Snow Storm

21

The plastic surgeon looked decidedly more nervous than last time they’d had the pleasure, like someone living on stimulants. Took one to know one Burke reckoned, but this was a man who hadn’t been spending much time in the land of nod lately.

He seemed to shrink quite a lot outside the confines of his secure domain. No oak panelled solidity here, no comfortable conforming Chesterfields to slouch on, no, just the nasty cheap cleaning product smell of a well-used interview room.

They’d asked that he came to the station this time, for the benefit of the tape as he’d grown so fond of hearing throughout the duration of the morning. He had appeared within the hour. Nipping and tucking was clearly not too popular at the present time. Maybe it was a seasonal thing; no point getting lipo in the run up to Chrimbo on the off chance it just might tear your stitches and leave you with an abdomen like a burst couch.

“Is it true that if you get liposuction on your man boobs and pot-belly that you can suffer from fat knees if you over indulge?” he asked Douglas now, almost unintentionally.

“Ehm, yes. I suppose so,” Douglas replied, wrong-footed slightly by this. “Anywhere you’re likely to store fat other than the area you’ve had the procedure on. Obviously we’re genetically predisposed to store fat in different places and hormones play a significant role, so in men the classic middle aged spread results from the way testosterone makes the body store fat on the abdomen and neck, whereas women are more likely to store it on the hips and of course the gluteus maximus. Doubtful it would be the knees first though. If I were to say remove the fat from your lower abdomen the remainder of the fat cells on your chest would be the most likely area to bear the brunt of the enlargement. Similarly if I were to remove the fat from your chest your neck would be the most likely area and so on. So you might have to do a fair bit of sculpting to get the desired effect on your knees.”

This was the first question Burke asked and he allowed Douglas to continue in this vein. “So if I were to do the right amount of lipo-sculpting and eat the requisite amount of lard, is theoretically possible to have the body of Marilyn Monroe?”

The doctor sighed and shook his head. “I suppose so, but wouldn’t that be an expensive way of doing it when you could probably do the same with hormones?”

“Indeed.” Burke agreed, before adding “were you actually having an affair with Oleg Karpov, or merely taking advantage of the many rent boys you say he brought round?”

Douglas’s head dropped and he began to sob at which point Burke ran out of things to say and looked imploringly at Sam Jones for anything she had. She put some tissues on the desk and handed them to Douglas.

“How did you know?” he asked as he blew his nose loudly.

“Tattoos,” Jones replied. Clearly she selected the good cop role for herself and this routine.

Douglas laughed resigned silent laugh. “Of course.”

“Did you know what all of them meant?” Burke asked.

“Not one,” Douglas answered, laughing again and shaking his head before sniffling some more and dabbing his eyes with the tissue.

“Well one in particular gave away his particular preferences.”

“The eyes?” Douglas asked.

“Correct,” Burke answered.

“A bit cold. But then my comparison with the other artwork really not so much.”

“And you sure you don’t know what any of it meant?” Jones asked.

“Not at all. He always refused to discuss it.”

“So presumably you were close?” Burke asked

“I suppose so. I mean I don’t think he was as close to anyone else, but how close can you really be to someone when you don’t divulge anything about their life to anyone. I have no real clue what he did.”

“Despite the Russian prison tattoos?”

“Is that what they were? I had an inkling but as I say it was never discussed.”

“You sure about that?” Burke asked, “I mean he didn’t mention anything about it while you’re indulging in your illegal class A drugs or the illegal services provided by possibly very young sex workers?”

Douglas’s face was very pale all of a sudden. He had begun to look like a weight had been lifted from the shoulders, but now he was carrying it once more. “I can assure you inspector, they were fully above the age of consent.”

Burke felt mildly uncomfortable at this and decided to move it along. “Where were you on the night Mr Karpov was murdered?”

“Ah, well that’s the thing. I was trying to tell you and I wish I had inspector but if I’m honest my nerves got the better of me somewhat.”

“You were there weren’t you?” Jones interrupted in a sympathetic tone.

“I’m rather afraid I was.” Douglas confirmed, raising what seemed to be an apologetic smile.

Andy had spent most of the morning, or what he assumed was the morning, drifting in and out of consciousness. The girl had stopped waking him know, obviously deciding that he wasn’t going to die from concussion. His head told a different story.

He still felt sick when he tried to move too much. That was yet another doing over he owed the big guy he now knew must be Georgian.

He pretended to be asleep when they came in and dropped food and water for the numerous bodies in the shed. They’d delivered it in what looked like stainless steel dog bowls.

One of the girls said something to the two hulks they clearly understood and didn’t agree with, reasoning that the correct response was to quite literally slap her down.

He wanted to do something, felt ashamed that he didn’t, couldn’t. He wasn’t used to feeling so fucking helpless, like a dog with his tail between his legs.

A couple of the other girls tried to soothe her, but this seemed to cause an argument more than anything, which again made his head hurt. Much as he normally enjoyed the idea of girls fighting, it wasn’t the same when you couldn’t understand what was actually going on.

What now? Was he actually going to eat from a bowl, like their dog or something? At what point would his pride give out? And what were the bastards planning on doing with him anyway? He wondered if there was a way he could persuade them to call it quits, let him go on his way in exchange for his silence about whatever fucked up shit was going on here. Like hell. Not after he’d been put in a shed full of the girls they were trafficking. More likely he’d be taking a dirt nap or getting put to work in some kind of sweat shop along with them if he was lucky. He’d seen the documentaries, admittedly while doing other things. They were on in the background because the old man was genuinely interested in what was going on in the outside world, despite never really getting to see any of it for real. Not that he was missing out on much if this was the kind of shit they could pull right under the noses of everyone in even their quiet little corner of the world.

At least they couldn’t put him to work in one of their brothels. He doubted he’d make them much, what with the nose that had been broken so many times it was starting to look like it was made of papier mache and the ears that were becoming more cauliflower like by the day. He had a face that had seen the inside of too many scrums.

His eyes had fully acclimatised to the darkness now. Any more and he would probably start to look like a mole. He could see the dust floating in the air in the shafts of light created by the holes in the building’s ageing, once temporary fabric. Movements outside caused a strobing effect. Whenever someone passed by it caused a sense of panic he wouldn’t have thought possible after such a length of time.

One of the girls, she said her name was Ania, tried to feed him and he gathered enough energy to refuse enthusiastically, but eventually gave in as she poured the concoction, soup he thought, down his throat. His head pounded with every miniscule movement, like a bad hangover. He was surprisingly hungry all things considered. He managed to finish the contents of his dog bowl before thanking her.

“So are they Georgian as well?” he asked, motioning to the wall with his head as it was the only thing not tied up. “The guys outside with the big guns and the bad attitude.”

“Georgian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, I think,” she said softly.

In another time, he thought, he might well have been trying to chat this girl up in the pub. Who was he kidding? In another time he was far more likely to be too nervous to even speak to her at all. But right now all bets were off. Wasn’t that what they said about the spirit of the blitz and all that? It was the great leveller, brought everyone together.

He wanted to ask again what she thought they’d do with him but that would do no good. He wanted it to be over, whatever the outcome, get the worst out of the way.

Ania looked away towards the darkness as if knowing what he was thinking.

“And you?” he asked eventually.

“I don’t know,” she said, “But I’m here. I have some sort of shot of making a life. I think it might not be the life I expected but who can say theirs is?”

“I know what you mean,” he agreed benignly, wishing he could say something more constructive that might make everything ok. He wished more than anything that he could fix this for both of them, for all of them, because it was doubtful any of them deserved to be here. What could you do that meant you did? Perhaps people trafficking, selling girls into slavery once they’d paid you everything they had for a chance of a life beyond what they knew, deducting their hopes, dreams and dignity on top of everything else. Perhaps that meant you deserved to be stored in a rotting shed, not knowing what was going to happen next.