Body Politic (11 page)

“What is it?” Davie asked immediately.

I shook my head to shut him up. Again there was a quick, confined flurry. It came from the right armpit. I leaned forward slowly, drawn on despite the urge to escape my stomach manifested by the mug of coffee I'd drunk earlier. Then I saw it.

The rat was so bloated that it could hardly pull itself out of the corpse. It looked at me with glassy eyes then opened its mouth to pant. Its head twitched from side to side as it calculated angles and distances for its escape. I wasn't planning on getting in its way.

It made its move with surprising speed. The long hairless tail was past me even before I could sit back. But it hadn't taken account of Davie. He grabbed the tail and held the animal at arm's length. I hadn't put him down as a pet lover. The rat wriggled frantically and tried without success to bite him. It was too fat to double up.

“Don't we want to examine it?” Davie asked. “The stomach contents might . . .”

“Jesus Christ, let the bloody thing go. We've got a whole, well, almost a whole body to dissect. Not to mention about a million bluebottles.”

There was a rustling noise behind me.

“What have you got there, guardsman?” asked Robert Yellowlees. “We can always use those in the labs. Give it to my assistant.”

Davie grinned at me and departed.

The medical guardian inspected the body, running his rubber-sheathed hands over the limbs and sniffing like a discerning wine drinker.

“You were right, citizen,” he said. “We're dealing with a multiple murderer. Whether it's the otolaryngologist or not.” He pointed to the victim's neck. “Strangled by ligature like the guardswoman. And an organ removed. There isn't much doubt that it's the same killer.”

I looked at the dead man's swollen face. He had a misshapen nose that had been broken at some stage. There was no evidence of it having been blocked. The ears were intact too. His close-cropped hair was grey and I put his age at around forty-five. The mouth, caught open in a rictus that looked like he was trying to call for help and yawn at the same time, revealed discoloured teeth and gaps where several had fallen out. Another one who hadn't taken advantage of the city's dental services.

Yellowlees was writing notes. I went over to the pile of clothes. In the breast pocket of a donkey jacket I found a wallet containing only an ID card. There were none of the booklets of food, clothing and electricity vouchers that citizens usually have on them. Still, it seemed hard to believe robbery was the motive. Any self-respecting thief would have taken the ID to sell to the dissidents. No self-respecting thief would have had a man's kidney out.

I read that the victim's name was Rory Talbot Baillie, aged forty-eight, driver in the central vehicle pool.

“Around ten days since he was killed,” Yellowlees said, a thin smile flashing on his lips. “Before you ask. The entomologists will be able to confirm that from the maggots. I'll run my own tests as well, of course. I'd say that the kidney was removed with a blade very similar to the one used in the other murder.” He turned to go then stopped. “Oh, and the anus was penetrated. Will that do you for the time being?”

I spent three hours supervising the scene-of-crime auxiliaries. They seemed to have a reasonable idea of what they were doing. Perhaps they'd read my manual. Davie certainly had. He took charge of the photographer and made sure all the angles were covered. We had some trouble taking plastercasts of the footprints as the ground was still soft, but eventually we got some good ones. An auxiliary got on to the Supply Directorate and was told that two thousand three hundred and six pairs of size twelve citizens' boots had been issued in the previous year. That was a great help.

Hamilton came over when things were winding down and the body was long gone. “What do you make of it, Dalrymple? It's our man, isn't it?” His cheeks were glowing like those of a believer who's just had his faith confirmed by a thumbs-up from an effigy of his god.

“Bit early to say,” I said, keeping encouragement to a minimum.

“Come on, man. Size twelve footprints. What more do you want?”

“There's no shortage of large men in Edinburgh,” I observed. “Thanks to the Medical Directorate's dietary guidelines.”

The guardian was impervious to irony. I've often noticed that with members of his rank.

“Damn the fog.” That made me bite my lip. Now he sounded like an eminent Victorian. “The body would have been found much more quickly under normal weather conditions.”

“I checked with the meteorology centre. The fog came down on the afternoon of Friday the 13th. We're waiting for an accurate time of death, but it looks like the murder happened when the atmosphere was still clear.” A thought struck me. “Of course. It must have been at night. And this area's outside the central lighting zone.”

The guardian looked at me dubiously. “So?”

“So no witnesses. Your people are taking statements from residents but I'm not holding my breath.”

“No. There would have been a call by now.”

“But if it was night, how did the killer see what he was doing?”

Hamilton stared at me. “What are you getting at?”

I stared back. “He must have had a torch. Tell me, guardian, who are the only people in Edinburgh issued with torches and the batteries for them?”

“Auxiliaries,” he mumbled.

“Sorry? I didn't catch that.”

“Auxiliaries,” he repeated, his eyes steely. “Guardsmen and women, as you full bloody well know.” He turned away, wiping his mouth. This time he resembled one of the faithful who's just been tempted into heresy by a hirsute gentleman with a full set of horns and hooves.

“Who won that round?” asked Davie. “Don't tell me. The chief looks like he's going to throttle someone.”

“Very apt. Let's leave him to it.”

“Where to? The infirmary?”

“Yellowlees will be desperate to start the post-mortem, but there's somewhere else I need to go first.” I gave him directions to Adam Kirkwood's flat.

The lane was quiet. I got Davie to park round the corner so we'd be less conspicuous. That was a waste of time. The sound of his boots on the pavement told the locals that the guard was on its way.

The street door was open. I led him up the stairs to the flat. The door was closed. I got out the strip of plastic I always carry.

“How about knocking?” Davie suggested.

“I thought your lot preferred to break doors down.”

The lock clicked and I pushed the door open slowly. A familiar scent filled my nostrils.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Katharine Kirkwood appeared from behind the kitchen curtain with a carving knife in her hand. “Quint. God, you nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“Put the knife down, citizen.” Davie had his hand on the butt of his truncheon. “Slowly.”

“It's all right,” I said. “This is one of my clients. Katharine Kirkwood, Hume 253. Also known as Davie.”

They looked at each other suspiciously.

“Quint, what's going on?” Katharine asked after she'd put the knife back in the drawer. “You break in here with a guardsman in tow. I thought you were an independent investigator.” She gave me a questioning look. “At least that's what you led me to believe.”

“I am.” I opened my arms in a feeble display of innocence that I could see she didn't buy. “I've been taken on by the Council for one particular job.”

She walked over to the sofa and picked up her bag. Despite the limited choice of clothing in the city, she had managed to dress in an idiosyncratic way. The tight black trousers made her legs look even longer than they were and the long chiffon scarves, magenta and brown, gave her an exotic air.

“And this job includes sniffing around my brother's flat, does it?”

“Not exactly. Look, I can't tell you what's going on . . .”

“Of course you can't.” Katharine gave Davie a glare that Lewis Hamilton would have been proud of. He put back a book he'd taken from the shelves. “It's classified, like everything else official in this place.”

“Right. I needed to check if your brother was here, that's all.”

“Well, as you can see, he's not.” She moved towards the door.

“And you haven't seen him since we last spoke?”

“No, I haven't.” Her voice had softened. “Have you found anything out?”

I didn't fancy telling her I'd done nothing about her brother at that point. “Look, come round to my flat tonight as we arranged. I can't talk now.”

She nodded without looking at me and headed out. “Since you managed to get in on your own, I suppose you can close up again when you've finished.”

I checked the place out. Everything was the same. There were no more foreign banknotes in the book of Chinese poetry and the size twelve running shoes didn't look like they'd been moved. Davie watched me with undisguised curiosity.

“Who was that female?”

“I'll tell you later. We'd better get up to the infirmary.”

“You're forgetting this.” He held up a clear plastic bag in which he'd put the long-bladed knife Katharine had brandished.

“Well done, guardsman. You beat me to it.”

The post-mortem went on for hours. A team from the university zoology department spent an hour removing the insect life from Rory Talbot Baillie. Then Yellowlees confirmed what we already knew concerning the cause of death and the wound in the back. I could have spent the afternoon in the archives looking into the dead man's background, but that could wait till the morning. One reason for staying in the mortuary was to watch Hamilton's face change colour more often than a chameleon in a disco. As long as I was there, he felt he had to be too. Simpson 134, the nurse with the prominent chest, took notes – when she wasn't following the medical guardian's every move.

As I was leaving, Hamilton came up. “You know, Dalrymple,” he said in a low voice, “your idea about the torch and batteries doesn't mean a thing. The Ear, Nose and Throat Man could easily have got hold of them on the black market. And remember, the boots were citizen issue, not auxiliaries'.” He stepped back, looking pleased with himself.

There was something in what he said, but I didn't feel like letting him off the hook. “I'm glad you admit that there is a black market in the perfect city, guardian.” His scowl encouraged me to go on. “And as for the boots, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't auxiliaries issued with standard boots for fatigues?”

He didn't correct me. There was something else I was tempted to bring up but I decided to keep it for the Council meeting. The guardian looked like he had enough to wrestle with for the time being.

Before the meeting I stood by the railings and looked down over Princes Street Gardens. The last race had just finished and the tourists were going back to their hotels to get ready for a night on the town. There was no way the butcher could have been alive when I buried him, no way he crawled out before the concrete was poured – I would have seen a trail. I remembered the sick grin on his face as he slashed my finger off with one of his knives and felt myself shiver. No, he was dead all right. The alternative was too horrific to consider.

I passed by the Land-Rover on my way into the Assembly Hall. If Davie was surprised by the request I made, he didn't show it. I pocketed what he gave me and went inside.

The guardians were less disturbed than they'd been after the first murder. You can get used to anything. A cynic would say that the death of an ordinary citizen was less important to them than an auxiliary's, but even I wouldn't go along with that. They were concerned enough, but they showed their usual tendency to get bogged down in philosophical debate. This time the subject was cannibalism. We never determined what the ENT Man did with the organs he removed. The possibility that he ate them had been difficult to overlook. The same applied now.

The deputy senior guardian caught me looking at my watch. “You don't seem to have much to contribute on the subject, citizen.”

“It's all a question of evidence, guardian. We don't know why the killer's removing the organs. Since there's nothing to back up any conjecture, why waste time talking about cannibalism?”

“Very practical,” she said drily. “How do you think we should be proceeding?”

“First, we should publish full details of this murder in the
Guardian
tomorrow. You'll find that half the city knows already, so you may as well give the killer some publicity. That may prompt him to do something careless.”

The red-headed information guardian nodded in agreement. Even ex-journalists love a murder.

“Very well,” said the speaker. “Subject to the senior guardian's approval. What else?”

“I have a question,” I said, feeling around carefully in my pocket. “For the medical guardian.”

Robert Yellowlees was watching me, his fingers in the usual pyramid under his nose. “Go ahead, citizen,” he said.

I took Davie's auxiliary knife out. The naked blade flashed in the light from the spots above the horseshoe table. “Could the weapon used to remove the organs have looked anything like this?”

The guardians looked like a flock of pigeons that had been infiltrated by a ravenous cat.

Except Yellowlees. He smiled broadly. “Long, well-honed blade, single edge, non-serrated, sharp point – yes, it fits the bill. Not exclusively, of course.”

From then on the atmosphere was distinctly frosty. If there was one thing that had never been obtainable on the black market, it was auxiliary knives. I think they got my drift. The trouble was, I was no nearer to catching the lunatic who'd done the cutting.

“You look pissed off,” Davie said as I climbed into the Land-Rover.

“Pissed on, more like. I'm having difficulty convincing our beloved guardians about something.”