Read Online Snow Storm by Robert Parker - Free Book Online Page A

us?"
    "I'd like to say not a
lot. It would mean we hadn't wasted hundreds of man-hours on this
only for it to go straight down the swanny."
    Burke noted the way he
used the expression. There was a hint of the wrong vowel in the way
he tailed off with the Y; suggested Edwards was not a man
predisposed to using such expressions, would rarely do so socially
and probably only did here in a misguided attempt to buy himself
some kind of social currency. Not Paisley boy then, or at least not
educated here.
    "I'd appreciate it if
you’d take care of this. I can't afford any more expensive
losses."
    "Of course." Burke
replied.
    "Good."
Edwards said, in the manner of a teacher who has just reprimanded a
slightly disruptive pupil. "So, Vlad the Inhaler, AKA Vladimir
Petrovsky." He passed them a single paper copy of Vlad’s rap sheet.
If it was possible, he looked even more unhealthy with the body
attached, going on the evidence of his mug shots. Edwards fired up
the projector and hooked in his laptop as Burke and DC Jones leafed
through the deceased’s rap sheet and MO. Burke had accessed this
already. That was the easy bit, a matter of public or at least
police record and so readily available on the database. Edwards ran
through the rap sheet as he flicked through the file the projector.
Vlad’s bloodhound face looked down at them from the stat covered
screen, like the world's most unlikely sportsman.
    "He's been on
our radar for the past ten years, which is when he appeared in the
country. Lithuanian national, did some serious time back home after
running a crew of thieving scumbags and trying to pull off a daring
armed robbery. Who'd have thought there was anything worth robbing
in the former Eastern Bloc? Turns out someone was storing diamonds
in Vilnius. More fool them. Seems our boy got wind of it. Anyway,
he went away for five years, got involved with a bad crowd, or
maybe just a worse crowd. Know anything about Russian prison gangs
Burke?" He asked this in a way that suggested it was a
challenge.
    "Not especially. Thought
you said he was Lithuanian?"
    "Okay, former
Soviet Union prison gangs then. He’s ethnic Russian, hence the
name. You get the picture. He got involved with those boys before
coming out with more fingers just itching to get into more pies
than most men would be capable of. You name it, our boy was into
it. As I say, he appeared on these sunny shores some ten years
back, by way of London. It looks like some of the brotherhood were
already fully installed there, but ever the opportunist, Vlad
stepped on more than a few toes. They dispatched him to the great
undiscovered northern frontier. He settled in like the parasite he
is, flitting between the two cities until he got a proper foothold
in the capital. He started up with some light people trafficking
taking advantage of your fair city’s lenient attitude to saunas
slash massage parlours to cash in on his..." He coughed and
pantomime fashion, "imports, before throwing in some extras for his
clientele, mainly coke. Then about five years ago he got all
technological and discovered the merits of internet fraud. This is
the latest information we have on his activities." Edwards opened
an Excel spreadsheet. There were different tabs for each of Vlad’s
income streams and the names of various contacts, phone numbers and
addresses.
    "Of course,
he got the name due to his love of the hard stuff. He obviously got
bored of snorting coke and took up smoking crack. And that's when
things really went nuts. Around a year ago he seems to have cleaned
up his act. Edwards pulled out a dongle like object and plugged it
into the side of his laptop. He opened the visualisation program
and dumped all the data from the spreadsheet into it. As it
updated, they were presented with a selection of graphics,
structures that looked like snowflakes forming. Names linked to
names, linked to addresses, linked to crimes. Vlad's life in one
continuous all-encompassing graphic; this was