The Blood Tree Read online

  Naked, Katharine slid under the covers and crushed against me.

  “Christ, you’re freezing,” I gasped.

  “I’ll soon warm up,” she said, leaning over to blow out the candle. “So what did the old Tartar tell you?” she asked.

  “Nothing much,” I said, feeling her long fingers gliding up my stiffening cock.

  “Nothing much?” She squeezed hard.

  “Ow! Don’t.’”

  “You want me to stop?” She removed her hand. “No problem.” She turned away. “Good night.”

  I put out my hand and pulled her back. “No, I don’t want you to stop, Katharine.” I took a deep breath. If I couldn’t trust her, who could I trust? I knew that Katharine was with me because she wanted to be, not because she was after something. After Caro’s death it had taken a long time before I could accept anything as straightforward as that.

  So I told her about the genetic research that the small group of guardians had sanctioned. She was surprised, though not as much as I’d been – she was even more cynical than I was about the probity of Council members.

  “What exactly do you think this research is into?” she asked. Her hand hadn’t taken hold of me again.

  “God knows. Hamilton probably doesn’t understand the science and he warned me off talking to any of the others.”

  “I know what it’s into,” Katharine said.

  “What?” For a second I was taken in.

  “I mean, I can guess.” She nudged me in the ribs. “Come on, Quint, it’s obvious. What’s your ex-girlfriend carrying around in her belly?”

  “You reckon they’re working on embryos?” That thought had struck me when I was with Hamilton. “To improve the quality and quantity of children born in the city?”

  “Who’s a clever boy?” she said sarcastically. “I might have known the Ice Queen would get her sperm from a refrigerator.”

  This time I nudged her. “Lay off Sophia. What’s she done to you recently?”

  “Didn’t you see the way the arrogant cow was looking at me in the Council chamber? If she had her way, she’d have me under the knife in a flash.”

  I felt a wave of exhaustion break over me. It was now or never. I moved my hand up her back and cupped her breast.

  “Oh, talk of Sophia’s got you going, has it?” Katharine asked.

  “No,” I said simply. I was too tired for chat-up lines. “I want you.”

  She laughed. “Fair enough.”

  I heard her fingers move across the bedside table.

  “Got a condom?” she asked.

  “Oh shit.” I remembered that we’d used the last one. I hadn’t had time to queue up in the Supply Directorate store recently.

  “Forget it then.” Katharine sank back into the sagging mattress. “I’m not taking any chances. The last thing I want is a kid at my age.”

  “There are other ways of achieving satisfaction,” I said, quoting the Medical Directorate’s pamphlet on sexual relations.

  “Be my guest,” she murmured.

  A few minutes later I could tell from her breathing that she was fast asleep.

  I went the same way soon afterwards but I didn’t pass a restful night. I kept surfacing from clammy, fog-ridden dreams featuring a villain in a cloak with a chisel in one hand and a mallet in the other, a cigarette hanging from his swollen, unnatural lips. And all the time in the background was the schizophrenic howling of a genetically modified guardian of the underworld called Cerberus.

  Chapter Eight

  I woke up to the scent of half-decent tea.

  “Come on, Quint,” Katharine said, drawing the curtains. “You’d better make the most of that Welfare Directorate tea-bag. It’s a foul day. The rain’s coming down heavier than Davie’s boots, there’s a freezing mist off the sea and you’re out of coal. Good morning, Enlightenment Edinburgh.”

  I accepted the mug from her, rubbing sleep from my eyes. “What are you looking so pleased about?” I mumbled.

  She held up a small packet. Citizen-issue condoms – given the problems with the birth-rate these days, they probably came ready pinpricked.

  “I got up early and went down to your local store.”

  I grabbed her arm. “Come on then.”

  Katharine pulled away, laughing. “Not now. We’ve got work to do.” I must have looked very disappointed. “Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of time later.”

  “You never know what might happen,” I said. “Don’t put off till this evening—”

  “Shut up, idiot,” she said, moving to the door. “I’m going to the Welfare Directorate to see if anything urgent’s come up. I’ll call you when I’m finished.” She stopped and looked back at me. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ve got a rendezvous with Doctor Godwin’s file.”

  “Lucky you. Don’t forget to check out Cerberus as well.” She produced what she thought was a cover version of the creature’s cry.

  Then she left me to the tea and a bad case of what Lightnin’ Hopkins used to call the “Morning Blues”.

  I called the infirmary and found out that my old man was awake and in reasonable shape. They were planning to move him into a general ward at eleven a.m. I told the nursing auxiliary I’d be there, then got dressed and considered my options. Gavin Godwin – a.k.a. Napier 77 – would feature both in his barracks archive and in the Science and Energy Directorate’s records. Since Hamilton had warned me off his colleagues’ territories and since what I was really interested in was the old geneticist’s Glaswegian background, I decided to check his general file in Napier first.

  Davie came on the mobile as I was on my way down to the guard vehicle I’d called. “Morning, Quint. I’m in the command centre and I heard you ordered a vehicle. Where are you off to then?” He sounded pretty down in the mouth. “You said you were going to tell me what you and the guardian talked about last night.”

  “I will, guardsman, don’t worry.” I reverted to Katharine’s strategy. “Later.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  “Any news?”

  “Nothing that pertains to the case. No sign of any bogeymen or of the pick-up they took.”

  “They’ll be keeping that out of sight.” A thought struck me. “Christ, if these guys are as smart as they seem to be, they’ll probably have changed the number-plates. You’d better amend the all-barracks alert to include all red pick-ups.”

  “Right. Anything else?”

  “Nope.”

  “Quint?” Davie said suspiciously. “You didn’t answer my question. Where are you off to?”

  I didn’t want Davie to know where I was going in case Hamilton forced it out of him. I had the feeling that the public order guardian wouldn’t like me digging around in the background of a former Genetic Engineering Committee member.

  “You’re breaking up,” I lied. “Out.”

  I sent the guardswoman who arrived in a clapped-out pick-up back to the castle on foot – auxiliaries need all the exercise they can get – and headed south.

  Napier Barracks is spread across a group of buildings at the crossroads which used to be called Holy Corner. The four churches that led to the name are now components of the barracks and the junction about a mile out of the city centre has been renamed Napier Cross. To me that has ironic undertones considering the Council’s hardline atheist principles, but for most ordinary citizens it’s become a gag about the irate nature of the auxiliaries in the barracks. From past experience I knew that the archive was in one of the former churches. I showed my authorisation and walked into a weird juxtaposition of stained-glass windows and shelves full of maroon and grey folders.

  I pulled Napier 77’s file and headed for a table in what was once the chancel. Before I got there, an officious-looking senior auxiliary stormed towards me. He’d obviously been informed by the sentry that there was an alien in his domain. I quickly obscured the barracks number on the file from him.

  “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded
, eyeing my donkey jacket and black trousers. “Procedure requires that all visitors report to my office before entering Napier facilities.” That’s commander-speak for “I’m the cock of the walk here – prepare to be fertilised.” He must have been one of the few people of his rank who didn’t know who I was.

  I soon put that right. “Dalrymple,” I said, showing him my authorisation. “Now fuck off, Napier 01.”

  His face went beetroot, then he complied. That made me feel great.

  Unfortunately Gavin Godwin’s file didn’t. It confirmed what I already knew – that he was originally from Glasgow, that he was eighty-five years old and that he’d been a professor at Heriot-Watt before independence. But I ran into the same problem as I had with Knox 43. There was very little about the subject’s life and activities before the last election. For all I knew, the pair of them could have been best boozing pals in the Glaswegian tradition, or they could have been members of a ring of deep-cover operatives. The reality might well have been that they didn’t even know each other. The dead man was over thirty years younger than Godwin and he’d studied surveying at Heriot-Watt, not biology or anything even vaguely connected with genetic engineering. And there was no chance of me checking out the university’s archive – the place was stomped to pieces years ago by the drugs gangs.

  All in all, the file was remarkably uninformative about the old scientist. It hadn’t been weeded – I checked the contents pages and the binding – but it was still much thinner than the average auxiliary’s. Like many of his kind, Godwin had a dispensation from barracks duties and seemed to spend almost all his waking hours at the research centre in King’s Buildings. His Personal Evaluations were sparse and nebulous, his Superior’s Reports were single sentences and his Close Colleagues Lists had been left blank for the last ten years. It was obvious that Godwin had powerful patrons in the Science and Energy Directorate who kept the barracks off his back. Of course, there was nothing at all about his work – I’d have to ransack the directorate archive to get that.

  Eventually I closed my notebook – not that there had been much point in opening it – and glanced at my watch. Ten to eleven. I’d have to hurry if I was to get to the infirmary in time for Hector’s transfer.

  I ran out to the pick-up. Before I got to it, my mobile went off.

  “It’s Katharine. I’m finished in the directorate. They’ve agreed to let me have a week off.”

  “I wish I could have a week off,” I said, getting into the vehicle and turning the key. The starter-motor screeched like a banshee with a hangover.

  “Not a week’s holiday,” she said. “I had to fill out a form seconding myself to you.”

  I pulled away from the kerb, making a guardswoman leap out of the way. “So that means I come first and you come second, does it?” I asked.

  “Only in your dreams. Where do you want me to meet you?”

  I accelerated past a citizen bus. “At the infirmary. They’re moving my father.”

  There was a pause. “Okay,” she said. “I hope he remembers who I am this time.”

  I signed off. I hoped he remembered who I was too.

  I made it just in time. The nursing auxiliaries were in the process of removing the last of the tubes and lines from Hector in the ICU. I waved at him through the glass screen and received a scowl for my trouble. It looked like the old man was back to his normal state – cantankerous and proud of it.

  “He seems to be doing all right,” Katharine said from behind me.

  “Mm. I get the feeling he’s had enough of lying on his back without his precious books.”

  We were ushered away from the door as the mobile bed was wheeled out. Then we followed it down the corridor. I could hear the old man grumbling as he went.

  Katharine laughed. “No sign of any major personality change.”

  I nodded. “If he’s complaining now, wait till he gets into a ward full of other patients. He’ll soon have them talking in whispers so he can read in peace.”

  It didn’t take long for the formalities to be completed and for Hector to be set up in his next temporary home. All the infirmary’s general wards are mixed sex to maximise the space. He found himself between an elderly man with yellowish skin and a young female citizen. Her broken leg was on a pulley and her looks were definitely above par.

  “How are you feeling then, old man?” I enquired.

  “How am I feeling now, you mean, failure,” he replied impatiently. “You do have a command of English, don’t you?”

  “Apparently not,” I said, leaning over and taking in his lined face and pallid skin. “Answer the question. How do you feel?”

  “All right, I suppose.” Hector looked away disconsolately, as if he’d suddenly realised that he wasn’t going to be the centre of attention for much longer. Then he turned his head back towards me and beckoned to me to come close again. “Your woman friend,” he said in a low voice. “I made a fool of myself, didn’t I? She’s Katharine, not Caro.”

  I nodded. “Don’t worry. She’s forgiven you.”

  The old man twitched his head in irritation. “Pathetic,” he complained. “How could I make a mistake like that? I must be going senile.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You had a serious heart attack. And now you’re going to make a full recovery.”

  He wasn’t listening. “I’m sorry, Quintilian. It was just that Caro seemed very real. Even though it’s over ten years now . . .” He looked at me awkwardly, his eyes damp. “She and you were so close. I’ve never seen love like that. I’m sorry I never told you I was happy for you. I had to follow the Council’s bloody guidelines and feign indifference to human feelings.” He shook his head. “God, if the Enlightenment hadn’t taken over Edinburgh, you two would have got married, you’d have had children—”

  This was becoming hard to cope with. I squeezed my father’s hand then pulled away, aware that my own eyes were wet too.

  “You’ve nothing to blame yourself about, Hector,” I said quietly. “I always knew how you felt about us. That’s all that matters.” I took a step back. “Now, you do what the nurses tell you. It won’t be long before you’re back with your dirty Latin books.”

  He nodded weakly, raising his hand at Katharine.

  Before we reached the door I heard him asking the woman in the next bed what her name was. For a card-carrying member of the Misogynist International my father was remarkably good at charming members of the opposite sex when he could be bothered.

  “So,” Katharine said as we hit the corridor. “What next?”

  I stopped. I was seriously thinking about disobeying Hamilton’s instruction not to pester his colleagues and going down to Sophia’s office. What she knew about the current genetic research might help me out in the investigation. Then I made myself reconsider. Sophia wasn’t corrupt, nor was she stupid. If she knew about some link between the murder and the research, she’d have told Hamilton if not me. Before I could make a final decision, I got a surprise.

  “Quint? I wondered if I’d find you here.” The voice came from behind me, at the level of the small of my back.

  I recognised it before I turned. “Billy?” I looked down at the crumpled figure in the wheelchair. “Christ, long time no see. How have you been?”

  The guy who had once been my best friend was ignoring me now. He only had eyes for Katharine. “I remember you,” he said to her. “January 2022, wasn’t it?” Trust a financial wheeler-dealer to have perfect recall for numbers.

  “Billy Geddes, Heriot 07 as was,” Katharine said, showing that she had a good memory for figures too. “Demoted for corruption in 2021. You were sent to rehabilitation, weren’t you?” She smiled humourlessly. “Have they let you out of the human zoo?” Demoted auxiliaries sent to rehab are given animal codenames, supposedly to emphasise the bestial natures that are to be programmed out of them. Billy had been known as the Jackal.

  Billy cackled like a broody hen. “She’s really something, this squeeze of yours, Quint.
”

  He was taking his life in his hands, referring to Katharine in those terms. Even though his arms and legs had been shattered in an accident I was partially responsible for in 2020, I suspected she might still use force on him. I frowned to warn her off.

  “You in here for a check-up, Billy?” I asked. “You look pretty well.”

  He ran his fingers over the thin hair that was plastered on to his scalp. “Pretty well?” he repeated ironically. “Oh aye, I’m fine. I’m brilliant. Thanks for asking, Quint.” He gave me a harsh stare. “Course, if you ever bothered to visit me, you wouldn’t need to ask.”

  I nodded, feeling my cheeks redden. Billy and I had once been very close but I never really came to terms with his self-interest and his greed. I still felt guilty about cutting him loose though.

  “You got out of rehab in the spring, didn’t you?” I said.

  “I knew you’d have your spies keeping an eye on me,” Billy said, froth dotting his lips. “No doubt you’re aware that the Council’s using me to check their biggest deals with the tourist companies and the like.”

  I shrugged. I’d actually suggested that to Sophia when she was acting senior guardian a year back. It seemed a waste of talent to ignore Billy, for all his past sins and his inherent untrustworthiness.

  Suddenly Billy’s expression softened. “I heard your father had a heart attack, Quint. How is he?” When we were kids before independence, Billy was a frequent visitor to our house in Newington. His own parents had divorced and he eventually got quite attached to mine – until they became Council members and cut themselves off from personal contact with everyone, including me.

  I filled him in about Hector, touched by his concern. It didn’t last long. He saluted me with a sardonic laugh, gave Katharine an attempt at a winning smile and propelled himself down the corridor at what I thought, given his shrunken frame and twisted arms, was impressive speed.

  “He’s crazy,” Katharine said, shaking her head.