Heads or Hearts

by Paul Johnston

  ‘Am I supposed to say “thanks”?’

  ‘Only if you feel like it.’

  I didn’t.

  ‘You knew I’d come here, didn’t you? Tell me what’s going on.’ I put my glass down on the Georgian side table with a thud. ‘Or I’m hitting the road.’

  ‘No … no, stay where you are, Quint.’ He smiled, never a pretty sight. ‘What’s going on? That’s what you’re supposed to discover.’

  I stood up.

  ‘No … oh, for fuck’s sake, sit down. I’ll tell you what I know.’

  ‘That’ll make me swoon with joy’

  ‘Arsehole. This human heart stunt. It isn’t the first time it’s happened.’

  ‘What? In Edinburgh?’

  ‘No, in Glasgow. And Inverness.’

  ‘Wonderful. When?’

  ‘A week ago at Celtic Park and three days ago at wherever Inverness Caley Thistle play – any idea?’

  ‘Search me. When was I going to be told?’

  ‘I just told you, didn’t I? Jack and Fergus decided they wouldn’t inform the rest of the Council. If you hadn’t agreed to the public order guardian’s summons, I’d have called you.’

  ‘Why the hyper-secrecy? Besides, decisions to call up non-auxiliaries are supposed to be taken with full Council agreement.’

  ‘You were at the meeting, weren’t you? The guardians know you’ve been taken on.’

  ‘But they don’t know the full background. Is even Guardian Doris up to speed?’

  ‘No, and you’re not to tell her. Or your oversized guardsman friend.’

  I let him think I agreed.

  ‘What did the authorities in the other cities discover?’

  ‘Nothing. No leads, no evidence – apart from healthy young male hearts – and no witnesses.’

  ‘No one saw someone deposit a heart on the centre circle of the cities’ main football clubs?’

  ‘That’s the same here, isn’t it?’

  I wasn’t going to correct his assumption.

  ‘Have they got any idea about motive?’

  ‘Apparently not. And they haven’t found anyone missing a heart either.’

  I took out my mobile and called Davie.

  ‘Get undercover surveillance teams into Easter Road and all the other football grounds in the city.’

  ‘You think there could be more hearts?’ he asked, the background noise of the command centre audible.

  ‘No point in taking the chance.’

  I cut the connection.

  ‘Good move, Quint,’ Billy said with a grin. ‘You’ve still got it.’

  ‘I could have done that nearly twelve hours ago if your bosses had bothered to tell me immediately.’ I had a thought. ‘How did they know about the hearts in the other cities?’

  ‘How do you think? Jack and Fergus talk to their counterparts all the time.’

  That was the second time he’d prioritized his boss’s name over the senior guardian’s name. Departmental loyalty or something more?

  ‘How cosy. Shame it’s against City Regulations about contact with the outside world.’

  ‘I told you, Quint. Everything’s changing.’

  ‘To the extent that your guardian pals spend hours on the phone to non-locals before talking to their colleagues – and then not telling them the whole story? There are bound to be guardians who are against reunification.’

  ‘Not for long.’

  I gave him a heavy stare. ‘What else do you know, Billy?’

  ‘Nothing that’s germane to this. Oh, and you’re forbidden to make contact with the Glasgow and Inverness investigators.’

  ‘How would I do that?’

  ‘Carrier pigeon? In case you’re interested, Hel Hyslop’s in charge of the Glasgow police now.’

  Another specimen I couldn’t trust further than I could throw her, though that wouldn’t be far.

  ‘One more thing,’ I said. ‘Why’s the heart business so important?’

  He made the best of raising his shoulders. ‘Someone’s putting the screws on three of Scotland’s major cities in the lead up to the referendum.’

  ‘Hang on, are they voting on re-unification too?’

  ‘Yes. There are different concepts of democracy, of course. I don’t think the Lord of the Isles will be accepting “no” votes.’

  ‘So this isn’t just about Edinburgh.’

  ‘No. Everything’s connected now, Quint.’

  That was all I got.

  I left the house and walked home through a heavy drizzle, hoping to make some sense of what I’d learned. Waste of time.

  I put together my files of missing people. There were only five, though two were young men whose hearts could have fitted the specification. I eventually got to sleep after listening to the blues on my decrepit headphones. The last song was the Reverend Gary Davis’s ‘Death Don’t Have No Mercy’, which may have been why my dreams weren’t exactly sweet. I was haunted by the women I’d loved, their faces and bodies tantalizingly close, but disappearing as soon as I stretched out my arms. Caro, my first love, her eyes wide and unseeing as the rope tightened round her neck and squeezed her life away – she was killed on a drugs-gang raid I planned and led in 2015, and I got there just as she kicked out for the last time. Caro. Later I killed the bastard who throttled her and gave up on the Enlightenment. She wouldn’t have liked that – we’d been strong supporters of the party since it started – but I hope that remembering her, even in my dreams, meant something to her soul, wherever it was wandering. Then Katharine, her green eyes and full lips almost taunting me. We’d been together, on and off, for ten years, but she never fully opened up. She’d suffered terribly at the hands of drugs-gang members outside the city and coped with that by being even more spiky and contrarian than I was. She had secrets, the last of which were the preparations she’d made to cross the city line. It wasn’t the first time she’d done that – her feelings for the Council were antagonistic, and more recently she’d been working with people she thought had been let down by the system. Something had obviously driven her to desert them as well as me. We’d been distant for months before, but we still spent the night together occasionally. It wasn’t enough and I knew it, but Katharine wouldn’t let me closer. Maybe she thought Caro still meant more to me. She’d been angry about my original dalliance with Sophia, though it had started when Katharine was out of the city and hadn’t picked up again till after she left, whatever she might have imagined.

  Then another figure came out of the mist – a younger woman. Her hair was long and blonde, and in her hands she was carrying a human heart covered in blood. As she got closer, I saw it was still beating …

  The pounding on the door was a welcome release.

  FIVE

  ‘Croissant, coffee and … no banana.’ Davie tried to look apologetic. ‘Bananas are off today. But I got you a nice pear.’

  I had slumped on the sofa.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he demanded. ‘Big case, no clues, only you can solve it … the city’s your mussel.’

  ‘Dreamed about my women,’ I mumbled.

  ‘You don’t want to do that,’ he said, putting my breakfast on the table.

  ‘Besides, plenty more citizens in the, well, not in the sea obviously …’

  I gave him the Katharine Kirkwood memorial glare. She and Davie used to get on worse than Mary, Queen of Scots and the English cousin who chopped her head off.

  ‘By “no clues” I take it you mean the Guard sweep squads haven’t picked up anything.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘What are you looking so happy about?’

  ‘At least there weren’t any more hearts at the city’s football grounds. We’ve even checked all the schools.’

  I sipped my coffee without screwing up my face. I still hadn’t got used to that. ‘I suppose that’s something. Get your Herculean brain round this.’ I told him about the hearts in Glasgow and Inverness.

  ‘I don’t understand,’
he said.

  ‘Join the club.’

  ‘No, I mean how does the former Heriot 07 know about the other cities?’ Davie had never forgiven Billy for his egregious scheming and avoided using his name.

  ‘It seems that Fergus Calder and Jack MacLean are in frequent touch with them.’

  ‘Does the Council know about that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Let’s keep it that way for the time being.’

  ‘Who am I going to tell?’

  ‘The public order guardian? Speaking of Doris, I think we’d better not tell her about the blonde woman at Tynecastle either. It’ll just complicate things.’

  Davie looked at me suspiciously. ‘I’m only seconded to you, Quint. My loyalties are still with the directorate.’

  I bit into the pear. It was surprisingly juicy, which made me wonder where it came from. One of Billy’s deals with some foreign state? As far as I knew, the Agriculture Directorate didn’t run to fruit trees. Then again, where did the bananas come from? Had global warming turned Aquitaine into a banana republic?

  ‘Your loyalties lie with me, my friend, and have done for thirteen years. Think how much I’ve taught you. I remember how keen you were to learn from the master when you first ran up those stairs.’

  That shut him up for a few moments.

  ‘What are we doing today?’ he asked, making a move for my croissant.

  ‘Leave that alone. How many have you already had?’

  He muttered something.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘Right, I’m reporting you to your boss.’

  ‘Like she’d care.’

  ‘Well, let’s cheer her up. Answer your own question.’

  ‘Those scumbag drugs-gang bosses in the dungeons.’

  ‘Bullseye.’

  When we got to the castle, we compared my list of missing people with the Guard’s, the latter being considerably larger. Only one of mine – not the young men – was repeated. Davie got squads sent to the young men’s houses. There wasn’t time for my velvet-glove approach.

  A quarter of an hour later we were going down the slippery steps that led to Edinburgh’s only remaining prison. It was packed, though there were only twenty cells. The Guard personnel assigned to the dungeons were volunteers who had substantial experience on the city line or the border – the only places where firearms were issued. Here they had to make do with truncheons, although they also had their standard-issue auxiliary knives.

  ‘Citizen Dalrymple,’ said the burly guardsman at the bottom of the steps. ‘You’ll have to share a cell, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Very funny, Rab.’ I knew him of old. He was one of many Guard members who thought I was an insult to the Enlightenment. Which, to be fair, much of the time I was. I turned to Davie. ‘What are the guys we want to see called?’

  ‘Jackson “Swallow Ma Pish” Greig and “Muckle” Anthony Robertson.’

  ‘Yellow Jacko and Muckle Tony,’ put in Guardsman Rab.

  I smiled. ‘That’ll be a help. We don’t want to antagonize them by getting their names wrong.’

  ‘Yes, we do,’ said Davie.

  ‘This way.’ Rab – Raeburn 97 – led us down a long passage with iron doors on either side. ‘We keep them away from each other.’

  ‘So they don’t plot and scheme?’ I asked.

  He laughed. ‘No chance. They hate each other.’

  That could be useful.

  ‘Right,’ said Rab. ‘This is Yellow Jacko’s abode.’ He inserted and turned a key that looked like it dated from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. ‘Visitors, you piece of piss!’ He turned to Davie. ‘Keep a hand on your knife. He’s a serious head-banger.’

  ‘I’ve read his file.’

  ‘Have you?’ I said. ‘Thanks for the briefing.’

  ‘Guard Eyes Only.’

  I jabbed my elbow into his midriff, where it encountered firm layers of muscle.

  ‘Sit down, Citizen Greig,’ I said.

  ‘Fuck you.’

  Davie went over quickly and hit him in the abdomen. The prisoner obviously didn’t work out like he did. When he’d caught his breath, we started again.

  ‘What’s he in for?’ I asked Davie.

  ‘Seven counts of murder, one of running a drugs gang, three of crossing the city line, seventeen of grievous bodily harm and one of possession of firearms.’

  ‘Ya fuckers, where are ma Uzis?’ the skinny, bald figure on the bed said hoarsely.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Davie said, ‘the Guard’s making good use of them. Baltic Barracks in Leith has got them. That’s your old territory, isn’t it, shitebag?’

  ‘Drink ma pish.’

  ‘No today, thanks,’ I said, obviously having been allocated the role of good interrogator. ‘Citizen Greig, we’d like to ask you some questions.’

  ‘Drink ma—’

  ‘Boring,’ Davie said, going over to the covered bucket in the corner. ‘Fancy consuming the contents of this?’

  ‘Ye cannae dae that!’

  ‘I think you’ll find he can,’ I said emolliently. ‘How about a few answers? It won’t take long. Or it’ll take all day and you’ll have the taste of your own urine in your mouth.’

  ‘That’s not all that’s in here,’ Davie said.

  ‘Splendid. So what do you say, Jacko.’

  ‘Yous fuckers dinnae get tae call me that.’

  ‘I’m sorry – Yellow.’

  ‘Fu—’ The prisoner broke off as Davie stepped towards him. ‘Whit is it ye want?’

  ‘Have you ever cut someone’s heart out?’

  ‘Nuh.’

  ‘He cut a thirteen-year-old boy’s hands off,’ Davie supplied.

  I swallowed the wave of bile that rose in my throat. ‘Do you know of anyone else in the gangs who cut out a heart?’

  ‘Aye. That cunt Muckle Tony.’

  Davie nodded. ‘After Pish here sent a young woman to infiltrate Robertson’s gang, the Leith Lancers.’

  ‘Cut off her airms and legs tae, the bastard,’ Grieg said, shaking his head so his long greasy hair obscured his face.

  I glanced at Davie. ‘Are we in the right place?’

  ‘Possibly not.’

  We got up and headed for the door.

  ‘Hey, whit aboot me? I want a favour for talkin’.’

  Davie put the bucket down as Rab opened up. ‘The favour is you aren’t sitting with your own turds for headwear.’

  ‘That was short and sweet,’ Guardsman Rab said as he led us further down the poorly lit passage.

  ‘Long enough for me,’ I said. ‘How do you live with the stench down here?’

  ‘Fuckers like these killed guardsmen and women, citizen. Smelling them rot is a privilege.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ I was glad Rab wasn’t on the streets, but he was right. The drugs gangs that had grown in strength after the Council’s relaxing of the regulations were vicious, though less than their earlier counterparts. So far.

  He stopped at the last cell on the right and hit the door with his truncheon.

  ‘Guess what, psycho, you’ve got visitors.’

  There was no reply.

  Rab looked through the spyhole. ‘Fuck!’ He fumbled with the key and got the door open.

  Before us a gargantuan flabby man was slumped to the floor under the window, a strip of material round his neck. He had managed to break the glass and loop the ligature round one of the external bars. The ripped remains of a shirt lay on the floor beside his bare feet. He must have bent his knees and pulled downwards, which suggested determination.

  ‘That glass is supposed to be unbreakable,’ Rab said, his eyes wide.

  Davie touched the hanged man’s neck. ‘No pulse and he’s cold. He did this some hours ago, I’d guess.’

  ‘When did you last check on him?’ I asked the guardsman.

  ‘They don’t get breakfast, so it would have been the night warden at midnight. I saw the log when I came in.’

  ‘All right,
Rab. Go and call it in.’

  After he’d left, I turned to Davie. ‘Search the body. I’ll take the cell.’

  ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘Anything that might explain why he did this, now of all times.’

  We looked everywhere, which didn’t take long. There was a concrete bed built into the wall, a latrine bucket – empty – and a pile of books on the floor. It seemed that the Education Directorate had sway even in the dungeons. Apart from the City Regulations, the tomes ranged from Free City – The History of Edinburgh, Why Scotland Failed, The Enlightenment: How Edinburgh Survived the Global Crisis to the collected stories of Robert Louis Stevenson. I took them all to look at later.

  ‘Nothing in his pockets?’

  Davie shook his head.

  ‘How about his rectum?’

  ‘He crapped himself. No suicide note or anything else that I can see.’

  ‘Thanks for checking.’

  Davie grimaced. ‘I can’t get into his mouth. Rigor’s set in.’

  ‘Sophia’s people can check that. I’ll make sure I’m present.’

  ‘Aye,’ Davie said. ‘What do you think? The only person in the city to have cut out a heart commits suicide the night after the heart was left at Tynecastle. Coincidence?’

  ‘We don’t believe in coincidences, do we, guardsman?’

  ‘No, we definitely don’t.’

  I got out of the way as a team of Guard personnel arrived with a stretcher.

  ‘He’s going to the infirmary,’ I said, flashing my authorization. ‘And I’m coming with you.

  Then I called Sophia and asked her to tell the pathologists we were on our way.

  ‘Well, well,’ I said. ‘Murder, not suicide.’ Davie was already trying to locate the warden who’d been on the night shift at the dungeons.

  ‘Definitely,’ said the tall pathologist. ‘The bruising above his knees was made by hands that pulled him downwards. You can see the distinct marks of fingertips.’

  ‘How come he didn’t resist? He was a gang boss, after all.’

  ‘Good question,’ said the short pathologist. ‘We’ll have to wait for the toxicology report. Maybe he was drugged.’

  I shook my head. ‘If he was drugged, the murderer wouldn’t have needed to pull him. He’d have been suffocated by his own weight.’