“Want to talk about it?”
I thought about that. Over the past five years I'd got used to working things out on my own, with a bit of help from the old man occasionally. But the fact that Davie didn't know about the ENT Man might be an advantage. “All right. Drive up to the Lawnmarket. We don't want Hamilton to see us having a heart-to-heart, do we?”
On the Royal Mile the souvenir shops were still open, tourists wandering around with their purchases in lurid tartan plastic bags that invariably clashed with their clothes.
“Pull up over there.” I pointed to the gallows where I'd seen the hanging two days before. “Have you ever heard any rumours about the mock executions they stage here?”
“Rumours?” He looked puzzled. “The only story I heard was the executions were the chief's very own idea. He persuaded the tourism guardian to go ahead with them.”
“Is that right?” I wondered if Hamilton was clutching at any way, even as theatre, to keep the ultimate deterrent alive. Or had he taken it upon himself to dispense summary justice? “Forget it,” I said to Davie. It seemed to have nothing to do with the case and I didn't want to test his loyalty too hard.
I needn't have worried. He'd already forgotten the subject and was busy exchanging smiles with a guardswoman who'd walked up.
“Friend of yours?” I asked as she moved away.
“Auxiliaries don't have friends, citizen. You know that.” Then he grinned. “I have spent the occasional sex session with her though.”
“Oh aye. Don't you think those sessions are a bit soulless?”
“Why? There's nothing wrong with safe sex.” He was avoiding my eyes.
“What about emotional involvement?”
He shrugged. “What about it? It just gets in the way.”
“Come on, Davie. Haven't you ever fallen for a woman?”
“I thought we were going to talk about the investigation.”
“We are. Just answer that simple question first.”
He let out a long breath. “All right. Yes, I've been in love, whatever that means. Satisfied?”
I gave him a smile. “For the time being. Right, let's look at the second murder. Yellowlees and the forensics people will confirm the time of death tomorrow. I'm not expecting any surprises, so what are we going to do?”
“Check family, friends, workplace of the victim.”
“Yes, there's going to be plenty of legwork over the next few days. But there are other angles too. Put yourself in the murderer's shoes. Or boots.”
“Killing someone in a public park isn't a job you'd do in daylight.”
“Good one, Davie. That's just what I said to your boss.”
He scratched his beard. “So the murder happened at night . . . Christ, he must have had a torch.” He turned to me. “Now I understand why the guardians were down on you. You think it was an auxiliary. Bloody hell, Quint.”
“Hang on a minute. There isn't much to go on. The boots weren't auxiliary issue. All I'm saying is that we should open our minds to the possibility.”
He didn't go for it. “There's no way one of us would go around throttling people and removing their organs, no way.”
I hadn't expected him to be convinced easily. In fact I'd have been suspicious if he hadn't objected. The auxiliary training programme is so intense that self-doubt is an early casualty. I put my hand in my pocket. “Here's your knife, by the way.”
He looked at it for a moment. “You told them one of these could have been used on the victims, didn't you?”
“Actually, it was the medical guardian who said so.”
“But you asked the question.”
“I asked the question.”
He shook his head slowly. “Have you got a burning desire to spend the rest of your life down the mines?”
I laughed. “I told you. They won't have me back there. Any other thoughts?”
“The killer's clothes. They must have been heavily bloodstained. It's too bloody cold at this time of year to go prancing around in the nude like he did in Stevenson Hall.”
“I agree. I got Hamilton to organise search parties in a mile radius from Dean Gardens. There's a good chance he'll have dumped his clothes.”
“Meaning he had others with him to change into.”
“Meaning, as if we didn't know it, that the murder was carefully planned.”
Twilight was well advanced though the bright lights on the Royal Mile made it hard to tell.
“Come on,” I said. “We'd better get going. I've got a meeting with Katharine Kirkwood.”
Davie started the engine. “You haven't told me who she is.”
I looked down the street to the ruined palace. “I haven't found that out myself yet, my friend.”
Chapter Seven
Davie parked outside my flat and joined me on the pavement.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I'm coming with you.”
“No, you're not. This has nothing to do with the murders.”
He looked dubious. “Why did we give that knife to forensics then?”
“Just covering every angle. See you in the morning.”
He laughed. “If you're sure you can manage on your own.”
“Goodnight, guardsman.” I pushed open the street door. Traces of her perfume confirmed that she was in the vicinity. I ran up the stairs.
Katharine Kirkwood was sitting against my door, knees apart. “Here you are at last.” She examined her watch in the dim light of the stairwell. “I've got to get home by curfew time.”
I led her into my rooms. “You don't have to worry about that.” I showed her my Council authorisation.
She glanced at it. “I suppose this means you're going to stop looking for Adam.” She fixed me with an acid look. “If you ever started.”
I went over to the table and picked up the whisky bottle. “Drink?”
She shook her head dismissively.
I didn't fancy drinking on my own. “Sit down. I need to ask you some questions.”
“About Adam?”
I nodded slowly. “What were you doing in his flat this morning, Katharine?”
“What do you think? I'm worried about him.” She looked away. “I miss him.”
“Look, I'll be straight with you. I was called to a Council meeting straight after I met you on Friday evening. I haven't had time to check anything about your brother.”
“Great.” She stood up and walked to the door.
“I haven't finished.”
Katharine opened the door. “But I have,” she said over her shoulder.
I had to tell her. “There's been a murder.”
She stopped dead in the doorway.
“Don't worry,” I added quickly. “Adam wasn't the victim.”
She came back in. “So that's what all those guard vehicles were doing at Dean Gardens.” She sat down opposite me. “You're investigating that?”
“Among other things.”
Katharine took her bag from her knees and loosened her coat. “You must be a real detective.”
“I have some relevant experience.”
“What's this murder got to do with me? Or with Adam?”
I decided to try the victim's name out on her. “Do you know a citizen called Rory Baillie?”
She shook her head after a few moments' thought.
“Did you ever hear your brother mention that name?”
The same reponse. It seemed genuine. “Rory Baillie was killed by someone wearing size twelve citizen-issue boots.”
Katharine was looking straight at me, her elbows resting on her knees. She wasn't going to give me any help.
I shrugged. “Your brother takes that shoe size, he lives down the road from the murder site and he hasn't been seen for over ten days.”
Her eyes opened wide. “You think Adam killed someone?”
“No. But I need to find him so I can rule him out as a potential suspect.”
She stood up and stared down at me. “You've got it all wrong. Adam couldn't kill anyone. He may be tall and strong but he's never been aggressive.”
“I need to know more, Katharine.”
She raised her left hand to her forehead and drew long fingers across it. “All right.” She sat down again, her hotel-issue skirt riding up over black-stockinged thighs. She didn't pull the skirt back down. “It was true what you said, even if you were only guessing. I'm very close to Adam. Our parents were doctors, Enlightenment supporters. Not that they had time to get very involved with the party, they were so busy. Adam and I were often on our own at home. He's so much younger than I am. I was always looking after him.” She gave a curious, winsome smile that changed the appearance of her face completely. “I still think of him as a little boy.” Then her expression hardened again. “Our parents died in the flu epidemic of 2010. Adam was fifteen. I was in the City Guard at the time. They gave me the afternoon off to get him settled into the orphans' barracks.”
“They're a caring crowd in the Public Order Directorate.”
She nodded without smiling. “That was when I first had doubts about the system.”
“And doubts are something auxiliaries aren't allowed to entertain.”
“You've been through the same process, haven't you, Quint?” She was doing it again â turning the discussion away from her to me.
This time I wasn't going to let her get away with it. “So why exactly were you demoted?”
Katharine finally became aware of the state of her thighs and covered them in a rapid movement. She held her lower lip between her teeth for a few moments. “A couple of months later I finished my tour of duty in the guard. I was transferred to the Prostitution Services Department.”
I had a flash of Patsy Cameron, that department's head, in the Bearskin and wondered if Katharine knew her. “In what capacity?”
She laughed harshly. “It said âGeneral Duties' on my transfer papers. You can imagine what that meant.”
I looked at her and tried to work out how much of what she'd said was true. Then I heard the sound of a Land-Rover pulling up in the street below and thought of Davie. I was guilty about excluding him, but I reckoned Katharine wouldn't have said anything with a guardsman present.
There were footsteps on the staircase. I opened the door just before the knocking started.
A slim female form in a guard uniform fell against me. “Sorry, citizen,” she said with unusual civility. She handed me an envelope.
I recognised the seal immediately. “That's all I need.” It was a summons to the senior guardian. “We haven't finished,” I said to Katharine. “Can you wait here? I'll be back as soon as I can.”
She looked at me then nodded. “Why not? My place isn't any better.”
I expected to find her there when I returned about as much as I expected the murderer to give himself up without a fight.
The guardians pride themselves on their rejection of private property and the trappings traditionally enjoyed by those in power. Their ascetic lifestyle and separation from members of their families are an example to auxiliaries, as well as a guarantee of their probity to ordinary citizens. But like all fanatics, they ruin their case by overstatement. The senior guardian's Land-Rover must have been the oldest in the fleet, the maroon pennant fluttering over bodywork that wouldn't even have had scrap value in the days when there was such a thing as a used car market.
The guardswoman was used to the ancient vehicle's ways, dextrously slipping from gear to gear without too much stirring of the slack lever. If she had any idea of who I was, she wasn't showing it. She stopped at the Great Stuart Street barrier and pointed the direction.
“It's number . . .”
“Don't worry, I know which one it is. Thanks for the ride.”
The auxiliary's face remained impassive. “I'll be waiting for you here.”
I couldn't resist the temptation to slam the door. The guardsman who checked my ID wasn't impressed.
“You are aware of the regulation about silence in the proximity of Moray Place, aren't you, citizen?”
“Must have slipped my mind.”
He let me into the circular street which contains the guardians' residences. Their demand for silence was a typical example of their tendency to overlegislate. It's one thing to exclude all vehicles from the street, but telling citizens to keep quiet as they pass is comical. Not that any action is taken over the racket from the gambling tents in Charlotte Square; tourists can make as much noise as they like as long as they keep spending money.
The senior guardian had retained control of the Education Directorate and lived where the Educational Institute of Scotland had been located before independence. The black door opened a second after I put my finger to the bell and a female auxiliary in a grey suit admitted me.
“Go up to the second floor, citizen.”
I climbed the elegant staircase slowly, trying to put off what was about to happen. It was over a year since I'd been in the building and then I'd been torn to shreds. I ran through the report I was going to make and tried unsuccessfully to decide which of my ideas I should come clean about.
Another administrative auxiliary opened the high door to the guardian's study. I walked in reluctantly, rubbing at a dusty mark I'd just noticed on my trousers. The room was lit by a single lamp which cast a glow around the desk and left the walls and peripheral furniture in gloom. The city's senior executive was standing, back to me, beside the thick curtains.
“Good evening, citizen.” The voice was lower than it had been, but its edge was still perceptible.
I walked up to the desk. “Hello, Mother.” I waited for her to turn, knowing that my use of that form of address would have annoyed her. “You sound tired.”
The laugh that prompted was humourless, almost bitter. I was surprised. Whatever else I could accuse my mother of, she'd never let self-pity get the better of her.
“If only being tired was all I had to put up with.” Then her voice softened. “Do not look away, Quintilian, I beg you.”