Water of Death (11 page)

Knox 42 shrugged. “I don't work that way. DMs aren't my favourite people but I don't come down hard on them.”

“That's a relief,” I said. “What about the things you don't put in here?”

The auxiliary poured herself a glass of water from a bottle she took from her drawer and drank deeply. She didn't offer me one. “Like what, citizen?”

“Like did you let him take the remains of the joints from the ashtrays? Did you let him bring his friends in for a peek at the girls? Did you feed him booze to keep him quiet when things in here got out of hand?”

The edge I'd slipped into my voice didn't seem to get to her.

“No, citizen,” she said, looking at me stolidly. “None of those.”

“Come on,” I scoffed. “Everyone knows that cleaners in the clubs are a source of black-market grass and tobacco.”

Knox 42 shook her head. “Not from here they aren't. I check the grass and hash stocks every day personally and I distribute them to the girls myself. All personnel are body-searched every time they leave the premises. And the ashtrays are emptied into a sack that's sealed and sent back to the Drugs Department daily for reconstitution.” She gave me a stern glare that Hamilton would have applauded wildly. “As for citizens other than accredited staff even reaching the front door, forget it.”

Impressive. I almost believed her and, anyway, the scene-of-crime squad would report any traces of grass or tobacco found in the dead man's flat. But it was all a bit mechanical.

“How about whisky? Frankie was a big fan of that.”

She blinked involuntarily. “Whisky? We don't keep any.”

Marijuana clubs exist to supply soft drugs to the tourists. Even on these premises clients are restricted to three joints per person per day. The only alcohol they're meant to sell is low-strength beer – known throughout the city as “Golden Drizzle” – so that the customers don't get too wrecked. But it's common knowledge in the guard that tourists with a big wallet can get anything they want.

I decided to play with a concrete ball. “All right, Knox 42, here's the story. Frankie Thomson's dead.” I watched her closely but she was being a good auxiliary and impersonating a block of granite when tension mounts. “There's a chance that he drank himself to death and I want to know where he got the whisky.”

“Citizens earn vouchers for Supply Directorate spirits,” she said in a monotone. “Why do you think he got his whisky here?”

I wasn't planning on telling her about the bottles of the Ultimate Usquebaugh we'd found. “Look, Knox 42, we both know you get supplies of top-quality whisky for seriously loaded customers. Give me the paperwork, please.”

She did. I made sure she stayed where she was while I went through it. It didn't take long. She had only twenty-three bottles in stock, none of them with the same name as those in the dead man's flat.

“Are you sure there's nothing more you can tell me about Frankie Thomson?” I said as I got up to go.

Knox 42 shook her head slowly. “He was just a cleaner. He came in the morning, cleaned the bogs – not very well – and the tables and floors. He didn't pilfer drink, he didn't get his hands on reefer butts and he didn't bring his friends in. I very much doubt that he had any friends, citizen.” She may well have been right; that squared with what Drem had told Davie.

I went back out into the smoke and aural thunder zone. My side-kick was behind the bar writing in his notebook, a barman in a frizzy blond wig staring at him moodily.

“Are you done?” I asked in as loud a voice as I could manage.

He nodded. “Just about. I've checked the cellar and the rest of the rooms. They've got twenty-three bottles of the hard stuff, none called  . . .”

I raised a finger to stop him just in case the barman could lip-read.

A few minutes later we shouldered our way out past a group of excited Russian tourists with clippered hair and tattoos on their forearms. I was willing to bet that the stock of whisky was about to take a big hit. And that the rock chicks were in for a lot of sedentary bump and grind.

The music had changed but not for the better. Now they were playing “Mistreated”.

“What next?” Davie asked as we got back to the guard vehicle.

“You tell me.” My throat was dry and the walk had made me short of breath. Or perhaps my lungs had contracted something virulent from the atmosphere in the club.

“The archives again?”

“Who's a clever boy then? I want to see Frankie Thomson's ordinary citizen file. Maybe we'll strike lucky and find someone he used to get pissed with.”

“And more likely we won't.”

“Don't be so pessimistic.” I climbed in and beat him to the bottle under the driver's seat.

“Bastard,” he said. “That's my water.”

I sluiced down my throat. “Now, now. Citizens and auxiliaries have equal rights in Edinburgh nowadays.” I handed him the bottle and watched as he tried to laugh and drink at the same time. Not many guard personnel took that line seriously.

“Right?” Davie said, starting the engine. “You have the right to spend the rest of the day sweating in file graveyard and I have the right to leave you to it.” He ground up the hill towards Queensferry Street. The sun was to our left, making me blink and then curse. I'd left my shades at home.

“You might as well go up to the castle while I'm checking out Frankie Thomson,” I conceded. “Maybe have a go at pretending to Hamilton that you're a real guard commander.”

“Rather than your chauffeur, you mean?”

We passed an Edlott booth. Customers at this one were being harangued by a former winner dressed as King James VI, complete with catamite. Some tourists were examining the small boy with confused looks on their faces. The tableau reminded me of Fordyce Kennedy. I'd been ignoring that case completely.

“Davie, when you're in the castle check with the command centre if the missing Edlott winner's turned up.”

“Okay.” He turned and gave me a dirty grin. “If you like, I'll even go and visit his delectable daughter.”

A vision of the sultry Agnes floated up before me. It struck me that maybe I was spending far too much time on the DM who'd been found by the Water of Leith.

Chapter Five

I hit the central archive on George IVth Bridge for the second time that day and got my body temperature down to a reasonable level in the marble halls. I could have gone to Napier Barracks and tried to track down anyone who knew the dead man – I was still intrigued by the fact that his file in the demoted auxiliary archive had been weeded – but it was less hassle to follow up this angle first. Sitting at a desk in the double-height room, I worked through Frankie Thomson's ordinary citizen file, the one covering his life after he'd been demoted. You'd think the Public Order Directorate would want to keep such records with the DM files in the castle, but the rationale seems to be that people reduced to the ranks are no longer entitled even to archive space in such hallowed ground. I smelled some kind of half-baked symbolism.

All I got was confirmation of what I'd already learned – that Frankie Thomson kept himself to himself and liked the booze. Ordinary citizens are not subject to quite as much supervision as auxiliaries but they still have to list their friends and workmates. The only name given by the dead man was Angus Drem and Davie had already established how limited that relationship was – though it might be worth putting the shits up the storeman again in case he'd been lying. Frankie T. apparently didn't have anything going with members of the other gender either. After the Council made the weekly sex session voluntary, he'd left the sexual relations section of his personal evaluation form blank. I began to feel even sorrier for him as I read his work records. He'd been a cleaner at several other marijuana clubs before Smoke on the Water and his work reports were mostly unfavourable. His latest medical had turned up signs of cirrhosis and he'd been told to stop drinking. The bottles in his kitchen showed how much attention he'd paid to that instruction. Frankie's handwriting had become a random scrawl and the little he said about himself struck me as a coded call for help that no one had picked up.

‘The drink doesn't work',” read a voice from behind my shoulder. “It looks like it worked plenty of damage on his handwriting though.”

“What are you doing sneaking around behind people, Ray?”

The archivist put his hand on the back of my neck and squeezed hard. “I work here, remember? In fact, I'm in charge here.” He leaned closer. “Thomson, Francis Dee. Who he?”

I put down the form and turned towards him. “Thomson, Francis Dee, deceased, he.”

Ray sat on the desk and scratched the stump of his arm. He seemed to have been doing a lot of that recently. Maybe the heat was getting to him. “What happened to him? Why are you so interested?”

“I'm not so interested. I'm just checking his background. We found him on the bank of the Water of Leith with his face in the stream.”

“Really?” Ray looked surprised. “Heatstroke?”

“Could be. We'll soon find out from the post-mortem.” I started putting the papers back in some sort of order then looked round at him. “I don't suppose you knew the guy? He was a DM. Napier 25 was his barracks number.”

Ray thought for a moment then shook his head. “Nope. I've never known many people in Napier.” He glanced down at the papers on the desk, the expression of surprise still on his face. “I'll look after that,” he said. “The file will have to be taken off the open shelves now the subject is dead. You've saved me the trouble of finding it when the death notification comes in.”

“On the house, my friend.”

“Speaking of which, do you fancy a dram?” He picked up the grey folder and moved away, not bothering to wait for an answer.

Up in his office, Ray scrabbled around in a drawer for a couple of glasses then pulled out a bottle of barracks malt.

“Highland Breeze,” I read. “Never heard of that one.”

“New shipment,” he said, stripping the seal and pulling the cork with his teeth – which impressed me a lot – before pouring a couple of heavy slugs. “Apparently there's been a shake-up of the suppliers the Council has started using across the firth.”

“You mean the gangs have been playing bury the claymore again?”

“Bury the claymore,” he repeated, laughing quietly. “I like it.” He pushed one of the glasses across his desk.

“Still reading Wilfred Owen?” I asked.

“What?” For a couple of seconds he looked like he'd seen an unfriendly ghost.

I inclined my head towards the book that was lodged behind a file at the front of his desk.

Ray leaned forward and took it clumsily. “Wilfred Owen.” He repeated the name slowly. “He really was a great poet, you know.” He didn't sound all that convinced.

I had the glass halfway to my lips when my mobile rang. I put the glass down and eventually got the contraption out of my bag.

“Dalrymple.”

“Quint, listen to this.” Sophia's voice was at a higher pitch than normal. I even thought I heard it waver, which was definitely a first. “What the dead man drank  . . . it wasn't straight whisky.”

“What do you mean? It's not illegal to add water.”

“This is serious,” Sophia said, with what almost amounted to a scream. “The whisky he drank was lethal.”

“Lethal? How?”

“I can't talk now. This connection may not be secure.” There had been a few cases of dissidents listening in to guard communications but I wasn't worrying about them at this point. I'd just got the message. “There's an emergency Council meeting in a quarter of an hour. Be there. Out.”

“Put it down, Ray!” I yelled.

He froze, the measure of whisky he'd just poured himself an inch from his lips.

“The glass! Put it down!”

This time he did what I said.

“What the fuck  . . . ?”

I plugged the cork back in the bottle and stuck it in my bag.

“Here, that's mine,” Ray said weakly.

“Trust me,” I said. “Don't drink any unfamiliar brands of whisky till you hear from me again. And don't talk to anyone about the dead man, Ray.” I leaned over and relieved him of Frankie Thomson's file.

As I reached the door, I glanced back. Ray was standing with his mouth open, his single arm clutching the book of Great War poetry to his chest.

My mobile went three more times when I was on the street. I told Davie and Hamilton to meet me on the Lawnmarket and the chief toxicologist to get himself down to the Council chamber at maximum speed. It turned out he was already there.

“This is a nightmare, Dalrymple,” Hamilton said as Davie floored the Jeep's accelerator. Tourists on the High Street suddenly got very close to the shopfronts.

“Not yet it isn't but it may well turn into one. I presume you're arranging searches of all stocks of spirits for the Ultimate Usquebaugh?”