it ever feeling normal again, or that it ever had.

His hands were now numb and he found himself worrying about the possibility of circulation loss and the inevitable consequences of this, namely gangrene and the loss of limb.

But most of all though it was the pain in his head that really registered. It wasn’t even that sore. He’d had more pain in his limbs after a good work out. It was more that everything was not as it should be. One side of his head was swollen and even in this light his eyesight seemed to have diminished although maybe that was down to the fact his eye was bruised closed.

At first he’d thought it was his captors who kept waking him up. Maybe they were about to start the hard core water boarding or wire his nuts to a car battery after a spot of light sleep deprivation. But then he’d heard the soft female voice, talking to him in a soothing way in a language not his own as the side of his head was gently massaged and stroked with some kind of wet material.

The gag was gone. He tried to speak but at first she just said ‘shhh,’ and then later she seemed somehow different, voice at a slightly lower pitch though still talking to him in a foreign tongue.

Slowly the light began to stream through the crack between the big barn doors in front of them and it seemed as though someone had hit the room with a spotlight. He supposed it was all relative. He could now see there were more than one or even two girls but maybe ten all sitting in the dark like mushrooms or something.

“What is this?” he asked, as someone else took their turn at soothing his pounding temple.

He was shushed again. “You must keep quiet,” she told him in a whisper, “Or they’ll hear you and you don’t want them in here, trust me.”

She sounded young, about his age anyway, pretty not that he could see clearly but blonde, slight, Eastern European looking.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Waiting,” she answered.

“What for?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“You don’t know? How did you end up here?” he demanded, realising his voice had escaped more loudly than intended. He could make out her eyes glaring at him even in this light. “Where are you from?”

She replied something he didn’t understand before adding, “You call it Georgia.”

“Georgia? So what are you doing here?”

“Escaping,” she said.

“Looks like you’re doing a grand job. Why are you locked up here?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “It is not my place to know. I pay them money to escape for a new life and now, we wait.”

“You paid them for this kind of accommodation?” he said, wishing that he hadn’t as she took her wet cloth and moved away from him. “I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it, unlike the majority of times he’d used the word in his short life. “Do you know what they’ll do with me?” he asked, knowing he probably didn’t want the response he was about to get.

She shook her head looking sad as far as he could tell. He could see that she was very beautiful and instantly decided the worst was likely to happen to her.

The address was one in Gorgie; a one bedroom hidden up a backstreet, entered by a distinctly rank smelling close. He buzzed and waited a good two minutes before buzzing again and getting an angry response. “What?” the voice on the intercom demanded.

“Oleg’s people sent me,” Giles volunteered. This was followed by a long pause before the buzzer finally sounded and the outer door was released.

Through the door inside emerged a grotesquely overweight figure wearing a grey tracksuit. He had lank greasy hair, spots and a beard that seemed to exist mainly on his neck despite obviously being in his thirties. “You don’t look like Oleg sent you,” the man mountain challenged.

“I am his lawyer,” Giles replied, sticking out his hand. “John Smith.”

The man laughed at this but shook his hand with a clammy paw and ushered him inside. “Jackie Chan. Best not to use our real names I suppose.”

The hall stank of damp and unwashed clothes. It was dimly lit and there was stuff everywhere; old computers, boxes of electrical items, seemingly unopened parcels from Amazon and in one corner a massive pile of train tickets. As they moved through to the living area which consisted of a kitchenette that had been at its height of design currency sometime around 1978 and more stuff surrounding a couch, there was at least some light provided by a bank of screens. On one screen there seemed to be various transactions in operation on another a spreadsheet with what looked like card details. A bigger screen ran rolling news bulletins and another showed a PlayStation game paused mid action. There were various printers and blank cards.

Jackie Chan saw him looking. “You’re not a cop are you?”

“No,” Giles replied, a little too quickly for his liking.

“Then what exactly are you?” Chan demanded, “Because I know you weren’t sent here by Oleg.”

“And how do you know that?” Giles replied, injecting as much indignation as he felt he could properly pull off.

“Well I suppose my main reasoning would be based around the fact that he bought the farm yesterday morning.”

“Really?”

“Really, although it’s not common knowledge of course. But I would expect you cops to know that.”

“Listen,” Giles began shakily. “I’m not a cop or anything like that. I work for a man called…”

“Victor Andreyevich,” Chan interrupted.

“Yes,” Giles replied, relief flooding into his vocal chords and everywhere else.

“I knew that,” Chan said. “I just wondered if you did.”

“Pardon?”

“Well, everything’s so subdivided, partitioned off, it’s hard to know who knows what.”

“I see.”

“You might, but not as much as those of us who know how to get in the back door do.”

“Eh?”

Chan motioned to his technological pile. “With this you can know it all, not to mention have it all.” He waved his arm round the room at all his ill-gotten gains. “Your boss however, allows me access to certain systems so that in return I provide him with a certain level of income and the odd favour now and again.”

“Of course,” Giles confirmed. It was news to him as right now he was on the Everest of learning curves, but no need to let the geek know what his precise security clearance was.

“Then you’ll know why I’m anxious to protect my investment.”

“Indeed.”

“What do you need?” the giant asked.

Giles did his best to explain and when he was finished Chan shook his head and laughed. “Childs play,” was all he said, which Giles was quite glad about as anything more would have been beyond his comprehension.

“I would offer you a cup of tea,” Chan said, gesturing towards the kitchenette where a sink overflowed with festering dishes blending almost seamlessly with used takeaway receptacles, “But we’re all out.”

Giles found himself wondering who the ‘we’ was and if it possibly included the bacteria who were clearly a permanent fixture in the property. There was a distinct possibility Chan’s clothes could actually walk him round the flat and a similar likelihood that the morbidly obese boffin would quite like that.

“I think I’ll leave you to it. Not like I’d be much use to be honest,” Giles admitted. “If I can ehm….” He stumbled.

“Ah yes. The filthy lucre,” Chan confirmed. “I wouldn’t be embarrassed about that Mr Smith. It is the stuff that keeps everything flowing.”

“It is.”

Chan handed him a greasy looking brown paper bag which at some point had played host to doughnuts or something similar. Giles accepted it awkwardly. Chan looked at him expectedly. “Well?”

“Well?”

“Aren’t you going to count it?” He demanded.

“Well, I…” Giles stumbled again. This wasn’t his forte.

“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.