Body Politic

by Paul Johnston

“Anyway, however the clothes got here, they rather put paid to your theory about the killer being an auxiliary, don’t they?” He smiled with more satisfaction than guardians usually allow themselves. That was a mistake.

  “I had the impression that all barracks keep a stock of labourers’ clothes for auxiliaries engaged in maintenance work.”

  The smile disappeared quicker than the sun on an August morning in the city. “You don’t give up, do you, Dalrymple? Until the going gets tough.” He turned on his heel and headed for his Land-Rover.

  “Not again,” groaned Davie as he came up. “The guardian’s going to have your head if you’re not careful.”

  “I’m sure he’d love to have it over his fireplace in the castle. Find anything out from forensics while I was distracting your boss?”

  He grinned. “Is that what you were doing? As a matter of fact, I did. That carving knife we gave them. No traces of anything human.”

  I walked away from the river.

  “Let’s go and see the widow.”

  Davie drove down the broad avenue where the regional police headquarters used to be located. The buildings, surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence, are now Raeburn Barracks, responsible for Pilton to the north where the drugs gangs used to hang out. Ahead of us lay the ruins of Fettes where I met Leadbelly. I remembered that I hadn’t sent him the recordings I’d promised. He wouldn’t be surprised.

  I slumped down in the seat. “Christ, Davie, if evidence was oxygen, we’d have suffocated days ago.”

  “Aye, there are a good few dead ends. The guard didn’t turn up any witnesses at Dean Gardens, I heard. Surprise, surprise.” He glanced at me. “Still, maybe we’ll find out something from Baillie’s wife.”

  I wasn’t sure whether that qualified optimism was his own or a result of auxiliary-style positive thinking. Looking at the forbidding estate ahead – growths of grey concrete against the steely estuary – I wished I could share it.

  Before the Council took charge I’d never been to Pilton. Although the area isn’t much more than a mile from the northern extent of the city centre, it belongs to a different world. The drug traders recruited their hard men from the gangs that had always operated there. It was the city’s open sore until the Public Order Directorate went in and the real fighting started. Since then the Housing Directorate has done what it can to rebuild and the streets are patrolled by the City Guard, but the place still looks like a war zone. Every window is fitted with solid shutters that are closed as soon as night approaches. I wondered when Hamilton had last been down here. Let alone the senior guardian.

  A group of adolescents of both sexes was gathered round a lamppost that stood at a crazy angle. They watched us pass sullenly.

  “Shouldn’t they be at school?” My mother’s educational planning set great store on the removal of truancy from the list of the city’s social problems. There were squads of auxiliaries who went around counselling parents and pupils about the value of attending school.

  Davie laughed grimly. “You want to make them go?”

  “No.” I didn’t fancy the tough faces and empty eyes much. “What is the city coming to?”

  “Don’t ask me. I haven’t finished the political philosophy course yet.” He pointed ahead. “It’s that block there.”

  We had reached the centre of a web of streets uncluttered by any vehicles. There were no people around here; all were busy at whatever work the Labour Directorate had assigned them. The dead driver’s wife was to have been picked up by a guardswoman from the bakery where she worked as a counter assistant and brought home.

  Inside the street door the sharp smell of disinfectant didn’t disguise the inadequate sewerage. Working for the Parks Department meant that I was allowed to live just outside the tourist area. If I’d lived in Pilton, I wouldn’t have been a drop-out from the system for long.

  The information board in the lobby told us that Baillie R. and J. were in flat C on the third floor. I ran up concrete stairs that had been chipped away by the residents’ heavy boots. The door of the flat had once been dark blue. I paused to draw breath then knocked softly. A heavily built guardswoman opened up immediately.

  “Where is she?” I asked, looking round the room. Its standard-issue sofa and armchair, dining table and chairs all showed signs of wear, but the place was spotlessly clean.

  “She went to the toilet,” said the guardswoman, Raeburn 244.

  I went over to the table where a large Bible lay open. It was over a hundred years old, the heavy type as stern as the Church which had authorised it.

  “How long has she been in there?”

  Raeburn 244 looked at her watch then met my stare with wide eyes.

  “Shit!” I ran down the narrow hallway that led to the other rooms. “Mrs Baillie? Are you in there?” I shoved hard with my shoulder without waiting for an answer. The poor quality wood and hinges gave way as fast as an old-style princess before an offer from a tabloid newspaper.

  A thin woman was crouching over the toilet bowl. At first I though she was throwing up. Her head, brown hair flecked with flour from the bakery, was moving backwards and forwards. Then her hand shot up and pulled the chain with surprising speed. I saw a mass of colour in the foaming water which didn’t look like vomit. Pushing her out of the way, I rammed my hand down as the last of it was disappearing. A soggy lump caught in my extended fingers. I heard the woman sobbing.

  “I hope you haven’t been eating this, Mrs Baillie,” I said, shaking my head. “It isn’t good for you.”

  The pinkish mess had unravelled into what was clearly a banknote. Although the writing was in a foreign alphabet I had no trouble identifying it. I’d seen one in pristine condition a few days earlier. It was a fifty thousand drachmae note, all the way from Greece’s sun-kissed shores and oil-rich waters.

  “How many of these did you manage to flush away, Jean?”

  The woman’s eyes followed Davie and the guardswoman, who were taking the flat apart. “I’m no’ sure. Maybe ten.”

  Half a million drachmae. In a city where foreign currency is restricted to tourists and the needs of citizens are covered by vouchers, that’s big money, especially for a driver to have.

  “Where did your husband – I presume it was your husband, not you?” I watched her carefully as she nodded. “Where did he get this money?”

  “Ah dinnae ken, citizen, honest ah dinnae.”

  “Watch your language,” said the guardswoman.

  I raised my hand to silence her. The last thing I needed now was for Jean Baillie to be reminded of Council language policy. I didn’t give a bugger if she said “ah dinnae ken”.

  The woman had lowered her head after the rebuke and her veined hands shook against the maroon of her overall. She eventually looked up when I didn’t speak, eyes pleading for another question to make things easier. I kept quiet.

  “He . . . Rory . . . he worked extra shifts. At night, a lot of the time. I only found that money this morning . . . I was tidying up his clothes in the wardrobe.” Her voice almost broke, but she held on.

  I believed her. “You don’t have any children, Jean?”

  She shook her head slowly. “I couldn’t. Or he couldn’t.” She dropped her head again. “He tried hard enough.”

  That sounded promising. I changed the subject temporarily. “You read the Bible a lot?”

  “Aye.” She was suddenly more in control of herself. “I go to St Margaret’s every Sunday.” Like most of the believers who remain in the secular city, she was ardent about her faith.

  “And your husband? Did he go with you to church?”

  Jean Baillie laughed, a harsh scrape from a throat dried in the bakery for years. “Rory? He wouldnae go near a church. He spent all his time chasing fancy women and . . .” Her voice tailed off.

  “And what, Jean?” I asked softly.

  She stared up at me fiercely. “And nothing. I don’t know what else he was doing.”

  “Why did you try to get rid of th
e money?”

  She shook her head but didn’t answer. The guardswoman came over but I waved her away. I was sure Jean Baillie hadn’t done anything criminal. The same couldn’t be said for her husband.

  The widow wasn’t able to answer my other questions either. She didn’t know any of her husband’s workmates; she didn’t know where he’d been on the night of his death. I tried a long shot.

  “Did Rory ever mention an Adam Kirkwood?”

  I saw Davie look over and stare at me. We waited for the woman to reply. In vain. Eventually she shook her head slowly, hopelessly.

  Down in the street the same group of teenagers had gathered near the Land-Rover. They hadn’t touched it yet, but I reckoned it wouldn’t be long before they had a go. When we came out of the block, they shambled away with calculated nonchalance.

  “Get on the mobile and tell the directorate to send a squad down to search the sewers,” I said to Davie as we climbed in. I caught a glimpse of Mrs Baillie at her window. She was gazing out to the north where the hills of Fife were visible beyond the Firth of Forth. I was pretty sure that for all its marauding gangs and violence, she was praying to her god to pluck her up in a pillar of fire and lift her over there.

  Another one whom the system failed.

  As we were passing Raeburn Barracks, Davie turned to me. “Why did you ask her about that Adam Kirkwood guy?”

  I came clean and told him about Katharine and her brother. He didn’t seem too pissed off at being excluded.

  “You think he and Baillie might have met in the vicinity of Dean Gardens on the night of the murder?”

  “It’s possible.” I took the banknote I’d found in Adam Kirkwood’s flat from my wallet. “There’s also the small matter of this.”

  Davie whistled. “Christ, the same currency and denomination. I told you we’d get lucky.”

  “Yes, but keep it to yourself for the time being.” I gave him a Hamiltonesque glare. “And wipe that bloody grin off your face, guardsman. All this does is make things even more complicated.”

  He nodded, the smile still on his lips. “I’m assuming we’re heading for the drivers’ mess in Melville Street.”

  “You know, you’re too bright to be in the guard, Davie. Ever thought of a transfer to the Parks Department?”

  He shook his head violently. “No way. I couldn’t face clearing up all that horse shit after the races.”

  “We’re going to be clearing up a lot worse than that in the near future, my friend.”

  Yellowlees came on the mobile as we were driving over the Dean Bridge. “I’ve just finished comparing notes with the entomologists, Dalrymple. We’ve concluded that the time of death was between four and six a.m. on Friday 13 March.”

  “It certainly wasn’t a lucky day for Rory Baillie.”

  “What? Oh, I see what you mean. You might like to know that the killer used a condom in this case too.” The guardian paused as if he were waiting for me to volunteer information. “Making any progress?” he asked when I didn’t.

  “Slowly but surely,” I lied, then signed off.

  We left the guard vehicle on Queensferry Street and walked round the corner to Melville Street. Davie stopped at a kiosk and took a copy of the Edinburgh Guardian.

  “Look, Quint, you’ve made the front page.”

  “That’s all I need.” They’d dug out a photograph of me so that the killer would know who he was up against. Above it was the headline “Dalrymple Investigates”. I read the beginning of the lead article out. “‘Quintilian Dalrymple, former senior detective at the Public Order Directorate, has been appointed to head the investigation into the murder of a citizen in Dean Gardens.’” I looked further down. “Jesus, listen to this. ‘Citizen Dalrymple, who was forced to retire from active service because of ill health, has the full confidence of the public order guardian.’ Two heaps of your favourite substance in one sentence, Davie. They’ve printed the number of my mobile, too. Wonderful.”

  Davie didn’t seem too keen to hear any more of that in public. He grabbed my arm and led me down the street, taking back his paper. “Come on, citizen. Time to play detective. Here’s the drivers’ mess.”

  An open door led into a broad hallway. The building had once been a school, then offices, before it became the centre for all drivers of city vehicles apart from the guard’s. The Transportation Directorate has overall control of the facility, but the drivers have always had a reputation for being individualists – as far as such creatures survive in Edinburgh.

  The auxiliary in charge was middle-aged and overweight. I decided to play things low-key and kept my authorisation in my pocket. He didn’t show any interest in my request for information about Rory Baillie. The magazine he was looking at did pertain to vehicles, but only in as much as they offered partially clothed women the means of sexual gratification.

  “I hardly knew the man,” he said. “Go and see Anderson, the drivers’ co-ordinator.”

  Davie leaned across the desk, grabbed the magazine and jammed it up against the auxiliary’s neck. “I don’t like what I’m seeing here, Ferguson 73.” He glanced at me. “Show him your authorisation. Obviously he’s been too busy to read the Guardian today.”

  The auxiliary slumped forward as Davie pulled the magazine away. He rubbed his throat and gulped, his jowls vibrating like a petrified chipmunk’s. Within seconds he’d called Anderson on the internal phone and told him to bring the relevant files.

  I smiled at him while we were waiting. The fat man’s skin had acquired a sheen of sweat. Auxiliaries have been demoted for obstructing the bearer of a Council authorisation, but I had a feeling he was more worried about his magazine. He would have paid a Scandinavian tourist plenty for it.

  The co-ordinator bustled in with an armful of folders. He was balding, with the professional driver’s paunch and fondness for black leather. If leather trousers had been available from the city’s clothing stores, Anderson would have had a wardrobe full of them. As it was, his jacket was scuffed and his belt looked like it was about to give way. He must have had both items since before the time of the Enlightenment. Only his standard-issue boots looked new. The shine on them suggested he’d once been in the army.

  “Hello there, gents,” he said cheerily. “Here’s all the stuff I’ve got on Rory: personal file, time sheets, medical record, the lot.” He dumped the papers on his boss’s desk and shook his head. “Poor sod. We thought he’d been drafted to the farms or down the mines.” He turned to me. “Is it true what they’re saying, that one of his kidneys was cut out?”

  “It is.” I motioned to him to sit down. “We’ll go through the records later. In the meantime, I’d like you to fill me in about Baillie. How well did you know him?”

  “Hardly at all,” he said with a shrug. “Even though we were in the army together.” He ran his hands down his jacket. “Rory was a secretive bugger.”

  “Tell me everything you can about him,” I said.

  The sun appeared suddenly above the buildings and light flooded into the room, making everyone screw their eyes up. The fat auxiliary mopped his face with a filthy handkerchief.

  “Good driver,” the co-ordinator said. “Plenty of experience in all kinds of vehicles – cars, Land-Rovers, trucks, ambulances, oil tankers.” He looked at Davie and me. “There hasn’t been much call for armoured cars since you lot dealt with the gangs,” he added ironically.

  “Watch it,” growled Davie.

  “Did he have any particular speciality?”

  “Not really. As Ferguson 73 will confirm, we run a fair system here.” His emphasis on the word “we” made it clear who was really in charge. “Everyone changes round regularly to maintain efficiency.”

  “Very commendable,” I said, not buying that explanation for a second. “Why do I get the impression you’re stonewalling, citizen? Would you like Hume 253 here to take you up to the castle and interrogate you with his friends?”

  Anderson’s shoulders dropped and his cocksure a
ttitude vanished in the sunlight. Ferguson 73 started waving his hands about in a belated and wholly unnecessary attempt to make his subordinate see reason.

  “Look, citizen,” the driver said desperately, “I don’t know anything about what Rory was up to.”

  “But you suspected something.”

  Anderson nodded. “Aye. I mean, we’ve always had a reputation for being on the make, we drivers, especially when we’re on the tourist buses and horse-drawn carriages. Christ, they offer us tips. We can’t offend them by saying no.”

  Davie and I didn’t say anything. The commander put his head in his hands. It was obvious he was on a percentage.

  “But Rory,” Anderson continued, “Rory was something else.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He always had a lot more in his wallet than the rest of us, even though his roster was the same as everyone else’s.” The co-ordinator shrugged. “I’ve often wondered where he got it.”

  “Those tips you mentioned – how much do you make from them?”

  “Say five US dollars, maybe ten of those Chinese things . . .”

  “Renminbis,” said the fat commander hoarsely.

  “Ever get anything from the Greeks?”

  Anderson smiled. “Oh aye, they’re very generous. They’ll give you five thousand of their currency on a good day.”

  I wrote the numbers down in my notebook. “What could a driver expect to make from tips every year?” I glanced at the man behind the desk. “Net of what he pays your boss here.”

  The driver grinned. “No one works the tourist routes more than two months a year and often the guard stop us accepting tips.” He scratched his chin. “Say three hundred dollars US.”

  Or around three hundred thousand drachmae, I calculated. Still a lot less than Baillie’s wife had flushed away. I turned to Ferguson 73. “Right, here’s how we’re going to do this. Personally I don’t give a shit that you’ve been taking a cut. As long as you tell me everything that’s been happening in this facility and go through the files with us, I’m prepared to forget about your financial arrangements. If you’re good, you might even get your magazine back.”