Davie came storming in not long afterwards, leading a squad of guards. They stood around in bewilderment as I helped Sophia to her feet and draped her torn blouse round her shoulders.
“You didn’t swallow any, did you?” I asked, grabbing a guardswoman’s waterbottle and handing it to her.
She shook her head as she rinsed her mouth out. “My mouth’s burning but the infirmary should be able to handle it.” She allowed herself to be moved towards the exit by a medical auxiliary then stopped and looked round. “Is he dead?”
I nodded.
“I have to thank you then, Quint,” she said.
“Not me. Katharine got to him first.”
Sophia looked behind me and nodded her head slowly. “Thank you, Katharine Kirkwood,” she said. There might have been a smile on her battered lips.
Davie watched her go. “What happened?”
“Quite,” said Hamilton, stepping forward. “Was that female citizen really a male?”
“She was,” I said.
“Does that mean I’m not going to get my whisky after all?” Davie demanded.
I laughed. “No, my friend. I’ll honour the bet.”
The public order guardian stared at us.
“Did he swallow the poisoned whisky?” Davie asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “He killed himself rather than end up in our hands.”
“Like his sister.”
“Like his sister.” I was about as far from understanding how their minds worked as it was possible to be. I went over to Katharine. She’d moved away from Allie Kennedy’s body and was propped against the wall, her head bowed. “Nice one,” I said. “I can’t say I thought you had it in you to save Sophia.”
She looked up at me, running her hands through her hair. “Me neither. In the end I just forgot who she was. I didn’t want that little shit to kill anyone else.”
“Come on,” I said, taking her arm. “I could do with some fresh air.”
“Where are we going to find that in Edinburgh?”
She had a point. Outside it was sweatier than ever, the air thicker than a barracks canteen treacle pudding. We sat on the steps of the mock temple and gazed out over the empty space in front of the rostrum. The tourists had all been shepherded away and the heart-shaped drum stood deserted, the streamers lank and the lottery balls in a heap at the pointed bottom.
“So much for greed,” I said as Hamilton and Davie joined us.
“Don’t worry,” Lewis said scathingly. “The culture guardian is no doubt already planning a relaunch for next week.”
I nodded. Nothing would get in the way of the Council’s drive for tourist income.
There was a dull rumbling in the distance behind Arthur’s Seat.
“What was that?” the guardian asked, his face registering alarm.
“Dissident attack,” I said. “Allie Kennedy told us it was planned.”
They bought it for a couple of seconds then Davie’s boot made contact with my backside.
“Very funny, Quint. The case is finished.” He looked at me uncertainly. “Isn’t it?”
Suddenly a blast of surprisingly cool wind hit us and the sun was obscured by quick-moving dark clouds.
“The case is finished all right, my friend,” I said, standing up and walking out into the open. “And here comes the real water of life.”
There was a long-drawn-out roll of thunder which climaxed in an ear-shattering boom. Lightning flashes strafed the city and blinded us momentarily. Katharine came out into the empty square to join me. We stood with our arms extended as the rain splashed across us in a great wave.
After the Big Heat, the deluge.
Over the next few days things calmed down in the city. The rain washed out the last of the high temperatures and Edinburgh became a sweet-smelling oasis. The city’s reserves of water shot up and citizens were given permission for an additional two showers a week, which made them ridiculously happy. I took the time to listen to some blues – Muddy Waters seemed appropriate. I also drank a lot of poison-free whisky and caught up on the sleep I’d missed during the investigation. Well, not that much sleep. Katharine was staying at my place and we discovered that our bodies were the repositories of half-forgotten, seriously arousing secrets. There was no mention of Peter Bryson, her former friend turned dope trafficker and poisoner.
Eventually Davie got so pissed off by my repeated refusals to take the chair from behind my door that he tied a rope to the roof and abseiled down to the bedroom window. Apparently the Council were tired of waiting for me to give my final report.
So I went to the chamber and told them everything I knew. I couldn’t understand why they needed to get it from me since Sophia had heard everything Allie Kennedy and I had said. She herself was playing the Ice Queen in hearts as well as spades, refusing to look even in my general direction. After I’d finished, she announced that the female dissident who was in a coma had died. The Water of Death Case was definitely closed.
I headed off rapidly when the meeting ended – I had unfinished business with Katharine at the flat.
Davie revved up the Land-Rover when I got in and backed out of the Council yard. “Get on all right?”
“Waste of time, pal,” I said.
“Aye, you’ve got much better things to do with your time now that Katharine Kirkwood’s an Edinburgh resident again.”
“I’m just following my old man’s advice. Remember the Latin poem he was translating? Tomorrow’s too late to have a good time so I’m getting on with it now. You know Katharine’s record. She’s a serial vanisher. One morning I’ll wake up and she’ll be gone.”
“Aw, come off it, you jackass. Anyone can see she’s smitten with you.” Davie laughed as he pulled away up the Royal Mile. “You’re not exactly indifferent yourself.”
“Thanks for your interest, guardsman,” I said loftily. “This is a private relationship, not a production of Romeo and Juliet.”
“Or The Taming of the Shrew.”
“Very funny.” I looked at his bearded face more seriously. “No word from the search squads on the south side?”
He shook his head. “Do you think Allie Kennedy was telling the truth about his mother’s body being out there?”
“God knows. Probably. The bastard was very proud of all the mayhem he caused.” I ran my fingers through my hair. It was longer than usual because Katharine had refused to let me have it trimmed. She told me I looked like an escaped convict. “My guess is that Allie experimented on Hilda to find out how much poisoned whisky was necessary to kill his victims.”
“Jesus. Do you think he and his sister really were abused by their parents?”
I nodded. “Probably. There had to be some personal motivation for what happened with their father.”
“Not just anti-Enlightenment angst?”
“You’ve been reading too many existentialist novels, guardsman.”
“That’ll be right.” Suddenly he glanced over his shoulder. “What the . . .”
We jerked to a halt underneath the gallows at the Lawnmarket. I straightened up, rubbing my neck gingerly. A Land-Rover in much better nick than Davie’s had forced us to the kerb. Sophia was at the wheel. She turned round, raised her forefinger and beckoned me towards her.
“Oh-oh,” I said. “If I’m not home by midnight, put out an all-barracks search.”
“No chance, Quint,” Davie said, his face split by a grin. “This is one case you’ll have to solve on your own.”
Sophia kept her eyes off me as I climbed in then drove away, turning on to Johnston Terrace.
“What’s going on?” I asked when she didn’t speak.
“Nothing is going on, citizen,” she said. Her lips were still swollen from Allie Kennedy’s blows and from the whisky flask he’d rammed against them. “I’m taking you back to your flat.”
“Any chance of you calling me Quint, Sophia?”
She glanced at me coolly. “None whatsoever, citizen.”
I sho
ok my head. So that was how she wanted to play it. I kept quiet as we headed down the rain-soaked asphalt, the castle rock looming up to our right. The scent of recently drenched vegetation came in through the open windows.
“Oh, very well,” Sophia said in irritation. “I wanted . . . I wanted to thank you, Quint.”
“For what? I told you it was Katharine—”
“For the successful conclusion to the investigation.” She shot me a fierce look. “I’ve already thanked the Kirkwood . . . I mean Katharine Kirkwood for saving my life.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “It was a seriously complicated case, Sophia. If I hadn’t been so blind about Hilda, I could have saved you the hassle at the Edlott ceremony.”
“You did more than could be expected.” Then she glanced at me angrily. “Although, as usual, you treated the City Regulations with complete disregard. You were lucky the Council overlooked the fact that you allowed the Fisheries Guard personnel to desert.”
“Do I have you to thank for that?”
“On the other hand,” she said, ignoring my sarcasm, “you have enabled the Council to maintain a reasonable level of tourist income despite last week’s fiasco.”
“No doubt you’ll make it all up this Saturday.” I looked at her. “I don’t care about the tourist income, Sophia. Even though I hate Edlott and its culture of greed almost as much as I hate auxiliaries who put the boot into citizens for no reason. I suppose people do need something to dream about. What I care about is that citizens’ lives aren’t made any more difficult than they have to be. That means keeping the user-friendly policies that the current Council’s instituted.” I held my eyes on her as she accelerated past the Culture Directorate and its banners advertising the rescheduled inaugural ceremony. “Maybe if the welfare services had been better in the past, Allie and Agnes Kennedy wouldn’t have ended up the way they did.”
Sophia nodded. “I know what you’re saying, Quint. I may not have been the greatest supporter of recent Council measures but I accept that citizens deserve more freedom than they had in the past.” She looked at me and gave a brief smile. “Don’t worry. We won’t be going back to the bad old days.” She frowned. “Although I still believe that liberalisation has been the cause of too many problems.”
Trust Sophia not to give in without a fight. But I reckoned she was being straight with me so I returned her smile – and felt a stab of guilt that I ever suspected her of being involved in the killings.
As we went through Tollcross, Sophia turned to me again. “You may be interested to know that Nasmyth 05 has been demoted. He’s in the rehabilitation centre at Duddingston.”
I’d got over my urge to crucify the fat auxiliary for passing my father’s address to Allie Kennedy. Sophia’s words made me think of another resident of the rehab facility. “Don’t you think it’s time the Council used Billy Geddes’s talents officially again? He could make the city a lot of money. As long as he’s properly supervised, of course.”
“I’ll put it to the Council. We need all the help we can get.”
I laughed. “Well said.” To my surprise, Sophia laughed as well.
We stopped outside my place.
“Go on then,” Sophia said haltingly. “She’s waiting for you, isn’t she?”
I watched her face, which was half turned away from me. Her swollen lips gave her an uncharacteristically fragile look though her eyes were as unwavering as ever. “Are you okay about this, Sophia?” I asked in a low voice.
She sat motionless for a few seconds. Then she looked at me and smiled more warmly. “I’ll survive, Quint. I know she has a prior claim.” She faced the front again. “To be honest with you, the original Council’s celibacy rules suit me better.”
I didn’t think she was being honest with me but I wasn’t going to argue. I leaned towards her and kissed her on the cheek. “See you at the next murder.”
“An appropriately unromantic way to say farewell,” she said drily. “Now go. Before I change my mind and have Katharine Kirkwood expelled.”
I didn’t hang around to see if she was joking.
I raced up the stairs and put my key in the lock. “I’m home,” I called, only realising after the words had escaped how odd they sounded. I hadn’t used them since Caro died ten years ago.
No reply.
“Katharine?” I said, walking into the living room. “Katharine?” My stomach suddenly felt hollow. I ran to the bedroom. No sign of her there either. “Katharine?” I went to the sofa and sat down, my legs weak. Surely not. Surely she hadn’t left the city again? There had been no sign that she was unhappy. Christ, she was the one who’d poleaxed me by suggesting we get back together.
I stood up and went over to the door. The carpet was unattached there and a couple of days earlier we’d found the note she’d left me when she went to the Kennedy flat – it was caught on the floorboards underneath. I stuck my fingers in and filled the ends of them with splinters. Nothing.
“Shit!” I shouted. I started sucking my nails. Then I remembered her backpack. If that was here, she would definitely be back. I ran to the bedroom again. It wasn’t there.
“Shit!” This time my shout was so loud that my neighbour to the rear started pounding on the thin wall.
I stood in the middle of the room shaking my head. Then I realised there was only one thing to do. I went over to my cassette player and put on John Lee Hooker. The old genius was in the middle of “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer”. That was a hell of a good idea. I hadn’t seen bourbon since I was eighteen but I had some barracks heavy that Davie’d given me, and a bottle of decent malt – no words beginning with “u” on its label. So I cranked up the decibels to drown out the neighbour’s complaints and drank. It didn’t make me feel much better.
The hand on my shoulder made me jump though. By the time I looked round Katharine had moved over to the cassette player and cut the volume.
“What are you doing?” she asked, looking at the booze.
“Where have you been?” I yelled, taking in the backpack on her shoulder.
“Shopping. There was a delivery of vegetables at the store,” she said, screwing up her eyes. “What’s the matter?”
“Jesus, Katharine. I thought you’d buggered off, that’s the matter.” I emptied my glass of whisky and washed it down with beer.
Katharine came over to me and took the bottle gently from my hand. “Quint,” she said, a smile breaking across her tanned face. “That’s very sweet.” She kissed me on the lips then put her arms round me. “I didn’t know you cared.”
“Didn’t you?” I said, nestling against her and breathing in the smell of newly washed hair. “Neither did I.”
Water of Death Page 38
