Water of Death Read online

  Agnes looked at Davie and me angrily, her face flushed. “Isn’t that enough?” she demanded in a low voice.

  “They shouldn’t have taken his work away,” her mother repeated dolefully.

  “Don’t worry,” I said with as much encouragement as I could muster. “He’ll turn up.”

  “Will he?” Hilda said, suddenly turning her eyes on me, her dry lips quivering. “Are you sure, son?”

  I avoided her gaze as I made for the door.

  “Pretty strange pair,” Davie said as we drove back towards the city centre. The sun was blinding where it shone through the gaps between buildings.

  “You didn’t have to come in with me,” I said. “That’ll teach you to chase female citizens.”

  “What do you mean chase?” he said, laughing. “You saw the way she was looking at me.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, guardsman, but don’t the City Regulations forbid fraternisation between auxiliaries and citizens under thirty?” Until a few months ago auxiliaries weren’t allowed to fraternise with citizens of any age. Another one of the Council’s attempts to break down the barriers.

  “Aye, I suppose you’re right.” Davie shot me a suspicious glance. “What are you up to, Quint? Oh, I get it. You reckon that you can have a go at the delectable Agnes on the grounds that you’re a demoted rather than a serving auxiliary.”

  I held my breath as we passed through the cloud of exhaust fumes a guard vehicle had belched out. “Me? Certainly not. I’m already spoken for.”

  Davie laughed, this time raucously. “Like hell you are.”

  I let him go on thinking that.

  Five minutes later he dropped me at my flat in Gilmore Place. I pulled the street door open impatiently, wondering if any traces of the perfume I’d got used to over the last couple of weeks would be lingering in the hot air.

  They were. I raced up the stairs, opened my door and got an eyeful of the woman I’d been hoping would be there.

  That didn’t do anything to cool me down at all.

  Chapter Two

  “Hello, guardian.”

  The Ice Queen turned and gave me one of the Antarctic glares that led to her nickname. Her short, silver-blonde hair also had something to do with that, as did the high cheekbones and tight lips that were unadorned by make-up. “Where have you been, Quint?” She sounded more like an exasperated schoolmistress than the city’s highest-ranking medical officer. “I’ve been waiting for half an hour.”

  “Did we have a rendezvous then?” I have a thing about being scolded. Besides, I was parched and I had a nasty feeling I’d forgotten to refill my waterbottles. A quick glance at the collection of empties in the corner of my living room that passes for a kitchen confirmed my fear. I looked at my watch. “Shit.”

  The medical guardian read my mind. “Missed the street tank?”

  I nodded. The Water Department locks up drinking supplies at six in the evening to restrict consumption.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, opening her briefcase. “I’ve got a couple of pints.”

  I crossed to my sideboard. It was a lot grottier than the one the missing lottery-winner had made for himself but there was something in it I fancied.

  “I’m not worried,” I said, taking out a bottle of citizen-issue whisky.

  The Ice Queen twitched her lips in disapproval as I downed a slug.

  “Relax. I’m not planning on offering you any.” I breathed in hard as the rough spirit cauterised the inside of my throat. “Jesus, what do they put in this stuff?” I raised my hand. “No, don’t tell me.” If I’d let her, she’d have provided me with a full chemical analysis. You don’t want to give scientists any encouragement. “How about some music?”

  “That’s not exactly what I came for.” The guardian was looking out of the window into the street, her arms stretched out against the frame. The white blouse and grey skirt that female Council members wear during the Big Heat made her look like the strait-laced schoolteacher her voice had suggested. She was of medium height, slim, her body carrying no more weight than the average female citizen’s. Then again, her chest was a lot more eye-catching than the average female citizen’s so maybe years of a senior auxiliary’s diet had some effect. The guardians have always claimed their lifestyle is ascetic but you don’t see many signs of malnutrition in their residences in Moray Place.

  I was rooting around in my tape collection trying to find something that wasn’t the blues – despite the relaxation of regulations, they’re still seen as subversive. The trouble is, I don’t have much apart from the blues. Eventually I put on a Rolling Stones recording from 2001. No one could call that subversive.

  “I said that wasn’t what I came for,” the guardian repeated, moving towards where I was kneeling by my ancient cassette deck.

  I turned my head and got a look that didn’t originate in the polar regions. In fact, it was positively provocative. Despite the heat, I shivered. A few months ago the Council decided to loosen the rules governing guardians’ personal lives. For years they were expected to live on their own in total celibacy. Now they’re supposed to show they’re ordinary people like the rest of us by getting laid. I still haven’t got used to guardians showing their feelings, let alone guardians having sex. Especially not with me.

  “Take your hand away, Quint.”

  That sounded more like what you’d expect a female Council member to say. Then again, it was after midnight, my bedroom was as steamy as the innermost room of a Turkish bath and we’d already made it twice.

  I moved my hand from her thigh. “Sorry, Sophia,” I said, keeping my eyes on her. It wasn’t till we’d spent three nights together that she allowed me to use her name, and she didn’t like me using it anywhere other than in bed. Although she was still in her thirties, the medical guardian was on the reactionary wing of the Council, like Lewis Hamilton. The idea of ordinary citizens being allowed to address their rulers by first name was about as popular with her as compulsory duty in the coal mines used to be with ordinary citizens until the regulations were changed. Sophia had been one of the disciplinarian “iron boyscouts” who ran the Council before they were discredited. She kept her job because she was so bloody good at it.

  “Anyway, you must have had enough of me by now.” She was lying on her back, her arms behind her head and her knees apart, trying to cool down. There was a sheen of sweat on her skin. Her small rose-coloured nipples were soft now. She saw the direction of my gaze and covered her breasts with an arm. Being celibate for years had made her modest. Well, most of the time. In bed she combined that modesty with a degree of lasciviousness that wouldn’t have been out of place in a nunnery in the days before organised religion went out of fashion.

  “It isn’t just about sex, you know,” I said.

  Sophia returned my gaze. “Isn’t it?” she asked, her face blank. Then the hint of a smile creased the corners of her mouth. “Men are such romantics.”

  “Is that right?” I said sharply, rolling over on to my right side and confronting the heap of dirty clothing that had built up in the corner of my bedroom. I’d managed to miss my session at the wash house last month.

  “Don’t be childish, Quint,” she said, slapping my shoulder lightly. “What are you working on at the moment?”

  “The usual. Trying to find the shithead who’s running that gang of pickpockets on Princes Street, chasing a Swedish porn dealer who’s operating out of Leith. Where are the master criminals, for Christ’s sake? Today they got me on to a lottery-winner who’s done a bunk. Can’t say I blame him.”

  The Ice Queen let out an impatient sigh. “What are you saying, Quint? Would you prefer us to have trysts at murder scenes and in the mortuary like we used to? I don’t approve of all the changes my colleagues in the Council have made but at least we’ve kept a grip on crime.” She shook her head. “Though setting up marijuana clubs for the tourists is asking for trouble.”

  I knew she and Hamilton had argued hard against that policy. N
o one bothered to ask me what I thought. I’m a big fan of irony and since the Enlightenment came to power with a mission to root out drugs from the city, the irony quotient in this volte-face is pretty high. But despite an increase in drugs-related petty crime like the one I witnessed in the Meadows, there hasn’t been much sign of Edinburgh people wandering around in a grass-induced haze. The fact that citizens have bugger all to trade for dope seemed to regulate demand pretty effectively – there’s no cash in the city apart from foreign currency, and the distribution of food and clothing vouchers is closely monitored.

  There was a sibilant snore from the far side of the bed. Sophia had fallen asleep as rapidly as usual. Despite, or perhaps because of, the move towards accessibility and openness, the guardians still work ridiculously long hours. At least the daily Council meetings take place at midday now rather than in the evenings, but the medical guardian continues to put in a fifteen-hour day. My experience in the short time she’d been coming to me was that she’d be away to her office in the infirmary by five in the morning.

  I got up carefully so as not to wake her and went into the living room. My throat was dry but my skin was drenched in sweat. I gulped water from one of Sophia’s bottles and sat down gingerly on my sphincter-endangering sofa. Outside, the street was so quiet you could almost hear the tar bubbles popping in the heat. The curfew for citizens has been moved from ten to twelve p.m. but the guard still enforce it rigidly. As usual, sleep was as far from me as a cool breeze was from the city.

  During the Big Heat my mind likes to pretend it’s a nocturnal organism. Just as well. I had a lot to think about. Having sexual relations with Sophia was great, especially as I gave up sex sessions when they became non-compulsory a year back and my body was beginning to suffer serious deprivation. I still dreamed about my ex-lover Katharine Kirkwood and I used to kid myself that we still had some kind of tie, even though she walked away from me in January 2022 and I hadn’t seen her since. But I couldn’t figure out exactly what Sophia wanted from me. When she first showed up at my door and grabbed the contents of my underpants, I was more surprised than I’d been when the Council opened up its meetings to ordinary citizens. Like I say, the idea of the medical guardian having sex with anyone was pretty weird. Still, I suppose she had urges like everyone else. But why had she chosen me rather than a superfit young guardsman or a high-flying auxiliary? Something told me it was more than just the use of my genitalia she wanted. When we were together Sophia often asked me what I was working on, as she’d done tonight. Was that simply idle curiosity or was she after something else? Like information she could use against Council members who were more progressive than her?

  I took the bottle of whisky into the bedroom and gulped from it as I sat on the bed. A stirring came from the other side.

  “You should cut down on the spirits, Quint,” the Ice Queen said blearily, one eye half open. “They’ll poison your system.”

  I raised the bottle to her and drank again. I’ve made it a strict rule never to take advice from guardians.

  I eventually passed out. I didn’t register Sophia leaving and it was eight in the morning before I came round to the racket of clapped-out buses and kids complaining on their way to school. Saturday’s a working day in Enlightenment Edinburgh for most citizens, schoolchildren included. They shouldn’t complain too much – at least they only have half a day of lessons on Saturdays during the Big Heat. Maybe they were looking forward without enthusiasm to the summer holidays. They last all of two weeks, one of which is spent picking litter from the beaches. At least we still have beaches – unlike the west of Scotland which has been subject to catastrophic flooding because of rising sea levels. Some of the countries that used to send plenty of tourists such as China have gone into subaquatic pursuits in a big way too. We don’t find out much about the rest of the world in our little wire-fenced paradise but news sometimes filters through from tourists and traders. The last I heard, the democratic system in Glasgow was hanging on but had come under heavy pressure from food shortages and organised crime. Most of the other states in Scotland have reverted to anarchy, while what used to be England is going through a modern version of the Dark Ages despite fifteen hours of skull-splitting sunshine every day.

  I stumbled through to the living room and discovered that Sophia had left one of her bottles with enough water for me to make a mug of coffee. That commodity used to be harder to find in Edinburgh than silk knickers but the Council recently got into bed with a Swiss food and drink multinational – not that ordinary citizens get anything other than the scrapings from the factory floor. I chewed the end of a three-day-old loaf of bread and had a go at planning the day. What I should have done was try to find a new chain for my wreck of a bicycle, except I didn’t fancy queuing for hours at the local Supply Directorate depot. Besides, I told myself, walking is good for you. And the city archive where I needed to go to find the missing lottery-winner’s records isn’t that far from my flat.

  Dragging myself up what is a deceptive gradient on Lauriston Place in the morning sweatbath made me change my mind. It would have been worse on my bike but at least it would have been over quickly. The air was heavy and the stink from the breweries was cut with the acrid tang of sewage coming to the boil in the undermaintained pipes beneath the streets. These days Japanese tourists are told to bring along the little masks they wear in the busy streets back home. Edinburgh citizens haven’t been allowed cars for years so there isn’t much of a problem with exhaust fumes here. Unfortunately the Council hasn’t yet found a way to stop people shitting during the Big Heat. No doubt Sophia’s got the Medical Directorate working on that.

  Things got a bit better when I reached George IVth Bridge. It’s in the central tourist zone, so the pavements are washed down overnight and maroon awnings are hung to keep the sun off the city’s honoured paying guests. Further on at the next checkpoint, guard personnel were looking out for ordinary citizens. For all the Council’s attempts at openness, the High Street is still off limits unless you have work there. I had a Public Order Directorate authorisation but I wasn’t going as far as the barrier. I turned into the archive and felt my body temperature begin to drop immediately in the polished-stone entrance hall. Before the Enlightenment the building was the city’s central library, but the original Council’s policy was to bring books – meaning the ones they approved of – closer to citizens, so they increased the number of smaller libraries in residential areas. Which gave them the chance to convert the main library into something they were even keener on – a centralised store containing everything they wanted to know about every citizen, without the citizens being allowed access. It’s all on paper, of course. The guardians have always been suspicious of computers, forbidding citizens to possess them and under-using the few they kept for themselves.

  “Morning, Citizen Dalrymple.”

  “Morning, Ray. What’s the problem?”

  The one-armed auxiliary looked pointedly at the sentry who’d just checked my pass then beckoned me into his office.

  “Jackass,” he said in a low voice. “You know you should call me Nasmyth 67 in public, Quint.” Although the guardians have been encouraging citizens to use their names, auxiliaries are still to be addressed by barracks number – after all, they’re the ones who keep control.

  “Bugger that,” I said. “We served together for years.”

  “Till you got demoted and I got crippled.” Ray looked down at the stump that was protruding from his auxiliary-issue grey shirt. He always rolled the sleeve up as high as he could to make sure everyone got an eyeful.

  I held up my right hand with the missing forefinger to remind him we were brothers in arms.

  “So what are you after in my house of files this sweaty morning?” He filled a glass of water and handed it to me. During the Big Heat people do that without asking. It suddenly struck me that Agnes Kennedy hadn’t given Davie and me a drink yesterday. Maybe she was more wound up about her missing father than I realised
.

  “There’s a lottery-winner who’s made a break for freedom,” I replied. “Or drunk himself into a stupor somewhere.”

  “Well, you know your way around.” Ray sat down and wrapped his good arm round a heap of folders on his desk.

  “Unfortunately. I seem to have spent half my life in here.”

  Ray looked up and laughed derisively. “You only come for the bogs.”

  “You noticed? Auxiliary-issue paper, no queues. In fact, now you mention it . . .”

  “Goodbye,” he said rapidly.

  “I’ll see you later. I’ve got something for you.”

  “Don’t forget to wash your hands.”

  I raised my fist, this time giving him only the middle finger.

  Ahead of me lay what had been the pilastered reference room. Its domed ceiling is still visible, but there isn’t much else to see apart from stacks and shelves full of grey cardboard folders. Bureaucrat heaven. The people who work in the archive are all auxiliaries. They tend to be specimens whose devotion to the Enlightenment is a lot greater than their physical capabilities. Short-sighted women and puny guys were poring avidly at mounds of files like gold prospectors who’d struck pay dirt.

  “Can I help you?” asked a middle-aged man with pepper-and-salt stubble. It was probably as close as he could get to what used to be the regulation male auxiliary beard.

  I declined his offer. The archivists always take a note of the files they bring you, so I collect my own. There’s enough surveillance going on in this city without my activities being added to the list. I found Fordyce Bulloch Kennedy’s file after a lot of scrabbling and heaving. In the process I inhaled enough dust to clog my bronchial tubes as effectively as a twenty-a-day coffin stick habit – so much for any improvement in my health brought about by the Council’s long-standing ban on smoking. I took the thick file to a booth in a corner away from prying eyes and got stuck in.