The Blood Tree Page 18

  “And how off the wall is the Macbeth cult?” I asked.

  Hel gave a humourless laugh. “As off the wall as a free-standing mirror.”

  Tam Haggs was shaking his head. “Aye, those lunatics actually believe that the guy in charge is a reincarnation of Macbeth. Apparently he’s come back to make Scotland a nation again.”

  I could remember a lot of stuff in that vein at the turn of the century. Most politicians who spouted about nationhood ended up dead in the riots. “Harmless, are they?” I asked.

  Hel raised her shoulders. “Not my squad’s brief.” She sounded unhappy about that. “They put on productions of the play for the tourists as well as the locals.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Culture on the streets.”

  The inspector nodded. “This city’s always been good at that.”

  We drove past Queen Street railway station and I watched crowds of people passing in and out the doors. Obviously Glasgow’s trains were still running – I hadn’t seen one in operation since the early years of the Council. Then we moved into the commercial centre of the city and I rubbed my eyes in disbelief. The streets were packed with shoppers, some of them tourists but the majority Glasgow people – you could tell because they were wearing fist-size badges that said “I’m Glaswegian and I’m Proud”. But that wasn’t all. I assumed “the best part” that Tam Haggs had been on about was the city itself. It was a revelation. The buildings had been cleaned and the place was resplendent in rosy-hued sandstone and glinting, silvery granite. Anything concrete had been painted in pastel shades and flags and banners were strung across every available space. There was a band on every main junction, some playing traditional Scottish music, some blasting out jazz rhythms the like of which I’d never heard in Edinburgh. There was even a blues combo. They were having a go at David Alexander’s “Standing By a Lamp-Post” – they weren’t bad either.

  “So what do you think?” Tam asked as we pulled up outside a towering Victorian block with grandiose columns and capitals carved all over its reddish-brown façade.

  “Neat building,” I said. “What is it? Your kennel?”

  “What do you think of the city, arsehole?” he said, dragging me on to the pavement.

  I shrugged. “It’s not bad. Not a patch on—”

  “Bollocks,” he said. “Your place is a midden compared with this.”

  “All right, sergeant,” Hel Hyslop said, joining us beside the Llama. “This is your hotel, Quint,” she said, looking up at the magnificent edifice.

  “Glad to see you’re keeping me in the manner to which I’m accustomed.” I wasn’t going to tell them how much I was looking forward to checking in. Now I looked more closely, I could see the place’s name. The sign was small, suggesting the owners didn’t feel the need to boast. Then again, the hotel’s name was the St Vincent Palace.

  Hel gave me a frosty smile. “My superiors presumably want to soften you up.” She ran an eye down my undernourished frame. “And fatten you up.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Is cannibalism how you keep this wonder city going?”

  “You’ll soon find that out for yourself, Quint.” The inspector turned away.

  Tam Haggs grinned and led me into the luxurious entrance. If eating people was what they were into, who was I to complain? As long as I had the free run of the hotel for a day or two.

  The smiling goon in reception knew who we were. There was no messing about with filling in a registration card – that had already been taken care of. My room was on the seventh floor. Haggs took me up, told me I could order anything I wanted from room service – I got the impression he wasn’t over the moon about that – and left, locking me in. Fair enough. If this was the Glasgow version of captivity, I could live with it.

  The room, or rather the rooms were amazing. The top floor must have been the boardroom of the insurance company whose name still adorned the stonework on the façade. It had been split up into smaller rooms, but mine was still big enough to swing several lions. The main room was twice the size of my whole flat in Edinburgh, while the bathroom could have accommodated an extra-large harem. In fact, most of the harem could have got into the bath at one go. It stood on ornate dragon’s-claw feet and was surrounded with enough marble to have reduced an Aegean island to sea level. I filled the ridiculous receptacle with more water than I’d seen in a year’s worth of weekly showers in Edinburgh and wallowed, having ordered a luxury high tea complete with kippers and Dundee cake – neither of which I’d seen for a couple of decades.

  After soaking and stuffing, I looked out over the city’s rooftops. The skyline was still disfigured by tower blocks, but at least the multicoloured balloons and bright paintwork blunted the effect. I could see a couple of the river’s bends. The Clyde actually looked inviting. The city must have invested a hell of a lot in pollution and flood control – or perhaps the Council back home had made up the story about the Clyde basin being flooded as a result of global warming a couple of years ago.

  There was a knock on the door then the sound of a key in the lock. A smiling specimen in a dress suit appeared.

  “Good evening, sir,” he said with what he thought was an appropriate mixture of charm and obsequiousness. “I wonder if you’d care to try these on.” He produced several large paper bags from behind his back. “We estimated your various sizes when you arrived.”

  I pulled out a pair of sharply cut black trousers and a lime-green silk shirt. I didn’t think much of the colour but it was the first silk that had been anywhere near my anatomy, so I didn’t send the shirt away. There was also a selection of top-of-the-range underwear and a pair of loafers – I decided against wearing the latter, reckoning that my boots with their steel toe-caps might come in handy. And last but very definitely not least, there was a seriously cool black leather jacket. That did it – I was there for the duration. I was about to ask the hotel to get me the relevant immigration forms when the phone rang.

  “Quintilian Dalrymple?” asked a smooth male voice.

  “Call me Quint,” I said, running my hand down the jacket.

  “Right you are, Quint it is. My name’s Andrew Duart, Quint. I’d like to invite you to dinner.”

  I waved the hotel employee away. “Do I have a choice?”

  There was a dry laugh. “Realistically, no.”

  “Who are you, anyway?” I demanded.

  “We don’t usually bother with titles in Glasgow, Quint.” The voice had suddenly acquired the superior tone that I’d been aware of in Hel Hyslop’s. “When we do, mine is first secretary. I run the city. Is that any help?”

  I wasn’t going to show him any respect. “Help would be an explanation of why I’m here, pal.”

  “Which you’ll get,” Duart said. “At dinner. You’ll be picked up shortly.”

  Maybe the luxury high tea hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

  Chapter Eleven

  Tam Haggs unlocked the door and ordered me to come with him. Under normal circumstances I would have told him to sit on the contents of his shiny holster, but I was too excited by the prospect of wearing the leather jacket. In Edinburgh vanity has been suppressed for over twenty years. I had a lot of lost time to make up.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as I was led towards the lift.

  “You’ve been told, haven’t you? You’re going out to dinner.” It sounded like he hadn’t been invited.

  “Yeah, but where?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Extricating information from the sergeant was harder than getting a smile out of an auxiliary in Edinburgh. We exited the lift and skirted a group of animated Chinese tourists. Outside it was hard to tell that night had fallen. The streets were lit up brighter than Berlin in 2003 when a bunch of neo-Nazis firebombed the Reichstag. The shops were all still open and there was no shortage of customers. Glasgow seemed to be shoppers’ paradise.

  “Where’s the inspector?” I asked as Haggs pushed me into the Llama.

  “You�
�ll see her soon enough.”

  “Shouldn’t you be giving me the guided tour?” I demanded. “After all, your bosses seem to think I’m worth pampering.”

  “Shut your face, you Edinburgh poof!” the sergeant yelled.

  “If I had my way you’d never have got as far as the border.” He slammed his foot on the brake.

  I put my arms out to stop myself crashing into the windscreen. “Fuck you, Haggs!”

  He grinned at me malevolently as he waved an old lady across the road. “Always fasten your seat-belt before commencing a journey.” He gave me a derisive look. “Course, you don’t have cars where you come from, do you?”

  I ignored that. If Haggs started thinking he’d got the better of me, maybe his concentration would drop and I’d be able to give him the slip. I twitched my head. What the hell was I thinking? Even if I got loose, how would I get out of the city?

  We turned east on to the road that ran alongside the Clyde. Pleasure boats festooned with lights were moving slowly up and down. There were plenty of people having a good time on board.

  “Tourists?” I asked.

  “Some of them,” Haggs said. “Most will be Glasgow people. We all get a free evening’s entertainment from the city once a month.” He glanced at me. “I bet you wankers don’t.”

  “No, we spend our spare time down the mines.”

  The sergeant laughed. “And sucking off the tourists, I heard.”

  “That’ll be right, dickhead,” I said under my breath.

  “Watch it, son. I’ve got very good hearing.”

  So I watched the city and its lights. Soon we turned away from the river and cut past an expanse of parkland.

  “Isn’t that Glasgow Green?” I asked, a distant memory stirring. I once ended up there with a girlfriend when I was a schoolboy daytripper. A park keeper caught me with my hand down her blouse and called his mates over to have a laugh. That was the last time I went out with the girl in question.

  Haggs was nodding. “And this is where you get off.” Ahead of us was a squat sandstone building. Bright lights shone off the high semi-circular glasshouse to the rear. “The People’s Palace,” he said, a note of pride in his voice. “This is where the elected representatives hold all their evening events.”

  They were certainly keen on stressing the informal nature of the city. The so-called palace looked more like an oversized café than a gathering place for the high and mighty. The car park to one side was full of Llamas. Someone in the administration must have done a major deal with the manufacturers. I wondered if there were any kickbacks involved – so far everything about Glasgow was too good to be true.

  “Come on,” the sergeant said. “They’re waiting for you, Christ knows why.”

  I stepped out and checked my leather jacket was hanging right, which made my escort smirk. Then he saw his superior and got serious.

  “Everything all right, Tam?” Hel Hyslop asked. She was wearing an elegant black trouser suit that managed to say “I am a responsible city servant” and “I’m pretty cool” at the same time.

  “He’s a real pussycat,” Haggs replied. I got the impression he had a large collection of gangster movies.

  “Uh-huh.” Hyslop looked at me dubiously. “A pussycat in leather.” She turned to her sergeant. “Stand by in the squadroom,” she ordered. “I may need you later.”

  Haggs nodded and hit the road. I knew one thing about him for sure – he was bloody keen on his job. I wondered when he’d last slept.

  “Right,” the inspector said. “They’re waiting for you.”

  “They?” I asked. “Who are they, exactly?”

  “The ward representatives. All fifty of them are here.”

  I stared at her. “Fifty of them? What do they want from me?”

  She met my gaze. “I imagine they want to examine a specimen from Edinburgh, Quint.”

  It was then that I remembered the crack I’d made about cannibalism. Being invited over for dinner suddenly lost some of its appeal.

  The people in the long function room stopped talking as soon as I appeared. I noticed a couple of things immediately. One, they were all – both men and women – wearing clothes that by Edinburgh standards were very high-altitude fashion. And two, most of them had a heavy gold chain of office round their necks, each with a different design.

  A tall guy with unnaturally black hair swept back from his face and a carefully trimmed goatee beard stepped forward.

  “Good evening, Quint,” he said, smiling broadly. “We spoke earlier. Andrew Duart.” He nodded to the inspector. “Hel.”

  “Andrew,” she riposted. First names were obviously de rigueur.

  “So, Andrew,” I said, accepting the glass of what smelled like extremely rare malt that he handed me, “are you the one who signed the warrant for me?” There was still silence all around us. I went for broke. “Are you the one who authorised my kidnapping?”

  The smile on Duart’s face didn’t fade and there were no sharp intakes of breath around the room. Maybe they were all in on it. Oh well, it was worth a try.

  “Drink your whisky, Quint,” he said. “There are no secrets here.”

  I drank my whisky and let him give me a refill, but I didn’t buy his line. Long experience of the Council’s love affair with information control made me suspicious of any power structure that flaunts its openness. Still, the whisky was excellent and I didn’t have anything better to do that night.

  People started coming up to me and shaking my hand. They were all cheery and welcoming – something I couldn’t square with the way I’d been brought to Glasgow. The women were smart, like Hel Hyslop carrying their clothes with a lack of affectation, and the men had strong grips and jutting jaws. After a while I began to realise that none of them looked more than fifty – Duart probably wasn’t even that old. So how come there weren’t any more mature ward representatives? Did this supposedly free and equal state discriminate against its aged citizens?

  Then, as if to deal conclusively with that line of thought, two older men confronted me. The first was of average height and his face was very gaunt. His chest was poking forward like a pigeon’s, gold chain to the fore.

  “From Edinburgh, are you?” he said, his bright blue eyes fixed on mine. “What are you doing over here, Quintilian Dalrymple?” He suddenly seemed to remember his companion. “This is Mister Trent Crummett of Ohio. He’s also a long way from home.”

  Before I could answer, Duart took my arm. He led me towards the centre of a long table. Hel Hyslop kept close behind.

  “Who was that guy?” I asked, glancing back at the man with the piercing eyes.

  “David Rennie,” the first secretary replied, twitching his head. “One of our more . . . um . . . enterprising ward representatives. He’s brought a lot of American business to the city.”

  I got the feeling that Duart wasn’t a fan. Then I was distracted by the spread in front of me. “Jesus,” I gasped. A cold collation that Mrs Beeton would have been impressed by was laid out on the pristine table linen – everything from lobster and crayfish to legs of lamb and mounds of rare roast beef. There was also a huge display of fresh vegetables and fruit, including many varieties that I hadn’t seen since I was a kid.

  “Better than you’re used to in Edinburgh?” Duart asked, his lips twitching into another smile.

  “Just a touch,” I mumbled, but I wasn’t going to let him have all his own way. “This produce wasn’t all grown in Glasgow and its environs.”

  “A large part of it was,” he said, contradicting me smoothly. “Glasgow agriculture has been very successful in recent years. Of course, we do trade intensively with other parts of Britain and Europe, not to mention the rest of the world.” He sat down and draped a spotless napkin over his lap. “Glasgow is totally committed to equality and the sharing of produce and profit. Free enterprise flourishes and all citizens are treated in the same way.”

  I glanced down the table at the ward representatives in their fla
sh clothes. “If everyone’s equal, how come this lot get designer suits? How come they wear gold chains to distinguish them from everyone else?”

  Andrew Duart didn’t show any sign of irritation. Instead he just gave me another of his annoying smiles. “I meant to ask you, Quint. How do you like the clothes we sent over?” He ran his eyes over me. “The jacket fits very well, doesn’t it?”

  I shrugged. “If you want to expand my wardrobe, why should I object? I haven’t bought into your brand of democracy.”

  “No, you’re the one who’s spent the last twenty years working for a dictatorship.” Even now Duart’s tone was light and his eyes playful. “But leaving that aside, I’m happy to answer any questions you might have. As regards clothes, all Glasgow citizens receive an allowance for fashion items such as these you see around the table. We have some of the best designers in the world and the fashion industry here is very well developed.” He gave a smile which, this time, was definitely self-satisfied. “We see no reason why the populace at large shouldn’t gain some benefit from the industry’s success.”

  Christ, Glasgow a centre of world fashion? Things had definitely changed since I was a teenager.

  “As for the chains of office,” Duart continued, leaning back to allow a waiter to fill his wine glass, “they were donated by one of the multinationals we work with. They’re the property of the city, not the individuals who wear them.”

  “But the individuals who wear them stick out from the masses, don’t they?” Suddenly I felt a hand on my left thigh. Hel Hyslop was holding a glass in her other hand but she was definitely the guilty party.

  “It’s a mark of office, not of material difference from the citizen body,” Duart said, serving scallops on to his plate.

  “But—” I broke off and winced. Strong fingers had just gripped my cock very hard.

  Duart glanced at me. “Something wrong?”

  “Em, no, nothing at all.” I gave Hel Hyslop a loose smile then picked up my glass. “Pretty interesting wine, Andrew,” I said, taking the inspector’s hint. As soon as I changed the subject, the hand was withdrawn.