House of Dust (51 page)

I was stumbling around like a blind man, arms extended as I desperately tried to make contact with Katharine. Then, suddenly, the floodlights were doused and I managed to focus on the interior of the Council chamber. There was no sign of Dirty Harry or of Katharine.

“Are you all right, Quint?” Davie was at the window. There was a series of explosions, followed by screams and cries. “Bloody hell. Harry just took out a couple of bulldog Chariots. What kind of weaponry is he using?”

I was looking at an open window further down the room, its curtains moving in the breeze. Then my eyes fell on Raphael. She was lying back in the chair, completely motionless, her legs straight out and her upper body an overflowing crater of blood. She hadn't stood a chance against whatever Harry had fired.

I turned as a squad of bulldogs led by Harriet Haskins rushed in. Dawkley and Wood-Lewis were to the rear.

“Stay here!” I shouted to them. “The Grendel still has Katharine. Davie and I will find them.”

The science administrator kneeled by his former leader. “Very well,” he said in a defeated voice. “You have fifteen minutes. But I warn you: if the Grendel eludes you, we will hit him and his prisoner with everything we have.”

Haskins came up and handed me a nostrum. “Here,” she said. “You'll need this. It's programmed to monitor your female friend's location.”

I thanked her and ran to the window. Davie was already halfway down the emergency rope.

“Where are they?” he asked as I got to the ground, my stomach hollow.

“Just up the road,” I said, looking at the nostrum and pointing north. “They've gone into Wad.”

We sprinted towards the college where the Encaenia procession had gathered.

“What the hell's he doing?” Davie said.

“Looking for a bolthole?” I suggested, my lungs already straining.

Davie grunted. “No way. Harry's got this all planned.”

Maybe he was right. I followed him towards the gateway. There were a couple of blood-boltered bulldogs on the ground.

“Where now?” Davie said, peering at the nostrum in my hand.

I looked to the left. “Over there,” I said. “The first staircase.” There was another shattered body at the doorway.

We took the steps in threes, looking in each room that we came to. Those on the first floor were empty, the doors ajar. As we were halfway up the next flight, we heard a crack followed by a sharp cry.

Davie thundered into the room in front of me. “It's me, Harry,” I heard him say. “Shit, what have you done?”

I made it to the landing and pushed him aside. “Where's Katharine? What's—?” I broke off as I took in the scene in front of me. Katharine was still hooked up to Dirty Harry, both of them standing dead still. Beyond them Billy Geddes was sitting in his wheelchair, an expression of sheer terror on his irregular features. He didn't seem to be hurt, which was more than could be said for the other occupant of the plush sitting room.

“Christ,” I gasped. “Is that who I think it is?”

Billy nodded slowly. “Lachlan Lessels, also known as Slick.” He was staring at the body that was lying in a scarlet pool in front of him. “Late senior guardian of Enlightenment Edinburgh.” He turned and looked at the Grendel, the aggressive side of his nature reasserting itself. “Why the fuck did you kill him?”

“You're next, Heriot 07,” Dirty Harry said, raising his right arm. There was no weapon in his hand. “You and he signed Edinburgh over to the bastards in New Oxford, didn't you? The toxins in the Poison Fields are going to make this golden sewer uninhabitable any day now, so you've let them move their operation to Edinburgh.”

“Is that true, Billy?” I asked, moving between him and the former Fisheries Guard commander. I knew from the look on the occupant of the wheelchair's face that it was even before he nodded. “Harry,” I said, turning to the Grendel and opening my arms. “Don't do it. Billy's just a fixer. The guardians would be the ones who took the decision.”

Dirty Harry stared at me, his eyes cold glints, then lowered his arm slowly. He put his other hand to his waist and unfastened the umbilical link. “There you go, Katharine Kirkwood,” he said. “You're free.”

She stared at him and tugged off her end of the wire. “You aren't, though,” she observed, her voice sharp. “What are you going to do? Kill every bulldog in the city?”

Harry took a deep breath and then shook his head. “No. I'm finished.” He sank into an armchair and his head dropped to his chest. He looked like a man who'd run a double marathon. “I'm finished,” he repeated, the words faint.

I squeezed Katharine's arm and got a frosty glare for my pains. She didn't seem too traumatised by her experience. I wanted to talk to her, I wanted to make sure that she really was okay, but I needed to question her captor first. It wouldn't be long before the bulldogs arrived.

“You're not finished, Harry,” I said, kneeling in front of him. “You can come back to Edinburgh with us.”

He was inhaling deeply, the breath catching in his throat. “Can I fuck, Citizen Quint.” His eyes met mine and I felt the power of them again. “Don't you understand what I am?”

I was forced to look away. “I know what you've done, Harry. But there are mitigating factors.”

He laughed until he choked. Perhaps his system was finally succumbing to toxic exposure. “You still don't get it, do you?” He said. “What kind of smartarse are you?”

I stood up, accepting the challenge. “All right, here's what I think, Harry. Your surviving crew – four of them, right? – were killed during the Mark Two fitting-out process, weren't they?” I repeated the term Raphael had used, not that I understood it.

“That's more like it,” he said, giving me an approving nod. “And what was it that killed them, Mr Investigator?”

I was looking at his right arm. There had been something strange about it, something unnatural in the way he raised it at Billy. “Where's you ASAR, Harry?” I asked. “How did you shoot Hamilton and the academics in the theatre? How did you kill Raphael and Slick?” I glanced round the room. Katharine, Billy and Davie were staring at me in expectation. “You've got some kind of artificial arm, haven't you? An arm that contains an advanced long-range rifle.”

“Bull's-eye,” the Grendel said, flexing his fingers. “I hate the fucking thing but it has its uses.”

“And your crewmen died when their arms were being fitted,” I added.

He nodded. “Blood poisoning in the stumps. The fucking medics screwed the drugs up.”

“That's why you've been going around amputating arms, isn't it?” Katharine said, shaking her head. “Jesus Christ Almighty. Why did you mutilate that poor kid in Edinburgh, you bastard? He didn't do anything to you.”

Dirty Harry shrugged. “I made sure I picked a scumbag gang member and I made sure he didn't know anything about what happened to him.” He put his hand in his pocket and came out with a small, matt black canister with a nozzle on the top. “At least I wasn't in full Grendel mode when I caught him – otherwise he'd be as dead as Raphael.”

Katharine was standing over the former Fisheries Guard commander. “You left George Faulds in a coma on a stinking tenement floor!” she shouted.

“I tipped the guard off about his whereabouts,” Harry said with a shrug.

Katharine turned away in disgust.

I peered at his arm. “You've got a laser in there too, haven't you?” I said, remembering the sound I'd heard on the way up the stairs as well as seeing Raphael's shattered chest. “That's what produced the cauterised wound on Dead Dod.”

Harry nodded. “It's not a supermax, but it's lethal enough.”

“And the drug you used on him is in there,” I said, pointing at the canister. “Did it come from New Oxford?”

“Of course,” he replied. “Not all their products are lethal. It was top secret, of course, developed for one of the transnationals. A combined anaesthetic and antiseptic for use during organ transplantation. I stole it from one of Dawkley's supposedly secure labs.”

“You left a trail of people in deep coma,” Davie said.

Dirty Harry raised his shoulders. “They should all have come round by now. The amnesia will begin to clear up after ten days.”

It wasn't a surprise to discover that Haskins had lied to me in the Department of Forensic Chemistry, and I was still pissed off with her. And with myself for not giving the drug compound more attention. “They never admitted to us that it was a Nox product,” I said.

The Grendel laughed. “They told you as little as possible – that's the Hebdomadal Council's way. That was why I slipped into your rooms in Brase and left you that clue about the Code Red file – it looked like you needed the help.”

“That Ghost unit you've got obscured your appearance as well as keeping the surveillance at bay, didn't it?” I looked at him. “Christ, Harry, why didn't you just wake me up and come clean about everything?” Then I remembered the brief glimpse of him that I'd been given. “You almost showed yourself. Why didn't you go the whole way?”

“You're lucky I didn't, Citizen Quint,” he said, drawing the fingers of both hands over his smooth face. “You have to watch me. I come and go. The psych regime they put us through was so severe that there arc still times when I swing back into complete Grendel status, no matter how much I fight it. It's like a frenzy. That's how Ted Pym ended up the way he did. You noticed that I used my auxiliary knife on him, like I did on the Leith Lancer's finger? I didn't mean to, but the conditioning leads to maximum savagery; Mark Two Grendels aren't just hitmen, we're propagandists of violence.”

“All roads lead to Oxford,” I said. “That was you, wasn't it?”

Harry nodded, his face sombre. “I knew where you lived. The message was a way of getting you down here. I had a feeling that you'd bugger up Raphael's plans.” He looked round us all. “Whatever happens, none of you people are going to let New Oxford get its claws any further into Edinburgh, are you? No Nox, nowhere. That's the way it has to be.”

Katharine nodded and Davie joined in. It looked like they'd finally found something they could agree on.

Dirty Harry smiled crookedly at me. “By the way, Katharine will confirm that I blew the bone mill in the House of Dust to pieces before we left.”

“What the hell's the House of Dust?” demanded Billy. “What bone mill?”

“Never mind now,” I said, raising a hand. “How did you lure Raskolnikov to the Botanic Garden? Was it a fake message from his lover boy?”

Harry nodded. “I found out about the male brothel.” He held up the Ghost device. “This got me into restricted premises and gave me access to plenty of interesting databases.” He ran his fingers over the miniature buttons. “Bad news,” he said. “Lister 25's dead. I placed a pinhead monitor on him a couple of nights ago.”

“Poor old sod,” I said, hoping the toxicologist's last hours had at least been pain-free. “You pointed me in his direction by giving a file that contained a reference to him as well as to the toxins, didn't you?”

“I thought it would get you more involved,” Harry said, his head moving up and down. “More outraged about the fuckers who run this place.”

“You crushed Raskolnikov's nostrum with that robot hand, didn't you?” Davie said. He stepped forwards. “Bloody hell, Harry, how does it feel to have been turned into a killing machine?” Davie hadn't forgotten that the pair of them went through auxiliary training and served together in the guard. “Can you still remember what you were like before they . . . before they mindfucked you? How did you keep going?”

Dirty Harry kept his head down, then raised it slowly and smiled slackly at his former comrade. “I've had enough of this now. I've reached the end of the road now that Raphael and the bastards who helped her develop the Grendels are dealt with. But what kept me going was revenge, Davie. Revenge. It feeds the fire like nothing else.”

There was a swift movement at the door.

“Indeed it does, Number Three,” said a familiar voice.

The chief administrator stepped in through the open doorway, her right arm raised. There was no sign of a limp in her wounded leg, no visible trauma to her chest. Before anyone could move, there was an eye-shattering flash of light accompanied by a short, high-pitched report.

When I managed to focus on Harry, I realised that black smoke was emanating from his eyes and that the robotic arm was hanging stiff and motionless over the chair. There was no question about it: the ex-Fisheries Guard captain had set out on his last voyage. I hoped he would find his crew on the way.

I should have paid more attention during English literature classes. It had come to me far too late that Beowulf didn't only have Grendel to contend with. After he'd pulled the monster's arm off, the hero had to face Grendel's mother.

As we'd just seen, she was even more lethal.

We were taken out of the room in Wad and moved under heavy guard to the Noxad building. Davie discovered the hard way that speaking was not allowed: a bulldog belted him over the back of the head with the butt of his rifle when he tried to address me. I watched him as he straightened his back. His limbs were loose but his eyes were steady enough. I reckoned someone would be paying for that blow.

They held us outside in the quadrangle of the former Bodleian, the bulldogs forming a ring around us with their weapons lowered. I glanced at the others. Katharine's lips were tight and she met my gaze with a questioning look. I shrugged. We didn't exactly have much room for manoeuvre. Billy's silk tie was loose and he was shivering in the chill night air – obviously his designer suit didn't have sufficient wool in the weave. His face was a picture of resentment. The way he stared at me suggested that he held me responsible for screwing up his latest big money deal. Tough. I had other things to worry about: such as how we were going to get out of this intact.