The Bone Yard Page 15

  “It seems to be a place,” she continued. “Or at least the code-name for a place.”

  “Tell me, Katharine.”

  She ran her fingertips down her cheek then twitched her nose like she’d just sniffed industrial-strength disinfectant.

  “The Bone Yard,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. Then she realised I was as jumpy as a male tourist near the stage in the Three Graces. “What is it, Quint? Have you heard of it?”

  I nodded slowly and reached for the bottle again. It looked like it was going to be a very long night.

  Katharine shivered and closed her eyes. After a couple of minutes I began to wonder if she’d fallen asleep. Then she gave a start and sat up straight again.

  “Where have you been hiding out in the city?”

  “We’ve got some contacts here.” She frowned and looked at me suspiciously. “Are you working for the Council again, Quint?”

  “Yes, but not full time. Don’t worry, Katherine. I’m not going to hand you or your friends over to the guard.”

  “You’d better not try,” she replied, her expression harder than a barracks rugby player’s. Then she shivered again, this time uncontrollably.

  I put my arm round her shoulders. “What is it, Katharine?”

  She let out a sob then swallowed hard. “Food,” she said with a gasp. “I haven’t had anything for a couple of days.”

  “Glad to see your people have been looking after you,” I said on the way to the kitchen that takes up one corner of my main room. “I haven’t got much myself. I’ve not been in a lot recently.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” Katharine said weakly. “I’ve been looking for you all over the city.”

  I found a can of stew that had escaped Davie’s notice and opened it. The electricity was off so the cooker was no good. “Have this,” I said, handing it to her. “You’re taking your life in your hands eating it cold. God knows what state the meat’s in. There are rumours that the Supply Directorate’s been having problems with diseased cattle.”

  She started wolfing it down. “You’d have been much better off coming with me out of the city, Quint,” she said between mouthfuls. “At least we have clean herds on our land.”

  Some dissidents run collective farms, defending them against the lunatics and criminal gangs who maraud about the country.

  Katharine had finished eating but she was still trembling. I touched her hand. It was freezing. There was only one solution.

  “Come on,” I said, pulling her to her feet. “You’re the one who’s going to catch her death. The bed’s the only warm place in this flat.”

  She didn’t resist, but as I pulled off her coat and bundled her under the covers she looked at me sternly. “I haven’t forgotten what they taught us in auxiliary training about keeping each other warm on night exercises. But that’s all that we’re going to do, all right?”

  I gave her my best salute and crawled up against her. After a while she stopped shivering and moved so that there was a gap between us.

  “Right, Quint. Let’s get down to business.”

  Her business in the past had been purveying sexual services to tourists in the city’s biggest hotel, but I didn’t think mentioning that would be a good idea. She seemed to have lost interest in carnal matters.

  “Okay,” I said, letting my head sink into the sack of straw that the Supply Directorate classifies as a pillow. “What do you want to tell me about first? The drugs, the psycho or the Bone Yard?”

  She glanced down at me and twitched her head. “It doesn’t matter. As far as I can see, they’re all part of the same story.”

  I was afraid she’d say that.

  “Our fields are in what used to be East Lothian, south of Dunbar,” she said after a long silence. “There are about a hundred of us – enough to look after the animals, work the crops and guard the fences. I made sure we got a hold of rifles and ammunition not long after I arrived. Most of the gangs keep their distance.” Katharine glanced at me dispassionately. “Any who don’t, we shoot.”

  “Which is why firearms were banned in Edinburgh,” I put in. “Mob rule’s a dangerous thing.”

  She glared at me. “We’re not a mob. Anyway, it’s not as simple as that and you know it, Quint. This city’s got plenty wrong with it from what I’ve been hearing.”

  I got my hands out from beneath the covers and tried to calm her down. “All right, cool it. I’m even less of a fan of the Council than I used to be.”

  She kept her gaze on me, then laughed. “And you never exactly gave the guardians your unconditional support in the old days.” Her face became serious again. “Quint, I heard your mother died. I’m sorry. You must have had a hard time.”

  Those words affected me more than the official tributes at the funeral. Katharine had first-hand experience of the catastrophic mistakes my mother had made when she was senior guardian, but she was still sympathetic. I’d missed her openness.

  “Anyway, our fence guards found the guy who deserted a couple of weeks back,” she said, leaning over me to reach for the vodka. My nostrils were filled by the reek of unwashed clothing and sweat which didn’t completely obscure the delicate smell I remembered from the few times we’d been naked together.

  Katharine gulped then quivered as the spirit fired up inside her. “He was in a bad way physically and mentally. He took a couple of bullets in the abdomen when he slipped out of the gang’s camp. And he was raving. At first we thought he’d messed himself up permanently on some brain-damaging drug.”

  Electric Blues, for instance? I took the bottle and swallowed from it. There wasn’t much left. At least we were keeping ourselves warm.

  “So what did he say that sent you back into the city you love so much?” I asked.

  Katharine gave me the kind of look that guardswomen reserve for the barracks jackass when they draw him as sex session partner. “In one of his relatively lucid periods he told me about this formula for a hot new drug that his gang leader had got a hold of. Apparently it was pretty complicated and needed a good chemist in a well-equipped lab to produce it.”

  “And his gang boss had a contact in the city who could arrange that?”

  She nodded then looked at me sternly. “Am I telling you something you already know, Quint? This isn’t a one-way transaction.”

  “I’ll tell you what I’m working on, Katharine.” I squeezed her arm. “Honest.”

  She pulled her arm away. “You’ll tell me after I tell you? Sounds like kids playing doctors and nurses.”

  “We can do that too if you like.”

  Her face went blank and her body jerked away from mine.

  “What is it, Katharine? What’s the matter?”

  She was gazing straight ahead into the darkness, the candle on the bedside table casting its dim light on to her profile. Although she looked thinner, the lines of her features hadn’t changed in the two years since I’d last seen her. But she’d been strong then, hardened by her experience of prison and the Prostitution Services Department. Now her toughness seemed more of an act.

  “I . . . I had a bad time after I went over the wire. There are a lot of animals out there.”

  “Tell me, Katharine.”

  She kept her eyes off me. “No, Quint. I can’t. It’s over now.”

  I touched her hand with one finger. “No, it isn’t. You’re still in pain.” I sat up and moved closer to her. “Remember when I told you about Caro? You persuaded me it would do me good to share the pain. I didn’t believe you at first, but you were right.” Her eyelashes quivered and for a moment I thought she was going to weep, but she kept control. “Let it go, Katharine. You can trust me.”

  She turned slowly towards the light and looked into my eyes. Then she shuddered briefly and dropped her gaze, like a deer that senses the stalker’s gun but can’t find it in herself to turn tail.

  “There was a gang in the hills east of Lauder,” she said slowly. “They lived off the sheep that have run wild th
ere since the original farmers were massacred years ago.” She lifted her eyes to mine and I saw the hatred in them. “They really were animals, Quint. They called themselves the Cavemen. The morons had burned down all the cottages in the area, so they had to dig themselves holes in the ground. Bastards.” She spat out the last word and lapsed back into silence.

  “They caught you?” I asked haltingly.

  She gave a bitter laugh. “I thought I could look after myself. But not against those madmen. They even slashed each other with their skinning knives in their desperation to get at me.” She looked at me, her gaze suddenly unsteady as she finally began to lose control. “I was tied to a tree for a month before I killed two of them and escaped.”

  “Jesus.” I tried to put my arm round her.

  “Don’t!” Her shout must have woken most of the neighbours. “Don’t, Quint,” she repeated, her voice back to something approaching normal volume. “I . . . I haven’t been with a man since then.”

  I moved away. “I understand, Katharine.”

  She looked at me in disbelief.

  “Or at least I’m trying to understand.” In fact I was way out of my depth and suffering from cramp in both legs.

  “So now you know,” she said, her face loosening into a faint smile. “After years spent satisfying tourists, I’ve turned into Katharine the Untouchable. Funny, isn’t it?”

  I wasn’t laughing. Suddenly I had a great urge to change the subject. “The guy who told you about the drug formula. What did he say about the psycho who was running the deal?”

  Katharine nodded, happy to stop talking about what she’d been through. “He was completely terrified of him. Remember, this was a man who was delirious most of the time, but even when he was raving he kept going on about the Screecher.”

  “The Screecher?”

  She nodded. “That’s what the leader of his gang was called. He was terrified the Screecher was going to track him down and cut him to pieces for deserting.”

  Cut him to pieces? That sounded familiar.

  “What else did he say about him?”

  Katharine shrugged. “Nothing very coherent. I had trouble making sense of it. About the drugs, his boss . . .”

  “And what about the Bone Yard?” I asked, trying not to sound too interested.

  “He kept repeating that and moaning – not just from the pain of his wounds, but as if it were something horrendous that he could barely live with.”

  Like William McEwan, I thought. But not like the senior guardian. I hadn’t seen many signs of spiritual disturbance on his saintly face.

  “He never explained what it was though.” Katharine settled back on her pillow, her eyes flickering. She was about to pass out, but I needed more.

  “So where is he, the wounded gang member? I need to see him for myself. It sounds like he could do with hospital treatment as well.”

  She shook her head weakly, her eyes firmly closed now. “He’s long past that stage, Quint. He died a week ago.”

  “Shit.” The first half-decent lead I’d got in the case and it vanished quicker than the beggars on Princes Street after the Enlightenment came to power.

  Katharine turned over, her back towards me. “Look in my coat pocket. I’ve got his ID.”

  Santa Claus does exist after all. Even though he’d arrived a bit late this season.

  I came to as the front door slammed.

  Katharine sat up straight. A wicked-looking knife that I hadn’t noticed before glinted in the faint glow from the streetlights. “Who’s that?” she whispered.

  “Davie. Get back under the covers.”

  I jumped out of bed and reached the door before he came in.

  “You’re up early, Quint,” he said. “It’s only seven o’clock. What happened? Guilty conscience keep you awake?”

  “Something like that,” I mumbled, suddenly aware that I was seriously short of shut-eye.

  “Here.” He tossed me a brown paper bag, which I failed to catch.

  “Croissants? Jesus, Davie, where did you get them?”

  He looked over from the kitchen where he was starting to make coffee, a grin spreading across his bearded face.

  “Fell off the back of a Supply Directorate van, did they?”

  “Are you suggesting that a guardsman is capable of dishonesty? That’s a serious offence, citizen.” His face didn’t look very serious.

  “Aye, and so’s nicking tourist provisions.” I headed back to the bedroom with my share of breakfast.

  Katharine’s head emerged from the covers.

  “Take these,” I said in a low voice.

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll pick something up later. Now listen. Stay here all day. I’ll get back as soon as I can. It’s not safe for you on the streets.” I pulled on my trousers and put the dead gang member’s ID card in the pocket.

  She raised her eyes to the ceiling. “I can look after myself.”

  “Please,” I said, putting my hand on hers. “There are some serious crazies out there.”

  She pulled her hand away, not too fast, and looked at me accusingly. “You never told me about the case you’re working on.”

  “I will.” Then, before she could move, I leaned forward and kissed her once on the lips. “Later.”

  If her expression was anything to go by, I was lucky not to walk into the main room with the haft of her knife protruding from my chest.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Davie and I went out into the cold. Darkness still prevailed in the sky overhead and the underpowered streetlights weren’t making too much of an impression on it. They were helped a bit by the thick carpet of snow that was lying on all the surfaces. It reflected their feeble glow and muffled the sound of the buses on the main road. Citizens unlucky enough to be working in the mines were already heading for the collection points, scarves wrapped around their faces. Eyes were sunk as deep in their sockets as those of the prisoners on Death Row after the last, desperate UK government reintroduced capital punishment.

  Davie had parked the Land-Rover away from the pavement as the snow had drifted near the buildings. Walking into the road, I caught sight of thin parallel tyre tracks about two feet apart. Probably some poor sod in a wheelchair going to the infirmary for an early morning appointment.

  “Where to then?” asked Davie.

  “The main archive on George IVth Bridge.”

  “Not again,” he groaned as the starter motor whined and eventually fired. “This case is about as much fun as the paper chases we did during auxiliary training.”

  “Don’t knock it, guardsman. It’s the only lead we’ve got.” He was about to ask me about it. I’d have to tell him eventually but I didn’t want him to know about Katharine yet. I spoke before he could. “Did the guardsman who was attacked yesterday have anything more to say?”

  Davie shook his head. “I checked with his barracks commander late last night. Apparently he was still pretty shaky.”

  “He took a hell of a pounding.”

  Davie swung carefully round the snow-covered junction at Tollcross, slowing to walking pace as we passed a City Guard emergency unit. A Mines Department bus had mounted the pavement and turned an Edinburgh Guardian kiosk into firewood. The passengers were standing around looking dazed and confused, but happy; whatever happened next, they’d missed at least part of their shift in the frozen earth.

  “I wouldn’t worry,” Davie said as he accelerated up Lauriston Place. “I played rugby against that guardsman once. He used his head like it was the business end of a battering ram. He probably bangs it against a wall himself if he doesn’t get his daily ration of hits.”

  At the archive I sent him off to see if Hamilton’s people had reported anything overnight. That made him very happy. Then I told him to come back as soon as he’d finished, which didn’t impress him so much.

  Even at eight in the morning there were plenty of auxiliaries in the archive. Paper has come to dominate this city in the eighteen years
since the Enlightenment came to power. Here were large numbers of highly educated people spending their lives chasing files. Winston Smith in 1984 would have felt very much at home, though his first name wouldn’t have made him popular with the Council – too redolent of what’s still seen as the bankrupt legacy of the British establishment. The Enlightenment regarded computers as socially divisive and educationally sterile, so they got rid of as many as they could. Those the guardians have kept are used to run the Council’s classified records, but there aren’t enough to go round for that. Just as well. That means I can still find a lot of sensitive information in the archives.

  I found a quiet corner and took out the ID card Katharine had given me. Under the bright reading light it didn’t take me long to discover something very interesting. The card proclaimed that Hamish Robin Campbell had been born on 27.11.1970, had the status of ordinary citizen, was five feet nine inches tall, weighed twelve stone six pounds, had light brown hair, a complete set of teeth and an appendix scar; he was in the Leisure Department of the Tourism Directorate, lived at 19b Elgin Street and his next of kin was his wife Muriel Campbell. The photograph that stared out dully from the laminated card was of a balding, sad-faced man who looked like he’d been working too hard for too many years. In that respect he was no different from most of his fellow citizens who’d invested their lives in the Enlightenment. Except they don’t carry fake ID cards. If you’ve seen as many as I have, you can spot a ringer faster than the annual strawberry ration disappears from the city’s foodstores.

  I had a pretty good idea where this particular specimen came from too. The City Guard’s Documentation Department is staffed by skilled forgers and graphic designers. The problem is, they’re all auxiliaries and auxiliaries are by training and nature perfectionists. They make a really good job of every false ID they produce for undercover agents, with the result that those IDs often look more convincing than the real cards the Citizen Registration Department issues.

  So what was going on here with Hamish Robin Campbell? Was he a former guard operative who’d deserted? Or could he be an active undercover man who’d penetrated the gang that was run by the crazy guy he called the Screecher? The obvious person to ask would be Hamilton, but that wouldn’t prove much. I’d never heard of covert guard operations being run outside the city borders and, anyway, Campbell might have been handled by one of the iron boyscouts without the public order guardian’s knowledge. I also wanted to keep this to myself till I found out more about the dead man and his links with the drug formula.