Water of Death (18 page)

The driver pulled up at the barrier outside the village and I flashed my authorisation. To our right what remained of the loch, a small extent of swamp in the central depression, glowed dull brown in the sunlight. A couple of seagulls flipflopped across the mud looking for something to get their beaks round. The acrid smell of drying excrement hung over the place.

“Where to, citizen?” the guardswoman asked as the barrier was raised.

“Park outside the gate. I won't be long.” I didn't want her to know which inmate I was visiting. It would get back to Hamilton sooner or later but I didn't see why I should make things easy for the old bugger. He wouldn't approve anyway.

I walked down Old Church Lane and passed a couple of guys who stared at my T-shirt and black trousers. The guardsman was satisfied after a glance at my card but the other one had no excuse for looking askance at my clothing. He was in the black and white striped overalls and yellow beret issued to inmates. They call the jokers “lollipops” in the guard but citizens don't have a nickname for them. Despite the Council's much-vaunted openness, only auxiliaries are allowed in to the rehab centre so ordinary locals never see the inmates' apparel.

I turned into what had been the churchyard and looked at the board on the wall. Inmates are given codenames – they have to earn back the right to their barracks numbers – and Billy was referred to as the Jackal. I suppose the Council thought that giving corrupt auxiliaries animal names is a neat way of emphasising their bestiality. The Jackal was still in residence in the old watchtower. Obviously his rehabilitation hadn't yet been completed.

I went in the door at the bottom of the building.

The white-bearded sentry made me sign in and then waved me up the narrow stairs. “The Jackal's right at the top,” he called after me.

“I know,” I said, feeling the muscles beginning to hurt already. The first time I visited Billy I wondered why he'd been stuck at the highest point in the rehab centre. The guy was in a wheelchair for life and he was hardly going to perform his own version of
Escape from Alcatraz
. Then I remembered that he had a track record of escaping official supervision.

I reached a heavy oak door and paused to catch my breath.

“Who's that?” The voice was more high-pitched and unsteady but I recognised it all the same. “Don't just hang around. Come in.”

I decided knocking was unnecessary and pulled the door open. That was a mistake.

“What the—” The voice broke off as the wheelchair with its crazed, shrunken passenger cannoned into my legs and nearly sent me straight back down the stairs.

I got off my arse slowly. It had taken a heavy slam on to the flagstones.

“Nice driving, Billy,” I said, pushing the wheelchair backwards.

“What the fuck do you want, you tosser?” Billy looked away from me and struggled to heave himself back into his room. “I thought you were my counsellor. I fucking hate him.”

“Just as well I wasn't or you'd have been on punishment rations.” I followed him into the square space at the top of the tower. It had tall, narrow windows on each side, the front one giving a view over the dried loch bed. Under this was a wide desk with a computer and screen. That was interesting.

“How did you get your hands on this?” I asked, moving over to the machine.

“That's typical of you, Quint.” Billy banged into my legs again, making me turn aside before I got to the computer. “You arrive unannounced after months and don't even bother to say hello or ask me how I am. Always the fucking investigator.” He shoved me further away from the desk, his arms much stronger than his withered frame suggested.

“Sorry,” I said. I meant it. I still felt some responsibility for the events that put him in the chair. “So how are you doing, Billy?”

“Up yours, Quint,” he said, his eyes flashing above the slack skin of his face. “What do you care?”

I put my hands on his shoulders and leaned over him. “I care, you self-pitying little shit. If only because there's still a tiny bit of the guy you used to be left under that jackal skin.”

“Ha fucking ha.” He looked away and I saw the flaky scalp under what remained of his hair. “You only visit me when you need something.” Despite the heat in his room, Billy had his black and white shirt buttoned up to the collar and his sleeves down. He didn't like looking at his shrivelled limbs. I couldn't blame him.

I stood straight again then jinked round him to the computer. “Where did you get this, Billy?” The label on it said “Property of Culture Directorate”. Well, well.

He spun his wheels and drove into me, smiling maliciously. “They gave it to me a few months back.”

“They? The Culture Directorate?”

He nodded reluctantly.

“Why?”

He looked away, lips pressed tight.

“Why, Billy?” I persisted. “I can find out easily enough from the facility commander.”

“What's it got to do with you?” he demanded angrily. “They wanted me to check the financial structure of the lottery.”

This was getting more interesting by the minute but I didn't want to show my hand to Billy too soon.

“Is that right? They make use of your financial acumen even before you're fully rehabilitated? That sounds like the Council, all right.” I glanced back at him. “I'm surprised you went for it. Unless you're using the computer for your own devious purposes as well.”

“You'll never know, Quint.” He let out a forced laugh that slowly faded away. “Don't worry, I'm not on line. They won't trust me with access to the directorate databank. I just sit here and massage their figures then play
Attila the Hun
2015. It's the only computer game I could squeeze out of them.”

I sat down on the bed and looked round the room. There were no chairs since Billy didn't need one and he didn't have many visitors. But all the walls were lined with bookshelves and I recognised some from Billy's collection of first editions. He'd started that when he was in the Finance Directorate and he obviously still had a good contact in the Library Department. He'd been allowed to keep his edition of Hume's
Treatise
as well as hardback novels by Waugh, Orwell and plenty of other big names. He even had a copy of
Red Harvest
that I'd coveted for years.

There was a rattle as the wheelchair moved across the bare floorboards of the tower room.

“What do you want to know, Quint?” Billy asked sardonically. “What can I possibly tell you that you can't find out for yourself using the methods you're famous for?”

I couldn't wait any longer. “Did you ever know an auxiliary numbered Napier 25?”

Billy kept perfectly still apart from a slight flicker of his eyelids. “Napier 25,” he repeated, looking up at the ceiling. “Napier 25. Yeah, I remember him.”

Halleluiah. “And?”

“He was with me in the Strategic Planning Department.” He moved his eyes back to me. “Boring tosser. Pretty good at cost control and analysis though. I think he had a bit of a drink problem. What's your interest?”

I ignored his question. “Remember anything specific he worked on?”

Billy laughed. “Christ, Quint, it's five years since I was booted out of the directorate.” His eyes flashed. “And since I got my head kicked in.”

“I haven't forgotten,” I said, holding his gaze. “Did you know he was demoted a year back?”

Billy shrugged. “How would I? He hasn't turned up here for rehab.”

“No,” I said, “and he isn't going to either. He died a couple of days ago.”

“Lucky him.” Billy looked down at his shrunken limbs.

“No, not lucky him. He drank poisoned whisky.” I was taking a chance telling a DM about a classified case but I wanted to see his reaction. So far he'd been just a little too cool.

“You mean someone murdered him?” Billy asked with what seemed like no more than normal amounts of surprise and curiosity.

I nodded. “Ever heard of a whisky called the Ultimate Usquebaugh?”

Billy didn't take his eyes off me. “Sounds like quite a dram. They don't give us any booze in here, you know.”

“Have you ever fucking heard of it?” I yelled.

He jerked back in his chair. The extent to which his body had been wrecked was suddenly very apparent. “No, I fucking haven't. Bastard.”

I nodded. I was pretty sure he was telling the truth, at least about that. I went over to the window. The seagulls were still flapping around languidly, their shrieks cutting through the hot air. I was less convinced that Billy had been straight about Frankie Thomson. True enough, it was a long time since he'd been in the Finance Directorate.

“So you've been working on Edlott?” I said, trying to make my peace with him. “What do you think of it?”

“Fuck you,” he said, turning away.

“Billy, I'm sorry. I needed to know if you'd heard of the whisky.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said bitterly. “As if I'd know anything locked up in this school for unjustified sinners.”

“Personally I think the lottery's a con,” I said. The only way to get to him was by winding him up.

“You do, do you?” he said, swinging his wheels round. “The great financial expert Quintilian Dalrymple gives his opinion. Big fucking deal. Listen to someone who knows what he's talking about. Edlott's the ultimate success story. The citizens get a chance to improve the quality of their lives and the Council saves funds by deducting the cost of tickets from food and clothing vouchers. Everyone's happy.” He grinned and displayed yellow teeth. Apparently the rehab centre didn't run to a dentist. “I'll tell you a secret for nothing. Soon the tourists will be able to play too.”

I hadn't heard that before. “Whose bright idea was that, Billy?”

“Whose do you think, Quint?” He wriggled in an unsuccessful attempt at modesty. “See, I still have some uses.”

“Good for you,” I said, glad to hear that he was getting something out of life. “Who should I talk to in the Culture Directorate if I want information?” I still needed to find out what Frankie Thomson had been doing on his frequent visits there.

Billy bit his lip. “Your best bet's the senior auxiliary in charge of operations. That's Nasmyth 05.”

“Right, thanks.” I remembered that was the barracks number I'd seen in Fordyce Kennedy's file. I wondered if there was any chance he'd heard about the missing lottery-winner. “Billy, there's something else. Do you know anything about—” My mobile rang and I broke off. I could see from the look on Billy's face that sentence interruptus was no more fun than the sexual variety.

“Dalrymple? Public order guardian here.” Trust Hamilton to use his title on the phone.

“Yes, Lewis.”

“Another body's been found.”

“Shit. Whereabouts?”

“Baird Drive, to the west of the stadium at Murrayfield. There's a footbridge—”

“I'm on my way. Make sure no one touches anything. Out.”

I gave Billy a brief wave on my way to the door. His response was pure abuse.

As I took the stairs three at a time on the way down the tower I continued the swearing Billy had started. I knew the footbridge Hamilton had mentioned.

It sounded like we had a second body by the Water of Leith.

Chapter Eight

I pulled the road map out from underneath the driver's seat and checked the access.

“You'll need to go past the stadium and turn left on to Balgreen Road.”

“I know where I'm going, citizen,” the guardswoman said sharply. She kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead, obviously one of those who disapprove of DMs like me being involved with the directorate. There's no shortage of them.

I let her get on with it and looked out at the giant cantilevered construction around the former international rugby ground. Now it's used for inter-barracks games, the vast stands echoing the shouts of a few hundred supporters. Things were very different at the sellout matches I went to in my teens, sixty-five thousand souls going mental whenever a man in blue scored. Scotland victories got fewer and fewer as opposition countries ploughed ridiculous amounts of money into the game, but the supporters still lived in hope. It gave the impression that some sort of national consciousness existed. That was soon revealed to be an illusion as the crime rate rocketed upwards and the drugs gangs tore society apart. Then the politicians started taking the easy option, preaching zero tolerance, isolationism and the like. The riots weren't long in coming and then rugby was played in the streets with people's heads for balls.

There was a blast from a horn behind us. I turned to see Davie roar past us in a Land-Rover, his arm jerking like a marionette's.

“I think he wants you to follow him,” I said.

The guardswoman didn't even favour me with a glance. She floored the accelerator and took off after Davie like her tail was on fire. That shut me up.