Water of Death

by Paul Johnston

  “It has no connection with either of those citizens.” Something about the sharp edge to Sophia’s voice made my stomach somersault. “It came from your flat.”

  “What?” Davie, Hamilton and I blurted out the interrogative in unison.

  “Or, to be more precise,” Sophia continued, “it came from the backpack left there by your friend Katharine Kirkwood.”

  Now I was the one who was well and truly hooked.

  Sophia let me wriggle for a bit. If I hadn’t known that she was in full dictator mode, I’d have thought that she enjoyed seeing the shocked expressions on Davie’s and Hamilton’s faces. I suppose I should have told them about Katharine’s reappearance. They were never her greatest fans, but at least that way it wouldn’t have looked like I was keeping her presence in the city to myself.

  “Because I couldn’t get through to you on your mobile, I went to your flat,” Sophia said, fixing me with a look that would have withered cornfields if the Big Heat hadn’t got there first. “You and the Kirkwood woman had left, but I found this bottle and another identical one in the pack I saw Kirkwood carrying when she arrived out of the blue.” Her eyes didn’t flicker when she mentioned that episode, nor did her cheeks redden. Behold the Ice Queen in full flight. “The chief toxicologist has tested for nicotine. He found it in both bottles.”

  I was finding it hard to make sense of this. Katharine had been involved with dissidents years ago and had served time in the prison on Cramond Island, but she’d also worked with me on two major cases. She certainly didn’t think much of the Council and its activities, which was why she’d gone to live on the farm. That didn’t make her a cold-blooded killer.

  “A scene-of-crime auxiliary has dusted for prints,” Sophia continued. “Apart from Kirkwood’s, there is another set that is being checked against the archive.” She gave me another glance. “You’ll be relieved to hear they aren’t yours, citizen.” The hostility in her eyes suggested she still suspected I might have spent hours massaging the bottles with gloves on.

  Hamilton’s cheeks above his white beard had gone deep scarlet. “You’ve been using personnel from my directorate, senior guardian?” he said. “Why wasn’t I informed?”

  Trust Lewis to get involved in an argument about procedure rather than arrest me and get every auxiliary in the city looking for Katharine. On this occasion I wasn’t complaining. Then again, Sophia had probably already given the latter of those orders. I wondered if she was about to transfer me to the dungeons.

  “I am informing you now, guardian,” Sophia said in a voice that brooked no argument. She turned back to me. “Citizen Dalrymple, can you cast any light on this development?”

  “None at all.” I returned her gaze stonily. “But I can tell you one thing for sure. Katharine’s not a poisoner.”

  “How can you know that?” Sophia demanded. “She has a criminal record. She arrives in the city at the time the Ultimate Usquebaugh kills two citizens and she has bottles of it in her bag. At the very least she is a prime suspect.”

  I thought of the unbalanced look I’d seen in Katharine’s eyes and the wild laughter she’d let slip. Could what had happened to the farm have driven her over the edge? And where the hell had she been spending her time since she came back to the city? I shook my head involuntarily. No way. I knew Katharine. I wasn’t going to let myself be steamrollered by Sophia.

  The senior guardian looked at me and moved her lips into an unlikely pout. “My first reaction was to have you taken off the investigation, citizen.” I heard Lewis and Davie draw breath sharply. “However, I am prepared to accept your word that you know nothing of this matter.”

  That was easy enough to give.

  “I also require your word that you will inform me immediately if Kirkwood makes contact with you in any way.” She opened her eyes wide and waited for my answer.

  “All right,” I said after a short pause. Making promises to guardians that I don’t keep is something I’ve got used to over the years.

  Sophia nodded. “Very well. Get back to work. And try to work out some more constructive approaches.”

  She wasn’t getting a response to that.

  “Your flat is under surveillance by undercover operatives, by the way,” she said as I got up.

  “In that case you’ve got no chance of catching Katharine,” I said with a bitter smile. “She can smell them a mile off. And don’t forget, she’s got an ‘ask no questions’.”

  The two guardians gave me a look that even I could have lived without.

  “Wanker.” Davie stormed past me down the stone-flagged corridor towards the guard command centre.

  “Hang on a minute,” I said, catching him up. “You don’t really think Katharine’s involved with the murders, do you?”

  He stopped and turned, letting me careen off his solid chest. “We’re supposed to be friends, aren’t we, Quint? Why the fuck didn’t you tell me that your old girlfriend had shown up again?”

  I shrugged, avoiding his eyes. “It was a bit embarrassing, what with Sophia being involved.”

  “Embarrassing?” he roared, glaring at a timid-looking female auxiliary at the other end of the passage who almost dropped her files. “It’s a fucking disaster area. You’re bloody lucky you’re not counting the cobwebs in the directorate’s deepest dungeon.”

  “She isn’t a poisoner, Davie,” I insisted in a low voice. “You know she isn’t.”

  “I bloody don’t,” he growled. His relationship with Katharine had been almost as stormy as the last king’s with the people of Britain. “I saw her kill, remember?”

  I nodded. “That was different, Davie. She saved my life then.”

  He stared at me then slowly lowered his eyes. “Yes, she did. That was a long time ago though. Who knows what might have happened to her since then?” He strode away.

  “Davie, you will let me know if there are any sightings of her, won’t you?”

  He turned back to me. “All right. But next time tell me what the fuck’s going on. Where are you going?”

  “The central archive. I’ve got things to find out about Fordyce Kennedy’s missing son. What about you?”

  “We’re still checking whisky stocks, remember?” he said sardonically, heading away. “As well as looking for your fancy woman.”

  I walked down the Royal Mile to George IVth Bridge without losing more than a pint of sweat. After going into the archive in the former library, I drank noisily from the fountain in the entrance hall then stuck my head round my friend Ray’s door. There was no sign of him. But his desk was something else. He usually kept it in the well-ordered fashion beloved of senior bureaucrats. Now it looked as if a paperchase involving a full squad of trainee auxiliaries had taken place across it. There were books strewn all over the floor as well, which struck me as curious behaviour for a bibliophile. Still, the room wasn’t a bad metaphor for the current state of my investigation.

  “Is Nasmyth 67 around?” I called to the sentry at the glass doors.

  She looked at me snottily, as if to say “demoted auxiliaries can kiss my arse before I give them the time of day” and nodded once. That was all I got. It didn’t seem worth asking for Ray’s exact whereabouts so I went down to the document stacks. At least I wouldn’t need to ask for help down there.

  Before I pulled Allie Kennedy’s file, I sat at a table and considered the question of Katharine. I’d have tried to get a message to her to warn her that she was a wanted woman, but I couldn’t think of a way to do that. She didn’t have a mobile. If she showed up at my place, she’d be grabbed before she could see any note I left. I’d just have to hope that her highly developed instinct for self-preservation would get her out of trouble. If anyone could stay free, she could. In the meantime it was up to me to prove that she wasn’t involved in the killings. I’d been looking for something to fill my spare time.

  I checked out the second victim’s son with the thoroughness of a lice infestation controller in the city’s primary sch
ools. That involved a serious amount of cross-referencing. Although I’d cast an eye over Allie when I first investigated the missing lottery-winner, that gave me nothing more than a vague idea about him. Documentation on ordinary citizens collated by the various directorates is supposedly transferred on a weekly basis to the central archive. I spent an hour running between the stacks updated by the Education, Labour, Recreation and Welfare Directorates.

  I didn’t get much for my pains. Alexander Kennedy certainly wasn’t one of the Enlightenment’s success stories but neither was I. As I knew, he had a less-than-impressive school and work record, although the only formal notice of anything dubious apart from his spells in youth detention was a Public Order Directorate offence notification which hadn’t been moved to his main folder. That referred to a case of gambling in a derelict house in south Morningside a year back. Nothing too worrying about that. There’s no shortage of disaffected young people in the city who spend their evenings dodging the guard – who’ve got better things to do than chase them. The only other thing that I picked up was that Allie was registered as homosexual in his Sex Session Record. Before the current Council’s opening up of the system, citizens had to attend a weekly sex session at their local recreation centre. Different partners were allocated every time in the original Council’s drive to replace emotion with sexual variety – and to keep tabs on everyone. You had to declare yourself as either hetero or homo, bisexuality not being recognised by the Recreation Directorate who probably found it too untidy from a bureaucratic point of view. There was a long list of male citizens who Allie’d had sex with but none of the names meant anything to me. Frankie Thomson certainly wasn’t on it.

  I gathered my notes together and put back the files. I was going to have to check some of the details with the missing man’s family. That idea didn’t fill me with enthusiasm. On my way to the exit I looked into Ray’s office again. This time he was in residence, bent over the chaos that was his desk.

  “Hiya, Ray.”

  His head shot up, the eyes heavily ringed and the mouth slack. He looked so bad that I almost expected him to croak “The horror, the horror.”

  “Jesus, what happened to you?” I asked.

  “I . . .” He dropped his head again. “I . . .”

  “You . . . you had a skinful last night?”

  “No, I . . . I . . .”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not in a hurry.”

  Ray looked across at me and I realised that this wasn’t just a case of the “Bootlegger’s Blues”. This was a guy who’d either had some very bad news or had just seen a ghost with its head in its hands.

  “What’s the matter, my friend?” I went round the desk towards him, but he dragged himself out of his chair quickly and stepped to the window. The sleeve of the pink shirt over his missing arm flapped like a dead flamingo’s neck.

  “Nothing . . . I . . . I just had a bad night.” He stared at me dully. “Pain . . . pain in my arm. You know how it is.”

  After a fashion. I glanced down at the stump of my finger. It does sometimes give me a hard time. “Aye. Here, any news from that American dealer?”

  His eyes sprang open. “Dealer?” he repeated. “What dealer?”

  “You know the one. Chandler editions?”

  “Oh.” Ray’s face slackened again. “Chandler. Yes. No. I mean, I haven’t seen that dealer since you were last in.” He turned away and peered out at the street beyond the heavy bars on his window.

  “Ray?” I went up to him and saw him flinch. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  He nodded impatiently as if he very much wanted me out.

  “I can help, Ray,” I said. “If you’re in some sort of trouble . . .”

  This time he faced me. He blinked uncontrollably then pushed me gently away. “Hit the road, Quint. You’ve got enough problems of your own.”

  He was right there even though he was only guessing. So I squeezed his shoulder and left him to his heaps of papers and scattered volumes.

  It was only when I was out of the building that I remembered where I’d seen someone with a look of horror as deeply etched as the one on Ray’s face. It was in Granton during the height of the drugs wars, after a City Guard unit had taken what then passed for the law into its own hands. A young guardsman was picking his way among the mutilated corpses with his eyelids stretched so far apart that for a second I thought his eyes would drop out. I was bloody glad I didn’t get the kind of pain that had distorted Ray’s features.

  Chapter Ten

  I called Davie. The barracks reports he’d been collating showed no sign of Allie Kennedy or – to my relief – of Katharine. The Ultimate Usquebaugh was keeping itself to itself as well. I asked him to assign me a vehicle, told him where I was headed and signed off.

  When the clapped-out Land-Rover arrived, I sent the driver back to the castle on foot and set off towards Tollcross. The morning influx of citizen workers in buses was long over and the only vehicles on the road apart from guard vehicles like mine were tourist coaches and taxis. There were a few citizens on ramshackle bicycles held together with pieces of string heading towards the areas near the city line – houses damaged in the drugs wars years ago out there were finally being brought back into use. Soon I passed Napier Barracks and ran down the hill into Morningside. The Pentland Hills to the south shimmered light brown and dusty green, clouds of dust rising from the building sites as if sticks of bombs had just been dropped on them by one of the American air force’s latest Skulk planes.

  I turned into Millar Crescent and floored the brake pedal. The street was full of people clustered around the drinking-water tank. They were the unlucky ones who had the afternoon and night shifts – even though they weren’t at work right now, they had to spend a large part of their so-called free time ensuring they had enough water to get through the day. I stepped out and looked over the lines of people in vests and T-shirts. Those who weren’t queuing for drinking-water were waiting to use the communal bogs. I didn’t see anyone from the Kennedy family, either male or female. A guard vehicle was parked further down. I’d already heard from Davie that the auxiliaries in it hadn’t reported any individuals resembling Allie Kennedy.

  I walked over to the drinking-water tank. It was at the end of the street beside the local bike shed. There was a heavy padlock on the inflow lid on top and I wondered how feasible it would be for someone bent on poisoning the supply to get it open. Very feasible indeed if you worked for the Water Department. I wondered what I had to do to get Sophia and Lewis Hamilton to protect what could be the poisoners’ next target.

  I climbed up to the Kennedy flat, breathing in the simmering, fetid smell of Edinburgh stairwells during the Big Heat. Agnes opened the door. A brief flash of surprise registered in her eyes when she saw me. There were dark rings around them. She was dressed in her usual paint-dotted clothes, the scarf round her neck tied in a double knot. Her raven-coloured hair was loose. It didn’t look like she’d passed a restful night.

  “Citizen . . .” she said, her voice fading away.

  “You can call me Quint,” I said.

  “What . . . what is it?” she asked dully.

  “Can I come in? I need to ask you some questions.”

  Agnes seemed reluctant to admit me. Finally she shrugged and opened the door wider.

  “How’s your mother?”

  She had her arms crossed tightly over her chest. “Away in her own little world. I don’t know if she really understands what’s happened.”

  “Are you not working today?”

  She raised her hand to her scarf. “My supervisor gave me the day off.”

  “Unusually decent supervisor,” I said under my breath. Bereaved citizens are entitled to take time off work only for the cremation service. In Fordyce Kennedy’s case that wouldn’t be happening for some time.

  “That’s the Council’s new way, isn’t it?” Agnes said. “Auxiliaries are required to be responsive to citizens’ needs.” I heard her snort deris
ively as I glanced into the rooms off the hall. The surviving man of the house wasn’t around.

  She led me into the sitting room. The curtains were drawn, allowing only a little of the burning sunlight in. Hilda Kennedy was on the sofa, keeled over against the arm. Her eyes were blank and a drop of saliva was at the edge of her gaping mouth. She looked like she wasn’t just away with the fairies – she was dancing jigs with pixies, goblins, elves, sprites, the lot.

  Then I realised that Allie wasn’t the only person missing. “Agnes, where’s the nursing auxiliary who was assigned to you yesterday?”

  She looked up from wiping her mother’s mouth with a handkerchief. “She went off in the middle of the evening.”

  “Went off?” I tried not to shout.

  Agnes was helping her mother to sit up straight. “She got an urgent call. Around nine o’clock.”

  Hilda turned towards me, her face suddenly animated. “Allie’s a good laddie,” she said in a surprisingly strong voice. “A good laddie, our Allie.” Then her eyes rolled and she slumped against the sofa arm again.

  I finished swearing at the auxiliary’s absence under my breath and watched as Agnes sat down next to Hilda on the sofa. The ornate furniture that Fordyce had made stood around us like a ring of memorial stones. I had a thought that didn’t make me proud of myself.

  “Agnes, is there any chance of a cup of tea?” I said quietly. “I was out of the house very early this morning.”

  She studied me for a few seconds then nodded. “Just let her be,” she said, inclining her head towards her mother.

  I watched her go then moved towards the older woman. “Hilda?” I said in a loud whisper. “Hilda, can you hear me?”

  Her eyes focused on me slowly.

  “Hilda, where’s Allie?” I said.

  Nothing.

  “Where’s Allie?” I repeated. “Where’s he been?”

  A smile spread across her thin lips. “Allie’s a good laddie. Aye, a good laddie.” Then she lost contact and drifted back to the set of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.