Water of Death (22 page)

Sophia just opened a folder and ran her finger down a list of bullet points. “A water jug, citizen,” she said without raising her eyes from the page. “Your point?”

So I was “citizen” again, was I? Time to play with a lead ball. “And how much are the contents worth?”

Despite the presence of two of his superiors, Davie had slumped down in his chair, a hand over his eyes. He'd never been able to cope with me baiting guardians.

“What are you talking about, man?” Lewis demanded, forgetting how often I'd hung him out to dry at this game.

“How much are the contents of the jug worth?” I repeated.

Sophia finally looked up. “How much is a pint or so of water worth? Next to nothing.”

“You're wrong, senior guardian.” If she wanted official titles, she could have them. “As wrong as it's possible to be in this city during the Big Heat.”

Davie had removed his hand from his face. At least I was getting through to one of them.

“Would you mind telling us what you're implying, citizen?” There was plenty of irritation in Sophia's voice.

“Yes, stop playing around, Dalrymple,” Hamilton said, his cheeks reddening.

Bingo. I had all three of them hooked. “The point is that maybe we aren't dealing with some crazy guys who are having a laugh by knocking off a whisky drinker here and there.” I looked round the table. “Maybe we're dealing with people who are putting the squeeze on the city.” One more glance round for dramatic effect. “If they can put poison in bottles of whisky, why shouldn't they have a go at the water supplies as well?”

All eyes were suddenly back on the water jug but no one made a move to refill their glass.

“That is pure supposition,” Sophia said, looking at me like my marbles had been nicked in the playground and I hadn't noticed. “What possible grounds do you have for such  . . .” she paused, searching for a suitably disparaging phrase “ . . . such blatant scaremongering.”

“Blatant scaremongering?” I said with heavy irony. This was turning out to be even harder to sell than I'd expected. “Have you forgotten where the bodies were located?”

“Of course not, man,” Hamilton answered. “At the Colonies and near Murrayfield stadium.”

“You're not being specific enough, Lewis.”

“Next to the river,” Davie put in, eyeing me uneasily.

“Getting warmer.” I wasn't letting him off the hook either.

“With their heads in the river,” Sophia said.

I nodded. “With their mouths in the Water of Leith.” I looked round at all three of them again. “Am I getting through to you? With their mouths in the water.”

Sophia returned my look thoughtfully. “That could just be coincidence.”

“Coincidences only happen in crappy detective stories, senior guardian. I think the killer or killers are sending us a message.”

Davie sat up straight. “Along the lines of ‘I drank the water of life and look what happened to me'?”

“Something like that.”

Hamilton wasn't completely lost in space. “Why didn't they put the nicotine in bottles of water then?”

He had a point. This was where my imagination slipped into overdrive. “Say these people are putting the squeeze on us. They're using nicotine because they've got some interest in the only people who are allowed to smoke in this city – the tourists. They're putting it in bottles of whisky called the Ultimate Usquebaugh because  . . . well, where is the word ‘ultimate' used all the time in Edinburgh?”

“In lottery publicity,” Sophia answered. She sounded seriously unconvinced.

“Correct. So maybe they're hinting that they could destabilise the city by messing up Edlott – whence the murder of a winner. And they're putting the bodies in the Water of Leith because they want us to understand what else they could do if they feel like it.”

Silence cocooned the room like it does in winter when the heavy mist rolls in from the sea and smothers all the city's sounds. I glanced at my sweat-stained clothing to remind myself that it was still the hot season.

Then Sophia reached for the water jug, filled her glass and drank the contents down pointedly. “You can't seriously expect the Council to act on such a farrago of groundless suppositions, citizen. We've already expended a huge amount of auxiliary time checking the whisky stocks.”

Hamilton wasn't buying it either. “Surely people who are intent on putting the squeeze on the Council would have sent us a list of demands by now, Dalrymple?”

I shrugged. “They might want to engineer a condition of panic first. Let's face it, citizen unrest at the temporary halt in whisky supplies has got you going, hasn't it?”

Sophia gave me a dismissive glance. “We're weathering that storm, as we'll weather any subsequent ones. Doubtless you have some suggestions as to how we should safeguard the city's water supplies.” Now that she'd satisfied herself that I was barking mad, she'd reverted to formal language. It goes with her rank like bad taste in music goes with teenagers.

“Put a guard on every water tank, put a squad of guards on every reservoir and filter bed, put—”

“Thank you, citizen.” The senior guardian was back with her files. “I recommend that you refrain from favouring the Council with these wild ideas.” She glanced up and raked me with frozen grapeshot. “I would further recommend that you open some new lines of enquiry immediately. If you wish to remain on the investigation.” Apparently Hamilton's views on my suitability for the post of his directorate's chief investigator didn't interest her. Not that he looked exactly supportive.

I felt a kick on my calf. Davie inclined his head towards the door and stood up. I followed suit.

“One moment, citizen.” Sophia raised her head again and put down her pencil. Her tone was even more biting. “There's something I want to bring to your attention.” She leaned sideways and opened the satchel that she'd placed on the floor by her chair. Then she straightened up and put a bottle on the table. It was sheathed in a transparent plastic bag through which I could make out a familiar label. “You recognise this?”

“The Ultimate Usquebaugh?” I said. “Of course.” I looked more closely and ascertained from the level in the bottleneck that a small amount of the amber liquid had been removed. I could also see traces of fingerprinting powder on the glass. “Is that bottle from Frankie Thomson or Fordyce Kennedy?”

“It has no connection with either of those citizens.” Something about the sharp edge to Sophia's voice made my stomach somersault. “It came from your flat.”

“What?” Davie, Hamilton and I blurted out the interrogative in unison.

“Or, to be more precise,” Sophia continued, “it came from the backpack left there by your friend Katharine Kirkwood.”

Now I was the one who was well and truly hooked.

Sophia let me wriggle for a bit. If I hadn't known that she was in full dictator mode, I'd have thought that she enjoyed seeing the shocked expressions on Davie's and Hamilton's faces. I suppose I should have told them about Katharine's reappearance. They were never her greatest fans, but at least that way it wouldn't have looked like I was keeping her presence in the city to myself.

“Because I couldn't get through to you on your mobile, I went to your flat,” Sophia said, fixing me with a look that would have withered cornfields if the Big Heat hadn't got there first. “You and the Kirkwood woman had left, but I found this bottle and another identical one in the pack I saw Kirkwood carrying when she arrived out of the blue.” Her eyes didn't flicker when she mentioned that episode, nor did her cheeks redden. Behold the Ice Queen in full flight. “The chief toxicologist has tested for nicotine. He found it in both bottles.”

I was finding it hard to make sense of this. Katharine had been involved with dissidents years ago and had served time in the prison on Cramond Island, but she'd also worked with me on two major cases. She certainly didn't think much of the Council and its activities, which was why she'd gone to live on the farm. That didn't make her a cold-blooded killer.

“A scene-of-crime auxiliary has dusted for prints,” Sophia continued. “Apart from Kirkwood's, there is another set that is being checked against the archive.” She gave me another glance. “You'll be relieved to hear they aren't yours, citizen.” The hostility in her eyes suggested she still suspected I might have spent hours massaging the bottles with gloves on.

Hamilton's cheeks above his white beard had gone deep scarlet. “You've been using personnel from my directorate, senior guardian?” he said. “Why wasn't I informed?”

Trust Lewis to get involved in an argument about procedure rather than arrest me and get every auxiliary in the city looking for Katharine. On this occasion I wasn't complaining. Then again, Sophia had probably already given the latter of those orders. I wondered if she was about to transfer me to the dungeons.

“I am informing you now, guardian,” Sophia said in a voice that brooked no argument. She turned back to me. “Citizen Dalrymple, can you cast any light on this development?”

“None at all.” I returned her gaze stonily. “But I can tell you one thing for sure. Katharine's not a poisoner.”

“How can you know that?” Sophia demanded. “She has a criminal record. She arrives in the city at the time the Ultimate Usquebaugh kills two citizens and she has bottles of it in her bag. At the very least she is a prime suspect.”

I thought of the unbalanced look I'd seen in Katharine's eyes and the wild laughter she'd let slip. Could what had happened to the farm have driven her over the edge? And where the hell had she been spending her time since she came back to the city? I shook my head involuntarily. No way. I knew Katharine. I wasn't going to let myself be steamrollered by Sophia.

The senior guardian looked at me and moved her lips into an unlikely pout. “My first reaction was to have you taken off the investigation, citizen.” I heard Lewis and Davie draw breath sharply. “However, I am prepared to accept your word that you know nothing of this matter.”

That was easy enough to give.

“I also require your word that you will inform me immediately if Kirkwood makes contact with you in any way.” She opened her eyes wide and waited for my answer.

“All right,” I said after a short pause. Making promises to guardians that I don't keep is something I've got used to over the years.

Sophia nodded. “Very well. Get back to work. And try to work out some more constructive approaches.”

She wasn't getting a response to that.

“Your flat is under surveillance by undercover operatives, by the way,” she said as I got up.

“In that case you've got no chance of catching Katharine,” I said with a bitter smile. “She can smell them a mile off. And don't forget, she's got an ‘ask no questions'.”

The two guardians gave me a look that even I could have lived without.

“Wanker.” Davie stormed past me down the stone-flagged corridor towards the guard command centre.

“Hang on a minute,” I said, catching him up. “You don't really think Katharine's involved with the murders, do you?”

He stopped and turned, letting me careen off his solid chest. “We're supposed to be friends, aren't we, Quint? Why the fuck didn't you tell me that your old girlfriend had shown up again?”

I shrugged, avoiding his eyes. “It was a bit embarrassing, what with Sophia being involved.”

“Embarrassing?” he roared, glaring at a timid-looking female auxiliary at the other end of the passage who almost dropped her files. “It's a fucking disaster area. You're bloody lucky you're not counting the cobwebs in the directorate's deepest dungeon.”

“She isn't a poisoner, Davie,” I insisted in a low voice. “You know she isn't.”

“I bloody don't,” he growled. His relationship with Katharine had been almost as stormy as the last king's with the people of Britain. “I saw her kill, remember?”

I nodded. “That was different, Davie. She saved my life then.”

He stared at me then slowly lowered his eyes. “Yes, she did. That was a long time ago though. Who knows what might have happened to her since then?” He strode away.

“Davie, you will let me know if there are any sightings of her, won't you?”

He turned back to me. “All right. But next time tell me what the fuck's going on. Where are you going?”

“The central archive. I've got things to find out about Fordyce Kennedy's missing son. What about you?”

“We're still checking whisky stocks, remember?” he said sardonically, heading away. “As well as looking for your fancy woman.”

I walked down the Royal Mile to George IVth Bridge without losing more than a pint of sweat. After going into the archive in the former library, I drank noisily from the fountain in the entrance hall then stuck my head round my friend Ray's door. There was no sign of him. But his desk was something else. He usually kept it in the well-ordered fashion beloved of senior bureaucrats. Now it looked as if a paperchase involving a full squad of trainee auxiliaries had taken place across it. There were books strewn all over the floor as well, which struck me as curious behaviour for a bibliophile. Still, the room wasn't a bad metaphor for the current state of my investigation.

“Is Nasmyth 67 around?” I called to the sentry at the glass doors.

She looked at me snottily, as if to say “demoted auxiliaries can kiss my arse before I give them the time of day” and nodded once. That was all I got. It didn't seem worth asking for Ray's exact whereabouts so I went down to the document stacks. At least I wouldn't need to ask for help down there.

Before I pulled Allie Kennedy's file, I sat at a table and considered the question of Katharine. I'd have tried to get a message to her to warn her that she was a wanted woman, but I couldn't think of a way to do that. She didn't have a mobile. If she showed up at my place, she'd be grabbed before she could see any note I left. I'd just have to hope that her highly developed instinct for self-preservation would get her out of trouble. If anyone could stay free, she could. In the meantime it was up to me to prove that she wasn't involved in the killings. I'd been looking for something to fill my spare time.