The Blood Tree (22 page)

They have their backs towards me, the three figures in black. They're wearing long cloaks and their hair is all over the place, bird's-nest style. I try to call out but I don't seem to be able to make any sound at all. Then I remember the guy seen by the witnesses, the guy with the stitched-up face who carries a mallet – the footprints showed that he had a couple of side-kicks. I decide against trying to make any more noise. It doesn't make any difference. The gang of three are turning to face me. Then I get a real fright.

At the left of the trio Katharine stares at me, her face blotchy and her green eyes glinting like pale fire. She doesn't speak, just looks at me accusingly then turns to the taller figure next to her. Christ. It's Hector. The old man's face is ashen, the skin taut over his cheeks and hooked nose. He stares too, his gaze cutting into my brain and forcing me to close my eyes. When I open them again, the third figure takes a single step towards me and extends a hand. It's Caro. My long-dead lover's perfect face has been ravaged by time, lines etched deep around dull brown eyes and slack lips. Caro. This time I manage to emit a cry. She frowns and steps forward again. Now the features I used to love, still love, could never stop loving, are those of a mouldering corpse.

I blink and choke as I realise that something even worse has happened to Caro's face. Now, above the line of her nose in the centre of her forehead, a third eye has blossomed. There's no mistaking the colour of the iris. This eye isn't brown like the other two. It's a piercing, visceral red.

I hear myself scream.

“Keep quiet.” The voice was a harsh whisper. “Or do you want the gag tighter?” Spittle drizzled on to my cheeks.

I opened my eyes cautiously and was confronted by a face covered in heavy stubble. The head had a half-inch carpet of a similar material. I tried to move my limbs, without much success.

“Struggle all you like, pal. I tied the knots double.” My captor let out a humourless laugh. “Just as well, the way you were jerking about. Nice dream, was it?” He grunted and moved away.

I recognised the voice. It belonged to the Glaswegian pillock who'd stuck the needle in me outside my flat. What the hell was going on? Above me was a low wooden ceiling and I made out a bunk to the right. The slight bobbing movement clinched it. I was on a bloody boat.

“Sleeping Beauty's woken up,” I heard the bristle merchant say.

Light footsteps approached. I turned to the wall, feigning indifference.

“So he has.” This time the voice was female. The West Coast accent wasn't as heavy but there was the same aggressive edge to it. “If you want something to drink you're going to have to keep the noise down.” The woman leaned over me. “Or else.”

I suddenly realised that my throat was drier than the average Edinburgh stand-pipe during the Big Heat. I looked up at the face that was now above mine. If it hadn't been set in a hard expression, it would almost have been pretty. The grey eyes set above a button nose and full lips were surrounded by a mass of brown curls. But there was something worryingly forbidding about the way the woman was regarding me.

She took my lack of movement as acquiescence and loosened the gag. “Give us some water, Tam.”

I drank deeply from the can that was put to my lips, the man called Tam having undone the rope that bound my upper body to the bunk. He lifted me up and stuffed a pillow under my shoulders, giving me a blast of sweaty armpits as he did so.

The woman noticed my grimace. “We've been on the road for a few days. No chance of a bath.” She removed the can. “So you're the great Quintilian Dalrymple.” She gave an ironic laugh. “What kind of pretentious Edinburgh name is that?”

“It's Roman, actually,” I muttered, glancing at her companion. “And it's a bit classier than Tam.”

“Is that right?” The bristles were up against my face again. “How would you like your Roman name stuffed up your Roman arse?”

The woman laughed again. “Now, now, Tam. Our leaders want this specimen brought back in full working order.”

That sounded interesting but I didn't react. I was working on giving the impression that I was semi-comatose.

“We should be moving soon,” she continued. “The skipper says the fog's thick enough to cover us.”

“The sooner the better,” Tam said. “This arsehole's mates will be looking for him.”

I felt their eyes on me, then jerked as a shudder ran through the boat. It looked like Full Speed Ahead was on the cards. I needed to give myself a chance.

“I feel like shit,” I mumbled. “I need some air.”

They both laughed.

“Nice try, pal,” Tam said. “Fancied a swim, did you?” He grabbed my throat. “Forget it.”

The woman pulled him back. “That's all right,” she said. “Quintilian can come up on deck.” She pulled a large automatic pistol from her belt. “As long as he promises to behave.”

“I promise,” I said quickly. I meant it. You don't see many guns in Edinburgh. They scare the shit out of me.

“Let's go then.” She signalled to Tam to loosen the rest of the ropes.

I stood up unsteadily and tried to shake the stiffness out of my legs.

“Here, lean on me,” the woman said. She wasn't much more than five feet three but she was solid enough. She was wearing a high-quality green parka and well-oiled brown leather boots.

“Thanks,” I said, staggering out of the cabin. “By the way, call me Quint. I only use my full name on special occasions.”

“Like when your Council of City Guardians is crucifying Christians?” she asked

“That'll be right,” I replied. “What's your name then?”

“Helen Hyslop,” she said. “Chief Inspector, All-Glasgow Major Crime Squad.” She gave a tight smile. “If you feel like taking a chance, you can call me Hel.”

I kept my mouth shut.

On deck, the visibility was down to twenty yards. My watch told me it was eight-thirty in the morning. A watery light filtered through the mist, so faint that you'd hardly know the sun was up. I could just make out that the boat we were on was a medium-sized trawler with Edinburgh Fisheries Department insignia on the wheelhouse.

“Don't worry,” said Tam. “We didn't nick it. The
Argyll's
one of ours. We just fitted it up to look like one of your rustbuckets.” He grinned at me. Getting under way seemed to have brought about an improvement in his temper. “Sergeant Tam Haggs,” he said, extending a thick-fingered hand. “All-Glasgow Major Crime . . .”

“Isn't kidnapping a major crime in your hell-hole?” I demanded, ignoring his hand.

The inspector turned round at the sound of her name. “Oh, we're not kidnapping you, Quint.” She gave me a thin smile. “We've got a warrant to bring you in.”

I was about to register a formal complaint when I remembered the teenagers who'd been kidnapped from the Lauriston facility. I wondered if this pair of Glaswegian cops had anything to do with the kids' disappearance. There wasn't much room to hide them on the boat, but I would need to keep my eyes and ears open. Then I remembered what the inspector had said about being on the road for a few days. What else might they have been up to in my home city?

“When you say you've got a warrant for me,” I said, “what am I supposed to have done?”

“What's the matter?” Tam Haggs said with a derisive grin. “Have you got a guilty conscience about something?”

I definitely had one of those from my years in the Public Order Directorate, but not over anything to do with Glasgow. I shrugged and slowly moved my hands towards the pockets of my donkey jacket.

Hel Hyslop was on the ball. “Looking for this?” she asked, holding up my mobile. “We'll soon be out of range.” She wiped moisture from her face. “If you behave, I might think about giving it back.”

I looked out into the fog. It was insulating us very effectively from the outside world. All I could hear was the dull thud of the engine and the splash of the waves against the hull. “Where are we?” I asked.

“Pretty near the old rail bridge,” the inspector said. “We hid up in an inlet near Cramond overnight.”

“Worried about the patrols?” I shook my head. “The Fisheries Guard only has a few boats these days.”

She nodded. “We know that. But we had instructions to be very careful.” She stared at me curiously. “You're important cargo.”

That didn't make me feel any better.

“Look at the state of that,” Haggs said, pointing out through the murk.

“God didn't save the king,” I murmured, as we flitted past the wreck of
Britannia
. The former royal yacht had been moored in Leith and used as a tourist attraction at the end of the last century. When the crown prince got himself tied up with a Colombian drugs heiress, the man and woman in the street suddenly became rabidly republican. After ransacking Holyrood Palace, some of them cut
Britannia
loose and let her drift away – having first relieved her of every single movable object. The ship had been lying on her side on a mudbank for over twenty years, her funnel canted over her superstructure and her hull heavily pocked by machine-gun bullets from passing pirate and guard vessels. Some bright spark had picked out the words “Ship of Fools” under the name on the bow.

“Say goodbye to the perfect city, Quint,” Hel Hyslop said as one of the supports of the Forth Rail Bridge loomed up on the starboard beam. The great stone pile shot up into the sky, but the tubular steel structures it bore for over a century had been in the water since the early years of the Enlightenment. In its wisdom the Council decided to destroy all road and rail connections with Edinburgh to safeguard our independence. So the furthest western boundary of the city's territory is marked by the battered remains of one of the greatest engineering feats in European history – one of many monuments to the guardians' enlightened approach.

The fog had lifted almost completely by the time we came alongside at an improvised jetty next to the remains of the Kincardine Bridge – it hadn't fared any better than its larger neighbours. I struggled with my memory to orientate myself and reckoned we were around thirteen miles upstream from the rail bridge. Given that I hadn't been outside Edinburgh territory for over twenty years, I was impressed I remembered that much.

I watched as the crew manhandled a gangway over the side. There was a flashy dark green off-road vehicle on the quay. I hadn't seen the make before. The logo told me it was a Llama. Presumably it was South American – that part of the world has been booming recently. I pretended to take an interest in the surroundings as I ran my eyes over the hold in front of the deckhouse. No sign of any other kidnapped individuals.

“Move, Quintilian,” Haggs said, grabbing my arm. He led me down the gangway.

The inspector walked past us and got into the Llama's driving seat. Haggs shoved me in the other front door and crushed up against me.

“Tell me, do Glasgow police officers often go to Edinburgh, inspector?” I asked.

“MC squad operations are classified,” Hyslop said, pulling away from the dock and on to a pock-marked asphalt road.

I looked back at the boat. The crewmen were still on deck but there was no one else around. There were no cloaks or mallets in the back of the vehicle either, let alone any Labour Directorate work-boots. It didn't look like Hyslop and Haggs had anything to do with the missing adolescents or the killings.

“So what do you think of the real world?” the inspector asked.

I glanced round and realised we were still very much on our own. “Where the hell is everyone, Hel?”

“Very funny,” she said, giving her sergeant a look which wiped the smile off his face. “When you say everyone . . . ?”

“I mean, where's the native population? The place is completely desolate.” I looked out across overgrown fields and derelict houses. Back towards Edinburgh the shattered ruins of the oil and chemical installations in Grangemouth glinted dully in the weak sunlight. They'd been casualties of the civil disorder in the early years of the century. So far I couldn't fault the Council's line that the terrain west of Edinburgh was a wasteland.

“We call these parts the desert,” Haggs said. “Anyone with any sense moved to Glasgow when the drugs wars started.” He snorted. “The brainless ones went to be abused in totalitarian Edinburgh.”

I let that pass. It wasn't a totally inaccurate description of the Council's regime, even though the original guardians did try to be benevolent dictators. Some of the later ones decided the adjective was unnecessary. Anyway, I was too busy looking at the road we were driving down. Burned-out lorries and overturned cars, most of them at least twenty years old, had been bulldozed out of the way. We were moving down the single passable lane at a speed I wasn't too happy about.

“What happens if we meet someone coming in the opposite direction?” I asked nervously.

Hel Hyslop laughed and hit the accelerator even harder. “What's the matter, Quint? Scared?”

“No,” I lied. “I'd just like to survive this excursion if at all possible.” I watched her as she concentrated on the road, her grey eyes fixed on the uneven asphalt and her expression impassive. Something about her made me uncomfortable, but I couldn't work out what it was.

She glanced at me. “Look at this.” She tapped a small screen on the dashboard. I made out a maze of green lines and a few flashing red dots. “This tells me we're the only vehicle moving on the road within four miles.”

I whistled. “Nice toy.” I hadn't seen apparatus like that since pre-Enlightenment times. The Council purports to hate modern technology – in reality, it can't afford even bog-standard digital equipment. I was impressed that the Glasgow police had invested in it – not that I was going to tell Hyslop and Haggs. Christ, I didn't even know that a police force existed in the west. The stories we heard gave the impression that Glasgow was Anarchy City.