House of Dust (2 page)

I grimaced as I swallowed and headed for the door. Even by Edinburgh standards it had not been a breakfast of champions.

“Wait a minute,” Katharine said. “Haven't you forgotten something?”

I patted my pockets and felt keys, mobile phone, notebook and cosh – the last object essential these days given the city's lunatic fringe. “Don't think so.”

She came towards me, her slim form and strong legs crossing the confined room quickly. “Tonight, Quint,” she said, enunciating as if to a backward child. “Are we doing anything tonight?”

“Ah.” I gave her an awkward smile. “Tonight's a bit of a problem. You see, it's the Council's party for the Oxford delegation and—”

“What?” Suddenly Katharine's face was set hard. “I thought you said you weren't going to that freak show.”

“Em . . . true enough, I wasn't going to.”

“So what's made you change your mind?” Katharine demanded. “Surely you don't want to stand around exchanging chit-chat with those repressive shitebags, do you?” She glared at me. “The Corrections Department is going to ruin this city and it's all because of those supposed geniuses from Oxford.” Her eyes were wide open and her chest had begun to heave. “Prison won't solve any of Edinburgh's problems and you know it.”

“Yes, Katharine,” I said as patiently as I could manage. “I know that. I've been against the reintroduction of incarceration all along. I was only invited to the reception so the Council could rub my nose in the new prison.”

She was still staring at me, her lips pursed. “Why are you giving the guardians the chance then?”

I shrugged. “I'm a glutton for punishment.” I raised my eyes to hers. “And I also want to find out exactly what's going on between the Council and the Oxford delegation. You never know how useful that might be in the future.”

“Oh.” Katharine's expression softened. “Okay. As long as you don't turn into a supporter of imprisonment. I'd never forgive you, Quint.”

“I know you wouldn't,” I replied, smiling cautiously. “See you here afterwards?”

She shook her head. “No. I'm doing an overnight shift at the centre. Tomorrow evening?”

“You're on.” I leaned forward to kiss her.

She let my lips touch hers for a second then pushed me away. “Give them hell,” she said under her breath.

“Give who hell?” I asked as I turned towards the door.

“Everyone,” she said. “But especially the bastards who want to lock young people up. They should try a few years in solitary themselves.”

I wasn't going to argue with that. Katharine knew much more about life inside than I did.

I could have called for a guard vehicle to pick me up but, since the Supply Directorate had finally come up with a new front wheel for my antediluvian bicycle, I decided to get some exercise. The citizen rush hour was long past so I had the streets to myself apart from the clapped-out, diesel-spewing buses and the tourist taxis; no private cars have been seen in the city since the original Council outlawed them twenty-plus years ago, along with cigarettes, computers, television and private telephones. It had turned into about as good a spring morning as we get in Edinburgh and, as I headed up Lauriston Place towards the infirmary in the weak sunshine, I could hear the school kids rioting in the Meadows. Structured play, of course – or so the education guardian claimed. I suspected the poor wee buggers were really getting combat training so they could get home in one piece every afternoon.

Panting from the gradient, I passed the city's main hospital on my right and swung round towards George IV Bridge. As I was approaching a pair of dull-eyed guardsmen in grey uniforms – the body armour and helmets they wore being evidence of the youth gangs' ability to do serious damage – a high-pitched, mechanical scream almost canted me over into the gutter. After what seemed like a very long time, the noise reduced to a steady whine that was almost bearable.

I looked up to see the senior of the two guardsmen mouthing a phrase that would have earned him a day licking the latrines; the Council requires auxiliaries, even the muscular ones, to observe a strict language code.

“Bloody right,” I agreed, putting my right foot back on the pedal.

The younger guardsman stepped forward, hand on his steel-filled truncheon. He obviously fancied taking his angst out on an over-familiar local.

“Let him be,” the older man said. His accent was the soft lilt of a Highlander; although most of them go to Glasgow to escape the marauders, a few prefer Edinburgh's hair-shirt and haggis regime. “Morning, Citizen Dalrymple. Arse-juddering machines, aren't they?” He stared up at the dark blue aircraft with cutback wings that was coming down slowly on the roof of the pale brown museum building.

“Aye,” I agreed, reading the badge on his tunic. “You're right, Knox 87.” Auxiliaries are known by barracks name and number rather than their own names, at least in public. This one had probably seen me at some crime scene or in the pages of the
Edinburgh Guardian
. “Who would have thought the top of what used to be the Museum of Scotland would end up as a miniature airport?”

“Progress is a wonderful thing, is it not?” Knox 87 said. His ironic tone drew a shocked look from his youthful companion.

“The New Oxford helijet is an amazing machine,” the junior guardsman said. “Vertical take-off and landing capabilities, fifty luxury seats and a cargo capacity of over thirty tons. There are twenty-two in service and—”

“I thought I told you to stop reading those dirty aeroplane magazines, Raeburn 544,” the senior man said sternly, giving me a wink. “Take care of yourself, citizen.” He led his scandalised subordinate away.

I peered back up at the museum roof. Transparent anti-blast panels had been built out over the streets to protect innocent bystanders like me. We weren't provided with earplugs though. I shook my head in an attempt to regain full hearing. The New Oxford helijet. It was as good a symbol as any for the influence on the Council that the southern city had built up over the last year. Who did they think they were, these academics? First they get a contract to oversee the construction of Edinburgh's first operating prison for ten years, then they insist on having a landing pad built for their poxy aircraft as near the central zone as possible. And do the guardians lay down and open their legs? You're bloody right they do.

I continued up the road and flashed ID at the checkpoint beyond the main archive. Ordinary citizens are only allowed into the tourist zone to work and technically I'm still of that rank, having been demoted for refusing orders back in 2015. But the Public Order Directorate has been using me as a freelance senior investigator for years so I'm allowed to move around unhindered, at least in theory.

As I squeezed through a group of Indian tourists on Castlehill, I forced myself to concentrate on the report I was about to make. Lister 25 was Edinburgh's chief toxicologist. He'd worked with me on some of my biggest cases. More interesting as far as I was concerned, he was a closet blues freak, a devotee of Robert Johnson – which wasn't bad considering the Council banned the blues decades ago because of what it saw as the music's subversive nature. A senior auxiliary like Lister 25 would have been for the high jump over the North Bridge if he'd ever been caught listening to the old master.

But even more interesting right now was the fact that the city's number one chemist had disappeared twelve days back. Without leaving a trace.

I crossed over the narrow drawbridge leading to the castle gatehouse and asked the guardswoman on sentry duty where the public order guardian was. Lately, Hamilton had acquired the habit of roaming around his domain like a lost sheep and not answering his mobile. I was directed to the command centre in what used to be the Great Hall. On the way up the winding cobbled road I couldn't miss different shots of the panorama over Edinburgh's northern sector. Beyond the shops, marijuana cafés and gambling tents in the central zone – tourist access only – the suburbs where ordinary citizens live stretched away to the Firth of Forth, windows glinting in the sunshine. It looked like a picture of urban serenity; unless you knew how dangerous the youth gangs had made the streets the further you went from the city centre.

In the restored medieval hall with its hammerbeam roof I got a surprise. It must have been a month since I last visited the Council's security headquarters, but in that time a bank of new, ultra-modern computers had been installed. The detailed wall maps of each part of the city had been replaced in certain central locations by interlinked screen panels that gave virtual displays of streets and even individual buildings. As I watched in astonishment, one panel zoomed in on the greyhound track at Easter Road. I heard a dispatcher directing a guard vehicle to the perpetrator of a mugging who was hiding in the groundsman's shed.

“Impressive, don't you think, Dalrymple?”

I turned to the public order guardian. He was looking pleased, no doubt because he'd managed to sneak up on me. “What's all this, Lewis? Don't tell me the Council's finally entered the twenty-first century?” Till now the city's leaders had always done all they could to restrict the use of computers; they wanted to control the flow of information, but all they did was land themselves with a huge, paper-driven bureaucracy that no one could handle – not even an archive rat like me.

“Trust you to carp,” the guardian said, shaking his head. “I'd have thought technology like this would make your job easier.” Although he was in his late seventies, Lewis Hamilton was still an imposing figure, his white hair and beard giving him the look of an Old Testament patriarch. Unfortunately, in recent times his staff have paid about as much attention to him as they do to the Holy Writ: auxiliaries are required to be atheists.

I nodded. “It probably would.” I watched a heavily built middle-aged woman move towards us. “If I were given a free rein.”

Hamilton caught the sharpness in my voice. “We'd all like one of those, Dalrymple,” he said sotto voce. “Ah, Raeburn 124, everything in hand?” He was trying to sound like he was in command but I didn't buy it. Neither did his deputy.

“Oh yes, guardian,” she said, a tight smile cutting across her fleshy face. “Everything is very much in hand.” Raeburn 124 – known throughout the City Guard as “the Mist” both because she'd appeared out of the blue at the top of the directorate tree and because she came down everywhere to put a serious dampener on things – glanced at me with ill-disguised disapproval. “Citizen Dalrymple,” she said, aiming her small eyes at a point several inches to the left of me. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

I smiled malevolently. “I've no idea what gets you going, but I own up to whisky and the blues.”

The deputy guardian moved her eyes off me and tried not to spit. She had a reputation among her subordinates for enforcing standards of discipline that Stalin would have been proud of. I was an independent operator – inasmuch as such a being exists in Enlightenment Edinburgh – so she couldn't lay down the law to me. I got the feeling that kept her awake at night.

“I don't imagine we'll be continuing this diverting exchange at the reception tonight, citizen,” the Mist said, smoothing down her mousy hair. She was in charge of the Corrections Department within the directorate and had been overseeing the implementation of the Council's incarceration policy, as well as the refurbishment of the prison building. “Your opposition to imprisonment is on record.”

I registered the snub. “That's why you sent me an invite, no doubt.” I shifted my upper body into the line of her gaze. “Thanks very much. I'm looking forward to the event.” Raeburn 124's face was impassive, but I could see that her fingertips were jammed into the palms of her hands. “And to the inauguration of the New Bridewell facility the day after tomorrow.”

“You'll be very welcome at both,” she said, the thin smile on her lips again. “Make sure you don't get locked up in the Bridewell in the meantime.” She nodded to Hamilton. “Guardian.”

He watched her lumber across to the computer bank. “Bloody woman,” he muttered. “She'll be the ruin of this directorate.” He turned to the door. “Come on, man,” he said over his shoulder. “You've got a report to make.”

I followed him into the courtyard. It was a close call whether the guardian or his deputy was the bigger pain to deal with.

“All right, let's hear it,” Lewis said impatiently. He was sitting at his desk in his quarters in what used to be the Governor's House, the creases in his guard uniform sharper than a butcher's knife. “Where's that bloody chemist got to?”

I made a show of pulling out my notebook and flicking through its pages, even though I didn't have a lot to say.

“You haven't got anywhere, have you?” the guardian said with unusual perspicacity.

“Em, no, not really,” I said, putting my notes down. “Lister 25 was last seen by his staff in the laboratories in King's Buildings twelve days ago, on 25 March. I've interviewed all of them and no one seems to have noticed anything unusual in his behaviour leading up to his disappearance.” I shrugged. “Of course, being chief toxicologist he had plenty on his plate, especially considering the quality of food served up to ordinary citizens—”

“Spare me the social outrage, Dalrymple,” Hamilton said, his shoulders slumping.

In the past I would have laid on some more ironic observations, but baiting him wasn't what it used to be. The fact was that Lewis was yesterday's man. The Council was full of young, go-ahead guardians now and he'd lost his grip on what used to be the single most powerful directorate. Public order was effectively handled by his deputy, who'd been transferred from the Welfare Directorate when her former boss became senior guardian six months back. It didn't help that Lewis Hamilton had been caught with less than pristine hands after a major investigation in 2026. He was lucky he was still in a job, but the changes in the command centre made me wonder how long he'd keep the keys to these quarters.