Body Politic

by Paul Johnston

  He may not have been a guardian any more but he still spoke in the long sentences favoured by that rank. Still, what he’d said about corruption had made me prick up my ears. “How come you’ve never spoken about this before?” I asked. “Have you given up on the Enlightenment completely now?”

  “Of course not.” The old man went over to his desk. “When we founded the Edinburgh Enlightenment at the turn of the century, we were convinced that the only way out of the political and economic nightmare in the United Kingdom was by decentralising power. Not the feeble assemblies that some of the old parties had set up, but the real thing – regional government by bodies of experts, some of them even philosophers like Plato’s guardians. Here, I want to show you something.” He started rummaging around in his papers.

  I thought about the early years. I was still at school when the party was formed – sixteen, and almost as fascinated by Edinburgh’s new politics as I was by the blues. The world was changing day by day. Oil in the Aegean had lead to the end of American investment in the North Sea and a slump in the UK’s already weakened economy. At the same time China, bolstered by the return of Hong Kong, had become the dominant economic power and the USA had reverted to the self-obsession that’s a hallmark of their history.

  It wasn’t long before crime reduced the majority of British cities to battlefields. Drugs were the country’s only significant industry. The government reintroduced the death penalty in 1999 and became increasingly assertive in its handling of foreign policy, egged on by the tabloid press. Following a European Union directive to withdraw British forces from Gibraltar, Downing Street threatened the use of nuclear warheads against Spanish ships. This resulted in international sanctions and the sealing of the Channel Tunnel. The catastrophic accident at the Thorp installation at Sellafield in 2003 was the final straw. The country fell into total disorder and the Enlightenment got the opportunity it needed. Edinburgh citizens voted the party in with a huge majority after a London mob barricaded MPs in the chamber during their last emergency debate and burned the place to the ground. I can’t say I was too upset.

  “Got it.” Hector held up a piece of paper triumphantly. “Read that.”

  I looked at the typed sheet. It was a page from the minutes of a Council meeting six months after the election victory. I studied it with mounting amazement. “‘As a result of negative votes by the education and public order guardians, we do not approve the information guardian’s proposal that the Council commit itself to resign en masse if evidence of corruption in any directorate is brought to light.’” I glanced at my father and whistled. “Jesus. You tried to get them to agree to that and they refused?”

  His eyes were unusually wide open. “You see what I mean? That proposal was an integral part of the Enlightenment’s planning from the beginning – it was the ultimate safeguard. But once we were in power, people’s priorities changed.”

  “I’m not surprised Hamilton voted against it, but the education guardian . . .”

  “Who is now the senior guardian.” The old man sat down, his limbs suddenly loose and his jaw slack. “From that day on I never felt the same about the Council. I stuck it out for another nine years, but organising propaganda is hard when your heart isn’t in it.”

  It was one of the few times I’d seen my father looking like he needed support. I wish I’d shown him that I felt for him, but neither of us was ever much good at displays of emotion. The Enlightenment deadened us completely.

  Pretty soon afterwards Hector sat up straight. His periods of introspection were always short. “Look on the bright side, Quintilian,” he said. “People are better off than they were and they know it. Electricity and water may be in short supply, but there’s enough. There are no cars or private telephones or personal computers. There’s no television, though only a cretin would choose to sit in front of what used to be served up every evening. But think of all the benefits: jobs, a reliable health and welfare system, safety in the streets, education throughout their lives for all.” He glanced at me and smiled ironically. “Except for people who’ve been demoted, of course.” He looked away, shaking his head. “Those were our ideals and they’ve actually been achieved. Sometimes I still find it hard to believe.”

  I admired his ability to criticise the regime and then salute its achievements, but I wondered how close he was to the reality of life in the city now. “I saw Billy Geddes last night,” I said, then told him about the Bearskin.

  “Sounds like he’s turned out to be one of the backsliders I was talking about,” Hector said scathingly. He was never keen on what he referred to as “affairs of the cock”.

  “Maybe he isn’t that bad,” I said, scrabbling around for something to put up in mitigation. “Maybe he’s just keen on cars and flash clothes.”

  “I’d have him down the mines before he could zip himself up.”

  He had a point. I was having a hard time with Billy myself.

  “I never agreed with all that entertainment for the tourists,” the old man added. “At least the gambling and whoring. I’m no Calvinist, but to me that’s just dirty money.”

  I had a sudden vision of the perfect woman on the stage and wondered how she’d got involved in that kind of work. “The Medical Directorate checks all the women regularly,” I said. “There hasn’t been a case of AIDS for years.”

  “Not that we’ve been told about,” Hector said. “There hadn’t been a murder . . .”

  Boots were pounding up the stairs. The noise grew louder, then Davie burst in, my mobile phone in his hand.

  “Quint, you’re wanted. Come on.”

  “What is it?”

  Davie struggled to catch his breath. “They’ve found another body . . . in Dean Gardens.” He looked at my father, then back to me. “Male this time . . . same modus operandi, it seems.”

  Hector was looking worried. I didn’t feel too good myself.

  “Sounds like you’ve got a psychopath on your hands, Quintilian. Be careful.”

  Davie set off out the door and I followed. “I’ll try to come again next Sunday. Keep well, old man.”

  Halfway down the stairs I heard him calling out. Something about me not telling him if I’d seen my mother. At that moment, she was the last thing on my mind.

  Chapter Six

  “Shit, Davie.” I clutched the seat. “I told you, I don’t want to die.”

  “Don’t worry. There hasn’t been a fatality on the roads for years.” He kept his foot on the floor and called ahead to the next checkpoint. We raced through and were soon crossing the Dean Bridge. The parkland dropping steeply down to the Water of Leith was bright green in the sunlight, the only trace of the days of fog a silver sheen on the leaves and grass that had almost evaporated. Along with the last slim chance of this being a one-off killing.

  Then the Land-Rover swung round hard into Academy Place and I remembered two things. The first was irrelevant, a desperate attempt by my mind to distract itself from what lay in the park; it had come to me that the street used to be called Eton Terrace before the Council took steps to change all names with suspect cultural connotations. The second thing gave me a jolt of electric-chair proportions. Adam Kirkwood’s flat, where I’d been with Katharine two days earlier, was a couple of hundred yards further on. I hoped to hell he wasn’t the latest corpse.

  I counted six guard vehicles, including the public order guardian’s with its maroon pennant. The windows of the houses lining the street were filled with spectators. No chance of the Council keeping this killing quiet.

  Lewis Hamilton emerged from the gap in the railings where the gate to these formerly private gardens had been. “Dalrymple, it’s about time you turned up.” His cheeks had an unhealthy tinge and I reckoned he’d been closer to the dead man than he would have liked.

  “Who found the body?” I headed down the slope to the bushes where a group of guardsmen and women stood.

  “We did,” said the guardian. “A woman who refused to identify herself teleph
oned from the callbox at the end of the bridge. Probably one of the local residents who didn’t want to get involved.”

  “Very public-spirited of her.”

  “There are rotten apples in every barrel, citizen.”

  That was too inviting to ignore. “I thought your directorate had got rid of all of them.”

  He gave me a glare that made me feel a lot better. “Clear the way,” he ordered curtly. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen him taking things out on his auxiliaries.

  I pulled on rubber gloves and dropped to my knees. There were a lot of footprints on the grass at the edge of the bushes but it was clear they were all recent – from the guard and the woman who’d raised the alarm. It was also obvious what had drawn her to the spot. The stench of decomposing flesh was like a curtain I’d just poked my head through. Beyond the branches a discoloured mass was visible. Even at ten yards’ range I could see that the body was completely naked.

  There was a small clearing beyond the outer foliage. I approached from an oblique angle to avoid touching any footprints. As I got nearer the corpse their number increased and I marked the deepest indentations so that casts could be taken. I already knew what kind of footwear had made them – non-nailed citizen-issue boots, size twelve. That was all I needed. The Ear, Nose and Throat Man took size twelves. That’s how I was sure the man in Princes Street Gardens that night was him, even before I got close. He was wearing a pair of ancient cowboy boots with square toes – I’d found prints from them at several of the murder sites. Jesus. He couldn’t still be alive. I clung to that certainty. After he skewered himself, I pushed him into the foundations of the stand they were building beside the new racetrack. Then I heaped a great load of earth over him till I passed out because of the loss of blood from my finger. But I came to before the workmen arrived the next morning and I saw them pour the concrete over him. It was a coincidence, the shoe size, but it shook me for longer than it should have.

  I crawled around with my magnifying glass but found nothing else in the way of traces. No fibres from clothing, no buttons torn off in the struggle, no strands of hair.

  Davie came in on his hands and knees, carefully avoiding the marks I’d drawn around the footprints. He looked across at the body and grimaced. “How long do you think he’s been here?”

  I couldn’t put it off any longer. “I was just getting round to having a look.”

  Davie was holding a handkerchief to his face. “After you.”

  “Thanks a lot.” I moved forward. The man was lying on his left side, his limbs swollen under greenish purple skin. The abdomen was grotesquely distended. A couple of yards behind his head was a neat pile of clothes, boots placed on top. He was short, no more than five feet five inches, and heavily built. At least I could be sure he wasn’t Adam Kirkwood. I could also be sure that something violent had been done to the lower part of his back.

  Taking a deep breath, I bent over the blackened hole. And almost threw up. It was seething. I had an idea there would be insect infestation, but not this much. The temperature under the fog carpet hadn’t been too low so the maggots were fat, clustered over what was left of the flesh around the ribs. I reckoned they were in the third instar of growth. The flies had laid their eggs in the cavity which had once been occupied by the dead man’s right kidney. I turned towards the upper part of the body and froze solider than the permafrost on a Siberian steppe. Something had moved.

  “What is it?” Davie asked immediately.

  I shook my head to shut him up. Again there was a quick, confined flurry. It came from the right armpit. I leaned forward slowly, drawn on despite the urge to escape my stomach manifested by the mug of coffee I’d drunk earlier. Then I saw it.

  The rat was so bloated that it could hardly pull itself out of the corpse. It looked at me with glassy eyes then opened its mouth to pant. Its head twitched from side to side as it calculated angles and distances for its escape. I wasn’t planning on getting in its way.

  It made its move with surprising speed. The long hairless tail was past me even before I could sit back. But it hadn’t taken account of Davie. He grabbed the tail and held the animal at arm’s length. I hadn’t put him down as a pet lover. The rat wriggled frantically and tried without success to bite him. It was too fat to double up.

  “Don’t we want to examine it?” Davie asked. “The stomach contents might . . .”

  “Jesus Christ, let the bloody thing go. We’ve got a whole, well, almost a whole body to dissect. Not to mention about a million bluebottles.”

  There was a rustling noise behind me.

  “What have you got there, guardsman?” asked Robert Yellowlees. “We can always use those in the labs. Give it to my assistant.”

  Davie grinned at me and departed.

  The medical guardian inspected the body, running his rubber-sheathed hands over the limbs and sniffing like a discerning wine drinker.

  “You were right, citizen,” he said. “We’re dealing with a multiple murderer. Whether it’s the otolaryngologist or not.” He pointed to the victim’s neck. “Strangled by ligature like the guardswoman. And an organ removed. There isn’t much doubt that it’s the same killer.”

  I looked at the dead man’s swollen face. He had a misshapen nose that had been broken at some stage. There was no evidence of it having been blocked. The ears were intact too. His close-cropped hair was grey and I put his age at around forty-five. The mouth, caught open in a rictus that looked like he was trying to call for help and yawn at the same time, revealed discoloured teeth and gaps where several had fallen out. Another one who hadn’t taken advantage of the city’s dental services.

  Yellowlees was writing notes. I went over to the pile of clothes. In the breast pocket of a donkey jacket I found a wallet containing only an ID card. There were none of the booklets of food, clothing and electricity vouchers that citizens usually have on them. Still, it seemed hard to believe robbery was the motive. Any self-respecting thief would have taken the ID to sell to the dissidents. No self-respecting thief would have had a man’s kidney out.

  I read that the victim’s name was Rory Talbot Baillie, aged forty-eight, driver in the central vehicle pool.

  “Around ten days since he was killed,” Yellowlees said, a thin smile flashing on his lips. “Before you ask. The entomologists will be able to confirm that from the maggots. I’ll run my own tests as well, of course. I’d say that the kidney was removed with a blade very similar to the one used in the other murder.” He turned to go then stopped. “Oh, and the anus was penetrated. Will that do you for the time being?”

  I spent three hours supervising the scene-of-crime auxiliaries. They seemed to have a reasonable idea of what they were doing. Perhaps they’d read my manual. Davie certainly had. He took charge of the photographer and made sure all the angles were covered. We had some trouble taking plastercasts of the footprints as the ground was still soft, but eventually we got some good ones. An auxiliary got on to the Supply Directorate and was told that two thousand three hundred and six pairs of size twelve citizens’ boots had been issued in the previous year. That was a great help.

  Hamilton came over when things were winding down and the body was long gone. “What do you make of it, Dalrymple? It’s our man, isn’t it?” His cheeks were glowing like those of a believer who’s just had his faith confirmed by a thumbs-up from an effigy of his god.

  “Bit early to say,” I said, keeping encouragement to a minimum.

  “Come on, man. Size twelve footprints. What more do you want?”

  “There’s no shortage of large men in Edinburgh,” I observed. “Thanks to the Medical Directorate’s dietary guidelines.”

  The guardian was impervious to irony. I’ve often noticed that with members of his rank.

  “Damn the fog.” That made me bite my lip. Now he sounded like an eminent Victorian. “The body would have been found much more quickly under normal weather conditions.”

  “I checked with the meteorology centre. The
fog came down on the afternoon of Friday the 13th. We’re waiting for an accurate time of death, but it looks like the murder happened when the atmosphere was still clear.” A thought struck me. “Of course. It must have been at night. And this area’s outside the central lighting zone.”

  The guardian looked at me dubiously. “So?”

  “So no witnesses. Your people are taking statements from residents but I’m not holding my breath.”

  “No. There would have been a call by now.”

  “But if it was night, how did the killer see what he was doing?”

  Hamilton stared at me. “What are you getting at?”

  I stared back. “He must have had a torch. Tell me, guardian, who are the only people in Edinburgh issued with torches and the batteries for them?”

  “Auxiliaries,” he mumbled.

  “Sorry? I didn’t catch that.”

  “Auxiliaries,” he repeated, his eyes steely. “Guardsmen and women, as you full bloody well know.” He turned away, wiping his mouth. This time he resembled one of the faithful who’s just been tempted into heresy by a hirsute gentleman with a full set of horns and hooves.

  “Who won that round?” asked Davie. “Don’t tell me. The chief looks like he’s going to throttle someone.”

  “Very apt. Let’s leave him to it.”

  “Where to? The infirmary?”

  “Yellowlees will be desperate to start the post-mortem, but there’s somewhere else I need to go first.” I gave him directions to Adam Kirkwood’s flat.

  The lane was quiet. I got Davie to park round the corner so we’d be less conspicuous. That was a waste of time. The sound of his boots on the pavement told the locals that the guard was on its way.

  The street door was open. I led him up the stairs to the flat. The door was closed. I got out the strip of plastic I always carry.