Water of Death (7 page)

“Only I'd have expected you to check whether this citizen was alive and getting his mouth and nose out of the water would have been a perfectly natural reaction.”

The guardsman looked at his commander, keeping his eyes off the guardian, then nodded. “I  . . . I did lift his head out for a short time. But I put it back again as soon as I ascertained he wasn't breathing.”

I nodded at him, giving his superiors a tight smile. “Just so we're clear on that. Anyone else touch anything? Check in his pockets?”

There was a collective shaking of heads. I didn't believe them – the guardian had asked if there was any ID when he was contacted on the phone – but I'd made my point. It's always a good idea to impose yourself on auxiliaries.

“Can we get on, Dalrymple?” Hamilton demanded.

I lifted the dead man's head and looked at his face. The unshaven skin was only slightly wrinkled, suggesting he hadn't been in the water for long. Initially it was difficult to be sure from the photographs I'd seen of the missing lottery-winner. He was around the same age. But I soon realised the build and weight were different. The man at the riverside was pretty short and his face looked markedly thinner than Fordyce Kennedy's.

“I reckon you're in the clear with the Culture Directorate, Lewis,” I said. “The question is, who's this guy?”

I checked the dead man's pockets: a heavily stained handkerchief and a lottery ticket stub, but no sign of the identity card citizens have to carry at all times. There were no obvious injuries so murder didn't look like a banker. Suicide wasn't too likely either – he'd have had a hell of a job drowning himself in the Water of Leith's less-than-raging torrent. Natural causes was still the best bet. He might have suffered a heart attack while he was walking by the river, or maybe succumbed to heatstroke. But the angle of his legs and the missing shoe made me wonder. Walking with only one shoe? Hit by a spasm that jerked the legs out at such an extreme angle? I twitched my head and tried to restrain my imagination.

I stepped back and let the Public Order Directorate photographers get stuck in. While they were busy, I took a walk around. Auxiliaries in protective suits had already sectioned off the stretch of ground from the road end to the river. Three of them were crawling around looking for prints or traces. A small group of local residents, those who obviously worked earlier or later shifts, had gathered behind the tape that had been run between the flaky trunks of two trees. I went over to them.

“We'll need one of you to have a go at identifying the dead man,” I said.

They looked at me doubtfully, trying to work out what one of their rank was doing in the middle of a guard operation. Eventually a tall, gangly guy in his fifties with a badly set broken nose and thick grey hair nodded.

“All right, son. I'll help you out.”

I lifted the tape and led him down, skirting the area the scene-of-crime squad were scrutinising.

“Here,” the man said in a low voice, “what's in it for me?”

I looked round at him. He was wearing brown overalls bearing the badge of a Supply Directorate storeman. His kind was on the take years before the Council relaxed the penalties for involvement in the black market. Now they only get six months in the mines.

I gave him an encouraging smile. “What's your name?” I asked.

“Angus Drem.” He returned my smile, sensing a payoff.

“Well, Angus, here's the deal. See the old fellow with the beard over there?”

His smile faded. “That's the public order guardian, isn't it?”

“That's right. He's the one who negotiates payments to citizens.” I headed towards Lewis Hamilton. “I'll just let him know you're in the market, shall I?”

“No!”

The citizen's shout made everyone turn towards us.

“No, son, I was just kidding,” he said hastily. “After all, this is a public duty. You must've misunderstood me.”

“Uh-huh.” I kneeled down by the dead man again and lifted his head out of the water. “So do you know him, Angus?”

The man's face had gone white. “Oh fuck, aye,” he said in a whisper. “It's Frankie Thomson, the poor bugger. He lives in number 19.”

I beckoned to the commander. “Get one of your people to take a statement from Citizen Drem here. Everything he knows about the dead man, when he last saw him, any visitors to his  . . .”

“I know the procedure, citizen,” the auxiliary interrupted, leading the citizen away.

“What have we got then?” asked a cool voice from behind me.

I turned to find the medical guardian kneeling on the other side of the body.

“Sophia,” I said, unable to keep the surprise from my voice. “I didn't expect to see you down here.”

If she was unimpressed by my use of her name in front of auxiliaries, she didn't show it. “You know how it is. There are so few sudden deaths in the city  . . .”

Not so few during the Big Heat that the medical guardian checks each one out personally, I thought.

“Also,” she said, head bent over the corpse, “I was informed that both the public order guardian and you were attending. That piqued my curiosity.”

I still wasn't convinced. Maybe she'd just wanted some fresh air – in which case she was in the wrong place. Frankie Thomson was in need of cold storage.

“Have the scene-of-crime people finished with the body?” she asked.

I looked round at the auxiliary in white plastic who was hovering behind us. He nodded.

“So it seems. What do you think then?”

Sophia lifted the dead man's head and examined the mouth and nostrils. “No sign of the foam that drowning would produce, but then the flow of water would have washed that away. Flesh beginning to whiten. The goose bumps on his cheeks show the onset of cutis anserina.” She felt the limbs. “Rigor mortis is under way in the arms and legs but he hasn't been here for too long. Twelve hours maximum, I'd say provisionally, though the high ambient temperature complicates things.” Now she was at the lower half of the body. “Curious angle of the legs, don't you think?”

I nodded.

She leaned closer and sniffed. “I can smell faecal matter. He lost control of his bowels.”

I looked closer. The dead man's trousers had a stain on the backside which the sun had dried. “Significant?” I asked.

“Maybe. Don't get your hopes up though. He may just have eaten something bad.”

“Never. Your directorate's dietary planning doesn't allow for that.”

Sophia ignored my sarcasm. “Abrasions on the sole of the foot but not elsewhere. So he walked here, he wasn't dragged.”

“Can we get his head out of the water now?” I asked.

“Why not?” Sophia stood up and wiped sweat from her brow. Even the Ice Queen must have been boiling in the protective suit she was wearing over her clothes.

Scene-of-crime personnel lifted the body away from the water. Sophia signalled to them to turn it over on its back. Then she kneeled down by the upper abdomen and undid the buttons of the citizen-issue shirt.

“No signs of any bruising or abrasions here.” She looked at the fabric of the shirt.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Look at these patches.” She put her nose up to them and inhaled. “Vomit. He definitely had something that didn't agree with him.”

“For example?”

She shrugged. “There are plenty of possibilities.”

“But you'll narrow them down in the post-mortem?”

She gave me the hint of a smile. “We'll narrow them down all right, citizen,” she replied in a cold voice, glancing up at Lewis Hamilton who'd just joined us.

I swallowed a bitter laugh. I'd been in bed with her a few hours ago, but as far as she was concerned I was nothing more than a demoted auxiliary on special investigation duties.

“What next?” the public order guardian asked.

“The medical guardian takes the body to the morgue,” I said. “And we stick our noses into Frankie Thomson's flat.”

I was standing outside number 19 Bell Place gulping water from a bottle I'd got from Hamilton's driver. The sun was at its zenith and the heat was as big as it gets. A guard Land-Rover came round the corner at speed and screeched to a halt six inches from the guardian's Jeep.

“Well parked, Davie,” I called.

“What are you doing here, Hume 253?” Hamilton asked, peering at the gap between the bumpers.

“Good morning, guardian,” Davie said, trying to pretend that his driving was beyond criticism. “I heard from the command centre that a body had been discovered.” He looked at me hopefully. “I thought you and citizen Dalrymple might need some help.”

“Oh, you did, did you? So you drove down here like a madman and  . . .” The guardian finally took his gaze from the back end of his Jeep. “Anyway, what makes you think Citizen Dalrymple has any involvement in this case?” He glared at me. “You wanted to know if this body was that of the missing Edlott winner. It isn't. Why are you still here?”

Typical Hamilton. For him, things were either black or white. I've always tended to operate in grey areas.

“Look,” I said, “the missing guy will probably turn up with a hangover any time now. That poor sod over there's had his last hair of the dog and I'm not convinced he just dropped dead on the river bank. I'm your special investigator, for God's sake. Let me confirm this isn't a suspicious death.”

For a few moments it seemed Hamilton wasn't going to buy it, then he nodded reluctantly. “Oh, very well. But I want you back on the Edlott case as soon as possible.” Before I could celebrate my minor victory his lower jaw jutted forward aggressively. “Don't think you can use any guard personnel you want, Dalrymple. In case it's escaped your attention, Hume 253 is a guard commander and as such is subject to my orders.”

“I know,” I said, playing it cool. “That's why I'm asking you to let him assist me here. It'll mean I get things finished quicker.”

The guardian couldn't really argue with that. “Now I suppose I'm going to have to rearrange the watch commanders' rota,” he grumbled, looking round for a minion to bawl out.

I led Davie up the steps to the dead man's front door. “Next time pull up further away from his precious Jeep,” I suggested.

“Did I hit it?” Davie demanded. “Did I?”

“Calm down.” I handed him a pair of rubber gloves and led him inside. Scene-of-crime people were already at work finger-printing and taking photographs.

“Not bad,” Davie said, taking in the living room and separate kitchen from the hall. “You could have a whole family in here.”

“Yes, you could.” I put in a call to the Housing Directorate and discovered that Thomson, Francis Dee, had lived here on his own for fourteen months. They weren't able to tell me why he hadn't been allocated single-citizen accommodation. It may simply have been that the bureaucracy had fouled up.

“Right, where do we start?” Davie said, going into the living room.

“You know the drill by now, guardsman.”

“Confirm ID, collate forensic evidence, list personal belongings  . . .”

“All right, smartarse. I'll take the table, you take the rest.”

“Done.”

Although there was the usual range of Supply Directorate furniture in the room, I'd actually given Davie the easy bit. It looked like almost all of Frankie Thomson's worldly possessions were on the table that stood under the front window – papers, dirty cups, old copies of the
Edinburgh Guardian
, a pair of socks with holes in the toes and a darning needle stuck through them, a couple of well-thumbed Ngaio Marsh novels. And, on the top, his ID card. That saved us some time. It also gave me a medium-voltage shock.

“Well, well,” I said.

“What have you got?” Davie came over.

I fended him off. “Thomson, Francis Dee,” I read. “Status – citizen. Born 24.4.1972, height five feet five inches, weight eight stone six pounds, hair grey, teeth incomplete (upper rear denture plate), distinguishing mark none, employment Cleansing Department, Tourism Directorate, address 19 Bell Place, Colonies, next of kin none.” The face staring out was the one I'd seen by the river. In life the eyes looked as vacant as they did now.

“Is that it?” Davie sounded disappointed.

“No, it's not,” I said, turning the laminated card round and holding it in front of his face.

“Ah,” he said, registering the letters “DM” in bold maroon type at the bottom. “The dead man was a demoted auxiliary.”

“Kind of changes things, doesn't it?” I said, putting the card into my pocket. Although the Council carefully avoids doing DM-class citizens like me any favours when we're alive, they find us much more interesting when we're dead. Because demoted auxiliaries are by definition untrustworthy characters who've sold the Enlightenment out one way or another, their deaths are automatically treated as suspicious until proved otherwise.

“I'd better notify the guardian,” Davie said, turning away.

I reached out an arm and grabbed his shoulder. “Hold on. He'll be off to the Council meeting soon. Let's sit on this for a bit till we dig up some more about the guy.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Davie said, his eyes wide open. “The guardian'll have my balls for breakfast if he finds out I've colluded in suppressing significant information.”

“Who's going to tell him?” I asked. “Anyway, you don't have to work with me on this if you don't want to.” I gave him a tight smile. “Or if I don't want you to.”

“Why are you doing this?” he asked desperately. “It's just a waster who passed out in the sun, for Christ's sake.”

I ran my fingers across my unshaven cheek slowly. I wasn't too sure what I was doing myself. Maybe I felt some irrational sympathy for a fellow former auxiliary. But more than that, something I couldn't put my finger on felt strange about the whole set-up.