Impolitic Corpses Page 9

  He nodded. ‘The pay’s a wee bit better and I like it on my own. During the day there’s a lot of coming and going.’

  ‘What do you do with yourself when you’re not on rounds?’ I continued, giving Davie a warning glance. Robust interrogation methods were no longer legal – worse, they often made people clam up.

  Denzil Kennedy shrugged. ‘I’m doing a distance-learning course from Inverness University. Computer science.’

  The northern city was well known for its innovative digital pedagogy.

  ‘Good for you,’ I said. ‘So, do you go into each floor’s locked spaces?’

  He nodded. ‘Have to; it’s in the protocol.’

  We hadn’t told him what we’d found. ‘When were you last in the Theatre of Life’s area?’

  He dropped his gaze. ‘I …’ He looked at his phone. ‘I have to log my visits on this. Two twenty a.m.’

  Something was clearly getting at him. ‘Are you sure?’ I said.

  ‘Aye,’ he said rapidly.

  I gave him an encouraging smile. ‘And what does the protocol require you to do on each visit?’

  He was still looking at the concrete floor. ‘Em, you have to walk up and down, checking that everything’s as it was on the last round. Which was at ten p.m.’

  Davie had had enough. ‘What are you hiding, you wee shite?’

  I raised my eyes to the ceiling. Fortunately, the outcome was positive.

  ‘I don’t like that place,’ Kennedy said. ‘All those sheets, they’re like shrouds over dead people. I looked once. It was horrible. Two great big ears with this huge blade sticking out between them. Creepy.’

  I took his arm. ‘Is that all you saw? How about tonight? Did you look under any of the dust sheets?’

  He shook his head. ‘No way.’ He looked at me. ‘Here, what did you find?’ There was the sound of approaching sirens.

  ‘If I find out that you know …’ Davie didn’t need to spell out the threat.

  Vehicles pulled up outside and uniformed ScotPol officers rushed in.

  ‘Take this specimen to HQ,’ Davie said, pushing Denzil Kennedy forward.

  ‘Give him something to eat and drink,’ I added.

  ‘And don’t let him out of your sight,’ finished Davie.

  I watched as the bearded man was led away. A second after he went out the door, in came Hel Hyslop.

  Davie and I looked at each other and then for an emergency exit. There wasn’t one.

  ‘Over here,’ said the director of ScotPol, motioning to the far corner.

  ‘I’ll handle this,’ I said.

  Davie grinned. ‘Just like old times. I’ve got your back.’

  ‘Well?’ she demanded, arms akimbo.

  I was tempted to reply, ‘Not bad. You?’ but decided to stay alive.

  ‘What have you heard?’ I asked.

  ‘Very little. Start from the beginning.’

  I did, then passed the middle and reached the end.

  Hel tugged on one of her unruly curls. ‘Might the attempted strangulation in Leith be connected to the Lord of the Isles’s disappearance?’

  ‘That’s a big jump at this time.’

  ‘All the same, you’d better liaise with the detectives you put on that case.’

  ‘Will do,’ said Davie, backing away to make the call. Hel Hyslop was keen on immediate action. My worry was that she was about to immediate-action me.

  ‘What next, Quint?’ she demanded, which was a victory of sorts.

  ‘Check this place for other bodies – I hope not including his lordship the leader of the opposition. Then try to identify the poor woman upstairs, work out why she’s here, who killed her and why, then investigate Matthew Barker in depth, see what the SOCOs discover here, talk to Rory Campbell again …’

  Hel raised a hand. ‘Be careful with that individual.’

  I locked eyes with her. What the hell? Live dangerously. ‘Any particular reason?’

  ‘He has a problematic history.’

  ‘You mean he revolted. So did I.’

  There wasn’t a hint of humour in her smile. ‘Don’t worry, that has been noted.’

  ‘I remember your and Andrew Duart’s histories, too,’ I said, going for broke. She and her boss had several things they didn’t want trumpeted about in the now free press of Scotland’s capital. They had Glasgow’s editors in their pockets.

  ‘Rory Campbell is a suspect in a major case,’ Hyslop said.

  ‘And what’s that?’

  She chewed her lower lip to give the impression of reluctance before telling me something big. ‘He’s been having secret meetings with representatives of Nor-England.’

  Although Lachie MacFarlane had mentioned our friends in the south, I feigned surprise. I’d learned only to share the minimum with Hyslop and Duart.

  ‘Does that have anything to do with the Theatre of Life props upstairs?’ I asked.

  ‘How would I know?’ Hel could play the same game as me, but I was better at it. ‘Let me know immediately if you find an English connection.’

  I had the feeling she wouldn’t mind if the Lord of the Isles went missing permanently.

  Hel looked at her phone. She had a flash model with a big screen. I’d seen her typing notes on it. ‘I don’t get this. The props and the woman upstairs are from The Garden of Earthly Delights, but the tree-fish attacker in Leith was from another painting, The Temptation—’

  ‘Of Saint Anthony,’ I completed. ‘That didn’t escape me. Maybe anything by Bosch goes.’ I gave her a tight smile. ‘Or maybe there are different assailants reading from the same catalogue raisonné.’

  That made her head shoot back. Goal.

  ‘There’s the pathologist,’ Hyslop said after a brief silence. ‘Keep in touch, Quint.’ She narrowed one eye. ‘After all, we know where you live.’ Then she went over to greet the medic.

  Davie came back and I told him the little I’d heard.

  ‘This is beginning to stink,’ he said. ‘It really is like old times.’

  ‘Fish rotting from the head down.’

  ‘Even tree-fish. I spoke to my people. They’ll be at HQ in half an hour.’

  ‘I take it they haven’t made any significant progress.’

  ‘You take it right. Going up with the pathologist?’

  I nodded and we walked over.

  ‘Ah, Dalrymple,’ the short, plump doctor said, his bulbous nose in the air as if I hadn’t washed.

  ‘Ah, McKirdy,’ I returned. He was from Dundee, which used to have a renowned teaching hospital, but he’d got away before the anarcho-syndicalists took over. They’d have had his bowels for bootlaces. ‘Glad we’re still on surname terms.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I call your wife by her first name,’ he said, with a smirk.

  I’d get him for that before the night was out.

  A SOCO handed the pathologist, Davie and me coveralls and bootees. On the first floor, a space had been cleared around the body. All the dust sheets had been removed and technicians were at work on the props. Only four had Bosch connections that I recognized. We hung back and let McKirdy carry out his preliminary examination. He had a large silver case and numerous pieces of equipment, some beyond my ken. Eventually, he got off his knees and turned to us.

  ‘Right, then – ask your predictable questions, Dalrymple.’

  ‘The answers to which will be “I need to run more tests”.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ he said through his mask.

  ‘Cause of death?’ said Davie, ratcheting up the volume.

  The pathologist gave him a quick look and straightened his back. ‘I do, of course, have to run more tests, but I’d say the wound to her chest was fatal.’

  I took out my notebook. ‘Any thoughts on what caused it?’

  ‘A flat-headed object approximately five centimetres in diameter. Wielded with considerable force, as it went through the sternum and almost broke through the skin on her back.’

  ‘Flat?’ Davie repeated.
‘Not sharp.’

  ‘No. Something like a steel bar.’

  I conjured up the painting. There were several weapons of that shape in the right panel of the triptych. I decided not to share that with Sophia’s boss.

  ‘Time of death?’ said Davie.

  ‘I’d hazard between eight and ten hours ago. I’ll have to—’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ I interrupted. ‘Was she killed here?’

  ‘I’d say not. There’s no blood on the floor beneath her.’ McKirdy started to pack up his equipment. ‘I’ll tell you something else.’ Nothing was forthcoming.

  I realized I was expected to supplicate him. ‘Very good of you. What?’

  ‘The victim was a drug addict. There are numerous puncture marks between her toes. She may well have been unconscious when she was murdered.’

  ‘Couldn’t have been an accident?’ Davie said.

  The pathologist snorted. ‘Highly unlikely with a flat object, Detective Leader.’

  ‘Just checking, Doctor.’ Davie gave him a slack smile. ‘See, we’re the ones who decide if this is a murder case. After you’ve run further tests, of course.’

  McKirdy stalked away. I hoped he wouldn’t take his irritation out on Sophia.

  After talking to the SOCO leader and taking a slight detour, we went back to the four-by-four.

  ‘No obvious signs or traces of the victim’s arrival at the warehouse,’ I said. ‘The timing that Dundonian arse gave us covers the change of shift. You’d better bring in the security guy who was on before Denzil Kennedy.’

  ‘Already organized,’ Davie said, starting the engine. ‘While you were giving your attention to that jukebox.’

  The ground floor had been rented by a pub chain that was storing vintage pinball machines and the like.

  ‘Great music on it,’ I said.

  ‘Sonny Blue Catshagger? Hound Dog Dalrymple?’

  ‘Drive, fool.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Where to, sir?’

  ‘I’d like to say “home, David, and don’t spare the horses”, but I guess we’d better go to your place of work.’

  ‘Brilliant. I’m hungry.’

  ‘Again?’

  He ignored that.

  The snow started again, thick flakes floating slowly to the sodden roads and pavements. The wind had blown itself out. Drifting would soon be a problem.

  ‘Shit!’ Davie gasped, swerving towards the kerb.

  A large silver car of the kind that the richest business people drove had passed us and forced us to the side of Jeffrey Street. Davie was out of the four-by-four in a flash, his truncheon fully extended. Then, as the window came down, I saw who was in the rear of the other vehicle.

  ‘Jesus, Billy,’ I said. ‘Davie!’

  Too late – he’d already got the chauffeur on the road and was cuffing him. I wasn’t inclined to intervene.

  ‘Get in, will you, Quint?’ Billy said with a frown. I knew for sure that he wasn’t concerned about the fate of his driver.

  I got into the car, smelling the sumptuous leather interior.

  ‘This’d better not be about my Icelandic royalties.’

  ‘You haven’t sold there yet.’ He opened the compartment on the floor between us. ‘Twenty-five-year-old Talisker, Detective Leader?’ he said to Davie, who was peering in the window.

  ‘No bloody chance, Mr Geddes.’ The name came out like a curse. Davie had never had any time for Billy and his scheming. He went back to the four-by-four, dragging his victim.

  Billy handed me a cut-crystal glass containing a large measure, adding a few drops of water with his shaky hand. I could have declined, but that malt was way out of my price range.

  ‘You want to pick my brains, don’t you?’ I said after I’d taken a sip of the nectar.

  Billy took a slug rather than a sip. ‘Of course I fucking do. Where’s the Lord of the Isles?’

  ‘Angus? Can’t you tell me? You’re in bed with him on numerous money-making ventures, aren’t you?’

  ‘So what?’ he snarled. ‘He has plenty of other business partners, you know – not all of them well-intentioned like me.’

  I took in his misshapen features. It seemed he wasn’t being ironic.

  ‘Names?’

  He raised the glass again. ‘Not so fast. What have you found out?’

  I looked at him sceptically. The thing was, Billy could be a useful source – by now he knew everybody who mattered across the country – but he expected plenty in return. I decided to play his game, confirming that the Lord of the Isles was missing. I also told him about Matthew Barker’s link to the Lord of the Isles – not that the SOCOs had found any sign of the missing man in the prop-maker’s house, we’d heard – and about the dead woman. But nothing about Rory Campbell or the finger, let alone Hieronymus Bosch. I was still trying to make sense of that.

  ‘Shit,’ he said in a low voice, propping his chin up with his good hand. ‘This is a fucking disaster.’

  ‘Which part of it?’

  ‘Angus being absent, of course. There are deals to be finalized, clients to be whiskied and dined.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll manage in his stead.’

  ‘Ha! They don’t show me off to visitors like that. I’m the greedy goblin, remember?’

  A long-dead senior member of the Enlightenment had called him that.

  ‘Any idea what might have happened to Angus Macdonald, Billy?’ Flattery was always a good idea. ‘He trusts you as much as anyone.’ I was repeating what Billy had told me a couple of months back.

  He sniffed. ‘I thought he did.’

  ‘No secret lovers? Opium dens? Blackmailers? Kidnappers?’

  ‘That puffed-up old prig? You’re kidding. His idea of a good time is standing in a freezing river up to his balls, trying to catch a fish for his tea.’

  I thought of Barker and the kippers the pair had eaten – he hadn’t caught those.

  ‘Besides, he’s got a large staff and a security detail,’ Billy continued. ‘How could he have slipped away unnoticed?’

  ‘I don’t know. Yet.’ Then I remembered what Lachie MacFarlane had told me. ‘Here, is it true that there are people from Nor-England in the city?’

  Billy’s eyes were immediately veiled. I’d hit pay dirt. ‘Pardon?’ he said, his voice taut.

  ‘I’ll take that as an “aye”. What are they like, the English?’ I hadn’t spoken to one since a hair-thinning trip to Oxford ten years back.

  He glared at me. ‘They’ve got two heads and three eyes. Christ, Quint, what do you think? They’re like anyone else.’

  ‘Self-centred, money-grabbing hedonists with bad haircuts, worse facial hair and abysmal tattoos, then?’

  ‘Pillock. There are only three here, apart from their bodyguards. Hel Hyslop forced the latter to give up their weapons. Apparently, they were armed to the teeth.’

  ‘And you’ve met them?’

  ‘Two – a big bugger called Nigel Shotbolt—’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘He’s the leader of Nor-England – one of his titles is Warden of the Marches.’

  I took out my notebook and scribbled the title down.

  ‘He’s a big mouth and a blusterer,’ Billy continued. ‘The brains belong to his aide, a woman by the name of Gemma Bass.’ He leered, which was a frightful sight. ‘Blonde and extremely well upholstered. Knows her commodity trading.’

  I kept writing. ‘And the third?’

  ‘Another guy, seems to be the aide to the aide. Geoffrey something … can’t remember … oh, yeah, Lassiter. Skinnymalink who defers to the others in a big way.’

  ‘The media have been remarkably quiet about this Nor-England,’ I said.

  ‘The government will have been pulling their chains. It’s only recently come into being. Apparently stretches from what were, when we were kids, Northumberland and Cumbria, to Durham and North Yorkshire. The purveyors of chaos that were in charge have been eradicated, according to Shotbolt.’

  ‘And you�
�re crapping yourself because the contracts you’ve been working on with them have to be approved by Angus Macdonald.’

  ‘I already told you that.’

  ‘But he’s the leader of the opposition. Why can’t the energy minister sign on the dots?’

  He laughed uproariously. ‘You think the government’s in charge of everything in our freshly reminted country? You get younger every birthday.’

  ‘Incorrect. I’m permanently sixteen. Andrew Duart thinks he’s in charge.’

  ‘Not when it comes to oil and gas. The Lord of the Isles can turn off the taps any time he wants.’

  ‘If that’s true, Duart’s more likely than anyone to be behind the disappearance.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. Duart’s economic strategy relies on oil and gas being pumped every second of the day.’

  I smiled. ‘You’ve told me about the Nor-English because you think they’ve got Angus Macdonald.’

  I got a twist of the lips in return. ‘It’s certainly a possibility. They haven’t used him as a bargaining tool yet, but it would be handy if we found him before they do so.’

  Sitting back in the soft leather, I considered the situation. Duart and Hyslop could have put me on the case because they had the same concerns as Billy; they hadn’t given me the background because living in democratic Glasgow had made them careful about managing the flow of information. But they also hadn’t authorized me to question the Nor-English, let alone drag them in chains to ScotPol HQ. Davie would have encouraged me to do that. To him, English meant bloodthirsty, shoot-first-and-don’t-bother-asking-questions criminals – which, to be fair, were the only kind we’d encountered during the drugs wars.

  ‘I trust you’ll act on what I’ve said,’ Billy said, lighting one of his noxious cigarillos.

  ‘You seem to have become indispensable to those in power. Why don’t you pull Hel Hyslop’s chain yourself?’

  He laughed. ‘For some reason she’s never taken to me.’

  ‘Despite the deals you worked on with her boss before the Enlightenment ended?’

  ‘Maybe she hates cripples,’ he said, blowing smoke over me. ‘She wouldn’t be the only one.’

  I opened the door and got out. Maudlin Billy was unbearable.

  ‘Here,’ he called, ‘don’t think you can pull the fleece over my eyes. You didn’t tell me about the severed finger.’