Water of Death (39 page)

I shook my head. She nudged me then laughed and put the weapon back in its sheath in the small of her back.

“I haven't been anywhere today, Quint,” she said, leaning her head against my shoulder. “Yesterday, apart from when I was out at the mill house, I lay low wherever I could. Waiting for you to get the guard off my back.”

I breathed in deeply then decided to follow my instincts. I still reckoned Sophia was wrong about Katharine being involved in the poisonings. What possible reason could she have for killing Ray? And she was in the clear as regards possession of the poisoned whisky – unless she'd stashed it somewhere else. But why should she? She wasn't expecting me to arrive in the middle of the night.

“All right,” I said. “I'm sorry. Things have got nasty.” I told her about Ray.

“God, how terrible,” she said, squeezing my hand. She'd taken hold of it while I was speaking. “The poor man. Why should he have been murdered?”

I shrugged. “I wish I knew. But I'll find out, you can be sure of that.”

She came closer and I felt her head on my chest.

“You didn't really think I had anything to do with it, did you, Quint?”

I shook my head slowly. “No, I—”

She put her finger against my lips, then replaced it with her mouth. It was a long kiss, the first good kiss I'd had for a long time. I suddenly realised that I'd never let Sophia get to me in the ways Katharine did.

“Quint?” she said when she finally removed her lips from mine. “Can I ask you something?”

The tone of her voice, questioning but tender, made my spine tingle.

“Go on,” I said breathlessly.

“Do you think  . . .” She stopped then turned away and laughed quietly. “No, I'm making a fool of myself.”

I moved her face back towards me. “You're not.”

“I am.” She leaned her forehead against mine. “All right. If I stayed in the city, do you think we could make it together?”

The blood rushed to my cheeks. Fortunately she couldn't see them in the dark. “Make it together?” I repeated lamely. “You mean live together?” The words sounded distant, like someone else had spoken them. I was seriously shaken up. Katharine and I had spent only short periods of time together and I'd convinced myself that she didn't really care that much about me. There was a burning in my body that had nothing to do with the Big Heat.

“Is that such a horrible idea?” she asked.

“Em, no,” I said. “No. But there are a lot of auxiliaries looking for you.”

“We don't have to talk about it any more now, Quint. There'll be time for talk later.” She kissed me again, then manoeuvred me to my feet and led me to a large flat stone. “I noticed this earlier and wondered if I'd manage to get you on to it.”

I was pushed back gently but firmly on to some unknown rich man's memorial. Katharine pulled my trousers down. The dried moss on the stone stuck to my backside and for a split second I considered giving her a blast of Blind Lemon Jefferson's “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean”. Katharine took her own clothes off rapidly then straddled me, reminding me of the first time we'd made love. That had been in the armchair in my flat, but al fresco was even more exciting. I ran my hand up the well-toned flesh and rubbed her nipples with my thumbs. They were hard and long, the flesh beneath them supple. She moaned as I crushed it softly.

“Do you think the old guy underneath minds?” she asked hoarsely.

“Christ no,” I gasped. “Probably enjoying the view.”

She lowered herself carefully on to my erect organ and then sat down in a controlled movement. I exhaled slowly as I was enveloped in her moistness. She started lifting herself up and down, leaning back and guiding my finger to her sensitive spot. I suddenly saw Sophia's face flash before me, her eyes cold and unwavering. I flinched.

“What's the matter?” Katharine asked, slowing her action.

I shook my head. “Nothing. Don't stop.”

She leaned forward, her hair brushing my face. “I knew you before her, Quint.” Then she pushed down on my midriff again. “You're mine.”

I wasn't going to argue about that. I arched my back upwards and reached a level the Climax Blues Band never even got close to.

I came to with a dull ache in my back and a warm body on top of me. It was dark in the cemetery but nothing like as dark as the satiated slumber I was blearily emerging from. Katharine was asleep, her breasts compressed against my chest and her face over my shoulder. She was breathing gently into my left ear. The dawn was breaking and the granite houses around the perimeter wall were beginning to take on their daytime grey-black hue. I wasn't too comfortable but I didn't want to wake Katharine. So I lay still and thought about things.

Things first of all being her. Did she really mean what she'd said about us making it together? Even if I managed to get Sophia and Hamilton off her back, I wasn't sure if I was up to sharing my space with someone else. Then again, ever since Katharine appeared at the door when Sophia had undone me, I'd been aware that I had strong feelings for her. But could I trust her? She was still a suspect as far as everyone else in the investigation was concerned. I wasn't sure she'd told me everything about Peter Bryson and what she saw at the mill house. I twitched my head to dispel the image of her friend's smashed face and torn body.

Then I started thinking about Ray. Ray on the ground in the barracks extension yard, Ray on the mortuary table; Ray's room with the open window, Ray's office – and the dust on the floor in those two places. What object or objects had left the dust, and where the hell did it come from? I thought about the books on the floor by the window in Buccleuch Place again. Ray must have pulled them off the shelves as he was fighting for air with his throat on fire. They were all Wilfred Owen books. Jesus. The recollection hit me like a sniper's bullet. He had a volume of Wilfred Owen poems in his office too. Wilfred Owen. What did it mean? What did the long-dead First World War poet have to do with  . . . ?

I sat up with a start, grabbing Katharine's arms to stop her falling off.

“What is it?” she said, instantly awake and looking round for her knife.

I was shaking my head slowly. “Surely not,” I muttered.

“Surely not what?” Katharine stood up and started locating her clothes.

“What?”

“Surely not what, Quint?” She gave me a push. “Has your brain gone into hibernation?

“In this temperature? Hardly,” I said, snapping out of my reverie. “I've got to check something outside the city line. Do you want to come with me?” I pulled on my trousers and reached over for my shirt.

“What's going on?” she asked, staring at me doubtfully.

“I've just come up with a long shot that even I'm surprised by.”

She stared at me. “Any chance of telling me what it is?”

“Let's go and see first. I don't want you to think I've lost all my marbles.”

She picked up the last of her gear and gave me an ironic look. “What possible grounds could I have to think that?”

The guards at the gate were surprised by my appearance at six a.m. but they couldn't say no to my authorisation. Katharine was on the floor in the back of the Land-Rover with a tarpaulin over her. I didn't fancy Lewis Hamilton finding out that I was consorting with her. After we'd traversed the cleared ground beyond the city line, I saw her sit up in the mirror.

“Where are we going, Quint? We're pretty near the mill in Colinton, aren't we?”

I nodded. “That's the connection, I'm sure of it,” I said under my breath.

“What?”

“Just hold on. We'll be there in a minute.”

Katharine gave me an irritated look but kept quiet.

It didn't take long. The building I was heading for was only about half a mile from the city line. The Land-Rover ground up the hill, leaving a cloud of purple exhaust fumes in the still morning air. The houses on both sides of the road were in a terrible state, the windows and doors pulled out and the roofs denuded of slates. This area had been badly hit in the drugs wars and by looting from the south side before the line went up. Then, through the sickly trees, the great mass of stone with its tower and pavilions came into view.

“Is that where we're going?” Katharine asked, her voice betraying interest. “It used to be part of one of the universities, didn't it?”

“Before a drugs gang took over the labs and the guard went in with everything it had.” The assault had happened before I had enough influence in the Public Order Directorate to change tactics and work on driving the scumbags out of Edinburgh without destroying all the city's buildings. “That's not all it used to be.”

Katharine leaned over the seat and looked at me. “No? What else was it then?”

“During the First World War it was Craiglockhart War Hospital.”

“Really.” The interest faded from her voice.

“Yup. There were some famous people here. Siegfried Sassoon springs to mind.” I glanced at her. “As does Wilfred Owen.”

“I remember them,” Katharine said, sitting back. “At school the boys loved all that pity of war stuff.” She shook her head dismissively. “I preferred Sylvia Plath myself.”

“Uh-huh.” I pulled up by a tree trunk that was lying across the drive of the former hospital. “Let's go and take a look.”

“Why?” she demanded, clambering out of the vehicle. “What do you expect to find here?”

“Who knows? It's a voyage of discovery.” I went up to the tree trunk. The pot-holed asphalt beneath it had a layer of brownish dust that looked like it hadn't been there for long. I wondered if the guard checked the place out regularly. “Come on.” I stepped over the trunk, feeling it move underneath me. It wasn't a particularly large tree.

“I'm right behind you,” Katharine said.

I stepped away up the slope, my heart beginning to beat fast. I had the feeling I wasn't the first person to come here recently. It was only a few hundred yards from the spot where the comatose female was found – and a few hundred more from the mill house where her three companions, including Peter Bryson, were beaten to death. I was getting close to something but I still didn't have much idea of what it was.

“Nice place.” Katharine was at my shoulder, pointing to the shattered windows and crumbling stonework. The pockmarks in the walls showed that the guard had still had plenty of heavy machine-gun ammunition to burn when they attacked.

The main entrance was completely blocked by a pile of collapsed masonry. Pigeons were cooing inside in a drowsy manner that suggested they weren't bothered by human company. Citizens have been known to cross the line armed with catapults to supplement their meat ration.

“Come on, we can't get in here. There must be another entrance.”

She gave me a doubtful look then let me pass. I followed the building round to the left and met a wall of branches that didn't look natural. There were far too many of them and, as I kneeled down to look through them, I noticed a mass of unclear footprints in the dust covering the uneven flagstones.

“Hey, look at this,” I said, starting to turn towards Katharine.

Then my head exploded and I plunged over a drop sheer enough to wrench my stomach out of my abdomen. I watched as it flapped sluggishly away from my clutching hands. There was a shrieking in my ears which gradually lowered in pitch, ending up as the mournful howl of a subterranean demon so desperate for soul food that even an atheist's like mine would do.

Hell's teeth, I thought. Then I was swallowed up in the abyss.

Chapter Seventeen

I seemed to be floating in the dark, my body chewed up by the ravenous being who'd been waiting for me to land in his vacant underground halls. Robert Johnson was down there with me, and “Me and the Devil Blues” was the song the old maestro had chosen. The universe, space and time, the big wide world had all been reduced to this inky blackness. It was a curiously restful state to be in – no past I could remember, no present to give me pain and definitely no future to look forward to. But then things went into reverse. The moaning noise started again, so low in tone at first that I could hardly pick it up, then inexorably rising till it turned into a long-drawn-out shriek that almost burst my eardrums. I opened my eyes warily but still couldn't see anything. I gradually became aware of a hard stone floor beneath me and of musty air cut with the bittersweet tang of rodent piss. I've never been good at waking up.

I brought a hand to my face and felt something sticky on the side of my head. Then I made the mistake of moving. A wave of pain coursed through my body and vomit surged up my throat. I managed to turn to one side so it didn't go all over my clothes. I lay perfectly still, trying to summon up the courage to move again, and pieced together what had happened. Christ, I hadn't been on my own.