The Edinburgh Dead (15 page)

The clatter of the cart’s wheels took on a deeper, heavier sound as it rattled out on to the bridge. The wind, much brisker up on this exposed viaduct, snapped the hat from Merry Andrew’s head and sent it tumbling out over the parapet and spinning down towards the river far below.

It took Quire several paces to catch the wagon, and get a grip he could trust on its bucking bed. His weaker left arm ached at the exertion. Man and cart, the one clutching the other with fierce determination, flashed by a couple of washerwomen, who stopped and stared at the unlikely coupling.

Quire jumped up, and flung himself on to the back of the cart. It bounced and smacked him hard in the face and chest as he came down, which did nothing to improve his humour. He looked up from his prone position. Merry Andrew seemed oblivious to his
arrival, and was lashing at the horse with ever more wild abandon. A long roll of white cloth, tied with coarse rope and containing something heavy to judge by the way it thumped up and down, lay close to Quire.

He got carefully on to one knee, swaying from side to side, and edged himself further up the cart’s length, all the while clinging to the side.

“I think you’re done now,” he shouted to Merry Andrew.

Who looked round, at first startled and then fiercely resolved. Twisting on his seat, he raised the switch with which he had been belabouring the horse.

“Don’t be…” Quire began, but was too busy ducking to finish the suggestion, as Merrilees tried to whip him about the head.

“Right,” growled Quire, fumbling for his baton.

Something in his tone, rasping out over the cart’s creaking protests, or perhaps the way the horse slowed now that it was no longer subjected to the whip’s encouragement, drained the resistance out of Merrilees. He slumped slightly, in so far as anyone of his elongate construction could be said to slump, and lowered the switch. Horse and cart came to a groaning halt.

Quire stood up and surveyed their surroundings. Open fields on one side, the grounds of a small and austere orphans’ hospital on the other. He looked back, over the narrow valley of the Leith Water, and could see clear across the receding terraces of the New Town to the castle on its high rock.

“Turn us around and get us back,” he instructed, and sat down heavily. His legs were tired, now that the immediacy of the chase was gone.

“You’re a lucky man I’m not in the mood to lay a beating on you for your stupidity,” he added for good measure.

“Who are you, anyway?” Merry Andrew asked as he pulled on the reins to bring the horse about.

His voice had an eccentric, spiky shape to it, of a piece with his appearance. He did not seem overly concerned at his capture, for all the sincerity of his efforts to evade it.

“Sergeant Quire.”

“Oh, aye? I’ve heard of you.”

“I’m honoured.”

“Speak well of you, some folk do. Say you’re a fair man. Fair as any bastard police can be, at any rate.”

Quire regarded the cloth-wrapped parcel beside which he sat. He tugged at one of the ropes securing it, and finding it loose, opened up the whole thing. Within, all tied up with their own cord, were a lantern, a spade, a crowbar and a pair of large canvas sacks.

“Would you look at that,” Quire said.

Merrilees glanced round, and sniffed in mock indifference.

“Got a job doing some fencing out west,” he said.

“Is that right? Fencing with a spade and a crowbar? At night?”

“Fencing. Aye. Early start tomorrow morning.”

The flat assurance of Merry Andrew’s voice said he cared not at all whether Quire believed him.

“Are you armed?” Quire asked, reminding himself, perhaps belatedly, that this was not a man to be taken lightly.

“Not tonight. Not for fencing,” Merrilees said, and smiled maliciously at him.

They trundled back towards the bridge. Quire settled himself against the side of the cart, his legs stretched out over the grave robber’s tools.

“We were only wanting to talk to you, you know,” he told Merrilees. “It’s not you we’re after. There’s another lot of men about, doing work at night. Might be you’ve come across them?”

Merry Andrew said nothing, but he laid a sharp blow across the horse’s hindquarters that gave it a start.

“Killed a man at Duddingston,” Quire went on. “You heard about that?”

“Might’ve done.”

“Might you have heard about who did it, then?”

Again, Merrilees fell abruptly dumb. A flight of seagulls went squalling raucously overhead, following the course of the Leith Water towards the ocean. Merrilees glanced up, and watched them
go, and then turned his eyes back to the road. The horse went sluggishly out on to the bridge.

“We’ve got our orders,” Quire said. “No peace for you and your kind. You’ll not be able to lift a finger, nor take a piss, without there’s one of our boys watching you. Annoying you. Stealing a body or two, that’s one thing, you see, but killing a man, that’s another altogether. That’s the kind of thing that can make life miserable for everybody.”

“Aye, it is,” grunted Merry Andrew, his demeanour now entirely out of kilter with his name.

Quire looked ahead. Rutherford was standing in the middle of the lane. Spune sat cross-legged at his feet, despondency incarnate. Merrilees could see them too, but he abruptly pulled the horse to a halt, and turned about on his seat; an ungainly manoeuvre.

“See a lot of things when you’re doing your work at night,” he said levelly to Quire, who nodded and raised his eyebrows in expectation of more. Merrilees sniffed.

“This last winter, there were some bad folk out and about. Evil. New folk who don’t follow the rules. Might be I met them one night, round about Greyfriars Kirk. Might be they did one of my lads a good deal of hurt, breaking bones. Near enough killed the boy.”

“You see, that’s the very kind of folk I’m wanting to hear about.”

“Well, if you mean to hang them, I’m all for it. Good riddance. I’d give a lot to meet them again myself, but only if I’d a bit of an army at my back. These are men who don’t say a word, not a word. Don’t bleed—not any kind of blood I recognise, at least—nor feel no pain even if they’re cut. They’re not right, not right at all. Not natural.”

His voice had taken on a distant, low quality. He stared out over the lip of the bridge and across the roofs of the manufactories.

“Got dead eyes. Stronger than this horse here. Something of the Devil in them, I’ll tell you that. You go chasing after them, police, I’d take a lot of folk along if I was you. That, or a priest.”

With that, he turned away once more. He nudged the horse onwards.

“Do you know who’s buying their wares?” Quire asked.

“Couldn’t say.”

“Come on, there’s a only a few it could be. The anatomists at the university; one of the private tutors. The law’s no use against these bastards unless someone talks. Might be I could get someone at the buying end of things to tell me what I need.”

“Couldn’t say,” Merrilees insisted irritably. “You do your work, and leave me to do mine. If you lay hands on these folk you’re after, I’ll be wishing you well, with all my heart I will, but I don’t fancy your chances much, police. I’m telling you, they’re not like you and me. They’re something else. You’ve no idea.”

“I’ve an idea,” Quire said darkly. “I was at Duddingston myself. I saw things there that don’t make a lot of sense.”

Merry Andrew grunted at that, but would say not another word, for all the prodding and the pestering Rutherford and Quire belaboured him with.

The great hollow of land—once marshy, now neatly gardened—between the long rising ridge of the Old Town and the sweeping grace of the New was crossed by a construction of inglorious name but remarkable scale: the Mound. A huge descending ramp, it carried much of the constant traffic between the two Edinburghs.

From its summit, an observer might look out northwards across the geometric splendour of the New Town, and beyond its spires and chimney stacks glimpse the white-capped waters of the Firth of Forth, with the rolling farmlands of Fife as distant backdrop. That same observer, descending the Mound, might look back and be amazed by the chaotic drama of the Old Town: the gargantuan angular mass of the castle atop its rock and the dark crags of the tenements trailing away to the east of it, like a host of giants petrified in the act of clambering one over the other as they reached for the cloud-heavy sky.

Just there, at the foot of the Mound, stood the Royal Institution. A low slab of a building, with a veritable thicket of massive columns forming a huge portico and a panoply of cornices and carving and stone flourishes all around the edges of its roof. It squatted upon the land in splendid isolation, with Princes Street, the expansive boulevard that marked the beginning of the New Town, running along before it.

As Quire approached the steps that led up amongst those serried ranks of pillars, the wind was rumbling its way down the full exposed length of Princes Street, and his long coat snapped about his legs like a heavy flag caught up on a fence. The hessian sack he carried loosely in one hand bucked against his grip. There were few pedestrians about. Those who had to move were doing so on wheels: hackneys and broughams and plain old wagons rattled and trundled along Princes Street.

Quire pushed through the massive, solid oak doors and entered the Institution. Instantly, the rough and raucous weather was only a memory. A restful quiet prevailed within, almost churchly in its stillness. In the lobby, a soberly dressed and mannered doorman directed Quire towards the cloakroom, and seemed decidedly perturbed when he declined.

A broad spiral staircase of polished stone took Quire up to the offices rented by the Society of Antiquaries. Papers were piled upon tables, with little evident order to them. Shelves of leather-bound books ran around the walls, many so worn and frayed that they looked as though they might fall apart in whatever hand lifted them. The place had a smell that Quire was unaccustomed to: that of parchment and dust and learning. He did not find it unpleasant.

A small, bespectacled man sat behind a desk so laden with documents and books that its surface could hardly be seen. He pulled his eyeglasses a little further down his nose with one finger, and peered at Quire over the top of them. Satisfied, he returned them to their former position.

“Can I be of some assistance?” he asked, scribbling a few last notes in the margin of a heavy tome open before him.

“I’m hoping so, if you know anything of the Society’s members and its past. I’m a sergeant of police. Quire.”

“William Anderson, secretary to the Society,” the man said, rising and extending his hand.

Quire shook it. The secretary’s hand felt small in his.

“John Ruthven,” Quire said. “That’s who I’m interested in.”

“I know the name, but his involvement with the Society ceased some time before my appointment, I’m afraid. I am not long in post, you know.”

“I understand. Nevertheless, he told me that he left in unfortunate circumstances. Ill humour on all sides, as he had it. Might be the sort of thing that’s remembered? Talked about?”

Anderson pursed his lips.

“I regret it is not something I would be able to assist you with, Sergeant. I pay little heed to gossip and hearsay, when it comes to matters that pre-date my responsibilities.”

“An admirable trait, I suppose,” said Quire. Improbably incurious, he might have added. “Perhaps you could suggest someone more talkative for me to go and pester?”

Anderson looked doubtful, and gave the bridge of his nose a thoughtful pinch, bobbing his glasses up and down.

“Mr. Macdonald is here,” he said with an air of reluctance. “Alexander Macdonald, assistant curator for the collection. He is in the store rooms, cataloguing. There is always cataloguing to be done.”

“Let’s hope he lacks your scruples when it comes to loose tongues.”

Quire found Alexander Macdonald in a long, gloomy chamber filled with rows of free-standing shelves, upon which resided a chaotic host of boxes and crates and grimy glass cases. Even as he advanced between the tight-packed stacks, Quire could feel his nose tingling and tickling beneath the assault of dust.

The assistant curator was standing on a low stool, reaching perilously upwards to feel about in a crate that rested on the uppermost shelf. Flakes and strands of straw packing drifted down as his apparently fruitless search grew more vigorous. He glanced down at the sound of Quire’s cautious approach. Quire was moving with a good deal more care than was his habit, for fear of dislodging
some priceless artefact from its place. The shelving had evidently not been arranged with men of his size in mind.

“Ah, a visitor,” Macdonald exclaimed; redundant, but at least a touch more enthusiastic than Quire’s reception by Anderson.

Before Quire could explain himself, the curator gave a grunt of satisfaction and produced a short, flat length of enormously corroded metal from the crate. It was pitted and fractured, in places as thin as paper, and quite black.

“
Gladius
,” Macdonald said, as if that explained everything. “A Roman sword. So we think, at least. A precious token of our deep history. There was some concern that the thing might have gone missing, but I suspected… well, never mind. Is there something I can do for you?”