The Blood Tree (5 page)

Hamilton was staring at me. “You're saying that they didn't want us to know what they were interested in?” he asked dubiously. “That's pure guesswork, Dalrymple. The guardswoman told us that they cleared off when she was about to check their papers. Maybe they didn't find what they wanted.” He looked at the stacks of paper. “Anyway, everything in here is rubbish. I don't know why we don't burn the lot of it.”

I wasn't keen on the way he'd defined my investigative technique. “Guesswork? That's what you think, Lewis. What if I can show you the documents they wanted?”

The guardian laughed softly. “Then I'll give you an auxiliary knife engraved with the word ‘genius'. But it's not going to happen, man.”

“Isn't it?” I bent over and looked at the flagstones again. I had a hunch I was right, but Hamilton had never been a fan of my hunches. There was only one way to find out.

Before I started going over the place with my magnifying glass, I called the infirmary and checked on the old man. He was asleep and as comfortable as could be expected. So I got down to work.

I had the feeling it was going to be a long night.

Fortunately, that feeling turned out to be a loser. Not long after half-past midnight I spotted the spots.

I had just reached the end of a stack and caught a glimpse of Lewis Hamilton. The city's law and order supremo and acting chief executive was bent over in the passageway like a cleaner chasing the piece of fluff that had got away. I was about to ask him if he was having a good time when I saw a six-inch line of dull red drops. The dust had been disturbed all around the stack-end. I'd come across several such places but this was the only one with traces of what looked very like blood. Well, well.

“Lewis! Davie! We're in business.”

The sound of City Guard-issue nailed boots came at me from different directions. I took up a position at the stack-end to protect the scene.

“What have you found?” Hamilton asked, wiping a cobweb from his beard.

Davie arrived and looked past me. “No dead bodies then,” he said, a hint of regret in his voice.

“Only a small amount of corporeal matter,” I said, turning to the area of the floor with the blood line. “Someone cut their finger, I reckon.” I put my hand on the guardian's arm as he craned forward. “Don't go any nearer. I haven't checked for other traces yet.”

Davie had dropped to his knees. “One thing's for sure. There are no distinct footprints here.”

I nodded. The dust was so thick that it had swirled up when disturbed and resettled over the prints. But I wondered if there was more to it than that. Had the intruders made efforts to obliterate the traces they'd left in particular places? If so, the line of blood spots might be the only clue we'd get.

“That minuscule quantity of blood isn't going to get us far,” Hamilton said discouragingly. “Especially since we don't have the equipment to carry out DNA testing.”

“Another brilliant decision by the Council,” I said under my breath. After the Public Order Directorate had driven out the drugs gangs and reduced crime in the city to what it claimed was level zero, the guardians declined to fund anything more than the most basic forensic service. That had made my working life a lot more fun.

“I suppose those blood traces mean we'll have to get the scene-of-crime squad down here now,” the guardian said, shaking his head. “I need Council approval first. This is a restricted area no matter what's been going on.”

“You've already let me down here and I'm a DM,” I said impatiently. “Tell the Council tomorrow, Lewis. After all, you are the boss this month.”

“That's not the way the system works, Dalrymple. As you well know.” The guardian pulled out his mobile. “All right, the scene-of-crime squad it is. I'll advise my colleagues in the morning.”

I gave Davie a quick smile. He didn't return it. Winding up Hamilton is off limits for serving auxiliaries – which is one reason I was demoted from the rank years ago.

The scene-of-crime people arrived in their white plastic overalls and flitted about the stacks like nosy but extremely fastidious ghosts. I had to let them get on with it, even though I wanted to have a look at the files in the vicinity of the blood spots. Eventually the auxiliaries finished taking photos, samples and prints there and started checking other parts of the vast subterranean hall.

“Don't you want an operative present when we pull the files?” I asked the guardian.

“Certainly not,” he replied. “Everything in here is classified ‘Guardian Eyes Only'.”

“Right then,” I said, turning away. “Hume 253 and I'll be off.”

“Quint,” Davie growled. “Get a grip.”

“Quite so, Dalrymple,” Hamilton agreed. “You and the commander are part of the investigative team. You don't need further accreditation.” He smiled humourlessly. “Until I decide otherwise.”

“Very good of you,” I said, pulling my rubber gloves back on. I started examining the stack above the floor where the blood had dripped. “Doesn't look like any complete folders have been removed.” The shelves were jammed tight with dark blue cardboard binders. “Give me your torch, Davie.”

He passed it over. The Council used to issue torches only to auxiliaries. A couple of years ago they made them available to ordinary citizens when the curfew was put back to midnight – the street-lights in the suburbs are so unreliable that you need a torch to get home in one piece. The only problem is that there's been a shortage of batteries ever since, which is why I don't carry my own torch. I could get Davie to arrange a supply but, like I say, I'm not keen on pulling strings – unless I have to.

“See anything interesting?” the guardian asked.

“Not even an archive-rat like me could find Scottish Parliament minutes interesting,” I said. “Wait a second.” I looked closer. Under the torch's beam I'd noticed the spine of a folder with smudges on the dust covering it. I took out my magnifying glass. There was a small, dust-adulterated bloodstain on the fold between spine and back cover. “Hello there,” I said, looking round at Lewis. “You know the ‘genius' auxiliary knife you promised me?”

The guardian was staring balefully at the scuffs he'd got on his brogues. “What about it, Dalrymple?” he demanded.

I pulled the file out from the shelf carefully, keeping my fingers away from the area potentially bearing traces of the bogus maintenance workers. “You'd better get the engravers working on the inscription.”

We headed back to the hole in the roof. I wanted to open the file in surroundings that weren't contaminated by dust and Hamilton wanted to open it as far away from unauthorised eyes as possible. Davie was behind us, organising the collection of the files in the surrounding shelves. My experience of archives is that you always need to cross-reference.

“Guardian?” the scene-of-crime squad supervisor called as we approached the piles of rubble under the hole. “We've found a complete footprint.” She beckoned us over to the end of a stack.

There was an area of minor subsidence where seven or eight flagstones had canted over and raised small heaps of earth. The print was in the middle of one of the heaps, a couple of feet in front of a dark patch on the flags.

“We're about to take a cast,” the female auxiliary said. “The intruder took a leak,” she said, inclining her head towards the stain and grinning.

I smiled. It's unusual to find evidence of a sense of humour in Public Order Directorate personnel.

Hamilton wasn't impressed. “Do you recognise the footwear?” he asked testily.

The auxiliary nodded her head, spots of red on her cheeks showing that she'd clocked her superior's disapproval. “Yes, guardian. Standard Labour Directorate rubber work-boot, I'd say. I'll be checking that.”

“Make sure you do,” Hamilton said, moving away.

I gave the scene-of-crime supervisor a friendly shrug. She just stared at me dully. Yet another member of the DMs Can Kiss My Buttocks Society.

Hamilton drove me to the castle in the Jeep that was his pride and joy. It had been donated to the city by an American company that had wanted to butter up the Council; somehow it had found its way to the guardian's personal parking place on the esplanade.

“What do you think that's going to tell you, Dalrymple?” he asked, nodding at the object in the protective plastic bag on my knees.

“Who knows, Lewis? If we're lucky, the guy with the bleeding finger will have left a consultation note giving his name, address and sexual preferences.”

“Stop messing about, man. Do you think something's been taken from the file? And if so, why?”

“Patience, Lewis, patience,” I replied as he pulled up at the upper end of the esplanade. Although electricity was restricted in the suburbs, the castle was lit up like a stripper's dressing-room. It wouldn't do to keep the City Guard's headquarters in the dark, would it?

I followed the guardian up the narrow ramp to the gate then across the cobbled yards to his quarters in what was formerly the Governor's House. There was no trace of red in the sky to the west now. The wind was lively enough from that direction though, spatters of chill rain whipping in like grape-shot.

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” I said, leaning into the blast.

“Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun,” Hamilton completed, provoking an inquisitive look from a passing guardsman. “I never imagined you were a devotee of Keats, Dalrymple.”

“Keats was the original blues poet, Lewis,” I said as we entered the granite building. “If he'd grown up in the American South in the first half of the last century, he'd have taken Robert Johnson to the cleaners, believe me.”

“Really?” the guardian said, his mind already elsewhere. He led me up to his rooms on the second floor and gave the grey-suited female auxiliary in the outer office strict instructions to allow no one in. In his sanctum, he stood beside the conference table with his hands on his hips. “Right, let's see what we've got.”

“Hold on,” I said, putting the folder down carefully and reaching into my pocket for my gloves. “We've got to check for any other traces.” I looked at the guardian. He was strangely nervous, he had been ever since I found the file. Did he know something I didn't? I took the dark blue cardboard object out and ran my eyes over it again. Apart from the bloodstain I'd noticed in the archive, I couldn't see any other residual evidence on the outside. Then something else struck me. “What about Davie?” I asked. “You told your secretary not to let anyone in.”

“Hume 253 does not need to be involved in this part of the investigation, Dalrymple,” the guardian said in a leaden voice. “Proceed.”

I thought about insisting on Davie's presence, but I knew that when Hamilton made his mind up only acts of god – or whatever the atheist Council describes them as – could deflect him. So I bent over the file and took a final look at the cover. It revealed nothing apart from the Scottish Parliament logo and crest, the “Guardian Eyes Only” stamp that had been applied later, and a laser-printed reference line – GEC/02/04/ATTS1–2.

“Do you know what that means?” Hamilton asked. Something about the tone of his voice gave me the impression that he did.

“I don't know what the ‘G' and the ‘E' stand for,” I said, scratching the stubble on my chin. “But I'd guess the ‘C' is committee.”

The guardian nodded noncommittally.

I scrabbled around in the recesses of my memory. I hadn't seen any Scottish Parliament documents since the early years of the Enlightenment, before the Council locked them all up. A few shards of archival data came back to me.

“They used to record the year first then the month, didn't they?” I said. “So this dates from April 2002.” I shook my head. “Bad time to be a member of the Scottish Parliament.” Rioting had begun to tear the country apart by then.

“Bad time to be a Scottish citizen,” Hamilton said darkly. “Go on.”

I looked back at the reference line. “The last bit is presumably Attachments Numbers One and Two.”

The guardian nodded. “That was how the abbreviations worked, yes.” His eyes were fixed on the folder now, his bottom lip caught between his teeth.

“Are you familiar with the contents of this file, Lewis?” I asked, moving closer to him. “Because if you are, you'd better tell me now.”

He shook his head slowly. “No, I'm not. At least not in detail.” He glanced up and saw the suspicious look on my face. “Any more ideas about the letters ‘GE'?” he asked.

“General Excuses?” I suggested. “Now there's an idea for the Council.”

“No,” he said, his voice suddenly less assured. “GEC was the parliamentary committee which regulated genetic engineering.”

Chapter Three

I poured the last of the coffee into my cup. Lewis had ordered it at three a.m. and gone to the door himself to take the tray – he wasn't letting anyone else even catch a glimpse of the files that were lying dismembered across the table.