“Before a drugs gang took over the labs and the guard went in with everything it had.” The assault had happened before I had enough influence in the Public Order Directorate to change tactics and work on driving the scumbags out of Edinburgh without destroying all the city’s buildings. “That’s not all it used to be.”
Katharine leaned over the seat and looked at me. “No? What else was it then?”
“During the First World War it was Craiglockhart War Hospital.”
“Really.” The interest faded from her voice.
“Yup. There were some famous people here. Siegfried Sassoon springs to mind.” I glanced at her. “As does Wilfred Owen.”
“I remember them,” Katharine said, sitting back. “At school the boys loved all that pity of war stuff.” She shook her head dismissively. “I preferred Sylvia Plath myself.”
“Uh-huh.” I pulled up by a tree trunk that was lying across the drive of the former hospital. “Let’s go and take a look.”
“Why?” she demanded, clambering out of the vehicle. “What do you expect to find here?”
“Who knows? It’s a voyage of discovery.” I went up to the tree trunk. The pot-holed asphalt beneath it had a layer of brownish dust that looked like it hadn’t been there for long. I wondered if the guard checked the place out regularly. “Come on.” I stepped over the trunk, feeling it move underneath me. It wasn’t a particularly large tree.
“I’m right behind you,” Katharine said.
I stepped away up the slope, my heart beginning to beat fast. I had the feeling I wasn’t the first person to come here recently. It was only a few hundred yards from the spot where the comatose female was found – and a few hundred more from the mill house where her three companions, including Peter Bryson, were beaten to death. I was getting close to something but I still didn’t have much idea of what it was.
“Nice place.” Katharine was at my shoulder, pointing to the shattered windows and crumbling stonework. The pockmarks in the walls showed that the guard had still had plenty of heavy machine-gun ammunition to burn when they attacked.
The main entrance was completely blocked by a pile of collapsed masonry. Pigeons were cooing inside in a drowsy manner that suggested they weren’t bothered by human company. Citizens have been known to cross the line armed with catapults to supplement their meat ration.
“Come on, we can’t get in here. There must be another entrance.”
She gave me a doubtful look then let me pass. I followed the building round to the left and met a wall of branches that didn’t look natural. There were far too many of them and, as I kneeled down to look through them, I noticed a mass of unclear footprints in the dust covering the uneven flagstones.
“Hey, look at this,” I said, starting to turn towards Katharine.
Then my head exploded and I plunged over a drop sheer enough to wrench my stomach out of my abdomen. I watched as it flapped sluggishly away from my clutching hands. There was a shrieking in my ears which gradually lowered in pitch, ending up as the mournful howl of a subterranean demon so desperate for soul food that even an atheist’s like mine would do.
Hell’s teeth, I thought. Then I was swallowed up in the abyss.
Chapter Seventeen
I seemed to be floating in the dark, my body chewed up by the ravenous being who’d been waiting for me to land in his vacant underground halls. Robert Johnson was down there with me, and “Me and the Devil Blues” was the song the old maestro had chosen. The universe, space and time, the big wide world had all been reduced to this inky blackness. It was a curiously restful state to be in – no past I could remember, no present to give me pain and definitely no future to look forward to. But then things went into reverse. The moaning noise started again, so low in tone at first that I could hardly pick it up, then inexorably rising till it turned into a long-drawn-out shriek that almost burst my eardrums. I opened my eyes warily but still couldn’t see anything. I gradually became aware of a hard stone floor beneath me and of musty air cut with the bittersweet tang of rodent piss. I’ve never been good at waking up.
I brought a hand to my face and felt something sticky on the side of my head. Then I made the mistake of moving. A wave of pain coursed through my body and vomit surged up my throat. I managed to turn to one side so it didn’t go all over my clothes. I lay perfectly still, trying to summon up the courage to move again, and pieced together what had happened. Christ, I hadn’t been on my own.
“Katharine?” The pain flooded through me again, not quite as ruinously as before. “Katharine?”
There was no reply. No sound at all. Then came a distant noise I couldn’t immediately place. It was regular and sibilant, softly insistent. Pigeons. There had been pigeons in the upper storeys of the old war hospital. I reckoned I was still somewhere in the depths of the building. But where was Katharine?
I had no idea how long it took me to drag myself into a sitting position – citizen-issue watches don’t run to luminous hands. My head tolled like one of Hemingway’s bells every time I moved. My throat was dry and painful and I could have used a gallon or two of water. Then I found something that made me whoop with joy till I realised that whooping wasn’t good for my head – my torch was still in my shirt pocket. I couldn’t lay hands on my mobile phone but you can’t win them all.
I shone the torch round the room I was in. “Room” turned out not to be the correct term. It was more like a cavern, a hole in the ground, the entrance to a mine. There were piles of wooden props and heaps of earth by the walls. I had difficulty making sense of it because I could only see a few feet at a time in the restricted beam. It was like trying to do a jigsaw with only a box of matches for light. There was no sign of anyone else in the vicinity, no sign of Katharine. Then I flicked the beam further into the depths and got a couple of nasty surprises.
The first one paralysed me with fear. A snarling, bestial face leaped out at me from the surrounding gloom, eyes shining bright and murderous. I dropped the torch on to my legs and waited to be savaged. Nothing happened. I scrabbled for the light and gingerly shone it back in that direction. The face sprang forward again but I held the torch firm. Hell’s teeth, all right. A statue of a dog with lips curled back and long pointed teeth was up against the far wall. It had been carved from some dark-coloured stone, only the eyes and dentalwork picked out in white and faded red. Good boy. Heel. Sit. Don’t bloody move.
I crawled slowly over to the other surprise, a mound of objects covered in dusty plastic sheeting, the edges held down by lumps of stone. In the dim light I couldn’t be sure but it looked like someone’s private library that had been preserved for posterity. I made it over there without retching more than three times and rolled away the stones. Then I stuck my hand in and pulled out a heavy tome, carefully unwrapping the protective sheathing to reveal a soft leather binding. I opened the book, shining my light on the title page. And hit what for a book collector was the mother lode – a first edition of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, dated 1755, with the stamp of the British Library on its inside front cover. I let out an oath. Only one of the words appears in the great work.
Time passed – I didn’t know how long – until there was a noise like thunder over to my right.
“Quint?” came a muffled shout. “Are you in there, Quint?”
“Davie? Is that you, Davie?” I headed for the door which I’d earlier tried and failed to open.
“Hold on.”
I heard him giving orders, then there was a series of shattering blows to the heavy panels. Daylight streamed in through a cloud of dust. A few more applications of the sledgehammer and they were in. Very shortly afterwards I was out, breathing in what passes for fresh air during the Big Heat.
“Christ, it’s good to see you, man,” I said, holding on to Davie’s arm. “Give me your waterbottle.” I emptied it quickly and took the replacement offered by a muscular guardswoman.
“Better?” Davie asked when I’d finished the
second pint. “What happened to you? You should get that wound seen to.”
I shook my head and instantly regretted it. “No time,” I gasped. A squad of guard personnel had gathered around us like a flock of curious sheep. I took Davie aside. “Look, keep this to yourself. I was with Katharine before I was belted.”
His eyes shot wide open but he didn’t say anything.
“There’s no sign of her now. So whoever decked me and shut me in down there must have taken her away.”
Now Davie was shaking his head. “Arsehole. She’s a wanted person, Quint. Hasn’t it occurred to you that she might be involved with the person who hit you? Christ, she might have hit you herself.”
I stood in the sunlight outside the cellar entrance and thought about it. He could be right. I didn’t see who knocked me out and Katharine had been behind me. Then I remembered the wall of branches and the footprints. I walked round the corner of the building and crossed the woodland to the place where I was attacked. There were more scuffmarks than before but none of them revealed any clear prints. On the other hand, there was no sign of a body – my body – being dragged through the undergrowth to the cellar. I didn’t think Katharine could have got me there without leaving traces. If she did hit me, she must have had help.
I squatted down on the ground, my head in my hands. No, I couldn’t go along with it. Katharine hadn’t tried to stop me checking out the former hospital and she hadn’t seemed particularly interested in it. There wasn’t any way that she could have warned her associates either. Besides, we’d been together last night – we’d made love. I hadn’t expected her to suggest that we try living together but I’d taken it at face value. Maybe I was just gullible. I had a flash of Peter Bryson’s corpse. Had she been straight with me about him and the events at the mill?
“Are you all right, Quint?” Davie dropped down beside me.
“Yeah.” I looked round at him. “How did you find me out here?”
“The command centre received an anonymous call. The voice was disguised. Something held over the mouthpiece. A guy said you were up here.”
“A man?”
“Aye. I heard the tape. It definitely sounded like a male voice.”
“Not Katharine then,” I said triumphantly.
He pursed his lips. “That proves nothing and you know it, Quint. She could have got a sidekick to make the call.”
“Did you trace it?”
He nodded. “Public phone near the Easter Road greyhound track.”
“Any witnesses?”
“Christ, no. You know what that place is like when the tourists are swarming.”
“And no ordinary citizens are allowed anywhere near it when there’s a meet.”
“That’s right.” Davie glanced at me suspiciously. “What are you getting at?”
I shrugged and decided to keep my ideas about auxiliary involvement to myself for the time being. An auxiliary could easily have got through the barriers around the former football stadium and made a call. Sophia’s face floated up before me, her eyes cold and her mouth set firm. Then I twitched my head. I was clutching at straws again. Davie was right. Katharine was a much more likely suspect. But still . . .
“What’s down that hole in the basement anyway?” Davie asked.
I stood up unsteadily. “A regular treasure-trove, my friend. A collection of books and Egyptian objets d’art that must be worth a fortune on the global market. Jesus, there are dozens of first editions, most of them looted from the British Library. Walter Scott, Henry James, MacDiarmid, George Mackay Brown. Not to mention Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Oh, and Wilfred Owen. That’s how I got on to this place.”
Davie raised an eyebrow.
“Remember the books Ray pulled out of his shelves? I reckon he was trying to direct us to the cellar. Wilfred Owen recuperated here when it was a hospital.”
“Has this got anything to do with the poisonings, Quint?”
“Not sure yet. There’s some connection between what was going on here and the poisonings. I think Ray may have seen something at the mill that got him killed.”
Davie was shaking his head. “This is all pretty far-fetched.”
“This isn’t.” I said, pointing to the side of my head where the blood had caked. “And the contents of the cellar aren’t.” I caught sight of my hands. The fingernails were encrusted with reddish-brown earth and gritty dust. I was pretty sure the latter would match the traces I saw in Ray’s office and barracks room. I’d seen the red stuff under his nails too, but that wasn’t the only place. I tried to remember where else and only succeeded in making my headache worse. “The anonymous call you got isn’t a product of my imagination either, is it?” I added, forcing myself to concentrate.
Davie ran his fingers through the tangles of his beard. “Aye, right enough. What does it all mean?”
“Let’s see if we can work that out, shall we, guardsman? Give me your mobile.”
He handed it over. I called the culture guardian and asked him to organise a team of experts to catalogue what I’d found. I also told him to make sure that the Edlott controller Nasmyth 05 was kept in the dark about those arrangements. I wanted to ask him if he knew anything about what his barracks colleague Ray had been up to in the basement at Craiglockhart. Time for the fourth degree.
The Land-Rover I drove to the former hospital had disappeared, so I went back into the city with Davie. We put an all-barracks search out for the missing vehicle but it hadn’t been logged through any of the checkpoints. What interested me more was my mobile. I took Davie’s again and called my own number. It started to ring and my heart pounded as I waited for someone – Katharine? – to answer. But nobody did.
“Shit.” I called the communications centre and got them to patch calls to my number through to Davie’s, which I intended to keep. That meant whoever had my mobile could make outgoing calls – I wanted Katharine to have the ability to ask for help – but they wouldn’t receive any.
“You can draw a new mobile when you get back to the command centre, Davie,” I said. “In the meantime, let’s see where the fat man is.”
The duty undercover supervisor advised that Nasmyth 05 had just left the Culture Directorate in an official vehicle and was being followed. His current location was Nicolson Street, heading south. I relayed Davie’s mobile number to the tail.
“I wonder where he’s going,” I said after we turned eastwards in Morningside. Then I had a thought that made me sit up straight. I should have examined the connection earlier. “Bloody hell, I might have known the cunning bastard would have his finger in this.”
“Who?” Davie demanded. “What are you on about?”
“The Jackal,” I replied, shaking my head. “Billy sodding Geddes. He’s been doing freelance work for the Culture Directorate and he knows our man. Head for the auxiliary rehab centre at Duddingston. I’ll bet you any number of bottles of barracks whisky you like that Nasmyth 05’s going there.”
“Not accepted,” Davie said morosely. He’d lost too often to risk wagers with me any more.
We rolled into the car park outside the rehabilitation centre after Nasmyth 05 had cleared the checkpoint. A figure dressed as an electrician got out of a van and followed him in.
“I’ll give the undercover guy a minute or two to confirm where the fat man’s gone,” I said, looking round at the desiccated lake bed and the tan sides of Arthur’s Seat. The place still smelled of untreated sewage and the midday sun was beating down on us mercilessly. I took another gulp of water and wondered where Katharine was. There was nothing I could do for her now – just hope that she was managing to look after herself. She had a good record at that.
The mobile buzzed.
“Subject’s entered the quarters of the inmate called—”
“—the Jackal,” I said, completing the tail’s sentence for him. “Okay. We’ll take it from here. Stand by in your vehicle. Out.”
We went to the checkpoint and flashed ID. Whoever hit
me and took my mobile hadn’t taken my Council authorisation.
I stopped Davie outside the old church tower. “The usual, all right?”
“Me hard, you soft,” he said, looking keen.
I nodded. “And don’t worry if you can’t follow what I’m saying. I’m going to have to make some of this up as I go along.”
“That’ll make a change, won’t it?” he said with a broad grin.
I raised my middle finger and led him up the stairs. I’d hoped for a stealthy approach but you can forget that when you’re accompanied by guard personnel wearing tackety boots. We piled into Billy’s room without bothering to knock.
He and Nasmyth 05 hardly seemed to notice us.
“The computer, Davie!” I shouted, realising what they were doing.
He ran across the wooden floor and pushed the pair of them aside.
“Hit ‘Escape’,” I said desperately.
Davie punched keys then shook his head. “Too late.”
I went over to the screen and watched as the words “File Deletion Completed” flashed up.
“Too late was the cry,” Billy said with a malevolent grin. “Too fucking late.” He let out a high-pitched laugh. “As usual, Quint.”
I resisted the temptation to throttle him and shoved his wheelchair away from the computer. Davie grabbed Nasmyth 05 by the collar of his smart suit.
“Right, you two,” I said. “It’s time to have a wee chat.”
The fat man glanced at Billy, his brow covered in a sheen of sweat.
“Don’t worry, the disk’s clean,” my former friend said. “They’ve got no evidence.” He gave me a sulphuric smile.
“Evidence?” I asked calmly. “That’s a pretty elastic term in Enlightenment Edinburgh, Billy. You know that.” I moved my eyes on to the Edlott controller to include him in the conversation. “Let’s face it, if the Council takes a dislike to you, your life’s worth about as much as a bucketful of shite. Citizen shite, that is, rather than the sweeter-smelling auxiliary version.”
Water of Death Page 30
