Water of Death

by Paul Johnston

  There was a rattle as the wheelchair moved across the bare floorboards of the tower room.

  “What do you want to know, Quint?” Billy asked sardonically. “What can I possibly tell you that you can’t find out for yourself using the methods you’re famous for?”

  I couldn’t wait any longer. “Did you ever know an auxiliary numbered Napier 25?”

  Billy kept perfectly still apart from a slight flicker of his eyelids. “Napier 25,” he repeated, looking up at the ceiling. “Napier 25. Yeah, I remember him.”

  Halleluiah. “And?”

  “He was with me in the Strategic Planning Department.” He moved his eyes back to me. “Boring tosser. Pretty good at cost control and analysis though. I think he had a bit of a drink problem. What’s your interest?”

  I ignored his question. “Remember anything specific he worked on?”

  Billy laughed. “Christ, Quint, it’s five years since I was booted out of the directorate.” His eyes flashed. “And since I got my head kicked in.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” I said, holding his gaze. “Did you know he was demoted a year back?”

  Billy shrugged. “How would I? He hasn’t turned up here for rehab.”

  “No,” I said, “and he isn’t going to either. He died a couple of days ago.”

  “Lucky him.” Billy looked down at his shrunken limbs.

  “No, not lucky him. He drank poisoned whisky.” I was taking a chance telling a DM about a classified case but I wanted to see his reaction. So far he’d been just a little too cool.

  “You mean someone murdered him?” Billy asked with what seemed like no more than normal amounts of surprise and curiosity.

  I nodded. “Ever heard of a whisky called the Ultimate Usquebaugh?”

  Billy didn’t take his eyes off me. “Sounds like quite a dram. They don’t give us any booze in here, you know.”

  “Have you ever fucking heard of it?” I yelled.

  He jerked back in his chair. The extent to which his body had been wrecked was suddenly very apparent. “No, I fucking haven’t. Bastard.”

  I nodded. I was pretty sure he was telling the truth, at least about that. I went over to the window. The seagulls were still flapping around languidly, their shrieks cutting through the hot air. I was less convinced that Billy had been straight about Frankie Thomson. True enough, it was a long time since he’d been in the Finance Directorate.

  “So you’ve been working on Edlott?” I said, trying to make my peace with him. “What do you think of it?”

  “Fuck you,” he said, turning away.

  “Billy, I’m sorry. I needed to know if you’d heard of the whisky.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said bitterly. “As if I’d know anything locked up in this school for unjustified sinners.”

  “Personally I think the lottery’s a con,” I said. The only way to get to him was by winding him up.

  “You do, do you?” he said, swinging his wheels round. “The great financial expert Quintilian Dalrymple gives his opinion. Big fucking deal. Listen to someone who knows what he’s talking about. Edlott’s the ultimate success story. The citizens get a chance to improve the quality of their lives and the Council saves funds by deducting the cost of tickets from food and clothing vouchers. Everyone’s happy.” He grinned and displayed yellow teeth. Apparently the rehab centre didn’t run to a dentist. “I’ll tell you a secret for nothing. Soon the tourists will be able to play too.”

  I hadn’t heard that before. “Whose bright idea was that, Billy?”

  “Whose do you think, Quint?” He wriggled in an unsuccessful attempt at modesty. “See, I still have some uses.”

  “Good for you,” I said, glad to hear that he was getting something out of life. “Who should I talk to in the Culture Directorate if I want information?” I still needed to find out what Frankie Thomson had been doing on his frequent visits there.

  Billy bit his lip. “Your best bet’s the senior auxiliary in charge of operations. That’s Nasmyth 05.”

  “Right, thanks.” I remembered that was the barracks number I’d seen in Fordyce Kennedy’s file. I wondered if there was any chance he’d heard about the missing lottery-winner. “Billy, there’s something else. Do you know anything about—” My mobile rang and I broke off. I could see from the look on Billy’s face that sentence interruptus was no more fun than the sexual variety.

  “Dalrymple? Public order guardian here.” Trust Hamilton to use his title on the phone.

  “Yes, Lewis.”

  “Another body’s been found.”

  “Shit. Whereabouts?”

  “Baird Drive, to the west of the stadium at Murrayfield. There’s a footbridge—”

  “I’m on my way. Make sure no one touches anything. Out.”

  I gave Billy a brief wave on my way to the door. His response was pure abuse.

  As I took the stairs three at a time on the way down the tower I continued the swearing Billy had started. I knew the footbridge Hamilton had mentioned.

  It sounded like we had a second body by the Water of Leith.

  Chapter Eight

  I pulled the road map out from underneath the driver’s seat and checked the access.

  “You’ll need to go past the stadium and turn left on to Balgreen Road.”

  “I know where I’m going, citizen,” the guardswoman said sharply. She kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead, obviously one of those who disapprove of DMs like me being involved with the directorate. There’s no shortage of them.

  I let her get on with it and looked out at the giant cantilevered construction around the former international rugby ground. Now it’s used for inter-barracks games, the vast stands echoing the shouts of a few hundred supporters. Things were very different at the sellout matches I went to in my teens, sixty-five thousand souls going mental whenever a man in blue scored. Scotland victories got fewer and fewer as opposition countries ploughed ridiculous amounts of money into the game, but the supporters still lived in hope. It gave the impression that some sort of national consciousness existed. That was soon revealed to be an illusion as the crime rate rocketed upwards and the drugs gangs tore society apart. Then the politicians started taking the easy option, preaching zero tolerance, isolationism and the like. The riots weren’t long in coming and then rugby was played in the streets with people’s heads for balls.

  There was a blast from a horn behind us. I turned to see Davie roar past us in a Land-Rover, his arm jerking like a marionette’s.

  “I think he wants you to follow him,” I said.

  The guardswoman didn’t even favour me with a glance. She floored the accelerator and took off after Davie like her tail was on fire. That shut me up.

  We turned into a side street and slewed to a stop at the back of a long line of guard vehicles. Hamilton was surrounded by a group of his minions, some of them in white plastic overalls. He saw me and beckoned me over.

  “At last, Dalrymple,” he said, dismissing the auxiliaries with a single movement of his hand. “Where have you been?”

  “Does it matter?” I asked, nodding to Davie as he joined us. “What’s the story here?”

  “Female citizen who works as a cleaner in the stadium spotted an arm under the bridge on her way home.” Hamilton took us down the street towards the footbridge that led to an open expanse of grass between the houses and the rugby ground. As we got nearer, his pace slowed. “You go ahead,” he said, his face pale. “I’ve seen all I want to.” As usual, the public order guardian’s interest in bodies had waned as soon as he got close to them.

  Davie and I exchanged glances then crossed over the bridge to where a couple of scene-of-crime personnel were squatting. They pointed to the line of tape they’d set up around the area that would potentially reveal footprints. We scrambled down the bank further down and walked up the shallow stream to the shaded confines of the bridge. Our feet stirred up the bottom, making me think of the old blues motif – muddy water was a seriously bad omen. The cu
rtain of blowflies under the struts didn’t exactly bode well either.

  “Bloody hell, Quint,” Davie said in a low voice. “Déjà vu.”

  I stopped about five yards away from the body and let the water wash around my ankles. The dead man was certainly in a similar position to Frankie Thomson’s. He was on his front, the left arm beside his torso but the right one extended at about ninety degrees, as seen by the female citizen. The legs were spread at a wide angle, but because of the proximity of the bridge supports the lower parts were bent backwards against the bank. As well as the head, the chest was in the water.

  “What’s that he’s wearing?” Davie asked. “It’s not exactly standard-citizen issue, is it?”

  I moved closer and kneeled down in the water. It felt unnaturally warm, like a fluid that shouldn’t have been released into the open air. Davie had a point. The dead man was dressed in a white shirt and black trousers but neither were of the basic style ordinary citizens get in exchange for their clothing vouchers. The trousers were more like knickerbockers, ending just below the knee, and the shirt had elaborate cuffs. I pulled on rubber gloves and picked up the right hand. Rigor mortis was not far advanced yet. There was a gold-coloured cufflink holding the material together. My bad feeling began to get worse. There are very few kinds of people kitted out with cufflinks in the city these days.

  “Look at these boots, citizen,” said one of the scene-of-crime auxiliaries.

  I moved over and examined the footwear. They were high boots reaching up to the top of the dead man’s calves, with a large number of eyes for the laces.

  I stepped over the body and looked at the left hand. It was closed tightly around something that after inspection I saw to be white fabric.

  “A handkerchief,” I said, going towards the head. I put both my hands on it and moved it sideways gently. The rigor in the neck was tighter than in the arms but I managed to get a glimpse of something I’d been hoping I wouldn’t see.

  “What is that?” Davie asked. “What’s caught beneath his collar?”

  I beckoned to the directorate photographer to take a shot of what looked like a long, hairy caterpillar.

  “It’s a false moustache, my friend,” I said slowly, my fears now confirmed. I’d seen enough of the features to recognise the dead man. “This is Fordyce Kennedy, the missing lottery-winner. They got him to dress up as Robert Louis Stevenson, remember?”

  I sat back on my heels in the water as the realisation struck me. I was going to have to inform the two women we’d visited in the darkened flat in Morningside. That made my day.

  Sophia arrived a few minutes after I’d sent Davie to liaise with the scene-of-crime personnel. She stood on the bank pulling on her protective overalls, an impassive look on her face. She didn’t respond to my wave.

  When she joined me under the footbridge, she started dictating detailed notes of the body’s position to her assistant then kneeled down by the torso and continued talking. It was only after she’d finished her preliminary description that she acknowledged my existence by glancing up at me.

  “There are broad similarities with the dead man in Bell Place,” she said. “Taking the ambient temperature into account, I’d say he’s been here for between eight and twelve hours.”

  I decided to play her game and pretend that Katharine’s intrusion had never happened. “Cause of death?” I asked.

  “No obvious signs of injury.” She looked round and shook her head briefly at me. “We’ll need to run tests on the internal organs.”

  I went up to her and led her a small distance away. “It’s likely that we’ve got another case of poisoning, Sophia. You’ll be testing for nicotine first, won’t you?”

  “We’ll have to.” Her expression was grim. “Have you found any whisky bottles in the vicinity?”

  “Not yet. I’ve got Davie co-ordinating the search with the scene-of-crime squad.”

  Sophia turned away from the other auxiliaries under the bridge. Her face paled and for a few seconds she looked like a lost child. “What are we to do if it is nicotine again, Quint? There are already reports of citizen unrest in the suburbs because of the whisky ban.” She looked at me anxiously. “I can’t authorise resupply if there’s even the slightest chance of lethal poisoning.”

  I took a chance and squeezed her arm in public. Bad move. She pulled it away instantly. “Look, it won’t just be your decision. The Council takes collective responsibility, remember?”

  “I’m aware of procedure,” she snapped. “But I’m medical guardian as well as acting senior guardian. I’ve got nowhere to hide.”

  I nodded. “You never know,” I said encouragingly. “Maybe this’ll turn out not to be a case of poisoning.”

  She looked at me sceptically.

  “All right,” I admitted. “I’m not making that assumption.” Then I told her the identity of the dead man.

  “The missing Edlott-winner?” she said in puzzlement. “Is that significant?”

  I shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he didn’t like being made to dress up as the creator of Long John Silver.”

  “Stevenson also created Dr Jekyll,” Sophia said, grimacing. “I seem to remember that character created a dangerous potion.”

  I wasn’t sure what to make of that. By the time I’d finished scratching my head, Sophia had gone to consult Hamilton.

  A few moments later Davie came running down the river bank brandishing an object in a clear plastic bag. I recognised the Ultimate Usquebaugh label from some way off. Only a small amount of the dark amber liquid in the bottle was missing. Now I had no doubt there was a connection with the first death, but we still had to check the details.

  At four o’clock we broke off to compare notes. Hamilton and Davie had debriefed the scene-of-crime squad while I was interviewing the woman who’d found the body and the citizens who lived in the street leading to the footbridge.

  “Right,” I said. “The medical guardian’s taken the body to the morgue for post-mortem. I asked her to go ahead without me. The chief toxicologist is standing by so we should know soon if this is a case of nicotine poisoning. He’s also got the bottle you found, Davie. What was the exact location?”

  He pointed to a cross he’d made on the fine-detail City Guard map of the area. “It was protruding from a rabbit hole ninety-seven yards upstream on the east bank.”

  “The same bank as the body was lying on,” the public order guardian said.

  I nodded. “Any prints or traces on the ground around there?”

  Davie shook his head. “It’s bone-hard.”

  “As it is everywhere in the city during the Big Heat,” I said ruefully.

  “And guess what,” Davie said, looking at us and shaking his head. “I got a technician to dust the bottle. There were no fingerprints on it.”

  “It’s clear enough that we’re dealing with the same killer or killers,” Hamilton said, jumping to conclusions with the certainty typical of the old school of guardians. This time he was probably right. “Like the other bottle, this one has only a small quantity taken from it. Enough for one lethal dram,” he said, ramming the point home. “The relative distance of the bottle from the body is also a link to the previous murder.”

  I nodded and looked at my notebook.

  “What have you discovered, Dalrymple?” the public order guardian asked.

  “Not much. The female citizen who found the body didn’t notice it on her way to the stadium for the morning shift. That figures because the arm is hardly visible from the west side of the bridge. She had a migraine and left work early so I suppose we were lucky. That bought us a few extra hours. She didn’t see or hear anything overnight or in the early morning. The same goes for the other locals.”

  “Which puts paid to your theory about the killer deliberately showing himself at the Colonies, doesn’t it?” Hamilton said.

  I thought about that. “Not necessarily. Maybe the first death needed more stage-managing. Maybe that’s why there were three bo
ttles there as well.”

  The guardian stared at me, his brows knotting. “Stick to the basics, man. How the hell did the body get here? On a flying carpet?”

  I took the map from Davie and opened it out. To the east of the bridge the open space of frazzled grass stretched all the way to the rugby ground three hundred yards away.

  “They could have come across the playing fields, I suppose,” I said.

  “They?” Davie said.

  “The killer or killers and the victim. It’s not very likely that the dead man killed himself by drinking from the bottle, putting it in a rabbit hole then walking on till he keeled over. Someone took the trouble to leave the bottle in a place that wasn’t too obvious, increasing the likelihood that we found it rather than some innocent passer-by. And the assumption has to be that they walked here.” I gave Hamilton a grin. “Otherwise they have access to transport, which would suggest they’re auxiliaries.”

  The guardian glared at me but managed to bite his tongue.

  “That’s very unlikely, of course,” I said, twisting the knife.

  “Quint,” Davie growled.

  I raised my hand. “Okay. I said we’re assuming they walked.”

  “But the playing fields are fenced to the north and in the vicinity of the stadium,” said Hamilton. “Plus there’s a guard post over there.”

  I nodded and took a long pull from a bottle of water. We were standing in the burning heat in the middle of the road because I’d talked the guardian out of commandeering some innocent local’s house for the duration.

  “Right. And the residents to the west claim they heard nothing.”

  “What would there have been to hear if they were on foot?” Davie asked.

  “They would probably have arrived after curfew so even footsteps would have been out of the ordinary. It’s certainly odd that it doesn’t seem to have been like Frankie Thomson’s last minutes – no singing or sounds of carousing. But remember, the family told us that Fordyce Kennedy liked his whisky. I suppose he could have been completely out of the brain.”