The Blood Tree (15 page)

Sophia was sitting with her hands supporting her back, which made her midriff protrude even more than usual. Her face pale, she nodded impassively.

“We will then hear from Citizen Dalrymple and his team,” the public order guardian continued.

I sat up with a start. What was the guardian playing at? Something was going to happen before Sophia and the rest of us were allowed to speak. I didn't have to wait long to find out what that something was.

“First I have to tell you about a piece of evidence that is potentially of great significance.” Hamilton paused to make sure that all eyes were on him. “Scene-of-crime personnel from my directorate scoured the area where the body was found with their usual diligence.”

Trust Lewis to get in a plug for his people and, by extension, for himself. I looked to my left and caught Katharine's brief sardonic smile.

The public order guardian held up a clear plastic bag with a couple of small, light brown objects at the bottom. “These are cigarette butts.” He smiled triumphantly. Smoking had been banned for all Edinburgh inhabitants by the original Council so cigarettes inevitably suggested external involvement in the murder.

“What is the place of origin?” the tourism guardian asked nervously. He was a skinny specimen well known for his single-minded devotion to the interests of the city's visitors.

“Don't worry,” Hamilton replied, “your precious tourists aren't implicated.” He gave his colleague a look that made clear his dislike of the year-round festival and the people it attracted.

I was wondering what he meant. I got it just before he explained. Shit. Now I knew why the extra meeting had been called. This case was beginning to get out of hand.

“My people found a match to the tobacco and filters very quickly in their files,” the public order guardian said, gazing straight at me. “These cigarettes came from the source of most of Edinburgh's present troubles.” He paused to increase the tension. “These cigarettes were made in Glasgow.”

Chapter Seven

There was a brief lull, then the Council chamber turned into pandemonium. Eventually Hamilton restored order by pulling out his City Guard whistle and blowing a long, uninterrupted blast. Not bad given the age of his lungs – and of his whistle.

“That will do, colleagues,” he declared. “We need to consider all aspects of the case calmly and analytically.” He looked round the guardians and brought them into line with the power of his gaze. They were all considerably younger than he was and I'm pretty sure he compared them unfavourably with the members of the original Council – the first guardians had a lot more to worry about than a couple of Glaswegian coffin nails.

Those of us involved in the case were called upon to report. Sophia ran through what she'd already told me, passing round photos of the dead man which made some of her colleagues blanch. The time of death was still estimated at between twelve and one a.m. Knox 43 had no other injuries or illnesses, though his general physical condition prior to death was described as “average to poor”. He apparently had some signs of malnutrition – he hadn't been visiting the Knox mess hall as often as regulations prescribe.

“Citizen Dalrymple?” Hamilton said, nodding at me to proceed.

“Citizen Kirkwood and Hume 253 will bring you up to date with their lines of enquiry first,” I said, playing for time. I wanted to hear what the others had discovered so I could get my own story straight.

“Thanks a lot,” Katharine said under her breath. “Guardians.” She pronounced the word like it was a witch's curse. “I can advise that Knox 43 – whose name, by the way, was Donald McBain . . .” She broke off and looked round at the Council members' faces. Although guardians' names had been made public, auxiliaries were still supposed to be known only by barracks numbers – something about them being anonymous servants of the city.

“Get on with it,” Hamilton barked.

Katharine smiled. She'd made her point. “Right. Knox 43 was a bit of a loner. The Close Colleagues List in his file has only two names on it. I've spoken to the two auxiliaries concerned and neither of them was actually very close to him at all.” She looked at her notes. “Knox 73 played chess with him once a week but never talked to him about anything in depth – he identified the body. And Knox 100 said she'd tried to get him to open up about himself after a sex session and failed completely. She couldn't understand why Knox 43 had put her on his list.”

The welfare guardian, an earnest-looking young man with glasses who'd only recently been appointed to the Council, leaned forward. “You mentioned sex sessions, citizen,” he said in a reedy voice. “I gather the dead auxiliary was hetero?”

“Correct,” Katharine replied.

“And did he fulfil his sexual obligations?” The welfare guardian's voice had a prurient tone which I didn't like much.

Neither did Katharine. “If by that you mean, did he attend the weekly session as required, the answer is yes.” She gave him a steely look that made it clear she thought auxiliaries shouldn't have their sex lives controlled, especially now that ordinary citizens have been let off sex sessions. “If you mean, did he show much enthusiasm for copulation with a different partner every week, the answer's no. Surprise, surprise.”

The welfare guardian looked at her curiously. I wondered if he knew that Katharine worked in his directorate – and that she was once in the Prostitution Services Department.

“That'll do, citizen,” Hamilton said. “We don't need criticism of Council policy from the likes of you.” If Katharine was bothered by that turn of phrase, she didn't show it. “Kindly sum up your findings.”

She shrugged. “From what I can gather, Knox 43 was a profoundly withdrawn and unhappy man, particularly over the last year. But I've found nothing to explain why he ended up dead in the Botanics.”

Davie got to his feet. “I've come across some irregularities that might help, guardians,” he said.

That made me sit up straighter. I turned to a blank page in my notebook.

Davie went on. “Knox 43's reports from the time of his auxiliary training to last autumn were never better than satisfactory. But this year they've shown a marked decline from that less than impressive level. He picked up several minor non-compliance charges for turning up late for appraisals, refusing to attend physical exercise classes and the like.” He looked up to make sure everyone was paying attention. “But there's more. In the last month he was reported three times for unauthorised absence from barracks.”

The guardians exchanged confused glances. As far as they were concerned, it wasn't in auxiliaries' natures to break regulations – certainly not to go missing from base.

“Any idea where he went during those absences?” I asked.

Davie nodded. “I checked the guard command centre log. There's no cross-reference to the first date he disappeared, but I've turned up references to the second and third.” He paused, foolishly expecting a pat on the back.

“And?” Hamilton demanded. “Come on, commander, get a move on.”

“Yes, guardian.” Davie's cheeks above his beard reddened. “On 7 October he was apprehended in a field on City Farm Number 7. And on 11 October a guard vehicle picked him up in Davidson's Mains.”

“City Farm Number 7?” Hamilton asked. “That's in Barnton, isn't it?”

Davie nodded. “Yes, guardian. It used to be the Bruntsfield Links golf-course.”

“The second time he was caught, he could have been on his way back from the farm,” I put in. I was trying to visualise the farm's location. It was in the city's north-western corner, about a mile from the fortified line and not much more than half a mile from the Firth of Forth.

“Exactly,” Davie said. “I've spoken to the farm manager. He didn't know anything about Knox 43 or what he might have been doing out there. It's all arable land and they've been busy with the ploughing and sowing. There hasn't been any surveying or maintenance work done there for a couple of years so the dead man had no professional reason to be on site. He's checking with his staff but he's not optimistic any of them will have a clue either.”

“What about the farm workers?” The labour guardian had finally summoned up the nerve to involve himself in the discussion of his former staff member. His bald head was glistening with sweat and his bulky body was slumped over his desk.

“You won't get anything out of them except a pair of fingers,” I said. Citizens are drafted on to the farms for a month at a time and they don't like it. They'd rather choke than open up to an investigator. “You didn't know Knox 43 personally, did you?”

The labour guardian shook his head and looked downwards. The dead man had been in the directorate for years and its chief hadn't even noticed him. I wasn't sure whether that said more about Knox 43's invisibility or the guardian's management skills.

Sophia raised her hand. “Aren't we in danger of making too much of this?” she asked. “Perhaps the dead man was just going for walks. Perhaps he just needed to get away from the barracks.” She might have been right but I wasn't convinced.

“Anything else, commander?” Hamilton asked Davie.

“No, guardian,” he replied, sitting down. He looked unimpressed that his discovery of Knox 43's absences was being sidelined.

My turn. I filled the guardians in about the scene of the crime and the few traces we'd found there. I also told them about the witness and her report of the supposed bogeyman. That didn't go down well.

“What's the child care supervisor talking about?” the welfare guardian demanded. “She's been reading too many fairy-tales to the inmates.” Auxiliaries are trained to be rationalists, their imaginations kept strictly under control.

I raised my shoulders in a shrug. “She saw someone, that's the main point.”

Katharine's directorate chief let out a high-pitched laugh. “So is the whole of the City Guard looking for a tall, ghostly figure in a cloak wearing a monster mask?”

Out of the mouths of babes and guardians. Of course. The bastard was in a mask. That explained the unnatural pallor and the stitching. I wasn't going to give him the pleasure of knowing he'd beaten me to that.

“That's exactly what the guard will be doing,” I said, looking at Hamilton. Time to move on. “As regards the cigarette butts the public order guardian mentioned, they might be significant but then again they might not. Cigarettes from Glasgow and other city-states are not that uncommon – smugglers get through the line more often than you'd like to think. On their own they hardly constitute evidence of dissident or politically inspired activity.”

I paused. The guardians looked down at me stonily. They might not believe in fairy monsters but they were still haunted by ogres – and democratic ones from Glasgow intent on over-throwing the Enlightenment were their worst nightmare.

“On the other hand,” I continued, “Knox 43 – or Donald McBain, if you prefer – was actually born and brought up in Glasgow.”

The intake of breath was sharp and extended.

“He moved to Edinburgh in 1994 to attend Heriot-Watt University,” I added. “He joined the Enlightenment before the last election and stayed on to become an auxiliary.”

“I presume the appropriate checks into his background were made,” the science and energy guardian said. She was a brilliant biologist in her thirties whose black hair was curly and untidy. She had a reputation for being bitter because she hardly ever won any battles for financing her directorate's research programmes. She didn't sound particularly bitter to me – more like extremely interested.

I nodded. “In as much as the checks in 2005 were worth much. The riots and the drugs wars were in full swing and anyone who was devoted enough or crazy enough to stay was very welcome. As long as you were a member of the Enlightenment, you were in.”

“But there's no suggestion that the dead man was secretly working for some outside interest?” the biologist asked. “I don't suppose we're the only regime to run undercover operatives.”

“There's nothing in his file that even hints at that,” I said. “It's hard to believe he was spying for another city-state, at least from the beginning. Edinburgh might have had a hard time after independence was declared, but Glasgow and the other cities had troubles on the scale of Stalingrad in 1943. No one would have bothered about setting up a long-term agent.”

The science and energy guardian looked at me doubtfully. She probably had no idea what Stalingrad was – most senior auxiliaries have purged their minds of everything except Edinburgh-oriented material. She wasn't giving up though. “Does the murder have any connection with the break-in at the old Parliament archive?”

I'd been hoping no one would ask that question. By the look on Hamilton's face, so had he. Then again, the Council had discussed the break-in at a previous meeting and the science and energy guardian was entitled to be concerned about the missing genetic engineering attachment.