Body Politic

by Paul Johnston

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  The Quintilian Dalrymple Mystery Series

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Quintilian Dalrymple Mystery Series

  THE BONE YARD

  WATER OF DEATH

  THE BLOOD TREE

  THE HOUSE OF DUST

  BODY POLITIC

  A Quintilian Dalrymple Mystery

  Paul Johnston

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain in 1997

  by Hodder and Stoughton, A Division of Hodder Headline PLC

  338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH,

  eBook edition first published in 2011 by Severn Select an imprint

  of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 1997 by Paul Johnston.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title

  is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0043-3 (epub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  In the last decade of the twentieth century people bought crime fiction like there was no tomorrow – which soon turned out to be the case for many of them. It isn’t hard to see why detective stories were addictive. The indomitable heroes and heroines with their reassuring solutions prolonged the illusion that a stable society existed outside the readers’ security windows and armoured doors.

  Since the Enlightenment won power in Edinburgh, the popularity of crime novels has gradually declined, though not as much as the guardians think. They would prefer citizens to read philosophical investigations rather than those of Holmes and Poirot, Morse and Dalgliesh, but even in the “perfect city” people hanker after the old certainties.

  I often have trouble deciding what to believe. All the same, the message that the Council sent on my birthday gave me even more of a shock than the first time I heard James Marshall Hendrix playing the “Catfish Blues”.

  I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Sceptics and detectives have the same general principle: the only thing you can be sure of is that you can’t be sure of anything at all.

  Chapter One

  Ghost-grey day in the city and seagulls screaming through the fog that had been smothering us for a week. Tourists started to head up George IVth Bridge for the Friday execution. I was the only local paying attention. If you want to survive in Edinburgh, you’ve got to keep reminding yourself this place is weirder than sweet-smelling sewage.

  My shift with the squad of Parks Department labourers was due to finish at four but I’d made up my mind long before that. I had an hour before my meeting with the woman who signed herself Katharine K. It was 20 March 2020, I was thirty-six years old and I was going to break the rules.

  “Are you coming for a pint, Quint?” one of the boys asked.

  It was tempting, but I managed to shake my head. There would have been no escape if they had known what day it was. The Council describes birthday celebrations as “excessively self-indulgent” in the City Regulations, but the tradition of getting paralytic remains. It’s one of the few that does. Anyway, I had a sex session later on and if you’re pissed at one of those, you’re in deep shit.

  “Course he isn’t.” Roddy the Ox wiped sweat and snot away with the back of his arm. “He’ll be away to the library like a model arse-licking citizen.” Every squad’s got a self-appointed spokesman and I never get on with any of them. So I go to the library a lot. Not just to broaden my mind. I spend most of my time in the archives checking up on the people my clients report missing.

  “Actually,” I said, looking the big man in the eye, “I’m going to watch the execution.” Jaws dropped so quickly that I checked my flies. “Anybody else coming?”

  They stood motionless in their fatigues, turned to stone. Not even the Ox seemed to fancy gate-crashing a party that’s strictly tourists only.

  The way things are, I usually try to stick out from the crowd. Not this time. As I was the only ordinary citizen pushing a bicycle towards the Royal Mile, I tried to make myself inconspicuous. The buses carrying groups to the gallows gave me a bit of cover. So did the clouds of diesel fumes, at the same time as choking me. Fifteen years since private cars were banned and still the place reeks.

  The mass of humanity slowed as it approached the checkpoint above the library’s grimy façade. Rousing folksongs came from loudspeakers, the notes echoing through the mist like the cries of sinners in the pit. Some of the tourists were glancing at adverts for events in the year-round Festival which is the Council’s main source of income. Among them were posters of the front page of Time’s New Year edition proclaiming Edinburgh “Worldwide City of the Year”. The words “Garden of Edin” were printed in maroon under a photo of the floodlit castle. I’ve worked in most of the city’s gardens but I’ve yet to see a naked woman – or a snake.

  I kept my head down and tried not to bump into too many people with my front wheel. The guards had raised the barrier as the time of the execution drew near. Fortunately they weren’t bothering to examine the herd of people. I felt a stickiness in my armpits that would stay with me till my session next week at the communal baths. Why was I taking the chance? The fire in my veins a few seconds later answered the question – I’d managed to get into a forbidden part of the city. I felt like a real anarchist. Till I started calculating my chances of getting out so easily.

  I let myself be swallowed up by the crowd that had gathered round the gallows in the Lawnmarket. Guides were struggling to make themselves heard, speaking Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Korean. There was a small group of elderly Americans in transparent rain-capes. They were among the first from across the Atlantic; until recently the Council refused entry to nationals of what it called in its diplomatic way “culturally bankrupt states”. A bearded courier in a kilt was giving them the sales pitch.

  “The Royal Mile runs from the castle to what remains of Holyrood Palace,” he bellowed, pointing towards the mist-covered lower reaches. “The palace was reduced to ruins in the rioting that followed the last coronation in 2002. The crown prince’s divorce and remarriage to a Colombian drugs heiress signed the old order’s death warrant.” He paused to catch his breath and gave me a suspicious look. “The already fragile United Kingdom quickly broke up into dozens of warring city-states. Thanks to the Council of City Guar
dians, Edinburgh has been the only one to achieve stability . . .”

  The propaganda washed over me. I knew most of it by heart. I wondered again about the note I’d found under my door yesterday. “Can’t wait any longer,” it read. “Meet me at 3 Lennox Street Lane five p.m. tomorrow if you want work. Katharine K.” The handwriting was spidery, very different from the copperplate required in the city’s schools and colleges. The writer must have been hanging about on the landing outside my flat for quite a time. Despite the fumes from the nearby brewery, the place was filled with her scent. I knew exactly what it was: Moonflower, classified Grade 3 by the Supply Directorate and issued to lower level hotel and restaurant workers. Beneath the perfume lay the even stronger smell of a client desperate for my services.

  It was coming up to four thirty and the guides took a break from their shouting competition. Looking around the crowd, I was struck by how many of the tourists were disabled in one way or another: some were in wheelchairs, some were clutching their companions’ arms, a few even looked to be blind. The Council had probably been working on a braille version of the hanging.

  Then there was a hush as the condemned man was led up to the scaffold by guards in period costume. The prisoner’s hands were bound and a black velvet bag placed over his head.

  The guides started speaking again. The bearded man was explaining to the Americans that this was Deacon William Brodie, the city’s most notorious villain.

  “Here, in the heart of the city where crime no longer exists” – at least according to the Public Order Directorate – “Brodie committed his outrages. He was a cabinet-maker by trade, rising to become Deacon of Wrights and Masons. But by night he was a master-burglar, robbing dozens of wealthy householders.”

  Encouraged by their guides’ gestures, the tourists began to boo. The English-speaking guide moved nearer the gallows.

  “Brodie was eventually caught, but not before his reputation had gained a permanent place in the minds of his fellow citizens. A century later the Edinburgh writer Robert Louis Stevenson used him as the model for his famous study of evil in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The man in the kilt gave a fawning grin. “Don’t forget to pick up a souvenir edition of the book in your hotel giftshop.”

  Under the gibbet final preparations were being made. I followed them closely, trying to work out how they faked it. There was no sign of a protective collar. It even looked like the victim was trembling involuntarily. I remembered summary executions I had seen, members of the drugs gangs that terrorised the city in the years after independence being put up against a wall. They had shaken in the same way, sworn at the guardsmen to get it over with. To my disgust I found that my heart was racing as it had done then.

  The presiding officer, dressed in black tunic and lace collar, shouted across the crowd from the scaffold. “On 1 October 1788 Brodie mounted the set of gallows which he himself had designed – to be hanged by the neck until he was dead.”

  There were a few seconds of silence to let everyone’s flesh creep, then a loud wooden thump as the trap jerked open and the body dropped behind a screen, leaving the rope twisting one way then the other from the tarred beam. The spectators went wild.

  I pushed my way to the side, wheeling my bicycle past the tartan and whisky shops towards Bank Street. I felt a bit shaky. It had struck me that maybe the execution wasn’t just a piece of theatre for the tourists. I mean, staging mock hangings in a city where capital punishment has been abolished and violence of any kind supposedly eradicated is cynical enough. Actually getting rid of the small number of murderers serving life with hard labour in the city’s one remaining prison would be seriously hypocritical. But with the Council you never know. It’s always boasting about the unique benefits it’s given us: stability, work and housing for everyone, as much self-improvement as you can stomach. But what about freedom? Even suicide has been outlawed.

  I turned the corner. By the Finance Directorate, a great, dilapidated palace that had once housed the Bank of Scotland, the barrier was down and the city guardswoman standing in front of it was definitely not friendly. She stuck her hand out for my ID.

  “What are you doing up here, citizen?” She was in her mid-twenties, tall and fit-looking. Her red hair was in a neat ponytail beneath her beret and the maroon heart – emblem of the city – was prominent on the left breast pocket of her grey tunic. On the right was her barracks name and number. The heavy belt around her waist provided straps for her sheath knife and truncheon; since the gangs were dealt with, the City Guard no longer carry firearms. “Well?” she demanded. “I’m waiting.”

  I tried to look innocent. “I was working at the museum, Wilkie 418 . . .”

  She didn’t buy it. “Your flat’s in the opposite direction.” She had the neutral voice that all auxiliaries acquire during training. The Council has been trying to get rid of class distinctions by banning local accents. It’s a nice theory. “You’ve no business to come this way.”

  She ran her eyes over my labourers’ fatigues and checked the data on my ID card – height five feet ten inches, weight eleven stone in the imperial system: bringing that back was one of the Council’s stranger decisions. Hair black, a bit over the one-inch maximum stipulated for male citizens. Eyes brown. Nose aquiline. Teeth complete and in good condition. Then she glanced at my right hand to check the distinguishing mark, showing no sign of emotion. Finally she gave me a stare that would have brought a tear to the eye of the Sphinx. She had registered the letters “DM” that told her I’d been demoted from the rank of auxiliary.

  “I hope you don’t think I’m going to do you any favours.” The sudden hard edge to her voice rasped like a meat-saw biting bone. “You’ve no business in a tourist area. Report to your local barracks tomorrow morning, citizen.” She handed me an offence notification. “You’ll be assigned two Sundays’ community service and your record will be endorsed accordingly.” She glanced at my face. “You could do with a shave as well.”

  I stood at the checkpoint with the neatly written sheet in my hand for a few moments. Cheering from the racetrack that had been laid over the disused railway lines in Princes Street Gardens came up through the fog. The seagulls had given up auditioning for the City Choir and now I could hear bagpipe music from the speakers beneath the streetlamps. It sounded more mournful than any blues song I ever played. My appetite for meeting the fragrant Katharine K. had gone completely.

  “Oh, and citizen,” the guardswoman called humourlessly from the sentry box. “Happy Birthday.”

  I was late of course. As I was cycling like a lunatic through the swirls of mist on the Dean Bridge, I almost went into the back of one of the city’s battered delivery vans. Their drivers have a reputation for using the vehicles to shift contraband but this one was going so slowly he had to be on city business.

  “At last.” The woman came towards me from the door of the house in Lennox Street Lane, then stopped abruptly. She examined me as critically as the guardswoman had, staring at my mud-encrusted trousers like she’d never seen filth before. She had a face to write poems about: high cheekbones, lips as promising as a lovers’ assignation and green eyes that flashed in the dim light and told me stories I hadn’t heard for a long time. Then her nose twitched and the spell was broken. “You are citizen Dalrymple, aren’t you?” she asked in a hoarse voice that I felt run up my spine like a caress.

  She wasn’t the first of my clients to be dubious about the way I look. I nodded and fumbled with the padlock on my bike; only an idiot relies on the City Guard to look after his property outside the tourist areas. At the same time I ran my eye over her. She was about my height, but her build had more going for it. The short brown hair that stood up on the top of her head would have made her look permanently surprised if she hadn’t been as languid as a well-fed lioness. I wondered whom she’d eaten recently.

  “Katharine Kirkwood,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting a labourer.”

  I took her hand and felt long, elegant fingers. Her scent
washed over me like the tide of a lunar sea. “Quintilian Dalrymple,” I said. “Investigator as well as labourer.”

  Her eyes blinked only once when she felt the stump of my right forefinger. “You give everyone that little test, don’t you?” A smile nagged at the corners of her mouth. “How did I do?”

  “Pretty well,” I said generously.

  “How did you lose it?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  She looked at me curiously, then shrugged. “Come this way.” She opened the street door and led me up dingy stairs to the first floor. That gave me an opportunity to examine her legs, black stockings beneath her issue coat. She passed that test too.

  “You’ve got a key,” I said. “Why were you waiting outside?”

  Katharine Kirkwood faced a door which needed several coats of paint. She turned slowly and handed me the keys, her face taut. “I’m . . . I’m frightened.” I hadn’t put her down as the type who scares easily. “This is my brother’s place.” All of a sudden her voice was soft. “It’s ten days since I last saw him.”

  “That’s not long. You know what it’s like in this city. People are always being picked up for extra duties or . . .”

  “No,” she said with quiet insistence. “Adam and I, we’re . . .” She left the sentence unfinished. “He’d have found a way to let me know.”

  I watched her as she leaned against the doorframe and tried to look optimistic. It wouldn’t be the first time I found a body behind a locked door. If this one had been there for over a week, not even a jerrycan of her perfume would be much help.

  “Haven’t you been to the City Guard?”

  “Those bastards?” Her tone was razor sharp. “I told them days ago but they still haven’t found the time to take a look. Too busy licking the tourists’ arses.”

  I nodded and knocked on the door less violently than the guard would have done. No answer. That would have been too easy. So I slipped the key into the lock and took a deep breath. Then pushed the door open and went inside.