Robert Parker - Snow Storm

“None to speak of.”

“None?”

“No, save to say that he was involved with a dodgy crowd.”

“A dodgy crowd?”

“Well the man did have a ready supply of drugs and hookers didn’t he?”

“As did you sir.”

“I’m hardly Pablo Escobar Inspector.”

“But you suspected Mr Karpov of being some kind of kingpin?”

“Well possibly, what did I know? It’s not like I asked, but he was of Lithuanian extraction and I’m not being racist but..”

Oh here we go Burke thought to himself.

“Eastern Europeans perhaps have a different view of that kind of thing, culturally speaking.”

So it’s more a case of xenophobia then? Burke thought. “And yet you freely associated with him sir?”

“Well no,” Douglas replied, now looking a trifle confused.

“So he was coercing, perhaps blackmailing you in some way?”

“No Inspector. No I suppose I did freely associate with him as you put it. We didn’t discuss work.”

“Just took illegal drugs and had sex with prostitutes?”

“Look I’m trying to be helpful here,” Douglas said holding his arms out to the side in the age old way suggested he had nothing concealed. I have been totally honest with you here. “I haven’t involved my solicitor as I came to you in good faith.”

“So you know nothing else?” Burke summarised. He’d been here long enough. The air in the room was starting to taste bitter.

“No.”

“In which case that should be all for now.”

“Meaning?”

“We’ll be in touch.”

“Am I what would you say immune from prosecution. Does this goes any further?”

“We’ll be in touch.”

“Can we keep this away from my wife? Inspector, I have tried to be reasonable in all of this. I am doing my best to be helpful in catching the criminals who did this to a friend and neighbour.”

“It’s good of your sir.” And with that he was gone leaving Douglas to stew in his own juices. Funny how he seemed to think a medical degree gave him the right to flout laws as long as he did the big confession scene when it all went wrong. He must have been watching too much Oprah, much like his cycling hero.

Doctor Brown had offered him coffee from a kettle he kept -probably against health and safety- in the lab but he always refused, feeling somehow that the stench of death might make its way into the water by osmosis or something.

The ever downtrodden Brown was currently regaling him with a story about his recent golf holiday in the Algarve. Soon to be retired, he had squirreled away enough cold, hard cash over the years to set himself up a decent bolt hole out there and planned on living out the rest of his days in the relentless sunshine.

“Until the start of the inevitable decline,” he pointed out. “There comes a point when one has to rely on the kindness of the NHS or whatever is left of it by the time they have all gone private. Had my teeth done while I’ve still got the readies.”

He flashed a smile that was faultless and yet somehow just the right side of normal.

“An implant here and a crown there should see me right till I shuffle off this mortal coil, eh Jim?”

“My granny kept hers in a glass most of the time,” Burke volunteered before realising what he’d said.

“I’m not quite as old as your grandmother yet,” came the response, “that said I’m always in the market for an older woman.”

Brown flashed the teeth again as he nudged his young female assistant in the ribs causing her to roll her big blue eyes and shake her blonde head in protest.

“And I’ve met some great grannies.”

He was a walking HR issue. It was just as well he was close to retirement. Burke often wondered what the fabled Mrs Brown was like. The only description he’d heard from her husband consisted of the words battle-axe, harridan, harpy, fuhrer and managing director on the occasions he was inclined to be more charitable.

“So I suppose we should get down to brass tacks. Can’t stand around listening to Jennifer’s gossip all day can we?” He nudged the assistant again before leading the way through to the autopsy room, which he referred to variously as his office or in more jovial moments his studio. As they gathered round the stainless steel slab, part operating table part sink, Brown was poised to pull back the plastic sheet covering the vast body of the ex-Oleg Karpov. “Interesting things were immediately obvious on the removal of the deceased’s shall we say tasteful kimono.” He lifted the sheet “I warn you this isn’t one of the more aesthetically pleasing autopsies I’ve had the fortune to perform,” he said in a tone of sincerity he occasionally deployed. He pulled back the sheet as far as the shoulders, showing a largely misshapen head caked in blood. The face was unrecognisable as the bullets had ripped their way through the top lip, right cheek, bridge of the nose and the entire left eyebrow. “Of course when the bullet hit the eyebrow the upper part of the face caved in, giving him his distinctly Neanderthal appearance down one side.

“Do we know this is him for sure?” Burke asked fighting back the urge he had to heave.

He’d seen some gruesome things particularly over the last couple of days but there was something about the face, or the loss of its form that really hit home. It was, after all, how people gauged each other.

“Oh yes. Thankfully he didn’t have quite as good a dentist or perhaps wasn’t so fond as squandering good cash as I. He had a partial denture consisting of the upper four incisors and the left canine. Despite the bullet it was still in very good shape so we were able to run it past his dentist in good time thanks to the feminine wiles of my glamorous assistant.” Jennifer blushed slightly and Burke wondered if the old boy had a particular way of saying inappropriate things that got him off scot free.

“So unless he has company, we can assume he wasn’t sleeping.” Burke said almost to himself.

“Unless he was really vain,” Jennifer added.

“True,” Burke replied remembering a story about someone choking on false teeth.

“Had he had sex recently,” he added.

“Haven’t got quite that far yet Jim,” Brown replied, “but will have a look under the bonnet and let you know. Same goes for the tox screen and ballistics report. Obviously so far we’re quite chuffed we’ve managed to identify the bugger. Certainly no traces standing out under black light but you never know.”

“Shouldn’t that kind of thing stand? I mean bodily fluids; doesn’t that normally show up fairly easily?”

“Well there were a lot of bodily fluids but not in that particular area. He made have had a shower or something though. Are you worried he didn’t get any before he went?”

“Something like that,” Burke replied, leaving them to draw their own conclusions.

“And so to one of the more interesting pieces of the puzzle,” Brown declared, pulling back the covers to the corpse’s waist.

Between the bullet holes were various tattoos giving the man’s upper body the appearance of the world’s biggest embroidered pin cushion.

“Bit like join the dots,” Brown said as he stood back to give Burke some space to take it all in.

“Welcome to my world.” Burke looked on in awe at the network of drawings on Karpov’s body. The images were distorted by the bullet holes across the length of his abdomen, with pieces missing and others stretched by the cushy lifestyle Karpov had clearly led in recent years and the fatty toll it had taken on his body.

On his chest was what looked like a crucifix, this was the focal point about which all the other art work seemed to revolve.

His right shoulder bore what seemed to be an epaulette and on his left just at the base of the neck was a dagger from which countless drops of draining blood made their way downwards. A star adorned the opposite shoulder and a church with multiple spires, -Burke counted ten- dominated the left side of his chest, and a rose with thorns appeared to ooze out of a deep wound on the right.