The Blood Tree (12 page)

I headed for the door, taking the Land-Rover keys from my pocket. Then my mobile buzzed again.

“Quint?”

“Yes, Katharine.”

“You'd better get over here,” she said, rushing her words. “I've got a witness.”

“To the murder?”

“Looks like it.”

“Jesus. I'm on my way. Out.”

The p-m would have to wait.

The rain had turned back into drizzle. As I walked across the waterlogged ground all I could hear were myriad drops falling from the trees to the puddles below. Blind Lemon Jefferson was singing the “Risin' High Water Blues” somewhere in the back of my mind.

Katharine was standing at the door of the child care facility underneath Hamilton's umbrella. The single-storey wooden building had been erected inside the Botanics' northern wall, its walls painted in pastel shades. It was one of the Welfare Directorate's better efforts, a bucolic environment for some of the city's most troubled kids. I'd tracked down a singularly persistent pickpocket here a year ago. He was a smiling, freckled boy of ten who'd been separated from his mother when he was a baby. The city had done its best, but I didn't go away with the impression that growing up in close proximity to flowers and trees had been an adequate substitute for parental care.

“What have you got, Katharine?”

“Facility supervisor,” she said. “Scott 124. She's in her office.”

“Let's go then.” I didn't ask her any more questions because I wanted to hear it from the auxiliary's own mouth.

The corridor was festooned with chains of coloured paper and the walls were covered in paintings and drawings. Kids' voices were audible behind every door we passed. They actually sounded happy, which isn't always the case in Welfare Directorate centres – a lot of the supervisors are members of the Mr Squeers Admiration Society.

This one certainly didn't seem to be. Scott 124 was rosy-cheeked and unusually rotund for an auxiliary. Her barracks number and greying hair suggested she was in her late forties, but the quick movements she made as she came to meet us cast doubt on that.

“Citizen Dalrymple,” she said, smiling. “I've read about you in the
Guardian
. Have a seat. Some tea? It's a fresh pot.”

I'd already had enough of the supervisor's good cheer. I didn't bother resisting the temptation to rattle her.

“Scott 124, I'm told you saw what went on in the gardens last night.”

She caught my sharp tone. “Well, I saw something, citizen. I . . .” Her voice trailed away and the smile left her lips.

“Why didn't you call the sentry in the gatehouse?”

The auxiliary bit her lip and glanced at Katharine. No support was forthcoming. “Well, as I told your colleague, there was a thick mist and I couldn't see very well. And . . .” She looked down. “And I didn't want to have the children disturbed at night.”

I raised my eyes to the ceiling. A brown and orange papier-mâché spider was dangling above my head. “Tell me exactly what you saw, please.”

The supervisor nodded. “As I say, the visibility wasn't good. I was just finishing some reports—”

“The time?” I asked.

“A little after midnight,” Scott 124 replied. “I know that because I heard the chimes.” She nodded towards a grandfather clock in the corner that had been decorated with streamers and balloons.

“Go on.”

She started fidgeting, her thick fingers tapping on the desktop. “It's . . . it's a bit embarrassing really,” she stammered. “At first I thought I was dreaming.” She looked at me uncertainly. “You see, I read a lot of fairy stories to the children. And . . . and suddenly I see a bogeyman in the Botanics.”

I opened my eyes wide at her. “A bogeyman? What are you talking about?”

“A bogeyman,” the supervisor repeated, her voice fading again. Then she shivered and sat up straight. “He was very tall, well over six feet, and wearing what looked like a cloak, you see. I couldn't make out anything else. Then . . . then a light shone and I got a glimpse of his face.” Her voice was trembling now. “It . . . it was scarcely human.”

I looked at Katharine. She shrugged at me and went over to the woman.

“Try to describe it,” Katharine said softly.

Scott 124 licked her lips. “That face . . . the colour was all wrong for a start. It was grey and there were lines across it. Like it had been stitched back together after some terrible injury. And the eyes . . . they stared out of ragged holes.”

I glared at Katharine but she shook her head insistently to let me know she hadn't told the supervisor anything about the state of the dead man's face.

The auxiliary looked away. “That was all I saw. Except he had a beard too.” She quivered. “That didn't look natural either. It was long and wispy. A funny reddish-brown colour.”

“You didn't see anyone else?” I asked.

“No.”

“And was your bogeyman carrying anything? Dragging anything?”

“No, citizen. He was bending over but there was mist at ground level and I couldn't make out much. Apart from the light – a torch, I suppose.” Scott 124 started chewing her lip again. There was a spot of blood on it now. “I only saw him for a few seconds. Then he was gone.”

“I still don't understand,” I said angrily. “If the guy looked so horrifying, why didn't you call the guard?”

The supervisor put a podgy hand to her eye. “I was frightened, citizen. Don't you understand? I was frightened when I saw him, frightened for the children.” She looked down. “Then when all the fuss started in the Botanics today, I was worried that I'd be blamed for not raising the alarm.”

Katharine squeezed her arm. I was pretty sure that the auxiliary wouldn't have opened up to anyone except her.

I got up and put my notebook into my pocket. The idea that the murder might have been carried out by an inhuman monster wasn't exactly making me shake my tailfeather.

I left Katharine to take a detailed statement from the supervisor and went back to the gatehouse. Hamilton was on the phone tearing a strip off some unfortunate subordinate.

“Anything?” Davie asked, looking up from a sheaf of papers.

I filled him in about the bogeyman.

“Sounds to me like that auxiliary's got a problem with the booze,” he said.

“Maybe. Have your people check her file, will you?”

Davie nodded then looked at me more closely. “Don't tell me you believe her?”

I shrugged. “Someone deposited Knox 43 here with a copper beech branch in his hand, a dent in his head and a transplanted eye. That's exactly the kind of thing mothers used to scare their kids with in the old days, isn't it?”

“Aye, but a tall guy in a cloak with a face a Prussian duellist would have been proud of? Give me a break.” He paused. “He took a hell of chance though, didn't he, Quint? The so-called bogeyman and his mates. What if they'd been seen? This is hardly the most deserted area of the city, even though it's mostly parkland.”

“That's what's bothering me, Davie. Why risk being caught? What was so important about leaving the body here? Unless . . .”

“Unless what?”

“Unless these guys are so crazy they don't care who runs into them. They didn't send Knox 43 off into the endless night with much sensitivity, did they?”

“Christ,” Davie said with a groan. “What have we got on our hands?”

“Big trouble,” I said, turning towards the door. “I'm off to the infirmary.”

“Aren't you going to ask if I found out anything?”

I stopped. “Have you found out anything, Davie?” I asked mechanically, still facing the way out.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact I have. The scene-of-crime squad have confirmed that the footprints are from three different pairs of boots. And get this – they reckon they're work-boots like the ones in the archive. They're going to compare the casts when they're dry.”

I looked round. “Nice one, big man. What are you doing now?”

“I'm finished here. I thought I'd get up to the Labour Directorate and talk to the dead man's colleagues.”

“Okay. I'll see you there later on.”

Hamilton broke off from his rant on the phone and eyed me suspiciously. I still wanted a word with him about the Council's attitude towards genetic engineering but that could wait. There was a body to be dissected.

I'd rung Sophia to tell her I'd been delayed, but she still looked unimpressed when I hit the morgue. Or rather, when the morgue's cloying reek of chemicals and decaying bodies hit me.

“I should have started without you,” the medical guardian said, pulling up her surgical mask. “I'm sick of waiting for Public Order Directorate representatives to attend post-mortems.” Then she looked across at me. “Have you obtained any new information pertaining to the deceased?”

I smiled at that turgid Council turn of phrase as I pulled on a green gown. “Nothing that'll make your job any easier.” I didn't think Sophia would be greatly taken by the intrusion of fairy-tale elements into the case.

Knox 43 had been formally identified by a barracks colleague. His body had already been stripped, photographed and washed. The morgue assistants circled the slab busily, plucking hairs, scraping behind fingernails and sticking swabs into orifices. Apart from the facial mutilation and cranial damage, the dead man looked strangely at ease, his knees and arms still bent. He could have been asleep. In Raymond Chandler's terms I suppose he was, but I didn't like the way he'd got into that state.

Sophia was standing by the head. She broke off from the speech she was making into the microphone that hung from the ceiling. “Ready, Quint? I'm going to examine the frontal bone.”

I moved up the slab and watched as she carefully removed the displaced eyeball from the jagged hole. She began to clean the cavity of blood and debris. The left socket had been washed out and was sunken, the lids collapsing into it. Sophia called the photographer over and got him to take several shots of the now gaping wound. Then she shone a light into it and probed the depths.

“Quite remarkable,” she said. “The instrument – chisel or whatever – penetrated over an inch and a half. It went through the bone and into the frontal lobe of the brain. That would have required massive force.”

“Maybe a hammer was used to drive the weapon in,” I said, feeling a shiver of apprehension run down my spine. I'd seen the worst the drugs gangs could offer and none of them had ever dealt with anyone that way.

“Possible,” Sophia said. She didn't show any sign of being disturbed by the method. She wasn't called the Ice Queen for nothing. “Or a mallet. The damage to the left side of the skull was caused by a blunt instrument. At least three heavy blows, I'd say.”

I glanced back down at the body. “Did those blows kill him?”

“They would certainly have rendered him unconscious immediately. Injury caused by splinters of the skull in both areas would subsequently have led to the arrest of brain functions with some rapidity.”

I nodded. “So he was killed where we found him?”

“I would say so, yes.” Sophia drew her sleeve across her forehead. “There were no scrapes on the ground to suggest he was dragged, were there?”

“No. His shoes weren't abnormally scuffed either. So he was either coerced into going with his killer or killers, or he went along willingly.” I pulled out my notebook. “Anything more on the time of death?”

“Not yet. As I told you, the rectal temperature suggested at least twelve hours have elapsed. I'll be testing the potassium level in the eye fluid.” She twitched her head. “At least from the eye that's still in situ. I expect that to confirm my earlier estimate of between midnight and one a.m.”

I took a last look at Knox 43's forehead. “I don't suppose you've formed any theories to explain why his eye was moved? Or the branch put in his hand?”

Sophia's mask bulged as she exhaled hard. “That's hardly my territory, Quint.”

I was afraid she'd say that.

Chapter Six

The Labour Directorate is a grimy concrete mass at the top of Leith Walk. In pre-Enlightenment times it was the St James Centre, a vast complex of shops and offices so ugly and out of synch with the rest of central Edinburgh that the architects must have been taking the piss. No one takes the piss out of the Labour Directorate though. It determines who gets sent to the mines and the city farms, and it controls citizen work details with a lack of feeling that reflects the original Council's severity – which has made it one of the most hated places in the city as far as the locals are concerned. The tourists are much better off. There are enough shops for them on Princes Street and the Royal Mile, so they don't have to go anywhere near the former shopping centre's dreary portals.

I ran up the steps and flashed my authorisation at a dozy-looking guardsman. He suddenly jerked into activity and lifted his clipboard.