The Bone Yard Page 14

  Davie was suddenly looking uncomfortable. “Well, it’s a possibility, isn’t it?”

  I thought of how Machiavelli looked in the sick bay. Something had washed all the colour from his face and I didn’t think it was just the smell of antiseptic. But that was hardly conclusive. After all, Raeburn was his barracks. He had every right to be there even though his current billet was in the castle.

  I stood up and shook the stiffness from my legs. “I wonder. Maybe the hooded man didn’t have a meet arranged.” I turned to Davie. “Maybe he was doing the same thing as we are.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe he was looking for someone.”

  “An auxiliary?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first one he’s targeted.”

  “Great. That means we’ve got the five hundred members of this barracks to check out.”

  “Forget it, my friend. The Council would never allow it. Anyway, what would we be looking for? All Raeburn personnel with guilty looks on their faces?”

  I headed back to the Land-Rover. As we were driving away, I remembered the last time I’d been in the public school’s grounds. It was when I was investigating the murders two years ago. An ex-drug gang member called Leadbelly who was one of the few remaining prisoners in the city’s prison had been clearing stones from the site. He gave me some information that turned out to be useful and I gave him some blues tapes in return. As we turned south and the long line of spires and gables leading along the Royal Mile to the castle swung into view, I wondered what had happened to my informant. Then my mobile rang and the thought exited my mind as quickly as a warm spell on an Edinburgh spring day.

  “What exactly were you doing in the Science and Energy Directorate, citizen?” The senior guardian’s voice didn’t suggest that he was making anything other than a mundane enquiry, but I sensed he was a lot more interested than that.

  “Checking on labs with personnel who could have produced the Electric Blues,” I lied.

  “In disguise?” There was a silence that the chief boyscout presumably thought was meaningful. “You are wasting your time, citizen Dalrymple. No auxiliary would have anything to do with the manufacture of such drugs without a specific order from my directorate. No such order has been given.”

  I was sure that if it had been given, there wouldn’t be any reference to it in the archive. I considered passing that thought on to him but decided I was enjoying my freedom too much.

  “Are you still there, citizen?” The senior guardian almost sounded impatient, an unusually human characteristic for him.

  “I am.”

  “What are you doing?”

  I’ve never been able to handle close supervision. “Sorry, guardian, you’re breaking up. I’ll see you at the Council meeting. Out.”

  Davie glanced across at me. “Are you messing the senior guardian about, Quint?”

  “Why? Are you going to do me for insubordination, guardsman?”

  He shook his head, but the expression on his face was girm. “He might look like a saint in a Renaissance painting, but he used to have a reputation in his barracks for breaking people he didn’t like.” He slowed at the checkpoint on Raeburn Place and raised his hand to acknowledge the guardswoman on duty. She gave him a smile that would get her a job in the Prostitution Services Department any day.

  “Friend of yours?” I asked.

  “Auxiliaries don’t have friends,” he replied with a grin.

  “Sorry. Close colleague?” I said, using the official term.

  “Close enough a few years back.”

  “You seem to have been close enough to every female auxiliary under thirty-five in the city, Davie.”

  “Jealousy’s a fearful thing, citizen.” The smile died on his lips. “Listen, I meant what I was saying about the senior guardian. Are you going into battle with him?”

  I looked out at the citizens trudging up the hill towards the centre for the evening shift in the city’s hotels and restaurants, casinos and strip joints. Their backs were bent, their faces drawn in the cold. Was this really the best the Council could offer them after nearly twenty years? The Enlightenment’s ideals of education, work and housing for all were still intact, but only just. I didn’t have much faith in the iron boyscouts and I wasn’t the only one. The question was, could anyone else do any better?

  “Well, are you?”

  Davie’s voice roused me from my thoughts. “Am I what?”

  “Are you going into battle with the senior guardian?”

  I looked ahead into the grey, lowering sky. “I don’t know, Davie. I’m beginning to get the feeling that he’s declared open season on me.”

  A snowflake hit the windscreen and stayed there on its own for a few seconds. Another joined it. Then they got our range and a flurry of the white stuff carpeted the glass. The frayed wipers immediately had trouble clearing it. The Land-Rover slowed as Davie took his foot off the accelerator and peered out through the glass.

  “Shit,” he said. “This is going to cause chaos. You know what the city’s like when it snows.”

  Buses with worn, remoulded tyres slewing across the roads, citizens late for work, tourists complaining – it’s the same every winter. But I had a nasty feeling that the murderer wasn’t the kind of guy to be deflected from his plans by a change in the weather. Of course, it would have helped if I had the faintest idea of what those plans were.

  The snow kept pelting down, some flakes even managing to slip through the holes in the Land-Rover’s bodywork. I felt them on my hands for a moment before they melted away, leaving as little behind as the hooded man who was haunting the city. And me.

  The Council meeting was a lot of fun. Hamilton told them how none of his operatives had turned up anything and I told them about the attack on the guardsman at Fettes. There was a brief burst of outrage at this second assault on one of the city’s servants, but as it wasn’t in the same league as the murder of the female auxiliary, they soon shut up.

  “Citizen Dalrymple.” The senior guardian paused for effect after addressing me. His lips twitched in a brief and unconvincing smile. “I have the strong impression that you are merely waiting for events to occur in this investigation. Surely there is more that you can do to pre-empt the murderer.” The tone of his voice was suddenly sharp and I remembered what Davie said about the chief boyscout’s reputation. He was trying to muscle in on my territory. Normally I give anyone who tries that the verbal equivalent of a knee in the bollocks, but that would just have ended up with me being booted off the case. No, I had to keep the senior guardian sweet: that was the only way I’d be able to find out if he or any of his colleagues had anything to do with the production of the Electric Blues.

  So I grovelled like a trainee auxiliary who’s failed all his assessments and has to beg for one last chance before being reassigned to ordinary citizen’s duties like cleaning the bogs in the city’s nightclubs.

  “I’m sorry my investigation hasn’t uncovered anything significant yet, guardian. I’d appreciate any help you can give.” Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of Hamilton’s face. He looked like he’d just seen a tourist voluntarily donate all his winnings from the racetrack in Princes Street Gardens to the Council’s urban renewal fund.

  As I suspected, the senior guardian didn’t have any specific advice to offer. He’d just been laying down the law. It’s interesting how many guardians in this supposedly equitable city get a kick out of doing that.

  “I won’t tell you again, citizen,” he said, fixing me with a steely glare. “Concentrate on finding the killer and leave the Science and Energy Directorate to me.”

  As far as I was concerned, that was as good as him hiring a mason to engrave in stone the words: “I have a secret that I’m not at all keen on you finding out about.”

  Hamilton caught up with me on the stairs outside the Council chamber. “What on earth was going on in there, Dalrymple? I know the investigation’s ground to a halt, but there was n
o need to make us look quite so cack-handed.”

  I wasn’t really listening to him. What was much more intriguing was the sight of his deputy Machiavelli racing up the stairs towards the senior guardian. His face was still greyer than a corpse’s. I turned and watched as the pair moved out of the throng of guardians to a secluded corner. Then Machiavelli started waving his arms about like a windmill in a hurricane.

  I’d have given a lot to hear that conversation.

  Back in my flat I sank into the faded, lumpy cushions of my citizen-issue sofa, took a pull of what remained in the whisky bottle and considered my options. When I was in the directorate, people used to accuse me of excessive cynicism. This manifested itself in a distrust of authority – meaning Lewis Hamilton – and a predilection for conspiracy theories. Nothing had changed. In this particular investigation I definitely distrusted the city’s top dog and I was bloody sure there was a conspiracy around the Electric Blues. Whether the two were connected was anybody’s guess. Then I remembered Roddie Aitken sitting on this very sofa and telling his story. I remembered the way he’d laughed off the hooded man as if he were a harmless crazy guy and went off into the dark to bring in the New Year. It looked more and more like he’d been set up. I hadn’t forgotten the oath I swore. I was going to find the bastard who cut him open. I was also going to find the bastards who put the killer on to him. No matter who they were.

  This time I was sprinting up a hillside in the moonlight after a shadowy figure, my breath rasping in my throat and my legs brushing through bracken. For all my efforts, I couldn’t gain on the figure. I caught a glimpse of a long coat as it breasted the summit. Then I slipped on the wet vegetation and went my length, knocking the breath out of my lungs. That woke me up with a jerk.

  There was a faint light in my bedroom. As my senses cleared from the dream, that began to puzzle me. I’d made sure the candles were extinguished before I crashed out at midnight. I sat up in bed and looked towards the door. The light was coming in through a slight gap between the door and the jamb. My heart skipped a few beats. The seal on the bedroom door is good and I always pull it to. It never opens itself during the night. I put my breathing on hold and listened carefully. Nothing, not a sound. But what was the source of the light? It couldn’t be Davie. His arrivals were about as subtle as a herd of rhinos. An icy thought stabbed into my mind. The hooded man. He’d been in the vicinity at least twice. I felt my hands tremble then the rest of my body followed suit. The auxiliary knife that I should have handed in when I was demoted was in my bookcase, behind my copy of the collected works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. All I had in the bedroom were my clothes. I forced myself to take a series of deep breaths. As I completed the fifth, I heard the unmistakable sound of the strut creak in the middle of my sofa. Jesus, there was definitely somebody there. I felt around under my bed for my boot, the only offensive weapon I could think of, gripped it hard and tensed every muscle in my body. Then powered myself out of bed and through the door.

  Although the light from the single candle on the coffee table wasn’t bright, it was enough for me to make out a single figure sitting on the sofa. The figure was wearing a long, dark-coloured coat.

  Chapter Twelve

  A moment of gut-freezing shock as what the killer had done to the groins of his two victims flashed in front of me, then I was put out of my misery. The figure raised its head and the light cast by the candle fell on the face.

  “Hello, Quint. Still in love with your bed, I see.”

  I tried to step forward then decided against it. My knees were suddenly weaker than those of a 1990s prime minister confronted by a backbench revolt. A series of shivers ran up my spine. I tried to make out the features, which were ringed by crewcut brown hair, but there was no need. I knew this person from the languid, hoarse voice.

  “Katharine?” I managed to get the name out, but inducing an auxiliary to tell a joke about Plato would have been easier. “Is it you, Katharine?”

  She stood up and let the coat drop from her shoulders. “At least you remember my name. Should I be pleased?”

  It came to my attention that I was standing in an unheated room wearing nothing more than a pair of grubby citizen-issue underpants and brandishing a well-worn size eight boot. For some reason this irritated me.

  “What the bloody hell are you doing sneaking around other people’s flats in the middle of the fucking night?” I threw the boot to the floor, narrowly missing my bare and very cold feet.

  “You’d better put some clothes on, dear. You’ll catch your death.” A smile flickered across Katharine’s lips, making her face look less gaunt. The shortness of her hair had the effect of increasing the size of her green eyes. I felt them on me.

  “Make yourself even more at home than you have already,” I said, turning tail and heading back to the bedroom. “Nothing much has changed since you were last here.”

  I sat down on the bed and tried to get a grip. Katharine Kirkwood. I never expected to see her again. After the murder investigation a couple of years back, she jumped the border fence. Edinburgh hadn’t been too kind to Katharine in the past so what was she doing back here? Surely she wasn’t risking arrest for her unauthorised departure from the city just to say hello.

  I fumbled with my flies and pulled on a heavy sweater. It’s against regulations to burn coal after curfew and I didn’t fancy risking another run-in with the senior guardian – he was energy supremo, after all.

  Katharine had pulled her coat round herself. It was brown and had a high collar, as well as a hood. I sat on the sofa, forcing her to move over. As she did that, I noticed her footwear – worn work boots rather than the cowboy variety.

  She turned to look at me, her face eventually loosening to a faint smile.

  “You look all right, Quint,” she said.

  “Oh, thanks. What were you expecting after two years? All my teeth to have fallen out and my hair to be whiter than the stuff that’s clogging up the streets?”

  “Why are you angry with me?” she said, her eyes flashing. “I’ve taken a lot of chances to get to you.”

  I nodded. “Yes, you have, haven’t you? I was impressed by that leap you made into the storeyard. Course, you’ve always been good at jumping.”

  “Haven’t I just? Was that Davie with you in the Land-Rover?”

  I ran my eyes over her. She was thinner but fitter-looking than before. Like all of us, she could have done with more to eat. Still, whatever she was involved in wasn’t doing her too much harm.

  “Didn’t you want to hang around so you could lay into him like you used to?” I asked. Davie and Katharine had never got beyond the stage of intense mutual suspicion.

  “I wasn’t sure it was him. Then that other Land-Rover arrived. I don’t want the guard to know I’m back.”

  “What about at Tollcross the other night? Was that you too?”

  She looked at me uncomprehendingly and shook her head. So that had either been the killer or my imagination playing tricks.

  I picked up the whisky bottle and held it up to the light. Enough for a slug each. I offered her it.

  “No, thanks. Try this.” She handed me a half-litre of Russian vodka.

  “Jesus, where did you get real vodka?” I let the spirit wash down my throat. Warmth instantly spread through my abdomen.

  “We can get anything from the traders – when we have something to trade.” She took the bottle from my hand. For a moment I felt her fingers on mine. The flesh tingled as if she’d spilled acid. That was my body’s way of reminding me that the first time we had sex was in this room. I didn’t actually need that reminder.

  Neither did Katharine. “Are you pleased to see me, Quint? Or have you been through too many sex sessions to remember what we did in that armchair?” Her eyelids were wide apart and the corners of her mouth twitched.

  I leaned forward and kissed her. For a few seconds she was still, then she put her hand against my chest and gently pushed me back.

  “You’r
e not answering my questions,” she said, her voice even hoarser than usual.

  I shrugged. “All right. Yes, I’m pleased to see you. No, sex sessions haven’t erased the memory of our love.”

  “Fuck you,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t remember anything about love.”

  I took the vodka back and drank. “Don’t you? Why are you here then?”

  “That’s just typical of a man,” she said, shaking her head. “Not everything revolves around your cock, Quint.”

  I gave her a weak smile. “Very little has been revolving around that recently. I’m on a case.”

  She looked interested. “Are you now?” She pulled the bottle from my fingers and drank. “Any chance of you telling me what it’s about?”

  It was time to be masterful. “No.”

  She laughed and I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck. She had the most arousing laugh I’d ever heard. I reached out for her hand. The long, thin fingers were another part of her that used to fascinate me.

  “Don’t, Quint. This is serious.”

  “So’s this.”

  She stuck both her hands inside her coat. “You want to know why I came? All right, I’ll tell you, mister investigator. You’re about to have a major drugs problem in this city.”

  I sat up as if a hatpin had just worked its way through the cushion.

  “And that’s not all,” she said, turning towards me and fixing me in her gaze. “The gang boss who’s setting it up is a complete psycho.”

  She wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t begun to suspect but how did she know all this? “Anything else?” I asked, trying to conceal my surprise.

  She nodded, her expression quizzical. “I don’t really understand this bit. The guy who told us about the drugs had escaped from one of the local gangs. He was delirious most of the time and he kept saying the same words over and over again.”

  My mind was in turmoil. What was she going to hit me with now?