‘How are we going to do this?’ I said to Davie, in the 4×4. ‘The Pish will have firearms.’
‘They will,’ he said, sounding sublimely unconcerned.
‘And your people don’t.’
‘Correct.’
‘Couldn’t you send someone over to the nearest city-line post to borrow some?’
‘Unnecessary.’
‘Is it Long Live Laconicism Day?’
‘No.’
I punched his arm and winced.
‘Fear not, citizen. We’ve been equipped with the perfect weapon for such situations.’
‘First I’ve heard of it.’
‘Guardian Doris is not just a pretty … Anyway, she got them from Glasgow, apparently.’
‘The suspense has already killed me.’
‘They’re called Hyper-Stuns.’ He reached over his seat and presented me with an oversized pistol with two tubes mounted over the barrel. ‘Ten shots, maximum range fifty yards, multiple settings ranging from mild to extreme electric shock – extreme equals death usually – night-vision sight and high-intensity light beam. All personnel get them when they’re on patrol in the outer suburbs.’
We got out quietly and pushed the doors to. Davie contacted his team leaders on his comms unit, changing the wavelengths to confuse potential listeners with scanners, and ascertained that everyone was in position. The nearest to the old church said there were eleven gang-bangers inside and that guns were visible.
‘Set to high shock,’ Davie ordered. ‘Up and at them!’
I followed him to the main door, where two guardsmen were standing by. One of them smashed a sledgehammer against the ornate but rusty lock. They were almost immediately met by fleeing members of the Pish. Davie dropped one of them with his Hyper-Stun, while the other was tripped and disarmed before he could fire his silver-plated semi-automatic pistol.
Multiple gunshots rang out from the interior, but soon they died away.
‘Report!’ Davie yelled into his comms unit.
The squads called in. One guardswoman had been shot dead and two guardsmen wounded, neither seriously. We moved inside, the space crisscrossed by beams from the Hyper-Stuns.
‘Well, well,’ Davie said. ‘There must be at least five pounds of cocaine here.’
‘And a large greenhouse’s production of grass,’ I added.
‘Commander,’ said a middle-aged guardswoman, ‘we think one of them might have got away.’
‘Not Allie Swanson?’ I asked.
‘No, he’s unconscious over there.’
I had a frightening thought. ‘They would have known we were chasing Allie. Get his family into protective custody, Davie.’
He sent two 4×4s round, but it was too late.
‘Fuck!’
We were in Davie’s office off the command centre in the castle.
‘It wasn’t your fault, Quint.’
‘Yes, it was. I should have thought of it from the start. It would have been obvious to the bastard who slipped past us that Allie’s people had talked.’
All four of them had been shot in the head by a large-calibre pistol.
‘At least we got Skinny Ewan and the rest of the Pish.’
‘They’re gang members, Davie. They’ll never talk.’
‘Oh, yes they will.’
I didn’t like his expression. It expressed homicidal determination.
The public order guardian appeared. ‘Congratulations, commander. And you, Quint.’
I scowled at her. ‘Unacceptable citizen casualties.’
‘One of my people was killed too, citizen,’ she said coldly.
‘In the line of duty, not while eating dinner.’
‘An illicitly obtained chicken, I gather.’
‘Who gives a fuck?’
Davie raised an eyebrow.
‘Sorry, guardian,’ I said. ‘Not your fault either.’
‘I suppose it was mine since we let the shit-sucker get away,’ Davie said, looking away.
‘These things happen,’ said the guardian. ‘Nobody’s to blame.’
I could have debated that at length, not least because the Council was responsible for letting the drugs gangs start up again in the city, but I let it go.
‘Where have you put the Pish?’ I asked her.
‘In a secure ward in the infirmary. They need to be monitored as they come round from high stuns. That can take up to twelve hours. And before you ask, there are two squads on guard.’
I failed to stifle a yawn.
‘You need to sleep,’ Guardian Doris said. ‘Both of you. Bed down here.’
‘After a late-night repast,’ Davie said.
I shook my head. ‘No food for me.’ I hadn’t seen the Swansons’ bodies, but my imagination was working triple time. ‘I don’t suppose Grant Brown’s head has turned up.’
‘I’m afraid not,’ said the guardian. ‘Oh, Yellow Jacko died while you were in the field. He and Muckle Tony are being cremated tomorrow. You might want to attend.’
‘They’re not scheduled in succession, are they?’ I asked. ‘There’ll be mayhem.’
‘No, there won’t,’ Davie said. ‘We caught all the Pish, remember?’
‘Bar one very savage scumbag. Anyway, their relatives will still have a go at each other.’
‘Robertson’s at eleven in the morning and Greig’s at three in the afternoon,’ said Guardian Doris. ‘Guard personnel will be there in force.’
‘What about Hume 481 and his parents?’ I said.
‘No reports.’
I went to the senior guardsmen’s bunk room and collapsed. I was exhausted, but sleep was a long time coming. The faces of Allie Swanson’s siblings kept coming towards me, screaming as their skulls exploded in blasts of scarlet.
‘Wakey, wakey.’
The smell of barracks coffee – better than what I got every morning – dragged me to the surface. I’d been in a deep hole, wrestling with ghosts recent and from further in the past – then my father appeared. That made me sit up.
‘Watch it!’ Davie exclaimed, getting the mug of steaming liquid out of the way in time.
‘I’ve got to check on the old man.’ I looked at my watch. ‘Five past six? What the hell?’
‘Sorry. Skinny Ewan’s conscious. I thought you’d want to squeeze his nuts as soon as possible.’
I groaned, then drank the coffee and ate the cheese roll he handed me.
‘Where is he?’ I asked as I came out of the bog.
‘The medical guardian’s waiting for you at the infirmary.’
I felt a mild twinge of erotic interest, then thought of the Swansons.
‘What’s her interest?’
‘Search me.’ He grinned. ‘Your nether regions?’
I treated that with hypocritical scorn.
The rain was doing its usual highly accurate impression of a waterfall. We ran to the esplanade, slipping and sliding like a pair of cack-footed skaters.
The infirmary looked like it had been doused in black paint, so sodden were its walls. I headed for Sophia’s office, but met her in the corridor leading to it. Her hair was tied back and she looked like she meant business.
‘Good morning, Quint,’ she said with a minimalist smile. ‘Commander. Follow me.’
We did as we were told, exchanging glances. What was she up to? We reached a door that had a key pad on the frame, a rare sight in Edinburgh. Once we were in, Sophia turned to us.
‘I’m going to experiment on Ewan Gow, a.k.a. Skinny Ewan.’
‘You’re going to experiment on the leader of one of the city’s most wanted gangs?’ I said, surprised.
‘I’ve obtained a recently developed drug from Inverness. It’s over ninety per cent guaranteed to break down resistance to questioning.’
‘A truth drug?’ I said.
‘In layman’s terms.’ Sophia gave me a dismissive look. ‘I’ve cleared this with the public order guardian.’
‘Why don’t you try it on Allie Swan
son or one of the others first?’ Davie asked.
‘Because this citizen is awake, commander. This is a high-priority case. We need answers.’
She led us through another door. A medical auxiliary in a white coat was inserting a needle into the forearm of a man who had been gagged and bound to a chair like those used by dentists. I looked around for the pliers.
‘All ready, guardian.’
Sophia dismissed him with a haughty wave. ‘Look and learn,’ she said to us, depressing the plunger of the syringe that the needle was attached to.
She looked at her watch, counting the seconds silently, and then undid the gag. Skinny Ewan’s eyes were fluttering and his breathing was regular. Very regular.
‘He’s ready,’ Sophia said. ‘Start with some basic questions so we can establish that the compound is working.’ She handed me the citizen’s file.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Ewan Gow.’
‘Date of birth?’
‘Fifth of January, 1997.’
‘Address?’
‘25 Woodside Terrace, Joppa.’ That’s the suburb adjacent to Portobello on the east.
‘All right?’ Sophia asked.
I nodded.
‘Try some more obscure questions.’
I looked through the handwritten sheets.
‘Where were you working in 2024?’
‘Ah was aff sick all year. Glandular fever.’
I tried something more emotive. ‘How did your sister Kelly die?’
There was no pause or change in his tone. ‘Food poisoning – a bad batch of Supply Directorate beef.’
‘What age was she?’
‘Seventeen.’
‘Where do you work?’
‘In the Zig Zag Casino on George Street. Ahm a barman.’
That was interesting. Citizens with access to tourist businesses had to be cleared by the Public Order Directorate. He’d obviously kept himself clean, at least on the surface.
‘Everything as it should be, Quint?’ Sophia asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Go for it, then,’ she said, unusually excited.
I moved closer to Skinny Ewan. His face was pockmarked and his nose had been broken several times.
‘Are you the leader of the Portobello Pish?’
‘Yes,’ he said without hesitation.
I looked at Davie, who was watching intently. ‘Name your associates.’
He did so, Davie taking notes. There were plenty more than eleven gang members, including both Nora and Dirk Swanson. But Allie’s brother and sister hadn’t been involved.
‘What do you traffic?’
‘Cigarettes, drugs, jewellery and malt whisky.’
‘Who supplies you?’
‘The Dead Men from Glasgow give us the booze and fags. The drugs come from …’
I waited, but he didn’t speak any more.
‘Where do you get the drugs?’ I said after a minute.
Nothing.
Sophia stepped forward and pressed the syringe plunger further in.
I repeated the question.
Skinny Ewan’s eyes blinked rapidly, then he answered.
‘The Supply Directorate,’ he said.
Then he died.
NINE
We were in Sophia’s office. She was trying unsuccessfully to hide her shock.
‘How sure are you that the drug is reliable?’ I asked.
‘I told you.’
‘Yes, but that could be salesman’s bullshit.’
Her eyes flashed. ‘I don’t deal with salesmen, Quint,’ she said. ‘If you must know, I attended a three-day seminar about the compound in Inverness last month.’
I wasn’t sure if Davie was more amazed than I was. If so, he must have been as stunned as the Pish had been by our attack last night. Guardians crossing the border? It had happened once before, but the disastrous end to that trip had led to the ban being reinforced even more strongly. I had a flash of Jack MacLean and wondered if he’d been travelling too. Maybe Billy had accompanied him to advise on deals.
Sophia raised a hand. ‘No questions. I had Council authorization.’
‘Oh, that’s all right then,’ I said. ‘Shame about the City Regulations being overridden.’
She didn’t respond to that. Besides, there was a large pachyderm in the room.
‘So they got their drugs from the Supply Directorate,’ I said. ‘Which is run by the current senior guardian, Fergus Calder.’ Who, I remembered, had gone into conference with the finance guardian and his SPADE as soon as the heart was discovered at Tyneside.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Sophia said.
‘Either you trust the drug or you don’t.’
Davie was looking at me dubiously. He had experience of guardians going off the rails, but he was still loyal to the regime and didn’t like to question it, unlike me.
‘There’s no reason the senior guardian should be involved, Quint,’ he said. ‘It could easily be delivery men.’
‘Or even a less senior auxiliary,’ I said snidely. He was right, but the directorate would have to be investigated and we had enough to be getting on with. I turned to Sophia. ‘Since you’ve got so much faith in the truth drug, do you fancy trying it on another guinea pig?’
‘Not the full dose, though.’
‘You’re the expert,’ I said. ‘After all, you’ve been to a seminar.’
She ignored that. Shortly afterwards we had Allie Swanson wheeled in. He was only half-awake, his Mohican almost horizontal like he’d just headed the ball. In five minutes we had something to go on. The missing gang member who had killed his parents and siblings was called Tom Lamont, a.k.a. ‘Madman’. I sent Davie off to find the psycho, not that we expected him to be at his registered address. Fortunately, Allie supplied us with a list of Pish hideouts, as well as the names of Madman’s friends and associates – not all of them had been captured last night.
‘Ask him about Grant Brown,’ I said, wondering what more might be divulged about the headless man.
He confirmed things we already knew – about Cecilia, who wasn’t involved with the gang; about the dead man’s work, which had no connection with the Pish’s activities; and about what Grant got up to in his spare time. Bingo. Because he lived not far from the city line, he acted as a freelance contact with the Dead Men and other Glasgow smuggling outfits – arranging where cigarettes and other goods were to be dropped off, handling payments and so on. Now I could see a reason for his decapitation. Outsider gangs were savage when they were crossed. Is that what had happened? I thought of Michael Campbell, the missing guardsman from Davie’s barracks. He had worked on the city line in the general vicinity of Grant’s workplace. Could he have been another contact, one who had landed Grant neck-high in the canal?
‘I have to go.’
‘The story of my life,’ Sophia said with a crooked smile.
I returned it with interest. ‘I’ll tell Guardian Doris about this – omitting the unexpected death. She’ll no doubt want more questions to be asked.’
‘Oh joy. That woman’s a pain in the rectum.’
‘Is she now? Why’s that?’
Sophia gave me an infuriated look. ‘She’s only been in her job for weeks and already she thinks she’s the knees of a queen bee.’
I laughed. ‘She doesn’t give me that impression. Calder, MacLean and Cowan are much fuller of themselves.’
‘Ah, but she’s cunning. Give her a few months and she’ll be telling us all what to do.’
I found that hard to believe, not least because the senior guardian could fire her whenever he wanted. Then again, you can’t fire someone who’s put together a file on your questionable activities. Was that Doris Barclay’s game? If so, I would be next in line for the Maiden, the medieval guillotine that removed dummies’ heads every day at the New Tolbooth.
‘No doubt I’ll see you at the Council meeting,’ Sophia said.
‘Some doubt. I was kept away yesterday.
‘I wondered what had happened to you. I assumed you were undertaking essential crime-solving.’
‘Maybe we could meet up later in the evening,’ I said, taking a step closer.
‘Maybe,’ she said, tossing her head. ‘Or maybe not.’
I was close to the esplanade, having arranged for a Guard squad to come with me to Muckle Tony Robertson’s funeral, when my phone rang.
‘Public order guardian. Drop whatever you’re doing and meet me on the esplanade.’
The connection was cut before I could open my mouth. I kept going down the cobbled slope and met the squad that was waiting for me.
‘Any of you gang specialists?’
‘I am, citizen,’ replied Raeburn 362, a short and sturdy guardswoman.
I asked her to take note of who was present and might be of interest. A few seconds later Guardian Doris appeared, two massive guardsmen at her heels.
‘Want to tell me what this is about?’ I said after following her into the back seat of her armour-plated 4×4.
‘We’ll be there in a few minutes.’
I rewarded her lack of loquacity by keeping Sophia’s truth drug and the Pish revelations to myself. She’d find out soon enough and would be irritated that I hadn’t told her. A small victory against Council highhandedness, but they all count.
We were driven down the Royal Mile, then right at George IV Bridge – who knows how that name redolent of the hereditary monarchy survived? – and then right down Victoria Street – same again. As we swung on to the Grassmarket, the mass of the Tolbooth filled the windscreen. Crowds of tourists surrounded it. No doubt an execution was about to take place. The recent reconstruction was the most popular attraction in the city, which tells you something about the Tourism Directorate, the Council and our esteemed visitors. The original building had been on the Royal Mile and had been a meeting place for the city’s office bearers as well as a rat-ridden prison. Many a criminal of all classes had been put to death in its environs.
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