Water of Death

by Paul Johnston

  “Why didn’t you ask me that question, citizen?”

  I jerked back from Hilda.

  Agnes was at the door, a cup in her hand. “I told you to let her be,” she said. The look on her face was placid but there was an edge to her voice.

  “Sorry, I was just wondering . . .”

  “I’ll answer all your questions, don’t worry.” She handed the cup to me.

  I nodded, my mind suddenly elsewhere. The dark-stained wood around me had given me another idea. Maybe Fordyce Kennedy’s cabinet-making skills had something to do with his death. I sat back in the unusually comfortable sofa and tried to make something of that. Illicit furniture smuggling? A black-market scam in fake antique escritoires? It didn’t sound very likely.

  “For your information, Allie was here last night,” Agnes said.

  “He slept here?”

  “What do you think he did?” Her eyes flashed again.

  “What time did he arrive?”

  “Don’t worry. It was before curfew.”

  I didn’t expect anything other than that standard response. For all the Council’s loosening up, citizens must be in their registered abode by curfew or face a month in the mines or on the Council farms. It wasn’t likely that Agnes would shop her brother if he’d been somewhere else. Which is why I’d made sure the bloody nurse was posted inside the flat in addition to the guard vehicle on the street.

  “Did you see him this morning?” I asked.

  Agnes shook her head. “He was away early. I don’t know where he’s gone.”

  “How did he take your father’s death?”

  She looked at me like I’d deposited something nasty on the carpet. “How do you fucking think, citizen?”

  I shrugged ineffectually. “Sorry. Can I see his room?”

  “Can I stop you?” Agnes was keeping her eyes off me now.

  I went into the second bedroom down the dingy hall. It was furnished with the usual Supply Directorate sticks and slats – there was nothing handmade by Fordyce in this room. But the bed had been slept in, the top sheet thrown back untidily and the poor-quality mattress and pillow indented. A few clothes had been tossed around the floor, none of them stained or marked in any obvious way. There weren’t many others in the narrow deal wardrobe. I took a shirt and a pair of underpants for the forensics team to play around with just in case. Then I went over to the window. It was half open and gave a view to the backs of other flats across the overgrown strips of garden. I ran my hand above the frame and felt the rope that was the Fire Department’s idea of an escape route in cases of emergency. It was coiled tightly and secured in its rack, which didn’t necessarily preclude recent use. I wondered if that was how Allie had escaped the attention of the auxiliaries in the street. Despite the signs of overnight inhabitation, the room had the atmosphere of a pied-à-terre which was only occasionally occupied. There was dust on the bookcase and chest of drawers and nothing that suggested day-to-day occupancy – no crumpled bits of paper, no half-emptied cups, no hairs in the hairbrush under the small mirror. That made me think.

  “Agnes?” She appeared at the door after a few moments. “How long is your brother’s hair?”

  She looked at me quizzically. “Why do you want to know that?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “It’s short, if you must know. Very short. He gets it clippered during the Big Heat.”

  “Clippered or shaved?”

  “Number one clipper,” she said, turning away.

  That is, pretty much akin to baldness. Well, well. Had he been down to visit Frankie Thomson in the Colonies?

  Before I left, I checked all the other rooms. Hilda’s bedroom was neat, presumably looked after by Agnes, while the daughter’s own room was much more homely. She’d painted the walls in pastel shades, hung curtains made from offcuts that she’d stitched together imaginatively and covered the bed in an attractive handmade bedspread. But none of that got me much further on. No Allie, no obvious bottles of the Ultimate Usquebaugh, no boogie.

  I thanked Agnes for her help and left her to it. My departure didn’t seem to make any impression on her at all.

  Back at the Land-Rover, which was being studiously ignored by the locals in the water queue, I put in a call to Davie.

  “Find the nursing auxiliary who was at the Kennedy flat last night and throw her in the dungeons till I’m ready for her. She buggered off after someone called her and I’m going to find out why. And another thing – replace the guard vehicle in Millar Crescent with an undercover surveillance team.”

  “Anything else?” he asked drily.

  “You’re going to love this. Find out from the Supply Directorate if there’s a trade in furniture – fake antique or high-quality contemporary.”

  “Is that a priority, Quint? We haven’t exactly got a plethora of personnel with time on their hands.”

  “A plethora?” I repeated. “Have you been reading Plato in the original Greek?”

  “What do you think?”

  “You’ll find someone to run the check, Davie. If not, do it yourself.”

  I rang off after his first expletive.

  I pulled up outside the Culture Directorate in Castle Terrace and flashed my authorisation at the guardswoman who’d raced towards me faster than the world’s computing systems crashed at the millennium. As I got out, I took in the late-twentieth-century neoclassical pile in front of me. It was a huge block with tiers of windows, pavilions and domes on the top corners. In the past the Council handled culture from the old Royal Scottish Academy on Princes Street but since the beginning of the lottery they needed bigger premises. Culture in Edinburgh means Edlott these days. Half the auxiliary population seemed to be working on schemes to convince ordinary citizens that greed is good. I wanted very much to squeeze the man in charge of lottery operations to see what came out.

  I went into the grand central entrance. The guardsman on sentry duty was dubious about my T-shirt and faded trousers but my authorisation did the trick again.

  “Where will I find Nasmyth 05?” I asked.

  “Rear atrium, second floor.”

  I moved into the open space inside the building. It was hotter than the Palm House in the Botanic Gardens. The architects who’d talked their clients out of a king’s ransom put their trust in air-conditioning. There’s no way the city’s restricted power supplies could cope with that now, so the poor sods working in the Culture Directorate were even worse off than the rest of us during the Big Heat. I glanced at the intricate designs etched into the glass over the lifts. By contrast, stencilled “Out of Order” signs had been stuck on the doors since the Council deprioritised maintenance of non-essential machinery.

  I looked up and caught a glimpse of Nasmyth 05. He was on the floor above me, moving his besuited bulk with surprising speed in the opposite direction from the staircase. The way his head was turned stiffly away gave me the impression that he’d spotted me and didn’t want to hang around for a chat. I ran towards the stairs.

  It was then that my mobile rang.

  “Quint? Davie. Something’s turned up.”

  I watched through the engraved-glass panels as the auxiliary in charge of Edlott disappeared from view on the far side of the atrium.

  “Shit!” I yelled. “It had better be good, Davie.”

  “You decide. A guard patrol has found a seriously injured woman outside the city line in Colinton. Near the Water of Leith.”

  “Injured in what way?” I asked.

  “Take your pick. Knife wounds, severe head wounds from a blunt instrument . . .”

  “Any ID?”

  “That’s where it gets even more interesting. No card, no food or clothing vouchers, no Labour Directorate slip.”

  “Dissident? Deserter? Smuggler?”

  “Could be, Quint. Or poisoner?”

  I was already on my way down the stairs. The questions I had for Nasmyth 05 would have to wait. “Where is the woman now?”

  “Approaching the
infirmary.”

  “Meet me there. Out.”

  Then, as I was climbing into the Land-Rover, a heart-stopping thought struck me. Katharine didn’t have any of the documentation Davie’d mentioned. Jesus, could it be her?

  Things got even worse when I arrived at the infirmary. I’d been hoping the acting senior guardian might have had other business, but Sophia was already on the scene. The mystery woman had been taken to a secure room at the rear of the hospital. There were guard personnel all over the place. I detected the heavy hand of Lewis Hamilton.

  The public order guardian was standing at the end of the corridor talking to Davie. “Ah, Dalrymple. What do you think of this then?” He looked inordinately pleased with himself, which made me even more ill at ease. “We found Glaswegian cigarettes in the woman’s pockets.”

  “Anything more exciting than that, Lewis?” I said, dropping into my normal role as ego-deflator. “Such as poisoned whisky?”

  He shook his head mournfully. “Nothing else.”

  “So maybe she’s just a tobacco smuggler then.” The bravado in my voice was an attempt to conceal the panic that had gripped me. Was it Katharine who’d been beaten and stabbed? Had she been spending time beyond the city line? What could she have been doing out there?

  The guard on the door admitted us. The ward was empty apart from the nearest bed. Sophia and a nursing auxiliary were bending over a figure, the torso of which was completely swathed in bandages. How bad was this about to get? If it was Katharine on the bed, Sophia would probably be grinning under her surgical mask. I almost rushed forward to push the medical guardian away. The strength of my feeling for Katharine startled me. I hadn’t seen her for over three years and I was acting like a fifteen-year-old. What the hell was going on?

  The patient wasn’t moving. Over her face was an apparatus with pipes and leads running from it, making identification impossible. I felt my heart pounding as I stepped closer and took in the extent of the injuries.

  “Quint.” Sophia’s voice was muffled by her mask but it sounded like she was pleased to see me. She’d even used my first name. That only made me more worried.

  I bent over the top half of the woman’s body, ignoring Sophia.

  Then relief burst over me like the water from a broken dam. The left upper arm was unbound and I was looking at a bright yellow number four that had been tattooed on the skin. Looking and breathing in heavily. It wasn’t Katharine. I’d seen her arms when she took off her shirt at my flat. There were no tattoos on them.

  “Quint?” Sophia’s voice was questioning now. “What is it?”

  I got a grip and looked across at her. “I wonder if someone’s been reading Sherlock Holmes novels.”

  She raised her eyes to the ceiling. Obviously she wasn’t a fan of The Sign of Four. “Have you any more pertinent comments to make?”

  “Not yet. Your patient seems to be in quite a state. What’s the prognosis?” As the words left my mouth, it occurred to me that the medical guardian wouldn’t normally take it on herself to treat every suspect the guard dragged in from across the city line. Why was she so interested in this one?

  “I think she’ll pull through but she’ll be severely disfigured. The sight’s gone in her right eye and she’ll need major reconstructive work on her cheeks and nose.”

  “What happened to her?” I asked. As well as the extensive dressings on her head and abdomen, the figure’s right hand was covered in bandages.

  Sophia saw where I was looking. “She was worked over really badly. Those are defence wounds. The palm and fingers sustained deep knife cuts. She’ll be lucky to keep all her fingers.”

  I looked at the stump of my own right forefinger. Compared with the wounds the woman had suffered, it was nothing. “What did the damage to her face?”

  “Something like a pick-axe handle.” Sophia shook her head and pulled down her mask. “I’ve rarely seen such injuries, Quint.” She was pale even by Ice Queen standards. “Her face was struck repeatedly. With extreme force. It’s almost as if someone were trying to injure her beyond recognition.”

  “What other wounds were there?”

  “Six knife wounds to the abdomen. With those she was lucky, though it may not look like it. None of the major organs was pierced. She’s lost a lot of blood but she should be out of danger now. More worrying is her head. She took at least four heavy blows to the rear of the cranium. I don’t yet know the extent of damage to the brain.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at Hamilton and Davie. They were both keeping their distance from the mummy-like form on the bed. “When can I talk to her?” I asked, turning back to Sophia.

  “It’s impossible to say. Judging by the state of the wounds, I’d say she was attacked at least six hours ago. There’s no way of telling how long she’s been unconscious. She might come round at any time.” She opened her eyes wide at me. “Or she might not come round at all.”

  I nodded then reached out and took her elbow to draw her away.

  Sophia shook off my hand, looking briefly at a nurse, who immediately dropped her gaze, then staring at me. “What is it?”

  “Any sign of nicotine poisoning?”

  She shook her head. “She’d have died a long time ago if she’d swallowed adulterated whisky. You know how quickly nicotine works.”

  I nodded. “Something else. Did you authorise the nursing auxiliary to leave the Kennedy flat yesterday evening?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Would anyone else from your directorate have done so?”

  “I’ll check but it’s extremely unlikely.”

  She seemed to be genuinely surprised so I let it pass.

  “The Council meeting’s in half an hour,” Sophia said. “Are you coming?”

  “No chance. Take Lewis with you. Davie and I have to check out where they found her.”

  “Quint?” Sophia said in a low voice. “The public order guardian told me there’s still no sign of Katharine Kirkwood. I take it you haven’t seen her?”

  I nearly told her how relieved I’d been that Katharine wasn’t the patient on the bed but I managed to swallow the words.

  Davie had disappeared by the time Sophia confirmed there had been no order given to the absent nurse from anyone in the Medical Directorate. I knew where to find him. I went to the canteen and led him away from the remains of what seemed to have been a six-course lunch. In his Land-Rover I reached under the driver’s seat for the detailed guard map of the city.

  “Where exactly was the woman with the sign-of-four tattoo found?” I asked.

  Davie turned left on to Lauriston Place and accelerated away. “By the river at Bogsmill Road. I told the patrol to wait for us there.”

  I looked up the street name in the index and found it on the map. “About half a mile outside the city line. Where the bad people hang out.” Apart from those on escorted work details, Edinburgh citizens aren’t allowed to cross into the suburbs outside the city line. The guard doesn’t patrol the area in anything like as much strength as it does the residential zones, so dissidents and black marketeers play hide and seek with them all of the day and all of the night.

  We hit the Slateford Road and I was struck by two thoughts. The first was that there used to be a hell of a good pub known as the Gravediggers near the junction. It had been turned into a citizen sex centre – maybe Freud was right and there is a link between Eros and Thanatos. I looked at the map again to confirm the second thing. As I thought, Bogsmill Road was only a mile and a half from the place where we found Fordyce Kennedy’s body near the rugby stadium. I checked the scale. It was about the same distance from the Kennedy flat in Millar Crescent. The three places were within walking distance of each other. Then I shook my head, remembering that Frankie Thomson’s body was found by the Water of Leith a lot further north. There was also the small matter of the fortified city line between Bogsmill Road and the other locations.

  Davie had begun to slow down. A little beyond the city’s slaughterhous
es the road kinks and goes under an aqueduct carrying the few stagnant inches that remain of the former Union Canal, imaginatively renamed the Enlightenment Canal by the first Council. Then the road crosses the Water of Leith’s trickling stream before bringing you up against the city line. During the drugs wars in the years after the Council took power, the Public Order Directorate erected huge concrete blocks at all the city’s entry and exit roads. They’re still standing, great monolithic memorial stones to the Council’s policy of independence by exclusion. Except that now the paint’s worn away from the maroon hearts and uplifting slogans, leaving dirty stains and patches of mould on the bullet-pocked surfaces. This is one of the few parts of the city where Edlott posters don’t proliferate. Some crazy local had spraypainted “Southside Strollers Ru” near the gate. The guard had got him before he managed to complete the last word. He’d have rued the day he thought of that escapade all right.

  The sentry on duty had an automatic machine pistol slung round his neck. The city line and outer border squads are the only guard units equipped with firearms, apart from the Fisheries Guard. When the fresh-faced guardsman spotted our vehicle he lost interest and opened the gate.

  “Bogsmill Road’s the next left,” I said as we started off again. “Not far from the line, is it? How easy is it to cross the barrier these days, Davie?”

  He shrugged. “There are eight feet of razor wire on the fences that run between each gatepost. The patrols check it regularly. If you’ve got the right gear you can cut your way through. People do it. There are reports of holes needing rewiring all the time. You know what the black market’s like.”

  He turned off the main road at the junction where another Land-Rover was waiting for us. We followed it down to the road by the river and got out. The place was once a residential area but now it looked like it had been a dinosaurs’ stomping ground. The walls of ruined houses were shattered, the roofs blown out by the anti-tank weapons the gangs liked so much. As for the doors and frames, they’d been wrenched away by citizens desperate for fuel during the freezing winters before the coal mines came back into operation.