Robert Parker - Snow Storm

He stood up and made his way through to the hallway and its collection of stuffed animals. A stag looked down on him, seemingly innocuous, giving away nothing of its true purpose in the two cameras it concealed, one infrared and one bog standard colour, allowing a view of both the surface of a person and what lay underneath. No secrets in this house, other than the ones kept by its owner.

They arrested the intruder. Assault on a police officer was enough, never mind whatever he might be doing in the house of a murder victim. He had no ID and when asked his name, replied “your mother.” They sent him on his way back to the station for arrangement of a duty solicitor and all the other boxes that had to be ticked before they could begin the grilling process.

“Are you ready for this?” Burke asked her when they were alone together in the hallway.

“Of course,” she answered, shrugging her shoulders. “I’m not sure what you are getting so excited about.”

“That’s because you don’t watch enough Bond films.”

“I don’t watch any Bond films.”

“Exactly.” He reached out to the bear’s head that now resided on a wall plaque and turned it forcefully so that it now leaned to the left at a jaunty angle. From inside the wood panelled wall there was a clunk and as he reached across part of the wall gave way with the slightest push, opening onto a dimly lit staircase.

“Really?” He asked, raising both eyebrows, “Secret passageways don’t in the least bit interest you?”

“It interests me from the point of view that it may or may not lead to this case being solved of course, but no, otherwise, in the outside world it’s just a door that opens slightly differently.”

“Then you have no soul,” Burke replied, as he began cautiously down the steps.

The light was faint, like security lighting almost and he had to be careful not to trip on what looked like very old steps. They weren’t old in the way the steps in his tenement close were, those were more of a normal shape and it was the faded mid-section that gave them away, countless footsteps having eroded them over time. These hidden stairs were older but relatively unused. The depth of them and the type of stone seemed to suggest they predated the house. In a town this old anything was possible.

“Careful. There might be more stabby teenagers down there,” Jones told him with more than a vague hint of wishful thinking.

“I’ll send them your way if there are,” he replied, “As you were kind enough to do last time.”

“I tried to stop him,” she protested. “Made an attempt at a rugby tackle.”

“I noticed that. Where did you learn to play rugby? At a netball lesson?”

“Queen Margaret Uni actually. Had quite a good women’s rugby team. I was quite a handy wing forward.”

“You don’t look big enough to be a flanker.”

“Not anymore,” she replied with a sense of triumph.

“Did you forget that for a second when you tried to take down your mother, or was it my mother?”

“I may have done,” she admitted.

The stair ran along the wall before turning sharply to the right. Brick merged with stone in a mish-mash that displayed a good couple of centuries of architectural reorganisation. The corner didn’t go far and the emerged at a heavy wooden door that looked like it belonged to a church rather than one of Bruntsfields Victorian Villas.

He keyed a code into the pad in front of him, 9-10-49, Karpov’s birthday. As the lock clicked releasing the door he kicked it open, standing back ready for any possible onslaught. A vast room emerged before them. There was a swimming pool, Jacuzzi, massive couches and what looked like a home cinema at the other end.

They walked through the room taking in the scene. The place was still lit up like a cathedral. Champagne flutes lay discarded with traces of white powder on a large glass coffee table, a bar was littered with snacks and at one end a home cinema still seemed to be showing the main feature.

“We’ll get DNA swabs from those glasses and maybe something off the food.” Burke said, as he turned to see the biggest plasma screen he’d ever seen, still on and still showing the image of the hallway, just as Douglas had said. “Most important thing is finding out what that thing connects to. Otherwise, glove up and make sure that you don’t touch too much. I’m thinking the SOC team need to see this pretty quick.”

Davie had begun a solid campaign of phoning after the second day. Nothing was happening. Andy could be huffy, sure, everyone knew that. He liked to hold the odd grudge, like over the time they’d hidden that old shed of a car he ran around in behind the silage pit and he hadn’t looked there because it was impossible to actually drive into the concrete hole. He hadn’t thought of what they’d actually done, which was to lift it over on the end of the loader. Ok, so they might have damaged it slightly, running it through with the forks, but it hadn’t lifted the first time when they’d tried to slip them under. A few holes gave it character anyway.

Andy didn’t get that though, something to do with taking Emma out for the first time that night, so even when they fessed up he hadn’t spoken to him or Colin for three days. Come to think of it, the Micra had smelt of silage for a while after that.

It didn’t look like he was in a cream puff this time though. Davie called in to see him three times in the course of the day but not a sign. He’d eventually run into old Jimmy, the part time worker that lived at the end of the farm road. Jimmy was a pretty laid back character, like the types his father liked to describe when he was three sheets to the wind and got all emotional about the fact there weren’t any characters around anymore. All the old crocs got like that, thinking the world was going to hell in a hand basket in the way the generation before and the generation before that probably had too.

Jimmy shook his head regarding the inside of his flat cap as though it were the font of all knowledge, which it maybe was. “I’ve no seen hide nor hair of him son. There’s no been any sign of the lights anyway. The sister’s back at vet school and faither’s away his holidays.”

“Aye, ah ken that,” Davie replied, feeling a pang of what he was worried might be guilt, an emotion he found inconvenient at the best of times.

“Well, he’ll no be happy if he gets back and the young yin hasnae pulled his weight.”

Davie nodded his agreement as he placed a foot up on the gate and lit a fag. The pair of them stared off into the frozen stock yard.

“What you been up to?” Jimmy asked, knowing full well that all was not as it seemed.

“Nothing too bad.”

“Yir an awfa boy tae be yin boy,” the old man said, shaking his head as though he had seen it all before and doubtless would again.

They stood for a while longer, contemplating nothing very much before Davie made his excuses, got back in the Peugeot and headed back to the ranch.

He could only think of one other possibility and that was one he didn’t want to acknowledge just yet. He had to clear out his head in the time honoured fashion before he could do that.

After a couple of Stellas and half a packet of Benson and Hedges he got the bit between his teeth and dialled the number. She seemed brighter than the last time they’d spoken, but that was only until she heard his name. The cloud had quickly spread over the conversation at that point. Her hackles were well and truly up after those two syllables.

He’d never totally gotten on with Andy’s girlfriend, and that was before they’d split up. Now he was most definitely persona non grata, the devil incarnate. No, she hadn’t seen him and wouldn’t, if she happened to have the misfortune to lay eyes on the philandering bastard, approach him for fear of what she might actually do. He didn’t like to ask what she might do but imagined it probably involved sharp objects and his friend’s eyes or worse. He didn’t want to picture worse, so he thanked her for her time, which going on the snorting sound she made, was likely taken as sarcasm, and said goodbye. He wasn’t sure why but she seemed to blame him somehow. He’d been blamed by a few ex-girlfriends in his time, but then that was what guys did, blamed any kind of wild irrational or inexcusable behaviour they could on a best mate. Better to be innocent and led astray than an actual bastard.