The Edinburgh Dead (3 page)

Though the place was quiet, the comparative peace had not done anything to lighten Lieutenant Baird’s mood. Quire’s immediate superior disliked him, and never troubled to disguise the fact. He also disliked his current duty. The three lieutenants of police each took their turn as officer in charge of the police house, a task that combined tedium and unavoidably close acquaintance with the city’s least appealing inhabitants. When his turn came about, Baird’s manner seldom did anything but sour. All of which led Quire to expect a gruff welcome, which he duly received.

“Took you long enough,” Baird grunted, barely lifting his gaze from the ledger in which he was scratching away.

“Would you send some men to the body in the Cowgate, sir?” Quire said as politely as he felt able. “Get them asking around. There’s one of our night men down there who needs to be away to his bed.”

Baird put an arch of irritation into his eyebrows as if consenting, solely by dint of his own near-saintly nature, to an outrageous request.

“Is the superintendent about?” Quire asked.

“He’s occupied. In the court. What is it you’re wanting to trouble him with?”

Belatedly, Baird looked Quire in the eyes, and bestowed upon him a suspicious glare.

Quire shrugged.

“I was told he wanted a word with me, that’s all,” he lied.

Baird looked doubtful, but directed Quire with a flick of his head towards the staircase.

Two creaking flights carried Quire up to the little courtroom where justice was applied to those charged with minor crimes. There, amongst the benches, the Superintendent of Police, James Robinson, was in conference with a clutch of judicial clerks. They spoke softly, as if to protect the dignity of the chamber, with its wood-panelled walls and leaded windows and buffed floorboards.

At Quire’s approach, Robinson dismissed the others with a nod and a murmur. They filed quietly out, and the superintendent rose a little stiffly from his seat and regarded Quire, his eyes narrow and inquisitive. He was a man of calm authority, with grizzled sideburns, a handsome face weathered by experience—he was a good deal older than Quire’s thirty-seven years—and a deliberate manner. It imbued his gaze with a certain weight.

“You look like a man in want of sleep, Sergeant,” Robinson observed. “An early start for you, I hear.”

Quire nodded.

“A body, sir. In the Cowgate. Foot of Borthwick’s Close.”

“Ah. Is that beer I smell on you? I hope you are not testing your constitution too severely, Quire.”

The superintendent’s tone was almost casual, but carried a touch of circumspect concern. He knew more of Quire’s history than most, and that history was not one of unblemished restraint and good judgement.

It was only the patronage of James Robinson that shielded Quire against the worst effects of Lieutenant Baird’s antipathy. And, indeed, against the wider consequences he might have suffered for his occasional past infringements of law and discipline, from which that antipathy sprang. He and Robinson, bracketing Baird in the hierarchy of command, shared something the other lacked, something that inclined them towards a certain mutual regard: they had both been soldiers.

There was more to their relationship than that, though. For Quire’s part, he had a vague, imprecisely formed notion that Robinson had been a saviour of sorts to him. At his first admittance to the ranks of the police, Quire had been something of a lost soul, and a drunken one at that. The years following his departure from the army had been turbulent and troubled: peace could be testing for one schooled in nothing but war. He had carried within him a certain restless anger and rebelliousness that should, by rights, have cut short his tenure as an officer of the law. That he had avoided dismissal was due solely to Robinson’s patient, stern tutelage. For that, and the measure of purpose and worth his continuing employment had slowly brought him, Quire owed the man a debt of gratitude.

As Robinson regarded him now, his gaze wore a faintly paternal sheen.

“A night of indulgence, was it?” the superintendent enquired. “With that lackey of yours, I suppose… what’s his name? Dunbar?”

“Nothing excessive, sir,” Quire said, smothering a wry smile at the thought of Wilson Dunbar being anybody’s lackey. “I’m well enough. The drink’s not been my master for a long time now.”

The assertion was accepted without comment.

“So, this corpse,” Robinson said. “Are you done with it for now?”

“That’s the thing I wanted to ask you about. I’ve a mind to send him to the professor.”

“Why?”

“The man was… savaged. It was bloody work. Entirely out of the ordinary. I’d like to know what Christison has to say about it.”

“I’d not want him bothered without good reason,” said Robinson. “Man’s got a fair few demands upon his time, you know. I’ll not have his willingness to aid us exhausted by too many requests.”

“I’d have asked Baird, but he’d only tell me that: not to waste my time—or Christison’s—on some nobody dead in the Old Town.”

“Lieutenant Baird,” Robinson corrected him. “You might make at least some pretence at observing the proprieties of rank, Quire.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you’re sure you’re not, are you? Wasting time, I mean.”

“No such thing as a nobody, sir. I’ve seen—we both have—enough folk of the sort Baird would call nobody die for King and Country to know that. Every man deserves a name putting to him, a bit of time spent on the explanation of his dying. The wars taught me that, and you too, I know. A man like Baird doesn’t…”

“Don’t test my patience, Quire,” Robinson muttered, grimacing. “You’re the best man I’ve got when there’s rough business to be conducted, and sharper than most, so I’ve never regretted any allowances I’ve made you, but I’m not in the best of tempers. The Board of Police are trying me sorely these days, and the gout’s got a hold of my leg something fierce.”

“I’d never want to add to your troubles, sir,” Quire said quickly. “This is the only work I’ve ever found myself good at, outside the army. I owe that to you, I know. It’s just I can’t abide the notion of one man being less worthy of our efforts than another.”

“Just tell me you’re sure this needs Christison’s attention, that’s all.”

“The body’s a mess, sir. Like nothing I’ve seen in years.”

Robinson looked dubious, but there was a foundation of trust between the two of them to be drawn upon.

“I’ll arrange for him to take a look then,” he said. “Don’t go making an issue of it with Lieutenant Baird, though.”

“No, sir,” Quire agreed with what he hoped was appropriately meek humility.

Quire found Grant Carstairs—Shake—waiting for him in the entrance hall of the police house, two days after the discovery of the corpse in the Cowgate. The scavenger sat on a three-legged wooden stool, slumped down into himself like a loose pile of clothes. When Quire appeared, Carstairs looked up with rheumy eyes that betrayed both relief and anguish.

“I’ve been asking after you,” Quire said before the scavenger could speak.

“Aye, sir, aye. I heard as much. I’ve no been well.” Carstairs extended a trembling hand, regarding it with a sad, piteous gaze. “The palsy’s on me something dreadful, and my chest…”

He gave a thick, richly textured cough by way of illustration and bestowed upon Quire a mournful smile.

“Is it your body that’s ailing or your conscience, Shake?”

“Oh, sir. You may have the right of it there. They say you’re a sharp one, and so you are. Body and conscience, and wife too. There’s the truth. D’you ken my wife at all, sir?”

“I don’t.”

“No, of course not. Well, have you a wife yourself, then, sir?”

“No.”

“Well, my wife is a wife of a certain sort, sir. A righteous sort. A righteous woman, and not blessed with great patience for a poor
sinner like myself. But for her, and for my conscience—but for the needles of the pair o’ them—I’d be in my sickbed still, not come here seeking after yourself.”

“Well, you’ve found me now.”

“Aye, sir. That I have.”

The scavenger rose unsteadily to his feet, one arm reaching for the wall to lever himself up, the other dancing at his side. Quire clenched his own left hand to still a sympathetic tremor; one infirmity called up by another. He grasped the old man’s elbow, taking what little weight there was to take.

“Can we speak, the two of us, somewhere a wee bit more private?” Shake asked, casting nervous glances around.

There were watchmen and policemen passing to and fro, and a steady traffic of townsfolk in search of succour, or delivering accusations, or asking after relatives. And there was Lieutenant Baird, standing in the doorway. He was deep in conversation with one of the members of the day patrol, but his eyes were drawn to Quire and to Carstairs.

“I can’t speak easy unless I ken it’s just you that’ll be hearing me, d’you see?” Shake murmured.

“Come, then,” said Quire, and gently guided Carstairs into a quiet side passage.

Shake’s hands began to leap and flutter with unease when he saw where he was being taken. The dark cells stood open and silent, like waiting mouths.

“Best place, if you don’t want to be seen or heard,” Quire said reassuringly. “That’s all.”

He closed the iron-banded door behind them, and the bustle of the police house was suddenly no more than a murmur. Quire could understand Shake’s reluctance to take up such quarters, however briefly. It was a miserable place, redolent of the troubles of those who had inhabited it. The dark cells were only used to hold those likely to harm themselves or others, and thus contained the equipment of restraint and of punishment. The door was heavy,
with just a small grille of bars to admit light. There were iron rings in the wall for the attachment of bonds. And a flogging horse—a narrow four-legged bench, with leather straps by which a man’s wrists and ankles might be secured—bolted to the floor. It was there that Quire settled Carstairs to sit.

“You’ve a reputation as a fair man, sir,” the scavenger said. “A man less given to hasty judgement or condemnation than most of his fellows, when it comes to those of lower station than yourself. I’m hoping that’s true.”

“Aye, well maybe I am and maybe I’m not, but we’ll not know unless you tell what you came to tell, Shake.”

“I’d not have come at all otherwise, if I’d not thought you’d give me a fair hearing. It’s a terribly thin life, sir, the scavenger’s. Needs doing, right enough, the cleaning of the streets, the carting off of the muck and the city’s sheddings. But it’s a thin life.”

“It’s hard work,” Quire said. “I know it. And I know the pay’s meagre.”

“Aye, sir. Meagre. That’s the word. So the temptation’s something fierce. You find a body, and there’s none but yourself about…”

“You go through the pockets.” Quire nodded, taking care to keep his voice free of accusation, leavening it with understanding.

“Oh, you do, sir. You do if you’re a poor sinner. Then, if you’re a poor fool of a man, you tell what you’ve found to your good wife. And she’ll not be having it, sir. Not at all. There’ll be no rest in my house until I’ve put it right, and that’s the truth.”

“What did you find?”

A trembling hand brought forth a small object and offered it to Quire.

“Only this, sir. Only this. Inside, in a hidden pocket. Not a thing else.”

A small silver snuff box. Quire took it and lifted it to one side, the better to see it in the dim light. A thing of exquisite beauty, shaped like a tiny chest with fluted edges of silver rope, and with a
dedication engraved upon its flat and polished lid in a flowery hand. Quire had to narrow his eyes and hold the box still closer to the grille in the door before he could make out the words.

Presented to John Ruthven

by his colleagues in

The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland

1822

“Get yourself home, Shake,” Quire said quietly. “You’ve done well. Done it late, but better than never, eh? Tell your wife I said so.”

The Royal Infirmary was an imposing structure: two wings projecting forwards from the grand central span of the building, the whole array adorned with a strict grid of tall rectangular windows. Quire passed through the gateway, flanked by pillars upon which sculpted urns rested, but turned aside from the steps leading up to the main entrance. His path took him instead to a side door, and down secluded passageways to the place where the corpses resided.

He found Robert Christison there, and was struck by the fact that the incumbent of the University Chair in Medical Jurisprudence seemed more contentedly at home in this chamber of the dead than any man—whatever his calling—should naturally be.

The tiled walls and floor reflected and concentrated the cold smell of vinegar and soap. Cabinets were arrayed around the walls, like a mute audience for the acts performed on the four waist-high stone slabs that took up much of the room. A crude trolley stood to one side; a conveyance for the dead that now bore not a cadaver but a neat array of tools of evident craftsmanship and gruesome purpose. Long-bladed flat knives, saws, hooks and forceps and shears. The means by which the human form might be dismantled.