Impolitic Corpses Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Previous titles by Paul Johnston

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Previous titles by Paul Johnston

  The Alex Mavros series

  A DEEPER SHADE OF BLUE

  (also known as CRYING BLUE MURDER)

  THE LAST RED DEATH

  THE GOLDEN SILENCE

  THE SILVER STAIN *

  THE GREEN LADY *

  THE BLACK LIFE *

  THE WHITE SEA *

  The Quint Dalrymple series

  BODY POLITIC *

  THE BONE YARD *

  WATER OF DEATH *

  THE BLOOD TREE *

  THE HOUSE OF DUST *

  HEADS OR HEARTS *

  SKELETON BLUES *

  IMPOLITIC CORPSES *

  The Matt Wells series

  THE DEATH LIST

  THE SOUL COLLECTOR

  MAPS OF HELL

  THE NAMELESS DEAD

  * available from Severn House

  IMPOLITIC CORPSES

  Paul Johnston

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2019 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.

  This eBook edition first published in 2019 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2020 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  Copyright © 2019 by Paul Johnston.

  The right of Paul Johnston to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8908-9 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-640-1 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0339-7 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  To Neil ‘Eric’ Swan,

  Iuvenes dumb eramus

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Here I go again. Mega-thanks to Kate Lyall Grant and her team at Severn House for their habitual excellence in every regard. Ditto, with a coup de blanc, to my longstanding and ever supportive agent, Broo Doherty, of the DHH Literary Agency. And glasses raised – maybe not so often, so quickly, the next time – to David ‘Destructor’ McDowell for essential Embra information. Great gratitude, too, to Claire and Chris for various vital forms of backing. And love eternal to Roula, Maggie and Alexander for filling my life with, well, stuff.

  PROLOGUE

  November 2038. Snow time.

  The three-year-old reconstituted state of Scotland – that name had prevailed over the old chestnuts Alba, Scotia and Caledonia – is doing remarkably well. So much so that sceptics such as I are beginning to get suspicious. Of course, living in Edinburgh, confirmed again as the nation’s capital, has its benefits. I doubt the farmers up to their oxters in climate-change-induced drifts of the white stuff that has been covering the country’s hills since mid-October are dancing the fling, Highland or Lowland. Baa, baa, black, white or black-faced sheep, have you any wool? Yes, sir, yes, sir, but you’re not getting your clippers on it for many a month.

  The government, in power for two years now after free and fair elections – really – has turned out to be progressive, competent and serious. Given that I tangled horns in the past with both the presiding minister, the opposition leader and several other members of the cabinet, never mind numerous people’s and municipal representatives, especially those from Edinburgh, I’ve been kicking myself on a daily basis. Still, a capitalist state, even one with a decent number of checks and balances, creates many an opportunity for dishonest behaviour. Which is good news for private investigators like me. ScotPol, the national public order organization, needs all the help it can get. There’s also an increased interest in reading about bad men and women, as well as in those who do the writing. Yes, one has become a published and lionized author. Put out more saltires and roaring big cats, but ditch the unicorns: we don’t need any more mythical creatures, human or otherwise, in our brave new republic.

  Then again, life isn’t completely cloudless. My hair’s gone as white as the braes, the Enlightenment-era fillings keep falling out of my teeth, and I’m heavier than my wife, adopted daughter and son standing on the scales together. When Edinburgh was independent, badly fed and either drenched by the Big Wet or sweating in the Big Heat, we had more pressing problems. Like staying alive, avoiding arrest, nailing our nefarious leaders … Maybe I took the latter more seriously than I should have.

  But hark, the doorbell rings and, after I press the button, heavy boots thunder up the tenement stairs – sixty-four of them – with no reduction in speed as altitude is gained. My partner in battling crime. If not, my many enemies have finally decided to give me a terminal battering. The way I often feel, it would be a mercy. Like in the Sunnyland Slim song ‘Be Careful How You Vote’, you never know what’s round the corner in a democracy creating more wealth than it knows what to do with.

  At least in the benevolent dictatorship that used to run this city you knew whom to trust. No one.

  ONE

  After looking through the spyhole, I opened the door a split second before a large fist shivered my timber. Davie Oliphant stumbled over the threshold – I having neatly stepped to the side – and nearly went his length on the parquet floor.

  ‘Bastard, Quint,’ he said, regaining his balance. His large frame loomed over me, though the intimidation was leavened by his clothing. Davie hadn’t got over not having to wear a City Guard uniform and his pale-blue herringbone jacket and grey trousers were ill-fitting and crumpled.

  ‘Good afternoon to you too, big man. I think there’s some shortbread.’

  His expression lightened. ‘How much shortbread?’

  ‘An unopened tin.’

  He headed for the kitchen. ‘Sophia and the kids not around?’

  ‘Violin lesson.’

  Davie stopped rooting around in the cupboards. ‘Heck’s not even four yet.’

  ‘For his sins, which are many, he’s having to listen to Maisie.’

  He grinned. ‘She’s great. Best eleven-year-old in Embra on that thing.’

  ‘So they say. I still prefe
r the guitar.’

  ‘Aye, right.’ He ripped the lid from a red tartan tin. ‘When are you going to put that blues band together?’

  I was filling the kettle. ‘When I have time.’

  ‘I.e. never,’ he said, spraying crumbs.

  I shook my head despairingly and made coffee. You could get decent beans these days and I could afford them, but the memory of Enlightenment beverages was still hard to shift. Davie, my loyal sidekick for eighteen years, deserved the best, though I wasn’t going to tell him that.

  He ran a hand through his thick locks. ‘I know,’ he said, catching my eye. ‘There are a few grey ones. But nothing like your white-out.’

  ‘Detective Leader, I don’t like your tone.’ I put Maisie’s Beethoven is God mug in front of him. ‘Amend it or you’ll get Hector’s Highland cow drinking cup.’

  ‘Yes, sir, right away, sir. Wait a minute – you’re not my boss any more.’ He inserted more shortbread into his maw. ‘Away and boil your—’

  ‘Who solved that bank robbery last month?’

  Davie looked out of the window. The watery sun was failing over the New Town and lights were coming on in the windows across the garden space.

  ‘According to the report, I did,’ he said, avoiding my eyes.

  ‘Uh-huh. Does your boss know you consult me?’

  ‘I haven’t said so, but of course she bloody does. Muriel’s a bright spark. Helps that you’re not on the payroll, mind.’

  I poured the coffee. ‘And my lack of security clearance?’

  Davie laughed. ‘You think she cares? Results are all that matter.’

  ‘No change there, then.’

  I shepherded him into the sitting room. Sophia had decorated and furnished it tastefully. Although we were on the highly desirable Great Scotland Street – originally Great King Street and, under the Enlightenment, Great Citizen Street – the place had been in a mess when we bought it. My first novelized memoir, The Body Politic, was published eighteen months back. It had been an instant success all over Scotland and soon after in the Scandinavian countries, followed by the German Federation (not including Bavaria, which was otherwise engaged trying to take over what remained of Austria) and those states of the former US and Canada that had returned to a degree of prosperity and literacy. Most of those were on the upper east and west coasts.

  ‘Finished showing off about your second book?’ Davie said. ‘What’s it called again?’

  He knew very well it was called Bone Yards, not least because it was dedicated to him and featured a loosely disguised version of him.

  ‘Yes, thanks. Sell-out crowd in the biggest theatre in Aberdeen.’

  ‘Ooh la la, mon brave,’ he said, in an execrable accent. Foreign languages had never been an Edinburgh strongpoint, except in the Tourism Directorate. Steps were being taken to rectify that, as Edinburgh was even more of a tourist attraction now.

  ‘And the purpose of your visit is?’ I inquired.

  ‘Ah. You’ll like this.’

  ‘A murder?’

  ‘You fiend. No, but not far off it. Laddie in Leith strangled. The paramedics managed to save him.’

  ‘Gang-related?’ Edinburgh’s port had been a stronghold of violent criminals even under the Council’s supposedly iron grip.

  ‘Not sure. A witness said the aggressor was a tree with a fishtail.’

  ‘You’ve got my attention. Let’s go.’ I was interested all right but, with the year-round festival even more all-encompassing than under the Enlightenment, people dressed in silly costumes was an Edinburgh way of life.

  Davie gulped down his coffee. ‘Aren’t you going to tell Sophia?’

  I wrote a note. The prospect of calling her late on Saturday afternoon wasn’t enticing. It was supposed to be family night. The truth was, she and I hadn’t been getting on for some months. I could spend time with the kids tomorrow. I loved them, especially wee Heck, but I got bored easily. That’s what came of being a writer – I always want to be alone. Then again, I was currently blocked worse than the side roads across the country.

  Davie was driving the ScotPol Korean four-by-four at his usual breakneck speed over the setts. ‘Nice flat, that. I still don’t understand how you can afford it. You can’t have made that much from the writing.’

  ‘You’re wrong, my friend,’ I said, putting on the wire-rimmed glasses I’d recently been prescribed. Presbyopia, the optician said. Most older people got it. I said I was only fifty-four and he smiled sympathetically. I almost broke his glasses. ‘Advances from here and other countries, radio, film and TV rights, merchandising …’

  He guffawed. ‘Don’t tell me there’s going to be a Quintilian Dalrymple action figure?’

  I gave him a sharp look. ‘If there is, his slob of a sidekick will have to appear too.’

  That got me a glare. ‘I didn’t agree to that.’ There was a pause. ‘Anything in it for me?’

  I laughed. ‘You know fine well that my number two in the books is called Andy and he’s got red hair – nothing like you.’

  ‘Bastard.’

  ‘If you call me that again …’

  ‘You’ll what? Piss on my foot?’ He grunted. ‘I suppose that thieving bawbag Billy Geddes is doing the deals.’

  ‘Aye, but he takes a hefty percentage.’

  ‘Poor, poor pitiful you.’ Davie had recently become a fan of the long-late, magnificent Warren Zevon, whose music had become popular since censorship was lifted. At least I hadn’t become Quint the Headless Thompson Gunner. Yet.

  On Goldenacre we passed what used to be Scott, one of the twenty barracks for Enlightenment bureaucrats and Guard personnel. It had been sold to a Finnish bank which gutted it and replaced the cladding. Everything was up for grabs in Edinburgh and across the country. The government took its cut. Since the oil and gas fields off the northwest coast had come on stream, the country was awash with money. Finland was one of many states buying various kinds of fuel. The irony was that Scotland itself was fully supplied by renewables. That technology was sold too, but at very high prices. There were those – not only in the ScotGreen Party – who said it was a disgrace our leaders were selling resources that made the effects of climate change worse. I sympathized. On the other hand, wealthier Scots, Finns and many others bought my books and I had a family to look after. Sophia would dispute that. She didn’t like me raking up the past and she had a decent enough salary as one of the city’s few pathologists – though she’d had to learn a lot about contemporary techniques and equipment since the modern world and its cadavers entered the morgue.

  Heavy drizzle was now falling in the glow from the streetlights.

  ‘At least it isn’t snow,’ Davie said, as he turned on to Ferry Road.

  ‘Give it time,’ I said, leaning back in the seat. I was thinking about Sophia’s view of my books. Maybe she was right. Digging up the ghastly remains of the city’s thirty-year experiment with supposedly benevolent totalitarianism wasn’t good for the soul, let alone the body. I was eating too much and getting through substantially more whisky than before. Even expensive single malts did your head in, eventually. I’d lost myself with the end of the Council and writing about old cases was a desperate attempt to regain my identity. Why wasn’t my new and successful life in the thriving reunified country enough? Why did I feel the need to dash off with Davie every time he brought me a case? It wasn’t just a desire to help him. My family wasn’t enough for me. Sophia wasn’t enough.

  ‘That bad?’ Davie said, nudging me with his elbow.

  I held back from answering.

  ‘You miss it, don’t you?’ He paused. ‘I do too, even though we lived like dogs and the Enlightenment lost its way in a big … you know what I mean.’

  I nodded. ‘The party was a necessity when the country fell apart and the drugs gangs ran riot. Firm control. It’s happened all over the world. We were just quicker off the mark.’

  ‘But there were places that loosened their grip on people earlier than w
e did.’

  ‘There were.’ I turned to him. ‘I believed in Enlightenment principles – guaranteed work and housing for all, free lifelong education, no personal wealth. Now we’ve got thirty TV channels and our own cars and mobile phones, how much better off are we?’

  Davie stopped at a red light. ‘Look at them,’ he said, nodding towards the people crossing the road. ‘Their lives have improved and you know it.’

  I sighed. ‘Yes, I do. And we were responsible for denying them all but the basics.’

  The aggrieved faces of Edinburgh citizens at the Truth and Reconciliation Hearings in the gothic Assembly Hall three years ago rose up before me …

  ‘… Quintilian Eric Dalrymple, we will first hear the accusations against you,’ said the elderly South African convenor, a black man with white hair. ‘You will then have the opportunity to explain your actions.’

  At the table to the judge’s left, I breathed in deeply, trying to calm my pounding heart. The fact that my middle name had been made public for the first time didn’t help, nor did Davie’s wide eyes and expanding grin from the front row. My maternal grandfather had been given the ‘E’ name after the Olympic gold-medal-winning runner Eric Liddell. I’d always hated it. QED my backside.

  ‘Bell 03 was your barracks number before you were demoted,’ said my accusers’ lawyer, a fleshy Glaswegian in an expensive suit. The Council’s Edinburgh had done away with his kind, the Public Order Directorate making what were called ‘informed judgements’, and our new breed were still in training.

  ‘It was,’ I confirmed.

  ‘And you were the author of the City Guard bible, Public Order in Practice.’

  So that was his angle of attack. ‘The first two editions only,’ I said. ‘After I left the Guard, amendments that I wouldn’t have countenanced were made.’

  The advocate, one Peter Adamson, looked at me dubiously. ‘There were still plenty of harsh directives in your versions. For example, in the first edition, citizens who used firearms against the Guard were to be executed.’