Body Politic Page 12

  The commander’s face lit up and he started simpering like a trainee auxiliary at his first sex session.

  I raised my hand. “But remember, my colleague here is in the Public Order Directorate. If he thinks either of you is holding out on us, expect tackety boots and thumbscrews.”

  The threat seemed to work. We spent hours in the mess but there was nothing that cast any light on the source of Rory Baillie’s wealth. The only interesting thing we discovered was about the night shifts Jean Baillie said her husband often worked. There was no reference in the duty rosters to him having driven any vehicle after eight p.m. for over six months. So what was he doing at nights?

  Back on Melville Street it occurred to me that Katharine Kirkwood lived less than five minutes’ walk away. Like her brother lived a few minutes walk from where Rory Baillie was murdered. Coincidence?

  As I was closing the Land-Rover door, Anderson appeared round the corner. He was panting from the short run.

  “Just a minute, gents.” He looked over his shoulder. “Something I didn’t want to say in front of the fat shite. Rory, he caught me eyeballing the wad he was carrying . . . must have been a month or so ago. He told me he had a friend he helped sometimes.” The driver leaned further into the cab. “He said the friend was in the Finance Directorate.”

  I didn’t have to rack my brains for long to come up with an idea of who that could be.

  Chapter Nine

  Thursday evening. After a few sunny days, the fog had returned and was settling over the city as thickly as the mustard gas in a Wilfred Owen poem. I trudged up the Mound, the prospect of another Council meeting with nothing much to report weighing on me more heavily than the concrete overcoat worn by the ENT Man. B.B. King once sang about outside help – he didn’t want any, but I could have done with some. I’d just spent the afternoon in the archives and I kept losing track of the time. That’s always a bad sign during an investigation. If my mind starts wandering, I know the trail’s going cold.

  Then, out of my favourite colour, the idea came to me. I ran up Mound Place and sat down in the vestibule of the Assembly Hall to scribble some notes. Shortly afterwards a pair of gleaming brogues appeared in front of me.

  “Come on, Dalrymple, you’ll be late. Again.”

  At the sound of Hamilton’s voice I closed my notebook hurriedly.

  “Working on anything interesting?”

  “Are you?”

  The guardian shook his head. “But I don’t have to, do I? You’re the special investigator.”

  I followed him up the stairs and wondered about the old sod. Hamilton’s involvement with the hangings still nagged me, but it had nothing to do with the murders. I’d like to have nailed my former boss, but that was another obsession from the past I had to forget.

  “Your report, citizen,” said the deputy senior guardian brusquely as the meeting came to order. As the days went by, she, along with most of her colleagues, had become noticeably sharper under the strain. The city’s intellectuals, who prided themselves on their deep knowledge of the human condition, were finding the killings harder to live with than ordinary citizens. Most of the latter found Baillie’s murder fascinating, a source of endless speculation and gossip.

  “Perhaps you could give us a recapitulation of all the evidence you have collated to enable us to gather our thoughts,” the speaker added wearily, her command of the guardians’ tortuous syntax apparently unaffected.

  I started off slowly, trying to spin out the little I had to report. “Well, guardians, extensive research has revealed little of significance. Sarah Spence had an exemplary service record and the only unresolved matter is where she was on the Saturday night twelve days before her death. The rosters of all directorates have been examined and no reference to her has been found.”

  “But you reported yesterday that the guardsman at her barracks remembered seeing an official authorisation,” said Hamilton.

  I’d told them about that to pad out an even more vacuous report. “True enough. So we’re left with two possibilities. Either Taggart” – I heard the public order guardian’s intake of breath – “I mean Knox 31 was mistaken, or somebody removed all traces of that authorisation from the records.”

  “No doubt you favour the latter,” Hamilton said ironically. “You were always keen on conspiracies. I’d be more inclined to think the guardsman confused the dead woman with someone else.”

  “What, one of your men made a mistake?”

  The speaker looked at me sternly. “Continue, citizen.”

  “Right. Rory Baillie. Twelve fifty thousand drachmae notes and thirteen US hundred dollar bills were recovered from the sewers outside his flat.” I glanced along the row of stony faces. “This raises more questions than it answers. For a start, none of the serial numbers on the banknotes tallied with the currency records at the airport and Leith docks.”

  “Meaning that some of our visitors bring in more than they declare. That’s quite normal, citizen.” The scratchy voice was that of the finance guardian, Billy Geddes’s boss.

  “The problem isn’t only the existence of undeclared foreign currency in the city,” I said to the wizened old economist. “Though if you ask me, it doesn’t seem to be in line with Enlightenment principles. The significant point is the amounts. Even the most generous tourist is hardly likely to tip a driver fifty thousand drachmae. So what was Rory Baillie doing to earn that sort of money?”

  No one came up with an answer. I could have asked the same question about Adam Kirkwood, but I’d kept him out of my reports; I didn’t think Katharine’s case had anything to do with the Council. But I’d checked Adam’s banknote. It hadn’t been declared either.

  “Is that all, citizen?” the speaker asked.

  I shook my head. “We’ve been trying to track down some of the women Baillie spent his time with, but no one was willing to talk.” I gave them a bitter smile. “It isn’t only in the barracks that speaking to strangers is discouraged.”

  “Thank you for that observation. Kindly confine yourself to reporting the facts.” The deputy senior guardian looked at me like a hassled schoolmistress who’s just been pushed over the edge by the class smartass.

  I felt a bit sorry for her. “All right. A final point about Baillie. I’ve double-checked all the records and there’s no reference anywhere to him working nights. That contradicts what his wife told us.”

  “Maybe he was lying to her to cover up his extramarital activities.” Robert Yellowlees gave a brief but unusually sympathetic smile for a guardian. His colleagues didn’t look too impressed.

  “Maybe. But we’re assuming he was murdered after curfew, when the lights were out. If he was with a girlfriend, wouldn’t he make sure he was at her place by then?”

  “He would,” put in Hamilton. “The chances of him avoiding all the patrols are minimal.”

  I was less sure about that than he was – after all, the murderer had managed to get away twice – but I didn’t argue. The likelihood was that Baillie had an authorisation and everyone in the chamber knew it. I gave them a couple of minutes to think about the fact that someone was manipulating the city’s precious bureaucracy.

  Then I hit them again. “There’s more bad news. There was no forensic evidence pointing to the killer on the clothing found in the Water of Leith – only blood and other matter from the victim. Either the murderer was very lucky not to leave traces or he was very careful.”

  “We’re assuming the latter, of course,” said Yellowlees with a humourless smile.

  “Of course.” I looked around the guardians. They looked about as bereft of ideas as a 1990s cabinet. Time to give them a nudge with the cattle-prod. “I had a thought on the way up here. Both the victims were killed in the early hours of a Friday morning.”

  “So?” said Hamilton.

  “So maybe there’s a pattern. This is Thursday evening.”

  The guardians’ eyes were all wide open now.

  “What odds will you give me
on another killing in the next twelve hours?”

  Davie drove up Ramsay Lane towards the castle. The fog was very thick now. Just what we wanted, especially tonight. Burke and Hare conditions.

  “What are we doing up here?” Davie asked.

  “I need something from Hamilton.”

  “Round six of fifteen.”

  “Have you been counting?”

  “Got to do something while I’m hanging around.” He accelerated through the checkpoint and on to the esplanade.

  “Tell me, Davie,” I said, watching him closely. “What do you know about the directorate’s undercover operations?”

  He looked like I’d just punched him in the balls.

  “Not much,” he said quietly. “Why do you ask?”

  He was a lot paler than he had been when we were next to Baillie’s body. “What is it, Davie? What’s the matter?”

  He looked away to the damp tarmac, then turned back to me. “You remember I told you I had a girl. She . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence.

  “She was selected to go undercover?”

  He nodded slowly. “Two years ago. I haven’t seen her since.”

  “Christ.”

  His chin jutted forward. “You know what’s the worst thing about it?”

  I did, but I let him tell me.

  “It’s the uncertainty. She could be dead, could have been dead for a long time and I just don’t know.” His hands were clamped to the steering wheel.

  I wasn’t proud of the pain that my question had etched into his face, but at least I’d found an auxiliary who could pass for a normal human being.

  Hamilton hadn’t got back to his office yet. I flashed my authorisation at his secretary, a thin young man with grey lips, and went into the guardian’s private bathroom. I hadn’t had a chance to visit the public baths for a week. The water temperature would have struck even a Spartan as low and the soap was as carbolic as Hamilton’s temper, but I felt better afterwards.

  Hamilton ambushed me in his outer office. “Dalrymple, what the—” He broke off and led me into his sanctum. “You’re pushing your luck, laddie. What do you want?”

  “I’ve got a problem.”

  The guardian sat down behind his broad Georgian desk and started looking through the files in his in-tray. “Really? Don’t tell me you need my help? I thought you preferred to work independently.” He raised his eyes. “Not that it’s got you very far.”

  As Davie said, time for the next round. I tossed my authorisation on to his pile of papers. “You remember what that says about co-operation, don’t you, guardian?” I tried hard to make his title sound like an insult. “You choose. Either comply with the request I’m about to make or explain your refusal at the next Council meeting.”

  Hamilton’s eyes were colder than the water in his shower. “That rather depends on the request,” he said, his voice taut.

  “One of the people I’m checking has a file that’s classified Restricted. You keep those in the directorate archive here, don’t you?”

  “You want to see a Restricted file,” he said slowly. “Why?”

  “That’s not a question I have to answer.”

  He picked up a pen. “Name of the subject?”

  “Katharine Kirkwood.” I watched his reaction, but I couldn’t tell if the name meant anything to him.

  “Very well. Wait here.”

  I raised my hand. “I want the complete file. Don’t forget, I spend half my life in the archives. There’s no way you’ll be able to pull any pages without me noticing.”

  Hamilton shot a ferocious look at me and walked out. I was surprised how quickly he came back with the maroon cardboard folder.

  “There you are.” He seemed to have calmed himself down. “So, do you think the precautions we’ve taken for tonight are adequate?” After my idea about the killer working to a pattern, measures had been approved to monitor movement around the city centre even more than normal.

  “Look at the fog,” I said, pointing outside the leaded windows. “There could be a massacre without anyone noticing.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. We’ll catch the bugger.” He looked at me. “Remember, the contents of that file are confidential.”

  Large black letters to that effect were stencilled on the cover. “I can read, you know.”

  “Which means that the subject is not to be given any hint of what we have collated.”

  “Why?” I headed for the door. “Do you know something she doesn’t?”

  William Street, once the location of fashionable bistros and sandwich shops patronised by lawyers and their weak-kneed secretaries, is now occupied solely by female citizens who work in the nearby West End hotels and shops. There was less than half an hour till curfew. I sat in the Land-Rover under the streetlight and read the file.

  “That’s hers, isn’t it?” Davie said, keeping his eyes off the typed pages. “What’s she got to do with the murders, Quint?”

  “God knows. Have you got that carving knife? I’ll give it back to her.”

  “Mind she doesn’t use it on you.”

  “I’m planning on keeping my hands to myself, don’t worry.”

  Davie grinned. “I wasn’t thinking of your hands. You know what they call this street?”

  “I do, guardsman.” The large number of women residents have led to it being referred to as “the Willie” in common parlance. “I thought auxiliaries kept themselves above that kind of thing.”

  “Did you now?”

  I left the maroon folder on the seat. As I went over to number 13, I wondered if Davie would resist the temptation to have a look. That would be a test for him.

  “Quint.” Katharine stood in the doorway wearing a dressing-gown. “Have you found Adam?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve made some other discoveries though.”

  She looked at me then turned quickly. I followed her in, my eyes drawn to her bare feet. They were unusually long and thin and I could see the networks of tiny veins around her ankles. I wasn’t aware that hotel maids were required to paint their toenails.

  Katharine sat down on a pile of cushions on the floor and motioned me to the sofa.

  “We didn’t finish our conversation the other night.” I glanced around the small flat. It was no more than a bedsit with a door off to the toilet in the corner. The sofa I was sitting on converted into a bed and the only other furniture was a small table with a couple of rickety chairs, a kitchen cabinet and a chest of drawers. The Supply Directorate wasn’t particularly generous to single female citizens, especially those with the kind of record I’d just been reading. Katharine had tried to put her own stamp on the place: she’d hung rugs made from scraps of different coloured material on the walls and stuck up pages copied from the large number of books that lay around the room. The extract nearest me was from one of Eliot’s Sweeney poems.

  I took the carving knife out of my jacket pocket, watching her face. It remained impassive. “This is from your brother’s flat. Can you take it back?”

  She knew I was putting her on the spot and she didn’t like it. Her lips were set in a tight line. But she was curious too. “What were you doing with it?” She sat up straight. “You were running tests, weren’t you? Why didn’t you listen to me? Adam couldn’t have killed that man in the gardens.”

  “I can’t take your word for that, Katharine.”

  She nodded slowly. “No proof.”

  “Not only that.” I pulled out my notebook. “You’ve been behaving like a civil servant before the Enlightenment.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve been economical with the truth.”

  She stiffened even more. “Like you said, we didn’t finish our conversation. You were called away.”

  “I was. I seem to remember that you offered your help. You can do that by telling me more about yourself and your brother.” I handed her the knife, pushing Davie’s comments to the back of my mind. Katharine took it nonchalantly and laid it o
n the floor.

  “Haven’t you checked us out by now?”

  “The archives don’t contain everything.” I’d been through Adam Kirkwood’s file, which wasn’t restricted. Davie and I had also questioned his workmates, who’d assumed he was in the mines. He seemed to be an adequate worker who kept himself to himself. None of them saw him out of work hours. There remained the question of the foreign banknote. Katharine was another puzzle. I’d been to the hotel and checked the duty roster. She was off duty on the nights of both murders. I was wondering how much of her past she would reveal voluntarily.

  “What happened when they transferred you to the Prostitution Services Department?”

  She looked at me curiously. “I still don’t understand what that’s got to do with Adam or with the killing.”

  “Any chance of you letting me be the judge of that?”

  She laughed. “All right. I refused the transfer, of course. They kept on at me for days. If they’d offered me something else I might have agreed, but they have that rule about auxiliaries never refusing duty. You know all about that. So I was demoted.”

  So far, as per her file. “What next?”

  “I was assigned work as a cleaner in one of the hotels down in Leith. That was someone’s idea of a joke, I suppose. I spent more time fighting off drunken Scandinavian tourists than mopping floors.” She smiled bitterly. “If it was a joke, it backfired. It was in the hotel that I met the contact from the dissident group.”

  I knew from the file that his name was Alex Irvine. She had what was referred to as “sexual involvement” with him.

  “They had links with the democrats in Glasgow, who used them pretty cynically. We blew up a few buildings.”

  “And got caught.”

  “Naturally. Even at that time the Public Order Directorate was good at planting informers.” She looked at me coolly. “As you know very well.”

  I lowered my eyes. “I wasn’t involved with that kind of operation.” Hamilton became a great advocate of undercover work during the drug wars. I always preferred the investigative approach. “What was your sentence?”

  “Three years on Cramond Island.” Her voice was flat. “I was lucky. They put the cell leaders up against a wall.”