The Blood Tree

by Paul Johnston

  We managed to turn off the computer and move Katharine’s papers on to the conference table before the guardian broke the door down.

  “What took you so long, man?” Hamilton demanded, eyeing us suspiciously.

  I shrugged. “We were busy. How about you?”

  “I haven’t exactly been having a rest-day,” the guardian said, moving towards his desk then stopping when he saw the mess I’d made of it. “I’ve just finished chairing the Council meeting.” He gave me a sharp look. “My colleagues expect you to clear up the break-in without delay.”

  “Do they really?” I glared at him. “Don’t they expect your directorate to come up with any sightings of the burglars, Lewis?” It’s always a good idea to remind guardians of their own shortcomings.

  Hamilton twitched his head but didn’t respond.

  “Uh-huh.” I beckoned to Katharine. “We’re going to interview a scientist who was on the committee.”

  Lewis’s eyes sprang open. “Who’s that?” he asked quickly, then tried to mask his interest by looking at the carpet.

  “Gavin Godwin,” Katharine said.

  The guardian turned away and hung his tweed jacket up on a hook inside his spartan washroom.

  “Lewis?” I said, going over to him. “Do you know him?”

  He glanced at Katharine but kept his eyes off mine. “Em, no. Not personally. I . . . I just had the idea that all the members died or left the city years ago.”

  I stared at him. “Apparently not.”

  He looked at me then pushed past.

  “Let me know what you find out,” he said, starting to collate the pages I’d left strewn across his desk. “By the way, my people in the archive have found no copies of the missing attachment. There aren’t even any references to it in the files they’ve checked so far.”

  “Brilliant,” I muttered as I headed for the door.

  “They’ll keep looking,” Lewis called after me.

  “A needle and a haystack spring to mind,” I said over my shoulder. “Or maybe just a haystack.”

  We picked up a couple of dodgy-looking sandwiches from the castle mess and ate them on the way to the esplanade. The cheese was hard, the butter was bogus and the pickle made my lips smart, but at least the bread was fresh – if a bit gritty. On the way down the drawbridge I pulled out my mobile and rang the infirmary.

  “No change with the old man,” I said after I’d finished the call.

  Katharine felt for my hand and touched it briefly. “That’s good.”

  The first vehicle in the line was a Land-Rover that looked like it had spent several years at the bottom of a loch. Who knows? Maybe it had. The guard would be lost without its squad of specialist mechanics. They work continuous shifts to keep the fleet of pre-Enlightenment wrecks on the road.

  A barrel-chested driver who’d had me in the front of his Land-Rover a few times in the past stepped forward enthusiastically.

  “Afternoon, Citizen Dalrymple. Where can I take you?”

  I’d already decided he was surplus to requirements. “Not today, Scott 139,” I said, extending my hand for the keys. “Go and get yourself a cup of tea.”

  He raised his eyes to the leaden sky. “Tea?” he grumbled. “Nettles stewed in sheep’s piss, you mean.” He gave me a fierce look. “Make sure you take care of the roller.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. Guard Land-Rovers picked up that designation fifteen years back, when their suspensions began to suffer from the lack of genuine replacement parts. Their drivers have become over-attached to them.

  When we were shaking and rattling towards Castlehill, Katharine leaned across and put her hand on my arm. Then she started to dig the points of her fingers in hard.

  “Ow! What are you doing?” I gasped, braking to let a Supply Directorate truck stacked with grey bog-rolls negotiate the checkpoint.

  “Tell me what that file’s about,” she said insistently.

  “Shit! Let go, Katharine. Why do you think I sent the driver away?”

  The pressure disappeared.

  “Ah,” she said, smiling. “Sorry. I should have known you would do the opposite of what the old tyrant in the castle told you.”

  I drove slowly through a group of tourists outside the Camera Obscura, getting a filthy look from their guide as his charges were forced to press themselves against the walls of the narrow street.

  “It’s nothing to do with Hamilton’s orders,” I said. “There’s no point in you working with me if you don’t know the whole story. Anyway, I know I can trust you.” I glanced at her. “Can’t I?”

  Katharine caught my mocking tone but didn’t respond to it. There had been times when I’d had what turned out to be misplaced suspicions about her and her bitterness towards the regime, but I reckoned I’d got beyond that now. So I told her about the minutes of the Genetic Engineering Committee and the missing attachment.

  “And you’ve got no idea what this mysterious research was into?”

  I shook my head. “Something sensitive enough to outrage most of the members of the committee.”

  “It must have been bad then,” Katharine said ironically. “MSPs would go with anything as long as the backhanders were big enough.”

  I felt the Land-Rover’s ancient steering jerk as the wheels slid over the soaking cobbles. “If what Hamilton said about there being no other copies of the attachment in the archive is right, we’d better hope that Doctor Gavin Godwin opens up to us.”

  The drizzle suddenly turned to rain and I switched the windscreen wipers on. They squeaked like demented lemmings in search of a cliff. For some reason that immediately brought the Council of City Guardians to mind.

  Royal Terrace is one of the few streets in Edinburgh that were allowed by the rabidly republican Enlightenment to retain their names. Even in the early years of the Council tourism was king, so to speak, and it was recognised that many visitors wanted to commune with what remained of the city’s regal past. So, although the city’s children are taught that disillusion with the monarchy had been a major cause of social unrest at the beginning of the millennium, the central tourist zone retains an element of majesty – alongside the racetrack, souvenir shops and stripjoints.

  I drove along the elegant Georgian terrace on the north of the Calton Hill, its upper slopes with the soot-encrusted monuments swathed in fog, and pulled up outside the retirement home. I wondered if this lead was what we needed to make sense of the break-in and felt my heart begin to beat faster.

  “This is a bit flashy for a bunch of old people,” Katharine said, gazing up at the high façade.

  She was right. Although my father’s home had once been a grand mansion, it was a long way out of the centre and it didn’t have window-boxes filled with multicoloured blooms.

  “This is a place for former auxiliaries that the Council approves of,” I said, pushing open my door. “Troublemakers like Hector got stuck in with ordinary citizens – not that he cares. The arselickers are trusted not to disturb the tourists in the hotels down the street so they’re put up in style.”

  “Very egalitarian,” Katharine said as she joined me on the pavement.

  “Who said anything about the Council being interested in equal rights for all?” I asked. “Apart from for all Council members and auxiliaries, of course.”

  We went up the steps and entered the building. My boots sank into a carpet that a pasha would happily have rolled around on with his harem.

  A male nursing auxiliary in a tight, well-pressed white tunic came out of a side-office like one of the heat-seeking missiles the Iraqis used on Airforce One in 2001.

  “Identification?” he said, running an eye down my less-than-pristine black sweatshirt and trousers.

  “Please,” I said before flashing my Council authorisation. I reckoned that would take the breeze from his spinnaker.

  “Citizen Dalrymple,” he read. His face was impassive as he wrote my name on his clipboard. “Purpose of visit?”

  “None of y
our business, Simpson 357. Where can I find Napier 77?” That was Dr Godwin’s barracks number.

  He ignored me. “Identification,” he said, sticking his hand out at Katharine.

  “She’s with me,” I said, taking her arm.

  “Identification,” he repeated, keeping his eyes off me. “Please,” he added in a low voice.

  Katharine took a plastic-covered card from her pocket and held it up to the auxiliary.

  That really did becalm him. It was an undercover operative’s pass, known to all as an “ask no questions”. I’d got one for Katharine on a case years ago and she’d held on to it.

  “Can we see Napier 77 now?” I asked with a cold smile.

  Simpson 357 nodded. “Second floor, room number 23.”

  We walked past him.

  “Em, citizen,” he called after me. “Don’t expect to get too much sense out of him. He sometimes rambles.”

  “Wonderful,” I said as we reached the stairs.

  “Look on the bright side,” Katharine said. “He could have had a stroke or a heart attack.” She raised her hand to her mouth. “Shit. Sorry.”

  I started climbing. “Like I said. Wonderful.”

  The door to room 23 was ajar. I craned my head round and was rewarded with the sight of a small man standing in the middle of another top-quality carpet. He was urinating into a bedpan.

  “What do you want?” he demanded. “Can’t I even piss in peace?” He gave a breathless laugh. “Piss in peace? That’s not bad.” He had a heavy West Coast accent. The first Council banned all dialects and accents in an attempt to do away with socially divisive factors, but this guy had probably been too useful to be strongarmed.

  “Right, I’m done,” he said, holding the bedpan out to me. “Go on, take it. It won’t bite.” Napier 77 sat down in an armchair and wrapped a tartan rug round himself. He was a scrawny figure with thin, grey hair and large ears. I wondered if he was a man or a mouse.

  “Who are you then?” He looked past me. “And who’s your much better-looking friend?”

  “Dalrymple’s the name,” I said, showing him my authorisation. “Call me Quint. And this is Katharine.”

  “Are you a special investigator too, dear?” the old man asked, giving her a smile that deepened the fault-lines on his face.

  “Something like that,” Katharine replied with barely concealed distaste.

  I deposited the pisspot under the bed and moved between them before more than sparks started to fly. “Nice place you’ve got here, Napier 77.”

  “You think so?” he said, looking at me like I was a congenital idiot. “A mincing wanker in charge, a gang of dribbling yes-men for company and one copy of the Edinburgh Guardian for the lot of us? Aye, it’s very fucking nice.” He glanced at Katharine to see if his swearing had any effect. He was disappointed. “And stop calling me by that bloody number. Your lords and masters have turned the city into a colony of automata.”

  “I quite agree, Doctor Godwin,” I said. That seemed to mollify him a bit.

  “Gavin will do, Quint.” He laughed again, the breath hissing faintly in his throat. “Quint. What kind of a name is that? You sound like a pirate out of Treasure Island.”

  That got a smile out of Katharine.

  “Now we’re on first-name terms,” the old man continued, “tell me what you’re doing here. Don’t tell me the Council’s finally decided to run me in for discourtesy to my fellow auxiliaries?”

  I shook my head. “How’s your memory, Gavin?”

  “In perfect working order,” the old man replied. “Quint? Is that short for something, son?”

  I wasn’t going to enlighten him. “The year 2002,” I said.

  “Oh aye?” He seemed to be watching me more carefully now. “What about it?”

  Before I could answer a series of noises that made the hairs on my neck rise came from the bed. They were high-pitched and rapidly repeated, a cross between a wail and howl.

  “What the hell’s that?” I said, looking round.

  “Uch, don’t worry about him,” Godwin said. “Come out of there, Cerberus.”

  Katharine and I exchanged glances as a black form manoeuvred itself from beneath the pillow. It stood peering at us, then jumped down and ran over to the old man.

  “You call your cat Cerberus?” I asked, trying to work out what it was about the animal’s appearance that didn’t make sense. It was larger than your average domesticated feline and the short fur was thick and curly. Then it started washing itself and I felt my stomach flip. “Jesus.”

  Gavin Godwin laughed. “I did think of calling him that, but I reckoned the science and energy guardian would have taken it as an attack on the Council’s atheist principles.”

  “What happened to its mouth?” I asked, staring at the heavy jaws and fearsome teeth.

  “His mouth,” Godwin said. “Cerberus is definitely male. Just look at his reproductive organs.”

  I bent down and clocked what looked very like a dog’s dick and bollocks.

  “He’s a hybrid,” Katharine said, her voice faint. “You crossed a cat with a dog.”

  The old man nodded. “Crossed hardly does justice to the complexity of the process, but yes, in layman’s terms that’s what I did. The Supply Directorate was having terrible problems with rats – big, ferocious bastards that nested in the old railway tunnels beneath the main depot in Waverley. So I came up with this little laddie and his pals. The cunning and ruthlessness of a Siamese combined with the speed and bite of a terrier.”

  “Didn’t Cerberus have three heads?” I asked.

  Gavin Godwin stretched a hand down – something I definitely wouldn’t have risked – and scratched the creature’s chin. It looked up at him, slanting its green eyes and making a strangulated purring noise that did nothing to reduce the impression of otherworldly viciousness.

  “I put forward a research proposal along those lines,” the old man said, leaning forward excitedly. “Think of the carnage three-headed rat-catchers could have generated.” Then he twitched his head. “My idiotic superiors thought it would cause unrest in the depot. They used it as an excuse to retire me. That and the fact that being over eighty apparently means you’re ga-ga.” He stuck his finger into his pet’s mouth and ran the nail along the line of solid teeth. The animal stopped purring and gave a cautionary growl. “No, the point of the name is that the first two embryos didn’t come to fruition. Cerberus was the third so I gave him that name to preserve the memory of his brothers.”

  “Unusually sentimental for a scientist,” I said.

  The old man gave me a blank look. “Cerberus was also the guardian of the ancient underworld, you know.”

  “Which must make you Pluto,” I said under my breath. “Getting back to 2002, Gavin.”

  He nodded slowly. “Aye. What are you after?”

  “You were an adviser to the Scottish Parliament’s Genetic Engineering Committee.”

  “I was,” the old scientist agreed. “Along with several colleagues. Are you talking to them too?”

  “None of the others is in Edinburgh,” I said. “Unless you know different.”

  “No, no. I haven’t seen any of them since independence.”

  “In April of 2002 there was a meeting that dealt with two research proposals.”

  Gavin Godwin was staring at me but he wasn’t giving me any help.

  “The first was called Fet-mat. It was approved.”

  He moved his head so slightly that I wasn’t sure if he’d nodded.

  “And the second was referred to as 4.1.116.” I was watching him closely. His eyes, pale brown and narrowed, didn’t give anything away. “Do you remember that proposal?”

  Godwin shook his head slowly, squeezing his pet’s ear.

  “No?” I asked. “Are you sure? It caused a lot of argument on ethical grounds.”

  “Careful, Cerberus,” the old man said quietly. “You don’t want to hurt your creator, do you?” The animal was growling in what sounded
like an affirmative way to me. “Do you know how many of those committee meetings I had to attend?” Godwin demanded. “The university started docking my salary eventually. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t long till the drugs gangs ransacked Heriot-Watt and burned it to the ground.”

  “Proposal 4.1.116,” I repeated. “Think about it. The research was outlined in an attachment.”

  “That was standard procedure,” Godwin snapped. It looked like I was getting to him.

  Katharine went up to him and knelt down by Cerberus. She even had the nerve to stroke the creature’s furry back. He seemed to like it. His master was impressed too. He smiled slackly.

  “Did you get a personal copy of the minutes and the attachments, Gavin?” Katharine asked in a low voice.

  The old man’s cheeks began to redden. I had the feeling the only women who’d been near him recently smelled of rubbing alcohol and haemorrhoid cream.

  “Did you?” Katharine pressed.

  Godwin looked away and shook his head. “No. We were given copies of the attachments to read before the meetings and we got the minutes to approve afterwards. In both cases the committee secretary’s office retrieved all documentation.” He shrugged his shoulders underneath the rug. “It was all top secret, of course.”

  “Of course,” I muttered. “So we’ll have to rely on your memory, Gavin.” I smiled encouragingly. “Which you said is in perfect working order.”

  He looked at me shakily. “Well, almost perfect—”

  “Rubbish!” I yelled, trying to shock him into talking.

  Bad idea. Cerberus leaped to his hairy feet and came scrabbling towards me like a mouth on legs.

  “Shit,” I gasped, aiming a kick at him. It missed but that only made him more ferocious. I felt the points of his teeth through the leather of my boot.

  Godwin fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a small metallic object and put it to his lips. His cheeks inflated, making him look more like a chipmunk than a mouse. I couldn’t hear anything but the animal crashed to the floor and wrapped his front paws over his ears. I’d have burst out laughing if I hadn’t been so worried about my foot.

  “Don’t worry,” the old man said. “You won’t need an anti-tetanus. Cerberus is clean of all infection. I built that into his system.”