“This is not a respectable way to behave, Mr Heriot-Watt,” he taunted. “Is this how your father brought you up to be a man? To cry like a little girl?”
The hired hands laughed and he hated them for it. Sycophantic nothings. How could men be so physically strong and yet so without backbone? “Did you think you had some kind of job for life? I suppose you did.” He laughed again. “But there’s no pension scheme in our business. This is not something you can do on a consultancy basis. We do not follow laws. We have our own. This has to be a clean operation. There can be no mess. Not when it’s all so dirty.” Again the sycophantic laughter. “Do you know where you are?”
The lawyer didn’t know how to respond so he just went back to the standard pleading.
“Physically?” Victor demanded. “Surely you know that? Do you know what this is? This is an empire. This is storage, logistics, production even, for everything I’m building. You don’t even know do you? This is the place where they regularly store white powder in bulk and truck the stuff all around the country. You think this is lime? This is Columbia’s finest cocaine. This place is its own airport, truck depot and even, God love your predecessor, money laundering operation. No one knows what’s going in and out of here and how much it costs. No one knows we have an oil tanker with an extra compartment for those girls you’re so fond of. Do you know we’re thirty miles from a port to Ireland, one where they’ve taken off the police presence because…” He paused and looked round at the others. “Well I don’t even know why. Do you know how they used to smuggle chemicals across that border? Do you? People would buy two newspapers, cut the pictures from one and paste them over the shots in the other just so they could squeeze a layer of heroin in between. Now I could drive a car through there and no one would notice and if we avoid the main routes when the pressure’s on and fly everything out of this place so be it. And if not, we have that boat you helped to launch the other day. Any sign of trouble at one end, we simply ditch the product in the sea and fish it out again like the most expensive catch you can imagine. So thank you. Thank you for your complicity and the fact that you knew what you were doing was wrong by your own bourgeois standards but didn’t care in any way.
Thank you for the publicity. The key to this was always to hide in plain sight.
Everything had swung into action beautifully. Edwards had materialised a task force from somewhere, like he’d been waiting for something like this to happen. He’d said as much of course though he probably never knew what it would be in any detail.
The choppers flew in low, coming out over the west coast and the North Channel, doubled back and crossed the Rhins, Luce Bay and rounded the Machars, South West Scotland’s hammer like bottom end peninsulas, into an icy dawn. Edwards sat up front wearing a pair of Oakleys that could really only be described as ridiculous but that Burke was fairly certain he’d selected specifically to go with Kevlar body armour and the cans on his ears. He was loving this.
It had been Burke’s granny that sealed the deal, sending out the local rag religiously, week in week out since he’d left home. He’d needed something to calm him down after the Campbell incident, some degree of grounding. Normally it was the court file that made interesting reading, trying to see if he recognised anyone from school that had been done for breach of the peace or bestiality after a night on the sauce. In an area where everyone knew everyone, the chances were you’d always know someone. Sometimes the headlines were laughable, like the time three sheep were nearly killed after escaping onto the A75 and it made the front page.
This time of course it had been the smirking face of Giles Heriot-Watt staring back at him, his gerbil like champagne quaffing mug a testament to the fact he’d just launched a speed boat, a speed boat that was about to be impounded.
Funny how granny always had a habit of pointing people in the right direction.
Wig Bay was to the right of them as they came in from the south avoiding the Galloway hills. Home, or what had been home lay three miles to the west, though no lights blinked there now and hadn’t done for some fifteen years. The memory faded but the twinge in the pit of the stomach remained just as strong. The achingly familiar landscape lay before them, spread out like an ink blue blanket with occasional sparkling lights indicating signs of life. Not long now.
32
Andy could hear the Russian speaking. In his head he pictured Borat, or a meaner version prancing around like the guy from Reservoir Dogs. Not that he spoke like Borat. Andy was probably just mildly racist or xenophobic he realised. Fair enough under the circumstances.
The prick behind him, it was the same stuffy little fucker who’d been there earlier. The one in the suit and the aura of self-importance. Not so grand now. He could hear the muffled grunts and the sound of the burner further away. If ever he was going to have a heart attack this was probably a good time. A quick painful death by his own hand or heart sounded good. He’d heard about Buddhist monks who when their time had come were able to just let go, push the red emergency button, pull the ejector cord, just fuck off and give the bastards the two fingered salute.
He tried holding his breath. Everything went silent. The burner was extinguished. He could hear the sounds of his heartbeat and the sobs of the suit behind him.
“It takes dedication to live this way. I wouldn’t expect you to understand a thing like that Giles.”
Giles, that was the snivelling posh twat’s name. The Russian or Estonian or whatever he was had a liking for the sound of his own voice, although the fact you could hear it from a distance was comforting. He hoped he could keep that distance.
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand it all, but allow me to educate you in some way.” The sound he heard then was familiar in some way and yet beyond that. A sickening crunch and at the same time a squelching sound like a dog chewing on a chicken bone. Then the scream came, a sound that would curdle the blood and twist the guts of anyone with senses. Then the burning smell. It hit is nostrils and was again familiar, the unmistakable reek of burning flesh like barbecuing pork or worse, further back in his memory, the pyres that came with foot and mouth. But this was more intense. This you couldn’t rationalise. This had only one conclusion, that he was next.
Giles lay on the barn floor where he had fallen when they had cut the cable ties. Everything was numb. Andreyevich’s lecture about the ways of his people had gone over fairly convincingly. Safe to say it had left its mark on his mind.
The toothless henchman lay on the ground. Smoke poured from a gaping and yet cauterised wound where his windpipe had once been. A warning shot to him and the others on the payroll. Don’t screw up or it’ll be the end of you. He picked himself up from the cold concrete floor and staggered towards the light at the doorway but stopped short when he saw Victor standing there waiting, a glint in his eye.
“You should change your trousers.”
“Yes, immediately. Obviously,” he stammered trying to get control over the nervousness in his voice.
“But first you must take care of some business. Think of it as some kind of contract perhaps. An act of faith and mutual trust you might say.”
“Anything,” he replied, at the same time not quite meaning it.
Victor motioned towards the slumped figure of the boy cable tied to the pallet in the far corner. “You know what must be done. There can be no loose ends. All or nothing, and nothing is easily done,” he said motioning to the corpse on the floor.