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seemed
a flawless plan but now, much like last night’s Lamb Bhuna, it was
headed round the u-bend.
    They had done some
serious under estimation. This might not be a bigger pond but as
far as they were concerned, there were a lot bigger
fish.
    Gus
spluttered some more before kicking into life like some kind of
clapped out over-loaded motor. He looked up from his mattress
through eyes that as usual looked set to burst out of their
sockets. “Well what now, man with the plan?” he rasped.
     
    ********************
     
     
    The initial
chat with Edwards had been brief. Yes, the SCDEA were missing Vlad
the Inhaler, was all he was willing to give away over the phone
before he began quizzing Burke regarding the state of the body or
part thereof that they had in their possession.
    Burke sent some pictures
across in a password protected file along with some info from
forensics.
    They had arranged a call
back for later in the afternoon, following the head shrinking
session.
    It was around three; the
point at which afternoons generally tended to sag. He often
wondered what they’d done to cope with it in the past. In the days
of the liquid lunch afternoons must have amounted to an endurance
event. Sleeping on the job was hard enough to avoid in these more
puritanical times. His system seemed to go into a sort of
pre-hibernation state. It was worse in the summer, when the air con
struggled to cope in a building constructed on the cheap with one
eye on the public purse strings.
    He went for a wander to
the coffee machine, more in an effort to get the blood going than
anything to do with caffeine, which, if he was honest, he needed
just to function normally, never mind provide any sort of
perk.
    Campbell shifted
awkwardly in his seat as he passed, pretending to focus on a set of
generic graphics Burke recognised from an online gambling site and
which popped up when the skiving chancer in question made the mouse
hover over a “look busy” icon.
    He didn’t actually mind
Campbell being on the site but did feel reassured when any of his
subordinates scrambled to hide things like that when they heard him
coming. It was one of life’s little pleasures, admittedly a mildly
sadistic one.
    Campbell had been talking
about placing a bet on the possibility of a white Christmas
earlier.
    Edwards had a shifty air
when he finally called back. “I’m sending a couple of my team
through to identify the remains if it’s ok by you,” he said. “Or at
least do the best they can.”
    “ Yeah sure,”
Burke replied.
    “ Just another
scumbag off the street, small time pusher. Gets it all off your
desk doesn’t it?”
    “ It does,”
Burke agreed, thinking it was terribly helpful.
    “ First thing
tomorrow we should be able to confirm either way but looking at the
snaps I’d say it’s our boy.”
    “ Good.”
    Burke attempted to
extract a fairly stubborn bit of chicken from between two of his
back teeth.
    “ And as for
this other one, I’m not even sure they’re connected but as a one
off finders fee let’s say..”
    The chicken gave way and
Burke felt a sense of victory.
    “… I suppose
we could, ahem, assume they are and take that off your hands to
boot.”
    Gotcha. A smile slowly
spread across Burke’s face. A low down shrink’s trick it was but
definitely one that worked and the results themselves had a certain
therapeutic quality.
    “ Anyway,”
Edwards continued, talking into the void, “I suppose we should
catch up again this time tomorrow.”
    “ Tomorrow it
is then.” Burke agreed. As he put the phone down he felt the
tension ease itself out of his shoulders and his brow begin to
unfurl.
    He left the office and
made his way home where he crawled into bed and into a state of
unconsciousness for the next 12 hours.

 
5

    Andy waited patiently at
the port road end. The big John Deere rattled in its diesely way
and the cover on the exhaust did its dance in his eye-line as he
waited for a gap in the line of cars coming out of