The Blood Tree (2 page)

We passed through the guard checkpoint in Dundas Street, the auxiliaries on duty straightening rapidly to attention when they saw Davie, and entered the citizen area. The few people braving the rain were dressed in ill-fitting, not very waterproof clothes, their backs bent against the wind and their heads bowed to ensure they didn't trip over the uneven paving-stones in the poorly lit streets. This was the reality of Enlightenment Edinburgh for its inhabitants – the tourist zone was only where they worked as waiters and cleaners. They'd got so used to the untouchables wearing expensive jewellery and well-cut clothes that even envy had been completely burned away, leaving nothing but empty looks and dead souls.

Davie drove down towards the junction with Inverleith Row. In pre-Enlightenment times there had been an insurance company's huge state-of-the-art computer centre on the bank of the Water of Leith. The Council, violently opposed to data processing equipment for security reasons, especially any that ordinary citizens could get their hands on, has turned it into an indoor running track and gymnasium – for auxiliary use only.

Suddenly the sound of sirens came up behind us and flashing red lights filled the rear windscreen.

“Shit!” Davie said, swerving towards the kerb to let a pair of guard vehicles past.

“What do you reckon they're up to?” I asked. “A spot of gang-busting?”

“Let's find out.” He grabbed the phone from the left of the dashboard and called the command centre in the castle. “Hume 253 here. Location Brandon Street. Where are the two Land-Rovers headed?” He listened for a few seconds. “Right. They should be able to handle that. Let me know if there's any problem. Out.”

“What is it?”

“Some kids broke into a Supply Directorate store in Granton. The guys that passed us are giving back-up to the Scott Barracks patrol that called the incident in. There are only eight of the little shitebags, apparently.”

“I hope they're not carrying pick-axe handles with six-inch nails through them like the headbangers you caught in Leith last week.”

“They'd better not be,” Davie said grimly. “My people will give as good as they get.”

“I won't tell the Council.”

Davie laughed. “You think they don't know?” He moved off. “Isn't Katharine expecting you tonight?” he asked as we passed the old rugby stadium in Goldenacre that obscures the breeze-block mass of Scott Barracks.

I shrugged and tried to look indifferent. “Who knows?”

Davie glanced at me. “Has she been sticking her claws into you again, Quint?” He'd never been a fan of my on-off lover Katharine Kirkwood.

“We did have a slight contretemps a couple of days ago,” I said, turning my eyes away from him. I was pretty sure he'd be delighted by that piece of news. “She's been working nights for the last month.” Although she'd helped out in several of my biggest cases and could have worked full-time with me if she'd wanted, Katharine took a job in the Welfare Directorate six months ago. She had her own ideas about how she wanted to spend her time and recently they didn't seem to include me. I wasn't sure how to handle that so I buried myself in work, whisky and the blues. That hadn't gone down too well with her.

Davie sensed my mood. He kept quiet until we pulled up outside the former merchant's villa in Trinity that housed my father's retirement home. “I'll wait for you in the vehicle,” he said.

“No, come up. It's freezing out here.” I nudged him in the ribs. “Anyway, you know Hector. He'll want the latest gossip from the Public Order Directorate.”

“Silly old sod,” Davie said with a smile. “Do you think being terminally curious is a consequence of old age?”

“Not in the old man's case,” I replied, shoving the Land-Rover door open. “We Dalrymples are genetically pre-conditioned to be curious.”

“True enough,” Davie said, joining me on the slippery pavement. “You're certainly the nosiest guy I've ever known.”

“What are you after?” I asked. “You know I can resist anything except flattery.”

“And barracks malt.”

We entered the retirement home.

Simpson 46, the resident nursing auxiliary – a thin-faced woman of indeterminate but substantial vintage – was half-way across the hall. She turned and gave me a disapproving look. “I presume you're visiting your father, Citizen Dalrymple.” Her voice was reedy and hesitant, as if she was still working on suppressing one of the local accents that the Council proscribed years ago. “Kindly don't stay long. He's been short of energy recently.”

I stepped up to her. “Is there anything wrong?”

She shook her head dismissively. “Your father is over eighty, citizen. Spells of listlessness are to be expected.”

I headed up the stairs at speed. There were a lot of adjectives that could be attached to my old man but listless wasn't one of them. By the time I reached the third floor, the breath was catching in my throat. I pushed open the door to my father's room without knocking.

There was a shape wrapped in a blanket sitting motionless in the chair by the window.

“Hector?” My father had insisted that I address him by his first name for as long as I could remember. “Are you okay, Hector?”

A cough came from the shrouded figure. “Is that you, failure? I thought I saw you come out of that Land-Rover.” The voice may have been wheezy but the tone was firm enough. “Where the hell did you get to on Sunday?”

I smiled. “Did you miss me, old man? How touching.”

My father coughed again, this time more deeply. “No, I didn't miss you, Quintilian.” He was the only person who called me by my full name, thank God. “I was hard at work translating a particularly scabrous piece by Catullus.” He sniffed. “You could have left a message.”

It was unlike him to feel sorry for himself. I went closer and looked down at him. The skin on his face was wan and there was a sheen of sweat on his forehead. “Are you sure you're all right?” I asked.

“Of course I'm sure,” he said. “That idiotic woman says I need to get out of the house more. She thinks I'm—”

“Listless. So I heard. Too many dirty Latin poems, that's your trouble.” Since he resigned from the Council in 2013, the old man had returned to his first love, the classics. He spent most of his time buried in old tomes.

“Don't be flippant, laddie. There are plenty of parallels between late Republican Rome and this city in 2026.” He gave a long sigh. “More's the pity.” He looked past me. “Is that you, Davie?”

“It is,” the big man said. “How are you doing, Hector?”

“Never mind me. What has that old tightarse in charge of your directorate been up to?”

Davie grinned at that description of his boss, then frowned when he saw how happy it had made me. The public order guardian, Lewis Hamilton, was a founder member of the Enlightenment Party and had been on the original Council with my father.

“I haven't seen much of him,” Davie replied. “He's serving his month as senior guardian.” The Council instigated a rotating system for the top job a couple of years back because of abuses when the position was permanent. My mother had been one of the holders of the city's senior office, much to Hector's disgust. They hadn't been getting on for years and had taken advantage of the celibate state that used to be required of guardians to ignore each other completely.

“May the Lord protect us,” the old man said, taking refuge in divine power like all the best atheists. “Lewis must be almost as doddery as I am.”

Davie laughed. “Not quite.”

Hector looked up, gave a stern stare then laughed weakly. “Very good, lad. Very good.” He started to cough again.

Dave and I exchanged glances. The old man didn't sound too healthy, but he was still quick enough to latch on to our concern.

“What's the matter with you two?” he complained. “Have you never seen someone who's reached the end of the line before?”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “I'm worried I'll be spending the rest of my life coming down to Trinity every weekend.”

The old man broke into a high-pitched laugh. “I know how much you look forward to these visits, Quintilian.” He turned his hooded eyes back to Davie. “You didn't answer my question, Hume 253. What's been going on in the Public Order Directorate?”

I must have needled Hector. He'd normally have asked for my sarcastic take on the Council's crime prevention activities first.

Davie glanced at me uneasily, picking up the edge in the old man's voice. “Well,” he said, “do you want the good news or the bad news?”

“Give me the bad first, laddie,” Hector said, struggling to pull himself upright in the chair and glaring at me to discourage any offer of assistance. “That's what we've got used to in this benighted city.”

“Em, right.” Davie ran his fingers through the matted hairs of his beard. “Thirty-seven arrests for disorderly conduct in the suburbs in the last week – thirty-one of them involving minors.”

“Disorderly conduct?” the old man asked. “What does that cover?”

Davie raised his shoulders. “Anything from stoning guard patrols to nicking old ladies' food vouchers. There's a mandatory six-month spell in a Youth Development Department facility for anyone under twenty who gets taken in.”

“Except those places are all full now,” I pointed out.

“So we send them down the mines instead,” Davie said with a broad grin.

“What else?” Hector asked, the question ending in a long wheeze.

“Five holes cut in the fences on the city line, no smugglers or dissidents apprehended yet.” Davie shook his head. “And at least three illicit landings on the shoreline, judging by the tracks and footprints the patrols have found on the beaches. Ever since the Fisheries Guard all but fell apart last year, the coast has been impossible to secure.”

“The dreaded democrats from Glasgow,” Hector said, his lips cracking into a bitter smile. “How will the Council manage to restrict the dangerous ideas they'll spread?” Although he'd been as hardline as any guardian in his time, my father had eventually become disillusioned with his colleagues' drive for total control over what Edinburgh citizens think and do. He reckoned that power had corrupted them. I reckoned he was right.

Davie wasn't buying it. “Democrats? Those people are just after a cut of the tourist income. How democratic is it to peddle dope and burn people's lungs out with cigarettes?”

“I suppose a compulsory lottery like the one the Council runs is all right in your book, is it, Davie?” Hector asked sharply.

“Edlott's all right,” Davie replied. “It doesn't do any harm.”

“Not now it doesn't,” I said. “Now that it's been cleaned up.” In 2025 I'd opened and closed a very nasty can of worms in the lottery.

The old man started muttering about the iniquity of forcing citizens to accept fewer food and drink vouchers in exchange for the minuscule chance of winning a not very exciting prize. Then, suddenly, his legs shot out straight. His mouth fell open and his lips turned an unnatural shade of blue. The rattle that came from his throat made the hairs on my neck rise.

“Get the nurse, Davie!” I yelled.

I bent over my father and pulled the rug away from his chest. The citizen-issue grey pyjamas he was wearing were drenched in sweat. The noise in his throat had subsided. I put my head to his bony chest and listened for a heartbeat. For what seemed like an eternity I didn't pick anything up. Then a faint, irregular thump came through.

“Out of the way, citizen!” Simpson 46 pushed past me and leaned over the old man. “Stand back,” she said as she took Hector's wrist and checked her watch.

“What is it?” I asked, feeling Davie's hands on my arms. He pulled me back gently. “What's happening to him?”

“Heart attack,” the nursing auxiliary said in a clipped voice. “Call the infirmary and get an ambulance down here right away.”

Davie let go of me and pulled out his mobile. I was only vaguely aware of him talking as I watched Simpson 46 running through procedure that was clearly second nature to her. I stood there helplessly, fighting the impulse to shove the nurse out of the way and grab the old man's hand. I glanced round the dimly lit room. Hector's desk was covered with piles of books, the slips of yellow paper that he used to mark passages and make notes hanging limply like streamers the day after a parade. In the corner his bed was as neat as ever. He still made it himself every morning, as well as brushing the faded leather brogues – the sole mark of guardian rank he retained – that stood on the floor beneath.

Davie came up to me. “The ambulance is on its way. I told them to give it top priority.”

I nodded and watched as Simpson 46 folded the blanket carefully over Hector's chest. Then a blast of anger hit me.

“Pity you weren't so meticulous in your care of my father earlier,” I said in a low voice, shaking off Davie's hand. “He wasn't listless. He was building up to this.”

The nursing auxiliary looked at me impassively then shook her head. For her I was just the latest in a long line of relatives who'd lost their grip.

“Leave it, Quint,” Davie said. “At least Hector's still alive.”

Simpson 46 nodded. “Quite so, Hume 253. Patients who survive the initial onslaught frequently recover.”

I lunged forward. “And that makes your negligence acceptable, does it, you—”

I broke off as a faint sound came from the old man. His eyes were half open and it seemed that he gave a shake of his head.

There was the sound of a siren in the street below, quickly followed by the pounding of auxiliary-issue boots on the stairs. Hector was placed on a stretcher and moved out of his room with consummate skill.

I stood there for a couple of seconds and looked at the books on the desk, wondering if my father would ever open them again.