Impolitic Corpses Read online

  My mobile rang as I was only a couple of minutes away from the theatre. It was Sophia. I pulled in, prompting a horn blast from a bus, and answered.

  ‘Quint, are you coming home tonight?’ Her voice was soft and sleepy.

  ‘Hope so, but you know what it’s like on big cases.’

  ‘You aren’t meant to be doing this any more.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But you don’t care.’ Her tone was sharper.

  ‘Of course I care. You know I do.’

  There was a long pause. ‘To be completely honest, I don’t. Even if you don’t want to spend time with me any more, you have to with the kids.’

  I sighed. ‘Who says I don’t want to spend time with you?’

  ‘When did we last have an evening together?’

  ‘That’s not very easy with Heck.’

  ‘There’s no shortage of babysitters. Come home when you can.’

  ‘Sophia?’ I said, before she cut the connection. ‘Tomorrow morning you’ll find a finger in the morgue. Can you check the night pathologist’s report on it?’

  ‘A finger?’ She was fully awake now. ‘Which one?’

  I swallowed. ‘Right index, belongs to a male.’

  ‘What on earth?’ She’d made the connection with my own missing digit instantly.

  I kept quiet.

  ‘Quint? What is it you aren’t telling me?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, realizing that I’d responded far too quickly.

  ‘You’re forever saying you don’t believe in coincidences.’

  I laughed, which was a mistake. An empty beer barrel would have sounded less hollow. ‘They happen from time to time.’

  ‘So why do you want my expertise?’

  Shit: good question.

  ‘I’ll see you later. Love you.’ I hit the red button.

  At least any conversation with Rory Campbell couldn’t go worse.

  The Theatre of Life had been a cinema when I was a kid and was then disused until the last years of the Enlightenment when Rory started putting on rabble-rousing plays as a front for his and Lachie’s revolutionary movement. Currently, a revival of David Lyndsay’s Thrie Estaitis was running – satire was still very popular in Edinburgh. I banged on the glass doors and a burly security guard appeared in the gloom.

  ‘Mr Dalrymple,’ he said, after he’d unlocked the chain. He’d been a freedom fighter and we’d met during the last days of the old regime.

  ‘Is he in?’ Rory was notorious for the long hours he worked. These days he had to catch up with the theatre at night as he spent the daylight hours, and more, running the city with Lachie.

  ‘Aye. Ye ken the way.’

  I went down the side of the auditorium and through the door to the left. After a series of steps that went down and then up again, I came to his office. He’d removed the door to enable rapid access to members of the company – it was hyper-democratic by nature and all the staff owned shares – and I saw his bare feet hanging over a tattered sofa.

  ‘Rory,’ I said.

  He looked to the left of the papers he was reading.

  ‘Quint. What’s up?’

  I moved the chair from the chaotic desk and sat facing him. His head was shaved – supposedly so he could wear wigs more easily when he appeared on stage, though I reckoned he liked the hard-man look – and his features were delineated by the single light behind him. The roots of his popularity were in his politics, but his enviable good looks also played a big part.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve tracked the Lord of the Isles down already?’ Rory said, sitting up, reaching for a bottle of Glenlivet and pouring large measures into glasses that might have been washed since reunification.

  I shook my head. ‘We’re following some leads.’ I took a sip. ‘One of which ends here.’

  The actor-director ran a hand over his glabrous scalp. ‘Is that right?’ He looked worryingly unconcerned, but unsurprisingly he was good at hiding his emotions.

  ‘Your upcoming production – the one about hell.’

  ‘The Garden?’

  ‘Is that what it’s called? Fan of Hieronymus Bosch, are you?’

  He smiled. ‘Any right-thinking person who isn’t?’

  ‘Wonder if Angus Macdonald is one.’

  ‘Probably not.’ Rory drained his glass and tipped the bottle again.

  ‘So he’s not involved?’

  He stared at me. ‘You’re pulling my sporran. That old reactionary?’

  ‘He wasn’t a fan of the Council.’

  Rory laughed. ‘You think? He did business with them and no doubt would have continued to do so if we hadn’t prevailed.’

  ‘He’s surely making more money now.’

  ‘Marginally. Do you think everyone in Scotland’s over the moon that Embra’s capital again? There are plenty of markets for oil, gas and everything else the old bastard peddles. South Africa for one. Their economy’s booming, largely because of Scottish oil.’

  ‘Is that right? To get back to The Garden …’

  ‘You a fan of Joni Mitchell? Thought you were a blues man.’

  ‘I love Joni, not least because she was banned by our former leaders. “Woodstock” was far too subversive for them and none of us was stardust. But, at the risk of becoming monotonous, to get back to …’

  ‘The Garden is a revue that combines visions of Bosch’s underworld with a love story,’ Rory said proudly. ‘Take my word, it’ll be our biggest hit yet.’

  ‘Even bigger than Spar/Tak/Us?’

  He raised his shoulders. ‘That was revolutionary theatre. This is just entertainment.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Everything was political, as Rory Campbell knew very well. ‘What can you tell me about Matthew Barker?’

  ‘The prop-maker?’

  I smiled. ‘I think he locates himself on a higher artistic level.’

  ‘True enough. He’s right up himself. Good work, though.’

  ‘You paying him?’

  Rory frowned. ‘I’ll have to check payroll. Why wouldn’t we be?’

  ‘He claims he has a patron.’

  The Scots ten-pence piece – the smallest denomination of coin – dropped.

  ‘The Lord of the Isles?’ Suddenly, there was a note of panic in Rory’s voice.

  ‘Aye. According to Barker, they had high tea together the Sunday before this one.’

  Rory got to his feet and stretched his well-exercised arms. ‘I’d have heard if he was offering to work for free. I wouldn’t like to think Angus Macdonald had anything to do with the Theatre of Life. He’s the nearest Scotland has to a robber baron.’

  It struck me that Rory Campbell might have found out about Barker’s affiliation and decided to teach the Lord of the Isles a lesson. On balance, I thought that was unlikely. They were both democratically elected representatives and the days of violence had passed in most of the country.

  ‘You know what Barker’s making?’

  He nodded. ‘Man on the harp – we decided that the clarsach was more appropriate.’

  ‘I’ve seen it. Pretty terrifying. What else are you planning? A bird that eats and shits people? Ears with a knife blade protruding?’

  ‘The latter, yes.’

  I caught his eye. ‘What about a tree-fish?’

  ‘A what?’ This time he seemed genuinely taken aback. ‘Is that in The Garden of Earthly Delights?’

  ‘No, The Temptation of St Anthony.’ It was possible that he hadn’t heard about the attempted strangling in Leith, but I wasn’t convinced. Then again, what reason could he have for playing dumb?

  I told him about the incident, watching for any giveaway reactions, but I caught none.

  ‘How can that be connected to the Lord of the Isles’s disappearance?’ he asked.

  ‘Apparently, via the Theatre of Life,’ I said, getting up and heading for the door. ‘See what you can find out about Barker, will you?’

  ‘Aye, Quint.’

  ‘Are there more props like his
man on the clarsach?’

  He went to his desk and opened a file. ‘Seven,’ he said. ‘All from The Garden of Earthly Delights. We’ve got two other prop-makers working on them.’

  ‘I’ll need their names. Where are the pieces? Not here?’

  He laughed. ‘You’re kidding. We’ve hardly got room for the current production. We rent warehouse space in the Pleasance.’ He scribbled on a notepad, tore the page off and handed it to me. ‘There’s a security guard round the clock. People will nick anything these days.’

  ‘Not like the old days?’

  ‘Piss off.’

  So I did. As I walked back to the glass doors, I felt mildly nauseous. Rory was as good a man as any in Edinburgh and I was harbouring doubts about him – worse, I’d shown him that I was.

  I wished I’d stayed in my study and stuck to fiction.

  I thought about going home to bed but, as always in the early days of big cases, I was running on adrenaline and knew sleep wouldn’t come. I hadn’t forgotten that Jack Nicol, Tree-Fish’s potential victim, had pointed me to the Theatre of Life.

  Back at ScotPol HQ, I tracked Davie down. He was in the senior officers’ canteen, eating a very large late dinner.

  ‘One thing about reunification is that we get Stornoway black pudding,’ he said, looking up from his platter. ‘Want some?’

  ‘In a minute. Where are you with the questioning?’

  ‘Matthew Barker clammed up straightaway. He’s waiting for his lawyer.’

  I sat down opposite him. The room had a low ceiling and reeked of fried food. Only one other table at the far end was occupied, by a pair of uniformed computer crime experts. They were deep in conversation.

  ‘Doesn’t suggest he’s got a clear conscience,’ I said, taking a piece of his burned bacon.

  ‘Get your own,’ he rumbled. ‘The staff from Ainslie Place have all talked, at length. We’ve compared notes and their stories hook up. They could have learned a script, but they’re bloody good actors if they did. There’s a change of shift at four p.m. Hamish Macdonald thinks his lord and master could have slipped out then.’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘Doesn’t seem very likely with so many people around.’ I told him about the valet’s absences. ‘What about the rooms above and below? Any sign of ropes or wires?’

  ‘Hard to tell. The stone’s old and there are some grooves. But if someone took him, they could have used some kind of padding and the marks wouldn’t be obvious.’

  I thought about that. ‘Maybe he wasn’t taken – maybe he went voluntarily.’

  Davie extracted a piece of gristle from his teeth. ‘In that case, he’d have got the equipment from somebody.’

  ‘I didn’t say he was flying solo.’

  ‘Flying solo’s pretty close to the bone. He’s an old man and he carries a fair amount of weight. Can you really see him abseiling down to the back garden? Anyway, how would he get out of there without being seen?’

  ‘Good points. The smart money’s still on at least one of his staff or bodyguards being in on it.’

  I got up and went to the counter, where I obtained a less artery-clogging plateful of vegetable stew and – there was no way I could resist – black pudding.

  ‘We’ll keep at them,’ Davie said, when I got back to the table. ‘What about you?’

  I went through what I’d learned from Rory Campbell.

  ‘Do you think he’s involved?’ Davie had never been a fan of the revolutionaries, even though he’d lost faith in the Council by the end. Campbell, in particular, he reckoned was as slippery as a conger eel. ‘You fancy taking a look at this warehouse?’

  I did.

  Davie drove the short distance to the Pleasance. The warehouse was a three-storey building behind the festival venue. During the Enlightenment period, the complex had been too far out of the centre to be safe for tourists, but since reunification it had been restored and hosted comedy shows, during none of which had I ever laughed. Either I was losing my sense of humour or what counted as comedy these days was a foreign country.

  Davie parked the four-by-four outside the dingy block. All the windows were covered by steel shutters. We went to the door, stepping through slush and shivering in the chill, and examined the sign. All three floors were attributed to the same company, EmbraSafeStore – spaces between words seemed to be going out of fashion. I hit the buzzer.

  ‘Who’s that?’ came a disembodied voice from a small panel.

  ‘ScotPol,’ Davie thundered. ‘Get this door open now!’

  After a few seconds came the sounds of bolts being pulled and keys turning. The door opened a few centimetres and a bearded face appeared between two chains.

  Davie held up his ID card.

  ‘Warrant?’ said the guard.

  ‘In your dreams, wee man.’

  I tried a different tone. ‘Rory Campbell sent me here. Call him if you like.’

  The door closed. Davie stepped back and raised his booted foot.

  ‘Hang on, Steel Toes,’ I said. ‘You’re not in the Guard now.’

  He glowered at me till we heard the chains being disengaged and the door opened fully.

  ‘All right, Mr Dalrymple,’ said the diminutive figure in dark-blue overalls. The cap on his head was crooked and his beard could have done with a wash. ‘Just you, though.’

  After Davie gave him a two-second death stare, he backed away and moved to a staircase. ‘Follow me. It’s the first floor.’

  ‘Give us the keys,’ Davie said.

  Resistance was brief. We left the guard – according to the badge on his chest, his name was Kennedy, D. – and went up. Davie opened the three locks and the door creaked like one in a horror film. The smell of paint and glue washed over us.

  I hit the lights. All the objects in the large space were covered by white dust sheets – they were an array of static ghosts.

  ‘Where are we going to start?’ Davie said with a groan.

  I pointed. There were labels pinned to each sheet. The first ones were marked Thrie Estaitis, so I left them untouched. Then I struck lucky and lifted the dust sheet up carefully.

  ‘What the—’

  I was amazed Davie hadn’t sworn because what I’d just revealed was a grade-A stomach-churner. Slightly less than my height, a green-headed hare or rabbit in a coat was holding some kind of pike or halberd over its right shoulder; a male body whose ankles had been fixed together was hanging from the shaft of the weapon, with painted flames and black smoke emanating from a large hole in its belly.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Davie at last. ‘Any idea what that means?’

  ‘I’ve got an encyclopaedia of symbols at home, but I’d guess that the hare or rabbit – probably the former because of its long ears – suggests lust. You know how much those creatures procreate. As for the exploding gut, you tell me. Onwards.’

  We went down the line, lifting and looking. I found a pig in a nun’s headdress making advances to a naked man, and a small creature with a large helmet and armour, but bare thighs, embedded in one of which was an arrow. Its tail looked as if it came from a large lizard. More lust, cut with religious corruption. Was the latter significant? I remembered the Lord of the Isles’s chief of staff saying that his boss was a Christian.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ came Davie’s voice.

  ‘That’s the general idea,’ I said, the smile freezing on my lips when I saw what he’d uncovered. Two dogs with scaly skins, one with what looked like an aerial coming out of a dish on its head, were at the throat of a naked man with his head thrown back. The trio was strikingly lifelike, and I held my breath before I convinced myself that the figures weren’t breathing.

  ‘Nice,’ said Davie. ‘That Campbell’s a twisted bastard.’

  ‘Hieronymus Bosch holds the copyright.’

  ‘Aye, but I can’t kick his arse.’

  I moved on to the next sheet. It was over an object that came up only to the middle of my thighs, though the bottom part extended outwards. I moved to
the side, tugged gently and the figure was laid bare.

  ‘Aw, come on,’ said Davie from behind me.

  The woman’s skin was pale and pasty. She was seated, her legs together and stretched out to the front. Her blonde hair hung below her shoulders, but it was what had a grip on her that made me freeze. Two thin arms were on the front of her torso, each with four long fingers; one hand rose up from the left and clutched her small right breast, the other came from the right and pointed to her groin.

  I knew immediately – from the texture of her skin, from the slight smell of decay, from the glassy eyes – that this was no prop.

  ‘Is that a—’

  ‘Real woman? Yes.’ I bent forward, looking at the leaf on her upper chest.

  Except it was no leaf. It was dark congealed blood around and in a deep, wound about two inches wide.

  I heard Davie talking on his mobile but could pay attention only to the corpse. I wanted to close the poor woman’s eyes, but I knew Sophia would deride that departure from procedure. So I held her lifeless gaze and hoped against the evidence that she’d left this world without pain.

  FIVE

  After I’d taken photos with my phone, we got out of the warehouse space and waited for the SOCO team and the pathologist. Sophia wasn’t on duty till eight a.m., so I’d have to put up with her smartarse boss. Davie told me that Hel Hyslop was on her way too. Great.

  In the meantime, we questioned Kennedy, D., the security guy. It turned out that the ‘D’ stood for Denzil, not exactly a common name in these parts.

  ‘Right, when did you come on duty, son?’ Davie asked, with more bellicosity in his tone than was necessary.

  ‘Eight o’clock yesterday evening,’ the man with the beard said. It made him look older than he was. I reckoned he was in his late twenties.

  ‘Anyone been in here since?’

  He shook his head emphatically. ‘The people who rent space have keys and twenty-four-hour access, but it’s rare for them to show up when I’m on.’

  ‘You always work nights?’ I put in.