Body Politic (6 page)

Like I did.

“Turn her to the front,” Yellowlees ordered, bending to lift the eyelids. “Note the haemorrhaging to the conjuctivae.” He took a syringe and plunged the needle into the right eye. Hamilton stepped back quickly. “The vitreous humour. I should be able to give you a fairly accurate time of death after I've tested for potassium.”

“What's your estimate from the body temperature?” I asked.

“I don't much like estimates,” the guardian said, his eyes narrowing. “Still, you need all the help you can get. I'd say between four and six a.m.; as the body was found just after six, we're already in the frame.”

I nodded and watched as he started examining further down the cadaver, cutting and plucking hairs then applying swabs to the vagina and rectum.

“There's extensive damage to the anus consistent with violent buggery.”

“As with almost all the ENT Man's victims, male and female,” said Hamilton.

“Correct.” Yellowlees lifted his mask and lowered his face to the dead woman's buttocks, then sniffed.

“Jesus Christ.” The public order guardian gagged and turned away.

“Curious.” Yellowlees stood up straight and glanced at me. “A hint of spermicide. Tests will confirm that.”

“A condom?” I said. “The Ear, Nose and Throat Man never used them.”

“And we still never managed to track him down from his DNA profile.” The medical guardian shook his head impatiently.

“He managed to keep himself out of all the Council's numerous files,” I said, looking at the pair of guardians. “Pretty good going.” He was a cunning bastard. Even though I buried him, I never knew his name. Members of the drug gangs always used aliases. I don't think the other Howlin' Wolf headcases knew his identity either. After I got rid of him, I didn't try to find it out. Maybe I should have.

Yellowlees had replaced his mask and was peering at the arms and chest. “No evidence of a struggle. She must have blacked out immediately. It happens.” Now he was over by the abdomen, reading off measurements. “Wound made by three incisions, forming a flap of skin six and a quarter inches by eleven inches by five and a half inches; said flap was pulled down to allow access to the liver, which was then removed.”

“What kind of blade?” I asked.

“Non-serrated, single-edged, extremely sharp.” The medical guardian shrugged. “As to length and thickness, I can't be sure.”

I looked into the blood-encrusted hole. “Any evidence of medical knowledge?”

“Not a great deal. The killer knew where to locate the liver, but he could have found that out in any encyclopaedia.”

“What about bloodstains? Surely he would have been soaked.”

Yellowlees nodded. “I would have thought so, though bear in mind that the victim was already dead when mutilation took place. There wouldn't have been any spurting.”

Hamilton came closer. It looked like he was only just winning the battle against vomiting. “We found all her clothing apart from the tunic in a neat pile under the washbasin nearest the door. Her equipment was laid on top. There were no stains on any of it.”

I looked at him. “And there were no traces of blood anywhere except in the immediate vicinity of the body.”

“That's right,” said Yellowlees. “What are you getting at?”

“I'll tell you what I'm getting at. I think the killer took off his own clothes as well as the victim's. I think he cut her open when he was stark naked, then washed the blood off in one of the basins. He's some sort of cleanliness freak.”

Simpson 134, the nurse, was staring at me, her eyelids so wide apart that I felt my own straining in sympathy. After a few seconds the medical guardian moved to her and put his hand on her arm briefly.

“I'd expect there to be traces of blood on the basin he used,” he said.

“Not after the Council's decision to send in the city's number one cleaner.”

Yellowlees ignored the sarcasm. “As I remember, the otolaryngologist didn't use to mind if he left bloodstains.” That was a typical guardian understatement. The ENT Man treated his victims' blood like it was paint and he was Jackson Pollock.

“What are you saying?” demanded Hamilton. “That this isn't the same killer? The victim was strangled by ligature, sodomised and had an organ removed. That was the pattern in the past. What more do you want?”

I wanted an explanation of a lot more: like why the ears weren't cut off, why the nose wasn't blocked with earth, why the face hadn't been beaten till it was more black than blue, why a condom had been used and why the scene of the crime hadn't been left like a room in some late twentieth-century slasher film. And that was just for starters.

Yellowlees looked like he was thinking along the same lines. He glanced at Hamilton doubtfully, then turned back to the body. His assistant had finished shaving the head and groin.

“Let's get on,” said the medical guardian. He picked up a dissecting knife and made a large Y-shaped incision from neck to pubis, leaving the larynx intact for further examination. The sternum was then split and the dead woman's chest prised apart. That was when the public order guardian left.

“There's more to this than meets the eye,” Yellowlees said. Even guardians sometimes speak in clichés.

“I'd go along with that,” I said, suddenly noticing that the statuesque nurse was following the surgeon's every movement like she had been hypnotised. Not even auxiliaries are that brainwashed usually.

I left them to it. I'd attended too many post-mortems in the past. Perhaps a five-year lay-off had turned me into a sensitive soul; perhaps there's just a limit to how much of the human body's interior you can take. Unless you're a medic. Or a serial killer. I had a nasty feeling that was what I was up against, even though there was only one body in the morgue. At least I knew it wasn't the ENT Man. I'd have gone through the whole of his autopsy, but I couldn't allow there to be one. What happened was between me and him alone. I owed Caro that much.

Hamilton ambushed me in the foyer. Even though it was late in the evening, there were still patients waiting to be seen. Some of them were speaking a language I didn't recognise.

“Here. I've got these for you.” The public order guardian looked like he desperately needed a cigarette, but the Council banned them years ago. He handed me a mobile phone and an embossed card bearing the Council seal. It authorised me to demand full co-operation from any guardian, auxiliary or citizen. “Anything else you need?” he asked mordantly. “Apart from a shave and a change of clothes.” I could see he hadn't forgotten my jibe about the cleaner. It was hard to resist another one.

“I saw the hanging today. Do you ever use it to get rid of undesirables?”

Hamilton's eyes sprang open like a pair of Venus flytraps that hadn't seen a bluebottle for weeks. He stepped towards me as I jumped into the Land-Rover.

“Looks like you did it again,” Davie said as he accelerated away. “What is it between you and the guardian?”

“You're better off not knowing. Take me back to my place, will you?”

“Right. I spoke to the guard commander who was on duty last night. Every call to Stevenson Hall got the correct response except the one at 0600. Napier 498, the guardswoman who was relieving the victim, made an emergency call at 0609. By that time a vehicle was already on its way to check out the place.”

“Thanks, Davie.” I made the decision. “What do you say to a temporary transfer? I need someone to work with me on this case.”

“Bloody brilliant.” He gave a great laugh that echoed round the Land-Rover's rattling shell like a crazed rodent trying to get out of a bass drum. “I wouldn't miss this for anything.”

Either he was one of Hamilton's best undercover men selling me a double dummy or he really was excited. I was too tired to work out which. The streetlights flashed three times in quick succession, making me blink.

“Curfew coming up. You better get a move on or you'll have to arrest me for being out after my bedtime.”

“Don't worry, I'll vouch for you,” he said with a grin. “Even if the chief won't.”

The fog closed in around us as the lights were extinguished outside the tourist area to conserve electricity. In the early days, when the Council still called itself the Enlightenment and the nuclear power station at Torness was operational, citizens had to be off the streets by midnight. More recently, curfew time has been brought forward to ten o'clock. Whatever that points to doesn't come under the definition of enlightenment in any dictionary that I know.

Chapter Four

I was playing rhythm guitar in the band, cutting some riffs Muddy Waters could have related to, when the ENT Man appeared. Then I was on him, my blood on his filthy jacket. His head turned towards me as I garotted him. In the light above the path I saw his teeth. They were as blue as a cheese that had been forgotten for decades in the deepest recesses of an underground storeroom in Copenhagen. The bastard was grinning, taunting me because he knew he could break my grip. When he got bored, that's what he did. Threw me sprawling to the ground, then came for me. I didn't think I had a chance of tripping him, but he went down like a hamstrung bull. On to his own knife. The beat drove on. Eventually I realised someone was hammering on my door. I staggered towards it.

“Morning.” Davie examined me. “I won't ask if you slept well. You look like . . .”

“What's in the bag?”

“Barracks bread.” He thrust it into my hands. “A sight better than anything you'll get in your local bakery.”

“The coffee's over there.” I went to dress.

“Coffee?” he called after me. “Where did you get that, citizen?”

I was groggier than a sailor's oesophagus, but it almost sounded like he was doing an imitation of your average hyper-inquisitive auxiliary. That wasn't enough to get him out of jail. As far as I'm concerned, people who thrive on getting up early belong to an alien race which has managed to infiltrate us without anyone noticing. Not a bad description of the Enlightenment.

Daylight was no more than a faint grey line under my tattered curtains. “What the hell's the time?” I shouted.

“You tell me. You've got my watch.”

I found it in the carpet of dust under my bedside table. Ten past six. “Jesus, Davie, when I asked you to call me, I didn't mean at the start of your shift.” The guard start two hours earlier than everyone else to police the rush hour.

He came in with a mug for me. “What shift? I thought murder investigations went on twenty-four hours a day.”

“Up yours, guardsman.”

He smiled and went back into the living room. While I was tying the laces of my boots, I heard him strum my guitar and have a go at “Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation”. It was an Enlightenment favourite before independence but he couldn't do it much justice because of the state of my strings.

When I came out he greeted the clean black sweatshirt and trousers I'd found at the back of the wardrobe with a whistle.

“Citizen Dalrymple, you look almost respectable.”

“Call me Quint if you want to stay on the case.”

“You'll do anything to be different, won't you? A spell down the mines is what you need.”

“They tried that once.” I gulped coffee. “They didn't invite me back. Apparently I was a disruptive element.”

Davie nodded slowly. “I can see that.” He put my guitar back in its case. “You any good with this?”

“I haven't played for a long time.”

“I noticed. What happened to your E-string?”

I had a flash of the ENT Man falling into the pit with my guitar string still round his neck. Then I thought of the dead guardswoman. Maybe she'd been strangled with a guitar string too. The idea disturbed me – too close for comfort.

I frowned at him when I realised he was still waiting for an answer. “I lost it, years ago. You know how difficult it is to get things like that replaced in Edinburgh.”

He looked at me dubiously then followed me to the door.

The victim had been stationed at Knox Barracks on the west side of Charlotte Square. The building was formerly one of the city's record offices. After independence its façade had been ruined by the addition of rows of dormitory windows. The Council chose it as a guard depot because it's close to the tourist hotels and shops at the West End of Princes Street, and because it's within sprinting distance of the guardians' quarters in Moray Place. The dark, mist-sodden stonework looked like the hull of a long-lost battleship sunk beyond the range of the most sophisticated depthfinder.

Davie stopped the Land-Rover outside. I was remembering when there were parking meters on both sides of the road. I gazed into the fog that was still a thick carpet over the city. In the grass-covered centre of the square there used to be bookstalls and tents where writers made speeches at the time when the Festival only lasted three weeks every summer. Now there are booths containing slot machines and roulette wheels – for tourists only. Guard personnel stood at the gates even at this early hour.

“Try not to draw attention to me, Davie,” I said before I got out.

“And how am I supposed to do that?” he said with a laugh. “Unless you grow a beard in the next two minutes, every auxiliary in the barracks is going to notice you.”

“Well, anyway, let me go ahead, then see if you can find anyone in the recreation area. Tell them you were a friend of Knox 96 and see what kind of reaction you get.” I shoved the rusty door open. “You can draw a replacement watch from the stores as well.”

“You think of everything, bossman.”

Which unfortunately was not the case. At that moment I had no idea how I was going to get anything but the most grudging of answers from the occupants of Knox.

At the entrance my way was barred by a grey-bearded guardsman. Most auxiliaries these days look like they're just out of primary school, but a few have survived from the early days. My ID and authorisation were scrutinised and the details entered in a logbook.