The Blood Tree Read online

  I wiped the creature’s saliva off my boot on the curtain and turned back to the scientist. “Are you sure you can’t help us on that research? What was it about?”

  Gavin Godwin turned up his hands. “I can’t recall. I’m pretty sure it didn’t have anything to do with animals. That would have stuck.”

  Before I could make my mind up whether I believed him or not, my mobile rang.

  “Quint? Where are you?”

  “Retirement home number zo in Royal Terrace, Davie.”

  “Get out of there fast. I’ll meet you at the entrance to the Botanic Gardens in Arboretum Road.” His voice was unusually tense.

  “What is it?”

  “Dead male auxiliary. Circumstances extremely suspicious.”

  “Bloody hell.” I beckoned to Katharine. “We’re on our way. Out.”

  I exited Godwin’s room so quickly that even Cerberus was left for dead.

  Chapter Five

  I drove across Leith Walk, heading north-west through what used to be Edinburgh’s gay quarter, the so-called Broughton Triangle. It still has that orientation, but the bars and clubs are for tourists only. The Council has no problem with homosexuality – given that the regime was founded on the doctrines of Plato, that would be one display of hypocrisy too many – but citizen liaisons are handled in leisure centres outside the tourist zone.

  “Did you believe that old crazy?” Katharine asked, bracing herself as I swerved round a corner.

  “About not remembering the research project? I’m not sure. He didn’t strike me as being particularly senile.”

  “What about that pet of his? Poor thing. It must be suffering from a major identity crisis.”

  “Poor thing?” I braked as a football bounced across the road in front of me. A small girl stood with her mouth open at the sight of the guard vehicle. She was probably even more shocked when I didn’t stop and take her name. “Cerberus is without question the most loathsome creature I’ve ever come across.” I glanced at her and grinned. “And that includes senior auxiliaries.”

  Katharine ignored that observation. “It’s not the animal’s fault,” she said. “I thought genetic engineering wasn’t allowed in this city.”

  We crossed the bridge over the Water of Leith beyond Canonmills and approached the Botanics.

  “Maybe its genes weren’t engineered or modified,” I said. “Maybe Gavin Godwin wasn’t being straight with us. He might just have found a way to make dogs fancy cats.”

  “Come on,” Katharine scoffed. “He was on the Genetic Engineering Committee. He obviously knew how to fiddle around with genes and embryos.”

  I nodded. “Don’t worry. I’ll be raising that point with Hamilton. He’s been seriously twitchy ever since he saw which file had been tampered with.”

  Katharine shook her head as I turned into Inverleith Terrace, the branches of the trees in the Botanics hanging over the road. “You’ll be far too busy with this suspicious death now to worry about the break-in.”

  Christ. The dead male auxiliary. I’d forgotten about him. I felt the extra rush that I always get at the beginning of cases involving suspicious death. The increase of youth gang activity has meant that homicide is more common than it used to be under the Council, but there still aren’t many murders. Especially not of auxiliaries.

  That may have explained why what looked like every guard vehicle in the city had pulled up in Arboretum Road.

  “Bloody hell, Davie,” I said as he came out of the mêlée of guard personnel. “Haven’t these people got anything else to do?”

  “This is a bad one, Quint,” he said in a low voice. His face was solemn. “You know what it’s like when an auxiliary goes down.” He glanced around. “Everyone wants to get involved.”

  “Where’s the body?” I asked.

  “I’ll take you straight there,” Davie replied. His eyes rested on Katharine. “What about . . . ?”

  “I’m coming too,” she said firmly.

  I looked at her. “Are you sure? You’ve got to go back to work tomorrow, haven’t you? There’s no point in—”

  “Sod the Welfare Directorate,” she said. “I’m due some days in lieu anyway. This sounds much more diverting.”

  “It’s definitely that,” Davie said, biting his lip. “If you’re sure, Quint . . .”

  I shrugged helplessly. Arguing with Katharine was never a good idea. Besides, it’s useful to have back-up you can rely on.

  “This way then.” Davie set off towards the gate. Guardsmen and women got out of his way, more because of the thunderous look on his face than his commander’s insignia.

  We went through the gate into the gardens’ seventy acres. A temporary checkpoint had been set up and we had to flash ID. Fortunately the gardens are only open to tourists at weekends as they’re outside the central zone. Special buses are organised and guard patrols are increased to ensure the locals don’t do anything embarrassing in front of the paying guests – like gawp at their expensive clothes and cameras. At least we wouldn’t be bothered today.

  Davie bore to the left. “The body’s in the copse,” he said.

  That area of the Botanics is less cultivated than the rest, the woodland and hedges sheltering foreign species of plants. Even in autumn there were patches of colour in the herbaceous border. Birds were hopping busily about the place uncovering worms beneath the carpet of leaves.

  “It’s over by that big copper beech,” Davie said.

  “Very appropriate,” I said under my breath. The leaves of the great tree, most of them still attached, were a deep burned-red colour which reminded me of the bloodstained scenes of crime I’d experienced too often in my life.

  There was a crowd of auxiliaries ahead of us. I made out the scene-of-crime squad and the Medical Directorate examiners pulling on their protective suits. A six-foot-high maroon tent had been erected beside the beech to keep the rain off the corpse and to shroud the scene. A Welfare Directorate child care facility had been built in the northern reaches of the gardens and this obviously wasn’t a sight for kiddies. Hamilton and Sophia were standing beside the tent. They were always attracted to suspicious deaths on the grounds of scarcity – like me.

  “Guardian alert,” Katharine said. “This’ll be fun.”

  I wiped the sheen of drizzle from my face and strode up to them.

  “Before we start, let’s get this clear,” I said. “I want Katharine on the case with me. No arguments, no further discussion.”

  Lewis and Sophia looked at me blankly for a few seconds then nodded their heads reluctantly.

  “We don’t have time for this, Quint,” Sophia said in a long-suffering voice. “Just make sure she doesn’t get in the way.”

  I nodded and accepted a pair of rubber gloves from one of Hamilton’s team.

  “My hero,” Katharine whispered as she pulled on hers.

  “My arse in the fire if you screw up,” I hissed.

  “Go on, man,” Hamilton said brusquely. “Get inside. My people are waiting.”

  “Not coming, Lewis?” I asked.

  The guardian shook his head. “I’ve seen quite enough.” He’d never been good at dealing with corpses. You’d have thought the drugs wars would have acclimatised him.

  I opened the flap in the canvas and dropped to my knees to examine the ground inside the tent. A large battery-powered light had been hung from the apex. The grass was sparse around the trunk of the copper beech and there were some scuffed prints. I avoided the clearest ones and moved further in.

  The auxiliary was dressed in a standard-issue grey suit and black shoes. He was lying on his left side, knees and arms bent uniformly. It looked like the body had been left in a carefully arranged pose, an impression strengthened by what was in the right hand. A branch had been cut from the beech and the fingers folded round it. The purple-red foliage was covering the dead man’s arm and face. There was a lot of blood on the leaves.

  “I told you it was bad,” Davie called.

&nbs
p; I turned round and saw Hamilton shaking his head.

  “Can I come in?” Sophia asked.

  “How about me?” Katharine added.

  “Hold on a minute,” I said. “I haven’t even seen the face yet.”

  I edged forward till I was kneeling by the upper abdomen. I didn’t want to move anything before photographs were taken so I bent down and peered through the leaves. What I saw made me jerk back uncontrollably.

  “God almighty,” I gasped.

  “What is it, Quint?” Davie asked.

  I looked again to make sure. No, I wasn’t imagining it.

  “Quint?” Sophia said.

  “Someone thought this guy didn’t see well enough,” I said, rocking back on my heels. “So they gave him a third eye.”

  I finished my preliminary examination and let the scene-of-crime squad get on with photos, sketches, prints and so on. We watched as the branch was removed from the corpse’s grip – it was loose, suggesting the branch had been put there after death. Then Sophia and I went back inside the tent.

  “What do you reckon?” I asked after she’d inspected the dead man’s face.

  She sat back, her midriff bulging under the protective tunic. “Very curious. I won’t be able to tell for sure until the postmortem—”

  “Of course.”

  She gave me a disparaging look. “But it would appear that what you described as a third eye is in fact the dead man’s own left eye. There’s a lot of blood about but if you look carefully you can see that the left eye’s been torn out and forced into the cavity that was opened in the frontal bone.”

  I felt my stomach churn. “You’re kidding. Why would anyone want to do that?”

  “I’m a doctor, not a psychologist,” Sophia said distractedly. “At first I wondered if the wound came from a bullet.”

  “Not many of those in Enlightenment Edinburgh,” I said. “Only the city line and border guards have guns.”

  She glanced up at me. “Always quick to assume that auxiliaries are the criminals, aren’t you, Quint?” She shook her head. “This is no bullet wound. Look at the ragged edges. This was done by a sharp instrument.” She pursed her lips. “Wielded by someone with considerable strength. The bone is thick there.”

  “Jesus,” I gasped, “this gets worse by the minute. What kind of sharp instrument? Don’t tell me – wait for the p-m.”

  She nodded. “Exactly. But it would have been something at least six inches long to allow for the leverage required to gouge out the hole. The rough edges suggest it didn’t have honed edges and I don’t think it would have been pointed – the leading edge would have been at least half-an-inch wide to make that hole.”

  “A chisel?”

  “Mm, possible.”

  I looked at her. “Not much doubt that this was murder.”

  “None at all, Quint. He could hardly have committed suicide like this. Or got that hole in his forehead and had his eye moved by accident.”

  “What about the time of death?”

  Sophia put her hands on the head and neck, then ran them down the arms and legs. “Rigor’s almost complete. That and the temperature reading makes me say around twelve hours ago. To be confirmed.”

  “So an hour or two after midnight?” I asked.

  Sophia stood up. “Something like that.” She stepped over the markers to the tent flap. “I’ll be waiting for the body,” she said over her shoulder. “The Council will want the p-m to be done as soon as possible.”

  “I know.” I moved over to the body and tried to make out the barracks number on the left side of the suit jacket. It was pressing into the ground. “Davie! I need a hand.”

  He appeared, Katharine not far behind him.

  “Lift him up from the other side.”

  Davie did so.

  “That’s interesting,” I said, touching a tear in the jacket fabric. “The barracks number’s been torn off.”

  “Why would the killer do that?” Davie asked.

  “Maybe he wanted to keep a trophy,” Katharine said, her eyes locked on the mutilated face.

  “Or maybe it just got lost in the struggle,” I said. “There are some ritualistic elements here – the branch over the face, the third eye. Jesus, look at the side of his head.”

  I leaned forward again. There was a mass of pulped bone and blood above the ear he’d been lying on.

  “Looks like someone smashed his head in,” Davie said.

  “Before or after the eye was taken out?”

  I shrugged, briefly wondering about Sophia’s failure to spot that injury.

  “Meanwhile we have the problem of identifying this guy. I don’t fancy getting everyone of auxiliary rank to look at these features and see if they recognise him.” I slid my hand into the inside jacket pocket. “Hang on.” I pulled out a black leather wallet. “This might help.” I opened it and took out a Knox Barracks ID card.

  Davie let the body back down on to the ground and leaned across. “It’s not a very recent photo but it looks pretty like him.”

  “Knox 43,” Katharine read.

  “Date of birth 10.10.75,” I continued, “height five feet ten, weight ten stone three—”

  “Seems about right,” Davie said.

  “Hair grey—”

  “Check,” Katharine said.

  “Eyes brown.”

  Neither of them volunteered to confirm that. The right eyelids were gummed together with dried blood. I had to force myself to look at the eyeball that had been moved from its socket and stuffed into the hole in the forehead. Lidless and not exactly free of blood, it stared out like one of the large, sticky sweets that kids used to suck before the Council banned confectionery on health grounds.

  “That one’s brown,” I said. “Who knows about the other?”

  “It must be the same,” Katharine said, looking away.

  “I’m not sure if we can be sure of anything in this case yet,” I said. “But, yeah, the likelihood is that this is Knox 43.”

  Davie got up. “I’ll go and find out about him.”

  I nodded and ran my fingers into the other pockets. A pristine handkerchief, an auxiliary-issue condom (unused), a pencil and a notebook were my haul. I put them into separate clear plastic bags.

  “What do you think, Quint?” Katharine asked. Her face was pale and her hands were quivering. She’d seen plenty of dead bodies in her time, but this one wasn’t easy to live with.

  I got to my feet and was immediately attacked by pins and needles. Heavy rain began to drum on the canvas above. “What I think is that our friend here needs to be taken to the morgue sharpish. Then we’ll have to look for witnesses – not that there would have been too many of them after curfew. Check the guard patrols, check—”

  “I don’t mean all that procedural stuff,” Katharine interrupted. “I mean what do you think about this killing? It’s giving me a really bad feeling.” She twitched her head. “Reminds me of the scumbags in the drugs gangs who used to mutilate people for fun.” Her eyes flashed at me. “I thought you’d got rid of all those animals.”

  I took her arm and led her to the tent flap. “So did I, Katharine. So did I.”

  The rain was coming down in torrents so we ran to the gatehouse where a temporary operations room had been set up. I hoped the forensics people had got all the traces and prints they needed from the vicinity of the body because the Botanics were about to be turned into a titanic sunken garden.

  A pimply trainee auxiliary who looked well out of his depth handed us mugs of oily tea. As usual there was no milk. Outside, the pile-up of guard vehicles had dissipated. Hamilton had no doubt told them to get about their business in words of one syllable. An ambulance moved slowly past the checkpoint – Knox 43’s last ride.

  “Does this place have a sentry overnight?” I asked Davie.

  He nodded. “Because of the child care facility at the Botanics.” He looked at his notebook. “Raeburn 266 was the sentry on the nightshift. I’ve already questioned her. S
he’s an experienced guardswoman.” He shrugged. “She saw nothing out of the ordinary all night. There was a mist and visibility was poor.”

  “Also,” I said, “the railings were removed for resmelting during the drugs wars so getting in and out of here anywhere along the boundary isn’t too difficult.”

  Hamilton glared at me. “We needed all the iron we could get at that time, Dalrymple. You know that.”

  “Uh-huh.” I turned to Davie. “Any other witnesses?”

  “None has come forward yet. I’ve got auxiliaries from Scott Barracks knocking on all the doors in the area.”

  “How about the child care facility?” I asked.

  “Ah.” Davie’s cheeks coloured. “I haven’t got round to that yet.”

  It was unlike Davie to overlook a place in close proximity to the scene. That showed how much the body had affected him.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ve got the perfect person to handle this. Katharine works in the Welfare Directorate.” I looked at her. “Can you go and check the facility out?”

  She nodded. “Anyone got an umbrella?”

  Hamilton reluctantly handed over his. “Make sure you bring it back,” he said.

  Katharine peered at it. The words “Public Order Guardian” had been stencilled over the maroon and white fabric. “What possible reason would I have for keeping it?” she asked, then left.

  “Don’t say a word, Lewis,” I warned.

  There was a buzz from Davie’s mobile. He answered and listened intently, making notes before he rang off.

  “That was the command centre. They’ve pulled the dead man’s file.” He was suddenly breathless. “Listen to this.”

  Hamilton and I stepped closer.

  “As Knox 43’s low barracks number suggests, he was a fairly senior auxiliary,” Davie said. The twenty auxiliary barracks were originally set up with fifty members each – they have five hundred-plus now.

  The guardian nodded impatiently. “We know that, commander. Continue.”

  Davie nodded, a faint smile on his lips. “He was also a civil engineer – in charge of the Roads and Power Maintenance Department.”