The Bone Yard Read online

  There was a stampede of auxiliary boots in the hallway.

  “What happened?” Hamilton asked, taking in the scene.

  Katharine got up slowly. Her breathing was still laboured and her whole body quivering. She raised her head. “Yes,” she said quietly, “what happened?”

  “The Wolf’s dead,” I said, moving my eyes away from her and feeling empty inside. “And we’re even.”

  I shouldered my way through the guard personnel into the front room that didn’t contain the sheep’s remains. I suddenly had an intense desire to be alone.

  Dirty Harry and his guys moved out, looking disappointed that they hadn’t had a chance to deal with the Wolf themselves.

  Hamilton came in after a few minutes. There was a mixture of shock and delight on his face which made him look like a child in pre-Enlightenment times who’d discovered how easy it was to get away with shoplifting. “I can hardly believe it, Dalrymple,” he said.

  “What can you hardly believe, Lewis?” I said, trying not to lose my train of thought.

  “After all this time, we finally got the scum.”

  I nodded. I obviously looked distracted enough to get his attention.

  “What’s the matter, man?” he asked impatiently. “This is a triumph. It’s exactly what we need to get the Council back on an even keel.”

  Something gave way inside me. “Bugger off, will you, Lewis!” I shouted. “I don’t give a fuck about the Council. If it hadn’t been for the Council and its bastard leader, none of this would have happened.”

  The guardian retreated, muttering something about how the strain of the investigation had obviously got to me.

  I turned away, dimly aware that the last of the guard personnel were leaving the house. My words to Hamilton took me back to what I’d been thinking about before. Was it right that the senior guardian was responsible for everything? He’d tried to keep what happened at Torness and what was done with the survivors secret, leaving himself open to blackmail by Howlin’ Wolf. He’d set up production of the Electric Blues, even though he later tried to double-cross the Wolf. And he’d used people like Roddie Aitken without caring what happened to them. All that was clear enough. So it came down to the Wolf. He was clever; all the years he kept ahead of us when I was in the directorate proved that. And he knew about the blues, so he could have worked out the idea of the tapes in order to put me on the trail of the guardian and the Electric Blues. Obviously the idea was that I track down the drugs and the lab that produced them so that he could muscle in later on. But that didn’t quite ring true. The Wolf was sharp, but he was also a psychopath. As the murders showed, he was at home with mayhem. I had the feeling that someone else was involved.

  Katharine came in. Her neck was ringed with livid bruises. “Quint . . . I . . .” She wasn’t looking at me. “I know what you’re thinking. I’m not denying it . . .”

  I went over to the hole where the window had been and stared out over the potholed road. There were criss-crossed tracks from guard vehicles all over it. “You’re not denying that the reason you came back to the city was to track down the guy who abused you? You’re not denying that you found out from the deserter who died at your farm that the Screecher used to be in charge of the Cavemen? You’re not denying that you played me for a jackass just so that you could get a chance to pay the bastard back?” I glanced at her, trying to look indifferent. “I told you, Katharine. We’re even. What more do you want?”

  “Stop it!” she shouted, her face screwed up and her fists clenched. At first I thought she was going to hit me, then I saw the wetness around her eyes. “I’m not denying I wanted to kill him. He made me hate myself more than I ever thought I could.” She gulped for breath. “But I didn’t only come back for that. There was the drugs formula. It could have hurt a lot of people.” She came closer. “And there was you, Quint. I came back for you as well. Even if you don’t believe me, I did.”

  I was listening to her, but as she’d been speaking something else had struck me. The Wolf taunted me about Caro, made a crack about how he’d already seen one of my women die. How the hell did he know Caro was my woman? Because of auxiliary regulations we kept our tie as secret as we could. Only people who were very close to us knew about it. That made me sure about who else was involved in it all.

  I took a step towards the door, then froze. There were a few seconds of silence then I heard the faint noise again. And again. Creaks on the ceiling and another sound I couldn’t place immediately. A kind of muffled rolling. I raised my hand, caught sight of the stump of my right forefinger, looked back at Katharine then felt my mouth open even wider. There was someone else in the house.

  I ran into the hallway, skidding and crashing my elbow into the wall. Then took the stairs three at a time.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I raced into the upstairs front room like a greyhound after a hare and choked on what I inhaled. Despite the open holes in the walls, the room stank like a cesspit. Looking at the heaps of excrement on what was left of the floorboards, I realised that it actually was a cesspit. One inhabited by a misshapen dwarf on wheels.

  “You forgot about me, Quint.” The voice from the shrunken, chair-bound figure in the far corner was scratchy, like an astronaut’s coming across the airwaves from a distant planet.

  “I did, Billy.” I watched as William Ewart Geddes, former deputy finance guardian and my oldest childhood friend, pushed his wheelchair forward a couple of feet. That was as far as the missing floorboards allowed him to go.

  “But I never forgot you.” The voice had hardened. Calculating eyes glinted at me from a filth-encrusted face. Billy’s clothes were in tatters, his trousers open and streaked with shit.

  “What’s been happening to you?” I said, stepping closer. “What did the Wolf do to you, Billy?”

  He laughed harshly. “The Wolf? The Wolf did nothing to me. He’s been the best friend I ever had, Quint. The best, you hear?” His eyes were locked on me.

  “But you need nursing, Billy. In your condition . . .”

  “In my condition?” he screamed, spittle flying from his disfigured lips. “And who was responsible for my condition, Quint?” He’d obviously spent the time since I’d last seen him building up a major grudge against me.

  “The blackmail and the drugs were your doing, weren’t they, Billy?”

  He nodded. “Oh aye. I was the best deal maker this city’s ever had. The fuckers in the Council could have used me, but they turned their noses up at me and shunted me off to the home. I was going to get them for that. The Wolf was in this to make a heap of money but I wanted to wreck the regime.”

  “The Electric Blues would have killed plenty of innocent people.”

  “Who gives a fuck about innocent people? Nobody’s innocent in this stinking city.” He pushed himself backwards with surprising strength and banged into the wall.

  “Not even Roddie Aitken, the first victim?”

  Billy made an attempt at shrugging with his damaged shoulders. “That saintly hypocrite in the Council told us the boy was working for another gang. That made him expendable.”

  “Expendable?” I shouted. “He was set up, Billy. He knew nothing about the drugs or anything else. Jesus Christ, you didn’t use to be like this.”

  He laughed again. “Exactly, Quint. You’re finally getting the picture. I didn’t use to be like this.” He nodded down at the wheelchair, strands of filthy hair dropping over his forehead. “That’s why I brought you into the game.” He looked to one side of me. “Tell your friends to leave us alone. This is between you and me.”

  I motioned to Katharine and Davie to move back from the doorway. “You set all this up so that you could have a go at me as well, didn’t you, Billy?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” he said dismissively. “I had dealings with the Wolf years ago. He provided the city with essential products from time to time.”

  “Drugs, you mean.”

  He nodded. “Drugs and chemica
ls, mainly for medical purposes. He had contacts with other cities that we couldn’t deal with officially.”

  “So he managed to get you out of the nursing home when he was looking for a lab to produce the Electric Blues.”

  Billy stared at me like a spider weighing up a fly. “Correct. And because I made a point of gathering information all the time I was in the Finance Directorate, I knew about the blast at Torness. I heard rumours about the Bone Yard. I ended up in this chair before I could find out exactly what it was.”

  “I found it, Billy. It was the chief boyscout’s version of a concentration camp for the people affected by radiation.”

  He showed no emotion. “Was it there the drugs were produced?”

  I nodded.

  “So you worked it all out, you fucking smartass.” Now there was a manic glint in his eyes. “Even where we were holed up. How?”

  I told him about Leadbelly. “But I haven’t found out everything, Billy,” I said, trying to placate him so I could get closer without him snarling at me. “The songs were your idea, I suppose?”

  “Of course. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist them.”

  “And ‘Fire and Water’ was to put me on to Torness and the senior guardian?”

  “You made the connection?” He cackled triumphantly. “I knew you would.”

  I took a step closer. “But why did you do it so abstrusely, for Christ’s sake? You could just have got the Wolf to scratch out a message in Roddie Aitken’s blood.”

  “To turn the screw on the senior guardian. He had the Electric Blues and we wanted to make sure he didn’t do anything hasty with them.” He looked at me as if I were a moron. “Anyway, do you think telling the Wolf what to do was easy? The only way I could sell him the idea of the tapes was by appealing to his extremely well-developed sense of the macabre. The guy wasn’t good at taking orders.” He stared at me blankly. “You killed him, I suppose.”

  The way he held his gaze on me made it clear that he meant “you” singular rather than plural. I nodded. “I’m not going to play a lament for him, Billy. When I got involved in the case, the Wolf started following me around, didn’t he?” I was thinking of the time I’d seen the hooded man in Tollcross and the wheelchair tracks outside my flat.

  “Sometimes he was totally out of control. The radiation did something to his brain. The stupid bugger got through the fence at Torness and started messing around with the damaged sarcophagus.”

  “I know.”

  “Of course you do.” Billy laughed bitterly. “Shades of what happened at Sellafield years ago, eh? You’d better send some conscripts out to clean things up.”

  “Fancy taking charge of that operation?” I demanded.

  “It would beat going back to the home I was in.” Billy’s eyes locked on to mine again. “The one you gave up visiting.”

  I inched towards him. “So why did the Wolf take you to my street?”

  “I made the mistake of telling him who you used to be. He had it in for you in a big way since you’d dealt with most of his gang and driven him out of the city. I only just talked him out of confronting you that morning.” Billy’s lips drew back from discoloured teeth. “It was his idea to hang the auxiliary’s head on your door.” He spat out a malevolent laugh. “Not that I had any objection.”

  I moved closer, breathing in his stench. “You told him about Caro too, Billy,” I said accusingly.

  He didn’t look away. “Everyone has their weak point. The Wolf wanted to know yours.”

  “You were her friend as well as mine, for fuck’s sake.”

  He pounded his shrivelled arms on the wheelchair. “Exactly, Quint. I was her friend. You were my friend. But nothing lasts for ever.”

  “You twisted little bastard,” I shouted, stepping over the gaps in the floorboards. “I’m taking you in front of the Council. This time it’ll be Cramond Island for you, not a nursing home.”

  He looked at me placidly, a mocking smile on his lips. As I bent over him to get a hold of the wheelchair, I saw his eyes narrow. Then I remembered the set of butcher’s knives the Wolf said he’d stashed in the house.

  “Sit still, citizen.” The medical guardian’s voice was unusually sharp. I suppose I should have been grateful that she was stitching my neck herself.

  “How many’s it going to be?”

  “Thirteen, I think. Lucky for some. If your assailant hadn’t been in such a weakened condition, the meat cleaver would have severed your head. That would have been a pity.” The Ice Queen looked even less compassionate than she sounded.

  “The Torness survivors,” I said. “Are they being looked after?”

  She nodded. “They’re in an isolation ward here.” She shook her head slowly. “They won’t need it for long though.”

  “So you’re not even letting them die where they want to, near their friends?” I asked, wincing as I turned to look at her. “Does that make you proud to be a Council member?”

  Her perfect features beneath the white-blonde hair were lifeless, as robotic as ever. I didn’t expect an answer and I wasn’t disappointed.

  “Done,” she said, snipping the thread.

  I got up and headed for the door.

  “Citizen,” she called. “Nothing like Torness and the Bone Yard will be allowed to happen again, you can be sure of that.”

  I glanced back as I reached the door. “No, I can’t, guardian,” I said. “And neither can you.”

  I found it difficult to get too excited about the Council meeting that evening. Hamilton had the boyscouts well under control and it was pretty obvious that most of them would be back in auxiliary uniform soon. The Science and Energy Directorate was already organising an expedition to check the reactor casings at Torness. I let Davie report on the final stages of the investigation. It wouldn’t do his career any harm and I was finding it difficult to care any more.

  “Anything further?” Hamilton asked, giving me the eye when Davie finished.

  “Billy Geddes – Heriot 03 as was,” I said. “I want to recommend that he isn’t sent to Cramond Island. He isn’t up to it physically.” I needed to clear my account with Billy. I was still guilty that I hadn’t visited him often. Maybe the violence that Howlin’ Wolf let loose on Roddie and the others could have been avoided if Billy hadn’t wanted to get back at me so much.

  Hamilton looked at me curiously and made a note. “It’s not exactly your jurisdiction, Dalrymple, but we’ll take your view into account. Anything else?”

  “The prisoner known as Leadbelly,” I said.

  “Number 35 in Cramond Island,” Davie put in, going for broke in the efficiency stakes.

  “I offered him an amnesty.”

  Lewis Hamilton looked like he was about to explode, but eventually he made another note. Two down, one to go.

  “And finally, there’s Katharine Kirkwood.”

  “Don’t tell me,” the guardian said. “You want her desertion charge removed from the guard register.”

  I nodded, running my eye round the so-called iron boyscouts. Their faces were slack and pale, but whatever happened to them, they had a future, unlike the radiation victims from the Bone Yard. Katharine had done a hell of a sight less harm than the guardians and I’d have pointed that out if any of them had objected. They kept their mouths shut.

  “Very well,” Hamilton said, nodding and closing his notebook. “It only remains for me to offer you the thanks of the Council and the entire city for your good work, citizen Dalrymple. Should you desire to return to a senior post in the Public Order Directorate . . .”

  I raised an eyebrow at him and turned away. Then they started to applaud, which got me to the door even faster.

  Outside the Assembly Hall I leaned against the railings and looked out across the city. The lights of the centre blazed as much as ever, burning up the city’s precious coal reserves. The idea of bringing Torness back into service wasn’t a bad one but anyone can have good ideas. It’s how you put them into action that’s
difficult. I glanced to my right. A few yards in that direction the senior guardian had skewered himself. Thinking of Roddie Aitken and William McEwan, I didn’t have it in me to feel regret for his suicide.

  I heard voices from round the corner. A squad of cleaners appeared. Most of the citizens were laughing and joking despite having drawn the much hated night shift. All of them looked thin and drawn, clothes loose on their undernourished limbs. I thought of the Bone Yard. It wasn’t just the place where the city’s untouchables had been confined. The Bone Yard was Edinburgh itself. The citizen body was skin and bone, struggling to survive. But people still seemed able to make something of their over-regulated lives. They deserved better than they’d been getting from the guardians. But would the next Council improve anything? And did I have a part to play in the “perfect” city any more?

  There was a rustle of clothing at my side.

  “What are you doing out here, Quint?” Katharine’s voice was hoarse, still affected by the bruising to her throat.

  “I walked out on the tossers,” I said without looking round. “Don’t worry. You’re in the clear.”

  I felt her eyes on me.

  “I don’t care about that.” She laughed softly. “Anyway, I’ve still got my ‘ask no questions’.”

  “You’re all right then.”

  “Don’t be like this, Quint,” she said desperately. “I told you the truth. Okay, I didn’t only come back for you.” She moved up against me. “But the case is finished, isn’t it? And I’m still here.”