Water of Death (19 page)

We turned into a side street and slewed to a stop at the back of a long line of guard vehicles. Hamilton was surrounded by a group of his minions, some of them in white plastic overalls. He saw me and beckoned me over.

“At last, Dalrymple,” he said, dismissing the auxiliaries with a single movement of his hand. “Where have you been?”

“Does it matter?” I asked, nodding to Davie as he joined us. “What's the story here?”

“Female citizen who works as a cleaner in the stadium spotted an arm under the bridge on her way home.” Hamilton took us down the street towards the footbridge that led to an open expanse of grass between the houses and the rugby ground. As we got nearer, his pace slowed. “You go ahead,” he said, his face pale. “I've seen all I want to.” As usual, the public order guardian's interest in bodies had waned as soon as he got close to them.

Davie and I exchanged glances then crossed over the bridge to where a couple of scene-of-crime personnel were squatting. They pointed to the line of tape they'd set up around the area that would potentially reveal footprints. We scrambled down the bank further down and walked up the shallow stream to the shaded confines of the bridge. Our feet stirred up the bottom, making me think of the old blues motif – muddy water was a seriously bad omen. The curtain of blowflies under the struts didn't exactly bode well either.

“Bloody hell, Quint,” Davie said in a low voice. “Déjà vu.”

I stopped about five yards away from the body and let the water wash around my ankles. The dead man was certainly in a similar position to Frankie Thomson's. He was on his front, the left arm beside his torso but the right one extended at about ninety degrees, as seen by the female citizen. The legs were spread at a wide angle, but because of the proximity of the bridge supports the lower parts were bent backwards against the bank. As well as the head, the chest was in the water.

“What's that he's wearing?” Davie asked. “It's not exactly standard-citizen issue, is it?”

I moved closer and kneeled down in the water. It felt unnaturally warm, like a fluid that shouldn't have been released into the open air. Davie had a point. The dead man was dressed in a white shirt and black trousers but neither were of the basic style ordinary citizens get in exchange for their clothing vouchers. The trousers were more like knickerbockers, ending just below the knee, and the shirt had elaborate cuffs. I pulled on rubber gloves and picked up the right hand. Rigor mortis was not far advanced yet. There was a gold-coloured cufflink holding the material together. My bad feeling began to get worse. There are very few kinds of people kitted out with cufflinks in the city these days.

“Look at these boots, citizen,” said one of the scene-of-crime auxiliaries.

I moved over and examined the footwear. They were high boots reaching up to the top of the dead man's calves, with a large number of eyes for the laces.

I stepped over the body and looked at the left hand. It was closed tightly around something that after inspection I saw to be white fabric.

“A handkerchief,” I said, going towards the head. I put both my hands on it and moved it sideways gently. The rigor in the neck was tighter than in the arms but I managed to get a glimpse of something I'd been hoping I wouldn't see.

“What is that?” Davie asked. “What's caught beneath his collar?”

I beckoned to the directorate photographer to take a shot of what looked like a long, hairy caterpillar.

“It's a false moustache, my friend,” I said slowly, my fears now confirmed. I'd seen enough of the features to recognise the dead man. “This is Fordyce Kennedy, the missing lottery-winner. They got him to dress up as Robert Louis Stevenson, remember?”

I sat back on my heels in the water as the realisation struck me. I was going to have to inform the two women we'd visited in the darkened flat in Morningside. That made my day.

Sophia arrived a few minutes after I'd sent Davie to liaise with the scene-of-crime personnel. She stood on the bank pulling on her protective overalls, an impassive look on her face. She didn't respond to my wave.

When she joined me under the footbridge, she started dictating detailed notes of the body's position to her assistant then kneeled down by the torso and continued talking. It was only after she'd finished her preliminary description that she acknowledged my existence by glancing up at me.

“There are broad similarities with the dead man in Bell Place,” she said. “Taking the ambient temperature into account, I'd say he's been here for between eight and twelve hours.”

I decided to play her game and pretend that Katharine's intrusion had never happened. “Cause of death?” I asked.

“No obvious signs of injury.” She looked round and shook her head briefly at me. “We'll need to run tests on the internal organs.”

I went up to her and led her a small distance away. “It's likely that we've got another case of poisoning, Sophia. You'll be testing for nicotine first, won't you?”

“We'll have to.” Her expression was grim. “Have you found any whisky bottles in the vicinity?”

“Not yet. I've got Davie co-ordinating the search with the scene-of-crime squad.”

Sophia turned away from the other auxiliaries under the bridge. Her face paled and for a few seconds she looked like a lost child. “What are we to do if it
is
nicotine again, Quint? There are already reports of citizen unrest in the suburbs because of the whisky ban.” She looked at me anxiously. “I can't authorise resupply if there's even the slightest chance of lethal poisoning.”

I took a chance and squeezed her arm in public. Bad move. She pulled it away instantly. “Look, it won't just be your decision. The Council takes collective responsibility, remember?”

“I'm aware of procedure,” she snapped. “But I'm medical guardian as well as acting senior guardian. I've got nowhere to hide.”

I nodded. “You never know,” I said encouragingly. “Maybe this'll turn out not to be a case of poisoning.”

She looked at me sceptically.

“All right,” I admitted. “I'm not making that assumption.” Then I told her the identity of the dead man.

“The missing Edlott-winner?” she said in puzzlement. “Is that significant?”

I shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he didn't like being made to dress up as the creator of Long John Silver.”

“Stevenson also created Dr Jekyll,” Sophia said, grimacing. “I seem to remember that character created a dangerous potion.”

I wasn't sure what to make of that. By the time I'd finished scratching my head, Sophia had gone to consult Hamilton.

A few moments later Davie came running down the river bank brandishing an object in a clear plastic bag. I recognised the Ultimate Usquebaugh label from some way off. Only a small amount of the dark amber liquid in the bottle was missing. Now I had no doubt there was a connection with the first death, but we still had to check the details.

At four o'clock we broke off to compare notes. Hamilton and Davie had debriefed the scene-of-crime squad while I was interviewing the woman who'd found the body and the citizens who lived in the street leading to the footbridge.

“Right,” I said. “The medical guardian's taken the body to the morgue for post-mortem. I asked her to go ahead without me. The chief toxicologist is standing by so we should know soon if this is a case of nicotine poisoning. He's also got the bottle you found, Davie. What was the exact location?”

He pointed to a cross he'd made on the fine-detail City Guard map of the area. “It was protruding from a rabbit hole ninety-seven yards upstream on the east bank.”

“The same bank as the body was lying on,” the public order guardian said.

I nodded. “Any prints or traces on the ground around there?”

Davie shook his head. “It's bone-hard.”

“As it is everywhere in the city during the Big Heat,” I said ruefully.

“And guess what,” Davie said, looking at us and shaking his head. “I got a technician to dust the bottle. There were no fingerprints on it.”

“It's clear enough that we're dealing with the same killer or killers,” Hamilton said, jumping to conclusions with the certainty typical of the old school of guardians. This time he was probably right. “Like the other bottle, this one has only a small quantity taken from it. Enough for one lethal dram,” he said, ramming the point home. “The relative distance of the bottle from the body is also a link to the previous murder.”

I nodded and looked at my notebook.

“What have you discovered, Dalrymple?” the public order guardian asked.

“Not much. The female citizen who found the body didn't notice it on her way to the stadium for the morning shift. That figures because the arm is hardly visible from the west side of the bridge. She had a migraine and left work early so I suppose we were lucky. That bought us a few extra hours. She didn't see or hear anything overnight or in the early morning. The same goes for the other locals.”

“Which puts paid to your theory about the killer deliberately showing himself at the Colonies, doesn't it?” Hamilton said.

I thought about that. “Not necessarily. Maybe the first death needed more stage-managing. Maybe that's why there were three bottles there as well.”

The guardian stared at me, his brows knotting. “Stick to the basics, man. How the hell did the body get here? On a flying carpet?”

I took the map from Davie and opened it out. To the east of the bridge the open space of frazzled grass stretched all the way to the rugby ground three hundred yards away.

“They could have come across the playing fields, I suppose,” I said.

“They?” Davie said.

“The killer or killers and the victim. It's not very likely that the dead man killed himself by drinking from the bottle, putting it in a rabbit hole then walking on till he keeled over. Someone took the trouble to leave the bottle in a place that wasn't too obvious, increasing the likelihood that
we
found it rather than some innocent passer-by. And the assumption has to be that they walked here.” I gave Hamilton a grin. “Otherwise they have access to transport, which would suggest they're auxiliaries.”

The guardian glared at me but managed to bite his tongue.

“That's very unlikely, of course,” I said, twisting the knife.

“Quint,” Davie growled.

I raised my hand. “Okay. I said we're assuming they walked.”

“But the playing fields are fenced to the north and in the vicinity of the stadium,” said Hamilton. “Plus there's a guard post over there.”

I nodded and took a long pull from a bottle of water. We were standing in the burning heat in the middle of the road because I'd talked the guardian out of commandeering some innocent local's house for the duration.

“Right. And the residents to the west claim they heard nothing.”

“What would there have been to hear if they were on foot?” Davie asked.

“They would probably have arrived after curfew so even footsteps would have been out of the ordinary. It's certainly odd that it doesn't seem to have been like Frankie Thomson's last minutes – no singing or sounds of carousing. But remember, the family told us that Fordyce Kennedy liked his whisky. I suppose he could have been completely out of the brain.”

“Maybe he was killed somewhere else,” Hamilton put in.

I nodded. “We can't rule out that possibility. Except in both those cases he would have been carried here, which would have made an obvious target for guard patrols.” I looked back at the map. “I reckon they came from the south. After all, the bottle was left in that direction. And that way, beyond the old railway line, there's more open ground with houses backing on to it before you get to the Gorgie Road.” I glanced at Davie. “You'd better get the scene-of-crime people to check for any prints or traces down there. And Lewis, can you put guard personnel on to taking statements from residents there?”

Hamilton gave me an ironic look. “I thought you'd want to do that yourself, Dalrymple. You're forever telling me that citizens would rather choke than open up to auxiliaries.”

“True enough,” I said, returning the look with interest. “It's just that I've got more pressing things to do. Like breaking the bad news to the dead man's next of kin.” I moved away. “And getting them to identify the body.”

I found Sophia and the chief toxicologist standing over Fordyce Kennedy. He had been opened up from throat to pubis and his organs removed. The green-coated figures looked up as the door banged behind me.

“Bad news, citizen,” said Lister 25. “I've just completed testing for nicotine.”

“And it was present in both the whisky and the dead man's stomach,” I said.

He nodded at me dolefully.

“I can't say that comes as an overwhelming surprise.” I turned to Sophia. “Any other signs of injury?”

She gave me a neutral look then shook her head. “Nothing at all. He doesn't appear to have been under duress.”

“How about alcohol consumption?” I asked.

Again she shook her head. “Preliminary inspection of the stomach suggests that the only alcohol he consumed was the small quantity of poisoned whisky which killed him.”

That was interesting. Fordyce Kennedy wasn't under the influence of alcohol when he went to the river bank during curfew – so why did he go there? Did someone talk him into it?

“If I could interject?” the chief toxicologist said, glancing at each of us in turn. “The amount of nicotine in the second bottle of the Ultimate Usquebaugh was considerably greater than in the first. The medical guardian and I are agreed that death would have been very rapid – probably a matter of seconds after the whisky was imbibed.”

I looked at Fordyce Kennedy's remains and shook my head. Having your throat and gut burned out even for only a few seconds was still a horrific idea. I wondered what kind of bastard would inflict suffering of that degree on another human being. Or rather, other human beings, plural.