The Blood Tree Read online

  Davie arrived and looked past me. “No dead bodies then,” he said, a hint of regret in his voice.

  “Only a small amount of corporeal matter,” I said, turning to the area of the floor with the blood line. “Someone cut their finger, I reckon.” I put my hand on the guardian’s arm as he craned forward. “Don’t go any nearer. I haven’t checked for other traces yet.”

  Davie had dropped to his knees. “One thing’s for sure. There are no distinct footprints here.”

  I nodded. The dust was so thick that it had swirled up when disturbed and resettled over the prints. But I wondered if there was more to it than that. Had the intruders made efforts to obliterate the traces they’d left in particular places? If so, the line of blood spots might be the only clue we’d get.

  “That minuscule quantity of blood isn’t going to get us far,” Hamilton said discouragingly. “Especially since we don’t have the equipment to carry out DNA testing.”

  “Another brilliant decision by the Council,” I said under my breath. After the Public Order Directorate had driven out the drugs gangs and reduced crime in the city to what it claimed was level zero, the guardians declined to fund anything more than the most basic forensic service. That had made my working life a lot more fun.

  “I suppose those blood traces mean we’ll have to get the scene-of-crime squad down here now,” the guardian said, shaking his head. “I need Council approval first. This is a restricted area no matter what’s been going on.”

  “You’ve already let me down here and I’m a DM,” I said impatiently. “Tell the Council tomorrow, Lewis. After all, you are the boss this month.”

  “That’s not the way the system works, Dalrymple. As you well know.” The guardian pulled out his mobile. “All right, the scene-of-crime squad it is. I’ll advise my colleagues in the morning.”

  I gave Davie a quick smile. He didn’t return it. Winding up Hamilton is off limits for serving auxiliaries – which is one reason I was demoted from the rank years ago.

  The scene-of-crime people arrived in their white plastic overalls and flitted about the stacks like nosy but extremely fastidious ghosts. I had to let them get on with it, even though I wanted to have a look at the files in the vicinity of the blood spots. Eventually the auxiliaries finished taking photos, samples and prints there and started checking other parts of the vast subterranean hall.

  “Don’t you want an operative present when we pull the files?” I asked the guardian.

  “Certainly not,” he replied. “Everything in here is classified ‘Guardian Eyes Only’.”

  “Right then,” I said, turning away. “Hume 253 and I’ll be off.”

  “Quint,” Davie growled. “Get a grip.”

  “Quite so, Dalrymple,” Hamilton agreed. “You and the commander are part of the investigative team. You don’t need further accreditation.” He smiled humourlessly. “Until I decide otherwise.”

  “Very good of you,” I said, pulling my rubber gloves back on. I started examining the stack above the floor where the blood had dripped. “Doesn’t look like any complete folders have been removed.” The shelves were jammed tight with dark blue cardboard binders. “Give me your torch, Davie.”

  He passed it over. The Council used to issue torches only to auxiliaries. A couple of years ago they made them available to ordinary citizens when the curfew was put back to midnight – the street-lights in the suburbs are so unreliable that you need a torch to get home in one piece. The only problem is that there’s been a shortage of batteries ever since, which is why I don’t carry my own torch. I could get Davie to arrange a supply but, like I say, I’m not keen on pulling strings – unless I have to.

  “See anything interesting?” the guardian asked.

  “Not even an archive-rat like me could find Scottish Parliament minutes interesting,” I said. “Wait a second.” I looked closer. Under the torch’s beam I’d noticed the spine of a folder with smudges on the dust covering it. I took out my magnifying glass. There was a small, dust-adulterated bloodstain on the fold between spine and back cover. “Hello there,” I said, looking round at Lewis. “You know the ‘genius’ auxiliary knife you promised me?”

  The guardian was staring balefully at the scuffs he’d got on his brogues. “What about it, Dalrymple?” he demanded.

  I pulled the file out from the shelf carefully, keeping my fingers away from the area potentially bearing traces of the bogus maintenance workers. “You’d better get the engravers working on the inscription.”

  We headed back to the hole in the roof. I wanted to open the file in surroundings that weren’t contaminated by dust and Hamilton wanted to open it as far away from unauthorised eyes as possible. Davie was behind us, organising the collection of the files in the surrounding shelves. My experience of archives is that you always need to cross-reference.

  “Guardian?” the scene-of-crime squad supervisor called as we approached the piles of rubble under the hole. “We’ve found a complete footprint.” She beckoned us over to the end of a stack.

  There was an area of minor subsidence where seven or eight flagstones had canted over and raised small heaps of earth. The print was in the middle of one of the heaps, a couple of feet in front of a dark patch on the flags.

  “We’re about to take a cast,” the female auxiliary said. “The intruder took a leak,” she said, inclining her head towards the stain and grinning.

  I smiled. It’s unusual to find evidence of a sense of humour in Public Order Directorate personnel.

  Hamilton wasn’t impressed. “Do you recognise the footwear?” he asked testily.

  The auxiliary nodded her head, spots of red on her cheeks showing that she’d clocked her superior’s disapproval. “Yes, guardian. Standard Labour Directorate rubber work-boot, I’d say. I’ll be checking that.”

  “Make sure you do,” Hamilton said, moving away.

  I gave the scene-of-crime supervisor a friendly shrug. She just stared at me dully. Yet another member of the DMs Can Kiss My Buttocks Society.

  Hamilton drove me to the castle in the Jeep that was his pride and joy. It had been donated to the city by an American company that had wanted to butter up the Council; somehow it had found its way to the guardian’s personal parking place on the esplanade.

  “What do you think that’s going to tell you, Dalrymple?” he asked, nodding at the object in the protective plastic bag on my knees.

  “Who knows, Lewis? If we’re lucky, the guy with the bleeding finger will have left a consultation note giving his name, address and sexual preferences.”

  “Stop messing about, man. Do you think something’s been taken from the file? And if so, why?”

  “Patience, Lewis, patience,” I replied as he pulled up at the upper end of the esplanade. Although electricity was restricted in the suburbs, the castle was lit up like a stripper’s dressing-room. It wouldn’t do to keep the City Guard’s headquarters in the dark, would it?

  I followed the guardian up the narrow ramp to the gate then across the cobbled yards to his quarters in what was formerly the Governor’s House. There was no trace of red in the sky to the west now. The wind was lively enough from that direction though, spatters of chill rain whipping in like grape-shot.

  “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” I said, leaning into the blast.

  “Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun,” Hamilton completed, provoking an inquisitive look from a passing guardsman. “I never imagined you were a devotee of Keats, Dalrymple.”

  “Keats was the original blues poet, Lewis,” I said as we entered the granite building. “If he’d grown up in the American South in the first half of the last century, he’d have taken Robert Johnson to the cleaners, believe me.”

  “Really?” the guardian said, his mind already elsewhere. He led me up to his rooms on the second floor and gave the grey-suited female auxiliary in the outer office strict instructions to allow no one in. In his sanctum, he stood beside the conference table with his hands on
his hips. “Right, let’s see what we’ve got.”

  “Hold on,” I said, putting the folder down carefully and reaching into my pocket for my gloves. “We’ve got to check for any other traces.” I looked at the guardian. He was strangely nervous, he had been ever since I found the file. Did he know something I didn’t? I took the dark blue cardboard object out and ran my eyes over it again. Apart from the bloodstain I’d noticed in the archive, I couldn’t see any other residual evidence on the outside. Then something else struck me. “What about Davie?” I asked. “You told your secretary not to let anyone in.”

  “Hume 253 does not need to be involved in this part of the investigation, Dalrymple,” the guardian said in a leaden voice. “Proceed.”

  I thought about insisting on Davie’s presence, but I knew that when Hamilton made his mind up only acts of god – or whatever the atheist Council describes them as – could deflect him. So I bent over the file and took a final look at the cover. It revealed nothing apart from the Scottish Parliament logo and crest, the “Guardian Eyes Only” stamp that had been applied later, and a laser-printed reference line – GEC/02/04/ATTS1–2.

  “Do you know what that means?” Hamilton asked. Something about the tone of his voice gave me the impression that he did.

  “I don’t know what the ‘G’ and the ‘E’ stand for,” I said, scratching the stubble on my chin. “But I’d guess the ‘C’ is committee.”

  The guardian nodded noncommittally.

  I scrabbled around in the recesses of my memory. I hadn’t seen any Scottish Parliament documents since the early years of the Enlightenment, before the Council locked them all up. A few shards of archival data came back to me.

  “They used to record the year first then the month, didn’t they?” I said. “So this dates from April 2002.” I shook my head. “Bad time to be a member of the Scottish Parliament.” Rioting had begun to tear the country apart by then.

  “Bad time to be a Scottish citizen,” Hamilton said darkly. “Go on.”

  I looked back at the reference line. “The last bit is presumably Attachments Numbers One and Two.”

  The guardian nodded. “That was how the abbreviations worked, yes.” His eyes were fixed on the folder now, his bottom lip caught between his teeth.

  “Are you familiar with the contents of this file, Lewis?” I asked, moving closer to him. “Because if you are, you’d better tell me now.”

  He shook his head slowly. “No, I’m not. At least not in detail.” He glanced up and saw the suspicious look on my face. “Any more ideas about the letters ‘GE’?” he asked.

  “General Excuses?” I suggested. “Now there’s an idea for the Council.”

  “No,” he said, his voice suddenly less assured. “GEC was the parliamentary committee which regulated genetic engineering.”

  Chapter Three

  I poured the last of the coffee into my cup. Lewis had ordered it at three a.m. and gone to the door himself to take the tray – he wasn’t letting anyone else even catch a glimpse of the files that were lying dismembered across the table.

  “Right, let’s recap,” I said, stifling a yawn. “As far as we know, the intruders were only interested in this file . . .” I tapped the folder with the bloodstain “. . . and Attachment Number Two has been removed from it.”

  The public order guardian moved his head dispiritedly.

  “We’ll have to get some senior auxiliaries to go through the other files more thoroughly.” I pointed at the heap of folders at the other end of the table. They were the neighbouring ones from the stack which Davie had delivered outside the door earlier. He’d sounded very unimpressed when the guardian wouldn’t let him in. No doubt he was now tearing several strips off the poor sods working the night shift in the command centre.

  “But so far there’s no sign of anything having been taken from them.”

  “No.” I looked over at the guardian. His bloodshot eyes stared out between the white of his hair and beard. “Of course, they could have taken papers from completely separate folders. You’ll have to get the whole archive checked.”

  “I’ll think about that tomorrow,” Hamilton said, waving his hand weakly.

  “It’s already tomorrow, Lewis.” I reined myself in a bit. My ex-boss looked like one of the city’s ancient diesel-spewing buses had recently run into him. “Anyway, as I said, one of the attachments is missing. And we don’t know what it contained.”

  The guardian nodded. He hadn’t allowed me to read anything other than the cover sheet of the folder. All it told me was that the contents related to three meetings of the Genetic Engineering Committee in April 2002. It gave the names of the Members of the Scottish Parliament, bureaucrats and scientists present, none of which I recognised.

  “What was so interesting about a parliamentary committee nearly twenty-five years ago?” I mused.

  “You were still in short trousers then, weren’t you?” Hamilton said, without much evidence of playfulness.

  “I was eighteen,” I said, giving him a sharp look. “And a fully paid-up member of the Enlightenment.” I shook my head. “That may well have been a mistake.”

  “The Enlightenment Party was the forerunner of the Council,” the guardian said. “How could it have been a mistake to join it?”

  “Oh, forget it,” I said under my breath. Suddenly I was bombarded by images and memories from that time. I’d just started at the university and for all the social unrest and drugs-gang-inspired chaos, I was full of the joys of life. Not for long. I wondered how many of my friends from that time were still alive, let alone in Edinburgh – plenty had deserted in the early years of the Council, seduced by the allure of supposedly democratic cities like Glasgow.

  “We’ll continue later. I need to get Council authorisation for you to read that file.” Hamilton raised his shoulders. “Sorry, Dalrymple.”

  I shrugged back at him. “Your loss, not mine. I want to check on Hector then hit my bed.”

  Hamilton looked at me blankly then concentrated on the checklist he’d written in his notebook. “I’ll get the forensics people to examine the folder for traces and compare the blood with the spots you found on the floor.”

  “I don’t think they’ll find much. I couldn’t see any fingerprints with my lens. Whoever laid hands on this file was wearing gloves.” I raised my right hand which was still sheathed in its protective glove; the rubber dangled loosely from the stump of the forefinger. “Not heavy labourer’s ones but thin ones like these, which were cut by the edge of a sheet of paper. Whence the blood traces and not much else.”

  The guardian went on down his list. “The guard will also be checking the removal of the equipment from the Labour Directorate depot and getting statements from all personnel involved.”

  “I smell something rotten in that directorate,” I said. “Someone supplied the bogus workmen with a job authorisation that convinced the sentry. Maybe that someone also let them into the depot.”

  Hamilton looked at me aggressively like he always did when I accused auxiliaries of corruption. Then he nodded. “You may be right. I’ll have the senior auxiliaries from the relevant departments in.”

  I stood up unsteadily and stretched my heavy limbs. “Right, Lewis. That only leaves one thing before I get my head down.”

  He finished writing another note and raised his eyes slowly. “And what’s that, Dalrymple?”

  “Genetic engineering’s been banned in this city for over twenty years,” I said, meeting his gaze. “It hasn’t been going on. So why’s this file making you jumpier than a filly before her first outing on the racetrack in Princes Street Gardens?”

  Hamilton claimed he didn’t know what I was talking about. That didn’t surprise me much, so I left him to his scribbling and headed for the esplanade. Under low cloud, the elevated parking area seemed to float in the air above the dim lights of the central zone. I flashed my directorate authorisation at a guard driver and got him to take me to the infirmary. Like I say, I only p
ull strings when absolutely necessary – and when I’m shagged out.

  I stood at the glass partition in the ICU and stared at the old man. He was still hooked up to all sorts of tubes and drips and it was difficult to make out his face. There seemed to be a placid expression on it. The senior nursing auxiliary was optimistic about his chances but couldn’t give any firm prognosis. I told her I’d be back later and returned to the Land-Rover. By the time I was dropped off outside my flat in Gilmore Place the first tinges of watery light had appeared in the eastern sky. So much for the night.

  The stairwell let out its familiar discharge of sewage gas and infrequently washed bodies. I fumbled my way up in the darkness – the electricity supply to citizen accommodation isn’t turned back on until the end of the curfew at six-thirty – and eventually managed to get my key in the lock. Although my living-room was as black as the heart of a drugs gang boss, I was capable of navigating my way to the bedroom on the other side. It wasn’t the first time I’d come home after Council-approved bedtime.

  I dumped my bag on the hamstrung sofa and heard the springs complain metallically. Then I pushed the bedroom door open, pulled off my donkey jacket and sat down heavily on the bed.

  “Ow.” An arm was wrenched from underneath me. “Mind where you put your backside, Quint.”

  “Jesus,” I gasped, my heart pounding from the shock of finding my bed occupied. “Thanks for letting me know you were coming, Katharine.”

  “Where have you been?” she asked sleepily. “What time is it?”

  I found the matches on the rickety bedside table and lit what remained of my last candle; I’d been putting off queuing at the local Supply Directorate store.

  “It’s so early in the morning that you’re better off not knowing,” I said, peering at her in the candle’s feeble light. Her light brown hair was tangled and she was having difficulty opening her eyes, but she still looked a million dollars – not that a million dollars is a big deal in the remaining United States these days, what with the volcanic inflation that resulted from religious fundamentalist-inspired civil war.