Robert Parker - Snow Storm

Andy stared at the sugar bowl, trying to make out his reflection in the dull tarnished concave surface of the teaspoon, anything really to avoid eye contact with the other two. It had all happened before he’d known about it. The toothless Polish guy had recognised him about the time he had done the same. The fact that he was already hanging out of the cab of the John Deere was the thing that really went against him. The guy grabbed him by the lapels of his boiler suit and in one smooth movement Andy was no longer in the cab. The giant jerked back suddenly as he over did it and lost his footing. Andy was thrown further out. He saw the gatepost heading towards him and felt his heart jump, right before everything went black. Everything after that was a bit hazy. He had pieces; some kind of flashback of another voice in a foreign tongue, giving the first one a hard time. He could remember being angry as they tried to move him. He just wanted to be left alone.

He was back in the John Deere when he came to what was left of his senses. They’d filled the trailer with feed. He was on the road to the side of the airstrip, neatly parked up. He was groggy and his head hurt. He staggered down the steps of the tractor and threw up on the grass. He sat for a while trying to muster the wherewithal to get moving, fired up the tractor, knocked it into gear and let out the clutch. He made it to the end of the side road, looked sideways at the junction and got overtaken by a wave of nausea.

He abandoned ship again just in time for whatever was left in his stomach to come up. He stood, leaning over the fence for a few minutes, just listening to the rattle of the diesel engine trying to quiet the jumbled up thoughts going through his head. Something that should be so simple was now nigh on impossible. He gave up after the second attempt, after realising he would never make it out of the junction. He couldn’t move his head to check for oncoming traffic.

He phoned Davie who jumped straight into the car and headed down to get him. He’d abandoned the tractor, hightailed it and ever since he’d been drinking tea in an effort to feel something like normal.

He felt ashamed if he was honest. He’d been taken by surprise, yes, but the Polish guy would have had the better of him anyway. The feeling of helplessness was not a feeling he thought he would ever be able to shake. He shivered thinking about it.

“I say we all head down and sort them,” Davie announced.

“You would,” his brother Colin snapped.

“Aye, I would,” Davie replied. “You’ve got to put your foot down. Cannae let people walk all over you bro.”

“I never do. Sounds like it was a bit of an accident. Saying that, it’s a bit full on though.”

“You’re not kidding, is not like they even phoned an ambulance or anything. His head could be vegetable soup for all they knew and they just him left to choke on his own puke or something.”

“Aye, but what are you really gonna do?”

“I don’t know, bunch of boys, pickup truck, baseball bats, job done.”

“Yeee haw! We’re not in the deep south now Jim Bob.”

Andy laughed and then regretted it, wondering if he was about to see those cups of tea again. “Technically, we are if you think about it.” He groaned.

The other two laughed and Colin poured more tea, spooning more sugar in, to the point where the spoon was liable to stand up on its own.

“What do you want us to do?” Davie finally asked. “Surely you don’t want to let them get away with it?”

“I think all I want is my bed. Besides, isn’t looking for trouble what got me into this position in the first place?”

“They started it.” Davie said, was a petulant look on his face. “But I’ll finish it.”

“I think you just wanted to say that,” Colin chimed in, slowly turning the screw in the back of his brother’s head. Why did brothers seem to enjoy winding each other up so much? Andy didn’t have brothers, though at times he thought it could be handy. They wound each other up these two, but they always had each other’s back.

“In any case.” Davie said, his face hardening suddenly, “Something’s got to be done.”

It was a face Andy had seen pull only once before, and that had ended in tears.

The offices of the SCDEA were hardly in the most salubrious of locations. Opposite a branch of a car rental firm, they looked like an up-to-date version of Gayfield Square; a testament to the architect’s lack of imagination or the lack of available options maybe.

They announced their arrival at the front desk and waited. The waiting must have been Edwards making a point. It went on for about ten minutes while Burke checked his phone messages and Facebook updates, eyed some managerial looking portraits of senior officers in the lobby and finally settled on looking at a pamphlet for Crime Stoppers.

It was DC Wilson who finally arrived, looking gregarious as ever. She escorted them to the lift where they made way up to the second floor. The office had a constant hum about it, the noise of activity, several brains processing information; analysts and coppers engaged in a constant struggle to stay one step ahead, or probably more accurately no more than a step behind the criminal fraternity.

They made their way towards a glassed off room at the back of the office, eyed by a stressed looking figure in an office to the side Burke presumed was Edwards. The man spoke into his phone in an animated fashion, gesticulating redundantly with his right hand.

Wilson took coffee orders and went in search of some biscuits as they sat one end of a long conference table. A plasma screen complete with camera hung from the wall at one end of the room for conferencing. On the opposite wall a drop down screen was positioned to take projections from above their heads.

They could see Edwards as he made his way across the floor towards the conference room. He was tall, around 6’2, fair hair and looked as though he kept fit, probably mid 40s Burke thought. In stark contrast to himself, Edwards was what you might realistically expect a Detective Inspector to look like.

“I have to apologise for my lateness, duty calls and all that,” he began, shaking Burke’s hand with a grip which was surprisingly limp.

“Not at all,” Burke lied, “we’re grateful for your time,” he lied again. “Nice offices.”

“Well, it keeps the rain off our heads,” Edwards replied, “But I’m sure you didn’t come here to appreciate the interior architecture.”

“No, quite right,” Burke confirmed. “Thought it’d be a good idea to call in person, seeing as I was through here anyway.” Lie number three.

“Good, well I’m glad you could fit us in,” Edwards grunted, through gritted whitened gnashers.

“Likewise.”

“Obviously, this has caused a bit of a stir.”

“Really?”

Edwards raised his eyebrows in a way that clearly said sarcy bastard. “Really.”

Burke lowered his in a way that clearly communicated mock empathy, with just the right amount of ha ha fuck you thrown in for good measure. “Well I’m sure we all want to inconvenience each other as little as possible. So what have you got for us?”

“I’d like to say not a lot. It would mean we hadn’t wasted hundreds of man-hours on this only for it to go straight down the swanny.”

Burke noted the way he used the expression. There was a hint of the wrong vowel in the way he tailed off with the Y; suggested Edwards was not a man predisposed to using such expressions, would rarely do so socially and probably only did here in a misguided attempt to buy himself some kind of social currency. Not Paisley boy then, or at least not educated here.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d take care of this. I can’t afford any more expensive losses.”