The Bone Yard (10 page)

“It's not your job to do what, citizen?” The man's voice was as smooth as the duvet cover in a tourist hotel bedroom. I almost believed he was unconcerned.

He didn't wait for the receptionist to answer. “And you are?”

“Dalrymple,” I answered, flashing my authorisation again. “I need to see your files.”

“Where's your barracks number badge, auxiliary?” Davie demanded. You can't take him anywhere.

The supervisor smiled urbanely. “I do apologise, guardsman. I must have left it on my desk. I'm Moray 37.” His low barracks number indicated that he'd been a member of the Enlightenment before independence. He led us down a corridor, his long legs sheathed in an unusually tight pair of cream trousers. He didn't look like he would last a day on the border, but he'd have got in as an auxiliary before the boyscouts restricted the rank to heavy-duty headbangers.

“Well, here we are,” he said, tossing carefully tended locks of black hair back from his forehead. “
Chez moi.
”

The room we were in was a file-spotter's paradise. Apart from the table and chair a couple of paces in from the door, the furniture consisted entirely of gunmetal filing cabinets. Judging by the neat array of pens, pencils, notepads and proformas on the tabletop, I reckoned Moray 37 was that file-spotter.

Davie picked up a barracks number badge and tossed it to the auxiliary, who gave him a brief smile.

“Well, gentlemen, tell me how I can be of service.” The supervisor sat down in front of us and propped up his head on the extended fingers of one hand. He was probably tired after a hard morning with his pencil and rubber.

“A citizen by the name of Roddie Aitken,” I said. “Do you know him?”

“I think not.” Moray 37 almost pulled it off. If his eyelashes had quivered for a micro-second less, I'd have gone for it. “Should I?” he asked with a studied lack of interest.

“Citizen Macmillan at the door says he's very popular around here,” I said, watching him carefully.

The auxiliary fluttered his lashes deliberately this time. “Citizen Macmillan doesn't know the meaning of the word popular.” He leaned back and pulled open a drawer in the nearest cabinet. “Aitken, Roderick. Here he is.” He pulled out a grey cardboard folder and opened it. “Aitken, Roderick.” His features were blank. Too blank. “I can't say I remember him. It appears he's one of our people though. Next due in on Saturday.”

No chance of that. I wondered whether Moray 37 had really heard nothing on the grapevine about the murder or whether he knew more about Roddie than he was letting on. Time for the third degree. I gave Davie the nod.

“Do you think I'm funny, auxiliary?” Davie asked mildly.

Moray 37 raised an eyebrow. “You're about as far from funny as I am from playing in the front row of the barracks rugby team.”

Davie leaned over the table until his face was a few inches in front of the supervisor's. “So why are you laughing at me?” he demanded.

“I can assure you, guardsman  . . .” There was no way that sentence was ever going to reach the finishing post.

“You're taking the piss. My boss and I come in here asking questions and what do you do?” His beard was close enough to tickle Moray 37's cheeks. Davie brought his fist down hard on the table. “You give us the runaround.”

The supervisor's eyes sprang open wide, then his gaze dropped. “I  . . . oh, very well  . . . you can see the file for yourselves.”

“Thank you.” I took it and looked down the attendance sheet. Next to the dates of sex sessions is entered the name of the partner. Unmarried ordinary citizens must, as the city regulations put it, “enjoy sexual congress” once a week with a different member of either sex, depending on whether they have declared themselves hetero or homo. (Bisexuals aren't catered for – they made the original guardians feel insecure, don't ask me why.) This was supposed to be a way of widening people's sexual experiences and ensuring that everyone screwed everyone, whether they were handsome, ugly, fat (not many of them nowadays), thin, spotty, greasy-haired or whatever. Believe it or not, the Council actually reckons this improves social cohesion. I've had sessions with women who definitely did not have that effect. No doubt there are several female citizens who would say the same about me.

There wasn't anything special about Roddie's attendance sheet. I made a note of the last six female names he had been with. Then I flicked through the other pages. One detailed his sexual preferences (oral sex was one – how unusual); another, the comments made by his partners to centre staff afterwards. They were mostly complimentary, although one woman didn't think much of his technique. The last page gave the results of his most recent medical check-up, which were clear.

“Satisfied, citizen?” Moray 37 asked. His voice sounded just a bit tense.

I smiled at him. “No. Show me the reception records.”

The auxiliary went as grey as the white bread in the city's bakeries. This looked promising.

“I'll come with you,” Davie said as Moray 37 got up and headed back to citizen Macmillan's desk in the entrance hall. He suddenly seemed to be carrying a great weight.

They were back in a minute, Davie holding another grey file. The auxiliary sat down slowly.

It only took me a few seconds to discover what he was worried about. “Well, well,” I said. “The Council is going to be very upset. You haven't been balancing your records, have you?”

Moray 37 now looked like he was about to lose control of his lunch. He shook his head distractedly.

What I'd found were the check-in slips for Roddie's last three partners. And the juicy bit was that, while the attendance sheet showed three different names, the slips all had the same one. Moray 37 could be demoted for this. Regulations state that citizens are forbidden to enjoy sexual congress more than once with the same partner unless what's called a “long-term relationship permit” has been issued.

“Did you know about this, Moray 37?” I asked, showing him the slips.

“I  . . . no  . . . I  . . .” His shoulders dropped. “Well, yes, I did have some idea  . . .”

“Some idea?” Davie yelled. “What the fuck does that mean?”

The auxiliary shifted around on his chair as if a burrowing creature had just broken through the fabric of his trousers. “You know how it is, citizen,” he said, looking at me hopefully.

I did but I wasn't going to tell him that.

He started shuffling paper. “Sometimes citizens form emotional attachments. They like to see the same partner every week.”

“And what do you get for arranging these romantic trysts?” I asked.

“What do I get?” Moray 37 tried to look outraged. “I'm an auxiliary. My job is to serve citizens.”

Davie sounded like he was about to choke. “Your job, in case you've forgotten, is to serve the city.”

“Which isn't exactly the same thing,” I said. “Don't tell me you did it in the cause of young love.”

The supervisor squirmed again. “Obviously you have no understanding of the feelings experienced by young people.”

He was wrong there, but I still wasn't buying it. Auxiliaries, even older ones, aren't known for acts of charity to citizens. Maybe someone was pulling his chain, but short of taking him up to the castle and setting Davie loose on him in a big way, it didn't look like I was going to get much more out of him.

I looked at the name on the last three check-in slips. It was an unusual one. “Get me Sheena Marinello's file, auxiliary.”

Now Moray 37 had the look of a pre-independence banker whose company car had just been surrounded by a crowd of ex-customers objecting to the way their savings had gone walkabout to the Cayman Islands. He moved away.

“I'll be right behind you,” said Davie with a death's-head grin.

They went to the filing cabinets, where Moray 37 put on a performance of failing to find the file that would have won an Oscar in the days when Hollywood producers made the occasional watchable movie, rather than the Christian fundamentalist garbage they come up with now.

“Apparently the file's been – how did you put it, auxiliary? – misplaced,” Davie said from the far end of the room.

I can't say I was surprised. “Can you describe how she looks, Moray 37?”

He shrugged. “Medium height, dark brown hair, shoulder length, freckles on her cheeks – nothing particularly special.”

“Don't discuss this conversation with anyone, auxiliary,” I said as I left his office. “That way, if you're lucky, you might stay in your job.”

He looked ridiculously grateful.

In the corridor I heard the usual noises from the cubicles where citizens get their weekly hour of congress: music, lowered voices, grunts, moans, even a soft, satisfied sigh. I can't remember the last time I emitted one of those. Well, I can. It was with Katharine, and it was in my flat rather than in public.

The late afternoon shift of clients had started and there was a queue in the entrance hall. The receptionist was checking in a middle-aged couple who were glancing at each other dubiously. I waited for them to head off down the corridor, clear space between their bodies. There's nothing worse than being allocated a partner you don't even vaguely fancy.

“Citizen Macmillan,” I said. “One question.”

Her mouth slackened and her eyes opened wide.

“Don't worry. I'm not investigating you.”

She didn't look like she believed me.

“Sheena Marinello. I know you've seen her. Describe the way she looks, will you?”

“Describe the way she looks?” The thin citizen laughed once, with surprising bitterness. “She's a bloody stunner. The kind that men do anything for. Beautiful body, perfect face, legs up to her neck.” She shook her head slowly. “Roddie couldn't believe his luck.”

We walked out into the cold past more ordinary citizens: young lads with lust in their eyes and standard-issue condoms in their pockets, women who'd seen it all before standing wearily in line. Roddie Aitken had got more out of his sex sessions than most. But who exactly was Sheena Marinello, and why had the supervisor been so vague about her charms? Time for another trip to the archives.

Where I discovered something very interesting. There weren't many women called Marinello in the citizen body, and only one whose first name was Sheena.

“Look at this, Davie.” I showed him the front cover of the file. A single word had been rubberstamped in black on it.

“Bloody hell,” he said. “Was Roddie Aitken having sex with a ghost?”

“Marinello, Sheena Pauline, deceased 12.3.2021.” I read the handwritten date from the middle of the stamp, then opened the file. “She was past the age for compulsory sex sessions anyway.”

Davie looked at the photograph. “Over sixty by a mile. So what's been going on at Moray 37's sex centre?”

That made me laugh. “You're not on parade now, guardsman. I know what goes on in barracks.”

“All right, all right,” he said with a scowl. “One of my female colleagues fancied a bit of rough.”

I nodded. Occasionally auxiliaries got bored with barracks sex sessions and got themselves into ordinary citizen centres. That explained why the supervisor had looked guilty and why Sheena Marinello's file had been misplaced. It wasn't the first time dead citizens' identities had been assumed.

“Are we going to pick Moray 37 up?” Davie said as we got back into the Land-Rover.

“Hang on a minute. Let's see if the dental records search has turned up anything.” I rang the medical guardian on the vehicle's mobile phone. She sounded totally unexcited to hear my voice, but she did inform me that no match had been found for the bite mark in the records so far.

Great. I looked up George IVth Bridge to the corner of the Lawnmarket where the gallows stand and thought about taking Moray 37 in. It would mean curtains for the supervisor's career if we did. I didn't reckon he deserved demotion and the rest of his life being shunned by citizens for being an ex-auxiliary just because he'd done a colleague a favour. On the other hand, this mystery woman might be the only lead we had to Roddie's killer. Before I could decide, my mobile rang.

“Dalrymple? Hamilton here.”

I knew immediately that he had something shit-hot to tell me – he'd never use his name rather than his title on the phone unless he was seriously wound up.

“Another body's been found.”

I signalled to Davie to start the engine.

“Where is it, Lewis?”

“Among the ruins of Holyroodhouse.”

“The palace?” Not a million miles from Roddie's flat or from the sex centre. I pointed to Davie and we moved off at speed. “We're on our way.”

“As am I. And Dalrymple?”

I had to hold the phone to my ear with my shoulder as both my hands were otherwise involved. Davie had taken the corner like a Formula One man in the days when spending millions of dollars driving round and round in circles was an acceptable part of popular culture. “What, Lewis?”

“It's a woman this time.”

I felt my stomach somersault.

“Not an auxiliary by any chance?”

“How on earth did you know that?” Hamilton asked in surprise.

“Call it a hunch, Lewis. Out.”

I could live without that kind of hunch.

Chapter Seven