I stepped forward. “Well, well. If it isn’t Jamieson 369.” I gave him a smile to obscure the fear that was threatening to engulf me. “How are you doing, Harry? Sorry I didn’t recognise you earlier.”
The former guard commander grunted, one hand on the explosive charges on his chest. “The fucks in New Oxford fixed me up, didn’t they? Off with the beard, in with the bodybuilding compounds. The plastic surgery took months.”
“Aye, you’re quite a piece of work, Harry,” Davie said, staying by the window. “What happened to your eye?”
The first time I met the Fisheries Guard leader back in 2022 he was wearing a patch on his face; a smuggler with a death wish had put his eye out. Later Harry got a glass eye from the Medical Directorate that didn’t match the colour of the surviving natural one.
“Oh, they fixed that too,” he said, staring at Raphael again. “They fixed both of them. They can fix anything in this sewer.” He shook his head. “Not that I like the colour very much. Black eyes, black heart, my granny used to say.”
The chief administrator was nodding. “You’re right, Number Three. We can fix anything. We can even fix your future.” She returned his gaze. “But first, why don’t you explain what you’ve been doing? Citizen Dalrymple is desperate to know.” She stepped closer to Harry and Katharine. That made my heart pound even more. “Why did you follow me to Edinburgh? Why have you been picking off my colleagues?”
I glanced at Katharine. She seemed to have her breathing under control, but her eyes were still moving continuously. I could only hope that she would bide her time. Davie and I stood a better chance of helping her if I could show Harry that I was on his side rather than Raphael’s.
“It’s all to do with the Grendel project, isn’t it, Harry?” I said, risking another smile on him. “What happened to your crew?”
The assassin wasn’t listening to me. He took another look at the device round his neck. He’d removed the brown wig he had on earlier and his scalp was now under a layer of unnaturally black, clippered hair. There was no sign of the dunt in his skull that used to pulse like a misplaced heart; presumably the Nox scientists had ironed that out too.
“It’s a superb device, the Ghost,” he said, raising the unit. “I could never have got away with what I did without its anti-surveillance functions. It even got me through the Poison Fields without being spotted. That much I’ll tell you for free, Raphael.” Then he dropped the device and his hand moved with bewildering speed to his belt.
There was a stomach-churning noise of honed blade entering flesh and the chief administrator collapsed to the ground clutching her left thigh. I could see the haft of an auxiliary knife protruding between her fingers.
“Everything else you want to know, you pay for,” Dirty Harry said, his face showing no emotion. “The currency is pain.”
Raphael was biting her lower lip, but she didn’t cry out. Screwing up her eyes, she pulled out the knife and tossed it back towards Harry. Then she took out a white handkerchief and bound it round her leg. The fabric reddened but the flow of blood seemed to be staunched quickly.
“What happened to your men, Harry?” I said, watching as Raphael crawled to a chair and hauled herself into it. Davie didn’t offer any help.
Harry stared at me then nodded slowly. “I did the right thing when I got you involved, Citizen Quint.” He laughed humourlessly. “I used to think you were a right fucking smartarse back in the old city.” He looked over at Raphael. “All right, bitch, you’ve put a down payment on the information you want so here it is – though I reckon you know most of it already. My guys and I deserted from Edinburgh in ’25. There were sixteen of us when we sailed away. By the time we ran aground in the Wash five had gone; they were taken out when we stormed a container ship off Hull. Another couple were killed in skirmishes with headbangers on land. We found our way to the borders of this fucking state in the spring of ’26. Then the nightmare really began.” He broke off and glanced at the Ghost in his hand. “Looks like your people are staying put, chief administrator. Obviously they don’t care that you’ve been hurt.” He grinned vacantly.
“They have orders not to intervene,” Raphael said, her voice surprisingly even. “Under any circumstances.”
“That’ll be right,” Harry said. He looked at me. “With me so far, Citizen Quint?”
“With you, Harry.” I could feel Katharine’s eyes burning into me. She obviously wasn’t with the former guard commander in spirit. “Go on.”
He nodded slowly, looking at me as if he were trying to figure out where I stood. “Aye, well, the bulldogs on the outer perimeter saw that we had some potential in the violence stakes, so we were airlifted over the Poison Fields and put straight into the Grendel training programme.” He glanced at Raphael. “Of course, back then it wasn’t anything like as sophisticated” – he gave the word a heavily ironic emphasis – “as it is now. Afterwards we spent months patrolling the PFs.” His voice lowered in intensity. “Four of my guys died towards the end of that time, their lungs eaten away by new toxic strains.” He straightened his back. “That was when they started work on the Mark Two Grendels.”
Raphael pulled herself up in the chair. “There is no need to share any more technical information with these outsiders, Number Three,” she said in a firm voice. “Explain the murders.”
The Grendel shook his head, the loose grin back on his face. “I’m not taking any more orders from you.”
“I’ve got some thoughts about the murders, Harry,” I said, opening my arms. I had the impression that when Harry got on to what happened to the rest of his crew, Katharine would be in the middle of a lethal crossfire. “The first one, Ted Pym, was an experiment. You’d discovered that he was involved in the Cowley resistance with his brother Pete, so he was expendable. You left him down at Dead Man’s Walk because it’s in sight of the House of Dust and you wanted to register your interest.”
The former Fisheries Guard commander was nodding at me. “Not bad as far as it goes, citizen. I’m still listening.”
There was more to be said about Ted Pym’s murder, but I wasn’t clear about the motive for the dismemberment so I moved on. “You followed Raphael and her entourage – all of them being involved one way or another in the Mark Two Grendel project – to Edinburgh.” I shrugged. “I guess that the Ghost device enabled you to board the helijet unobserved.”
“That’s right,” he confirmed. “I travelled both ways in the luggage hold.”
I stared at him. “Christ. How did you? . . . doesn’t matter. In Edinburgh, you severed a Leith Lancer’s arm to bring me and my team on board the case. Then you took a shot at the chief administrator here during the prison inauguration, where you would cause maximum disruption to the incarceration policy and to New Oxford’s involvement in Edinburgh.”
“Fucking prisons,” Harry said. “They’ve turned this place into a prison factory and look how much good it’s done them.” He paused and shook his head. “I didn’t mean to kill the public order guardian. Even though the old bastard was never very keen on me and the Fisheries Guard. When I saw him move after I fired, I reduced the Eagle One’s velocity and deactivated the explosive charge.”
“Lewis Hamilton’s heart gave out,” I said.
Harry nodded slowly. “Aye. Another innocent victim of New Oxford.”
Raphael was staring at him, her eyes wide. “What about Raskolnikov? What about Verzeni and Yamaguchi? Why did you kill them before me?”
Harry laughed again, his eyes meeting hers. “After Edinburgh I changed tactics, you heartless cow. I wanted to make you suffer as you waited for the shot.” There was a high-pitched beep from the Ghost device. “What a surprise,” he said in a level voice. “Your people have decided to intervene after all.” He raised his right arm at her. “It’s time for your suffering to end, chief administrator.”
I stared at him, trying to make out what he was doing with his right hand. Then my ears were filled with the pounding of heavy feet
on the stairs beyond the door and every window erupted into blinding light.
It looked like everyone except me was playing their end game at the same time.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I was stumbling around like a blind man, arms extended as I desperately tried to make contact with Katharine. Then, suddenly, the floodlights were doused and I managed to focus on the interior of the Council chamber. There was no sign of Dirty Harry or of Katharine.
“Are you all right, Quint?” Davie was at the window. There was a series of explosions, followed by screams and cries. “Bloody hell. Harry just took out a couple of bulldog Chariots. What kind of weaponry is he using?”
I was looking at an open window further down the room, its curtains moving in the breeze. Then my eyes fell on Raphael. She was lying back in the chair, completely motionless, her legs straight out and her upper body an overflowing crater of blood. She hadn’t stood a chance against whatever Harry had fired.
I turned as a squad of bulldogs led by Harriet Haskins rushed in. Dawkley and Wood-Lewis were to the rear.
“Stay here!” I shouted to them. “The Grendel still has Katharine. Davie and I will find them.”
The science administrator kneeled by his former leader. “Very well,” he said in a defeated voice. “You have fifteen minutes. But I warn you: if the Grendel eludes you, we will hit him and his prisoner with everything we have.”
Haskins came up and handed me a nostrum. “Here,” she said. “You’ll need this. It’s programmed to monitor your female friend’s location.”
I thanked her and ran to the window. Davie was already halfway down the emergency rope.
“Where are they?” he asked as I got to the ground, my stomach hollow.
“Just up the road,” I said, looking at the nostrum and pointing north. “They’ve gone into Wad.”
We sprinted towards the college where the Encaenia procession had gathered.
“What the hell’s he doing?” Davie said.
“Looking for a bolthole?” I suggested, my lungs already straining.
Davie grunted. “No way. Harry’s got this all planned.”
Maybe he was right. I followed him towards the gateway. There were a couple of blood-boltered bulldogs on the ground.
“Where now?” Davie said, peering at the nostrum in my hand.
I looked to the left. “Over there,” I said. “The first staircase.” There was another shattered body at the doorway.
We took the steps in threes, looking in each room that we came to. Those on the first floor were empty, the doors ajar. As we were halfway up the next flight, we heard a crack followed by a sharp cry.
Davie thundered into the room in front of me. “It’s me, Harry,” I heard him say. “Shit, what have you done?”
I made it to the landing and pushed him aside. “Where’s Katharine? What’s—?” I broke off as I took in the scene in front of me. Katharine was still hooked up to Dirty Harry, both of them standing dead still. Beyond them Billy Geddes was sitting in his wheelchair, an expression of sheer terror on his irregular features. He didn’t seem to be hurt, which was more than could be said for the other occupant of the plush sitting room.
“Christ,” I gasped. “Is that who I think it is?”
Billy nodded slowly. “Lachlan Lessels, also known as Slick.” He was staring at the body that was lying in a scarlet pool in front of him. “Late senior guardian of Enlightenment Edinburgh.” He turned and looked at the Grendel, the aggressive side of his nature reasserting itself. “Why the fuck did you kill him?”
“You’re next, Heriot 07,” Dirty Harry said, raising his right arm. There was no weapon in his hand. “You and he signed Edinburgh over to the bastards in New Oxford, didn’t you? The toxins in the Poison Fields are going to make this golden sewer uninhabitable any day now, so you’ve let them move their operation to Edinburgh.”
“Is that true, Billy?” I asked, moving between him and the former Fisheries Guard commander. I knew from the look on the occupant of the wheelchair’s face that it was even before he nodded. “Harry,” I said, turning to the Grendel and opening my arms. “Don’t do it. Billy’s just a fixer. The guardians would be the ones who took the decision.”
Dirty Harry stared at me, his eyes cold glints, then lowered his arm slowly. He put his other hand to his waist and unfastened the umbilical link. “There you go, Katharine Kirkwood,” he said. “You’re free.”
She stared at him and tugged off her end of the wire. “You aren’t, though,” she observed, her voice sharp. “What are you going to do? Kill every bulldog in the city?”
Harry took a deep breath and then shook his head. “No. I’m finished.” He sank into an armchair and his head dropped to his chest. He looked like a man who’d run a double marathon. “I’m finished,” he repeated, the words faint.
I squeezed Katharine’s arm and got a frosty glare for my pains. She didn’t seem too traumatised by her experience. I wanted to talk to her, I wanted to make sure that she really was okay, but I needed to question her captor first. It wouldn’t be long before the bulldogs arrived.
“You’re not finished, Harry,” I said, kneeling in front of him. “You can come back to Edinburgh with us.”
He was inhaling deeply, the breath catching in his throat. “Can I fuck, Citizen Quint.” His eyes met mine and I felt the power of them again. “Don’t you understand what I am?”
I was forced to look away. “I know what you’ve done, Harry. But there are mitigating factors.”
He laughed until he choked. Perhaps his system was finally succumbing to toxic exposure. “You still don’t get it, do you?” He said. “What kind of smartarse are you?”
I stood up, accepting the challenge. “All right, here’s what I think, Harry. Your surviving crew – four of them, right? – were killed during the Mark Two fitting-out process, weren’t they?” I repeated the term Raphael had used, not that I understood it.
“That’s more like it,” he said, giving me an approving nod. “And what was it that killed them, Mr Investigator?”
I was looking at his right arm. There had been something strange about it, something unnatural in the way he raised it at Billy. “Where’s you ASAR, Harry?” I asked. “How did you shoot Hamilton and the academics in the theatre? How did you kill Raphael and Slick?” I glanced round the room. Katharine, Billy and Davie were staring at me in expectation. “You’ve got some kind of artificial arm, haven’t you? An arm that contains an advanced long-range rifle.”
“Bull’s-eye,” the Grendel said, flexing his fingers. “I hate the fucking thing but it has its uses.”
“And your crewmen died when their arms were being fitted,” I added.
He nodded. “Blood poisoning in the stumps. The fucking medics screwed the drugs up.”
“That’s why you’ve been going around amputating arms, isn’t it?” Katharine said, shaking her head. “Jesus Christ Almighty. Why did you mutilate that poor kid in Edinburgh, you bastard? He didn’t do anything to you.”
Dirty Harry shrugged. “I made sure I picked a scumbag gang member and I made sure he didn’t know anything about what happened to him.” He put his hand in his pocket and came out with a small, matt black canister with a nozzle on the top. “At least I wasn’t in full Grendel mode when I caught him – otherwise he’d be as dead as Raphael.”
Katharine was standing over the former Fisheries Guard commander. “You left George Faulds in a coma on a stinking tenement floor!” she shouted.
“I tipped the guard off about his whereabouts,” Harry said with a shrug.
Katharine turned away in disgust.
I peered at his arm. “You’ve got a laser in there too, haven’t you?” I said, remembering the sound I’d heard on the way up the stairs as well as seeing Raphael’s shattered chest. “That’s what produced the cauterised wound on Dead Dod.”
Harry nodded. “It’s not a supermax, but it’s lethal enough.”
“And the drug you used on him is
in there,” I said, pointing at the canister. “Did it come from New Oxford?”
“Of course,” he replied. “Not all their products are lethal. It was top secret, of course, developed for one of the transnationals. A combined anaesthetic and antiseptic for use during organ transplantation. I stole it from one of Dawkley’s supposedly secure labs.”
“You left a trail of people in deep coma,” Davie said.
Dirty Harry raised his shoulders. “They should all have come round by now. The amnesia will begin to clear up after ten days.”
It wasn’t a surprise to discover that Haskins had lied to me in the Department of Forensic Chemistry, and I was still pissed off with her. And with myself for not giving the drug compound more attention. “They never admitted to us that it was a Nox product,” I said.
The Grendel laughed. “They told you as little as possible – that’s the Hebdomadal Council’s way. That was why I slipped into your rooms in Brase and left you that clue about the Code Red file – it looked like you needed the help.”
“That Ghost unit you’ve got obscured your appearance as well as keeping the surveillance at bay, didn’t it?” I looked at him. “Christ, Harry, why didn’t you just wake me up and come clean about everything?” Then I remembered the brief glimpse of him that I’d been given. “You almost showed yourself. Why didn’t you go the whole way?”
“You’re lucky I didn’t, Citizen Quint,” he said, drawing the fingers of both hands over his smooth face. “You have to watch me. I come and go. The psych regime they put us through was so severe that there arc still times when I swing back into complete Grendel status, no matter how much I fight it. It’s like a frenzy. That’s how Ted Pym ended up the way he did. You noticed that I used my auxiliary knife on him, like I did on the Leith Lancer’s finger? I didn’t mean to, but the conditioning leads to maximum savagery; Mark Two Grendels aren’t just hitmen, we’re propagandists of violence.”
“All roads lead to Oxford,” I said. “That was you, wasn’t it?”
Harry nodded, his face sombre. “I knew where you lived. The message was a way of getting you down here. I had a feeling that you’d bugger up Raphael’s plans.” He looked round us all. “Whatever happens, none of you people are going to let New Oxford get its claws any further into Edinburgh, are you? No Nox, nowhere. That’s the way it has to be.”
House of Dust Page 38
