Water of Death (10 page)

The DM archive is in what were originally cart sheds at the western end of the castle rock. They were turned into tearooms in the last century but the Public Order Directorate has no time for such frivolities, especially since no tourists have been allowed through the gatehouse since the Council took charge.

I flashed my authorisation at the senior of the two guardsmen at the entrance. I could tell he knew me, but he still went carefully through the procedure of confirming my credentials with the command centre and entering my details in a logbook. Eventually I was allowed in to the building. An elderly female auxiliary with a sour face met me and led me to the requisition desk. There was absolutely no chance of me getting away with omitting my name from the records like I'd done in the citizen archive. I filled in the form for Thomson, Francis Dee, and waited in the stifling heat for the file to be located.

“Here you are, Citizen Dalrymple,” the clerk said drily. “I'll be checking that all the pages are intact before you're allowed to leave.”

I resisted the temptation to make a comment involving the Latin word “intacta” and took the weighty grey folder to a desk in the far corner of the poorly lit room. All the windows were shuttered to keep the sun and curious eyes out.

I got stuck into the dead man's tale – and a rather curious one it was. Frankie Thomson had been an Enlightenment member for two years when the party won the last election. He'd worked for the only Scottish bank to survive the chaos of the financial crash of 2001 and, reading between the lines, I got the idea that he'd handled some deals that benefited the party. After independence, even though he was in his thirties, he went through the newly instituted auxiliary training programme – tours of duty fighting on the border and against the drugs gangs included – then had been posted to Napier Barracks in the south of the city. His barracks number was Napier 25 and he'd spent ten years doing general administrative work, interspersed with periods of active duty on the streets – even senior auxiliaries had to do that at the height of the drugs wars.

Then things went murky. The old harpy at the desk might be keeping a close eye on what I did with the file but that hadn't always been the case. From 2013 until he was demoted in April 2024, Frankie Thomson's documentation was much less complete. There were the usual barracks evaluations, sex session reports (he was hetero), medical records (which referred to his fondness for the bottle) and lists of close colleagues – the last with very few numbers on them, suggesting the dead man wasn't exactly the sociable type. But, contrary to standard practice, there was hardly anything about what he actually spent his days doing. There were none of the pro formas detailing work rosters and no progress reports by senior auxiliaries. Someone had weeded this file, probably before it arrived in this archive. It was only by chance that I came across a reference to his place of work in a physical fitness programme he'd been ordered to attend in 2018. It made me think though. Apparently Napier 25 worked in the Finance Directorate – and not just in any old department. He'd been a member of the elite Strategic Planning Department.

I leaned back and the poor-quality chair beneath me creaked alarmingly. Frankie Thomson might have ended up as a bog cleaner but he was massively overqualified for that job. I turned pages and found his Demotion Charge Sheet. At least no one had pilfered that. He'd been done not for ripping off the city, like certain people I could think of in the Finance Directorate, but for sticking his hand down a female tourist's blouse in the Three Graces night club – she'd been a member of a group of potential investors Frankie was entertaining. Molesting the city's visitors is as heinous a crime as you can commit in the Council's eyes, especially in a joint like the Three Graces where the biggest spenders go, but something bothered me about the charge. I turned back to the front of the file. The dead man stared out at me from his auxiliary-entry photograph, his face twenty years younger and partially obscured by the beard required of his rank until recently. He had been thin then as well, his features weaselly, and his eyes seemed to look at the lens reluctantly. I went back to the sex sessions reports I'd scanned earlier and confirmed what I thought I'd registered – that he was so lukewarm in his relations with female auxiliaries that several of them had filed complaints about his “lack of zeal”, as the barracks phrase goes. So what the hell was he suddenly doing grabbing the fifty-nine-year-old breasts of a Lebanese casino owner's wife?

Before I got any further, my mobile rang.

“Dalrymple? Where are you?” The public order guardian sounded unusually mellow. Perhaps the Council had voted to reinstate flogging.

“Checking some records.” Never be any more specific than you have to when reporting to guardians.

“Are you any further on with the dead man?”

“Getting there. I need a bit more time.”

There was a pause and I thought I was about to be blasted. “I hope it's worth it,” Hamilton said threateningly.

“Catch you later, Lewis. Out.”

I looked down at the photograph of Frankie Thomson – Napier 25 as was – and rubbed my cheek. Time was beginning to press and I knew where I wanted to go next. I punched Davie's number.

“I thought you were meant to be distracting you know who.”

“I tried, Quint. I thought he'd got sidelined laying into a guardsman who was caught listening to Radio Free Glasgow.”

“That explains why he sounded cheerful.”

“Yeah, well, the guardsman answered him back and that reminded the guardian of you.”

“Brilliant.” I headed for the desk to return the file. “Fancy spending some time in a smoke-filled room?”

The elderly auxiliary took the file and gave me the eye.

“Frankie Thomson's place of work?”

“Well spotted, guardsman. Can you find something appropriate to wear? Your uniform won't go down too well with the tourists.”

“And your festering T-shirt and stained shorts will?” Davie said sarcastically. “And stop calling me guardsman. You're the only person who still does.”

“I haven't got used to you being a commander,” I said. “We can go via my place so I can change, guardsman.”

“What difference will that make?” he asked, laughing and then breaking the connection.

We left the Land-Rover round the corner in Belford Road and hoofed it to the club in Bell's Brae. It was on the ground floor of what had been a nineteenth-century coachhouse before the trendy modernisers got to it fifteen years before the Enlightenment. Dean Village was a classic example of a former working area that changed beyond all recognition because of the demand for accommodation near the city centre. The old tanneries and flour mills ended up as luxury hotels and flats – till the economy went down the toilet and what used to be the UK became several dozen versions of the field of Armageddon. Below us the Water of Leith skirted frog-haunted reeds, trickling its meagre stream around the moss-covered stones.

The marijuana club advertised its presence by means of a purple and green façade. Above the door there hung a large sign with writing that was supposed to look spaced out, man. The word “smoke” was enclosed in a white cloud drifting over an expanse of water that was much deeper and much bluer than the neighbouring river. And just in case customers got the idea that designers in Edinburgh were completely lacking in imagination, the guardsman on the door was wearing a long black wig, tight satin trousers with gold fly buttons, and a yellow shirt open to display his massive pectorals. No doubt he also played air guitar solos when he got bored.

Not that he was bored now. One look at Davie's beard and off-duty guard personnel khaki trousers was enough for him to identify his rank. He needed a few more looks at me though. It must have been the tight-legged black trousers and the T-shirt with the “Heavy, Oh So Very Heavy” logo I'd dredged up from the suitcase of antediluvian rags I keep under my bed. Eventually I put him out of his misery by flashing my directorate authorisation.

“What's the problem?” he asked, now even more worried.

“Don't worry, we're not doing an inspection.” He'd probably heard that one before. All the city's tourist premises are subject to spot checks for black-market activities and inspectors often go in disguise. They've also been known to pretend they're on other business to gain the confidence of staff – just one of the many ways the Council keeps a grip.

“Do you know Frankie Thomson?” I asked.

“Frankie who?” he asked, squinting into the sun.

“Frankie Thomson. He's a cleaner here.”

“Oh, him.” The auxiliary looked unimpressed. “The piss artist. Makes more mess than he cleans up, I reckon. I haven't seen him today.” Then he got a bit more excited. “Why? What's he done?” Typical guardsman's suspicious mind.

I ignored the question. “Who does he knock around with? Have you seen him sneak his pals in?” Citizen staff have been known to do that after doing a deal with bent auxiliaries.

He shook his wig emphatically. “No way. They don't get away with that here. We run a tight ship.”

I looked up at the sign above his head. “Looks like your funnel could do with a clean.”

He stared at me uncomprehendingly as I walked inside.

“Don't mind him,” I heard Davie saying. “Heat's fried his brains.”

“Such loyalty,” I muttered, then pushed open the inner door. We were immediately enveloped in a fug of bittersweet smoke. The lights were low and it was hard to make things out. The same couldn't be said for the music. It wasn't loud enough to bring the walls of Jericho down but it would have made a fair start. The pounding of the bass and drums came up your legs from the floor like unfriendly boa constrictors and set your inner organs in violent disarray. I was all shook up, and not just because they were playing “Paranoid”.

A female auxiliary loomed out of the murk wearing a torn vest that made a major exhibition of her breasts and leather shorts that must have hurt like hell – what the Tourism Directorate imagined a rock chick looked like. She clocked us immediately and the false smile died on her purple-painted lips.

“Who's in charge?” I shouted.

She pointed to the bar and went back to her customer. There was an old-fashioned propeller fan doing not much to clear the air in the middle of the cavernous room. As it was early afternoon, only a few of the tables were occupied – mainly lone tourist guys with beer bellies, joints between their fingers and Prostitution Services Department women leading them on. The one who met us was already grinding her backside into an oriental's groin. His hands were on her breasts through the rents in her top, his eyes rolling back in a half-stupor. He had his lower lip between his teeth like he was trying to get his priorities straight. Meanwhile the woman was going for world championship lap-dancing gold.

Another female auxiliary appeared in front of us. This one was middle-aged, with short grey hair, a matching grey skirt and a hard set to her jaw. The boss. I pointed to the door at the back marked “Strictly Private” and followed her over. Davie went to check out the bar.

“And you are?” she asked, closing the sound-proofed door.

I shook my ears back into action. “Dalrymple.”

The auxiliary's eyes opened wide.

“Don't worry, it's only a routine enquiry.”

“Since when did you handle routine enquiries, citizen?” She reached into a drawer and took out her barracks badge.

“Have we met before?” I leaned forward. “Knox 42?”

She shook her head. “I know you though. You catch the bad people.” Her eyes were more playful than the rest of her face, which wasn't a hard trick for them to pull off.

“The bad people. Yes, well, I don't know if the person I'm going to ask you about was necessarily one of those.”

Knox 42's lips twitched for a second or two. She probably thought that constituted a smile. Still, some of her rank don't even make that much of an effort to be human.

“You never know, citizen. It's often the most unlikely people who turn out to be the worst ones of all.” Her voice was flat and empty. She was old enough to have been in the Enlightenment from the beginning like I had. Like Frankie Thomson had. We were the ones who had the most to be disappointed about, who'd been let down most by jokers who should never have been allowed on to the Council. If I'd been put in charge of a licensed dope and wanking parlour, I wouldn't have been too happy either.

“True enough,” I said. I'd have liked to talk to her about the old days and what we used to believe in but it was far too late for that. “Frankie Thomson. What can you tell me about him?”

“What can
you
tell
me
about the old sot, citizen?” No twitch of the lips this time. “He didn't turn up for work this morning. I had to get a couple of the girls to clean out the bogs.”

“I hope they washed their hands before you set them loose on clients.”

That went down like compulsory overtime at harvest time on the city farms. Eventually Knox 42 went to the filing cabinet on the rear wall of the windowless room.

“What do you want to know, citizen?” she asked wearily.

“Why don't you just give me the file?” I took a chance and smiled at her. Amazingly that worked. She handed it over.

I flicked through the pages. They were mainly time sheets and appraisals. Frankie T. didn't seem to have been a favourite of his boss.

“You knew he was a DM.”

“As you see.” Knox 42's gaze was unwavering.

“Did that cause you any problems?”

“Why should it? City Regulations state that demoted auxiliaries are to be treated in exactly the same way as other ordinary citizens.”

I smiled. “That's a nice fairy-tale. You and I both know that auxiliaries often give their former colleagues a bad time.”