The Blood Tree

by Paul Johnston

  I ran back to the ICU and was advised that the old man was weak but still stable. I gave the auxiliaries the number of my Public Order Directorate mobile and told them to call me immediately if there was any change.

  “Come on then,” Davie said, looking at his watch as I got back to him. “There’s a hole in the ground waiting for us.”

  “A pit, an underworld cavern, the infernal abyss,” I said as we walked out into the clammy mist that had thickened while we were inside. “Some juicy symbolism there in this less than perfect city, eh?”

  Davie opened the Land-Rover door. “You need a good lie-down, pal.”

  I nodded and climbed into the ancient guard vehicle. The adrenalin-inspired bravado that the start of a case always brought about was already beginning to fade. Even a cynic like me needs some motivation to keep on doing his job. Enlightenment Edinburgh didn’t provide much in the way of that any more.

  Mound Place. The lights of the guard Land-Rovers shone blearily out of the murk like the wreckers’ torches that lure unsuspecting ships on to the coasts of the badlands in Fife and Berwickshire these days.

  “Nice night for it,” Davie said.

  “Uh-huh.” I peered ahead. “Oh shit. Who told him? You’d have thought he had enough to keep him busy.”

  “Ah.” Davie didn’t look overjoyed to see his boss either. “The command centre, I suppose.”

  Lewis Hamilton, public order guardian and currently acting senior guardian, came out of the mist. He was dressed in the tweed jacket and corduroy trousers that make up the standard garb of Council members and, despite the chill air, he wore no coat. He was probably making a point to his subordinates; something along the lines of “Look how hard I am – over seventy-five and never a day off work.” No doubt the auxiliaries were very impressed.

  “Hume 253.” The guardian acknowledged his senior guard commander with the usual formality. Then he looked past Davie. “Is that you, Dalrymple?” The rheumy eyes above his white beard registered surprise. “I didn’t expect to see you here. Then again, I can never find you when I want you so I suppose the reverse applies.” His voice softened. “I heard about your father. Very sorry. Keeping his head above water, I was told.”

  I nodded. Lewis Hamilton had fallen out with Hector in a big way when they were on the Council. Still, at least he was making an effort to show sympathy. I got out of the Land-Rover and went round to join him on the slippery cobblestones.

  “You don’t have to involve yourself in this,” the guardian said. “You’ve got other things to worry about.”

  “I’ve had enough of worrying,” I said, remembering the dismal thoughts that had afflicted me in the infirmary. “Anyway,” I added, going on the offensive, “my contract with the Public Order Directorate allows me to intervene in any investigation.” I gave him a firm look. “And guarantees no interference from any quarter.”

  Lewis had taken a step back. “All right, man. I was only trying to help.” He turned back towards the lights outside the Assembly Hall.

  “Arsehole,” Davie said in a low voice. “Can you never manage to talk to the guardian without biting him in the throat?”

  “Sorry. Force of habit.” Lewis Hamilton had been my boss when I was in the directorate – before my lover Caro was killed in an operation planned and led by me in 2015, and I ended up being demoted because I didn’t care any more.

  We walked up to the collegiate building with the high twin towers that stands in front of the Assembly Hall. Both the buildings had connections with organised religion, but those counted for nothing when the atheist Enlightenment came to power. The college was turned into an auxiliary training block, and the hall to the rear became the Council chamber for the first twenty years of the regime. Then, in what I took to be a mark of the guardians’ burgeoning lust for the trappings of power, they moved the chamber to what used to be the Scottish Parliament building in Holyrood – a collection of upturned boats that was raked with machine-gun fire during the riots leading up to the last election. Of course, the Assembly Hall itself served as the Scottish Parliament for a couple of years before the boats were launched, so the Council’s love affair with the architecture of power had actually been going on from day one.

  “What have we got?” Davie asked the guard commander at the entrance.

  “Some pretty handy excavation works, Hume 253.” The balding auxiliary nodded at the deep hole inside the gateway. “As you can see, they had all the necessary equipment. Compressor, drills, mini-digger, pick-axes—”

  “Where did the gear come from?” I interrupted.

  “Ah, citizen Dalrymple. Good evening.” The commander gave me a brief smile. I’d had dealings with him from time to time in the command centre. He was one of a select group of senior auxiliaries who didn’t have a problem with a demoted citizen like me being employed by the directorate.

  I returned his smile. “How are you, Knox III?”

  “Fine, thank you. It’s Labour Directorate equipment. We’ve just checked. It was taken from the Canonmills depot last night, along with a pick-up truck that’s still unaccounted for. I’ve authorised an all-barracks search for it.”

  “How the bloody hell did they get away with it?” Hamilton demanded, coming out of the mist like an irate werewolf. “What happened to the watchmen?”

  The commander twitched his head nervously. “I’ve asked the local barracks for an explanation.”

  Lewis kept up his rant as I moved to the hole and looked down. Lights had been strung into it and there was a ladder leaning against one side. It was at least fifteen feet deep and at the bottom I could see a paved floor strewn with earth and lumps of stone.

  “What do you reckon?” Davie said, squatting down beside me.

  “I reckon these guys knew what they were doing.” I looked round at Hamilton. “There were three of them. We saw them.”

  “What?” the guardian said with a gasp of surprise.

  “When we were driving to Hector’s. The commander here even spoke to one of them.”

  “Is this true, Hume 253?” Hamilton demanded.

  Davie nodded sheepishly. “I didn’t see much of him, though. He was wearing full work gear. I assumed they really were citizens on overtime.”

  “Good God, man,” the guardian said. He started winding himself up for another harangue.

  “I made the same assumption, Lewis,” I said, taking the wind from his sails. I turned to Knox III. “Who raised the alarm?”

  “The sentry,” he replied. “Eventually.”

  I glanced at my watch. Being poor-quality, ordinary citizen-issue, the glass was partially clouded by condensation, but I could see that it was after eleven. “It took him his whole shift to work out there was something dodgy about the workmen?” The second guard shift starts at two p.m. and ends at ten. “What finally got to him?”

  “The sentry’s a guardswoman,” Knox iii said, stepping aside. “Ask her yourself.”

  I was confronted by a heavily built middle-aged woman in a tight guard uniform. Her face was ruddy and her mousy hair was tied back in a loose grip. The public order guardian’s presence didn’t seem to bother her. One of the old guard, literally.

  “So what happened . . .” I leaned forward to read the barracks badge on her mountainous chest “. . . Moray 58?”

  “The squad of labourers arrived when I was coming on duty.” The guardswoman was standing to attention, her eyes fixed on a point above my left shoulder. I got the feeling that she wasn’t enjoying making her report to an ordinary citizen. “I asked for their job authorisation form. It looked to be in order.”

  “Did you check it with the Labour Directorate as regulations require?” Hamilton demanded.

  Moray 58 stiffened even more. “I was about to,” she said. “Then a truck arrived with a delivery of supplies to the auxiliary training centre. I was busy clearing it through and the leader of the labour squad told me not to waste my time checking his papers.”

  The public order guard
ian snorted in disgust. “And you went along with that?”

  “I presumed,” the guardswoman said with less assurance, “that maintenance of the electricity cable was bound to be above board.”

  There was a frosty silence that made it clear to the guardswoman how limited her career prospects were.

  “Can you describe the squad leader?” I asked.

  Moray 58 nodded. “Certainly. He was approximately six feet two in height, fifteen stone in weight and wearing standard-issue labourer’s overalls, boots and jacket with luminous stripes.” She stopped abruptly.

  “Is that it?” I said when the silence began to drag. “What about hair colour, facial characteristics, accent?”

  The sentry was still looking above my shoulder. “I can’t say,” she answered after a long delay. “He was wearing a miner’s helmet and a protective mask.”

  “What, even when he first arrived?”

  She nodded.

  “So he could have looked like Boris Karloff and sounded like Bela Lugosi and you wouldn’t have noticed?”

  “I am not familiar with those individuals, citizen,” Moray 58 said stolidly. “I cannot describe the workman’s face or voice, if that’s what you mean.”

  I swore under my breath, loud enough for the guardswoman to hear and be appropriately scandalised by language citizens are not supposed to use.

  “I suppose the same goes for all the others?”

  The sentry nodded again.

  “How many of them were there?” I demanded. “Assuming you can count.”

  Moray 58 ignored the jibe. “Three including the squad leader.”

  The public order guardian stepped forward. His cheeks were red, and not just from the cold. He couldn’t cope with incompetence from his staff. “What finally raised your suspicions, guardswoman?” he shouted. “What finally woke you up?”

  The sentry jerked back, somehow managing to remain at attention. “It . . . it was the way they were working, guardian. For all the rain and cold they were so . . . so diligent. I’ve never seen Edinburgh labourers go through a shift with such commitment. They didn’t even stop for the tea-break.”

  I stifled a laugh as the guardian took in what the woman was saying. It’s been the case for years that ordinary citizens, whose faith in the Council has been gradually eroded to the lowest level, have developed shirking into an art form – not that Lewis and his colleagues on the Council could let themselves believe that.

  “So you began to realise that they were maybe up to no good?” I said.

  Moray 58 opened her eyes wide and nodded slowly. She pulled out her guard notebook and flicked it open. “At eight-oh-five I came out here and asked for the job authorisation form again. I intended to get confirmation from the Labour Directorate.” She broke off.

  “And . . . ?” I said impatiently.

  “And then the phone rang in the sentry box.” She gave a shrug. “By the time I was finished there the workmen had gone.”

  “What?” Hamilton said. “In the space of a few seconds?”

  The guardswoman bit her lip. “Well, it was longer than that, guardian. The command centre had a list of things for me to check.”

  I might have known. The City Guard is notorious for inventing activities to keep its people on their toes.

  “All right, Moray 58,” I said. “Give a full statement to Knox 111.” I watched as she moved swiftly away without waiting for Hamilton to dismiss her. She had some sense.

  Davie came over and we stood looking down the hole.

  “We’d better find out what they were after,” I said. “Where’s the scene-of-crime squad?”

  The public order guardian was shaking his head. “Oh no. That’s a restricted area down there. We’ll have to do the preliminary check ourselves.”

  “Really?” I said, my curiosity beginning to get out of hand. “Can we get in through the basement?”

  Hamilton shook his head even more firmly. “The old Parliament records were sealed by Council decree in 2005. It’ll need another Council order to get that seal broken. I want to know what’s been going on down there before I ask the Council for such an order.”

  This was getting seriously interesting. I’d known for years that the pre-Enlightenment Scottish Parliament’s archive existed, but I’d never allowed myself to get too excited by it since the Council, in its high-minded disapproval of what it regarded as a corrupt system of government, had put the records out of reach even of its own researchers.

  I pulled on the protective white overalls and rubber gloves that Davie handed me. When he and Hamilton had done the same, I dangled my legs down the hole and felt for the top rung of the ladder.

  “You don’t mind me going first, do you, Lewis?” I asked.

  “I’ll be right behind you, Dalrymple,” he replied grimly. “And don’t open any files unless I’m present.”

  “I’d never do a thing like that,” I said as I climbed into the surprisingly well-lit subterranean cavern.

  The guardian snorted. “And the Tourism Directorate will be closing down its knocking shops tomorrow.”

  The electricity cable certainly hadn’t been in need of maintenance. The vast basement was lit up like a shopping centre in pre-Enlightenment times – before looters nicked everything in sight, including the light fittings and bulbs. Roof-high shelves crammed with dark blue cardboard files stretched away in orderly lines. Dust that hadn’t been disturbed since I was in my early twenties hung in the air like plankton in the southern oceans.

  I moved forward carefully to give the others room then bent my knees and examined the floor. The flagstones in the vicinity of the hole were covered in rubble and earth, and there were plenty of footprints for the scene-of-crime people to take casts of later on. They looked like your standard work-boot to me.

  “The size of this place,” Davie said in astonishment.

  Hamilton nodded. “It was enlarged in the early years of the century. The Scottish Parliament was a great producer of paper.”

  “And the Council isn’t?” I said under my breath. “Have you been down here before, Lewis?”

  “Em . . . a few times. When we were preparing to close it up.”

  “Great,” I said. “You’ll know your way around then.”

  The guardian shook his head. “Hardly. It’s a long time ago.” He frowned at me. “Anyway, you’re the archive lover.”

  I glared at him. “If the Council used computers properly, I wouldn’t have to spend most of my waking hours in the city’s waste paper collections.”

  Davie stepped between us. “Shall we get on, gentlemen? Are we going to be able to tell what they were after?”

  I gazed down the long passage in front of me. It was one of many. “Only if we’re clever. Their boots would have been dirty so we may be able to trace the footprints they’ve left. We’d better split up.”

  So we did. But it wasn’t long before we joined up again.

  “There are blurred footprints in the dust all over the place, Dalrymple,” Hamilton said, his brow lined. “They aren’t going to tell us anything.”

  Davie nodded in agreement. “They seem to have been down all the stacks. Maybe they didn’t know what they were looking for.”

  “Maybe not.” I rubbed my hand across my face, forgetting that the protective gloves were now covered in dust. That gave me an idea. “Or maybe they had something specific in mind and walked up and down the passageways to throw us off their trail.”

  Hamilton looked at me sceptically. “What makes you think that?”

  “Listen, they were organised enough to steal Labour Directorate equipment. They were daring enough to set up a fake dig a few hundred yards from the castle.” I watched as the guardian’s jaw jutted out in anger. “And they worked out an effective place to break into the archive. What does all that tell you?”

  “That they were working to a plan,” Davie said.

  “Exactly. They wouldn’t be running the risk of spending the rest of their lives do
wn the mines just because they fancied a nose round the old Parliament records. They were after something particular. And I reckon they knew where to look for it.”

  Hamilton was staring at me. “You’re saying that they didn’t want us to know what they were interested in?” he asked dubiously. “That’s pure guesswork, Dalrymple. The guardswoman told us that they cleared off when she was about to check their papers. Maybe they didn’t find what they wanted.” He looked at the stacks of paper. “Anyway, everything in here is rubbish. I don’t know why we don’t burn the lot of it.”

  I wasn’t keen on the way he’d defined my investigative technique. “Guesswork? That’s what you think, Lewis. What if I can show you the documents they wanted?”

  The guardian laughed softly. “Then I’ll give you an auxiliary knife engraved with the word ‘genius’. But it’s not going to happen, man.”

  “Isn’t it?” I bent over and looked at the flagstones again. I had a hunch I was right, but Hamilton had never been a fan of my hunches. There was only one way to find out.

  Before I started going over the place with my magnifying glass, I called the infirmary and checked on the old man. He was asleep and as comfortable as could be expected. So I got down to work.

  I had the feeling it was going to be a long night.

  Fortunately, that feeling turned out to be a loser. Not long after half-past midnight I spotted the spots.

  I had just reached the end of a stack and caught a glimpse of Lewis Hamilton. The city’s law and order supremo and acting chief executive was bent over in the passageway like a cleaner chasing the piece of fluff that had got away. I was about to ask him if he was having a good time when I saw a six-inch line of dull red drops. The dust had been disturbed all around the stack-end. I’d come across several such places but this was the only one with traces of what looked very like blood. Well, well.

  “Lewis! Davie! We’re in business.”

  The sound of City Guard-issue nailed boots came at me from different directions. I took up a position at the stack-end to protect the scene.

  “What have you found?” Hamilton asked, wiping a cobweb from his beard.