The Blood Tree Page 23

  She nodded. “Under normal circumstances the regulations do require that.”

  “What do you mean ‘under normal circumstances’?”

  Hyslop pushed her chair back and stood up. Haggs moved away, his eyes still on me and his face set hard.

  “Exceptions can be made,” the inspector said.

  “Exceptions?” I was having difficulty restraining myself. “Exceptions on what grounds?”

  Hel shrugged. “On medical safety grounds.”

  “What does that mean?” I demanded.

  “If the cadaver is infectious, for example.”

  I straightened up. “Was there any indication of that with the adolescent?”

  “I don’t know, Quint. They’re sending the p-m report over now.”

  “That’s something,” I said between my teeth.

  Haggs stepped towards me. “You want to get a grip on your temper. We don’t speak to senior officers like that around here.”

  “Maybe you don’t,” I said. “Junior officer.”

  He raised his fist and pulled it back.

  “Forget it, Tam,” Hyslop said. “I can look after myself.”

  Haggs nodded. “I know you can. I’m just not sure that this cunt does.”

  I didn’t bother responding to that. Instead I picked up the notebook I’d been using and turned away. “We’re going nowhere fast with this. No one saw D . . .” I broke off, coughing loudly. Using the Edinburgh youth’s name would have been a major faux pas. “. . . no one saw the dead boy in the streets, no one’s been able to identify him, and we don’t know why he died. Bit of a result, eh?”

  The others looked at their files leadenly.

  “Still,” I continued, “at least we’ve found out which arsehole was responsible for giving Leadbelly back his boot-laces.” I was glaring at them but they still weren’t responding. Half an hour earlier a sheepish young policeman had been dragged in. His story was that Leadbelly had complained of cold feet in the holding cell. Constable Plod Minor claimed he didn’t know prisoners weren’t allowed laced footwear. I wasn’t convinced. He looked thick enough, but I found it hard to believe that a high priority suspect like Leadbelly would have been assigned such an inexperienced guard. The latest news from the hospital was that Leadbelly was still unconscious. If someone had wanted to shut him up they may well have achieved that end, even if he wasn’t dead.

  There was a rap on the glass door. “Special delivery,” said a fresh-faced young policewoman. Apparently the Major Crime Squad recruited straight from primary school. She handed Hel a large envelope and departed after giving Tam Haggs a frosty look. Perhaps he’d tried it on with her in the past. If she’d told him where to go, she wasn’t as stupid as her male counterpart from the cells.

  “What have we got then?” I asked, moving to the desk.

  “P-m report,” Hyslop said, running her finger down the typed front sheet. After a minute she sighed and handed it over to me. “No great help.”

  I tried to make sense of the pathologist’s tortured syntax in the summary. It didn’t help that the layout of the report bore no resemblance to that of the forms I was used to – trust Glasgow to do things as differently as possible from Edinburgh.

  “Time of death, between nine-thirty and ten p.m.,” I read. “Cause of death, massive brain injuries caused by a single heavy blow to right side of cranium. Medical history unknown but no debilitating or malignant conditions. No traces of any drugs or alcohol. Stomach contents show ham and wholemeal bread and tea, consumed approximately three hours before death.” I glanced over the back-up pages but failed to find anything else of significance.

  Hel Hyslop was sitting back in her chair with her hands crossed, her eyes on me. “So, Mister Investigator, what next?”

  “If there were no debilitating or malignant conditions, why was the p-m carried out in secret?” I asked.

  “The pathologist isn’t required to provide that information,” she replied. “Perhaps he was given orders by a superior.”

  “Like who? Surely there would be a reference to that in the report?”

  She raised her shoulders.

  I sat on the other side of the desk. “Look, Hel, I was born with a suspicious mind. If I don’t attend a p-m, I don’t trust the report.”

  Her eyes flared. “Don’t you dare question our procedures, Quint. You’re a guest in this city and—”

  “I’m an unwilling guest in this city,” I interrupted. “And anyway, your procedures stink.”

  This time Haggs completed his punch.

  I hit the floor.

  Chapter Fourteen

  We were in the Llama, Hel Hyslop at the wheel. Haggs had been banished to the back seat after his attempt to dislocate my jaw. Fortunately the evasive action I took meant that he only scuffed the end of my chin. Round one to Quintilian on points, but I knew I had to watch my back – and my front – even more carefully from now on.

  “Don’t we need tickets for the show?” I asked. “There were a lot of people in the necropolis this morning.”

  “I’ve arranged that with the Cult Squad,” Hyslop said, stopping at a crossing to let a group of youths stream over the road. They must have been at the magic all afternoon. In Edinburgh going over the top like that would have got them a month down the mines. “As long as you give a big enough donation to Macbeth’s cause, you’re in.” Her tone was heavily ironic.

  I peered out into the street. Despite the bright lights of the shops and bars in the city centre, it was a gloomy evening. The idea of watching an open-air production wasn’t at all enticing. “His cause? You think he’s serious about reuniting Scotland? He’s just a smalltime crazy, isn’t he?”

  Hel shook her head. “I’m not so sure. My opposite number in the Cult Squad reckons the so-called king’s been getting much stronger in recent months. Unlike most of these madmen, he doesn’t seem to be corrupt. Everything he takes is used to recruit new members and set up branches across the wards.”

  I looked at her face. It was glowing green in the light from the dashboard. “Yeah, but how can he seriously imagine that Scotland can be brought back into existence?” I asked. “Apart from a few city-states with varying degrees of civilisation, the land is wilder than it was in Viking times.”

  Haggs stirred in the back. “There’s only one state with any degree of civilisation, pal, and it’s not the one you come from.”

  I turned to him. “Glasgow, city of the right hook, you mean?”

  “Stop it,” Hel Hyslop ordered. “Otherwise I’ll send the pair of you to Greenock, city of continuous shifts in the shipyards.”

  Round two to the inspector.

  This time we left the Llama down a back-street and walked a couple of hundred yards to join the crowd that was streaming into the necropolis. The place was even weirder at night. Although the bright glare from the stage up the hill was obviously produced by electricity, the path that led through the ranks of funeral monuments and headstones was lit by wooden torches dipped in pitch – the return of the Dark Ages.

  A tall guy in casual clothes appeared at Hyslop’s elbow and handed her an envelope.

  “Tickets,” he said in a low voice. “My people are all in position. All you have to do is give the word.”

  Hel nodded and he disappeared. She’d spent the afternoon planning a heavy-duty raid on the cult. It wasn’t just the handbill from the dead boy that had got her going – apparently there had been a couple of reports of people going missing after showing interest in Macbeth. The king had some awkward questions to answer. I had a few I wanted to ask his henchman with the messed-up face mask as well.

  The area around the stage was packed. There was a ring of seats at the front and behind it a great throng of people had gathered. A lot of them were in medieval costume: leather jerkins and tights for the men, low-cut dresses and frilly blouses for the women. In Glasgow even the cult members were as chic as it comes.

  We took our seats in the fourth row, Hyslop making sure
she sat between Haggs and me. I wasn’t complaining. She looked around surreptitiously, locating her colleagues. I stuck to examining the stage. Apart from the ubiquitous “Die for the Experience, Live Forever!” banner, there was a line of shields with what I recognised to be the coats of arms of Scottish cities. Glasgow’s tree and fish were to the fore. Edinburgh’s emblem was there too – not the Council’s maroon heart but the original heraldic castle. I wondered what the guardians back home would think about Macbeth’s ideas. Not much, I was sure. But ordinary Edinburgh citizens might be persuaded to give reunification a chance – many of them had forgotten the disasters brought about by the Scottish Parliament after the millennium.

  Then, without any warning, the lights were killed. The audience shrieked for a few seconds but soon settled down to watch the spectacle. Except there wasn’t one. Darkness and silence reigned. All you could hear was the steady tolling of a bell in the distance and the croak of the ubiquitous raven. Where the hell had the witches got to?

  It turned out they weren’t on yet. The first change the new Macbeth had made to the play was to start it with himself, not the three old bags. It was his cult so I suppose he could do what he wanted. There was a roll of thunder that sounded pretty fake, then a spotlight picked out the king standing centre-stage. He was in full regal garb from crown to calf boots, his legs apart and his claymore planted in front of them. His hands were resting on the haft, which almost reached to his neck.

  “Friends, welcome!” he cried. “I pray your indulgence for a few short minutes.”

  We were in for a message from the management.

  “I have looked into the seeds of time,” the king continued. “I have seen which grain will grow and which will not. I shall give a happy prologue to the imperial theme.”

  It was a long time since I’d read the play, but I could tell that we were now in Glasgow, city of paraphrase. If he went on like this, he’d soon use up all the juicy bits.

  “Our movement is under way,” he went on, “our cult is growing. But we are more than that. We are Scotland’s destiny made manifest. Politics are not enough for us, neither is religion. We are a historical imperative, an unstoppable force. Scotland will be one again!”

  To my amazement, there was a huge burst of cheering and applause. Jesus, what were people playing at? Surely they didn’t go along with this lunacy. As the rant continued, the ovations increased in magnitude. At least the king had given up mangling the play. Now he was on about how he would drive out the marauders from the glens and the inadequate rulers from the cities.

  “Getting a bit close to the bone, isn’t he?” I said to Hyslop. “Does Duart like this kind of thing?”

  She had her eyes fixed on the king, her grey eyes glinting. “Duart doesn’t like attacks on the system at all. That’s one reason the Cult Squad’s been on Macbeth’s back recently.”

  “I’m sure Glasgow’s democratic institutions are strong enough to take criticism,” I said with an ironic smile.

  She turned her steely eyes on me. “People are being murdered, Quint. People are going missing. The state’s entitled to take action.” She shook her head. “I suppose your dictators in Edinburgh would just sit back and let the killers get on with it?”

  The king ended his address with a flourish and the crowd exploded again.

  “Why are you so sure there’s more than one murderer?” I asked as the lights were dimmed. “And why should there be a connection with this cult?”

  She pursed her lips. “I was making a general point.” She turned to the front again. “I don’t know how many people are behind these killings, but I’m pretty sure that bastard in the crown knows something about them. Why was the handbill in that dead boy’s pocket?”

  “It isn’t much to go on,” I said, wondering if she was telling me the whole story.

  There were more rolls of thunder and the raven was croaking like there was no tomorrow. Show time. The witches had finally made it. In the dull red glow from the fire under the cauldron they started capering and prancing, making the most of the bard’s great first scene. I sat back in the back-wrenching chair to enjoy the production.

  They hadn’t changed the structure much – just the whole point of the play. Macbeth was no longer a tragic figure racked by ambition, fate, the defects in his character and a manic spouse. Now he was made out to be a virtuous general with his country’s rather than his personal destiny at heart. So out went the scenes leading up to the murder of Duncan and in came a fantasy about the old king’s duplicitous nature. Out went everything about Banquo’s suspicions and his family’s eventual accession to the throne and in came a sub-plot showing him to be Duncan’s assassin. And out went anything critical of Macbeth – now he was brave and generous throughout. It reminded me of a dire movie I saw when I was a kid, William Wallace played by a wanker spouting an American accent till he was blue in the face and making up history as he went along.

  But there were two scenes that made me sit up. The first was in the fourth act, when the witches conjure up apparitions to show Macbeth what lies in the future for him and Scotland. They started with a paraphrase. In the text, before the king arrives one of the hags says “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes”. Except this witch said “something wondrous”. That was just the beginning.

  This scene was always one of my favourites; anything to do with evil spirits and ghostly manifestations appealed to me when I was a kid and didn’t know any better. The present Macbeth and his script editors had torn it to shreds. They’d left the apparition of the bloody child – a real infant, wailing piteously and covered in what I hoped was tomato ketchup, was carried on to show that “none of woman born” would harm the king. And they’d left unaltered the child who comes on holding a tree and gives a speech about Birnam Wood and Dunsinane. But they’d replaced the line of eight kings, supposed to be followed by Banquo’s ghost, with a line of eight royal figures wearing masks in the likeness of the cult leader. Talk about self-worship. It went down well with the crowd though.

  The noise almost made me take my eye off the stage at the moment when the bogeyman made his entrance. Christ knows who he was meant to be – he had his usual torn face and greasy hair on – but he kneeled before his liege and presented him with an even larger crown. Then he spoke. That shut everyone up instantaneously. His voice was terrifying – breathless and cracked like that of a singer who’d taken too many performance-buggering drugs.

  “Accept the crown of Scotland,” he was saying, “accept the crown and lead us into a glorious future. Your people are calling.” Then the monster turned to the crowd and swept his burning eyes over us, daring us not to shout out our approval. I almost joined in with the rest of them, but I managed to restrain myself. Instead I stared back at the freak and tried to catch his eye – unsuccessfully, which was probably just as well.

  “What is it?” Hel Hyslop said, nudging me. “You were looking at that guy this morning too. Do you know him?”

  I feigned ignorance. “Of course not. I’m just fascinated. This is the first time I’ve seen a production of Shakespeare given by the clinically insane.”

  She stared at me then got back to the action. I began to wonder if it was time to let her in on what I knew about the man in the scarred mask.

  The other scene that made my eyes open wide was in the last act. I should have spotted the link earlier, but I’d been distracted by disparate thoughts flashing through my mind like the NATO smart-but-incompetent bombs that led to the break-up of the European Union when I was young. Eventually the names Birnam and Dunsinane got through to me. Malcolm and Macduff were directing Macbeth’s downfall – not that it would come to fruition in this version of the play – and soldiers were running around the stage with branches in their hands. Some of the bits of vegetation obscured their faces as they moved, the leaves reddened by fake blood. Suddenly it was impossible not to think of the two Edinburgh murder victims and the latest one in Glasgow – they all had b
ranches in their hands, branches which concealed their mutilated faces.

  What had Macbeth and his cult been up to?

  I was still in a daze when the play ended with Macbeth strutting around the stage with the traitor Malcolm’s head in his hands. I didn’t even notice that Haggs had disappeared from the seat to my left until the inspector raised her wrist microphone to her lips.

  “Move in,” she said in a low voice. “As soon as the king takes his last bow.”

  His last bow? At this rate we’d be here all night. I looked around and tried to spot Hyslop’s people in the mass of cheering spectators. It was hopeless. Most of the audience had taken to standing on their seats. I did the same.

  Macbeth was inclining his head regally rather than bowing, probably worried that his heavy crown would drop off. I made out Tam Haggs underneath the stage at the left. I could also see the bogeyman. He was on the other side, hands resting on his sword and eyes staring out into the night above the crowd. Then he turned slightly and looked straight at me. I felt my heart stop and my armpits go sodden. It was like being eyed up by a hungry Moray eel – one that had fought and won numerous battles with squid and groupers. I had to return the cold stare though, I couldn’t break the power of his gaze.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Hel said into her mike.

  I glanced to my right when I heard her voice and when I looked back at the stage the masked man had done just that – he was definitely and indubitably gone.

  “What?” I gasped.

  Hel looked at me. “What?” she repeated.

  “Oh . . . forget it.” I jumped down and started forcing my way through the crowd.

  There was a series of gunshots, quickly followed by screaming and a general stampede. That made progress towards the stage almost impossible. When I finally got there, I found Tam Haggs with his boot on a motionless Macbeth, pistol in hand.

  “Christ, you haven’t killed him, have you?” I asked.