Water of Death (42 page)

“Quint, you're not going to the—”

“Out.”

I took the bend at an angle that made the clapped-out van's suspension creak horrendously then headed down Leith Walk at speed.

I stopped beside the Water of Leith thirty yards from the port and peered through the pockmarked windscreen. The barrier was down and I could see the sentry's beret-topped head in the booth. Beyond the fence there didn't seem to be much going on. The warehouses obscured the docks and it was impossible to tell how many boats were alongside.

I sat back and considered my options. Number one – call up Hamilton and send in the heavy squad. That would lead to plenty of casualties, given the high number of automatic weapons around the port area. It wouldn't do Katharine much good if she was down here either. I was pretty sure she was. Number two – call Davie and ask him to give me some personalised backup. Tempting, but I didn't want to get him shot to pieces. Number three – go in on my own. Even less tempting, but at least I might be able to reason with the man I was after from what would obviously be a position of extreme weakness. That might stop him shooting me for a few seconds. It looked like number three was the one.

My mobile went off in my pocket.

“Quint? Davie. You were right, you smartarse. The prints were so complete that they matched them almost immediately.”

“Right.” I felt my heart begin to dance a hornpipe.

“Are you by any chance down at the port, Quint?”

“Well spotted, guardsman.”

“Wait for me. Don't go in on your own. You know what those guys are like.”

“Come down on your own. I don't want Hamilton to turn this place into an Edinburgh version of Windsor the day the mob caught up with the royal family.”

“Okay.” He sounded very dubious. “But wait for me outside, all right?”

“Okay. Outside. Out.”

But I was already thinking about Katharine again. For her, every second might count. At least Davie knew where I was now. That would have to do.

I looked ahead at the guard post. There was no way the sentry would let me in, even if I asked nicely, but a fuel truck had just pulled up at the gate. It was too good an opportunity to miss. I floored the accelerator and drove the Nasmyth Barracks van straight at the gap between the barrier and the truck. To my amazement there was enough space for me to get through, though I left a lot of rubber on the asphalt. I thought I'd made it into the compound without damage, but I was wrong. The tanker jerked forward as I passed him and caught my rear bumper. That sent me swerving all over the place. For an uncomfortably long moment I thought I was going to end up in the Water of Leith at the point where it runs into the Enlightenment Dock. I managed to straighten up in time.

Looking ahead, I saw the battered hulk that was the pride of the Fisheries Guard. It was in the process of casting off, its shoreside deck lined with crew members holding automatic weapons. In the shed-like construction that was the vessel's wheelhouse I saw two figures that I recognised immediately. One was Katharine, her eyes fixed on my vehicle as it careered towards the dock. The other was the man who'd left his prints on the Land-Rover: Jamieson 369, also known as Dirty Harry – the admiral of the bloody fleet.

I held the horn down to make them stop then slammed the brake pedal to the floor. Nothing much happened. Now I realised what the Nasmyth auxiliary had been trying to tell me when I took the van – the brakes were buggered. The Fisheries Guard vessel loomed nearer, the ropes now free of the bollards and being pulled on board by crewmen with curious looks on their faces. This time I had only two choices – hit the harbour wall or take a dive into the oil-topped, filth-ridden outflow from Edinburgh's river. The steering wheel jerked left and made the decision for me. It looked like I was destined for the Enlightenment Dock after all.

The van took off gracelessly into the exhaust-filled air astern of the boat then dropped like a cow doing a belly flop.

Into the Water of Leith. Or death.

Chapter Eighteen

I was in luck. The heavily scratched windscreen flew out in one piece the second the van hit the water. I was winded by the impact but I managed to scramble out of the gap before the vehicle started to sink. I found myself crouching on the foundering bonnet, looking up at the row of gun-toting head-bangers along the boat's rail. The words “frying pan” and “fire” sprang to mind.

“You'd better throw the wanker a line.” I couldn't see Dirty Harry but his rough tones were easy enough to recognise.

The Fisheries Guard vessel's engines were gunned as the skipper held its position in the middle of the narrow dock. I choked in the acrid fumes as I grabbed the rope and was dragged through the scummy water. That was all the help they gave me. I had to heave myself up to the rail and collapse over it under my own steam. Then the muzzle of a well-oiled Uzi was jammed into my neck.

“On your feet, knobsucker. The chief wants to talk to you.”

It seemed like a good idea to comply with the hard-bitten crewman's order. I was shoved up to the wheelhouse, my wet boots skidding on the steps.

Katharine moved back from the door. “Are you all right, Quint?” she asked. There was concern in her voice but she avoided looking at me. She didn't seem to have been harmed. Doubt suddenly laid into me like a pre-Enlightenment mugger. Surely she wasn't part of Dirty Harry's operation?

That fear didn't last long.

“Shut it, woman,” the big man snarled, turning his good eye on her. Katharine stared back at him with undisguised loathing. “The two of you are seconds away from a watery grave.”

“Christ, Harry, make up your mind,” I said. “You just saved me from one of those.”

He ignored that as he concentrated on spinning the wheel and ratcheting up the engine revs. The boat moved forward surprisingly smoothly. Despite looking like a wreck that had just been dredged from the sea bottom, it had been well maintained. Shouts came from the quayside and I looked out of the wheelhouse. A line of crewmen and dock workers were waving their arms slowly, their faces sombre. I remembered scenes in old war films showing U-boats being cheered out of port.

“Do they always look this joyful when you go on patrol?” I asked the captain.

Dirty Harry glanced at me then let out a string of sardonic laughs. “We're not going on patrol, citizen smart fucker,” he said, his face hardening. “We're heading for the other side of the North Sea.” He eased the engine controls higher. “And we're not coming back.”

I watched as the buildings of Leith began to shrink in the distance. Harry steered east after we cleared the rocks round the harbour entrance. The juddering all over the boat suggested that maximum safe speed had been reached. I tried to talk to Katharine a couple of times but the skipper made it clear that was contrary to the ship's code of conduct by putting his hand on the haft of his auxiliary knife. So I was forced to suffer in silence as Arthur's Seat and the Castle Rock came into perspective in the Big Heat's hazy air and then began to fade away. Shit, this was not going the way I expected.

“Look, Harry,” I said, going up to the piratical figure at the wheel. “I don't think this is a very good idea.”

“Is that right, you fucking scumbag?” he roared. Getting up Dirty Harry's nose wasn't a very good idea either. “You fucked up our fucking treasure-trove, you forced us to desert and you came close to putting a van through my hull. I don't think you're an expert on good fucking ideas, pal.”

I shrugged. “Personally, I think you're in the clear.” I looked at him steadily, making him shoot an inquisitive glance at me. “Okay, so going along with Ray when he asked you to dig out the cellar in Craiglockhart was against regulations, but it's not necessarily a demotion offence.”

I kept my eyes off Katharine. I was going to have to try a high-risk strategy to get us off the boat. If I wasn't careful, I would end up with her knife in my chest.

“I mean, disposing of those headbangers in the mill was a major service to the city,” I said.

I felt Katharine go tense at my side. As I thought, she wanted more than a pound of flesh from the killer of her friend Peter Bryson. Fortunately she didn't act hastily.

Harry nodded slowly. “I might have fucking known. The genius has worked it out.” Then he looked at me fiercely. “Have you found out who killed Ray? I want that fucker's heart.”

Jesus, I was surrounded by avenging angels. I shook my head. “Not yet I haven't. But if you let me off this rustbucket I'll find the bastard.”

His expression loosened slightly. “Aye, you were a mate of his too, weren't you?”

“I was. So how about it? Will you let Katharine and me go?”

He stared ahead. “Convince me it's worth my while, citizen.”

I shivered and wrapped my arms round my upper body. It was cool out on the estuary and my sodden clothes had dripped what looked like gallons on to the wooden deck. I made the depressing discovery that my mobile had not come with me out of the van. Katharine was standing as still as a statue, her eyes locked on Harry. I needed to use my rhetorical skills to get us off the Fisheries Guard's version of the
Titanic
before she leaped at the big man and tore his remaining eye out.

“Like I say, Harry, the Council will look favourably on the fact that you dealt with the people responsible for the poisonings. What happened? Did you come across them by accident?”

He looked at me suspiciously, letting me know he'd spotted that I was pumping him. Then he nodded. “Aye. A pair of my lads saw one of them near Craiglockhart and followed him back to the old mill.”

“You went back there later, didn't you? And when you discovered the bottles of the Ultimate Usquebaugh you beat the hell out of them.”

“Aye. They were headcases. We heard them talking about how they were going to put poison in drinking-water tanks. They didn't care how many people died until the Council gave them a cut of the tourist revenues.” He grinned humourlessly. “Killing them was a pleasure.”

“Killing you will be a pleasure,” Katharine said, stepping towards Harry. “I knew one of those guys.”

The big man didn't care. “They were all shites,” he said emphatically. “All of them except the woman. She was well out of her depth. I heard the three men laughing about how the guardians would crap themselves when citizens and tourists started dying.”

Katharine took a step back. It looked like her feelings for Peter Bryson were in the process of changing.

“Lucky for you that the woman who survived went into a coma,” I said. “She could have identified you as auxiliaries.”

He snorted. “You think we went about dressed in guard uniforms when we were out there? We changed back into them when we crossed the city line.”

“Which you did when there were guard personnel on duty who knew you and turned a blind eye,” I said, thinking on the hoof. “You still wore auxiliary boots in the mill house though. That made me wonder. What about Ray? Was he with you on the attack?”

“Aye, the stupid bugger. He insisted on coming along. I don't know what he thought he could do with one arm. He'd have been better off sticking with his books.”

“Did he see someone else there?” I'd remembered that Katharine wasn't sure if there were three or four men.

Harry turned to me. “How the fuck do you know that?”

“I'm a class act,” I said, laughing till I saw the way he was looking at me. “This could be important, Harry. What did Ray see?”

“Said
he saw,” he corrected. “He said he saw another guy peering in the window when we hit the fuckers.”

“Did he say what he looked like, this guy?”

The skipper raised his shoulders. “Said he was youngish, thin build, with very short hair. And a manic look in his eyes. He was only there for a few seconds but he spooked Ray completely. We had a scout around outside for him but there was no sign. Jesus.” He turned to me, his face racked with unlikely anguish. “Do you think he was the fucker who killed Ray?”

“I think so. Have you ever heard of a citizen called Alexander Kennedy?”

He nodded. “The name rings a bell. Wasn't there an all-barracks out for him?”

“Yeah. But you haven't heard of him apart from that?”

“No. Was he in with those arseholes?”

“I think so.” I stared at him again. “He's still on the loose, Harry. And I think he's got more of the poisoned whisky. You have to take me back. I can catch the bastard. He probably killed Ray, for Christ's sake. And he might kill dozens of other innocent people.”

He glanced at me, squinting through his good eye then slowly nodding his head. “All right. But we're still getting out of this cesspit of a city. That's what Ray and I agreed with the arse-bandit in the Culture Directorate and that's what I'm going to do with my boys.” He cut the revs. “There's something you'd better have a look at before you go, citizen smartarse.”