House of Dust (9 page)

They had to accept that.

“And second, there's the question of the uniform. How was it obtained?” City Guard apparel is produced and stored in secure premises, separate from citizen-issue clothes. It's always been subject to stringent checks, and auxiliaries who lose garments face instant demotion; in the early days of the Council, drugs gangs used to steal uniforms and use them to cause even greater chaos.

“We're back where we started then, aren't we, citizen?” the Mist said. “You think the guilty party is a member of the guard.”

I gave the guardian an emollient look. “Not necessarily. The uniform could have been taken from a serving auxiliary.” I turned to Davie. “Any of your people gone missing recently?”

He shook his head. “You know how strict the procedures are on absenteeism.”

Before I could respond to that, telephonic hell broke loose. As well as all four of our mobiles going off, Hamilton's desk phone emitted a piercing shriek.

“What the . . .” the guardian gasped.

I stepped towards the window with my mobile to my ear and, as I surveyed the first leaves coming through on the trees in Princes Street Gardens, managed to make out that the body of a male citizen with one arm missing had just been found in Leith.

We all left the office at speed, boots clattering down the cobbles towards the esplanade. Davie and I left Hamilton and the Mist far behind.

“Don't wait,” I said as we reached the nearest Land-Rover. “Lewis and his deputy can sort out their own transport.”

Davie bundled the startled guard driver out and took the wheel.

As we headed for the checkpoint – alert sentries raising the barrier rapidly in response to Davie's gestures – we passed the VIP accommodation block. Outside the door I saw Administrator Raphael and her entourage moving towards the ceremonial Jeep. They were surrounded by a flock of guard personnel which was being handled, of all people, by the senior guardian. The three academics were keeping close to Raphael and she almost seemed to be keeping her head down. What did she think was going to happen to her in a city where the only firearms are those issued to guards on the city line and border posts? Maybe she was worried about dive-bombing seagulls.

Davie drove down the Royal Mile; for all the original Council's republican fervour, the street leading to the now ruined palace retains its name to make the tourists happy. He kept his hand on the horn to ensure the city's visitors stuck to the pavements. Most of them were more interested in the tacky souvenirs and cut-price woollens than in a rust-devoured guard vehicle.

“Hold tight!” Davie yelled as he took a left on to the North Bridge, the worn remoulds sending us into a skid that seemed terminal for much longer than was comfortable.

“Thanks a lot, big man,” I said, my heart pounding like a bass drum.

“Think nothing of it,” he said with a laugh. “Now sit back and enjoy the view.”

I did what he recommended, struggling to get my breathing under control. There was plenty to see as we traversed the great triple-arched bridge linking the Old Town with the New. The gardens and the neo-classical galleries to the west were more pleasing to the eye, but my gaze was irresistibly drawn to the castellated walls to the north-east. There it was: the New Bridewell, the jewel in the new Enlightenment Edinburgh's crown. The fortifications of the original prison reared up from the bare rock face in an unbroken chain over three hundred yards long. The obelisk in the former burial ground – now topped out with transmitter aerials and discs – pointed towards the sky at the left. To the rear the Nelson Monument on top of the Calton Hill mirrored its effect, and the circular watchtowers were almost lost in the bulk of the central block. As we got nearer I could see the razor wire that had been erected on top of the old defences. The mob that stormed the Bastille would have got nowhere with this monstrosity.

“Where's the Council going to find the prisoners to fill its new toy?” I asked.

Davie grinned. “Where we're going now.”

“Aye,” I said, nodding. “There's no shortage of gangbangers down in Leith these days.”

“And there's even a gangbanger with one arm,” he said. “Maybe it's a new form of initiation ceremony.”

That sent a shiver up my spine.

We were in the depths of the citizen residential area near the docks. Davie had taken a left turn off Constitution Street and immediately lost his bearings. The narrow lanes were deserted, the locals at work or school. Some of them had optimistically hung their washing on the wires above the road – no tumble dryers outside the tourist zone in this city – but the sun's weak April rays were unlikely to do much good in the confines of the buildings.

“Where is it we're headed?” I asked.

“Socrates Lane,” Davie said, grabbing the road map. “Should be somewhere around here.”

“Socrates Lane?” I said. “Spot the name imposed by the Council.” I wound my window down and checked out the place. I soon realised that it wasn't as deserted as I'd thought. There was movement behind the grubby net curtains over the upper windows on both sides.

“We are not alone,” I said. The back streets near the port were a notorious haunt of youth gangs and black-marketeers.

Davie chucked the atlas on to my lap and let off the handbrake. “Don't worry. They won't attack a guard vehicle in broad daylight.”

There was a light rattling on the Land-Rover's roof.

Davie slammed on the brakes and stuck his head out of the window. “Here!” he shouted. “I'll pull it off if I catch you!”

I decided against putting my own head outside. “Someone having a wettie?”

“Aye,” Davie grunted. “I saw the little scumbag. He couldn't have been more than ten.”

“They recruit young these days,” I said. “Maybe he's in the Portobello Pish.”

“Ha.” Davie hung a left and pulled up behind a couple of barracks patrol vans.

I made a quick survey of the upper flats before I got out. No sign of any more piss-artists.

A female auxiliary with an unusually healthy complexion came over from a gaggle of solemn barracks personnel. “Hello, Citizen Dalrymple. Remember me?”

I glanced at the badge on her tunic. “Baltic 04. Oh aye. We checked out the spirits bond a couple of years back, didn't we?”

She nodded. “When some lunatic poisoned the whisky.” She pointed to a doorway. “He's up there,” she added, her voice suddenly trembling.

“Bad one?” Davie asked over my shoulder.

Baltic 04 nodded, her eyes down.

“All right,” I said, “you stay out here. The public order guardian and his deputy will be arriving any minute now with the scene-of-crime squad and the medical team. Keep them on the street till I tell you otherwise.” I waited till she looked up again. “Your people haven't touched anything, have they?”

She shook her head. “It's the left-hand flat on the second floor. I went in on my own after we got the tip-off. And I was wearing gloves, citizen.”

I looked at her heavy boots. “Let's hope you didn't trample over any vital traces.” I touched her arm. “I'm sure you were careful, Baltic 04. Have you got a murder bag?”

“On the front seat of the leading van,” the auxiliary said. “Em, citizen? How shall I keep the guardian out?”

I was handed a protective suit by a solemn auxiliary. “Tell him I'm on the job,” I said.

“Aye,” Davie muttered. “That would put anyone off.”

The stairwell we were ascending was completely covered in gang graffiti. Even the worn steps had been given coats of luminous paint, words and crude pictures applied in black ink. On the walls there were vertical red lances every few feet.

“Bingo,” I said, remembering the tattoo on the severed arm. “This is a Leith Lancers base.”

Davie nudged open a door that was attached by only one hinge and looked around. “Unoccupied, I'm glad to see.”

“I'm hoping it stays that way, though the guard presence should have scared them off for a while.”

“And as soon as the Mist comes down, they'll vanish for the duration,” Davie said with a grim smile.

I kept going, stepping over a fairly recent heap of human excrement, till I reached the landing on the second floor. The doors to both flats were open and the reek made me choke.

“Christ, how do people live here?”

Davie shrugged. “They don't. They have other places where they kip. This is what they call a kicking hole, where they bring the ones they want to teach a lesson to. Members of other gangs, ordinary citizens who rat on them to us, you know how they operate.”

I walked into the flat and almost fell into a wide hole where the floorboards had been smashed open. These walls had been decorated in the same way as the stairwell, the centrepiece above the shattered fireplace being a drawing of a figure in guardian-issue clothes looking remarkably like Lewis Hamilton. There were at least a dozen lances protruding from his torso. St Sebastian had it easy by comparison.

“The bog, Quint,” Davie said, his eyes wide as he turned towards me. “Jesus, that's too much.”

I went past him and looked through the doorway. At first I thought the walls of the confined room had been decorated like all the other surfaces in the tenement, admittedly with even more red than elsewhere. Then I realised that the white tiles, though layered with grease and muck, had not been coated with paint. The covering was dried blood.

“Fuck,” Davie said, staring into the bathroom despite himself. “I don't believe this.”

I looked at the floor and pointed. “Footprints. Some of them are probably from our friend downstairs but we might get lucky.” I stepped round the ribbed markings on the bloodstained boards, my feet unsteady in the protective bootees I'd pulled on outside the front door.

The room was about ten feet by eight, the small window in the left wall covered by uneven planks. All that remained of the sink and lavatory were blackened holes in the surfaces. There was no bath – the water restrictions during the Big Heat had led to all remaining baths being removed from citizen residences – and the shower base was three inches deep in shit. I glanced up and saw that the ceiling was also criss-crossed by long sprays of congealed red. The guy I assumed they'd come from was lying along the right-hand wall. His head was resting on the raised surround of the shower base and his hair was smeared with its contents.

“Fuck is right, Davie,” I said, trying to breathe only through my mouth. Then I kneeled down beside the one-armed corpse.

The lower part was dressed in standard youth gang gear: citizen-issue trousers turned up to beneath the knee, heavy boots. I remembered the yob with the red flash on his cheek I'd encountered at the bus stop. This guy was taller, his legs stretched out and close together. I moved my eyes reluctantly to the torso. It was naked, the victim's motionless chest scrawny and spattered with muck. I looked closer. The spots on the pallid skin were dry faecal matter, not blood. I glanced up at the ceiling again and wondered how fresh the blood up there was. Maybe the victim had been mutilated elsewhere.

I steeled myself to lean over the upper part. The young man's face was almost at ease, the muscles slack, eyes closed and the mouth shaped into an incongruous smile. I felt in my pocket for my magnifying glass and held it over the stump of his right arm.

“It looks like a perfect match.” Her voice was muffled by a surgical mask that she'd sensibly donned.

I wrenched my neck as I twisted round. “Jesus, Sophia, stop doing that. I almost had a heart attack.”

“Sorry.” She looked about the room. “What a hell-hole,” she said, shaking her head. “I suppose it's an appropriate location for a sick attack like this.” She nudged me to one side. “Let's have a look then.” She bent down and examined the wound. After a minute she straightened up. “Yes, I'm almost certain the arm in Ramsay Garden came from this victim.”

“
Almost
certain?” I demanded. “How many other recently severed arms are you engaged in identifying?”

“None,” she said tartly. “But I won't be a hundred per cent sure till I have the body and the limb on the slab together.”

“From what I can see, there's no blood on the floor underneath the stump,” I said, trying to make sense of the scene. “I reckon he might have been dumped here after death.”

Sophia leaned forward again. “Possibly. It really is quite extraordinary. The stump is completely sealed, as was the arm. Cauterisation of some sort but, again, there's no sign of scorching.” She stepped back and started talking into her dictation machine.

I watched and listened, trying to follow what she was saying but rapidly getting lost in the medical terminology. Then Sophia's eyes opened wide and the cassette recorder dropped to the floor with a crack.

“Oh no, Quint!” she gasped. “Oh no!”

I looked to the front and felt the hairs on the back of my neck go as rigid as porcupine spines. “What the—?” I broke off and watched what was happening in front of me.

The corpse with one arm had come back to life. Eyes half open, the young man scrabbled on the filthy floorboards with the fingers of his remaining hand, let out a cracked groan and then lapsed back into unconsciousness.

“He's in shock,” Sophia said, hitting buttons on her mobile.

I knew exactly how he felt.

“I should have checked for a pulse,” Sophia said, her face pale.

We were back on the street, an ambulance having just taken the comatose youth to the infirmary.

“So should I,” I said. “So should Baltic 04. But the guy looked deader than a dodo. I didn't see any sign of breathing.”

She nodded. “I know. I'll be running tests. He's most likely in deep post-traumatic shock.” Her brow beneath the white-blonde hair was deeply lined. “There should have been some chest movement though.” She stripped off her protective suit and moved towards her Land-Rover. “Let me know what you find at the locus,” she said. “I'm going to supervise this intriguing patient.”