Water of Death

by Paul Johnston

  “Maybe he was killed somewhere else,” Hamilton put in.

  I nodded. “We can’t rule out that possibility. Except in both those cases he would have been carried here, which would have made an obvious target for guard patrols.” I looked back at the map. “I reckon they came from the south. After all, the bottle was left in that direction. And that way, beyond the old railway line, there’s more open ground with houses backing on to it before you get to the Gorgie Road.” I glanced at Davie. “You’d better get the scene-of-crime people to check for any prints or traces down there. And Lewis, can you put guard personnel on to taking statements from residents there?”

  Hamilton gave me an ironic look. “I thought you’d want to do that yourself, Dalrymple. You’re forever telling me that citizens would rather choke than open up to auxiliaries.”

  “True enough,” I said, returning the look with interest. “It’s just that I’ve got more pressing things to do. Like breaking the bad news to the dead man’s next of kin.” I moved away. “And getting them to identify the body.”

  I found Sophia and the chief toxicologist standing over Fordyce Kennedy. He had been opened up from throat to pubis and his organs removed. The green-coated figures looked up as the door banged behind me.

  “Bad news, citizen,” said Lister 25. “I’ve just completed testing for nicotine.”

  “And it was present in both the whisky and the dead man’s stomach,” I said.

  He nodded at me dolefully.

  “I can’t say that comes as an overwhelming surprise.” I turned to Sophia. “Any other signs of injury?”

  She gave me a neutral look then shook her head. “Nothing at all. He doesn’t appear to have been under duress.”

  “How about alcohol consumption?” I asked.

  Again she shook her head. “Preliminary inspection of the stomach suggests that the only alcohol he consumed was the small quantity of poisoned whisky which killed him.”

  That was interesting. Fordyce Kennedy wasn’t under the influence of alcohol when he went to the river bank during curfew – so why did he go there? Did someone talk him into it?

  “If I could interject?” the chief toxicologist said, glancing at each of us in turn. “The amount of nicotine in the second bottle of the Ultimate Usquebaugh was considerably greater than in the first. The medical guardian and I are agreed that death would have been very rapid – probably a matter of seconds after the whisky was imbibed.”

  I looked at Fordyce Kennedy’s remains and shook my head. Having your throat and gut burned out even for only a few seconds was still a horrific idea. I wondered what kind of bastard would inflict suffering of that degree on another human being. Or rather, other human beings, plural.

  “Can you make him respectable?” I asked Sophia. “The relatives will need to see him.”

  “Of course,” she said. “But only the face will be uncovered. And Quint? We won’t be able to release the body for some time.”

  “I know.”

  Sophia came up to me. “You realise you can’t tell his next of kin anything about the poisoning, of course. It’s top secret until the Council decides otherwise.”

  I’ve never been a fan of the guardians’ addiction to secrecy but there wasn’t much I could do about it. “What are we going to tell them?”

  “Heart attack. That’s the most straightforward.”

  Straightforward for you maybe, I thought as I turned away. Telling lies to my fellow citizens is something I’ve never got used to. On the other hand, most murders take place within the immediate family circle, meaning that Hilda Kennedy and her children had to be treated as potential suspects. It might be in my interest to make them think they’d got away with it. Sometimes this job really makes me sick.

  I called Davie from the guard vehicle that was taking me to the dead man’s flat.

  “No luck so far,” he said. “Scene-of-crime are carrying out a detailed examination of the ground beyond where we found the whisky bottle but there are no obvious prints. I’m just going to start interviewing the locals in the nearest houses.”

  “Okay. Let me know if anything turns up.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Passing Napier Barracks on my way to notify the next of kin.”

  “Rather you than me, Quint.”

  “Thanks a lot, guardsman. Out.”

  I leaned back in my seat to avoid the glare of the sun from the west and wondered who had enticed Fordyce Kennedy to the killing ground at the Water of Leith. And why.

  “Citizen Dalrymple,” Agnes said, the languid look on her face quickly changing to one of alarm as she took in my expression. She was dressed in the same paint-spotted workclothes and scarf as she’d been wearing the last time I saw her. “Oh, my God. What’s happened?”

  “Is your mother in?” I asked in a low voice.

  “Who is it, lassie?” Hilda Kennedy appeared at the far end of the hallway. She was knotting a scarf round her hair. It sounded like she was in one of her more lucid spells. When she saw me, she came forward quickly. “Don’t tell me you’ve found my man? Have you found him?” Her voice got shriller as she registered the set of my face. I’ve never worked out a way of doing this that softens the blow. “Agnes, what’s happened to him?”

  “Can I come in?” I said as doors began to open in the stairwell.

  Agnes took control and put her arm round her mother, who’d suddenly gone limp. “The sitting room,” she said, nodding at me to go first.

  I went into the room that was full of the dead man’s handiwork. The curtains were drawn against the sunlight as before. This time the darkness was a relief. After a minute the two of them appeared. Hilda was clutching a handkerchief in one hand and I had a sudden flashback to her husband’s tightly clenched fingers on the river bank. They’d have had difficulty prising them apart in the morgue to remove the square of cloth with the fake bloodstain that was meant to make people think of the tubercular writer.

  “Just tell us, son,” Agnes said dully. “Tell us what you’ve found.”

  I gave them the ID card that I’d taken from the dead man’s trouser pocket.

  “I’m afraid Citizen Kennedy has had a heart attack,” I said, stepping closer to them.

  Agnes’s body stiffened like she’d been given an electric shock. She looked at her mother immediately. It was difficult to tell whether the older woman understood my words.

  “Is he . . . ? Is he . . . ?” Agnes looked at me steadily but she didn’t complete the question.

  I nodded.

  Hilda looked up and saw my confirmation. She shrank into her daughter’s arms again and retreated into her own world. It seemed as private and impenetrable as a child’s in the womb. Agnes let her down slowly on to the sofa and watched as her mother keeled over and wrapped her arms in their baggy sleeves around her thin body. Then she got up and led me to the far end of the room.

  “Where did you find my father?” she asked in a controlled voice. Her brown eyes were moist but she wasn’t allowing tears to form.

  “Near Murrayfield stadium. Any idea why he’d have been in that area, Agnes?”

  She shook her head. “We don’t know anyone over there. Maybe it was something to do with Edlott.”

  “Maybe.” That was a possibility but it wouldn’t explain why he was out after curfew.

  “My dad never had any problems with his heart,” she said, holding her eyes on me. The challenge in them was inescapable.

  I forced myself to meet her gaze, feeling like a reptile. I almost told her the truth about her father’s death but breaking the Council security restriction on the killings would only have landed me in the castle dungeons. So I went on bullshitting her. “It sometimes happens that way,” I concluded. After what seemed like an eternity she looked back to where her mother was, motionless on the sofa like a discarded doll.

  “Agnes,” I said in a low voice, going for broke in the bastard stakes. “According to City Regulations your mother will have to id
entify the body.” I could have got an exemption for someone whose mental state was as unstable as Hilda’s, but I wanted to see how she and her daughter reacted to the body.

  Agnes wasn’t disturbed. She leaned so close to me that I could feel the light spray of her saliva on my face. I caught the smell of paint in my nostrils again. “I know my mother will want to see him, citizen. So do I.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked disingenuously.

  “I know my mother. I knew my father too,” Agnes said. The challenge was in her eyes again. “He never died of a heart attack.”

  I shrugged then called Sophia to tell her we were on our way.

  As we were leaving the flat, Hilda with a blank expression as she clutched her daughter’s arm, I wondered about the surviving male member of the family.

  “What about your brother?” I whispered to Agnes. “Shouldn’t we try to let him know.”

  “Allie?” she said dully. “You’ll have to find him first.”

  I stopped and turned to her. “He’s not missing as well, is he?”

  She shook her head. “Of course not. He was here at breakfast this morning, wasn’t he, Mother?”

  Hilda stared at her emptily, her mouth half open, then nodded. “Allie,” she said, smiling. “He’s a good lad, our Allie.”

  “Come on,” Agnes said. She seemed to have developed an aversion to looking at me. I couldn’t really blame her.

  As they were getting into the guard vehicle, I called the command centre and got them to instigate an all-barracks search for Alexander Kennedy, known as Allie.

  Sophia’s people had done a good job. Fordyce Kennedy lay with his body covered and bandages wrapped around his head, the brain already removed. The dead man’s face, despite the onset of rigor mortis, looked surprisingly calm. Hilda smiled as she touched her man’s cheek. I wondered if she really understood what was going on. Agnes was holding her mother’s arm, eyes fixed on her father’s face. A nursing auxiliary gave them a pretty convincing story about what had supposedly happened and how little he’d suffered. It seemed to work because they left quietly enough after she’d patiently answered their questions. Hilda even mutely accepted the ruling that the body remain in the infirmary indefinitely.

  As they were leaving I heard Agnes let out her first gasp of grief. I wanted to comfort her but I felt too guilty about the lies I’d told. After they left in a guard vehicle, I asked Sophia to assign a female nurse to look after them. That didn’t make me feel any better. I wanted to be able to find out what went on in their flat in the immediate future. It had turned into a day that was heavy on deceit.

  An emergency Council meeting was called for seven o’clock. I met Davie and Hamilton in the entrance hall of the former parliament building.

  “Any joy?”

  They both shook their heads.

  “What, nothing at all?”

  “No traces or prints, no witnesses to any sights or sounds overnight,” Davie said, wiping the sweat from his face. His guard shirt was soaked.

  Hamilton was standing by an ornate mirror tightening his Council tie. “How about you, Dalrymple? Any further on?”

  Before I could reply the culture guardian came up, his expression as suave as usual. He had a fleshy auxiliary wearing a well-cut business suit in tow. That individual’s cheeks were red and the waves in his fair hair looked unnatural. He also had a wide-eyed look that smacked of panic.

  “Gentlemen,” the guardian said, smiling with tight lips at Lewis and Davie. He ran a disapproving eye over my crumpled T-shirt and trousers. “Citizen Dalrymple. This is Nasmyth 05. He runs Edlott. I told him you might want to talk to him about the winner who has met with such an unfortunate end.” He glared at me as if what had happened to Fordyce Kennedy was my fault then went into the chamber.

  So this was the auxiliary who’d consulted the dead man’s file and who Billy Geddes had mentioned. He pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his face. His demeanour was that of a man who wished he was in a faraway place.

  “Guardian,” he said, giving Lewis a respectful nod and completely ignoring Davie and me. “This is appalling news. How can it be that an Edlott-winner has been killed?”

  I didn’t think much of his manners. “Maybe you can tell us something about that, Nasmyth 05? Was there some part of his duties as an Edlott-winner that might explain why he first went missing and then got killed?”

  He swelled up his chest and gave me a disdainful glance. “My department looks after the winners with the utmost care, citizen. I resent the suggestion that we bear any responsibility for what has happened.” He looked at Hamilton for support. “Publicising this would be a disaster. People will stop buying lottery tickets if they think the winners are at risk.” He shook his head frantically. “It’s particularly bad timing given that we’re about to extend operations to the tourist market.”

  “I’m sure Fordyce Kennedy thought it was bad timing as well,” I said.

  “What?” The fat man looked at me blankly. “Oh, I see.”

  The bell rang, announcing the start of the meeting.

  “Go back to running the lottery,” I said, walking past the auxiliary. “And expect me to come knocking on your door in the near future.”

  He didn’t look too enamoured with that prospect.

  The Council meeting was a fraught affair. Sophia had her hands full controlling a debate about restarting the supply of whisky. Despite the latest death, the Tourism Directorate was desperate that sales in the city-centre hotels and bars be authorised and the finance guardian was fearful about the loss of revenue. Even Hamilton argued for a partial resumption of supplies to citizens; he was worried about unrest spreading through the suburbs. After the chief toxicologist agreed to release stocks that had been tested, partial resupply to tourists was approved. Sophia looked uneasy but she bowed to her colleagues’ arguments. They also voted to keep Fordyce Kennedy’s death out of the Edinburgh Guardian and off the radio.

  “Moving on to the details of the second poisoning case,” she said. “I can confirm that nicotine has been found in the whisky and the victim’s body. Time of death was between three and four a.m. this morning, and the strength of the dose of nicotine was such that the victim died on the spot. Analysis of the victim’s body and clothes has revealed no fibres or traces of an assailant.”

  “Any sign of controlled drugs?” I asked.

  Sophia seemed surprised by the question. “None. Why do you ask, citizen?”

  I shrugged, not wanting to push the idea of drugs gang involvement yet.

  The senior guardian’s eyes bored into mine. “How do you propose to find the killer or killers, citizen?”

  She had me there. I gave them a spiel about investigating the dead man’s family and associates. I was also going to work on potential connections between the dead men. I didn’t tell the Council about Frankie Thomson’s visits to the Culture Directorate though. Could Edlott be the common ground between the murders? I was completely in the dark about that.

  My flat was in the dark as well when I got back after curfew, along with the rest of the city outside the central zone. Davie and I had spent the evening following up the Kennedy family’s records and checking out their relatives, friends and neighbours. None of them had the label “murderer” dangling round their necks. They all seemed to be normal hard-working citizens and there were no offence notifications of any significance against their names. The only dubious specimen was the son Allie. He still hadn’t been found by the guard. There was nothing specific to link him to the poisonings so it was pretty hard to construct a case against him. Maybe he’d show up at the flat in Morningside after curfew – such things happen in the outer suburbs. I had a guard Land-Rover waiting at the end of the street in case he did.

  I couldn’t be bothered to light a candle when I got inside. I was so exhausted that I would be asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. There was one thing I had to do before that happened. I pulled out my mobile and called Sophia.

 
; “Senior guardian,” she answered in clipped tones. It almost sounded like she got a kick out of using the title.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “Me? Who’s me?” Either she had incipient deafness or she was playing hard to get.

  “Me, the person you’ve been having sex with recently.” I was too tired for games. “Are you all right?”

  “Why shouldn’t I be?” she answered combatively. “Anything to report?”

  “How romantic.”

  There was a pause. “Quint, I’m very busy. Please let me get on with my work.”

  “Oh for God’s sake, Sophia. Katharine isn’t around, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “What makes you think I’m worried about that individual? I’m not the one she’s after.”

  “She isn’t after me,” I said, laughing weakly. “What gave you that idea?”

  She paused again before replying. “I’ve been reading her file, Quint. She’s a dangerous woman.”

  “Yeah, yeah. And I’m a pathetic tosser who can’t look after himself.”

  “Your words, not mine.” She cut the connection.

  “Bollocks!” I shouted. A few seconds later there was a series of violent thumps from my neighbour upstairs.

  I got to my bedroom by braille and sat down on the bed. A sudden movement from the other side made me freeze. I jumped back.

  “Bollocks?” Katharine said sleepily. “How kind.”

  “Fuck!”

  “It gets better and better.”

  “No, you gave me a hell of a shock. Where have you been? How did you unlock the front door?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” She rolled over. “I think I’ll pass on both your offers. Good night.”

  I nearly gave her a rendition of Mary Dixon’s “You Can’t Sleep In My Bed” but that would have made the neighbours put a contract out on me. Then I considered climbing in but the thought of Sophia discouraged me. She’d probably be round at the crack of dawn to carry out a dormitory inspection. So I went back to the living room and stretched out on my vertebra-wrenching sofa.