“I can also assure you that no scientist in Edinburgh would have anything to do with an illicit substance such as this one.” He looked at me like a heron that’s just speared a fish and then decided it’s not worth eating after all.
I left shortly afterwards, my tail more down than up. It’s a bad idea to go into battle with the Council when you’re short of ammunition. So far this investigation had come up with about as many bullets as a conscientious objector playing Russian roulette.
Outside it was another polar evening, the cold piling into my lungs faster than a crowd of tourists stampeding into the Tourism Directorate’s whorehouses at opening time. Sunday night. I had to make the weekly visit to my old man. Even though I saw him at the reception not long back, he’d give me hell if I didn’t turn up as usual. Davie was off trying to convince his regular skirt he still fancied her, not that he ever seemed to have much trouble pulling that off. So I called a guard vehicle and directed the driver to the retirement home in Trinity.
On the way down I found myself thinking again about the cassettes the killer had left in his victims. Had he used Clapton and Hendrix just because they were masters of the electric blues? And if it was some kind of message, who was it directed at?
Then I thought of the person who was my best friend when I first listened to those guitarists as a spot-ridden, music-crazed teenager; the guy who played drums in my first, ear-shattering band at university; the guy who used to run all the city’s most profitable deals until I caught up with him. William Ewart Geddes. Billy. This smelled like the sort of dead smart, high-profit, totally immoral deal he’d have got himself into right up to his shifty grey eyes.
But then I shook my head and made myself come back to the real world. Billy was so crippled that he could hardly even move around in the wheelchair they strapped him into every day. There had been talk of him being allowed to continue making the deals the Council depended on when my mother was still senior guardian. But the iron boyscouts took one look at his record and packed him off to a home for the disabled. Not exactly the place to run a drug trafficking operation from. No, I was dreaming. I was also guilty as hell that I hadn’t been to visit him for over a year.
In the end there’s only so much you can do for your friends when they go bad. With relatives it’s different. They can tear you to shreds every time you see them, they can turn out to be completely cynical in the pursuit of whatever they lust after – power in my mother’s case. But when they go, they still leave you with a hole inside bigger than the one in the ozone layer our predecessors bequeathed us.
The Land-Rover pulled up outside the house in Trinity. I was a bit shaken. For a moment I almost thought I was getting sentimental.
Chapter Ten
The house was set back from the road, its front lit by the bright lamp above the door and the much dimmer ones in the old men’s rooms. I looked up to the third floor. My father had the only room up there, just below the lookout tower that the early Victorian sea captain who built the mansion had insisted on. Hector had dug around in the archives – like son, like father – and discovered, to his great amusement, that the first owner had been drummed out of the Royal Navy for sodomy before he turned to trade. He was probably one of the few who got caught.
I knocked on the door and was admitted by the usual sour-faced nurse. I couldn’t blame her for looking less than enchanted with life. Who would volunteer to be in charge of a bunch of semi-incontinent old curmudgeons who spent most of their time working out scams for getting their hands on the contents of the alcohol cabinet? Like the buggers in the navy when such an institution existed, retired citizens are entitled to a shot of booze every day – unless they misbehave, in which case it ends up in the nurse.
There wasn’t much misbehaving going on tonight though. I walked across the hallway, breathing in the familiar reek of boiled fish and the wind it inspires, and popped my head into the common room. There was still an hour till bedtime and normally they were gathered around Scrabble boards or chess tables chuntering and rabbiting on like a convention of geriatric trainspotters. There were a few of them playing, but no one was saying much. I didn’t have to ask why.
I wasn’t too worried. The nurse would have told me if it was Hector who’d died. Then I remembered the note I’d received. Jesus, surely not. I took the stairs in threes and miraculously reached the top without hamstring damage.
“Who was it?” I said, stumbling into Hector’s room. “Don’t tell me it was . . .”
My father looked up from the array of books spread across his desk. “Ah, there you are, failure.” He shook his head irritably. “I wish you’d learn to formulate comprehensible sentences.”
“Not now, for God’s sake. Who’s died?”
That seemed to be comprehensible enough for him. He dropped his gaze. A shiver convulsed his long, thin body and suddenly he looked even older than he was. “Poor William. He should never have been in a second-floor room. He had trouble with his eyes . . . couldn’t judge distances properly . . .” His voice trailed away.
I leaned over him and swung his chair round so he was facing me. “I need to know exactly what happened to him, Hector.”
His eyes flashed as they met mine again. He was never down for long. “Why? He’s not the first former guardian to go. You’re not normally this interested.”
I suppose that was a reference to my mother, but he was being a bit hypocritical. For years my parents regarded each other with maximum suspicion and he didn’t exactly collapse with grief when she died. Then again, neither did I – it hit me later. But he had a point. I wasn’t too sure myself why the former science and energy guardian’s death had given me a frisson.
“How did it happen?” I asked quietly. Raising your voice with my father is always a waste of time. His time as a guardian and, before the Enlightenment, as professor of rhetoric at the university made him more or less invincible in verbal combat.
“He fell down the stairs this morning. Broke his neck, the silly old sod.” The words were harsh, but the tone wasn’t. I knew my father had been close to William.
“Did you see him?”
“I heard him, lad.” He gave me a weak smile. “I was sitting here reading some Quintilian, curiously enough.”
“What time was it?”
“Before seven. You know how early I wake. I heard his door open down below, then there was a sliding noise like he’d lost his footing. Then a series of bumps that I didn’t fathom immediately, followed by a godawful bang.” He looked up at me, his face white as he relived what had happened. “I got up from my chair and looked down the stairwell. I could see him, legs crumpled and his head at an impossible angle. He must have hit the floor head first. You know how hard it is in the hall.”
I nodded. “Was anyone else about?”
“I started shouting. The woman dragged herself out of her pit and called an ambulance, but there was no point.”
“Did William usually wake early too?”
Hector glared at me. “I didn’t sleep with him, you know.” He fumbled with his pen and eventually managed to screw the cap back on. Then he looked at me curiously. “No, as a matter of fact he didn’t. When he arrived here after your mother cleared out the Council – apart from the stubborn buggers like Hamilton – I remember him telling me how much he was looking forward to staying in bed in the morning. Apparently he never liked getting up at the crack of dawn.”
I had the strong feeling that something peculiar had taken place in the retirement home.
“Did you see anyone unusual around here this morning?”
Hector threw up his hands. “The place was full of stormtroopers. There was so much noise I couldn’t concentrate on my reading.”
“No, I mean before William fell. Any vehicles outside?”
“This room might be in the lookout tower but I’m not a bloody sentry, Quintilian.” More glaring, then a reluctant sigh. “I did glance out when I got up. There was nothing in the street.” His eye
s began to open wide and I backed off. “What are you suggesting, laddie?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” I headed for the door. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
William McEwan’s room was easy to spot. It was the one with the wide-open door and the stripped bed. The nurse hadn’t wasted any time getting the place ready for its next occupant. I bent down and examined the carpet on the landing. It looked like a herd of waterbuffalo had been stampeding over it for centuries. The same could be said for the rug in the old man’s room. I stood there for a few minutes and asked myself exactly what I was playing at. I’d heard the ex-guardian having a go at the chief boyscout, giving him grief about something called the Bone Yard. Then he’d sent me a note mentioning it again. Now he was dead. So what? I’d seen two people on the mortuary table who definitely hadn’t died accidentally. And what was I thinking anyway? That the senior guardian had been so pissed off by the old man’s harangue that he’d had him done away with. Even someone as cynical as I am about the effects of power on the individuals who exercise it would laugh at that idea. Then I saw the mark on the wooden floor beyond the rug.
I suppose it could have been made by William himself. Except that it was recent, and surrounded by several indentations that looked distinctly like those made by the nails on the soles of guard-issue boots. There’s no way a retired guardian would have a pair of those; if he was lucky, he might have managed to keep a hold of his guardian-issue brogues like Hector had done. If Davie had been there, I would have bet him that someone had dug a heel in while dragging a reasonably heavy weight off the bed. The odds would have been pretty short as well.
I went back up to my father’s room and tried to look nonchalant. I’ve never been much good at that. He knew I was on edge and conversation became sketchy.
I got up to leave before the nurse came round to turn the light out at ten. “When’s the funeral?”
“Tomorrow morning, nine o’clock. Full Council attendance.” Hector gave me a dubious look. “Are you planning on coming?”
I nodded slowly, suddenly wondering why William’s death hadn’t been mentioned at this evening’s Council meeting. Surely they weren’t trying to keep me away? That idea got up my nose in a big way. “I’ll be there all right.”
I said goodnight and went back to the Land-Rover. I’d already decided I wasn’t going to wait till morning to visit the crematorium.
If the driver thought it was weird to be directed there, he didn’t show it. His rank is taught to treat surprise as if it’s the bad boy at the back of the class – ignore it and it’ll eventually give up and find someone else to annoy. Oddly enough, I used to have problems with that tactic when I was an auxiliary. Probably something to do with my highly strung temperament.
Which was actually about as taut as a Hendrix e-string as we drove through the darkened streets to the northern of the city’s two crematoria. It wasn’t only that I was going way beyond my authority. That was limited to investigating the murders but anything’s fair game in a murder case as far as I’m concerned. No, it had just struck me that I hadn’t been back there since my mother’s funeral. It was suddenly very clear to me that I didn’t want to go anywhere near that soulless brick and concrete dump. So why didn’t I just redirect the driver and forget about William McEwan? I’d have been hard pressed to answer that question. Suspicion? Hunch? Curiosity about this Bone Yard that seemed to be eating away at him like a liver fluke? I wasn’t sure, but there was no one in the Land-Rover actually expecting answers to those questions so I let them ride.
The steel gate at the entrance to the crematorium driveway was chained up. I got out and pressed the intercom button. Even through the crackle I made out the voice that responded. I’d been hoping the city’s chief ghoul might have taken the night off. Or gone back to the underworld. He didn’t exactly sound overjoyed to hear my voice either.
In a minute he appeared on the other side of the gate.
“Citizen Dalrymple,” he said drily, the stiff parchment skin on his face even yellower than usual in the artificial light. “You’re almost becoming a regular.”
“I’m pleased to see you too, Haigh. Hurry up. Unlike you, I’m not a creature of the night.”
He finally got the chain open and let me in. I signalled to the driver to wait where he was. The less he knew of what I was about to do, the better for his future career.
“I imagine you have an authorisation, citizen,” Haigh said. He put out his hand for it like a vulture flexing its claw as we walked into the dingy low building. The guardians have a very pragmatic attitude towards death. All that matters to them is disposing of the body efficiently, so what funds they’ve spent on the crematorium have been to maintain the furnace, not to tart the buildings up. It’s never occurred to them that the bereaved might like to see off their relatives and friends in slightly more salubrious surroundings. No doubt that was why they kept Haigh on as facility supervisor too. His bony bald head and elongated limbs made even atheists cross themselves.
“Now, let me see, when was the last time we met?” the old bastard asked, handing back my authorisation.
“You know very well it was at my mother’s funeral, Haigh,” I answered, giving him the eye. “Shall we get on?”
He smiled, lips drawn back over seriously far gone teeth. “I also know that any personnel arriving at this facility during the hours of curfew have to be checked with guard headquarters. I’ll just go and make the call.”
I grabbed his fleshless arm before he could move off. “I don’t think so, citizen. What I’m going to do now will be our little secret.”
His jaw dropped. “What do you mean, citizen?” he asked suspiciously.
I gave him a smile to encourage him. All that did was make him look like a vampire who’s just noticed the garlic festooned about the chosen virgin’s negligée.
“William McEwan. You have him here?”
Now the virgin had whipped her cross out. “The former guardian?” he said haltingly. “Yes, he’s here. Why do you ask?”
“I want to have a look at his papers.”
The old bureaucrat’s expression brightened. “Only his papers?”
“Before I take a look at the body.”
He was back to being the panic-stricken vampire, this time with the first rays of dawn appearing over the eastern Transylvanian uplands. “You . . . you can’t do that. It’s against regulations. I’ll have to call . . .”
“You’ll have to calm down, citizen,” I said, leading him briskly into his office. Then I gave him the eye again. “You’ll also have to comply with everything I request.” I glanced around his impeccably neat room with its cabinets full of perfectly organised files. “Otherwise an unexpected wave of chaos might suddenly burst over your records.”
As I thought, the threat of messing with his files did the trick – anally retentive bureaucrats are easy to intimidate. He unlocked the drawer of his desk and took out a maroon file. Deceased ordinary citizens and auxiliaries get grey, but guardians are honoured with maroon. So much for death the great equaliser.
I flicked through the pages. I was after the post-mortem report, but all I got was a big zero from the Medical Directorate.
“How come there was no post-mortem, Haigh? It wasn’t exactly death by natural causes, was it?”
The crematorium supervisor looked away shiftily. “Yes, I did notice that. I rang the Medical Directorate and was told that a post-mortem was not required. They didn’t give me a reason.”
“And you were happy with that?”
Haigh gave the smirk of the bureaucrat who has covered his arse with fifteen-inch armour plating. “If that’s what the Medical Directorate decides, it’s good enough for me. I logged the call, of course.”
“Of course you did.” I handed the file back. “Got your screwdriver ready?”
His face slackened again. “Isn’t this enough for you? What more do you need to know?”
I went over to the nearest cabinet and grabbe
d a handful of folders.
“No, put those back. I . . . oh, very well.” Haigh put the file away, took out his screwdriver and locked the drawer again. He was nothing if not careful. I wondered how many other people he expected to be interested in the recently deceased former guardian.
The hall and corridors of the crematorium were bloody freezing. I followed the supervisor down to the room where coffins were stored for the brief period allowed by health regulations before their contents go up in smoke (the coffins themselves are reused, of course). The place had hardly any lights and I suddenly had the nasty feeling I was being led into a fairy-tale fiend’s lair. As if to reinforce that, Haigh looked over his hunched shoulder and gave me a grin Beelzebub would have been proud of. For all his protestations, I was sure this was the part of his work he liked best – messing about with the bodies.
“Here we are, citizen,” he said, turning into a windowless room and putting on the light. There were three coffins on stands, all of them showing signs of wear and tear. The one Haigh headed for was in the best condition of the three.
“Screwdriver,” I said, holding out my hand.
He handed it over reluctantly.
“Now, off you go back to your files,” I said. I was pleased to see he could barely contain his disappointment. He wasn’t giving up though.
“Regulations clearly state that a member of crematorium staff must always be present when coffins are opened, citizen Dalrymple.”
“Are you attached to this screwdriver?” I asked.
He didn’t get my drift.
“Would you like to be even more attached to it?” I brandished it at him like they taught us in the auxiliary training programme. The door closed behind him rapidly and I set to work.
Actually, I could have done with his help to lift the lid off when I’d undone all the screws, but I didn’t want him to see what I was looking for. That was the problem. I didn’t know what I was looking for myself. I took a deep breath and manhandled the lid off. And looked upon the face of William McEwan.
The Bone Yard Page 12