Robert Parker - Snow Storm

She probably never even knew the Ruskie boy. He wondered what it took to get a girl like that. Receptionists; they always seemed so snooty in a way that had the effect of only making him more interested. Maybe he should come out of the closet as a fully-fledged masochist, get someone to strap him into something and kick the living hell out of him while he begged for mercy, begged for more or whatever would happen when he embraced the madness. Half the time he was like a man picking at a scab.

Another girl came out of one of the offices and greeted him with a smile and a visitors badge just as he’d settled on one of the cream leather couches and got his nose stuck in the latest copy of Heat magazine. He then had to do a bit of a manoeuvre whereby he put the magazine back down on the glass topped coffee table without her seeing, like it was a copy of Playboy and she was his mum. Truth be told he’d rather be caught with a copy of Playboy than Heat but he liked to keep abreast of the celeb situation. You never knew when that might come in handy if trying to salvage a conversation.

She led him through the wall of glass and blinds to a full-on open plan office. A big sign taking up the wall of the entrance declared that this was home to several companies all of which fell under the umbrella of BCC Industries as denoted by the three letters in red blue and green plastic over all other organisation names.

The PA who introduced herself as Laura, led him into an office at the back of the larger expanse. It was a fairly characterless room. The back wall was plate glass and looked out onto the water of Leith. A bland desk with a laptop sat in the corner, wires snaking off in every direction. He took a seat on a plastic Ikea number and waited. The water was fairly mesmerising. It must have been hard to get much done here. He turned as he heard the faint sound of footsteps on carpet.

A business-like woman, probably early thirties greeted him as she walked through the door and gestured for him to take a seat again. She too, Campbell was pleased to note, was hot. She introduced herself as Nicole Bannister, with a firm business like handshake that seemed to match her pin-stripe suit.

“ I’m Operations Director here. Oleg’s second in command if you like.” She frowned and then her face was blank for a second or two. “Or I was.”

“ Were you close?” Campbell asked, pulling out his notepad.

She laughed as she adjusted a lock of stray hair, replacing firmly behind her ear.

“ In as much as anyone was.”

“ How so?”

“ Well Oleg, wasn’t, well, wasn’t to say he wasn’t that kind of person.”

“ In what way?” Campbell asked, wondering as he did what was wrong with a man who wasn’t close to her. Karpov clearly had more money than God. That must have carried some leverage.

“ He didn’t seem to have anyone or anything much in his life outside work,” she replied.

“ No family?”

“ Not that I was ever aware of. He did have various connections back in Lithuania but I was always led to believe they were mainly business associates.”

“ No friends?”

“ None I ever met. He generally seemed to live for work, always here before I was and still hard at it when I left. I tried to keep up with him in the beginning but in the end, you know there’s just more to life.”

“ So they tell me,” Campbell replied. “Girlfriends?”

“ None I ever heard about. I’m afraid it’s a bit of a dead end all of this. None of us knew anything about him really. I just don’t think he cared for much other than work.”

“ Surely a man of means, he can’t have been too short of offers,” Campbell mused.

“ He wasn’t exactly George Clooney,” she replied, a small grin lighting up her face briefly, “but I suppose some people like that power thing. No one I know of though.”

“ Did he have any dealings with anyone which may have resulted in ill will of any kind? Was there anyone who may have made threats of that kind?”

“ Well he was in financial services not an industry known for its consideration of our fellow man. I dare say he’d crossed swords with a few people over the years, a deal gone wrong here or there, well, right for him and wrong for someone else, but that’s the way it works. Business men of Oleg’s calibre don’t tend to lose sleep over toes they’ve inadvertently trampled on, do they? And they also don’t tend to overreact and shoot each other. Not in my experience.”

“ Depends what business they’re in.”

“ I would imagine so. However, to my knowledge no, there was no one in the near past that bore Mr Karpov any serious ill will.”

“ No threats then?”

“ None.”

“ Ok Miss Bannister, that should be all for now. Oh you don’t happen to know where Mr Karpov’s lap-top is?”

“ No. At home I’d imagine. He’d be unlikely to leave it here. That might mean he didn’t have all the answers at his disposal for more than five minutes.”

“ Bit of a control freak was he?”

“ You might say that. Perhaps it would be more charitable to say that he had issues around letting go…”

“ Of the reins,” Campbell replied before he could stop himself.

She smiled taking it in the humorous way he might have intended if he had actually meant to say it.

“ Can I reach you here if I need to?” he asked.

She produced an expensive looking embossed card with her details and he briefly felt like he’d won the lottery, before telling himself no he mustn’t phone this one after a skin full. Not after what happened last time.

He thanked her for her time and made his way out of the office

He entered the toilet across the hall and finding it suitably empty, proceeded to chop out two lines of the finest product Columbia had to offer onto a granite sink top before rolling a twenty and snorting the whole lot in one u-shaped movement. Just a little pick me up. Who was going to stop him? New suppliers were easy to find, it seemed.

He had thought of mentioning what his previous one had said about the possibility of losing her head to Burke, but he wasn’t sure. The boss had a way of disapproving of these things, along with a curiosity about most things and it might be best to avoid complicating the situation. It was hardly important info anyway.

He looked at his ornate surroundings. The perks of executive life.

Who was he kidding? He tore up her card and threw it in the bin as he left the building. Best not to go down that road.

Victor sat in the office of his fallen comrade as he watched the police officer go. He pushed the balls on the desk toy back and forth watching them knock off each other, the two in the middle remaining static and the ones on the outside doing all the work. He could think of no better model for how the world of business worked.

Executive toys they used to call them, this and the miniature pool tables, an assortment of curiosities for the feeble minded. Executive toys. He preferred his yacht. Now there was an executive toy. One for an executive in the truest sense of the word when the occasion had required it. Oleg was not feeble minded. Of course not. He would not have been allowed to enter the brotherhood were it ever the case. He had merely gone to seed in this place, which looking around this office, it appeared to be easy to do in these God forsaken parts, barely a sane one among them. A few months in the salt mines would do them good. Let them starve for a while, see how quickly they turned against one another