Robert Parker - Snow Storm

He reached the corner of the new wall and the large gate he’d been unlucky at earlier in the week and began what his father would call skulking. He saw the lights coming as they reflected on the other side of the road and dived for the protection of the fence.

“Incoming,” he rasped into the radio.

“Eh?” came the response.

“They’re on their way.”

“Shit. I’m on it,” Davie replied, as the lights from his car died down and he could be heard wheel-spinning on to the road again, clearly subscribing to the theory of brute force and ignorance in respect to off-road driving, or at least getting back on to the road.

“Hold on, I’m coming,” Colin shouted, as the Peugeot fell quiet again, waiting now in whatever equivalent Davie had of stealth mode.

“Move it lady-boy,” was Davie’s response as Andy held his breath and waited.

The lights from the complex grew brighter until he was almost blinded by a mirror some conscientious health and safety type had seen fit to install on the other side of the road. He could make out the vehicle and the silhouette of someone climbing into the passenger side. The car accelerated towards the mirror before passing him as it rounded the corner and roared off. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected but this wasn’t it; a black possibly dark blue people carrier headed down the road towards the side track where Colin and Davie waited. A new people carrier just seemed all wrong somehow. They didn’t pay that much in these places did they? Maybe it was the boss’s. In any case, it wasn’t quite as strange as what he now saw before him. Clearly they weren’t planning on going anywhere soon. They’d left the gate open and the place lit up like Christmas.

“Something’s up,” he radioed the other two.

“The chickens have flown the coop,” Colin radioed back.

“I’m serious.”

“Hang on,” came the reply, as Andy saw the lights of the people carrier turn down the track they were on and slowly pass the Peugeot.

“Shit,” Colin blurted into his handset. “There must be four of them in there and they’re fucking massive.”

The people carrier came to a halt and everything went quiet for a few seconds.

“OK man, were gonna have to run but we’ll be back in five,” Colin said as he heard the Peugeot rev up and drive away at speed.

They’d bottled it. Andy felt a little let down, not to mention a little cold at the prospect of hanging around here for much longer.

In the rounded mirror on the other side of the road he could just see through the gate. Light seemed to be coming from what looked like an industrial porta-cabin in the middle of the nearest of the open sheds. He was curious now. He decided a trip across to the ditch on the other side might be a good call; better vantage point, better cover and a better chance to see who came back in. They would be back soon surely, must have got annoyed with the nutters driving up and down the track bordering the company property and decided to go for a bit of friendly intimidation. It seemed a bit full on though.

Curiosity got the better of him. Fuck it, you’re only young once, he thought and ran across the road, slipping on the ice and landing heavily with a sickening thud on his elbow. He rolled into the ditch.

That had hurt. In his experience it always hurt more when you’d been over-confident five seconds before. He tried to inspect the wound. He could feel the trickle of blood inside his sleeve but he quickly decided against looking at it with the light on his phone when he heard the diesel engine of the people carrier returning. He couldn’t see the headlights due to the amount of light pollution inside the complex which was now spread out in front of him. It was indeed a large porta-cabin in the shed near the gate. No expense spared.

He felt his elbow throb. The blood ran down as far as his wrist as he yanked up his sleeve but there was no time to think about that now. He really had the urge to find out what was inside. He would just go for it. Why not? He could shin over the wall afterwards. It hadn’t been the plan, wasn’t the real point to them being here but it might be a laugh. After all, there was no law of trespass in Scotland, was there? He was considering this some more when he noticed the cameras and remembered Colin’s warning, just as the people carrier rumbled round the corner on its way back, just before it came to a halt and the door slid open and just before he was asked if he wouldn’t mind stepping inside.

What could you do? It seemed rude to say no to a man with a Kalashnikov.

Victor thought it had been a fairly simple request; “the sights.” He wanted to know where the locals drank, enjoy a night he might otherwise not and try to forget his woes. Clearly all Edinburgh’s residents lived a lifestyle of decadence and liked to pay a high price for their drinks or the small one, who he now had been ordered to call Billy and the large one who was apparently called Keith had decided to take him to the places he might like to drink in Edinburgh.

“Down that George Street,” Billy had immediately suggested, causing Victor to wonder if there was another.

“Aye,” Keith had added, giving weight, quite literally, to the suggestion.

Victor acquiesced and they made their way a couple of blocks along Prince’s Street, crossed a large square and found themselves on the aforementioned George Street. It seemed alive, even at this time on what he was fairly certain was a Wednesday night. A group of girls walked past, scantily clad for the season and he found himself wondering if it was the junk food that kept them warm. Why weren’t they wearing enough clothes? Was it some kind of act of bravado? It was colder in Vilnius and people were probably harder but no one dressed like that.

They made their way to the bar. It was busy in here and the high ceilings gave the place an echoing feel, the lack of any music serving to amplify this further. Billy ordered them two double rum and lemonades each, Captain Morgan’s finest apparently and they began drinking at a steadily desperate pace.

Though Victor felt a duty to drink them under the table on the grounds of patriotism, he realised it might also be a good move to stand firm on the pace, make them wait to order, stamp his authority on the situation. The rum seemed moreish though and he racked up a few more during the next hour, listening to stories of somewhere that sounded like it was called Site Hell, but that couldn’t be right, surely, could have been Sight Hill.

They moved on with each round of drinks, refused entry here and there, on the grounds of Billy’s appearance or manner as far as he could tell. The doorman clashes seemed set to be a theme of the evening. He could see their point in many ways. He was small, wiry and underweight, the type that often felt they had something to prove, maybe liked to start trouble. He’d seen it before; you looked a certain way and people treated you a certain way. It was a self-perpetuating thing. Still, it was strange, the way some people wore sportswear and looked as though they were out for an afternoon run and others did the same and looked like they were on the run. Not that he was one to judge.

They ended up in the Alexander Graham Bell, having walked the length of George Street. They were hemmed in by a crowd of drinkers, young ones, clearly intent on getting seasonally out of control.

That was where it happened. Thinking about it later, he would have admitted that it had been inevitable; a man with a bad attitude, a belly full of drink and too many others in close proximity. It was a tinderbox.

He was telling a story about something, Victor wasn’t even sure what that something was, and he went a bit too far with the accompanying arm movements, spilling someone’s drink, a student perhaps, bigger in stature but softer in nature than Billy. The boy looked at him with the wrong facial expression for a fraction of a second but that was enough. Billy snapped. All the pent up Napoleonic issues converged. He’d been trying to impress. This was his day in the sun and now this young man had offended him, inadvertently and unwittingly bringing him back down to earth with a bump, in front of the big boss as he saw it. He had lost face and so, in Billy’s mind at least, it seemed right that the younger man should too, quite literally, by way of a bottle.