Impolitic Corpses

by Paul Johnston

  Rory was quick-witted. ‘You’re right. Stay away. Give me Andy.’ I handed the phone back.

  Bothwell listened, his forehead lined, then cut the connection. ‘Fuck!’ he screamed, glaring at me. ‘We’re to stick with you. Rory must have lost his wits.’

  ‘No, he hasn’t. He’s getting your people out.’

  ‘Let’s hope the polis haven’t surrounded the place. What’s so important here?’

  ‘Leave the bigger picture to me, Knee. Get in, Davie.’ I waited and then joined him in the front seat.

  ‘Where to?’ demanded Bothwell.

  ‘We can’t wait for Morrie the Nut to head to the Salt and Chilli Club. We have to get to West Pilton.’

  The rebel’s face was split by a grin. ‘Now you’re talking. Break out the machine pistols, boys.’

  Davie looked happy too. ‘I need one of those, thanks.’

  I shook my head despairingly. This was like the prelude to the combat missions we used to run against the drugs gangs. They had been armed to the teeth and completely unforgiving. I hoped the suburb wasn’t like that any more, but its reputation suggested it might be.

  As the van slalomed down Howe Street, I had a flash of the ENT Man during my struggle with him. At least he no longer walked the earth. But the sick bastard who’d planted the severed forefinger in the Lord of the Isles’s four-poster did.

  ‘How do you want to play this?’ Davie said to me.

  ‘Fast in, fast out.’

  ‘What’s the target’s address?’ asked Andy.

  I squinted at my notebook. ‘Twelve West Pilton Grove.’

  He handed Davie a map. ‘Find it, will you?’

  As they discussed the best approach, I looked through the windscreen. Snow was coming down again. At least that would discourage the lads and lassies who roamed the streets looking for trouble in the northern suburb. We might manage to get close without mayhem erupting. Then again, there would be sentries posted around Morrie the Nut’s place. Speed was of the essence. As we traversed the trendy area of Stockbridge, I tried to make sense of what was going on. Even if Hel Hyslop wasn’t at Prestonfield, she must have given the order for the attack. I could only hope that Rory and his people got out, and that Lachie and the Lord of the Isles were hiding somewhere that no one else knew about – even Rory would crack under the fourth degree. I was sure whoever was behind the abductions of Angus and Margaret Macdonald was in the city. Billy had mentioned the arrival of a Finnish trade delegation. Finns had blond hair … Then again, so did lots of people.

  ‘Weapons check,’ Bothwell said over his shoulder. He turned on to Crewe Road.

  As the sounds of magazines being removed and then slapped back into pistols of varying shapes and sizes filled the van – Davie making more noise than he had to in his excitement – I looked to the right. What had been Raeburn Barracks – the old headquarters of the pre-Enlightenment Lothian and Borders Police – was now being turned into luxury flats. Raeburn had been where the City Guard’s biggest headbangers were posted to counter the threat from the gangs in Pilton, though Davie’s lair, Hume Barracks, would have disputed that, fists to the fore. Then we passed the tree-shrouded rubble that was the remains of Fettes College, whose most notorious alumnus had been the last prime minister of the UK before it fell apart in fury and flames. To my surprise, the site wasn’t being reused. Perhaps the soil had been permanently poisoned by the man who would be the messiah’s presence. Still, not even he deserved to suffer the same fate as William Wallace after the mob crashed into Downing Street.

  ‘Balaclavas!’ ordered Bothwell.

  I pulled mine down, nudging Davie. He could have gone in undisguised, as the city’s smarter villains knew who he was. Which begged the question, why hadn’t Morrie the Nut been picked up before? Maybe Hyslop was protecting him. That wasn’t a reassuring thought.

  We turned left at the roundabout, on to Ferry Road and then into the estate. It had been devastated during and after the drugs wars, though the municipal leaders had done their best to finance new apartment blocks. Morris Gish had taken over an entire building.

  Bothwell floored the accelerator and the van skidded in the slush. I couldn’t see any people on the streets, but that didn’t mean we hadn’t been spotted. We pulled up with a screech outside number twelve and leaped out, leaving one heavily armed rebel to guard the vehicle and sending another to cover the rear of the building.

  ‘Here, whit are ye—’

  Davie silenced the man in the sheepskin coat with a right to the jaw that was definitely not permitted in ScotPol regulations. Then again, neither was sending armed units without Municipal Board approval, which Lachie obviously wouldn’t have given for the raid on Prestonfield. Rules were for suckers in reunified Scotland.

  Davie charged in. ‘Come on, I know where he’ll be.’

  So did I. Gang bosses always took the top floor so they could see assailants coming and have time to get down the fire escape or specially mounted ropes. We raced up the stairs, ignoring the lifts, which were potential deathtraps. Fortunately, this block only had three storeys. As we reached the third flight of stairs, bullets started to fly. Bothwell and his men laid down covering fire while we dashed on. I could have been back in the Tactical Operations Squad – if my thighs weren’t burning, my lungs bursting and my throat drier than Andrew Duart’s soul.

  ‘Drop it!’ Davie shouted, firing at the floor in front of two guys dressed in red uniforms like those worn at Waterloo. Gish was clearly even more of a nut than his nickname suggested.

  I took the key from one of the now-kneeling men and slipped it into the hole in the door. Bothwell and his men arrived, having dealt with gang members on the lower floors.

  I turned the key and Davie rammed the door open, leading with his shoulder. I followed, as did Bothwell. His men stayed on the landing, firing down the stairs.

  ‘No, you don’t!’ Davie yelled, loosing off a burst around the window that a large man was partially through. He came back in with surprising agility.

  ‘He shot Denzil,’ Morrie the Nut said.

  I looked down. Davie had indeed terminated the former warehouse guard’s life. Kennedy was lying on his back, his chest a field of blood. One fewer to question, though I wished the young man was still alive. I had the feeling he was easily led, rather than a reprobate like his boss. But who had given the order for him to be released from custody at ScotPol HQ?

  ‘Sit down,’ I said to Gish.

  Davie thrust him into a pink leather armchair, then raised an eyebrow at me. ‘Are we not getting the Hades out of here, Quint?’

  ‘Can’t be sure we’ll make it, never mind him. I need to give his balls a preliminary squeeze.’

  ‘Allow me,’ Davie said, with a grin. He tossed me his machine pistol, leaving the Colt in his belt. He leaned forward and stuck his hand in the prisoner’s groin.

  Morrie the Nut squealed, his voice rising as the pressure increased. We were back in City Guard mode, but there was no time to feel bad.

  ‘Right, Mr Gish,’ I said, moving closer. The gunfire outside started again and Knee Bothwell went to have a look. ‘You have one minute to spill your guts. My friend has a Guard-issue combat knife. Remember those?’ I looked round the room, which had been decorated by someone with too much money and no taste. There was a frame on the wall with at least ten knives mounted inside it. ‘Yes, you do.’ I smiled with as much encouragement as I could muster. The place smelled like a brothel that catered for creatures from the black lagoon.

  ‘What is it ye want?’ Gish squealed, tears streaming down his face into a beard that had been incompetently dyed red.

  ‘You own the warehouse where Ricky Fetlar and Denzil Kennedy worked,’ I said, noticing that he had no lobes on his ears. It wasn’t clear if they’d been cut off or had never existed.

  ‘So? It’s all legal, I’ve got the … stop! … got the papers.’

  ‘How much did you pay under the table?’ I asked. Lachie MacFarlane ran a ti
ght municipality and corrupt civil servants were dealt with firmly, but there would be some festering apples.

  ‘A … a thousand poonds. Tell him … to stop … please!’ The tears were a torrent now.

  I nodded to Davie, who pulled his hand away and sniffed it cautiously.

  ‘Come on!’ shouted Bothwell. ‘There’s too many of the buggers.’

  I heard shooting from the window.

  ‘Who’s your backer?’ I said, mouth close to Gish’s ear.

  The question took him by surprise and he started mouthing inaudibly.

  ‘Davie?’

  ‘No! I cannae tell ye. They’ll rip me to pieces.’

  ‘And you think I won’t?’ Davie said, pulling out his knife.

  ‘All right, all right. BirdMammon, they’re called. I don’t know—’

  This time Davie didn’t need to be told what to do. He whipped off the tip of the gang boss’s nose. The scream almost broke my eardrums.

  ‘Who runs BirdMammon?’ I yelled. ‘Now!’

  ‘Mr … Mr Sebastian,’ Morrie said, hand over his nose. ‘Mr Edward Sebastian. He’s a—’

  There was a blinding explosion and bullets flew around the room.

  ‘Stun grenade,’ Davie mouthed. ‘Come on.’

  I followed him to the window, my ears ringing as if I was next to the biggest bell ever made, my legs unsteady. Morris Gish was lying back, shot through his left eye. I saw Andy Bothwell stagger in.

  Davie pointed downwards. The rebel we’d sent round the back was on one knee, his head bloodied, engaging a group of armed men and women with rapid fire. I slid down the escape rope and grabbed the wounded man’s pistol from his belt. The shots I fired hit some of my targets. Then Davie thumped down beside me and let loose with his machine pistol. Bothwell made it to the ground, but he went over on his ankle. I grabbed him, while Davie picked up the other rebel, continuing to fire after he swiftly changed magazine. We headed round to the front of the building. The rebel there was in the van, firing from the front seat. We piled into the back, Davie clambering between the seats to take the wheel. He reversed rapidly and ran into bodies. Bullets stitched lines across the van’s bodywork. The tyres were shot out and the vehicle’s wheels screeched across the snowy asphalt, swerving violently. The noise of gunfire increased, and I reckoned we were done for, but somehow Davie managed to pull off a 180-degree turn while moving and accelerate away. Bullets still came through where the windows had been, but soon there were fewer of them.

  ‘Clear!’ Davie shouted, as he turned out of the estate. He looked at the man next to him. His skull had been blown apart.

  ‘Fucking shit!’ Knee Bothwell was holding a piece of fabric over the crown of his head. Blood pulsed through it immediately. ‘That stunt cost us three men. I hope it was worth it.’

  I didn’t reply. It wasn’t clear that it had been. I was unscathed, which made me feel a fraud. Then again, Davie was untouched too. Not that he’d be beating himself up about that. Good for him.

  We had to split up. Bothwell said he would hijack a car and take himself and the other wounded men to a hospital in one of the neighbouring towns. Davie and I ran down Crewe Road, stopping a taxi by standing in the middle of the road. The driver was aghast – both of us had blood on our clothes – but the fifty-poond note I waved had an effect.

  ‘Where to?’ he asked.

  I glanced at Davie. Bothwell had told us three rendezvous points that had been set up for those in the Prestonfield base if it was attacked. I decided against going to any of them till I could contact Rory or Lachie.

  ‘Hanover Street,’ I said. We’d be able to disappear into the crowds of drinkers and diners in the city centre.

  On the way, I considered our options. It was clear that either of us rejoining the official enquiry wasn’t an option now. Nor was going home. Hyslop was no doubt having the flat watched. Would it be possible to get Sophia and the kids out? I decided the risk was too great. There was no alternative entrance or exit to the tenement, and we hadn’t the means to set up a rope like the Lord of the Isles’s kidnappers had done in Ainslie Place, not to mention the late unlamented Morrie the Nut in West Pilton. But how was I to find this Edward Sebastian? I knew the first person to ask and redirected the driver.

  ‘Wait, please,’ I said, when we pulled up outside. ‘Both of you.’

  Davie shrugged.

  This time there was an immediate answer.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Quint.’

  ‘Was that you?’ Billy’s voice screeched through the intercom. ‘Hell of a mess, even by your standards.’ He buzzed me in.

  I took the stairs one by one, low on energy.

  He was waiting for me on the landing. ‘There’s a TV crew down in Pilton. Seems there was a modern version of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.’

  ‘That only lasted thirty seconds,’ I said. I was a fan of the films made about the shootout before Hollywood became its own disaster movie. ‘This went on for … it seemed like hours.’

  ‘So it was you,’ he said, closing the heavy wooden door behind me. ‘No doubt Thunderboots was there too. I don’t suppose he took a bullet or six?’

  ‘You don’t suppose correctly. He’s downstairs. Shall I fetch him?’

  ‘No!’

  I staggered to an armchair and slumped into it.

  ‘When did you last eat?’

  Good question. I couldn’t remember.

  ‘I’ll bring your belly sustenance.’ Billy wheeled himself out of the room and soon returned with a tray on his knees. ‘Oatcakes, Camembert from Aberdeenshire, wind-dried beef from Fife, haddock mousse made by my own fair hand and smoked aubergines from the Carse of Gowrie.’

  The hot summers had enabled farmers to experiment with fruit and vegetables that never grew in Scotland before.

  ‘The Carse of Gowrie’s in Dundee territory, isn’t it?’ I said, as I heaped mousse on to a triangular bannock.

  ‘Yes, I think the loony left managed to take it from the feudalists next door.’

  ‘This is amazing,’ I said, spraying crumbs.

  ‘I thank you. My talents are, as you know, legion.’

  ‘Speaking of which, where’s Rowena?’

  ‘Her work is done,’ he said, with a smirk.

  ‘All right,’ I said, after swallowing a slice of aubergine. ‘Try this on for size. Who’s Edward Sebastian?’

  Billy’s ears pricked up, despite the damage they’d suffered under the horses’ hooves. He suddenly looked warier than a cat padding through Dogville.

  ‘Ah-ha,’ I said. ‘You know him.’

  There was a long silence, during which I cleared most of the plates and bowls. Billy had also brought a large glass of no doubt extremely expensive red wine. I emptied it.

  ‘Edward Sebastian,’ I repeated, wiping my mouth.

  More taciturnity. Billy looked scared, which was unusual – his modus operandi was to stare the world out and abuse anyone who got too close.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll hazard a guess. He’s an overweening and ultra-powerful businessman, whose companies you’ve invested in and are scared shitless you’re going to lose out on. Correct?’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘There’s worse? For a money-grubber like you?’ I was using the standard tone of our conversations, but he wasn’t returning serve. ‘That bad?’

  ‘Yes, Quint,’ he said firmly, avoiding my gaze. ‘Where did you hear the name, anyway?’

  ‘Morris Gish – the guy in West Pilton. Have you heard of him?’

  ‘Course not. I don’t hang around with gang bosses.’

  I laughed. ‘You hung around with plenty in the past.’

  ‘That was different.’

  ‘Oh, aye? Because the guardians knew Plato, that made them better than Morrie the Nut? I don’t think so. It made them worse, you idiot.’ I got up.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Billy said, alarm in his voice.

  ‘To wave at Dav
ie. He’ll be up in a flash.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake. All right, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Yes, you will. And then you’ll help me sort out this burgeoning nightmare. Right?’

  No answer, which I took as a ‘yes’.

  ‘So, Edward Sebastian.’

  ‘Mr Edward Sebastian.’

  ‘Yes, that’s how Gish referred to him too. What is he, a surgeon?’ I was just tossing out ideas, but the look on Billy’s face told me I’d drawn blood. That was the first profession in which ‘Mr’ was an honorific that had come to mind. I gave Billy the eye and this time he didn’t avoid it.

  ‘He’s not just any kind of surgeon,’ he said. ‘Not a urologist or an ear, nose and throat man.’

  My blood turned to ice. I presumed he hadn’t chosen the second example deliberately – he knew about the ENT Man back in the day, but not what I’d done to him. This case was raising phantoms I’d never wanted to see again, the main one being the psycho-killer who took Caro from me.

  ‘What is he, then?’ I asked, keeping my voice level.

  Billy paused. ‘He calls himself a teratologist.’

  Although I never studied the classical languages in depth, my old man – who was a professor of rhetoric – had made sure I knew plenty of word roots. ‘Teras’ was the ancient Greek for ‘monster’. I had a bad feeling about Mr Edward Sebastian.

  ‘What do you understand by that?’ I asked innocently.

  ‘I know what it means, though I had to look it up. You?’

  ‘I seem to remember the old man going on about the terata in the Council.’

  ‘Aye, well, this guy’s a special kind of teratologist.’ There was a combination of distaste and delight on Billy’s face now. He was going to try to shock me. I put my hands over my full stomach. ‘He fixes people with genetic and other disorders. Works all over the world – highly respected, I’ve heard.’

  ‘Other disorders?’ I said. Many nuclear power stations had been destroyed by drugs gangs or terrorists in continental Europe. There were rumours of people being born with all sorts of abnormalities.