Water of Death (38 page)

Davie looked at his boss, unwilling to speak first even though the public order guardian had been wandering around ineffectually for some time.

“Well, get on with it, Hume 253,” Hamilton said impatiently.

“Yes, guardian.” Davie flipped the pages of his notebook. “What I've got isn't much. There was hardly anyone else around earlier in the evening. Most of them were out on watch.” He shrugged. “The continuous shifts.”

I nodded. “Which Ray's seniority would have excused him from. He wasn't on his own in the building, was he?”

“Just about. The only others were a female auxiliary who was washing her clothes in the basement and a guardsman who came in to change his uniform a few minutes after eight. He went back on patrol almost immediately.”

“And neither of them saw or heard anything out of the ordinary,” I said, realising from his expression that we were out of luck.

He nodded. “'Fraid not.”

“Who found the body?”

“A trainee auxiliary on barracks immersion. She came back from duty at  . . .” he checked his notes “ . . . at eight fifty and happened to glance out of her dorm window. She isn't taking it too well.”

“She'll have to get used to that kind of thing,” Hamilton said.

“Thank you for that compassionate observation, Lewis,” I said. “She didn't see him fall?”

Davie shook his head. “I noticed the dead man's watch was smashed. It shows eight forty-three.”

“Very good, guardsman. Have you been reading Agatha Christie?” Both of them scowled at me. “Sorry. So we're tending towards suicide, are we?”

“Certainly seems that way to me, Dalrymple,” the guardian said. He gave me a suspicious look as if he already knew I was going to disagree.

“And to me,” Davie said, earning himself an approving nod from his chief. “The scene-of-crime people didn't find any prints apart from Ray's and those of other barracks residents who weren't around this evening.”

I went over to the window and thought about Ray's room next door, visualising the Owen books scattered on the floor. Something about that corner was nagging me and it wasn't just the uncharacteristic lack of order. I let the line of thought go reluctantly and turned back to the others. “You're ignoring something,” I said.

A wry look appeared on the guardian's bearded face. “Of course we are, Dalrymple. We're just a pair of clodhopping auxiliaries.”

“Your words, not mine.” I flashed him a smile. “What you're ignoring is the question why.”

“Why the auxiliary would commit suicide, you mean?” Davie asked.

“Exactly.”

“I would have thought that's clear enough, Dalrymple,” Hamilton said. “He was burdened by the loss of his arm.”

“Lewis,” I demanded, “have you forgotten that suicide's illegal in this city? In particular for serving auxiliaries. You'd need to have a bloody good reason to allow your name and number to be expunged from the records and sanctions to be taken against your next of kin.” The Council has always taken an adamantine stand against self-murderers, regarding them as arch-betrayers of the Enlightenment. I shook my head at them. “And that's not all. I know  . . . knew Ray. I knew him well. He wasn't suicidal.”

Hamilton hadn't given up. “Are you sure, Dalrymple? He could have been hiding it, especially from his friends.”

I thought about how weirdly Ray had been behaving in the last couple of days – slumped at his desk with his head in his hand, keeping away from me. Then the look of abject horror I'd seen on his face came up before me again. Something had definitely been hurting him badly. But could that have made him throw himself out of the window? Christ, I'd offered to help. He turned me down, but I could have pressed him harder.

“Ray was a fighter!” I shouted, guilt eating into me. “You shouldn't be accusing him, Lewis. You should be proud that someone who sustained a major injury in the guard still managed to be a productive auxiliary.”

The guardian took a step back. “All right, Dalrymple. Calm down.”

I eventually got a grip, feeling Davie's eyes on me. I lost so many friends in the early years of the Enlightenment, I lost the woman I loved ten years ago. I suppose I should have got used to it by now, but it gets worse. You'd think as you grow older that absences would be easier to handle. They aren't. I still find myself fighting for the people who've disappeared, the people who can't fight for themselves any more – like Ray.

“Come on,” I said to Davie. “We're done here.”

“What next, Quint?” he asked, watching the guardian's back as it disappeared out of the door ahead of us.

“You tell me. I need a drink. If we can find one that won't poison us in this bastard city.”

He opened his mouth to speak but my mobile went off first.

“Medical  . . . senior guardian here.”

“Get it right, Sophia.”

“You'd better come over to the morgue.” Her voice was sharp. “Immediately.”

“What have you found?”

“Not on an open line. Out.”

I was pretty sure my opposition to the suicide theory was about to be vindicated. That didn't make me feel any better.

Ray had been straightened out on the mortuary table, rigor mortis not having reached even the preliminary stages. Naked, he was a sad sight. His shattered, blood-drenched head was propped up by the wooden neck support and the stump of his arm was half raised like the barrier at a guard checkpoint. I heard Davie and Hamilton take deep breaths when they saw him. The large V-shaped incision had been made at the sides of the neck to enable removal of the larynx. Below, a single cut ran down to the pubis and the major organs had been taken out of the abdominal cavity. Two medical auxiliaries were bent over the body.

Sophia looked up from a bank of instruments against the far wall. Her face above the green surgical gown was very white.

“Let's have it then,” I said.

“Leave us,” she ordered her staff, turning her head towards Davie to exclude him too.

“My assistant stays,” I said.

“Very well.” Sophia sighed. “Much joy may it bring him.”

I went over to her and grabbed her arms. “What have you found? I need to know.”

She pulled her arms away. “Don't worry, Quint. I won't be keeping what the senior toxicologist advised to myself.”

“What?” Hamilton stepped forward, his eyes wide. “How did the auxiliary die?”

“It was nicotine poisoning, guardian,” Sophia said, dropping her gaze to the worn mortuary floor. “There are traces of whisky in the oesophagus. The Ultimate Usquebaugh again.” She looked up at me quickly. “If it's any comfort, your friend was dead before he hit the ground.”

I forced my eyes back to the body that had been split open on the slab. The poor bastard. Ray had been through enough; he didn't deserve any of this. Rage coursed through me. “No, senior guardian,” I said viciously, “it isn't any comfort to know that he spent the last seconds of his life in agony with his mouth and throat burning up. It isn't any fucking comfort at all.”

Sophia looked at me as if I'd just spat in her face. I felt Davie's bulk at my side.

“Cool it, Quint,” he said in a low voice. “It's not the senior guardian's fault.”

“Cool it?” I let out a strangled laugh. “How can anyone cool it in this place during the Big Heat?” I went over to a sink and splashed tepid water over my head. Eventually I managed to get my breathing under control.

Sophia had gone back to her slides and test tubes.

“Sorry,” I said quietly. “Like you said, Ray was my friend.” I glanced back at his remains, this time more dispassionately. If I was going to catch the bastard who killed him, I had to do as Davie said.

Sophia nodded curtly and picked up a clipboard. “The dose has been estimated at slightly over one and a half grains. Higher than the earlier cases.”

“How did you get on to it?” I asked.

“I'd have checked for nicotine anyway but I realised very quickly that there was vomit in his mouth and throat. That's not exactly standard with people who fall to their deaths.”

“I don't understand this, Dalrymple.” Hamilton was shaking his head. “I don't understand it at all. There was no sign of any whisky bottle. That's not like the first two victims.” He stared at me woodenly. “And there's been no further communication from the lunatics behind this.”

“Not yet there hasn't,” I said. “That could change at any time.”

“There was no bottle left at the retirement home either,” Davie said.

I nodded. “True enough. But you're right, Lewis. This latest killing is different. Whoever carried it out took a hell of a risk going into a barracks building and  . . .” I broke off. Could there have been some pressing reason for Ray to be murdered? One that overrode the dangers of the killer being seen? I tried to imagine what that reason might be.

“And?” Sophia asked, impatient for me to complete my sentence.

Davie came to my rescue. “At least there's no question of it being suicide now.”

“No,” I said, still picturing Ray's room in my mind. “Not only was there no bottle but there were no drinking vessels. Someone brought the poisoned whisky into the room and took it away again after Ray drank some.” I turned to Sophia. “Any bruises or scratches, that kind of thing, on the body?”

She shook her head. “Nothing that isn't consistent with the impact.”

I scratched the stubble on my chin. “So it could be that Ray took the whisky willingly. And that he jumped rather than was pushed.”

“Why would he have done either of those things?” Hamilton demanded.

I shrugged. “Maybe he thought the whisky was all right. And as for jumping, the window was probably already open. And he was in agony, his throat on fire. He was in desperate need of air.” Then I remembered the pile of books by the window. What had Ray done in the last seconds of his life? When he realised he'd been poisoned, could he have tried to leave some kind of message?

“Maybe he wanted to land the killer in the shit  . . .” Davie paused. “Excuse me, guardians. Maybe he wanted to attract attention.”

Hamilton nodded. “Except nobody else noticed.”

“No, but he probably panicked the killer,” I said. “Whence, no whisky bottle left behind. He just headed for the exit at terminal velocity.”

“He?” Sophia said, her eyes narrowing. “What makes you think the killer was a male? Your friend Katharine Kirkwood is still on the run. Maybe the bottles of whisky we found in her backpack weren't the only ones she had.”

Davie and Hamilton looked at me expectantly, as if the senior guardian had spoken words of indisputable wisdom. Christ, maybe she had. Katharine's activities over the last couple of days were as unfathomable to me as a Finance Directorate policy paper. I didn't know whether I was coming or going with her. So I went, passing Ray's remains and shaking my head. His killer was going to pay a heavy price, no matter who he or she was.

“Where are you going?” Davie asked as he caught me up at the infirmary exit.

“To check something out.” I stuck my hand out. “Keys.”

“I'll come with you.”

“That isn't a good idea.” I stopped by his Land-Rover, hand still extended.

“At least tell me where you're going, Quint,” he said desperately, giving me the keys.

“To the houses of the dead,” I said.

That gave him something to chew on.

“Katharine?” I spoke her name in a loud whisper for about the twentieth time then walked into a gravestone the thin beam of my torch had missed. “Fuck.”

“Over here. And stop sweet-talking me.”

I swung the beam round and caught a glimpse of her face a couple of rows further on. “You've moved campsite,” I said accusingly.

“Got to keep you guessing, haven't I?”

I went over and sat down on the base of an unusually large and imposing stone cross. It probably marked the grave of a Member of the Scottish Parliament from the time before the country began to break up – after 2002, most politicians ended up on funeral pyres built by the outraged voters they'd ripped off.

“What are you doing here in the middle of the night?” Katharine asked. “Did you bring any water?”

“Sorry.” I extinguished the torch. The last thing I wanted now was a guard patrol to pick us up. “I had other things on my mind.”

“Like what?” She leaned towards me and I felt her breath on my cheek.

I leaned back. “Like where were you earlier tonight?”

“What do you mean?” Her voice was immediately less warm.

“It's a simple question, Katharine. Where were you during the evening? In fact, where have you been and what have you been doing since you came back to the city? I need straight answers right now.”

She was still close, her breath making my face tingle. “I haven't been anywhere tonight,” she said quietly. “I've been here since you left.”

I switched the torch back on and grabbed her jacket. There was nothing akin to a bottle or container that could have held whisky. The waterbottles I'd brought her were in a bag, empty. I took the tops off all of them and sniffed. No odour of spirits.

“What's going on?” she asked.

“I need to search you, Katharine. Hold still.” I ran my hands down her upper body, feeling nothing in her shirt pocket. There was an interesting convexity underneath it.

“Are you having fun?” Katharine asked.

“Just a minute.” I ran my hands over her trousers, finding nothing incriminating.

“Don't forget this,” she said, reaching her arm round her back in a sudden movement.

The point of her knife was against my belly. I felt my armpits get sodden in a second.

“Oh, sorry. I'm holding it the wrong way. How careless of me.” She flipped her hand over and pressed the haft of the knife against my stomach. “Take it if you want.”