Water of Death (26 page)

“What was the dosage?” I asked. “Shouldn't there have been more deaths?”

Lister 25 nodded. “Good point, citizen. The dosage was indeed much less strong than in the Ultimate Usquebaugh.” He shook his head gravely. “It's pretty horrible stuff whatever the dosage. Especially for old people.”

“We need to find the scumbag who put the nicotine in the tea.” I looked at Davie. “Did anybody see an intruder?”

He flicked pages on his clipboard. “No. I've collated the statements taken from the residents who are conscious. None of them saw anyone or anything out of the ordinary.”

“What about the water supply?”

“Drinking-water was delivered yesterday at ten thirty in the morning. I've relayed the driver and tractor numbers to the command centre. We'll track them down soon.”

I looked round the room. “Where's the nursing auxiliary?”

“In shock,” Sophia said, her stern tone expressing what she thought of that performance by one of her staff. “I'll be talking to her shortly.”

I had no doubt of that. “I wonder where the nicotine was introduced into the tea chain, so to speak. The whole water delivery couldn't have been poisoned. Plenty of people must have drunk from it since yesterday morning.”

Davie nodded in agreement. “Correct. Several of the residents have said that they drank water from the dispenser on the ground floor as early as yesterday midday.”

“Right,” I said. “So the nicotine must have been in the kettles or teapots. Or in the milk, I suppose.”

“We're analysing all of those,” said the chief toxicologist.

I shook my head slowly. “Not that the entry point of the poison will get us any further on if no one saw who put it there.” I leaned over the desk and grabbed the Visitor Log. According to what the nursing auxiliary had written there, the waterman and the postwoman were the only externals in the building yesterday. We'd be checking them out, but I had the feeling we were up against someone who knew how to work round the Council's bureaucracy.

“Quint?” Sophia said softly. “Have you considered why this particular location was targeted?”

“What do you think?” I asked, looking into her pale blue eyes. It wouldn't be the first time that Hector had unwittingly got himself involved in a murder case, but it would definitely be the first time a killer had tried to get at me by aiming at the old man. That made me more angry than I'd been for a long time. I managed to channel how I felt into thinking about the next stage of the investigation. Whoever was behind all this had just made a major mistake.

The rest of the meeting consisted of Sophia and Hamilton wrangling over how many of the city's auxiliaries should be committed to guarding the water supplies. He wanted every last one while she took a broader view – after all, the tourists still had to be looked after so that the city's income didn't dry up overnight. Apart from getting them to agree to post a guard unit at the retirement home, I didn't involve myself in the debate. I was too busy trying to work out who had both the desire and the means to have a go at me via Hector. Desire could cover any number of survivors with a grudge from the drugs gangs I'd broken up when I was in the directorate. Most of them were outside the city and impossible to lay a hand on. Not many people in Edinburgh would remember, let alone care, that my father had once been information guardian. It was years since he resigned from the rank so what could anyone have against him now? Except in my line of work you find out pretty soon that coincidences don't happen – meaning that the poisoning in the retirement home wasn't a random event. I reckoned I was being sent a message along the lines of “we know where your only relative lives”. But who had the means to find out where Hector was? Retired citizen records are kept in the archive like all the rest of the city's documentation and the only people who have access are auxiliaries. There was already one of those at the top of my dubious specimens list.

“Where are you going?” Sophia asked as I moved towards the door.

Telling guardians you're off to put the boot into suspect auxiliaries is always risky. “I need to check something about the dead lottery-winner's family,” I lied.

She looked at me for a moment, then nodded.

“Come on, Davie,” I said.

“Oh no you don't,” Hamilton growled. “I need Hume 253. In case you haven't noticed, we've got a crisis on our hands here.”

I shrugged. I could handle Nasmyth 05 with both hands tied behind my back. As I passed him on my way to the door, Davie handed me a sheet of paper covered in the copperplate script required of auxiliaries. I hoped it wasn't a philosophy essay that he wanted me to look over.

In the street I flashed my authorisation and turfed a sour-looking guardsman out of the nearest directorate vehicle. It was a battered maroon pick-up. The last time I'd seen one of those had been at the Fisheries Guard base in Leith docks. As I started the engine, I wondered if Dirty Harry had sunk any raiders recently. I lost my grip on that thought as I struggled to engage first gear. Eventually I found it after provoking several guardsmen to ill-disguised mirth. I flicked them a V-sign with my mutilated right hand and pulled away, weaving through the crush of vehicles and personnel.

Heading for the city centre, I glanced at the screed Davie had written me. He'd somehow managed to find the time to look into what I'd dumped on him earlier. The Supply Directorate had advised that they knew nothing about any trade in fake antique furniture. That didn't necessarily mean there wasn't one but it left us with no leads.

“Great!” I shouted, pounding my thigh then swerving to avoid an elderly male citizen who'd obviously been sampling a secret stockpile of booze. As I passed, he made an impractical suggestion about what I could do with the pick-up.

“Ah-hah,” I said, reading Davie's last line. “Now you're talking.” The nursing auxiliary who should have stayed at the Kennedy flat last night had been located and taken to the castle dungeons. I decided to head there before going back to the Culture Directorate.

I pulled up on the esplanade, the sun beating down on the raised open space like it had been insulted by the asphalt and was now taking its revenge. On my way to what had once been the military prison, I wondered where Katharine was. I'd have heard if the guard had picked her up. What the hell had she been doing with two bottles of the Ultimate Usquebaugh in her bag? Surely she wasn't involved in the poisonings? Jesus. The thought ripped into me like a bayonet. She knew where my father lived. I stopped dead in the unshaded area between the command centre and the dungeons, my legs frozen despite the heat, and thought it through. No, I didn't believe it. Katharine knew Hector, she was fond of him. She wouldn't harm him. And besides, she didn't need to use the old man to get at me – she had direct access already. Or rather, she did have until the guard started watching my flat. I shook my head and walked on. No, Katharine wasn't behind the poisonings. I knew her better than that. Or did I?

I went down the steep steps to the additional dungeons Hamilton had prisoners excavate for themselves during the height of the drugs wars. They hadn't been much used in recent years except by rats but they were always good for scaring the shit out of people with guilty secrets. I showed ID to the overweight guardsman sitting at the end of the dimly lit passage. He'd spent so many years on duty down here that even the guardian didn't have the nerve to expose him to the outside world.

“Number thirteen,” he said hoarsely. “Lucky for some.” He started panting with excitement as I headed for the cell.

I struggled with the key and eventually swung the barred door open. The female auxiliary was cowering in the corner, her nurse's uniform stained by the filthy bedding and her white shoes badly scuffed. I brought my hand to my face when the stench from the waste bucket and the damp stone walls washed over me.

“Simpson 426?” I said, watching her as she drew herself up and wiped the sweat from her forehead.

The auxiliary eyed me nervously. She was young, only in her mid-twenties. Her light brown hair had once been in a tight plait but now it looked like a large bird had been trampling it into a nest. She looked even more worried when I showed her my authorisation.

“What's  . . . what's this all about?” she asked in a faint voice. “The guardsmen who brought me here wouldn't say anything.”

I sat down at the other end of the uneven mattress from her, keeping away from the wall of the narrow cell. Leaning against it was a bad idea unless you wanted your clothing to be impregnated by the rank liquid dribbling down from the roughly hewn roof.

“What's this all about?” I said, repeating her question with maximum incredulity. “How many derelictions of duty have you committed, auxiliary?”

“I  . . .” She shook her head weakly. “None.”

“None apart from this one?”

Her head made a couple of feeble movements sideways.

“This one being unauthorised absence from your post.” I pulled out my notebook. “Now let me see. Who was it gave you the order to stay with the Kennedy family yesterday?” I looked down at her and smiled encouragingly. “Can't remember? It doesn't matter. I'm sure I've got it written down here.”

I don't particularly like taunting people, especially young, frightened people. Unfortunately it's one of the few ways to handle auxiliaries, and even then their training often enables them to stand up to it.

“Ah, here it is,” I said, pointing to the page and then looking more closely. “Fuck me, Simpson 426.” Unexpected crudity is another handy weapon with the Council's servants. “You disobeyed an order from the medical guardian? The medical guardian who is currently senior guardian?” I inhaled the fetid air ostentatiously then wished I hadn't. “You must really love the smell of raw sewage in the morning.” Disobedient auxiliaries are sometimes sent to the shit farm in Portobello.

“No, no, I  . . .” The nurse broke off and shook her head, this time even more desperately.

I moved closer to her. She pulled her knees up to her chest and jammed herself as far as she could into the corner.

“There's some information I must have,” I said quietly. “If you help me, I'll get you out of here.”

The nurse's light brown eyelashes quivered. “I  . . . I can't  . . .”

“Yes you can,” I insisted. “Alexander Kennedy, known as Allie. The son. Did he come to the flat when you were there?”

She stared at me, first with surprise then with relief. Maybe she thought she was in the clear. “Yes. He arrived in the middle of the evening.”

“How did he come into the flat?”

She looked at me uncomprehendingly.

I spelled it out. “Did you see him come in the front door?”

She still found the question puzzling. “No,” she answered after some thought. “No, I was making tea at the time. The daughter asked me to do that while she went out to tell the neighbours about her father's death.”

“Describe the brother to me.”

The young woman let go of her knees and leaned forward from the wall. “Medium height, pretty slim. Smooth complexion.”

“What about his hair?”

“I didn't see it. He was wearing a sunhat pulled down low.”

“What else was he wearing?”

“A really horrible string vest with big holes in it and a pair of standard citizen-issue shorts.”

I scribbled notes. “What did he do?”

“He was closing the door of his mother's room when I came out of the kitchen. He stared at me.” The nurse looked away, her lips quivering. “Then he asked me who the  . . . who the fuck I was and what the fuck I was doing there.”

She was a bit of a sensitive soul to be an auxiliary. I wondered how she coped with Sophia in full Ice Queen mode. “What did he do after that?” I asked.

“He said I should take the tea into the sitting room. And that his mother wouldn't be wanting any since she'd dropped off to sleep.”

I nodded. “What happened after that?”

“I don't know.” Simpson 426 pulled her knees close to her chest again. “I  . . . I left.”

I gave her a few seconds to squirm then brought my face close and locked my eyes on to hers. “You don't know because you left your post,” I said in a steely voice. “Someone countermanded the medical guardian's order. Who was it?”

The nursing auxiliary slumped forward like a Homeric hero whose sinews had been terminally loosened by a sword stroke.

“Who was it?” I repeated.

The crumpled figure started jerking backwards and forwards. “I can't  . . . I can't say,” she sobbed.

“Yes, you can,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Who told you to leave the flat? Who told you to keep the whole thing to yourself?”

No reply. She'd had her chance.

I moved closer to her and put an arm round her thin shoulders. “Come on,” I said, less menacingly. “You've got to tell me.” I put my fingers under her chin and slowly forced her head up. “Because if you don't, I'll order the animal at the end of the corridor to come in here and get the answer out of you any way he chooses.”

She froze, her eyes springing open. “You can't do that,” she gasped.

“Try me.”

Simpson 426 summoned up the strength to push me away, a look of extreme disgust on her face. “It was Nasmyth 05,” she said in a low, empty voice.

Bull's-eye. I kept quiet as the nurse continued, her head bowed.

“He arrived at the flat at nine o'clock and sent me back to barracks. He told me he'd have me demoted if I ever said anything to anyone.” She buried her face in her hands.

I stepped back from her. “It was vital information,” I said weakly. “I had to find a way of making you talk. I'm sorry.”

She didn't move. For a moment I even thought she'd stopped breathing.