This was very strange. Not only had she used my full name, which she'd always disliked, but she almost sounded like she was getting emotional. Then I got a real shock. As she'd guessed, my first reaction was to take my eyes off her. After a struggle, I managed to hold my gaze steady.
“My God, Mother, what's happened to you?”
She was still unbent despite her seventy-four years, but there the resemblance to the woman I'd known ended. She had put on a lot of weight. What remained of her hair, which had once been a mass of thick curls, was sparse, giving the impression that handfuls of it had been pulled out. There were purple lesions on her arthritic hands and a pinkish rash on her face. But it was the shape of her face that had changed most. Even the year before it had still been finely drawn, the cheekbones prominent and the skin delicate. Now it was round and swollen, the eyes sunken. Moon face, I thought. She looked like the man in the moon.
She sat down slowly, laying her arms out on the surface of the desk. “It's the lupus.”
“But it was never like this before.” I wanted to sit down badly but I wasn't going to without an invitation. “You just had occasional fevers and pain in your joints, didn't you?”
“Sit down, for goodness sake,” my mother said irritably. Hector and I had always been wary of rousing her temper. “Don't worry, I still have fevers and joint pain. Apparently I've been lucky to escape these recent symptoms for so long.”
The Georgian chair I was sitting on was seriously uncomfortable. “And there's still no cure?” I asked, moving my legs.
“Sit still!” She shook her head. “Not yet. The medical guardian's treating me with something he's optimistic about. Up until last month all he could prescribe were painkillers and drugs for the lesions. The problem is to stop the disease advancing. It seems systemic lupus erythematosus can attack any organ â kidneys, heart, even the brain.” She smiled for the first time since I'd arrived. “Maybe your old mother's finally going to be certifiable.”
I looked away, catching a glimpse through the gloom of the single work of art the guardians allow themselves to choose from the city's collections. For some reason my mother had taken a Renoir of a buxom woman suckling a child.
“I have approved the Council's recommendation to publicise the second murder,” she said, opening the thick file in front of her. Clearly she was still able to work even though she wasn't showing up to meetings. “I gather you are doubtful that these latest killings are the work of the Ear, Nose and Throat Man.”
“Because of the differences in the modus operandi.”
She looked at me sternly. “Is that the only reason?” She waited to see if I had the nerve to answer. I didn't. “I'm not going to press you about what happened five years ago. I wasn't senior guardian at the time, so it doesn't directly concern me.”
She was my mother at the time, but given the guardians' renunciation of family life, I suppose that didn't concern her either.
“I know that you were under a lot of pressure, running the operations against the drugs gangs as well as the investigation into the murders.”
This was her attempt at compassion. No mention of Caro, of course. She knew about our ties, but it suited her to see us as nothing more than a pair of auxiliaries who spent time together only on duty and at sex sessions.
“I also know that you were never one to shirk your duty, Quintilian. For all your childish egocentricity. Do we understand each other?”
I don't know how much she understood me, but I knew what she meant all right. She was twisting my arm. Any displays of petulance during this investigation and she'd start asking awkward questions about that night in the gardens.
She turned a page. “I also gather you think an auxiliary might be involved.”
“There's a chance of that.”
“A lot of circumstantial evidence, if you ask me. Anyway, you're forgetting one essential point.”
“What?” I demanded. I was pretty sure I hadn't overlooked anything significant.
“The inherent illogicality.”
I nodded slowly and tried to restrain myself. I might have known she would bring philosophy into it. She was a professor in that department at the university before the Enlightenment came to power. “You mean auxiliaries are trained to serve the Council so blindly that they can never break the law?”
She refused to be drawn. “Auxiliaries, like all citizens, are encouraged to think for themselves. There's no question of them following instructions blindly. The whole thrust of our educational system is towards the fostering of independent but discriminating thought.”
“Spare me the lecture, Mother.”
“It is not a lecture. There are certain basic precepts that the people accept, one of which is the inviolability of the body.” She smiled briefly. “Despite what's happened to my own body, even I can uphold that. We abolished capital punishment for that reason, we eradicated physical violence in all its forms from the streets.”
“Someone slipped through the net. In fact, a lot of people did. There's no shortage of rejects. Look at me. The system didn't want me.”
She raised a finger. “You, Quintilian, were always wilful. But even you would accept that the city is a better place now.”
“Maybe,” I conceded. “But at what cost?”
“Cost? There is always some cost. In the past the poor and the unemployed bore it. Now everyone makes sacrifices. Surely you don't disagree with that principle?”
“Not as far as it goes. But what about the effect on people's hearts and minds?”
“Since when have you been an expert in those fields?” she asked caustically.
I stood up and leaned over her desk. “I don't have to be an expert to see that someone out there has been so messed up by your system that he's going around cutting people up.”
She nodded reluctantly. “I'll grant you there's at least one madman in the city. Who knows? Maybe there's a cell of dissidents at work. The point is, how do we put a stop to the killings?” Apparently it was a rhetorical question, as she raised her hand shakily to shut me up. “Listen carefully. No doubt you think we guardians are out of touch with the realities of life in Edinburgh. All right. I'm prepared to concede that some of my colleagues would be better off in retirement homes like your father.”
I'd have been surprised if there was any display of emotion to go with this mention of Hector.
“But I'll say this too,” my mother continued. “If â and I see it as only the remotest possibility â if an auxiliary is involved, there will be some entirely logical reason. So concentrate on the question of motive. An auxiliary is incapable of acting irrationally, I assure you.”
I was an auxiliary when I went after the ENT Man, but she didn't know that, of course. Maybe that was a rational act. I looked at the moon-shaped face and devastated hair. I couldn't help myself admiring her. But I knew without recourse to philosophical definitions that admiration is not the same as love.
“I'll bear that in mind, Mother,” I said as I turned towards the door. “Unfortunately I've got even less of an idea about the killer's motive than I have of his identity.”
In the Land-Rover on the way home I looked out at the city. The streets shone in bright moonlight and the floodlit mass of the castle rock reared up to my left â the illuminated heart of the Council's regime. At least that's how it's presented to the tourists. Citizens are more inclined to remember it's the headquarters of the City Guard.
I made myself go over the points I'd chickened out of bringing up with my mother. She always did have an imperious air that made contradicting her difficult, but this time I'd done even worse than usual. I wanted to ask her why she'd voted against the anti-corruption safeguard my father showed me. She'd probably just have wheeled out the standard line about how the citizen body now trusted the Council implicitly, while in the past they'd justifiably no faith in either their elected or hereditary rulers. Given the chaos inspired by the last UK government and the discredited monarchy, I couldn't have argued with that. But were the Council and its servants still worthy of that trust?
I also wished I'd had the nerve to ask her how much she knew about the activities of senior auxiliaries like Billy Geddes. I'd have liked to know what she thought she was doing drafting me on to the investigation without so much as a personal note too. She wouldn't even have bothered replying to that question.
It was only when I found myself on the pavement in Gilmore Place breathing in lungfuls of exhaust fumes that I remembered Katharine. No doubt the guardswoman would have reported the presence of a female citizen in my flat to my mother's office. Much joy might she have of that piece of information. The smile froze on my lips when it occurred to me that Katharine had probably been back in her own flat for a long time.
I opened the door and fumbled for the box of matches by the candle.
“Is that you, Quint?”
I jumped like a ewe surprised by a sex-starved shepherd. As the flame flared, I saw that she was sitting in the same place on the sofa. “Shit! Why didn't you light the candle?”
“Candle?” She shrugged. “I'm not afraid of the dark.”
“Well I am,” I shouted. “I assumed you'd gone.”
“Why?” She sounded puzzled. “I said I'd wait for you.”
I nodded. “Sorry. I just had a testing time with the senior guardian.”
“Yes, you look like you've been in a fight. Have a drink.” She pushed the bottle towards me. “Do you often visit the senior guardian?”
I shook my head and poured some whisky. I had a feeling she was about to start picking my brains.
“Want to talk about it?”
I did, but how could I trust her? Anyway, I was suddenly feeling completely exhausted. “It's classified,” I said, resorting to the coward's defence. “Look, I'm going to have to crash. We can talk in the morning. You take the bed. It won't be the first time I've passed out on the sofa.”
“Quint?” Katharine said quietly, lifting the candle and pointing to Caro's photograph. “Who is she?”
My stomach knotted. I took a couple of deep breaths. “Someone I lost,” I said in an even quieter voice than hers.
She looked at me but didn't say anything else.
“Goodnight,” I said abruptly. I wanted to be alone.
She got up. “I want to help, Quint. To find Adam, I mean. And . . .” She didn't finish the sentence.
“There are some clean sheets in the bottom drawer.”
“I'm the last person who needs clean sheets,” she said over her shoulder. “Goodnight, sweet prince.”
I was ready to drop but sleep didn't come immediately. I was thinking about what had led to Katharine's demotion. I'd sometimes heard rumours that the Prostitution Services Department used auxiliaries as undercover tarts to gather information on tourists in the city's hotels. Like most men who never go with whores, I always found them desperately alluring. A vision of Mary, Queen of Scots in the nightclub came to me; the way she'd gazed out over the crowd made it seem like every man there was naked and under her power. Then I thought of Katharine in my bed next door. Caro was absent from my dreams that night.
I often hear music in my sleep. This time it was Bessie Smith. She was singing “Mama's Got the Blues”.
Chapter Eight
I WAS FOLLOWING
Caro up a hillside. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get any closer to her. The Ear, Nose and Throat Man was coming up on me though. I could smell the stink from his rotting teeth. Eventually Davie's pounding woke me.
“You should give me a key, Quint,” he said. “Then I could bring you breakfast in bed.” He took in the clothes scattered around the sofa. “Or not, as the case may be.” He went over to the electric ring. “Did you forget where the bedroom is?”
“Shut it, guardsman.” I struggled into my trousers. Then I noticed that the bedroom door was open. On the neatly made bed I found a note. “Morning shift. Thanks for the bed.
I want to help
. K.” I still wasn't sure how to take the offer.
The mobile phone rang as I was finishing the coffee Davie'd made. He answered it, his back straightening, then handed it to me. “The chief.”
“Dalrymple? Get yourself down to Dean Terrace.” Hamilton sounded like a teenage boy who's stumbled on his father's store of dirty magazines. “We've found a plastic bag full of clothing.”
“I'm on my way. For Christ's sake, don't touch anything.”
By the time I'd got my jacket on, Davie was already halfway down the stairs.
“That's it down there.” Hamilton pointed at a shiny maroon object that was lodged between two rocks under the bridge.
I put on a pair of rubber gloves and clambered down. The Water of Leith sucked and pulled at the piles as it flowed past. It was only a couple of feet deep and choked with vegetation. Looking back to the slopes of the park four hundred yards upstream where the body had been found, I wondered if the river could have carried the bag this far. I leaned forward and lifted it up. I had to pull hard to dislodge it. A sodden sleeve flapped about like the neck of a dead swan.
One of the forensics team stood waiting with a photographer. I handed him the bundle and watched as he removed a labourer's tunic and trousers, both size extra-large, then a pair of thick socks. There were bloodstains on everything.
“Apart from the sleeve, everything is dry,” the scientist said.
“Meaning the bag was carefully placed there, not swept down by the water,” I added.
Hamilton looked at me uncomprehendingly. “Have your report ready as soon as possible,” he said to the forensics man, who was packing the clothes carefully in separate bags. Then he led me away. “What do you mean the bag was placed there?”