The Bone Yard (20 page)

My mind was in turmoil. What was she going to hit me with now?

“It seems to be a place,” she continued. “Or at least the code-name for a place.”

“Tell me, Katharine.”

She ran her fingertips down her cheek then twitched her nose like she'd just sniffed industrial-strength disinfectant.

“The Bone Yard,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. Then she realised I was as jumpy as a male tourist near the stage in the Three Graces. “What is it, Quint? Have you heard of it?”

I nodded slowly and reached for the bottle again. It looked like it was going to be a very long night.

Katharine shivered and closed her eyes. After a couple of minutes I began to wonder if she'd fallen asleep. Then she gave a start and sat up straight again.

“Where have you been hiding out in the city?”

“We've got some contacts here.” She frowned and looked at me suspiciously. “Are you working for the Council again, Quint?”

“Yes, but not full time. Don't worry, Katherine. I'm not going to hand you or your friends over to the guard.”

“You'd better not try,” she replied, her expression harder than a barracks rugby player's. Then she shivered again, this time uncontrollably.

I put my arm round her shoulders. “What is it, Katharine?”

She let out a sob then swallowed hard. “Food,” she said with a gasp. “I haven't had anything for a couple of days.”

“Glad to see your people have been looking after you,” I said on the way to the kitchen that takes up one corner of my main room. “I haven't got much myself. I've not been in a lot recently.”

“You don't have to tell me that,” Katharine said weakly. “I've been looking for you all over the city.”

I found a can of stew that had escaped Davie's notice and opened it. The electricity was off so the cooker was no good. “Have this,” I said, handing it to her. “You're taking your life in your hands eating it cold. God knows what state the meat's in. There are rumours that the Supply Directorate's been having problems with diseased cattle.”

She started wolfing it down. “You'd have been much better off coming with me out of the city, Quint,” she said between mouthfuls. “At least we have clean herds on our land.”

Some dissidents run collective farms, defending them against the lunatics and criminal gangs who maraud about the country.

Katharine had finished eating but she was still trembling. I touched her hand. It was freezing. There was only one solution.

“Come on,” I said, pulling her to her feet. “You're the one who's going to catch her death. The bed's the only warm place in this flat.”

She didn't resist, but as I pulled off her coat and bundled her under the covers she looked at me sternly. “I haven't forgotten what they taught us in auxiliary training about keeping each other warm on night exercises. But that's all that we're going to do, all right?”

I gave her my best salute and crawled up against her. After a while she stopped shivering and moved so that there was a gap between us.

“Right, Quint. Let's get down to business.”

Her business in the past had been purveying sexual services to tourists in the city's biggest hotel, but I didn't think mentioning that would be a good idea. She seemed to have lost interest in carnal matters.

“Okay,” I said, letting my head sink into the sack of straw that the Supply Directorate classifies as a pillow. “What do you want to tell me about first? The drugs, the psycho or the Bone Yard?”

She glanced down at me and twitched her head. “It doesn't matter. As far as I can see, they're all part of the same story.”

I was afraid she'd say that.

“Our fields are in what used to be East Lothian, south of Dunbar,” she said after a long silence. “There are about a hundred of us – enough to look after the animals, work the crops and guard the fences. I made sure we got a hold of rifles and ammunition not long after I arrived. Most of the gangs keep their distance.” Katharine glanced at me dispassionately. “Any who don't, we shoot.”

“Which is why firearms were banned in Edinburgh,” I put in. “Mob rule's a dangerous thing.”

She glared at me. “We're not a mob. Anyway, it's not as simple as that and you know it, Quint. This city's got plenty wrong with it from what I've been hearing.”

I got my hands out from beneath the covers and tried to calm her down. “All right, cool it. I'm even less of a fan of the Council than I used to be.”

She kept her gaze on me, then laughed. “And you never exactly gave the guardians your unconditional support in the old days.” Her face became serious again. “Quint, I heard your mother died. I'm sorry. You must have had a hard time.”

Those words affected me more than the official tributes at the funeral. Katharine had first-hand experience of the catastrophic mistakes my mother had made when she was senior guardian, but she was still sympathetic. I'd missed her openness.

“Anyway, our fence guards found the guy who deserted a couple of weeks back,” she said, leaning over me to reach for the vodka. My nostrils were filled by the reek of unwashed clothing and sweat which didn't completely obscure the delicate smell I remembered from the few times we'd been naked together.

Katharine gulped then quivered as the spirit fired up inside her. “He was in a bad way physically and mentally. He took a couple of bullets in the abdomen when he slipped out of the gang's camp. And he was raving. At first we thought he'd messed himself up permanently on some brain-damaging drug.”

Electric Blues, for instance? I took the bottle and swallowed from it. There wasn't much left. At least we were keeping ourselves warm.

“So what did he say that sent you back into the city you love so much?” I asked.

Katharine gave me the kind of look that guardswomen reserve for the barracks jackass when they draw him as sex session partner. “In one of his relatively lucid periods he told me about this formula for a hot new drug that his gang leader had got a hold of. Apparently it was pretty complicated and needed a good chemist in a well-equipped lab to produce it.”

“And his gang boss had a contact in the city who could arrange that?”

She nodded then looked at me sternly. “Am I telling you something you already know, Quint? This isn't a one-way transaction.”

“I'll tell you what I'm working on, Katharine.” I squeezed her arm. “Honest.”

She pulled her arm away. “You'll tell me after I tell you? Sounds like kids playing doctors and nurses.”

“We can do that too if you like.”

Her face went blank and her body jerked away from mine.

“What is it, Katharine? What's the matter?”

She was gazing straight ahead into the darkness, the candle on the bedside table casting its dim light on to her profile. Although she looked thinner, the lines of her features hadn't changed in the two years since I'd last seen her. But she'd been strong then, hardened by her experience of prison and the Prostitution Services Department. Now her toughness seemed more of an act.

“I  . . . I had a bad time after I went over the wire. There are a lot of animals out there.”

“Tell me, Katharine.”

She kept her eyes off me. “No, Quint. I can't. It's over now.”

I touched her hand with one finger. “No, it isn't. You're still in pain.” I sat up and moved closer to her. “Remember when I told you about Caro? You persuaded me it would do me good to share the pain. I didn't believe you at first, but you were right.” Her eyelashes quivered and for a moment I thought she was going to weep, but she kept control. “Let it go, Katharine. You can trust me.”

She turned slowly towards the light and looked into my eyes. Then she shuddered briefly and dropped her gaze, like a deer that senses the stalker's gun but can't find it in herself to turn tail.

“There was a gang in the hills east of Lauder,” she said slowly. “They lived off the sheep that have run wild there since the original farmers were massacred years ago.” She lifted her eyes to mine and I saw the hatred in them. “They really were animals, Quint. They called themselves the Cavemen. The morons had burned down all the cottages in the area, so they had to dig themselves holes in the ground. Bastards.” She spat out the last word and lapsed back into silence.

“They caught you?” I asked haltingly.

She gave a bitter laugh. “I thought I could look after myself. But not against those madmen. They even slashed each other with their skinning knives in their desperation to get at me.” She looked at me, her gaze suddenly unsteady as she finally began to lose control. “I was tied to a tree for a month before I killed two of them and escaped.”

“Jesus.” I tried to put my arm round her.

“Don't!” Her shout must have woken most of the neighbours. “Don't, Quint,” she repeated, her voice back to something approaching normal volume. “I  . . . I haven't been with a man since then.”

I moved away. “I understand, Katharine.”

She looked at me in disbelief.

“Or at least I'm trying to understand.” In fact I was way out of my depth and suffering from cramp in both legs.

“So now you know,” she said, her face loosening into a faint smile. “After years spent satisfying tourists, I've turned into Katharine the Untouchable. Funny, isn't it?”

I wasn't laughing. Suddenly I had a great urge to change the subject. “The guy who told you about the drug formula. What did he say about the psycho who was running the deal?”

Katharine nodded, happy to stop talking about what she'd been through. “He was completely terrified of him. Remember, this was a man who was delirious most of the time, but even when he was raving he kept going on about the Screecher.”

“The Screecher?”

She nodded. “That's what the leader of his gang was called. He was terrified the Screecher was going to track him down and cut him to pieces for deserting.”

Cut him to pieces? That sounded familiar.

“What else did he say about him?”

Katharine shrugged. “Nothing very coherent. I had trouble making sense of it. About the drugs, his boss  . . .”

“And what about the Bone Yard?” I asked, trying not to sound too interested.

“He kept repeating that and moaning – not just from the pain of his wounds, but as if it were something horrendous that he could barely live with.”

Like William McEwan, I thought. But not like the senior guardian. I hadn't seen many signs of spiritual disturbance on his saintly face.

“He never explained what it was though.” Katharine settled back on her pillow, her eyes flickering. She was about to pass out, but I needed more.

“So where is he, the wounded gang member? I need to see him for myself. It sounds like he could do with hospital treatment as well.”

She shook her head weakly, her eyes firmly closed now. “He's long past that stage, Quint. He died a week ago.”

“Shit.” The first half-decent lead I'd got in the case and it vanished quicker than the beggars on Princes Street after the Enlightenment came to power.

Katharine turned over, her back towards me. “Look in my coat pocket. I've got his ID.”

Santa Claus does exist after all. Even though he'd arrived a bit late this season.

I came to as the front door slammed.

Katharine sat up straight. A wicked-looking knife that I hadn't noticed before glinted in the faint glow from the streetlights. “Who's that?” she whispered.

“Davie. Get back under the covers.”

I jumped out of bed and reached the door before he came in.

“You're up early, Quint,” he said. “It's only seven o'clock. What happened? Guilty conscience keep you awake?”

“Something like that,” I mumbled, suddenly aware that I was seriously short of shut-eye.

“Here.” He tossed me a brown paper bag, which I failed to catch.

“Croissants? Jesus, Davie, where did you get them?”

He looked over from the kitchen where he was starting to make coffee, a grin spreading across his bearded face.

“Fell off the back of a Supply Directorate van, did they?”

“Are you suggesting that a guardsman is capable of dishonesty? That's a serious offence, citizen.” His face didn't look very serious.

“Aye, and so's nicking tourist provisions.” I headed back to the bedroom with my share of breakfast.

Katharine's head emerged from the covers.

“Take these,” I said in a low voice.

“What about you?”

“I'll pick something up later. Now listen. Stay here all day. I'll get back as soon as I can. It's not safe for you on the streets.” I pulled on my trousers and put the dead gang member's ID card in the pocket.

She raised her eyes to the ceiling. “I can look after myself.”

“Please,” I said, putting my hand on hers. “There are some serious crazies out there.”

She pulled her hand away, not too fast, and looked at me accusingly. “You never told me about the case you're working on.”

“I will.” Then, before she could move, I leaned forward and kissed her once on the lips. “Later.”

If her expression was anything to go by, I was lucky not to walk into the main room with the haft of her knife protruding from my chest.

Chapter Thirteen