Body Politic (5 page)

“The medical guardian.”

I didn't make it obvious to Hamilton, but I found that interesting. You'd think Yellowlees would have more pressing duties. Still, he did carry out the post-mortems on the ENT Man's victims, so it made some sense.

“Who found the body and when?”

“A guardswoman: the one who tried to stop you outside. She came to relieve the victim at 0600.”

“Jesus. She came on duty fourteen hours ago, found a colleague murdered and is now on crowd control? You're still treating your people like shit, Hamilton.”

“Spare me the lecture,” he said, avoiding my eyes. “For your information, she was taken back to barracks in the morning and allowed to rest after she'd given her statement. I told her commander to send her back after you were assigned the case. I presumed you'd want to talk to her.”

“That's about the first thing you've got right so far.” I'd forgotten how easy it was to bait my former boss. This time I got a reaction that was almost human.

“Look, you insubordinate little turd,” he said, the veins around his eyes swelling like a nest of purple snakes, “you may think you're something now you've been let back into the fold, but to me you'll always be a prima donna who ran away when things got tough. If you don't want me to stamp all over you when this investigation's finished, you'd better observe the rules. For a start, don't call me by my name.”

“Yes, guardian.” Being told what to do always brings out the worst in me. “Sorry, guardian. Can I go now, sir?”

Hamilton kicked the door open, his face red.

“Where's the guardswoman now?” I asked over my shoulder.

“In the manager's office.”

“I'm going to talk to her. Alone.”

The guardian's reply was lost as the doors were opened and a horde of tourists stampeded in.

Napier 498 was standing by the barred window with her hands behind her back. She looked exhausted, her shoulders drooping and her forehead resting on the glass. I saw she was very young.

“I'm Dalrymple.” I put my hand on her shoulder and felt the muscles tense. She turned, eyelashes quivering, then pulled herself together in proper auxiliary fashion and moved away from my touch. “You can call me Quint. What shall I call you?”

She pointed to the barracks number on her tunic, but let her hand drop almost immediately. Then, in little more than a whisper, she said, “Linda.”

I led her to the swivel chair and sat on the desk next to it. “I know exactly how you feel, Linda, believe me. But I have to hear what you saw.”

She kept her eyes down. “I made a statement. There's nothing more.”

I've never read a statement that tells the whole story, no matter how careful people think they're being. I leaned closer. “You know who I am, don't you?”

“The guardian told me you have Council authority.”

“That's not what I mean.”

She looked up at me, her eyes less like an exhausted doe's. As I expected, the jungle drums hadn't taken long to beat.

“You were Bell 03. You wrote the
Public Order in Practice
manual we studied during the auxiliary training programme.”

I nodded. “Some of your teachers probably told you that a lot of the material is irrelevant now that crime in the city has been controlled. But you saw what was done to one of your colleagues. Do you think any of your teachers can catch the killer?”

Napier 498 shook her head. “Catching the bus back to barracks is about the best they can do.”

I smiled at her, overjoyed that cynicism was alive in the City Guard. “On the other hand, my record is a bit better.”

“Legendary, more like,” she said, colouring slightly.

“Thank you.” Looking at the young woman, I suddenly felt a stab of guilt. I had turned tail and left the next generation in the shit. Then I thought of Caro and managed to justify what I'd done. “So trust me, Linda. Tell me what you found.” I waited, but the gentle approach wasn't enough – I could tell by the way she was leaning away from me. I would have to shock her out of the reluctance to talk that's drummed into auxiliaries. “Your written statement is only a skeleton.” Feeling like a worm, I hit her with my carefully chosen metaphor. “Flesh it out.”

It never fails. The guardswoman's eyes narrowed and she sat up straight. “All right, citizen Dalrymple,” she said, avoiding my first name like it might put running sores on her tongue. “I've been on the morning shift at Stevenson Hall all week. The guard vehicle dropped me off just after 0600 this morning – we were late because of the fog. We could hardly see a thing on the way down from the castle.”

I was feeling bad about what I said to her and had an uncontrollable urge to make friends. “You're in the barracks up there?”

She nodded, giving me a suspicious glance.

“How much more of your tour of duty have you got left?”

“Four months.” There was a slight loosening in the muscles round her mouth.

“Going to apply for another one?” I could see she was puzzled by these personal questions. They might have been a waste of time, but I reckoned I'd get more out of her if she didn't think I was a plague-carrier.

“I'm not sure.” She gave a tremor. “I doubt it, after today.”

I nodded. “Go on.”

“The fog was even thicker around the hall. Because I was late, I ran to the door . . .”

“Did you see or hear anything unusual?”

“No. As I said, the fog was really dense. I could hardly even see the lights in the building.” She paused. “And there was no sound. I didn't hear the Land-Rover driving off. It was like I had cotton wool in my ears.”

“So you wouldn't have heard anyone walking or running away?”

She shrugged. “I don't think so.”

I kept on at her. “Are you positive you were alone in the street? You didn't have any intuition that someone else was there?”

“Yes. No.” She looked at me helplessly. “You're deliberately confusing me.”

“No, I'm not. It's important.”

“Yes, I did feel alone. I told you. I . . . I remember I shivered. I suddenly felt afraid. I ran to the door to find Sarah.” The name made her choke and she bent forward, her hands over her eyes.

I let her have a few moments, then asked, “Her name was Sarah?”

Linda wiped her face quickly. “Sarah Spence. Knox 96. I knew her from the first day of my auxiliary training. She's . . . she was older than me – in her mid-thirties. She ran physical training classes on top of her normal guard duties.”

“Describe her to me.”

“Short and stocky, brown hair and eyes, a lot of freckles. The kind who would have turned to fat if she hadn't done so much exercise.” A strangled sob escaped before she could get in its way. “Oh God, she was always so full of energy, laughing . . .”

“Obviously she could defend herself.”

“Of course. She trained me in unarmed combat. That made it even more of a shock.” She straightened herself up again. “Of a shock,” she repeated, her voice falling away.

I gave her time to compose herself.

“So I knocked at the door and waited to be let in. She didn't come. I knocked again, then pushed the door. It was unlocked – against regulations. I was surprised, but I was still keen to see her before she was picked up. Her Land-Rover had been delayed too. So I walked in and called her name a few times. No reply.”

“Did you notice anything in the hallway? Anything strange?”

“No, they didn't find anything.”

“I'm not asking about what anybody else found, Linda. I'm asking if you saw anything.”

She frowned then shook her head. “No, there was nothing.”

“All right. Go on.”

“She wasn't there – at the guardpost by the ticket office, I mean. The mobile phone was there, on standby, but there was no sign of Sarah. I walked down the corridor calling her name. Then I got to the men's toilets and, I don't know why, I pushed open the door. I hardly broke my stride, so I only caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye . . .”

“It?”

She looked at me like I was a schoolboy who had just wandered into a research seminar on advanced cybernetics. “The blood, of course.” She began to shake. “It was, oh God, it was as if someone had thrown a bucketful over her.”

I slipped off the desk and held her jerking shoulders. This time she didn't shy away. “Was there any on the floor near the door: footprints, stains, anything?”

“No!” she screamed. “No!” Then her struggling subsided. “No, there wasn't.” Suddenly her voice was normal again. She stared at me in bewilderment. “But how could that be? She'd been . . . torn apart, but the blood was only in the corner where she was lying.”

“Yes, how could that be?” I tightened my grip on her bony shoulders. “Tell me exactly what you saw as you approached her.”

“The gaping hole,” Linda replied without hesitation, her voice as bereft of emotion as a hanging judge's. “The great hole in her abdomen. Like an animal had taken a bite out of her.” This time she didn't sob, but she seemed unaware that the door had opened quietly. The public order guardian came in.

“What about her face?” I asked quickly. “Did you see it?”

“No, thank God. Her tunic was wrapped around her head. It was soaked in blood.” She was looking at the floor. “Is it true what I heard, that her liver was cut out?”

“You shouldn't pay attention to gossip, guardswoman,” said Hamilton firmly. “Have you finished, Dalrymple?”

“Scarcely even begun, guardian,” I replied. “Scarcely even begun.”

“Where to now?” Davie asked. “The infirmary?”

I was looking at the mobile phone that was fitted beneath the Land-Rover's rusty vent. “Yes, the infirmary. Remind me about reporting procedures in guarded premises, will you?”

“Every hour, on the hour. New code word each time.”

Which is a pretty good example of the Council's mania for security. No wonder they need so many auxiliaries. I didn't share my thoughts with Davie, though I had a feeling he might have agreed.

“So what happened at Stevenson Hall last night? Did the killer time his arrival and departure to avoid the calls, or was he just lucky? Or . . . I wonder.” I glanced at the bearded figure beside me in the dim light from the dashboard. This was a chance to find out how enthusiastic he really was. “Davie, while I'm at the postmortem can you talk to the guard commander who was on duty this morning? Tell him you're working with me; he'll know that I have Council authority by now. Find out whether Sarah – I mean the dead guardswoman Knox 96 – gave all the correct responses.”

“No problem.”

Most auxiliaries would have had a hard time taking orders from an ordinary citizen, but Davie didn't seem to care. Maybe I would be able to make use of him. If he managed to squeeze an answer out of the commander.

The Land-Rover swung into Lauriston Place, just missing a horse-drawn carriage containing four tourists. We came to the gateway of the city's largest hospital. It bore the ubiquitous maroon heart emblem and the legend “The City Provides”. Is that right? I thought. Provides what? Mutilation for female auxiliaries?

Before I was five yards away from the vehicle, I heard Davie speaking on the mobile.

I walked into the mortuary and my nostrils were instantly flushed out by the sweet and sour reek of formaldehyde.

“Ah, there you are, citizen,” said Yellowlees, the medical guardian, with a warm smile. He looked so welcoming that I clenched my buttocks. Then I remembered the reputation he had for womanising years ago. “We're ready to begin.” He was standing next to the slab where the cadaver had been laid out.

Hamilton came in, his face turning greyer than his beard when he saw the dead guardswoman. He'd always been squeamish at post-mortems. I'm not particularly proud that I can turn my feelings off temporarily. A nursing auxiliary with a bust like the figurehead on a tea clipper handed us masks and gowns.

Yellowlees nodded to her. “Very well, Simpson 134, start taking notes on –” he glanced at the tag on the subject's ankle – “Knox 96.”

“She had a name, you know.”

They all stared at me.

“Sarah Spence. In case you're interested.”

Simpson 134 was the first to look away.

“Really?” Yellowlees turned briefly to the nurse, his eyes meeting hers above their masks, then stepped closer to the body. “It hardly matters now, does it?” He started the preliminary examination.

I soon realised that the medical guardian hadn't forgotten any of his pathologist's skills. The mortuary assistant scarcely got a look in as Yellowlees involved himself in everything, removing the plastic bags from head and hands, taking samples of dried blood from around the wound in the abdomen, scraping underneath the fingernails, telling the photographer exactly what angles he wanted. Then he lifted the tunic from around the head. I leaned forward. This was the interesting bit. As Sarah Spence had been lying on her left side, that part of her face and limbs was dark blue in post-mortem lividity. I saw immediately that her ears were intact and her nose unblocked. The guardians and I exchanged glances.

Yellowlees bent over her neck, then motioned to his assistant to turn the body over. “No doubt about the cause of death. Strangulation by ligature.”

“The Ear, Nose and Throat Man's modus operandi,” said Hamilton, nudging me.

“What?” I had suddenly been back in Princes Street Gardens, pulling a ligature of my own round a much thicker neck.

“All twelve of his victims were despatched that way.”

Caro's face flashed before me, then was gone.

“Quite so,” said Yellowlees. He pointed to the deeply scored line in the victim's flesh. “You can see the contusion where the ligature was twisted with considerable force. Unfortunately the killer took it away with him. We'll check for fibres, but it's possible he used strong wire.”