Water of Death (34 page)

“Yes, citizen?” He eyed me nervously, registering the threat in my voice.

“I hope you've been straight with me. Remember the size of Hume 253's truncheon.”

That sent him away without a spring in his step.

Davie was waiting for me at the end of the sweltering corridor. It looked like he'd been swapping torture stories with the cell-keeper. That lunatic's mouth was set in a slack grin.

“You let the bugger go.” Davie said, shaking his head.

“Put your best people on him.” I started up the worn steps. “I know it's a risk but I don't know how else we'll catch the mysterious Allie bloody Kennedy.”

“What next?”

“We'd better check with the command centre.”

There hadn't been any developments. No sign of Allie – surprise, surprise – no guard sightings of Katharine – thank God – and no further communications to the Council.

“Looks like we're in the clear for the evening,” I said. “I'm going to use the public order guardian's personal shower then go home to crash. I'll see you tomorrow, Davie.”

Hamilton waved me into the spartan shower room in his quarters without comment. He was bent over a heap of paperwork, his collar open and his white hair ruffled. I'd just come out from the blast of unusually cold water when my mobile rang.

“Citizen Dalrymple?” The female voice was clipped and officious. “The senior guardian requires your presence at her residence immediately. Out.”

As I dried myself with a thin Supply Directorate towel, I realised how little I was looking forward to seeing Sophia. Something had gone seriously wrong between her and me and I had the feeling Katharine wasn't the sole cause.

I got a guard driver to take me down to Moray Place. As we joined the Mound, I looked out across the city centre. Darkness had fallen but there wasn't any great drop in the temperature. At least a light breeze was now ruffling the flags on Princes Street and making the tourists in the street cafes believe that Edinburgh in the Big Heat was worth it after all. A band in the gardens was playing Council-approved jazz – that is, distinctly trad, no dissonance allowed. People were walking about having animated conversations and laughing. Watching them, you could almost accept that the system was working. Till you remembered that the people having a good time were tourists and the only locals in the vicinity were the ones serving them. I glanced at the Edlott stalls round the galleries. They'd almost been completed and were already attracting the attention of visitors with money to burn on tickets. Was that what life in the city was all about nowadays? Winning free sex and whisky, or a soft job for life? Greed really was God in this supposedly atheist city. So much for the Enlightenment.

The Land-Rover set me down at the barrier in Darnaway Street. I didn't even have to show ID. The guardsman recognised me and let me through with a perfunctory nod.

I walked into the circular street where the guardians' accommodation has been since the Council came to power. The idea was that the city's leaders would cut themselves off from their families and live together in a kind of a bosses' ghetto. In the old days when there was a permanent senior guardian, a specific house was allocated to the holder of that rank. I had pretty unhappy memories of that edifice as my mother was senior guardian for years. The only time I saw her was when she wanted to drag me over the coals about some investigation that I wasn't handling to her satisfaction. I hadn't been back too often since she died in 2021. At least with the new rotation system of senior guardians, I didn't have to go to that house now. Even when they wear the badge of ultimate power for a month, guardians stay in their own residences.

The decorative lights in the gardens at the centre of Moray Place hadn't been turned on – I was glad to see the guardians weren't wasting the city's precious power reserves – so I followed the dim streetlamps round to the medical guardian's residence. The door opened as soon as I started up the steps.

“Good evening, citizen,” a female auxiliary in a grey suit said brusquely, running a disapproving eye down my sweat-encrusted clothes. At least the body inside them was clean. “The senior guardian is waiting for you in her study. First floor.”

As I climbed the curved Georgian staircase, it struck me that I'd never been inside Sophia's place before. She always came to my flat. She was probably worried that the woman on the door would have a nervous breakdown if she knew what her chief got up to with a demoted auxiliary. Not that her chief had got up to anything with me in the last couple of days.

A guardsman on the landing pointed to the far door then went back to his copy of the
Inter-barracks Sports Report
.

Since everyone seemed to know I was coming, I didn't bother to knock.

Sophia raised her head briefly from her antique desk. She didn't bother to speak or smile.

There was a bottle of water on the table in front of the fireplace so I went over to it and poured myself a glass. If she wanted silence, who was I to deny her? I sat down on one of the armchairs that guardians seem to choose especially for their lack of comfort and picked up a well-thumbed book. The senior guardian's current leisure reading was Patricia Cornwell's
The Body Farm
. In the past, Council members would have died rather than read pre-Enlightenment mass-market fiction. Now they're desperate to acquire the common touch. I hoped that volume didn't inspire her to rethink Agriculture Directorate policy. Or increase her interest in criminal conspiracies.

After five minutes Sophia closed the folder she'd been annotating and got up. She came towards me slowly, her bare calves below the grey skirt gleaming in the light from the ornate chandelier. She took some water then sat down opposite me.

“Well, citizen?” she said finally.

“Well, Sophia?”

She looked away in irritation, her ice-blonde hair flicking out of shape. “Don't make this any more difficult than it already is, please.”

“What do you mean difficult?” I was puzzled. “You're the one who required my presence.”

“Very well,” she said, holding her back very straight. “Kindly give me an updated report.”

So that's how she wanted to play it. No messing about, no sweetness, no light. I reciprocated, telling her in unemotional tones about the current situation in the command centre – which she could have found out easily enough for herself. I decided to hit her with my thoughts about Nasmyth 05. That brought a hint of interest to her expression.

“Why wasn't the Council informed about the surveillance you had on the Edlott auxiliary?” she asked in full Ice Queen mode.

“If you and your colleagues were to be told about everyone being tailed by undercover operatives, you wouldn't have time to do anything else. Lewis Hamilton knew about it.”

“Nasmyth 05 has a senior position in the Culture Directorate,” she said angrily. “If you had the slightest suspicion, as senior guardian I should have been informed from the outset.”

I looked at her, keeping my face blank. Was she just pissed off because I'd kept her in the dark or did she have some connection with the fat auxiliary she didn't want me to know about?

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“I'd like an explanation of why you didn't tell me, citizen.”

“Oh for fuck's sake, Sophia,” I shouted, jumping to my feet. “Stop all this ‘citizen' bollocks, will you? We were sleeping together not long ago, remember?”

Spots of red appeared on her cheeks. “Yes, well, everybody makes mistakes.” She gave me a piercing look. “As you of all people should know, Quint.”

I attempted to step round the table and banged my knee on it. “What's that supposed to mean?”

She stood up and walked back to her desk, then stopped suddenly and faced me again. “You've seen her, haven't you? The Kirkwood woman.”

I held her gaze but didn't answer.

“At least you aren't lying.” She shook her head. “You're playing an extremely dangerous game. As far as I'm concerned, that woman is a prime suspect.”

I took a deep breath before speaking. She was on to me, God knows how. I thought I was the one who relied on hunches. “Be reasonable, Sophia. Katharine's not a cold-blooded killer.”

“Katharine!” she shouted, losing her cool. “Katharine, as you call her, is indeed a killer. You know that very well. She's also a dissident and a deserter. Not to mention a former prostitute.”

I gave her the eye. “Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't the Prostitution Services Department set up by the Council? And Katharine was forced to work there after she came out of prison.”

Sophia shrugged. “The details are irrelevant. I don't see any other suspect in this investigation with her record.”

“Jealousy's a terrible thing, Sophia,” I said, taking a pace towards her.

She went glacial again. “I can assure you that jealousy has nothing to do with my attitude to her, Quint. You'd better hope that there are no more ultimata and that you turn up something on Nasmyth 05 and the missing citizen soon.” She turned away from me. “Otherwise the spotlight will move on to you as well as your girlfriend.”

I wanted to give her a good shake but that would only have made her spit even more. Anyway, before I could make my mind up what to say, my mobile rang.

“Quint?” said a low, female voice that I recognised immediately. “Where are you?”

“At the senior guardian's residence, Davie,” I said, enunciating like a ham actor.

“Ah,” Katharine said. She gave a bitter laugh. “Don't even think about touching that woman. I'll call you later.” The connection was cut.

I stuck the phone back in my pocket, hoping my face hadn't given me away.

“What was that about?” Sophia asked.

“It was just Hume 253 checking on my whereabouts.”

“Why? Did he think you were in danger at my hands?” she said sarcastically. When guardians use sarcasm, you know they're out of their depth.

I shook my head. “Grow up, Sophia,” I said, turning away and heading for the door. As I got there, I found myself wondering why she'd called me to her residence. I hadn't exactly told her much about the case. She didn't even give me the post-mortem results on the dead men from the mill. Presumably there was nothing unexpected to report. So why had she got me over? Surely, for all her display of indifference, it wasn't because she wanted to see me? I walked to the exit and let that thought float away into the open space of the stairwell.

Back in my flat I stripped off, took a slug of safe whisky and sat back in the uneven sofa as the rasping spirit slipped down my throat. I got a momentary rush but all the booze really did was make my internal organs burn as much as my skin was already doing in the cramped room. The windows were wide open but the place was still a sauna.

I went over and stood by the curtains, vainly hoping that the air outside was cooler. Sticking my head out, I looked down into the street. The undercover operative five doors to the right wasn't quick enough. I caught a glimpse of his dark shirt as he jerked back behind the stonework. Sophia was making sure that Katharine didn't slip up to me unnoticed. I went back to the sofa and took another pull at the whisky. I'd checked with the command centre on my way home – no further messages received and no more poisoned bottles discovered. Maybe the messenger was running scared and we were in the clear after all. I gave myself the luxury of ten seconds to wallow in that delusion.

As my eyes began to close, faces flashed up before me. First, Katharine. Where was she? If she didn't call again before curfew, she'd be out of touch until the morning – the limited number of public phones the Council has located around the city go dead overnight as part of the drive to keep citizens indoors. Well, she was capable of looking after herself. Then Nasmyth 05's bloated features appeared. The tail had reported that the senior auxiliary returned to his quarters in the Culture Directorate an hour ago. The fat man was apparently so devoted to Edlott that he'd got himself a room above his office so he didn't have to go back to barracks to sleep. Which brought Ray's face up before me, the skin pale and lined as it had been the last time I'd seen him. As my brain sank into slumber, it struck me that he was a member of Nasmyth Barracks like the Edlott controller. Could there be some deeper connection between them? Could that have anything to do with the devastation on my friend's face and his erratic behaviour?

Ray disappeared into the void, to be replaced by a couple of faces I didn't immediately recognise. Young guys, one of them with red hair and the other with what he thought was the professional hard man's provocative stare. Then I remembered them. Colin and Tommy, the bagsnatchers in the Meadows. The Southside Strollers I'd asked Euan Caborn about. Allie Kennedy came from the south side of the city. Maybe those idiots knew him.

I made a feeble attempt to rouse myself, but before I could move I dropped into a black hole even sweatier than the dungeon I'd been in earlier. I thought I could hear the “Ventilator Blues” playing in the distance. Even in your dreams there's no escape from the Big Heat.

Chapter Fifteen