Water of Death Page 8

We left the Land-Rover round the corner in Belford Road and hoofed it to the club in Bell’s Brae. It was on the ground floor of what had been a nineteenth-century coachhouse before the trendy modernisers got to it fifteen years before the Enlightenment. Dean Village was a classic example of a former working area that changed beyond all recognition because of the demand for accommodation near the city centre. The old tanneries and flour mills ended up as luxury hotels and flats – till the economy went down the toilet and what used to be the UK became several dozen versions of the field of Armageddon. Below us the Water of Leith skirted frog-haunted reeds, trickling its meagre stream around the moss-covered stones.

  The marijuana club advertised its presence by means of a purple and green façade. Above the door there hung a large sign with writing that was supposed to look spaced out, man. The word “smoke” was enclosed in a white cloud drifting over an expanse of water that was much deeper and much bluer than the neighbouring river. And just in case customers got the idea that designers in Edinburgh were completely lacking in imagination, the guardsman on the door was wearing a long black wig, tight satin trousers with gold fly buttons, and a yellow shirt open to display his massive pectorals. No doubt he also played air guitar solos when he got bored.

  Not that he was bored now. One look at Davie’s beard and off-duty guard personnel khaki trousers was enough for him to identify his rank. He needed a few more looks at me though. It must have been the tight-legged black trousers and the T-shirt with the “Heavy, Oh So Very Heavy” logo I’d dredged up from the suitcase of antediluvian rags I keep under my bed. Eventually I put him out of his misery by flashing my directorate authorisation.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked, now even more worried.

  “Don’t worry, we’re not doing an inspection.” He’d probably heard that one before. All the city’s tourist premises are subject to spot checks for black-market activities and inspectors often go in disguise. They’ve also been known to pretend they’re on other business to gain the confidence of staff – just one of the many ways the Council keeps a grip.

  “Do you know Frankie Thomson?” I asked.

  “Frankie who?” he asked, squinting into the sun.

  “Frankie Thomson. He’s a cleaner here.”

  “Oh, him.” The auxiliary looked unimpressed. “The piss artist. Makes more mess than he cleans up, I reckon. I haven’t seen him today.” Then he got a bit more excited. “Why? What’s he done?” Typical guardsman’s suspicious mind.

  I ignored the question. “Who does he knock around with? Have you seen him sneak his pals in?” Citizen staff have been known to do that after doing a deal with bent auxiliaries.

  He shook his wig emphatically. “No way. They don’t get away with that here. We run a tight ship.”

  I looked up at the sign above his head. “Looks like your funnel could do with a clean.”

  He stared at me uncomprehendingly as I walked inside.

  “Don’t mind him,” I heard Davie saying. “Heat’s fried his brains.”

  “Such loyalty,” I muttered, then pushed open the inner door. We were immediately enveloped in a fug of bittersweet smoke. The lights were low and it was hard to make things out. The same couldn’t be said for the music. It wasn’t loud enough to bring the walls of Jericho down but it would have made a fair start. The pounding of the bass and drums came up your legs from the floor like unfriendly boa constrictors and set your inner organs in violent disarray. I was all shook up, and not just because they were playing “Paranoid”.

  A female auxiliary loomed out of the murk wearing a torn vest that made a major exhibition of her breasts and leather shorts that must have hurt like hell – what the Tourism Directorate imagined a rock chick looked like. She clocked us immediately and the false smile died on her purple-painted lips.

  “Who’s in charge?” I shouted.

  She pointed to the bar and went back to her customer. There was an old-fashioned propeller fan doing not much to clear the air in the middle of the cavernous room. As it was early afternoon, only a few of the tables were occupied – mainly lone tourist guys with beer bellies, joints between their fingers and Prostitution Services Department women leading them on. The one who met us was already grinding her backside into an oriental’s groin. His hands were on her breasts through the rents in her top, his eyes rolling back in a half-stupor. He had his lower lip between his teeth like he was trying to get his priorities straight. Meanwhile the woman was going for world championship lap-dancing gold.

  Another female auxiliary appeared in front of us. This one was middle-aged, with short grey hair, a matching grey skirt and a hard set to her jaw. The boss. I pointed to the door at the back marked “Strictly Private” and followed her over. Davie went to check out the bar.

  “And you are?” she asked, closing the sound-proofed door.

  I shook my ears back into action. “Dalrymple.”

  The auxiliary’s eyes opened wide.

  “Don’t worry, it’s only a routine enquiry.”

  “Since when did you handle routine enquiries, citizen?” She reached into a drawer and took out her barracks badge.

  “Have we met before?” I leaned forward. “Knox 42?”

  She shook her head. “I know you though. You catch the bad people.” Her eyes were more playful than the rest of her face, which wasn’t a hard trick for them to pull off.

  “The bad people. Yes, well, I don’t know if the person I’m going to ask you about was necessarily one of those.”

  Knox 42’s lips twitched for a second or two. She probably thought that constituted a smile. Still, some of her rank don’t even make that much of an effort to be human.

  “You never know, citizen. It’s often the most unlikely people who turn out to be the worst ones of all.” Her voice was flat and empty. She was old enough to have been in the Enlightenment from the beginning like I had. Like Frankie Thomson had. We were the ones who had the most to be disappointed about, who’d been let down most by jokers who should never have been allowed on to the Council. If I’d been put in charge of a licensed dope and wanking parlour, I wouldn’t have been too happy either.

  “True enough,” I said. I’d have liked to talk to her about the old days and what we used to believe in but it was far too late for that. “Frankie Thomson. What can you tell me about him?”

  “What can you tell me about the old sot, citizen?” No twitch of the lips this time. “He didn’t turn up for work this morning. I had to get a couple of the girls to clean out the bogs.”

  “I hope they washed their hands before you set them loose on clients.”

  That went down like compulsory overtime at harvest time on the city farms. Eventually Knox 42 went to the filing cabinet on the rear wall of the windowless room.

  “What do you want to know, citizen?” she asked wearily.

  “Why don’t you just give me the file?” I took a chance and smiled at her. Amazingly that worked. She handed it over.

  I flicked through the pages. They were mainly time sheets and appraisals. Frankie T. didn’t seem to have been a favourite of his boss.

  “You knew he was a DM.”

  “As you see.” Knox 42’s gaze was unwavering.

  “Did that cause you any problems?”

  “Why should it? City Regulations state that demoted auxiliaries are to be treated in exactly the same way as other ordinary citizens.”

  I smiled. “That’s a nice fairy-tale. You and I both know that auxiliaries often give their former colleagues a bad time.”

  Knox 42 shrugged. “I don’t work that way. DMs aren’t my favourite people but I don’t come down hard on them.”

  “That’s a relief,” I said. “What about the things you don’t put in here?”

  The auxiliary poured herself a glass of water from a bottle she took from her drawer and drank deeply. She didn’t offer me one. “Like what, citizen?”

  “Like did you let him take the remains of the joints from the ashtrays? Did y
ou let him bring his friends in for a peek at the girls? Did you feed him booze to keep him quiet when things in here got out of hand?”

  The edge I’d slipped into my voice didn’t seem to get to her.

  “No, citizen,” she said, looking at me stolidly. “None of those.”

  “Come on,” I scoffed. “Everyone knows that cleaners in the clubs are a source of black-market grass and tobacco.”

  Knox 42 shook her head. “Not from here they aren’t. I check the grass and hash stocks every day personally and I distribute them to the girls myself. All personnel are body-searched every time they leave the premises. And the ashtrays are emptied into a sack that’s sealed and sent back to the Drugs Department daily for reconstitution.” She gave me a stern glare that Hamilton would have applauded wildly. “As for citizens other than accredited staff even reaching the front door, forget it.”

  Impressive. I almost believed her and, anyway, the scene-of-crime squad would report any traces of grass or tobacco found in the dead man’s flat. But it was all a bit mechanical.

  “How about whisky? Frankie was a big fan of that.”

  She blinked involuntarily. “Whisky? We don’t keep any.”

  Marijuana clubs exist to supply soft drugs to the tourists. Even on these premises clients are restricted to three joints per person per day. The only alcohol they’re meant to sell is low-strength beer – known throughout the city as “Golden Drizzle” – so that the customers don’t get too wrecked. But it’s common knowledge in the guard that tourists with a big wallet can get anything they want.

  I decided to play with a concrete ball. “All right, Knox 42, here’s the story. Frankie Thomson’s dead.” I watched her closely but she was being a good auxiliary and impersonating a block of granite when tension mounts. “There’s a chance that he drank himself to death and I want to know where he got the whisky.”

  “Citizens earn vouchers for Supply Directorate spirits,” she said in a monotone. “Why do you think he got his whisky here?”

  I wasn’t planning on telling her about the bottles of the Ultimate Usquebaugh we’d found. “Look, Knox 42, we both know you get supplies of top-quality whisky for seriously loaded customers. Give me the paperwork, please.”

  She did. I made sure she stayed where she was while I went through it. It didn’t take long. She had only twenty-three bottles in stock, none of them with the same name as those in the dead man’s flat.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing more you can tell me about Frankie Thomson?” I said as I got up to go.

  Knox 42 shook her head slowly. “He was just a cleaner. He came in the morning, cleaned the bogs – not very well – and the tables and floors. He didn’t pilfer drink, he didn’t get his hands on reefer butts and he didn’t bring his friends in. I very much doubt that he had any friends, citizen.” She may well have been right; that squared with what Drem had told Davie.

  I went back out into the smoke and aural thunder zone. My side-kick was behind the bar writing in his notebook, a barman in a frizzy blond wig staring at him moodily.

  “Are you done?” I asked in as loud a voice as I could manage.

  He nodded. “Just about. I’ve checked the cellar and the rest of the rooms. They’ve got twenty-three bottles of the hard stuff, none called . . .”

  I raised a finger to stop him just in case the barman could lip-read.

  A few minutes later we shouldered our way out past a group of excited Russian tourists with clippered hair and tattoos on their forearms. I was willing to bet that the stock of whisky was about to take a big hit. And that the rock chicks were in for a lot of sedentary bump and grind.

  The music had changed but not for the better. Now they were playing “Mistreated”.

  “What next?” Davie asked as we got back to the guard vehicle.

  “You tell me.” My throat was dry and the walk had made me short of breath. Or perhaps my lungs had contracted something virulent from the atmosphere in the club.

  “The archives again?”

  “Who’s a clever boy then? I want to see Frankie Thomson’s ordinary citizen file. Maybe we’ll strike lucky and find someone he used to get pissed with.”

  “And more likely we won’t.”

  “Don’t be so pessimistic.” I climbed in and beat him to the bottle under the driver’s seat.

  “Bastard,” he said. “That’s my water.”

  I sluiced down my throat. “Now, now. Citizens and auxiliaries have equal rights in Edinburgh nowadays.” I handed him the bottle and watched as he tried to laugh and drink at the same time. Not many guard personnel took that line seriously.

  “Right?” Davie said, starting the engine. “You have the right to spend the rest of the day sweating in file graveyard and I have the right to leave you to it.” He ground up the hill towards Queensferry Street. The sun was to our left, making me blink and then curse. I’d left my shades at home.

  “You might as well go up to the castle while I’m checking out Frankie Thomson,” I conceded. “Maybe have a go at pretending to Hamilton that you’re a real guard commander.”

  “Rather than your chauffeur, you mean?”

  We passed an Edlott booth. Customers at this one were being harangued by a former winner dressed as King James VI, complete with catamite. Some tourists were examining the small boy with confused looks on their faces. The tableau reminded me of Fordyce Kennedy. I’d been ignoring that case completely.

  “Davie, when you’re in the castle check with the command centre if the missing Edlott winner’s turned up.”

  “Okay.” He turned and gave me a dirty grin. “If you like, I’ll even go and visit his delectable daughter.”

  A vision of the sultry Agnes floated up before me. It struck me that maybe I was spending far too much time on the DM who’d been found by the Water of Leith.

  Chapter Five

  I hit the central archive on George IVth Bridge for the second time that day and got my body temperature down to a reasonable level in the marble halls. I could have gone to Napier Barracks and tried to track down anyone who knew the dead man – I was still intrigued by the fact that his file in the demoted auxiliary archive had been weeded – but it was less hassle to follow up this angle first. Sitting at a desk in the double-height room, I worked through Frankie Thomson’s ordinary citizen file, the one covering his life after he’d been demoted. You’d think the Public Order Directorate would want to keep such records with the DM files in the castle, but the rationale seems to be that people reduced to the ranks are no longer entitled even to archive space in such hallowed ground. I smelled some kind of half-baked symbolism.

  All I got was confirmation of what I’d already learned – that Frankie Thomson kept himself to himself and liked the booze. Ordinary citizens are not subject to quite as much supervision as auxiliaries but they still have to list their friends and workmates. The only name given by the dead man was Angus Drem and Davie had already established how limited that relationship was – though it might be worth putting the shits up the storeman again in case he’d been lying. Frankie T. apparently didn’t have anything going with members of the other gender either. After the Council made the weekly sex session voluntary, he’d left the sexual relations section of his personal evaluation form blank. I began to feel even sorrier for him as I read his work records. He’d been a cleaner at several other marijuana clubs before Smoke on the Water and his work reports were mostly unfavourable. His latest medical had turned up signs of cirrhosis and he’d been told to stop drinking. The bottles in his kitchen showed how much attention he’d paid to that instruction. Frankie’s handwriting had become a random scrawl and the little he said about himself struck me as a coded call for help that no one had picked up.

  ‘The drink doesn’t work’,” read a voice from behind my shoulder. “It looks like it worked plenty of damage on his handwriting though.”

  “What are you doing sneaking around behind people, Ray?”

  The archivist put his hand
on the back of my neck and squeezed hard. “I work here, remember? In fact, I’m in charge here.” He leaned closer. “Thomson, Francis Dee. Who he?”

  I put down the form and turned towards him. “Thomson, Francis Dee, deceased, he.”

  Ray sat on the desk and scratched the stump of his arm. He seemed to have been doing a lot of that recently. Maybe the heat was getting to him. “What happened to him? Why are you so interested?”

  “I’m not so interested. I’m just checking his background. We found him on the bank of the Water of Leith with his face in the stream.”

  “Really?” Ray looked surprised. “Heatstroke?”

  “Could be. We’ll soon find out from the post-mortem.” I started putting the papers back in some sort of order then looked round at him. “I don’t suppose you knew the guy? He was a DM. Napier 25 was his barracks number.”

  Ray thought for a moment then shook his head. “Nope. I’ve never known many people in Napier.” He glanced down at the papers on the desk, the expression of surprise still on his face. “I’ll look after that,” he said. “The file will have to be taken off the open shelves now the subject is dead. You’ve saved me the trouble of finding it when the death notification comes in.”

  “On the house, my friend.”

  “Speaking of which, do you fancy a dram?” He picked up the grey folder and moved away, not bothering to wait for an answer.

  Up in his office, Ray scrabbled around in a drawer for a couple of glasses then pulled out a bottle of barracks malt.

  “Highland Breeze,” I read. “Never heard of that one.”

  “New shipment,” he said, stripping the seal and pulling the cork with his teeth – which impressed me a lot – before pouring a couple of heavy slugs. “Apparently there’s been a shake-up of the suppliers the Council has started using across the firth.”

  “You mean the gangs have been playing bury the claymore again?”

  “Bury the claymore,” he repeated, laughing quietly. “I like it.” He pushed one of the glasses across his desk.

  “Still reading Wilfred Owen?” I asked.