Impolitic Corpses

by Paul Johnston

  The blond man didn’t speak – it was obvious he’d lost some of his confidence.

  ‘As we discovered after you left, all three male members of your delegation assaulted local women. Only you raped your victim, though what the others did was no better. I have a warrant for your arrest.’

  ‘Lies!’ Koskinen shouted.

  ‘That will come out in the trial,’ Katharine said dispassionately. ‘The problem is, Stirling’s a very law-abiding state. We only have court hearings every three months and we recently had one. Still, our one and only prison isn’t too uncomfortable. Though the last prisoner – a man, of course – contracted a life-threatening condition caused by the rats that nibbled his hands, feet and face every night.’

  The Finn turned to me. ‘Dalrymple, you can’t allow this to happen! You brought me here illegally. I demand to see Hel Hyslop. She will—’ He broke off when he saw the gleaming short knife that Katharine had taken from her jacket pocket. ‘Dalrymple!’

  ‘The warrant empowers me to bypass the trial process and personally carry out the punishment deemed appropriate if getting you to Stirling is impractical.’ She glanced at me. ‘Which it clearly is.’

  ‘Definitely,’ I said.

  ‘What … what is this punishment?’ asked Koskinen, his voice almost as high as the scream he’d elicited from the sentry.

  ‘Castration,’ Katharine said. ‘Hold his legs open, Quint.’

  The blond man broke before I reached them.

  ‘All right, we can do a deal, yes? What is it you want to know, Dalrymple? I’ll tell you anything as long as you call off that bi— that … woman.’

  I looked at Katharine. She nodded almost imperceptibly.

  ‘Where’s Lady Margaret Macdonald?’ I said.

  His head dropped till his chin was in contact with his chest.

  I repeated the question. ‘You were behind her kidnap, weren’t you? And that of her husband?’

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted, in an almost inaudible voice. ‘But I can’t tell you where she is for one simple reason.’ He looked up at me with damp eyes. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Legs, Quint,’ Katharine said, brandishing the knife.

  ‘No, no, no!’ squealed Koskinen. ‘I’ll tell you, I will.’

  We waited in silence.

  ‘Arniston House by Gorebridge,’ he said, with a desperate gasp, as if he’d confirmed his own execution.

  I nodded, then went up the stairs as quickly as I could.

  Lachie dispatched Knee Bothwell and two squads of male and female rebels within minutes of me advising him. One of them was from that part of Midlothian and said the old Georgian house was still unoccupied, having been badly damaged in the drugs wars. Davie wanted to go, but I needed him in the city, much to his annoyance. Out in the country he’d have been able to fire his machine pistol.

  Katharine appeared at the top of the stairs. There was no sign of her knife.

  ‘Is he still in one piece?’ I asked.

  ‘For the time being.’

  ‘That stuff about the court and summary punishment was make-believe, yeah?’

  Her expression was grave. ‘No, it wasn’t. In Stirling we control men and their animal appetites strictly.’

  I looked at Lachie. ‘Have you heard that?’

  He nodded. ‘I’m thinking about doing it here.’

  Shit. Not even the Council had castrated men who abused women. At least not to my knowledge.

  Lachie, Katharine, Davie and I were sitting in the sitting room at the back of the house off Newington Road, having just finished a dinner consisting of haddock in mussel sauce and fresh vegetables. One of the rebels had trained as a cook during the Enlightenment, not that we got decent fish and veg then. There was a barrel of beer that he’d brewed too, as well as several good whiskies. The fire was keeping us warm and making us comfortable, at least physically.

  ‘The Nor-English haven’t left,’ Lachie said, putting the phone down. ‘I doubt they’ll make a move tonight. The snow’s getting even worse.’

  ‘Where’s the Lord of the Isles?’ I asked.

  Lachie gave me an inquisitive look. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘I was wondering if confronting the Finn with him might lead to even more spilling of his intestines.’

  Davie laughed, earning himself an icy glare from Katharine.

  Edinburgh’s leading politician gave that some thought, then shook his head. ‘We can’t risk Angus’s security right now, Quint. I’ll probably have to bring him out of hiding to do some kind of deal with the English tomorrow.’

  ‘Aren’t you under serious pressure from Andrew Duart to produce the old man?’ Lachie had told me on the phone that he’d informed the presiding minister that the Lord of the Isles was safe, but unavailable.

  ‘Why do you think I’m hiding out here rather than lounging in my official residence? Parliament’s in uproar too, but the members don’t know the dangers. One of the problems of democracy is that your average elected representative hasn’t got anything approaching the skills to handle issues of national security, never mind the temperament.’

  I considered Westminster before the last election in 2003. The House of Commons had been full of people who represented interest groups that stopped at nothing to get their way. Soon enough the people got theirs – to hell with the lot of you – but they should have been careful what they wished for. In my experience, hell had a capacity for endless deterioration. Which made me think of Hieronymus Bosch and The Garden of Earthly Delights.

  ‘Something doesn’t add up here,’ I said. ‘There are supposedly no Bosch cults in Finland. I didn’t get the impression the people in the hotel were dissembling about that, and the lack of tattoos and images on and about the biter downstairs suggests that’s reasonable. There are Bosch cults in Edinburgh, but they don’t appear to be of any significance beyond the spiritual, despite the bad relations between them.’

  ‘Right,’ Davie said. ‘Eilidh managed to talk to a colleague who’s been monitoring the cults. The members aren’t involved in criminal or revolutionary behaviour.’

  ‘Except perhaps for Jack Nicol,’ I said, remembering the young man who’d almost been strangled by the person impersonating the tree-fish. ‘Any sign of him?’

  Davie shook his head.

  ‘I’m beginning to think he might have been in with Morrie Gish.’

  Davie raised a finger. ‘He wasn’t on the list of dead or wounded from West Pilton.’

  ‘Which doesn’t mean he wasn’t there. You didn’t manage to hit everyone in the area.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ said Katharine. ‘That this Nicol is involved? How?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I’d like to.’

  ‘How can we locate him?’ asked Lachie.

  I looked at Davie and shrugged. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘What else?’ said Katharine.

  I was still wondering about Bosch. The Nor-English had cults but claimed they were unimportant, we had them but ditto, the Finns didn’t have them. What about the Dutch? After all, the painter was from the Low Countries.

  ‘Lachie, have you heard anything about what’s going on in the Netherlands, as were?’

  His moustache did its usual trick when he laughed. ‘Still Dope Central as far as I know – individual cities and communities either run by drugs gangs or supplying them.’

  ‘We don’t engage in trade?’ I asked.

  ‘Not that I’ve heard. There’s no government. They probably burn witches to keep warm.’

  Katharine turned her electric eye on the small man and his smile disappeared.

  ‘How about Luxembourg?’ I persisted.

  ‘You’re thinking of the BirdMammon company?’ Lachie asked. ‘They don’t send people outside their borders – everything’s done by computer. As to whether they have Bosch cults, no idea. I do know that they get their energy from coal mines in the German statelet nearby. The Lord of the Isles mentioned that once.’

>   I took that in. Luxembourg was a tiny state and it didn’t have energy problems. Apart from the company whose name hinted at The Garden of Earthly Delights, the place didn’t seem worthy of further consideration. Something was still gnawing at my mind and memory, but at a level I couldn’t reach.

  ‘Remember the guy with no tongue?’ I said to Davie.

  He nodded. ‘Dougie the Dundonian’s killer. He had Bosch-related tats all over his back.’

  ‘He did. And he was blond. Pity we haven’t got a photo.’

  Davie took out his mobile and fiddled. ‘Here you are.’

  I took the phone and went down to the basement. Aru Koskinen seemed to be asleep, his head down, but he rallied when he heard my footsteps.

  ‘Do you know this man?’ I said, thrusting the phone in front of him.

  He peered and then shook his head. ‘I don’t – and he’s not a Finn, if that’s what you’re getting at, Dalrymple. No Finn has suntanned skin like that, even with climate change.’

  I went back to the sitting room. ‘Negative, and I believe him. He pointed out how suntanned the dumb man’s skin is.’

  ‘One of the southern states of what used to be the USA?’ Lachie said. ‘They’re hot enough and some have got their economies going again.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘Using slavery. But none have sent delegations here. Trust me, I’d have heard.’

  I couldn’t argue with that. Then I remembered Ricky Fetlar, the security guard from Morrie the Nut’s warehouse who had smashed his head to pieces in his ScotPol cell. Fetlar – it was an island in Shetland. And there was oil and gas exploration in that independent state … A high-intensity light came on in my head.

  ‘South Africa,’ I said, raising the forefinger on my left hand.

  Katharine looked at me quizzically. ‘What about it?’

  ‘Lachie, is there a South African delegation in town?’

  ‘No,’ he replied, ‘but there was. They left last week. Signed a big deal for oil and gas supplies – they’ve been building huge tankers to transport them both.’

  ‘What do you know about the country?’ I asked, adrenaline coursing through me.

  ‘They keep their politics to themselves, but I could see what they are,’ said Lachie. He paused infuriatingly.

  ‘And what are they?’ I said, struggling to control the volume of my voice.

  ‘Fascists and racists,’ he said, as if the words had been dipped in dung. ‘One of them got drunk one night – he was blond, now I come to think of it. The Boers – remember them from history lessons? – took control five or so years back. They haven’t reimposed apartheid, though – they’ve gone right back to slaves in chains. They’ve sunk new gold and diamond mines and found tons of the stuff. That’s how they can afford our oil and gas and the ships.’

  Several thoughts shot across the firmament of my mind.

  The first: ‘If they’ve enslaved the blacks and other coloured people, they must have a lot of weapons.’

  Lachie nodded. ‘And a large standing army. They make so many arms that they export them to any state that can pay.’

  The second: ‘The Nor-English could have got arms from the South Africans.’

  He shrugged.

  The third: ‘Boers speak a version of Dutch. They’re likely to be interested in Dutch culture and art.’

  ‘Bosch,’ said Katharine.

  The fourth: ‘They’re using the Nor-English as a surrogate invasion force.’

  No one commented, but I could see they saw the sense in what I’d said.

  Then I had a fifth thought: ‘The Scottish Defence Force’s secret weapon. Where did it come from?’

  Lachie MacFarlane suddenly looked like the child he wasn’t.

  ‘The South Africans,’ I surmised. ‘Pressing that red button will result in precisely nothing.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Where does all this leave us, Quint?’ asked Davie.

  ‘We have to find Lady Margaret,’ I said. ‘Then her husband can refuse to sign the shares over to BirdMammon. I’m willing to bet all my blues and rock albums that the South Africans own the company. Why fight, even with a surrogate army, if you don’t have to? I’m sure they’d rather have a compliant but organized Scottish state as their vassal than a rag-tag coalition of regions led by Nigel Shotbolt.’

  The landline phone rang. Lachie spoke the prearranged words and then listened. After he cut the connection, he said, ‘The Finn downstairs has got bigger balls than we thought.’

  ‘Not for long,’ hissed Katharine.

  ‘That was Bothwell. Arniston House is empty. They’re not sure when they’ll get back. The snow’s drifting out there.’

  ‘Let’s give the blond arsehole the eighth degree,’ said Davie. ‘Come on, Katharine.’

  She gave me a questioning look.

  ‘Please yourselves,’ I said. ‘I don’t think he’ll say anything more. Even if he does, how can we trust him?’

  Lachie nodded. ‘And I’m running out of personnel.’ He looked at the others. ‘I know the situation’s critical, but I don’t want the Finn damaged irreparably. If we survive this, we’ll need to negotiate with the northern European states. Chopping one of their representative’s balls off isn’t in any protocol I know.’

  We watched Katharine and Davie head off without much of a spring in their step.

  ‘So,’ Lachie said, ‘you think the South Africans are behind all this? You might be right, but what can we do about that? It doesn’t help us find Lady Margaret.’

  I nodded, thinking back to Aku Koskinen’s behaviour after he’d bitten a hole in the sentry’s cheek. When he came round, he was still channelling the Mr Hyde side of his being. What was it he had said? Something that wasn’t as well expressed as his English usually was. I tried to remember.

  ‘What about you?’ I said to the small man. ‘You can’t stay hidden for long. Edinburgh needs to see its leader. Andrew Duart will already be gathering your enemies to find a replacement.’

  ‘True. My people are holding out, but I don’t know how much longer they’ll be able to. It doesn’t help that Rory’s down with the Dundonians.’

  ‘Why don’t you bring him back?’

  ‘And let loose those bloodthirsty brutes?’

  I smiled. ‘Use them. You could put them on to Duart or have them barricade parliament.’

  He thought about that. ‘At this rate Scotland’s going to fall apart again. We’re all going to end up in the dustbin of history.’

  And there it was. Dustbin. Bins. That was what Koskinen had said: ‘You might as well put my corpse in the bins.’ It was hardly something a well-educated foreign speaker of English would say – he wouldn’t have used the plural ‘bins’.

  Heart pounding, I went to the table and ran my gaze over the map of the city’s environs.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Lachie, getting up on a chair.

  I laughed. ‘The bastard. He told me straight out and I didn’t spot it.’ I pointed at a location to the west of the city. ‘The House of the Binns.’

  Lachie peered at me. ‘Bit far-fetched, isn’t it? And why would he tell you?’

  ‘Only one way to find out.’

  ‘What about the snow?’

  ‘We’re Scottish,’ I said over my shoulder as I strode to the door. ‘Snow’s our natural habitat.’

  The bravado of the words echoed in my head as I went down to the basement. Was I about to make an even bigger fool of myself than the Finn already had?

  The only available vehicle was a decrepit Land Rover from the earliest days of the City Guard. Davie groaned when he saw it, and not just because it was already covered in a layer of the white stuff.

  ‘I thought these had all been scrapped,’ he said, opening the rear door and pushing in Aku Koskinen. He was shivering despite the coat we’d found him, handcuffs on his wrists. Maybe he was in shock. Katharine had her knife a few centimetres from his groin when I arrived and Davie had his neck in an armlock.
>
  ‘Guess where we’re going,’ I said to the Finn.

  ‘Fuck you, Dalrymple,’ he gasped.

  I was aware we were potentially on a wild ptarmigan chase and wanted to see his reaction. Miraculously, after Davie had managed to fire up the engine, when I hit the switch the internal light came on.

  ‘The House of the Binns,’ I said.

  There were no signs of either surprise or gloating. Maybe he wanted us to go there, which made me immediately apprehensive. Perhaps there was a gang of heavily armed headbangers waiting. Too bad – we needed to find Margaret Macdonald and this was the only lead we had.

  Davie decided against using the recently reopened bypass to the south of the city. It was always jammed by crashed vehicles in these conditions because drivers didn’t reduce their speed. Then again, Davie’s own velocity was making the Land Rover fishtail round corners. In five minutes he’d struck glancing blows on three parked cars and shoved one slow driver to the side.

  ‘It would be good to get there in one piece,’ Katharine said mildly.

  ‘Prefer to walk?’ was the response.

  We went along Princes Street because it was always the first road to be cleared. At this time of night and in this weather, there were few people around – only the occasional staggering drunk, one of whom was being helped by a uniformed ScotPol officer. No one wanted frozen corpses to be found by visitors to the city. Shandwick Place had been gritted as it was the route for tourist buses to get to the airport – not that flights would be taking off tonight. Corstorphine Road was a test for the Land Rover’s worn tyres, but we made it. As we passed the turn to Matthew Barker’s house, I thought about the Lord of the Isles’s friend. Was he still in a ScotPol cell, body and mind in pieces?

  ‘What do you think?’ Davie said, straining forward to see through the snowstorm. ‘The fast road to Glasgow?’

  ‘It’s the best option,’ I replied. ‘At least it’s wide, though you’ll no doubt have to weave better than a …’ My brain declined to complete the metaphor.

  ‘Weaver?’ suggested Davie, accelerating past a snowplough, which gave us the benefit of its klaxon.

  ‘The smart thing would have been to stay behind that,’ the Finn observed.