The Blood Tree (21 page)

“We took scrapings from the fingernails, but I think they'll turn out to be mud and the like from the locality. We found no blood or fibres from anyone else. The first blow the victim took to the head would have dropped him on the spot. There wouldn't have been a struggle.”

“Anything out of the ordinary with the cadaver physiologically?”

She shook her head. “Cramond 333 was a healthy auxiliary – unusually fit even for that rank. There were no traces of alcohol or drugs and no medical irregularities.”

“Time of death?”

“The organ temperatures suggest that he died between eight and nine this morning.”

I looked up from my notes and nodded. “That early?”

“Does that surprise you?”

I shook my head. She'd confirmed what I'd been thinking earlier. But if the physical training instructor was killed between those hours, why had the murderer and his group waited so long before they kidnapped the nascent geniuses?

“Quint?” Sophia said, breaking into my reverie. “What is it?”

“Em, nothing.” I ran my eye down her robed form, taking in the bulge in her abdomen. I wondered if daily exposure to diseased and dead bodies was good for a fetus. Then I remembered that two of the kidnapped adolescents were hotshot science and medicine students.

“Sophia, did you know . . .” I flicked the pages of my notebook “. . . did you ever meet Michael MacGregor and Dougal Strachan?”

Her eyes flicked open a touch too quickly and I remembered her apprehension about the missing kids.

“Michael . . . ?” She looked at me uncertainly. “Oh, Michael and Dougal. They're two of the kidnapped adolescents, aren't they? As a matter of fact, I did talk to them once. They were at a lecture I gave a few months back.” She shook her head. “Brilliant boys,” she said, her eyes locking on to mine. “You must find them, Quint. We . . . the city needs them badly.”

I returned her stare, but she quickly broke away and pulled her mask back up. I wanted to ask her about the change of policy on genetic engineering that Hamilton had told me about, and I wanted to ask her why she was so concerned about the missing kids. But she'd already returned to the slab. She gave the instruction to her assistant to start sawing the skull apart.

I'd have to find a more appropriate setting for those questions later.

I met Katharine in the corridor.

“How's the old man?”

“All right, Quint. He's just dropped off to sleep. The nursing auxiliary told me he was making good progress.” She laughed. “And I'm glad to say that he knew exactly who I was. No mention of Caro at all.”

I was about to go to the ward to look in on Hector when my mobile rang.

“Public order guardian here.”

“Yes, Lewis.”

“Emergency Council meeting at four o'clock. Be there. Out.”

I glared at the apparatus and then at my watch. “Bloody guardians. Why can't they give more advance warning of emergency meetings?”

“Because they're emergencies?” Katharine suggested.

“Ha. We'd better get over there. So much for going through the files on the missing kids in detail.”

“I've already done that, Quint. You'll just have to trust me.”

“I do, I do.”

Now it was Katharine who was glaring.

The lower reaches of the Royal Mile were sunk in fog. The heavy drizzle almost defeated the windscreen wipers of the decrepit guard van that took us there. We could have hitched a lift in Sophia's vehicle, but the idea of the medical guardian and Katharine in the close confines of a Land-Rover wasn't a winner.

Inside the former Parliament building there was plenty more gloom. The guardians were milling around the Council chamber like zombies with hangovers. Even Davie looked like he could do with a mugful of painkillers. Katharine and I took our seats next to him in the middle of the bullring.

Hamilton took the chair and got things going. “This emergency meeting is in session. As you've heard, we have a second murder on our hands.”

The welfare guardian shot to his feet. “Even worse, acting senior guardian, we've lost three of the city's most promising young intellects. What do you propose to do?” His voice was even reedier than usual and his glasses had steamed up.

The public order guardian gave his colleague a crushing stare. “If your directorate's facility in Lauriston had been run more efficiently, perhaps the teenagers wouldn't have disappeared.”

The welfare guardian blushed but he wasn't off the hook yet.

“And if you'd allowed me to finish,” Hamilton continued, “I would have informed you of the current state of the investigation.” He turned his eyes on me. “Or rather, Citizen Dalrymple and his team would have. Go ahead, citizen.”

“Thanks a lot, Lewis,” I muttered. I looked back at him then ran my eye round the semi-circle of Council members. They were all staring at me, Sophia and the science and energy guardian with particularly severe expressions. “Right, guardians. I believe that what we have here are the components of one case, not a string of disparate ones. The footprints and other evidence suggest that the same group of three individuals broke into the archive beneath the Assembly Hall, murdered Knox 43 in the Botanics, murdered Cramond 333 in the vicinity of Lauriston Castle and abducted the teenage prodigies. That raises several questions.”

“Such as why,” the raven-haired biologist said. “If, as you assert, this is one interconnected case, a single answer to that question must underpin everything. Why did the criminals break in and steal the GEC attachment? Why did they kill the two auxiliaries? And why did they kidnap the adolescents?” She gazed down at me. “Any ideas, citizen?”

I met her gaze. I had an idea all right but Hamilton wouldn't thank me for airing it – there had to be a link between the killings and the secret genetic research that she and the small group of her colleagues were involved in. If I couldn't talk about that openly, I needed another angle of attack. It didn't take long to zero in on one.

“Why is always a complex issue,” I said. “Think of the philosophers who have tied themselves in knots over reasons and causes.” If I thought that appealing to the guardians' predilection for analytical thought would soften them up, I was wrong. They went on gazing at me stonily. “How about approaching the case differently? How about concentrating on where?”

That got them.

“What are you talking about, Dalrymple?” Hamilton demanded. “We know where the criminal activities occurred.”

“You're taking me too literally,” I said. “I mean ‘where' in conjunction with the science and energy guardian's insistence on ‘why'.”

Davie turned to me, a smile spreading across his face. I nudged him to shut him up. This was my game.

“The where I'm getting at is a city-state. It's the source of the cigarettes found at both murder scenes.” I opened my arms wide. “It's your favourite place. The democratic paradise of Glasgow.”

The predictable outbreak of outrage followed. I indulged them for a bit then struck back.

“On the other hand, guardians, all is not well in your own fair city.” That pulled them up hard. “Both Knox 43 and Cramond 333 had Glaswegian antecedents. Given that the killer's group had access to the Labour Directorate depot and that someone told them who Edinburgh's three best young brains were, it's reasonable to assume that either or both of the auxiliaries provided inside information.”

There was a long silence. Eventually the science and energy guardian rallied.

“Let's consider practicalities. How do you intend to find the missing teenagers, citizen?” she asked, her tone less assured now. “Do you think they're still in the city?”

I raised my shoulders. “I don't know, guardian.” I looked at Davie. “Anything from the command centre?”

He stood up. “We've increased guard patrols all round the city line and on the coast. There have been no sightings of the stolen vehicle or of a group including three adolescents on foot.”

“They may be hiding out somewhere, waiting for dark,” I said, lifting my eyes to the windows in the roof. “Not long to go. There's enough fog to make spotting them a hell of a job even before nightfall.”

Hamilton was sitting with his head on his left hand. With his white beard and furrowed brow, he looked like an elderly king whose forces had just been decimated on the battlefield.

“We still don't know why,” he said in a low voice. “Why is all this happening?”

No one, myself included, was up to answering that.

Katharine and I went to the central archive on George IV Bridge and worked on correlating the files all evening, but we came across nothing that stood out. Davie and Hamilton supervised interrogations of everyone that knew Cramond 333 and the three nascent geniuses. There was no sign of the missing kids or their kidnappers. They were obviously getting somewhere, but the same couldn't be said for us.

At about eleven p.m. I went through Michael MacGregor's file for the third time. I studied a report he'd written about the lecture Sophia had given on “Medicine – the Social and Ethical Interface”. The teenager seemed to have been very impressed by the medical guardian's ideas about how medical professionals could improve the lives of ordinary citizens. I got the impression that he was pretty keen on Sophia too, but maybe I was just imagining things.

I leaned back in my chair and watched Katharine rubbing her eyes. We'd gone as far as we could for the day and it was time to crash. But instead of packing up, I found myself thinking about eyes and the issue of sight. Why had the killers given the victims a third eye socket and transplanted their left eye there? If it was a ritual, did it have something to do with vision? Was the point that we see only what we want to see and close our eyes to the rest? After all, the third eye socket that had been chiselled out wasn't equipped with eyelids or lashes. It couldn't shut off unpleasant sights. I had a flash of the physical training supervisor's lifeless eye staring up at an unnatural angle through the blood-drenched leaves of the copper beech. And started to shiver.

“Come on, Quint,” Katharine said, noticing my movement. “Let's go.”

I stood up and started gathering the files together. “Where to?”

“The house of sleep,” she said, yawning.

“Ah. You didn't fancy making use of those condoms you picked up this morning then?”

She stood up slowly. “God, was that this morning? It feels like a week ago.”

“That was a no, I take it?”

“Give me a break, Quint. You're welcome to spend the night at my place if you want, but I'm too exhausted for sex.”

“No, thanks,” I said, shaking my head. “Too many nosy auxiliaries around there for me.” I smiled at her. “Besides, you left the condoms at my place.”

She headed for the exit. “Forget it. I'm not destroying my back on that mattress of yours for the second night running. Why don't you get a new one?”

“You don't like my flat, you don't like my mattress,” I said, unable to resist the temptation to bait her. Frustrating cases often make you behave like a seven-year-old. “Next you'll be telling me you don't like me.”

She turned and faced me. “Watch it, Quint.”

I'd gone too far. I kept quiet and waited for her to start walking again.

A guard vehicle was lumbering up the street towards the Lawnmarket. I flagged it down and got the female driver to take us to Grindlay Street. I followed Katharine on to the pavement outside her flat and waved the Land-Rover away. The lamp outside the auxiliary block was wreathed in mist, its light dim.

“Coming up?” Katharine asked. “Last chance.”

“I don't think so.”

“You don't think you'll come up or you don't think this is your last chance?” Her voice had an edge to it.

“Katharine?” I asked, taking her hand. “What is it?”

She shook me off gently but firmly. “I don't know, Quint. Sometimes it all gets too intense. The killings, the Council, your banter with Davie . . .”

I shrugged. “It's a way of surviving,” I said lamely.

She turned and put her key in the lock, then twisted back and kissed me once on the lips. “Go and sleep it off. That's the best way of surviving. Night.”

I watched the door close and walked slowly away. The broad thoroughfare of Lothian Road was almost invisible in the fog. I managed to find my way home by a form of ambulatory braille, narrowly escaping death from a guard Transit that came out of the murk as silently as a creature of the deep.

The lights were still on in Gilmore Place but the curfew would kick in soon. I pushed open the street door and ran up the stairs, promising myself a quick burst of the blues before turning in. Bumble Bee Slim singing “Cold-Blooded Murder” was what I had in mind.

As usual the stair light-timer gave out before I reached the third floor. While I was fumbling in my pocket for the key, I heard a quick movement behind me. I had a sudden vision of the cloaked figure with the criss-crossed face, then of the dead men with their mutilated foreheads.

“Dalrymple?” came a male voice in an unmistakable Glaswegian accent. “Quintilian Dalrymple?” He pronounced my name like it was bad joke.

“Yeah. Who the hell are—”

A gag was whipped round my mouth and I felt a sharp pain in my thigh. I tried to struggle but my limbs had already turned to lead.

Then I went on a trip to another galaxy.

Chapter Ten