Water of Death (6 page)

Hamilton joined me. “As much as another month of this bloody heat to go,” he said, wiping the sweat from his wrinkled forehead. Although he was in his seventies, the public order guardian still had a firm grip on the City Guard. His beard and hair were almost completely white but his bearing was as military as ever. “Well, I've checked all my Restricted Files. There's no reference to Kennedy  . . .” He broke off and went back to the papers on his desktop. “What the hell was his first name?”

“Fordyce,” I said. “Fordyce Bulloch Kennedy.”

“Thank you.” Hamilton's acknowledgement was curt. He didn't like being helped out, especially by an auxiliary who'd been demoted from his own directorate.

I can never resist having a go at guardians, especially one as thin-skinned as my former boss. “You would tell me if he was one of your undercover operatives, of course.”

The guardian's eyes bulged as he glared at me. Finally he managed to spit something out. “I tell you he's not.”

“But how do I know you're telling the truth, Lewis?” I asked, prolonging the fun.

“How do you know  . . . ?” Hamilton took a couple of deep breaths. Even in these more open times guardians don't like having their veracity impugned, as Councilspeak would have it. Auxiliaries are taught tension control techniques but Lewis was appointed by the first Council and never went through the training programme – unlike me. “You're doing it deliberately, aren't you? Grow up, man.”

“Grow up, man,” I repeated dubiously. “Bit of an oxymoron, wouldn't you say?”

The desk telephone buzzed, saving me from the guardian's tongue. I watched his expression change as he answered.

“What?” Hamilton bellowed. “Where?” He listened for a couple of seconds. “When?” He listened again. “Any ID?”

Shit. I'd been calculating the odds of him running through the full set of interrogatives beginning with “wh”.

“Very well. Tell the barracks commander to keep me informed.” He slammed the phone down.

“What's going on?” I asked, trying to give the impression of idle curiosity.

“Nothing for you to worry about, Dalrymple,” Hamilton said, shuffling files.

Nothing makes me suspicious quicker than a guardian telling me not to worry. “What is it, Lewis?” I said insistently.

He caught my tone and looked up. “Oh, very well. Body found by the Water of Leith. Sounds like heatstroke or the like.”

“Tell me more,” I said, leaning over him.

“Middle-aged male. No identification on the body.” The guardian glanced at me then reached over for a buff folder. “Ah, I see what you mean. What age is that missing lottery-winner?”

“Fifty-two.”

“You don't think it's him, do you?”

“Only one way to find out, Lewis,” I replied, heading for the door. “Call your people and tell them to keep their sticky fingers off the body till we get there.”

Chapter Three

We piled into Hamilton's Jeep and headed off the esplanade. His driver, a middle-aged guardswoman with a heavily freckled face, seemed to be enjoying herself as she turned down Ramsay Lane at speed.

“What do you reckon?” I said to the guardian as we roared past the Assembly Hall where the Council used to hold its daily meetings. “Murder, suicide, accident or natural causes?”

“My driver has a perfect safety record.”

I almost fell off my seat. There had never been much evidence that Lewis Hamilton possessed a sense of humour, let alone that he was prepared to show it off in front of his staff.

“Surely we shouldn't be prejudging, Dalrymple,” he went on. “But if you insist on playing games, our statistics clearly show that death from natural causes is the most likely, especially at this time of year. Accidental death comes next. Apart from dissident-related killings around the city line, there have been hardly any murders in Edinburgh since 2022. And, I'm glad to say, suicide is still illegal.”

I put my hands out as we swung on to the Mound and down towards Princes Street. The guardian was having a veiled go at the members of the Council who had tried to repeal the regulation banning suicide. There had been an idea that citizens would feel they had greater control over their lives, or rather deaths. The conservative wing had won that particular battle.

I took in the panorama from our elevated position. To the right protruded the stump of the Enlightenment Monument, as the original Council had renamed the Scott Monument. Its upper sections have been dropping off regularly in recent years and there's now a rectangular structure of scaffolding covered with tarpaulin around the top. There are vast maroon hearts painted on each side, along with the names of the foreign companies that have done sponsorship deals with the Council.

To my left a dustcloud was rising from the racetrack in the gardens. During the Big Heat spectators watch the horses from air-conditioned stands that look like a giant's greenhouses. What used to be lawns and flowerbeds are mostly rock gardens filled with cacti these days, though the floral clock has been kept in operation. It was being watered by a morose Parks Department labourer who had his hose at arm's length like he'd been asked to hold someone else's dick. Splatters of the city's precious water raked our windows as we reached the main thoroughfare. Before we crossed to Hanover Street I caught an eyeful of awnings and flags. Edinburgh has turned into an open-air cafe society, at least in the centre where the tourists go. They were easy enough to spot, their well-cut clothes in stark contrast to the faded Supply Directorate waiters' uniforms and overalls worn by the citizens who work in the tourist zone. Some young Chinese were watching satellite television from micro-receivers on their wrists. No doubt they were keeping up with the Beijing Stock Market – pandaflation had been rampant.

“I still don't see why you're coming with me,” the guardian said testily. “The chances that this is your missing Edlott winner can't be very great.”

I shrugged. “So we rule out this guy and I get back to the search.”

Hamilton glanced at me. “You can't resist a body, can you, Dalrymple?”

“And you can, can you, Lewis?” I asked with an ironic grin. “You were out of your office like a vulture in the mating season.”

I heard the guardswoman stifle a laugh and the conversation rapidly terminated.

In a few minutes we reached the guard checkpoint at the bottom of Dundas Street and moved into the citizen residential area of Stockbridge. The surroundings were immediately less salubrious, the road surface uneven and buildings stained black by the coal we've been burning in winter since the electricity restrictions bit years ago. Citizens working here don't have to bother with the uniforms they wear in the centre, so the streets were filled with people in dirty T-shirts and faded shorts. I felt at home again.

Just before the bridge there was a maroon and white striped Edlott booth with a queue of citizens snaking away from it. A character wearing an eighteenth-century coat and what was probably a false paunch was giving them a speech. The billiard cue he was carrying told me who he was meant to be – David Hume, Edinburgh philosopher and bon viveur. Christ knows what the old sceptic would think of his home town's condition in the twenty-first century. Maybe he'd be amused that a lottery-winner was impersonating him. He might even be impressed that a fair number of the populace was well read enough to recognise him.

“I sincerely hope it isn't the lottery-winner who's dead, Dalrymple,” Hamilton said, staring past me at the booth. “The Culture Directorate will make my life hell.”

He was probably right. Since the success of Edlott, the directorate handling it had become one of the most influential in the Council. Even the once all-powerful Finance Directorate had to listen to the culture guardian and his gang of smartarse senior auxiliaries – especially since they'd started developing initiatives with the Tourism Directorate, the city's other hotbed of money-grabbing schemers.

I smiled. The guardian was quite capable of looking after himself in Council meetings. “What's your problem, Lewis?” I asked. “You don't even approve of Edlott. You once told me it was run by fools for fools.”

He stared at me with hostile intentions. I shouldn't have wound him up by talking down the lottery in front of the guardswoman. Not that she gave any sign of having noticed – personnel who work in the proximity of the public order guardian learn to turn off their hearing regularly.

“I don't know what you mean, man,” Hamilton said unconvincingly. “Citizens deserve to have the chance to change their lives. They need to know that their dreams might come true. Anyway, the Council approved the setting up of Edlott unanimously.”

The Council always approves measures unanimously, or says it does. And the reason the guardians went for Edlott was because they were desperate to calm citizens down when food and power shortages threatened to cause major disorder.

“Here we are.” The guardian pointed ahead. A roadblock had been set up at the junction of St Bernard's Street and the main road. A couple of glowering guardsmen were holding some disaffected locals at bay. We were waved through, my citizen-issue clothes getting a dubious look from one of the auxiliaries.

“Where exactly are we headed?” I asked.

“The Colonies,” the guardian replied. “The barracks commander's waiting for us in Bell Place.”

We drove past the local citizens' bathhouse in what was once a swimming-pool and reached the Colonies, a housing scheme started in the 1860s by a group of stonemasons. As many as 10,000 people lived in the closely built streets at first, but the houses went upmarket in the second half of the twentieth century and the number of residents dropped. We took a left turn and found the road full of guard vehicles.

A careworn auxiliary appeared at the Jeep door. “Good morning, guardian.”

“Raeburn 01.” Hamilton acknowledged the commander of the local guard barracks and nudged me impatiently. “Come on then, Dalrymple. No time to lose.”

I stepped reluctantly into the heat then took in the neat lines of houses to our right and left. By Housing Directorate standards they were in unusually good condition. The railings running up to the first-floor entrances had been repainted recently. There was even the occasional flowerbox, water for them presumably taken illicitly from the river at the road end.

“Where's the body?” I asked.

“Follow me.” Raeburn 01 led us down the street. A guard had been placed outside each front door. Through the windows I could see anxious citizens looking out at us, in one house a mother standing with her arm round her daughter's back. The little girl gave me a cautious smile. I winked back and her eyes opened wide in surprise. She probably thought from my appearance that I was a clown the guard had brought along to cheer themselves up.

“Down here.” The commander took us through a small garden and down to the river bank. Then he raised his arm and pointed.

There were a few moments of silence as we focused on the Water of Leith. In the nineteenth century the river had been the sewer of the New Town and it didn't smell too healthy now. Water was running sluggishly through a narrow central channel, the rest of the river bed made up of bone-hard dried mud and stones that hadn't been submerged since last winter. By the end of the Big Heat there wouldn't be much more than a trickle in the channel.

Not that the guy lying on his front with his head in the flow cared about that any more. The hot wind gusted from the east down the river bed and billowed his shirt up from his back, baring pale, unwashed skin. The legs in frayed dark blue work trousers were spread wide open at a disturbing angle. There was a shoe missing from the man's right foot and the skin on the underside was covered in dried blood.

Then the silence was broken by a sound that's become common at this time of year in the few parts of the city where there's even a dribble of water. Our very own version of the “Bullfrog Blues”.

“Have your people touched anything?” I asked the barracks commander after I'd had a quick look around the site.

“Certainly not,” he replied with an affronted look. “We know the procedures.”

I got a glare from Hamilton for my trouble as well. “Okay, okay. Who found the body?”

An eager guardsman who couldn't have been long out of the auxiliary training programme stepped up. “I did, citizen. I was on foot patrol on the other side of the water. I called in immediately.”

“Right.” I took the pair of protective gloves offered by a scene-of-crime squad auxiliary, pulled them on and kneeled down by the body. Flies rose up angrily and cannoned off me. The shallow river was washing over the dead man's face and forehead, sluicing past the head with a gentle gurgling noise.

I twisted round towards the guardsman. “Are you sure you didn't touch anything?”

He shifted his weight uneasily.