Water of Death

by Paul Johnston

  Where I sank into an exceedingly wet dream. Not one that had anything to do with Sophia or Katharine though. I found myself engulfed by water, tidal waves and floods of it. I was bobbing over a submerged Edinburgh in the midst of a crowd of motionless citizen bodies. In the background the Band were playing “Cripple Creek” con brio. I woke up in a sweat, gasping for breath and wondering why the two men who’d drunk the ultimate water of life had been found with their heads in the Water of Leith.

  Then I had an idea that hit me like a truck. I didn’t get much more sleep that night.

  Chapter Nine

  I woke up on the sofa with a serious crick in my neck and a thirst that Gunga Din would have had trouble assuaging. Fortunately Katharine had repeated her trick with the water-bottles. I thought she’d sneaked off again till I heard sounds in the bedroom. She appeared at the door, her hair ruffled and one of my T-shirts on the upper part of her body. It had lost a lot of colour in the wash house but the slogan was still visible: it read “Edlott – Ultimate Prizes, Ultimate Satisfaction”. As long as you didn’t win a stint in the Robert Louis Stevenson costume.

  “When I got up you were sleeping the sleep of the just,” Katharine said with a smile. “The just knackered. It was so sweet.”

  “Uh-huh. I’d have enjoyed it more if I’d been in my bed.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “No one stopped you getting in.”

  I staggered to the curtain and pulled it open. Then closed it rapidly. I was no match for the sunlight.

  “I’ll see you later,” Katharine said.

  By the time I turned round, she was at the door. “Hang on a minute. Where are you going?”

  “I’ve got things to do,” she said, bending over her bag and stuffing her dirty shirt into it.

  “What things?” I went towards her, picking up a bottle of water on the way and gulping from it.

  “Just things.” She smiled at me again, this time a bit uncertainly.

  “How the hell did you get in here last night?”

  Her lips twitched. “You’re the detective.” She took hold of the door handle. “You work it out.”

  “You didn’t,” I said with a groan. “You didn’t use that ‘ask no questions’ to get a key cut?”

  “Very good, Quint. You haven’t lost your touch.” She pulled the door open. “Even if your taste in women has taken a nose dive.”

  “Here,” I called, “when will you be back?”

  The door had closed behind her before I finished the question.

  I climbed the upper reaches of the Royal Mile, puffing and blowing like an unfit sea lion. It was sweltering in the confines of Castlehill and I stopped to get my breath. A crowd of Korean tourists in shorts and sunhats were gathered outside the Camera Obscura. I hoped they’d manage to see something of the city through the heat haze that builds up from daybreak during the Big Heat.

  Then I caught sight of the solid walls of the reservoir that stands at the north-eastern corner of the esplanade. It holds a couple of million gallons of water and supplies much of central Edinburgh. What’s called the Witches Well is on the top end of the reservoir building. Hundreds of unfortunate and no doubt innocent women were executed there, the last as late as the eighteenth century. My thoughts last night about the Ultimate Usquebaugh flooded back. Could there be a link with the city’s water? If someone could put poison in whisky, why not in the water supply as well?

  I wanted to talk to Lewis Hamilton but he wasn’t in his office. His secretary told me that he and Davie had gone to interview a citizen in Murrayfield. I asked myself why they hadn’t let me know about that, then realised that I’d managed to turn my mobile off accidentally. That would explain why I hadn’t had an early-morning call from Sophia. I told the grey-haired female auxiliary that I’d wait for the public order guardian in his office. She wasn’t keen but I waved my Council authorisation at her.

  Lewis’s office was as tidy as a junior guardsman’s billet, the piles of folders on his large and spotless Victorian desk arranged in neat military lines. You’d hardly know there was a major enquiry under way. The table in the far corner with his computer terminal was a different story. A couple of manuals had been left open on top of the keyboard and bits of crumpled paper littered the surface. Obviously the guardian had been trying to track something down in the databank. He’d probably given up in disgust, too proud to ask for help. Even in a city where computers are restricted to senior auxiliaries who’ve always regarded them with extreme suspicion, Hamilton would walk away with the Technophobe of the Decade award. That was good news for me. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d accessed the Council archives via his terminal. The fact that the guardian was so ill-disposed towards his machine meant that he never bothered to change his passwords as procedure requires. So I booted up, typed the word “Colonel” and got stuck in.

  What I really wanted to do was sniff around the Edlott archive but I’d have to visit the Culture Directorate to do that. On the other hand, service records of all auxiliaries are kept in the Public Order Directorate’s databank. Hamilton liked to have information on all the city’s servants to hand – it was a way of making sure his colleagues in the Council didn’t get above themselves. I was interested in Nasmyth 05, the senior auxiliary who had been dragged unwillingly to the Council building by his boss last night. And I also wanted to check out how much was on record about the black-market trade in marijuana and hash emanating from the tourist clubs. Maybe, in my dreams, I would even find some juicy connection – perhaps via Frankie Thomson – between the lottery and the drug trafficking that had got going since the current Council opened things up in the city.

  Like I say, in my dreams. The lottery had been set up under the strict supervision of a committee of guardians and senior auxiliaries. If you excepted the basic policy of encouraging greed and personal profit in ordinary citizens (an exception the original Council would have gagged on in a couple of seconds), Edlott was fully compliant with normal control procedures. Nasmyth 05’s record showed that he had followed instructions and treated the winners like some kind of minor royalty, earning himself a lot of approving reports from his superiors. His sexual orientation was noted as homo rather than hetero but the Council has no problem with that. He seemed to have a normal sex life with other such male auxiliaries in his barracks. And there had never been any reference to him having tried it on with the male lottery-winners – an activity that would have got him nailed as senior auxiliaries are strictly forbidden sexual relationships with ordinary citizens.

  The trade in illicit drugs was more of a black hole. The guard had picked up twenty-seven citizens in possession of small quantities of grass and hash over the last six months. Twenty of those were underage specimens like the pair I’d run into in the Meadows. The Youth Development Department had taken them all under its wing, preventing the guard from carrying out its usual heavy-handed interrogations. The Public Order Directorate had so far not been able to identify any traffickers and the suspicion was that not much more than minor pilfering of the marijuana clubs’ stock was going on.

  I was printing out a list of the seven adult citizens caught in possession of soft drugs – none of them had prior Offence Notifications, suggesting they were hardly career criminals – when Hamilton and Davie came in.

  “There you are, Dalrymple,” the guardian said, looking unimpressed. “Where the bloody—”

  “Sorry, Lewis,” I interrupted, logging off. He didn’t seem to care that I’d been playing with his computer. “Problem with my mobile.”

  “Problem with the ‘on’ switch?” Davie asked with a grin.

  “Something like that, guardsman,” I answered. Time to change the subject. “Any joy with the Murrayfield resident you’ve been questioning?”

  “None,” Hamilton said from the sink in the recess beyond his desk. He’d stuck his head under the tap to cool down. “He was just shooting a line about hearing a gang of dissidents outside his flat. His wife said it wasn’t the
first time he’d tried to make a name for himself.”

  Davie put down the waterbottle he’d drained. “I think it’s fair to say it’ll be the last time.”

  I nodded, wondering if the buzzing in the anonymous citizen’s ears had started to fade yet.

  “Just as well you’re here actually, Dalrymple.” The guardian gave me a smile I didn’t like the look of. “The senior guardian tried to call you on numerous occasions earlier on. She’s on her way to the castle right now. I think she’s intending putting out an all-barracks search for you. She also made an uncharacteristically crude comment about what she was going to do with your mobile.”

  Davie looked at me expectantly but I had no intention of explaining that to him.

  Sophia arrived a few minutes later and went straight to the head of Hamilton’s conference table, studiously avoiding my eyes. She was laden with folders and a leather satchel.

  “Thank you, auxiliary, that will be all,” she said to Davie after offloading a heap of files marked “Senior Guardian/Public Order Guardian Eyes Only”.

  “Hume 253 stays,” I said, forcing her to look at me. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. “He’s been involved in the case from the outset.” I had a feeling I was about to need all the support I could get.

  Lewis Hamilton nodded reluctantly, unwilling to take on the senior guardian in public but equally unwilling to be left without backup from his directorate.

  Sophia gave a sigh which suggested that men who needed their hands held shouldn’t be involved in murder investigations. “Very well. We’ve wasted enough time this morning already. Give me an update please, guardian.”

  Hamilton reeled off a list of negatives – no witnesses in the vicinity of Fordyce Kennedy’s body, no more bottles of poisoned whisky, no sightings of the dead man’s son.

  “Do we really think he’s of interest?” Sophia asked.

  “We don’t really think anything about him,” I said testily, pissed off that she’d addressed the question to Lewis rather than to me. “He’s a bit of a mystery man, despite the fact that his mother and sister say he was at the family flat yesterday morning. That’s why I want to talk to him.”

  Sophia looked at me dubiously. “Don’t you have any other lines of enquiry?”

  I leaned forward and filled a glass from the water jug on the table. I had the feeling she wasn’t going to be overwhelmed by my ideas about Frankie Thomson, Edlott and the black-market trade in soft drugs but I tried them out all the same. Hers wasn’t the only blank face when I finished.

  “It’s all very far-fetched, isn’t it, Dalrymple?” Hamilton said, screwing his eyes up. I’d hoped he would be keen on nailing the lottery and drugs traffickers, given his intense dislike of both.

  “Quite so,” Sophia said. “Since you’re here, Hume 253, what do you think?”

  Davie looked at me apologetically then stuck the knife in. “There doesn’t seem to be much evidence of any connection with the poisonings.”

  So much for creative investigation techniques. I should have stitched my lips together but I’ve never taken criticism well, especially not from guardians and auxiliaries. I couldn’t resist the temptation to hit them with an even more far-fetched scenario.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing.

  The three of them followed my outstretched arm past the missing joint of my forefinger to the jug I’d just poured from.

  Hamilton and Davie glanced at each other nervously, wondering what idiocy I was up to now.

  Sophia just opened a folder and ran her finger down a list of bullet points. “A water jug, citizen,” she said without raising her eyes from the page. “Your point?”

  So I was “citizen” again, was I? Time to play with a lead ball. “And how much are the contents worth?”

  Despite the presence of two of his superiors, Davie had slumped down in his chair, a hand over his eyes. He’d never been able to cope with me baiting guardians.

  “What are you talking about, man?” Lewis demanded, forgetting how often I’d hung him out to dry at this game.

  “How much are the contents of the jug worth?” I repeated.

  Sophia finally looked up. “How much is a pint or so of water worth? Next to nothing.”

  “You’re wrong, senior guardian.” If she wanted official titles, she could have them. “As wrong as it’s possible to be in this city during the Big Heat.”

  Davie had removed his hand from his face. At least I was getting through to one of them.

  “Would you mind telling us what you’re implying, citizen?” There was plenty of irritation in Sophia’s voice.

  “Yes, stop playing around, Dalrymple,” Hamilton said, his cheeks reddening.

  Bingo. I had all three of them hooked. “The point is that maybe we aren’t dealing with some crazy guys who are having a laugh by knocking off a whisky drinker here and there.” I looked round the table. “Maybe we’re dealing with people who are putting the squeeze on the city.” One more glance round for dramatic effect. “If they can put poison in bottles of whisky, why shouldn’t they have a go at the water supplies as well?”

  All eyes were suddenly back on the water jug but no one made a move to refill their glass.

  “That is pure supposition,” Sophia said, looking at me like my marbles had been nicked in the playground and I hadn’t noticed. “What possible grounds do you have for such . . .” she paused, searching for a suitably disparaging phrase “ . . . such blatant scaremongering.”

  “Blatant scaremongering?” I said with heavy irony. This was turning out to be even harder to sell than I’d expected. “Have you forgotten where the bodies were located?”

  “Of course not, man,” Hamilton answered. “At the Colonies and near Murrayfield stadium.”

  “You’re not being specific enough, Lewis.”

  “Next to the river,” Davie put in, eyeing me uneasily.

  “Getting warmer.” I wasn’t letting him off the hook either.

  “With their heads in the river,” Sophia said.

  I nodded. “With their mouths in the Water of Leith.” I looked round at all three of them again. “Am I getting through to you? With their mouths in the water.”

  Sophia returned my look thoughtfully. “That could just be coincidence.”

  “Coincidences only happen in crappy detective stories, senior guardian. I think the killer or killers are sending us a message.”

  Davie sat up straight. “Along the lines of ‘I drank the water of life and look what happened to me’?”

  “Something like that.”

  Hamilton wasn’t completely lost in space. “Why didn’t they put the nicotine in bottles of water then?”

  He had a point. This was where my imagination slipped into overdrive. “Say these people are putting the squeeze on us. They’re using nicotine because they’ve got some interest in the only people who are allowed to smoke in this city – the tourists. They’re putting it in bottles of whisky called the Ultimate Usquebaugh because . . . well, where is the word ‘ultimate’ used all the time in Edinburgh?”

  “In lottery publicity,” Sophia answered. She sounded seriously unconvinced.

  “Correct. So maybe they’re hinting that they could destabilise the city by messing up Edlott – whence the murder of a winner. And they’re putting the bodies in the Water of Leith because they want us to understand what else they could do if they feel like it.”

  Silence cocooned the room like it does in winter when the heavy mist rolls in from the sea and smothers all the city’s sounds. I glanced at my sweat-stained clothing to remind myself that it was still the hot season.

  Then Sophia reached for the water jug, filled her glass and drank the contents down pointedly. “You can’t seriously expect the Council to act on such a farrago of groundless suppositions, citizen. We’ve already expended a huge amount of auxiliary time checking the whisky stocks.”

  Hamilton wasn’t buying it either. “Surely people who are intent on putting the squee
ze on the Council would have sent us a list of demands by now, Dalrymple?”

  I shrugged. “They might want to engineer a condition of panic first. Let’s face it, citizen unrest at the temporary halt in whisky supplies has got you going, hasn’t it?”

  Sophia gave me a dismissive glance. “We’re weathering that storm, as we’ll weather any subsequent ones. Doubtless you have some suggestions as to how we should safeguard the city’s water supplies.” Now that she’d satisfied herself that I was barking mad, she’d reverted to formal language. It goes with her rank like bad taste in music goes with teenagers.

  “Put a guard on every water tank, put a squad of guards on every reservoir and filter bed, put—”

  “Thank you, citizen.” The senior guardian was back with her files. “I recommend that you refrain from favouring the Council with these wild ideas.” She glanced up and raked me with frozen grapeshot. “I would further recommend that you open some new lines of enquiry immediately. If you wish to remain on the investigation.” Apparently Hamilton’s views on my suitability for the post of his directorate’s chief investigator didn’t interest her. Not that he looked exactly supportive.

  I felt a kick on my calf. Davie inclined his head towards the door and stood up. I followed suit.

  “One moment, citizen.” Sophia raised her head again and put down her pencil. Her tone was even more biting. “There’s something I want to bring to your attention.” She leaned sideways and opened the satchel that she’d placed on the floor by her chair. Then she straightened up and put a bottle on the table. It was sheathed in a transparent plastic bag through which I could make out a familiar label. “You recognise this?”

  “The Ultimate Usquebaugh?” I said. “Of course.” I looked more closely and ascertained from the level in the bottleneck that a small amount of the amber liquid had been removed. I could also see traces of fingerprinting powder on the glass. “Is that bottle from Frankie Thomson or Fordyce Kennedy?”