The Bone Yard (25 page)

I spent the day at the autopsy and checking out Raeburn 03's rooms in his barracks and in the castle. There were no traces of Electric Blues in his stomach and no bags full of the drug in his wardrobe. That would have been too easy. Machiavelli and his accommodation were as clean as a model would-be auxiliary's locker in the tented training camp in the Meadows. I did find copies of his namesake's works on his bedside table, but they're required reading for his ranks so I didn't even smile.

In the evening I attended the Council meeting. I thought there was a chance that the senior boyscout would be shaken up by Machiavelli's gruesome death but if he was, he wasn't showing it. What did get me going was his reluctance to accept that the latest murder was connected to the earlier two. Fair enough, there was no tape. But the other similarities convinced me that it was the same killer. Not for the first time I had the impression that I would make plenty of progress with the case if I tied the senior guardian to a chair and gave him the third degree. There was about as much chance of that happening as there used to be of insurance companies responding quickly to claims in pre-independence times. I considered trying to get Hamilton to give me access to his computer again so I could check out his deputy further, but that would have been a waste of time. What the senior guardian says goes. Unless you're an insubordinate schemer like I am. I went back to my flat to scheme.

“What do we do now?” Davie asked.

We were sitting in the Land-Rover in Gilmore Place under the light of the streetlamps. It was glowing dully on the grey sludge that the morning's snow had become.

“Good question,” I said. “We haven't exactly got much to go on.” There had been no reported sightings of Machiavelli's Land-Rover during the time he was missing, so we had no idea where he'd been before the killer caught up with him. The vehicle had been found in a back street near the King's Buildings with only Machiavelli's and other guard personnel prints on it. The sentry's log at the chemistry labs had no record of Hamilton's deputy being there. And there were no witnesses around Blackford Hill – everyone had been asleep in their uncomfortable beds.

“What did the medical guardian have to say in the Council meeting?”

I shrugged. “She just confirmed that the time of death was around four in the morning and that the cause of death was severing of the carotid arteries. The wounds on the thighs and abdomen and the rope marks on the wrists were similar to those of the previous victims.”

Davie looked up from his notes. “And the weapon?”

“A sharp knife with a large blade, would you believe?”

“Great.” He closed his notebook. “Like I said, what next?”

I opened the Land-Rover's door. “Ask me that tomorrow morning, guardsman.”

“Don't do anything I wouldn't with that deserter woman, Quint,” he said, leaning out of the window.

I looked back at him sternly. “As a loyal auxiliary, I know you wouldn't do anything at all with a deserter, my friend.”

“That's exactly what I mean,” he replied, slipping the vehicle into gear and pulling away.

What I called him was drowned out by the racket from an exhaust pipe shot through with more holes than a 1990s election manifesto.

In the stairwell's feeble light I made out a hooded figure sitting on the floor across the landing from my front door. My heart seized up for a couple of seconds, then I remembered who else wore a long coat.

“Katharine?” I moved towards her. “What are you doing out here?”

She raised her head slowly. Her face was pale, the rings around her eyes so dark that for a moment I thought she'd gone three rounds with the city's female boxing champion. She opened her mouth, whispered a few words I didn't catch and pointed with an unsteady hand at my door.

I followed the direction of her arm. And froze as solid as the ground around the concrete post at the top of Blackford Hill that morning.

“Tell me it's not what I think it is,” Katharine said faintly.

I pulled out my mobile. “Davie?” I shouted. “Get back here. Now!”

“Tell me, Quint,” Katharine repeated insistently, her breath catching in her throat. “Tell me.”

I stepped carefully over the flagstones and knelt down in front of the discoloured bag that had been hung from my doorknob. I could make out the stamp of the Supply Directorate. It looked like a flour sack but I knew very well it didn't contain that substance. More like a single, heavy object the shape and size of a football. On the floor beneath the sack were spatters of coagulated and partially frozen blood.

“Fucking hell,” I said under my breath, then jerked backwards as the street door below slammed. The sound of nailed boots sprinting up the stairs filled my ears.

“What is it?” Davie yelled as he careered on to the landing, narrowly avoiding Katharine's legs.

I pointed at the sack. “What do you think's in there?”

His eyes widened. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes.” I pulled on rubber gloves then lifted the weighty bag off the handle and set it down gingerly. “Knife.”

Davie handed me his service weapon. I took a deep breath and cut through the string round the top of the sack. Parted the flaps of material. And looked down on the severed head of Raeburn 03.

I heard Katharine move and waved to her to keep back.

Davie leaned forward, his lips drawn back in a rictus of disgust. “Bloody hell,” he hissed. Then he clutched my arm. “What's that in his mouth, Quint?”

“Give me your torch.”

I tilted the head over and shone the light at the senior auxiliary's swollen lips. The teeth were apart and a flat object covered in transparent plastic was protruding about two inches from them. I looked closer. There was no way I'd be able to open those hardened jaw muscles without an expanding clamp. That was a job for the medical guardian. But I already knew what was in there. The killer had provided another piece of music. And it had been personally delivered to me.

Chapter Sixteen

As I knelt down beside Katharine, the staircase lights flashed three times.

“Come on, that's the curfew,” I said. “Let's get you inside.” I looked over my shoulder at Davie. “Call the medical guardian, will you? And don't let anyone inside the flat.”

He nodded, glancing down at the sack and what had been inside it. “This should keep everyone occupied out here.”

I pushed Katharine in gently as the lights went out and lit a couple of candles. She slumped down on the sofa, her chin resting on her breastbone. Her breathing was uneven. She looked like an explorer who'd given everything and was now resigned to the end.

“Hey,” I said, sitting beside her and touching her hand. It was ice cold. “How long were you out there?”

She shivered but no words came.

I squeezed her chilled skin. “Tell me, Katharine. I need to have an idea of when the  . . . the sack was put on my door.”

She shivered again, this time more violently then laid into me. “You only care about your fucking investigation, don't you, Quint? It was the same the last time. I should have known better than to come back. I don't mean anything to you, do I?”

I left the question unanswered, feeling the sting of her words turn into a warm sensation deep inside. So it wasn't just concern about the drug formula that had brought her back to the city. Apparently she had some interest in me after all.

“I've only been back for about half an hour,” she said, looking away from me. Then she let out a great sob.

I took a chance and put my arm round her shoulders. She resisted for a few seconds, then moved towards me.

“I  . . . I couldn't touch it,” she said, her voice quivering like a frightened child's. “I couldn't get to the door handle.”

“It's all right, Katharine. I didn't exactly have a great time touching the sack myself.”

She raised her head and looked at me in the candlelight. “No, there's more to it than that.” Her eyes burned into mine. “You see, I knew what it was.”

I stiffened involuntarily, suddenly gripped by the horrific thought that she had some involvement in the killing. “How, Katharine?” I asked, my voice unsteady.

“I've seen a man's head in a sack before,” she said, her eyes still fixed on mine. Whatever else I read in them, it wasn't guilt. She'd been in bed with me all last night.

Outside on the stair there was the pounding of many feet. Davie knocked and stuck his head round the door. “They're here.”

“I'll be out in a minute,” I said, then turned back to Katharine. “When did you see a head before?” I got her to her feet and steered her towards the bedroom.

She sat down on the bed and wrapped her arms round herself. “The time I told you about with the  . . . the Cavemen  . . . the leader was a madman and he used to lay into his own men all the time.” She glanced up at me, then looked down again. “Two of them started fighting over me  . . . Christ, I don't know why  . . . they all had plenty of time to do whatever they wanted  . . . and the leader, he just waded in and grabbed one of the guys by the hair  . . . he had this long bayonet and he  . . . he hacked the head off  . . . then he put it in a sack and made the other Caveman wear it round his neck  . . .”

“Jesus, Katharine.”

She looked up again and shrugged. “I was happy at the time, though I made sure I didn't show it. One animal less.” Her voice broke. “But you don't forget things like that.”

I sat down beside her. “No, you don't. You wouldn't be a normal human being if you could.”

Katharine laughed bitterly. “No way am I a normal human being, Quint.”

“You think anyone else in this room is?” I stood up. “Look, I'm going to have to get out there. Stay here. I'll be back.”

She fell back on the bed like she'd been poleaxed. “I spend my life waiting for you, Quintilian Dalrymple.”

As I pulled the covers over her, it struck me that there were plenty of less encouraging things she could have said.

“What do you think, guardian?”

The Ice Queen looked up from the mortuary table on which Machiavelli's head had been placed. Behind her the body had been laid out on another table. In the bright lights it looked like a scene from one of the television pathologist series that were so popular in pre-Enlightenment times. Except that hospital finances in the 1990s wouldn't have stretched to two tables for the parts of a single body.

“What do I think?” the medical guardian asked irritably. “I think there are better ways to spend an evening.”

I was surprised. I'd always assumed that the Ice Queen was in the habit of shutting herself up in the morgue's refrigerated storeroom overnight.

“On the other hand,” she continued, “I know that this head belongs to that body and I know that this is our killer's third victim.”

That was more like it – competent analysis a robot would be proud of. “What about the tape?”

“Quite so.” The guardian straightened up and beckoned to her assistant to remove the contents of the dead auxiliary's mouth.

I followed her over to the sink. “Any thoughts on the victim?”

The Ice Queen gave me a sidelong glance. “You surely don't expect me to speculate on matters outside my field, citizen.”

I grinned. “They aren't exactly outside your field. Mach  . . . Raeburn 03 was very well connected in the Council. If he was a target, who's next among your colleagues?”

She shook the water from her hands and made a passable attempt at indifference. “I really don't see what you're getting at. The other victims had no such connections.”

I handed her a paper towel. “Maybe the killer's working his way up the hierarchy. Ordinary citizen, auxiliary, senior auxiliary – next, a guardian?”

She dropped the towel in a bin, managing to imply that my line of thought should go with it. “I'd keep that idea to yourself, citizen,” she said, looking across to the table. “Your tape's been ejected.”

I almost fell over. Verbal humour from the Ice Queen was about as likely as spontaneous cheering during a debate on
The Republic
. I took the tape from her sidekick and headed for the machine.

Before I got there the guardian's mobile rang. She spoke briefly and signed off.

“An emergency Council meeting has been called, citizen. Your presence is required.”

I started walking again. “What, now?”

“Now.”

I slotted the cassette into the cassette player, desperate to hear what was on it. I wasn't disappointed.

Great music, but not exactly consistent with the other pieces. Then I got the message. And experienced meltdown.

The Council chamber. If the senior guardian was shocked by the discovery of Machiavelli's head, he wasn't showing it. That wasn't the case with his colleagues. They were standing around him with their mouths open like a group of statues in the middle of a fountain. Fortunately the water supply had been turned off.