Robert Parker - Snow Storm

“Top dog then,” Edwards said, shuffling through some more slides and coming to an abrupt halt at Karpov’s groin which, due to the surrounding artwork, with eyes, gave that part of his body the look of an elephant. “Cheeky one there.”

“Also the thing that led us to the surgeon,” Burke added. “There’s a tattoo for everything in the joint.” He flicked through to one last image. In gothic script, over the heart, the letters V O R were inscribed. “Recognise those?” he asked a clearly confused Edwards.

“Should I?”

“Not especially. Does the phrase Vori V Zakone hold any meaning for you?”

Edwards’ blank expression gave away the depths of his knowledge on this. Should have studied harder, thought Burke.

“Thieves in law. A fairly serious bunch.”

“Well if they’re anything like my in-laws they probably do.”

“Vory V Zakone or the Vori as they tend to be known, are a society all of their own. They originally sprung up out of the destitution in the wake of the communist revolution; prisoners who vowed to fight authority and orthodoxy of any kind. These guys are no mere Russian mafia, they’re a religious order almost. They’ve been around a hundred years or so and they’ve scaled the ranks of society in that part of the world during that time.”

“I hate a social climber,” Edwards chimed in.

“Well, these guys controlled the prisons in what was the Soviet Union, probably not the yacht club cocktail parties you were thinking of. With the collapse of communism they’ve managed to infiltrate other facets of life. Yeltsin had one of them as his minister for human rights until they discovered he’d helped a good few souls shuffle their way off this mortal coil in a previous incarnation. Some of them are pretty peaceful on the outside world now and of course, some of them or at least one of them, until very recently, was running a holding company here in our own capital city.”

“So you don’t think he’ll be easily broken then?”

“Not so much.”

Jones phoned the barracks of 42 Commando in Plymouth before lunch and received a swift return call in the way on the military knew how. In the time it took her to check her texts (totally dissatisfying), check her emails (too many) and scoff a cheese sandwich she had an officer on the line.

Captain Saville was well spoken; clipped in the way the military liked their officers to be she supposed. She wondered if that was something they trained into them directly, if it was merely a by-product of their environment or actually something they selected for at interview stage. She also wondered if he had a moustache, but then reminded herself that as this wasn’t 1956 that was fairly unlikely. He could have been a hipster she thought, but they all worked in marketing and lived in whatever part of whatever city was about to become up and coming, not a military base just outside Plymouth.

“ So, you wanted to know about Leon Williams?” he asked.

“ I do indeed,” she replied. “Obviously we got his name from University Hospitals Birmingham in relation to some reconstructive surgery he had done.”

“ Yes. Nasty business that,” Saville confirmed. “Don’t know the ins and outs of it myself if I’m totally honest. Can’t pretend I was out there in the thick of it so to speak, but by all accounts they were just going about their business. Routine journey and they had to stop for whatever reason. IED; that’s what got them. So often is of course.”

“ Yes,” she agreed, before realising she hadn’t a clue and only went by what she heard on the news. They could be battling wild turkeys for all she knew. It all depended on what the main stream media were fed or in some cases cared to divulge. “Not that I’d know,” she added swiftly, a slight twinge of guilt reflecting in her voice as she did.

“ You don’t want to either,” Saville said. “And really, nor do I. Not something I’ve ever had the misfortune to deal with.”

“ Did you know Marine Williams, Captain Saville?” she asked, trying to move the conversation on before she put her foot in it again.

“ Not personally, no. Obviously I was aware of the incident when it happened. We’re a fairly tight unit. News does rather tend to travel fast and bad news really hits home when it comes.”

“ I’m sure.”

“ Anyway, I’ve asked around and he does seem to have been very well liked. Apparently he did quite a lot to help those less fortunate than himself when he was a patient at UHB. Kept their morale up, that kind of thing. Not a talent to be underestimated I can tell you.”

“ Did he have any history of problems? Anything to do with drugs say?”

“ No, model of discipline as far as his record goes. That’s not to say he wasn’t involved with anything untoward. You can never really know what goes on off-base, but with random testing you’d have to be a bit of a fool. As far as I am aware though, he was a good egg both on and off-base.”

“ He didn’t leave under a cloud then?”

“ No, not at all. He was honourably discharged having done his service to Queen and country.”

“ Do you know where he went to next?”

“ I really couldn’t say but he certainly has family according to his record or he did five years ago. We’re sending his dental records. I suppose the hard part will be informing whoever he left behind, especially if he did go off the rails a bit.”

“ Yes well, all part and parcel of the job.”

“ I bet. Can’t be easy though. It can be very common as well, this sort of thing.”

“ What’s that?”

“ Ex-servicemen losing their way somewhat, especially after the kind of things they can go through with modern warfare. You know we lost at least three men in that explosion? Another two badly injured, Williams and another chap who wasn’t quite so lucky, lost one leg just above the knee and the other just below. Not surprising some of our lads get PTSD. How are you supposed to readjust to normal life when you get a rude awakening to the fact that just sitting in a traffic jam can be the prelude to a bloody ambush? Part of one’s brain must always stay tuned in to that.”

She thanked him for his time and he assured her that the dental, medical and any other relevant records would be with her shortly.

Now all she had to do was tell Burke and hopefully manage to avoid the part where someone had to tell the family.

Simon Watson was not having a good day. In the dictionary definition of good day, assuming he slipped into a parallel universe where there were dictionaries that contained phrases, this would be the opposite of the definition, the anti-good day.

First of all he was in here, surrounded by the joys of decay, disease and death. Maybe last night had been the tail end of the worst day and this was merely the aftermath, but it hadn’t started that way. They had been going for it, having handed in the final essay due before the Christmas holidays, one he’d spent literally ages on owing to the marks he’d received for that last one, presumably for contradicting that blasted hippy lecturer in a tutorial the week before. Bloody communist. Who was he to say he knew all about the ins and outs of Proust? He’d only tried to inject a bit of personality into the thing, and now he was getting a hard time for not giving a balanced enough viewpoint.

Give it time, Simon would have a column in one of the broadsheets. They’d feel the full weight of his personality then. Where would the lecturer be when he was snorting his way round The Groucho Club of a Friday night? Fuck him. Jobsworth.