Body Politic (2 page)

“What are you doing up here, citizen?” She was in her mid-twenties, tall and fit-looking. Her red hair was in a neat ponytail beneath her beret and the maroon heart – emblem of the city – was prominent on the left breast pocket of her grey tunic. On the right was her barracks name and number. The heavy belt around her waist provided straps for her sheath knife and truncheon; since the gangs were dealt with, the City Guard no longer carry firearms. “Well?” she demanded. “I'm waiting.”

I tried to look innocent. “I was working at the museum, Wilkie 418 . . .”

She didn't buy it. “Your flat's in the opposite direction.” She had the neutral voice that all auxiliaries acquire during training. The Council has been trying to get rid of class distinctions by banning local accents. It's a nice theory. “You've no business to come this way.”

She ran her eyes over my labourers' fatigues and checked the data on my ID card – height five feet ten inches, weight eleven stone in the imperial system: bringing that back was one of the Council's stranger decisions. Hair black, a bit over the one-inch maximum stipulated for male citizens. Eyes brown. Nose aquiline. Teeth complete and in good condition. Then she glanced at my right hand to check the distinguishing mark, showing no sign of emotion. Finally she gave me a stare that would have brought a tear to the eye of the Sphinx. She had registered the letters “DM” that told her I'd been demoted from the rank of auxiliary.

“I hope you don't think I'm going to do you any favours.” The sudden hard edge to her voice rasped like a meat-saw biting bone. “You've no business in a tourist area. Report to your local barracks tomorrow morning, citizen.” She handed me an offence notification. “You'll be assigned two Sundays' community service and your record will be endorsed accordingly.” She glanced at my face. “You could do with a shave as well.”

I stood at the checkpoint with the neatly written sheet in my hand for a few moments. Cheering from the racetrack that had been laid over the disused railway lines in Princes Street Gardens came up through the fog. The seagulls had given up auditioning for the City Choir and now I could hear bagpipe music from the speakers beneath the streetlamps. It sounded more mournful than any blues song I ever played. My appetite for meeting the fragrant Katharine K. had gone completely.

“Oh, and citizen,” the guardswoman called humourlessly from the sentry box. “Happy Birthday.”

I was late of course. As I was cycling like a lunatic through the swirls of mist on the Dean Bridge, I almost went into the back of one of the city's battered delivery vans. Their drivers have a reputation for using the vehicles to shift contraband but this one was going so slowly he had to be on city business.

“At last.” The woman came towards me from the door of the house in Lennox Street Lane, then stopped abruptly. She examined me as critically as the guardswoman had, staring at my mud-encrusted trousers like she'd never seen filth before. She had a face to write poems about: high cheekbones, lips as promising as a lovers' assignation and green eyes that flashed in the dim light and told me stories I hadn't heard for a long time. Then her nose twitched and the spell was broken. “You are citizen Dalrymple, aren't you?” she asked in a hoarse voice that I felt run up my spine like a caress.

She wasn't the first of my clients to be dubious about the way I look. I nodded and fumbled with the padlock on my bike; only an idiot relies on the City Guard to look after his property outside the tourist areas. At the same time I ran my eye over her. She was about my height, but her build had more going for it. The short brown hair that stood up on the top of her head would have made her look permanently surprised if she hadn't been as languid as a well-fed lioness. I wondered whom she'd eaten recently.

“Katharine Kirkwood,” she said. “I wasn't expecting a labourer.”

I took her hand and felt long, elegant fingers. Her scent washed over me like the tide of a lunar sea. “Quintilian Dalrymple,” I said. “Investigator as well as labourer.”

Her eyes blinked only once when she felt the stump of my right forefinger. “You give everyone that little test, don't you?” A smile nagged at the corners of her mouth. “How did I do?”

“Pretty well,” I said generously.

“How did you lose it?”

“You don't want to know.”

She looked at me curiously, then shrugged. “Come this way.” She opened the street door and led me up dingy stairs to the first floor. That gave me an opportunity to examine her legs, black stockings beneath her issue coat. She passed that test too.

“You've got a key,” I said. “Why were you waiting outside?”

Katharine Kirkwood faced a door which needed several coats of paint. She turned slowly and handed me the keys, her face taut. “I'm . . . I'm frightened.” I hadn't put her down as the type who scares easily. “This is my brother's place.” All of a sudden her voice was soft. “It's ten days since I last saw him.”

“That's not long. You know what it's like in this city. People are always being picked up for extra duties or . . .”

“No,” she said with quiet insistence. “Adam and I, we're . . .” She left the sentence unfinished. “He'd have found a way to let me know.”

I watched her as she leaned against the doorframe and tried to look optimistic. It wouldn't be the first time I found a body behind a locked door. If this one had been there for over a week, not even a jerrycan of her perfume would be much help.

“Haven't you been to the City Guard?”

“Those bastards?” Her tone was razor sharp. “I told them days ago but they still haven't found the time to take a look. Too busy licking the tourists' arses.”

I nodded and knocked on the door less violently than the guard would have done. No answer. That would have been too easy. So I slipped the key into the lock and took a deep breath. Then pushed the door open and went inside.

Adam Kirkwood's flat conformed to the Housing Directorate's standard plan. In other words, it was a soulless dump. There was a square living room with the minuscule kitchen in a partitioned alcove, a bedroom off to the left and a toilet without shower or bath in the far corner. It contained the usual furniture; table, two stick-legged chairs, a sofa that looked like an elephant had been trampolining on it, a desk, uneven bookshelves and, to my relief, no body.

Katharine K. remained in the doorway till I beckoned, then came forward into the main room. “He's not here.”

She breathed out slowly and turned to me. “Your turn for a test.” She gave me a smile that was about as encouraging as the thumbs-down to a stricken gladiator. “I heard from one of the girls at work that you find missing people. Convince me you've got what it takes, citizen.”

“Call me Quint.” I've had to get used to clients who think investigators are magicians. Sometimes I refuse to perform, but not when they're female and have her looks. “You want a demonstration?” I scrutinised her, taking my time. I enjoyed it more than she did. “So, you work as a chambermaid at the Independence Hotel, you live in William Street, you're left-handed, you burned yourself with an iron five, maybe six days ago and you spend a lot of your free time in the staff gym.”

She wasn't impressed. “Come on, all that's obvious from my appearance. And everyone knows where Indie staff live.”

I shrugged. “I haven't finished. You have an unusually close relationship with your brother, your parents are dead, you used to be an auxiliary and you have a dissidence conviction.” I gave her my best smile. “Also, you like Chinese poetry.”

She glanced at the tattered book that was protruding from her bag. “Very observant. But most of that is just guesswork.” She didn't sound quite as sceptical.

“You reckon?” I don't usually reveal how my mind works and a lot of what I'd said was just supposition, but I wanted her to think I was as sharp as they come. Maybe I was trying to convince myself too. “I saw your handwriting, remember? Only someone who doesn't care what people think would write a note to a stranger without using copperplate. And you aren't in a hurry to get off to evening classes either. Demoted auxiliaries like us aren't allowed to attend classes in case we have a bad influence on the others.”

Katharine K. nodded. “You were one too. I was beginning to wonder. Don't tell me – Public Order Directorate?”

I raised my hands in surrender. The way she had shifted the discussion from her past to mine was impressive.

“Guardsman?” she asked acidly.

“Not exactly.” I went over to the kitchen. It was tidy, a cup and plate on the draining-board. “Do I get the job, then?”

“I suppose so.” She was right behind me, looking at the crockery, then touching the cup carefully as if she were trying to re-establish contact with her brother. “How do I pay you?”

“No cure, no pay. If I find your brother, it's up to you what you give me. None of my clients has much to spare after buying the week's food and electricity vouchers. I often get whatever they can lay their hands on at work. I had half a pound of coffee last month.”

“Riches indeed.” She finally took her fingers away from the cup. “Why do you do it?”

I've never been too sure of the answer to that question myself. “It's a way of staying alive.” I moved over to the sofa. “You'd better tell me something about your brother.”

Katharine K. sat down beside me and took a piece of hotel notepaper from her book of poetry.

“Adam Peter Kirkwood,” I read. “Status – citizen. Born 3.12.1995, height six feet two inches, weight thirteen stone twelve pounds, hair dark brown, nose snub, teeth complete, distinguishing mark none, employment Roads Department, Transport Directorate, address 3 Lennox Street Lane, next of kin Katharine Kirkwood (sister).” I nodded. “That'll do for a start. I don't suppose you've got a photo?” The Council has strictly controlled the taking of photographs, seeing them as a major element in the cult of the individual that had helped to destroy the United Kingdom.

She showed me a small, blurred copy of a handsome young man who was looking straight into the camera with the hint of a mocking smile on his lips. “Just this, I'm afraid.” The only way people can get pictures of their loved ones is by sneaking photocopies of ID cards.

“I'll track down his file and see what it says. If it's been brought up to date.”

“Can you do that?” She was staring at me. “I thought citizens' files were classified.”

“Depends who you know.” That line usually provokes admiration, but Katharine Kirkwood just looked puzzled. “He's twenty-four, so obviously he's done his year on the border.”

“Finished it three years ago.”

“And you last saw him when exactly?”

“Tuesday before last, 10 March. I came round here. I often do.”

I looked around the small room, keeping to myself the fact that over the last three months I'd had half a dozen cases of missing young people. I hadn't found any of them. “Anything different? Anything been taken?”

She got up and walked about, picking up and laying down objects that were clearly familiar to her. She went into the bedroom and re-emerged after a couple of minutes. “Everything's as it always is. Adam's very neat.”

“Is there anything you haven't told me, Katharine?”

She looked like she was going to object to my use of her first name, but nothing came of it.

“I need to know. If it turns out he's part of some dissident cell, I'd prefer to be told before they start using me as a punchbag.”

She shook her head. “No, he's not a rebel. You can be sure of that.” She raised her hand to her forehead. “What worries me most is how he was the last time I saw him. Kind of nervous – not frightened exactly, but excited, as if something important was about to happen. I've never seen him like that before. He wouldn't tell me about it. Said it was secret.”

I didn't like the sound of that and went into the bedroom to conceal my expression. If Adam Kirkwood was into something classified, I'd be giving myself a headache for nothing. Still, maybe she was worth it.

Where he slept was unusually tidy, more like a barracks than a private room. The deal wardrobe contained labourer's fatigues like mine and the few casual shirts and trousers that the average citizen possesses. A pair of size twelve running shoes took up one corner. When you look round a place you normally form an impression of the person who lives there. Not in Adam Kirkwood's case. I felt like an archaeologist breathlessly opening a golden sarcophagus to find nothing but dust and moth-eaten shrouds.

Back in the main room I continued snooping around, aware of Katharine's eyes on me.

“How are you going to track him down?” she asked.

I sat down on the sofa beside her. “I'll check the archives first. I know my way around there. I've got contacts in other places too – the Misdemeanours Department, the Labour Directorate – to see if he's been drafted into the mines or on to one of the city farms” – I skipped the hospitals, where unidentified bodies turn up more often than you might expect in a city whose population is carefully monitored – “the Deserters' Register. Did your brother ever talk about crossing the border illegally?”

Her eyes narrowed. “That's what the guard asked too. Adam isn't a deserter any more than I am. I don't like the Council but Edinburgh's safer than all the other cities. Neither of us wants to leave.” She moved her hand to her eyes quickly. “It's my fault. I influenced him. He could easily have become an auxiliary. It was because of me that he didn't. He let his work at college go, failed all his exams and ended up as a labourer.” She looked over at me. “Sorry . . .”

“Don't worry, I'm not proud. You haven't told me why you were demoted.”

Her eyes opened wide and glinted shafts of ice. “That's got nothing to do with this. What about you? Why did they kick you out?” She looked down.