Robert Parker - Snow Storm

“Of course.” Burke replied.

“Good.” Edwards said, in the manner of a teacher who has just reprimanded a slightly disruptive pupil. “So, Vlad the Inhaler, AKA Vladimir Petrovsky.” He passed them a single paper copy of Vlad’s rap sheet. If it was possible, he looked even more unhealthy with the body attached, going on the evidence of his mug shots. Edwards fired up the projector and hooked in his laptop as Burke and DC Jones leafed through the deceased’s rap sheet and MO. Burke had accessed this already. That was the easy bit, a matter of public or at least police record and so readily available on the database. Edwards ran through the rap sheet as he flicked through the file the projector. Vlad’s bloodhound face looked down at them from the stat covered screen, like the world’s most unlikely sportsman.

“He’s been on our radar for the past ten years, which is when he appeared in the country. Lithuanian national, did some serious time back home after running a crew of thieving scumbags and trying to pull off a daring armed robbery. Who’d have thought there was anything worth robbing in the former Eastern Bloc? Turns out someone was storing diamonds in Vilnius. More fool them. Seems our boy got wind of it. Anyway, he went away for five years, got involved with a bad crowd, or maybe just a worse crowd. Know anything about Russian prison gangs Burke?” He asked this in a way that suggested it was a challenge.

“Not especially. Thought you said he was Lithuanian?”

“Okay, former Soviet Union prison gangs then. He’s ethnic Russian, hence the name. You get the picture. He got involved with those boys before coming out with more fingers just itching to get into more pies than most men would be capable of. You name it, our boy was into it. As I say, he appeared on these sunny shores some ten years back, by way of London. It looks like some of the brotherhood were already fully installed there, but ever the opportunist, Vlad stepped on more than a few toes. They dispatched him to the great undiscovered northern frontier. He settled in like the parasite he is, flitting between the two cities until he got a proper foothold in the capital. He started up with some light people trafficking taking advantage of your fair city’s lenient attitude to saunas slash massage parlours to cash in on his…” He coughed and pantomime fashion, “imports, before throwing in some extras for his clientele, mainly coke. Then about five years ago he got all technological and discovered the merits of internet fraud. This is the latest information we have on his activities.” Edwards opened an Excel spreadsheet. There were different tabs for each of Vlad’s income streams and the names of various contacts, phone numbers and addresses.

“Of course, he got the name due to his love of the hard stuff. He obviously got bored of snorting coke and took up smoking crack. And that’s when things really went nuts. Around a year ago he seems to have cleaned up his act. Edwards pulled out a dongle like object and plugged it into the side of his laptop. He opened the visualisation program and dumped all the data from the spreadsheet into it. As it updated, they were presented with a selection of graphics, structures that looked like snowflakes forming. Names linked to names, linked to addresses, linked to crimes. Vlad’s life in one continuous all-encompassing graphic; this was what they had come for.

Victor checked into the Balmoral, where, as previously planned, Sacha and Boris were waiting for his arrival. It was good to see his sons, though he was wary of showing this too much. Odd that being the product of a useless bastard father, he should then be so standoffish with them, packing them off to the west for an expensive education on the quiet. The wife had been upset of course, but what did she know of the lives of men. The distance would toughen them up, give them skills that would be useful when the time came. She would wrap them in cotton wool, safe from the outside world but this was not realistic. This was not how the business worked.

Things changed however. Business evolved and moved on. They were learning how to network; indeed it could be said were ready networking with their future peers, ready to move things to the next level when their chance arrived.

Sacha had run towards him when he entered the suite, throwing his arms round him. Victor had patted the boy on the head. He wore his heart on his sleeve, the younger of his two sons. Boris was more composed, accepted his father’s hand with a manly grip and a confident expression. The west agreed with both. They had filled out with good food but kept trim on the rugby pitch.

“So what’s new boys?” he asked, unable to find a suitable opener. That was always a source of some awkwardness. They were, when all was said and done, from different backgrounds, different worlds. At Boris’s age he had been in the gulag, working on some networking of his own. He was not well fed and did not look like a rugby player, or for that matter know what the game was. The way things had been back then, he would probably have eaten a rugby player.

“I’ve started doing Italian and I made it into the first team at fullback.” Sacha began, as his father nodded his approval while watching Boris in his peripheral vision as he shrugged his shoulders and went back to doing something with that tablet they were all so interested in these days.

“…and if you mix hydrogen and oxygen in the correct amount you can make it explode with the mother of all bangs.” Sacha was saying now. It wasn’t that Victor had no interest in what his son was saying, more just that he was content to listen to the boy’s voice. It gave him the sensation all was well, with this part of his world at least. They were out of harm’s way. At least for now.

The rage was there again at this thought. He knew this could be channelled, could be the very thing that ensured the status quo remained, but that his thoughts must be marshalled in such a way that they did not overtake him.

They ordered dinner and the boys watched the new Bond film on pay per view while he attempted to clear his mind of all obstructions. Soon this would all be resolved. And then, all being well it would all be his. All of it. Just keep one eye on the prize he told himself.

He looked again at the boys. They had no idea what they were to inherit.

Sam Jones hadn’t really known what to expect through in Glasgow, at the hub of all things drug related. If she was honest, she hadn’t expected the home of the SCDEA to be quite such a hole in the ground. Maybe she’d expected too much, watched too many cop shows set in the good ole U S of A but a slightly more up market location and a building with a bit more presence wasn’t much to ask, was it? A carbuncle opposite a car hire depot on an industrial estate was hardly a shining beacon of law enforcement worthy of a forward thinking country was it?

To be fair, most of what she’d seen of Glasgow involved nights out in bars a sight trendier than the ones through in the Burgh, and Gayfield Square was a similar monstrosity. Glasgow did look a lot more city scape than Edinburgh but even so she hadn’t expected something straight off the set of Blade Runner which it turned out was just as well. It looked a lot like they’d taken over a contact centre. Hardly glamorous, which was a bit of a surprise considering the way these arseholes liked to strut about the place.

That Wilson one looked like someone had put vinegar in her coffee. Black, the small one with the big attitude needed a charisma transplant and Edwards, well, he was just sleaze incarnate. These two put Campbell to shame, although if ever anyone was deserving of a boot in the balls that one was. Ever since she’d given him the brush off at the Christmas night out it was like he was on a mission to expand the bounds of pedantry. Cock. She wondered if you could sue someone for sexual harassment on the grounds of looks and thought alone and then dismissed this idea as possibly a bit too 1984.