Water of Death (33 page)

“First floor, second window from the right.” The operative was having serious difficulty looking me in the eye – and not just because he didn't want to blow his cover.

I looked up at the first-floor window. Nasmyth 05 was clearly visible, his heavy torso resting against the fake Georgian frame. He was talking animatedly to someone I couldn't make out well. There was a blue workers' shirt and a pair of hands, but that was about all.

“Is it definitely a male he's with?” I asked, moving my head round the marbled thigh of one of the Graces.

The undercover man nodded. “He was waiting for the auxiliary outside. I saw them go in together. He's around five feet eight, pretty thin, with very short dark hair.”

I pulled out my notebook and showed him a copy of Alexander Kennedy's file photo.

“Could be,” he said, nodding. “Definitely could be. I didn't see his face very well though. He had it turned away from me.”

“You know an all-barracks search is going on for this citizen, don't you?”

The bogus roadsweeper shrugged. “No. We often don't find out about that kind of thing till our weekly debrief.”

So much for the Public Order Directorate's organisational skills. “Have you seen Nasmyth 05 with him before?”

He shook his head.

“All right.” I gave him a heavy-duty stare. “If we nail the guy, you're in the clear. But the next time you fail to call in you'll be pulling that broom handle out of your upper intestine.”

It looked like he got the message.

“Shall I call for back-up?” Davie asked when I returned to the Land-Rover.

I shook my head. “We can handle it. I know this place. The two of them are up top. The only way out is down the stairs. Let's hit them.”

I didn't bother flashing my authorisation at the doorman. He'd already taken one look at Davie and decided he would step aside for a bit. I put my shoulder to the door and stepped into what was about as welcoming as the inside of the bothies that used to cater for generations of migrant workers, none of whom gave a shit about interior decoration. That mirrors the Recreation Directorate's attitude when it comes to fixing up ordinary citizens' drinking dens.

Silence fell before I'd got two paces into the throng. The drinkers in places like this can smell guard personnel before they see them. As far as these guys were concerned, Davie wasn't the only representative of the Public Order Directorate present.

“Hey, fellas, look who it is,” came a booming voice from the far end of the bar. “Citizen Shitwit Dalrymple. What are you doing with the likes of us, Citizen Shitwit? After a bit of rough?”

I might have known Roddie the Ox would be here. When I was in the Parks Department with him, he used to supplement his beer supply by taking the other guys' alcohol vouchers in bent card games. It would be fair to say he wasn't happy when I clocked how he was cheating and put the word round.

“Come on,” I said over my shoulder to Davie. I didn't want to give Nasmyth 05 and his companion any more advance warning than I had to.

“Come on,” repeated the Ox in a falsetto voice. “Come on, big boy. The baddies are getting away.” He moved his bulky frame into the centre of the room as the rest of the occupants broke into loud jeering.

“Oh for fuck's sake,” I muttered, glancing at Davie.

“The two-step?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Why not?” I moved towards the solid mass of flesh in front of me.

“Going somewhere, Citizen Shit—” Roddie didn't manage to finish the question because I took a measured stride and kicked him hard in the balls. As he jacked forward in agony, Davie came towards him. The Ox's face met Davie's raised knee at high velocity. I can't stand dancing but the two-step definitely has its uses.

We piled up the stairs, leaving the drinkers as motionless as a gallery of waxworks. I felt my heart pounding. It wasn't only because of the arsehole we'd left in a heap below. Was this the break I needed? Was the Edlott controller's companion the one who would tie everything together?

I burst into the first-floor room, motioning to Davie to stay at the doorway. Nasmyth 05 and his pal were the only ones there. The auxiliary had probably pulled strings to have the place to himself. He was already standing up by the time I got to him.

“What on earth's going on, citizen?” he demanded.

I wasn't paying attention to the fat man. I had the photo in my hand and was comparing the face of the young man with it. He had close-cut black hair, and he was the right height and build. Not only that but he looked vicious enough to have killed. But no way was he Alexander Kennedy. His face was disfigured by a harelip so severe that all the yellow teeth in the front part of his upper jaw were open to view. The Medical Directorate doesn't run to what it defines as non-essential corrective surgery.

“ID,” I said, extending my hand.

The citizen looked at me with the sullen stare of someone whose expectations of life have never come close to great. Then he put his hand to the pocket of his workshirt and took out a dog-eared card. It told me that he was Euan Caborn, that he was twenty-one, that he lived in Granton and that he was a junior technician in the Culture Directorate.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him.

“What does it look like?” he said in a high voice, a spray of spittle flying from his impaired mouth. He glanced down at a half-emptied glass of heavy. “They haven't made drinking illegal now, have they?”

“Not that I know of,” I said, turning to Nasmyth 05 and shaking my head. “Auxiliaries meeting citizens in citizen bars is contrary to the City Regulations though. What are you playing at?”

Nasmyth 05 looked at Euan Caborn, who returned his gaze steadily. Then he glanced at Davie. “Em, could we discuss this in private, Citizen Dalrymple?”

“Why not?” I gave him a smile. “The castle dungeons are very good for that kind of thing.”

Caborn let out a squeal of laughter.

“Don't worry, son,” said Davie, stepping forward. “You're coming too.”

We took them off to the castle and gave them the hard man/soft man routine. It didn't get us very far. Nasmyth 05 was pretty unforthcoming. For all his effete appearance, he'd been through auxiliary training and he knew how to stonewall as well as the rest of us. Not that it mattered. Euan Caborn was very willing to talk, and he didn't seem to be bothered either by the cell's damp subterranean walls or by Davie's impression of a raging bull. I'd sent a guardswoman down to the archive to pull his file and everything he said was consistent with it.

“Right,” I said after half an hour trying not to stare at his harelip. “Let's recap. You've been at the Culture Directorate for three months. Two weeks ago Nasmyth 05 started turning up unannounced at your workstation. He started giving you little presents – sandwiches from the auxiliaries' canteen, razor blades, books  . . .”

“Mmm, very dirty books,” Euan Caborn said with a salacious laugh. “From Denmark, he told me.
The Little Merman
, one of them was called. You should have seen the size of his flipper.”

“You seen the size of my truncheon?” Davie said, moving his face close to the young man's. “So you started meeting the auxiliary after work, eh?”

“Aye,” Caborn said, suddenly less defiant. “Just for a drink or two.”

“Very likely,” Davie shouted. “Are you telling me there was no messing about with each other's dicks?”

“Well, just a bit.” The citizen raised his head again. “You can see from my file that I'm registered homo.”

I touched Davie's shoulder. “It's all right, Euan,” I said in soothing tones. “You're not at fault. There's something else I need to know.”

He nodded slowly, eyes still on Davie.

I held the photo of Allie Kennedy out to him. “Have you ever seen this citizen in the directorate or in Nasmyth 05's company?”

He considered for a long time then shook his head. “No, I don't know him.”

I reckoned he was telling the truth. There was no reference in his file to Kennedy being one of his associates. “One last thing. Has Nasmyth 05 ever asked you to do any special jobs for him?”

“Apart from sexual ones,” Davie growled.

Euan Caborn gave a mocking laugh then shook his head again. “I don't think so. Like what kind of special jobs?”

I shrugged.

“Naw,” Caborn said. “I'm a technician. I fix the machines when they break down. I never leave the directorate during working hours.”

“And after working hours you go back to Granton and read your Plato, I suppose,” Davie said with a sneer.

The young citizen's flawed mouth twisted into a smile. “Plato was homo too.”

True enough. I tried another tack. “You ever smoked grass, Euan?”

“Me?” he answered in a shocked voice that wasn't too convincing. “I've got a clean record.” That was true as well.

I remembered the scumbags I'd caught with grass in the Meadows. “Ever heard of the Southside Strollers?”

He looked at me blankly. Well, it was a long shot. He was from the north side.

I had the feeling Euan Caborn had nothing more to tell us so I decided to let him go. I got Davie to put a tail on him just to be sure. Then we went back into the Edlott auxiliary's cell.

The fat man was sitting on the rat-gnawed mattress. Despite the boiler-room temperature level, he was shivering. What had earlier been carefully arranged waves in his thick fair hair were now greasy strands. He looked up when we entered. The truncheon that Davie was slapping against the palm of his hand seemed to be a source of particular fascination.

“Right, Nasmyth 05, I'm prepared to cut you some slack.”

There was a disbelieving grunt from Davie at the door.

“I might consider not reporting that you've had your hand in a young male citizen's underwear. Somehow I don't think you'd last long harvesting potatoes.” He looked pathetically grateful. I took out the photo of Allie Kennedy again and threw it down in front of him. “You know we're interested in this specimen. I want you to tell me everything about your dealings with him.” I gave him the eye. “And I mean everything.”

The fat man drew his forearm across his forehead, making the auxiliary shirt even damper. Then he nodded slowly. “Very well.” He glanced up at Davie timorously.

“Don't worry about Hume 253,” I said. “He's very easy-going really.” I put my hand on Davie's truncheon and stopped him smacking it against his palm.

Nasmyth 05 gave me a dubious look then started talking. “I visited the Kennedy family after the father won the lottery. I always do that. To show how seriously the directorate takes Edlott-winners.”

I let him get away with that. The chances were that he and his mates in the Culture Directorate had carefully trawled the archive to find a respectable winner and put a false date on the consultation reference I saw in Fordyce Kennedy's file. Maybe he'd even looked for a winner with a son he fancied.

“I  . . . I struck up a friendship with Alexander,” the auxiliary said, his eyes down.

“You struck up an interest in his body, you mean,” Davie said.

I twitched my head to restrain him. “And you started meeting Allie socially after that?”

He nodded. “I know it's contrary to regulations but I didn't mean any harm. I—”

“I don't care about the regulations, Nasmyth 05,” I said. “I want to know everything you know about Allie Kennedy.”

The fat man raised his eyes to mine and frowned. “But I don't know much about him. He'd never tell me what he spent his time doing. I knew he didn't work much because I checked his file and—”

“It never occurred to you that he might be up to no good?” Davie interrupted.

“Go and get us some water, will you, guardsman?” I said, motioning to the door. Sometimes Davie's hard man act is counterproductive. I waited till he went, giving me an unimpressed stare as he did so.

“All right,” I continued, “Let's stop pissing about, auxiliary. We're both aware that Allie Kennedy is not one of the city's success stories. He might be into the black market or he might be into something a lot worse. All I want is to catch him. I don't give a shit what you've been up to with him.” I bent over, put my hand under his heavy chin and lifted it so he had to look at me. “Unless you and he had anything to do with the poisonings.” I hadn't forgotten the deaths at my old man's retirement home. “If you did, I'll use Hume 253's auxiliary knife on both of you.”

Nasmyth 05 gulped. “I don't know what you're talking about, citizen. All I know about the poisonings is what I've read in guard bulletins.”

“That had better be the truth, my friend.” I let go of his chin. “So tell me about Allie Kennedy.”

“He's  . . . he's a sweet boy.” The auxiliary's voice had suddenly become tender. “He never fitted into the system and now he feels lost. I  . . . I've just been trying to help him sort his life out.”

“No doubt. When did you last see him?”

The auxiliary seemed to be steeling himself to face me. “You know when. At the family flat the other night.”

I remembered something that had been puzzling me about that. “How did you leave? The surveillance team didn't report you.”

Nasmyth 05 gave me a shifty look. “Ah. Yes. I recognised one of them. I knew him on the auxiliary training programme. I asked him for a favour.”

Brilliant. So much for the incorruptible nature of Hamilton's City Guard. “When are you going to see Allie Kennedy again?”

He shrugged. “We never arrange meetings. He calls me when he can get away.”

Get away from what? I wondered. “Right, Nasmyth 05, here's the deal.” I wasn't anything like sure that he was telling me the whole truth but I reckoned he was more use on the loose than in the dungeons. “The minute Allie calls, you call me.” I scribbled my mobile number down. “Or the guard command centre. The same goes if he appears unexpectedly.” I was going to keep the surveillance on him – using hand-picked operatives this time – but there was no harm in giving him the impression that he was free as a bird. “And Nasmyth 05?”