Water of Death

by Paul Johnston

  I headed to the Finance Directorate. The great dome-topped block at the top of the Mound used to be the headquarters of one of Scotland’s banks before the crash and its present occupants are no more forthcoming than their predecessors. The directorate archive is in the depths of the ornate structure and I was eventually allowed in to it after sticking my Council authorisation under a dozen auxiliaries’ noses. Information was apparently subject to the same level of security as the city’s foreign currency reserves. No one I asked admitted to any recollection of Napier 25. Even the deputy guardian, who headed the Strategic Planning Department where Frankie T. used to work, claimed not to know him. I wasn’t buying it.

  I had other ways to get what I wanted – one of which was checking files that the city’s overworked bureaucrats produce then forget. In the former bank’s musty basement I pulled the dead man’s records and got down to some creative cross-referencing and indexing. Pretty soon I realised that someone had been there before me, though the consultation forms didn’t contain any giveaway barracks numbers. Napier 25’s existence in the directorate was documented as regards dates and worthless information like the rooms he’d worked in and the days he’d missed because of illness, but everything about what he’d actually done and which projects he’d worked on had been weeded – as with his file in the DM archive. What the hell was going on? The guy was just a heavy drinker who squeezed a tourist’s tits and ended up as a bog cleaner, wasn’t he? Why mess with his records? Then, when I was about to start banging my head on the desk, I found something that made me blink. His main service file was about as useful as a Supply Directorate sunshade, but in the directorate’s staff transportation dockets I came across frequent references to a particular destination Frankie had been ferried to during the year before his demotion. And that was the Culture Directorate.

  I went up the stairs to the opulent main hall scratching my head. Had the dead man been working on a project over there? There was no mention of that in any other folders I consulted. Then the timing locked in. Two years ago, when Frankie first started going regularly to the Culture Directorate, they’d been in the throes of Lewis Hamilton’s favourite initiative, the one that now had hoardings all over the city, the one that fuelled ordinary citizens’ desperate dreams and dressed up its winners as famous figures from history – the one called Edlott. I didn’t know what to make of that.

  “Nothing, Dalrymple.” Hamilton’s face was as grim as a martyr’s when the fire began nibbling at his feet. “Nothing’s been discovered by the search teams. No more poisoned whisky, no more Ultimate Usquebaugh labels, no more victims.”

  I nodded, blinking in the sunlight that was pouring through the windows of Lewis’s office in the castle. I’d been having more worrying thoughts about Frankie Thomson’s death. “We’ll have to commence controlled whisky distribution if we don’t find something soon.”

  “Surely you wouldn’t go along with that?” he said, staring at me as if I’d just suggested that Council members should wear codpieces and carnival masks in the street.

  “Obviously it’s a risk,” I said, looking across the table at Davie. He was trying not to get involved.

  “Hume 253?” Hamilton wasn’t letting him off the hook.

  “Em, yes,” Davie said, glancing at me. “As the citizen says, it’s definitely a risk . . . a big risk . . .”

  The public order guardian waited for him to go on then snorted when he realised Davie had nothing else to add. “What are we saying then?” Hamilton asked. “That the DM’s death was a one-off? An accident?”

  I shook my head. “Whatever way you look at it, someone put a lethal dose of nicotine in the whisky. The most pessimistic way of looking at it is that this is just the beginning. Whoever killed Frankie Thomson went to a hell of a lot of trouble, not just to organise his death but to leave the bottles of the Ultimate Usquebaugh in a very obvious place.”

  Hamilton had been scrutinising me as I spoke. “What do you mean, ‘organise his death’? Isn’t there still a chance that the citizen came across the bottles fortuitously?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. There are plenty of indications against it. For a start, as you’ve confirmed, no other bottles with that label or any other adulterated brands have been found.”

  “Which isn’t to say that no others exist,” Davie interjected. “We may just not have got to them yet.”

  “Possibly,” I said, nodding. “But there’s more to it than that. We’ve got a guy, the skinhead man, who was heard inside Frankie’s flat and seen outside it. Think about the set-up in the Colonies. The dead man’s sprawled on the river bank – but where’s the poisoned whisky?”

  “On the kitchen table fifty yards away.” The guardian’s brow was furrowed. “And nicotine in that strength acts very quickly. So the victim was either rushed out of the house or . . .”

  “Or he was given the whisky on the bank of the Water of Leith and the killer took the bottle back to the flat afterwards,” I said.

  “Why would he do that?” Davie asked.

  “And why would he make so much noise in the flat and on the street?” I asked.

  Hamilton looked at me. “They were singing drunken songs, weren’t they?”

  I nodded. “But why would the mystery man join in to the extent that the neighbour heard another voice? He could just have let Frankie get on with it and make us think no one else was there. The same thing with showing himself in the street. He could have done away with Frankie inside.”

  “What are you saying, Dalrymple?” the guardian asked slowly. “That the killer wanted to make it clear that someone else was present? Why would he do that? He made bloody sure he left no fingerprints.”

  “There’s a difference between making an appearance and leaving traces that could lead to his identification,” Davie pointed out.

  “Correct, guardsman.” I grinned at him then glanced back at Hamilton. He looked like a kid who’d just discovered that he’s got ten pages of algebra problems for homework.

  “You mean there’s more to this than meets the eye,” he said slowly.

  “Could be,” I replied. What my father said about drugs traffickers had come back to me. “Let’s face it, you need reasonably sophisticated equipment to produce pure nicotine. Maybe we’ve got a drugs gang playing games with us.”

  The guardian’s eyes widened. “Good God, man. That’s a hell of a theory.” He wiped his brow and thought about it. I could see he was keen. “I knew it, Dalrymple. We should never have relaxed the original Council’s hard line on drugs and allowed the tourists marijuana and hashish. It’s an open invitation for criminals across the border to get involved.”

  He might be right. I thought of Sophia. She shared Hamilton’s views on the drugs policy. It might be in her interest to encourage a conspiracy like this to discredit that policy. Tightening up on drugs for tourists would inevitably lead to the repeal of those small citizen freedoms that had been approved recently. That would be a hell of an agenda. But I couldn’t see how it tied in directly with Frankie Thomson’s death.

  The guardian’s voice broke into my thoughts. “You are coming to the Council meeting, aren’t you, citizen?” It sounded like Hamilton was living in hope rather than expectation. I took advantage of that.

  “Davie can stand in for me,” I said.

  “But . . .” They both spoke at the same time.

  “Very good,” I said, giving them an encouraging smile. “With a little more rehearsing you’ll be able to get the Public Order Directorate view across in perfect harmony.”

  “And where exactly are you going?” Hamilton shouted as I reached the door.

  I’d suddenly thought of a very sensitive source of information. “I’ll be sure to tell you if I find out anything useful,” I replied.

  That left me some room for manoeuvre. Because the person I was going to visit was as likely to headbutt me as he was to talk.

  I got into a Land-Rover on the esplanade and asked the middle-a
ged guardswoman to take the road through the Enlightenment Park. In the old days it was Holyrood Park but the party was quick to change the name. The road circling the crags and the leonine mounds of Arthur’s Seat used to be called the Queen’s Drive until widespread disillusion with the monarchy made the pre-Enlightenment city council revamp that in the early years of the century. Now it’s known as Citizens’ Walk – appropriate enough in a city where private cars have been banned for decades. As we swung round the road’s gentle bends, I looked out over the desiccated parkland. A cloud of dust was hanging over the slopes, churned up by the buses that take tourists up a dirt track to within a hundred yards of the summit on the other side. A few defeated-looking sheep were chewing what must have been meagre mouthfuls of grass, their spare flanks promising us locals thin soup and gristly stew. It was enough to make you turn vegetarian, except there was limited nutritional value in city farm cereals and root crops because of the Big Heat.

  We negotiated the roundabouts and joined the road leading to Duddingston behind the city’s biggest swimming-pool. It had been finished seventeen years before I was born in advance of the 1970 Commonwealth Games – when there was still such a thing as a Commonwealth and countries had funds to spare for sporting events. There would be a massive queue of citizens outside the pool on a day as hot as this, waiting for the quarter of an hour each individual is allotted in the eye-scorching, throat-burning water. Of course, the tourists don’t have to stand in line. They have all sorts of aquatic delights in their hotels, from jacuzzis to showers with underdressed attendants for both sexes. I scratched an armpit, suddenly aware that I was in serious need of a wash. The way the driver moved her nose suggested she’d noticed too.

  Crows rose up from the road ahead and we passed over the tangled remains of a lamb. Which, as the rooftops of the rehab centre came into sight, inevitably made me think of the man I was going to visit. Billy Geddes used to be my closest friend – my contemporary at school and university, fellow blues lover, the guy who joined the Enlightenment Party the same day as I did in the year before the last election and who went through auxiliary training with me. Then we’d gone in different directions. While my interest in crime led me to the Public Order Directorate, he was posted to the Finance Directorate and was soon the mover behind the city’s most important deals. He reached as high as deputy guardian before he got his hands dirty and ended up in seriously deep shit five years ago. I had a hand in his downfall. I wondered if he’d remember Frankie Thomson – and, if he did, whether he’d tell me.

  The Council turned the former Duddingston village into a centre for the rehabilitation of selected bent auxiliaries about a year ago. Until then even the idea that the rank between guardians and ordinary citizens might be susceptible to bribery, corruption, large-scale thieving and contact with criminal gangs beyond the border was totally unpalatable to the guardians. It was easier just to consign DMs like Frankie Thomson, Katharine and me to the rank of ordinary citizen. At least now they’ve admitted that bad boys and girls exist. Of course, they don’t try to rehabilitate everyone – only those regarded as potentially useful to the Council.

  Duddingston was the perfect place to put them. It’s not too far from the city centre but remote enough to keep the inmates out of ordinary citizens’ view. The fact that the village has high stone walls round most of its edges no doubt appealed as well. In pre-Enlightenment times there was a nature reserve and bird sanctuary by the small loch and the smart Victorian houses were priced beyond the range of even well-off professional types. These days the place is home to deviants instead of rare birds and what used to be a trendy pub houses the guard command post.

  The driver pulled up at the barrier outside the village and I flashed my authorisation. To our right what remained of the loch, a small extent of swamp in the central depression, glowed dull brown in the sunlight. A couple of seagulls flipflopped across the mud looking for something to get their beaks round. The acrid smell of drying excrement hung over the place.

  “Where to, citizen?” the guardswoman asked as the barrier was raised.

  “Park outside the gate. I won’t be long.” I didn’t want her to know which inmate I was visiting. It would get back to Hamilton sooner or later but I didn’t see why I should make things easy for the old bugger. He wouldn’t approve anyway.

  I walked down Old Church Lane and passed a couple of guys who stared at my T-shirt and black trousers. The guardsman was satisfied after a glance at my card but the other one had no excuse for looking askance at my clothing. He was in the black and white striped overalls and yellow beret issued to inmates. They call the jokers “lollipops” in the guard but citizens don’t have a nickname for them. Despite the Council’s much-vaunted openness, only auxiliaries are allowed in to the rehab centre so ordinary locals never see the inmates’ apparel.

  I turned into what had been the churchyard and looked at the board on the wall. Inmates are given codenames – they have to earn back the right to their barracks numbers – and Billy was referred to as the Jackal. I suppose the Council thought that giving corrupt auxiliaries animal names is a neat way of emphasising their bestiality. The Jackal was still in residence in the old watchtower. Obviously his rehabilitation hadn’t yet been completed.

  I went in the door at the bottom of the building.

  The white-bearded sentry made me sign in and then waved me up the narrow stairs. “The Jackal’s right at the top,” he called after me.

  “I know,” I said, feeling the muscles beginning to hurt already. The first time I visited Billy I wondered why he’d been stuck at the highest point in the rehab centre. The guy was in a wheelchair for life and he was hardly going to perform his own version of Escape from Alcatraz. Then I remembered that he had a track record of escaping official supervision.

  I reached a heavy oak door and paused to catch my breath.

  “Who’s that?” The voice was more high-pitched and unsteady but I recognised it all the same. “Don’t just hang around. Come in.”

  I decided knocking was unnecessary and pulled the door open. That was a mistake.

  “What the—” The voice broke off as the wheelchair with its crazed, shrunken passenger cannoned into my legs and nearly sent me straight back down the stairs.

  I got off my arse slowly. It had taken a heavy slam on to the flagstones.

  “Nice driving, Billy,” I said, pushing the wheelchair backwards.

  “What the fuck do you want, you tosser?” Billy looked away from me and struggled to heave himself back into his room. “I thought you were my counsellor. I fucking hate him.”

  “Just as well I wasn’t or you’d have been on punishment rations.” I followed him into the square space at the top of the tower. It had tall, narrow windows on each side, the front one giving a view over the dried loch bed. Under this was a wide desk with a computer and screen. That was interesting.

  “How did you get your hands on this?” I asked, moving over to the machine.

  “That’s typical of you, Quint.” Billy banged into my legs again, making me turn aside before I got to the computer. “You arrive unannounced after months and don’t even bother to say hello or ask me how I am. Always the fucking investigator.” He shoved me further away from the desk, his arms much stronger than his withered frame suggested.

  “Sorry,” I said. I meant it. I still felt some responsibility for the events that put him in the chair. “So how are you doing, Billy?”

  “Up yours, Quint,” he said, his eyes flashing above the slack skin of his face. “What do you care?”

  I put my hands on his shoulders and leaned over him. “I care, you self-pitying little shit. If only because there’s still a tiny bit of the guy you used to be left under that jackal skin.”

  “Ha fucking ha.” He looked away and I saw the flaky scalp under what remained of his hair. “You only visit me when you need something.” Despite the heat in his room, Billy had his black and white shirt buttoned up to the collar and his sleeves
down. He didn’t like looking at his shrivelled limbs. I couldn’t blame him.

  I stood straight again then jinked round him to the computer. “Where did you get this, Billy?” The label on it said “Property of Culture Directorate”. Well, well.

  He spun his wheels and drove into me, smiling maliciously. “They gave it to me a few months back.”

  “They? The Culture Directorate?”

  He nodded reluctantly.

  “Why?”

  He looked away, lips pressed tight.

  “Why, Billy?” I persisted. “I can find out easily enough from the facility commander.”

  “What’s it got to do with you?” he demanded angrily. “They wanted me to check the financial structure of the lottery.”

  This was getting more interesting by the minute but I didn’t want to show my hand to Billy too soon.

  “Is that right? They make use of your financial acumen even before you’re fully rehabilitated? That sounds like the Council, all right.” I glanced back at him. “I’m surprised you went for it. Unless you’re using the computer for your own devious purposes as well.”

  “You’ll never know, Quint.” He let out a forced laugh that slowly faded away. “Don’t worry, I’m not on line. They won’t trust me with access to the directorate databank. I just sit here and massage their figures then play Attila the Hun 2015. It’s the only computer game I could squeeze out of them.”

  I sat down on the bed and looked round the room. There were no chairs since Billy didn’t need one and he didn’t have many visitors. But all the walls were lined with bookshelves and I recognised some from Billy’s collection of first editions. He’d started that when he was in the Finance Directorate and he obviously still had a good contact in the Library Department. He’d been allowed to keep his edition of Hume’s Treatise as well as hardback novels by Waugh, Orwell and plenty of other big names. He even had a copy of Red Harvest that I’d coveted for years.