Body Politic (10 page)

“This is serious, Hector.” Even when I was at primary school, he'd insisted I address him that way. I don't know whether he subscribed to some late-eighties belief in equality between parents and children or whether he just liked the sound of his own name.

He sat down on the sofa beside me and stretched out his legs. Even indoors he always wore the guardians' tweed jacket and heavy brogues though he was no longer entitled to them. The polish from the old brown shoes made my nostrils twitch.

“Fire away, then,” he said encouragingly. He was more sympathetic to his fellow men's weaknesses than some of his activities as one of the original guardians suggested.

“I've been taken on by the Council. To investigate a murder.”

His eyebrows rose and he began to question me in detail. I didn't mention the ENT Man. He'd never heard about him.

“So what do you think?” I asked when he'd finished interrogating me. “You were information guardian. Should the Council be suppressing all news of the killing?”

He got up slowly then glared down at me. “Certainly not. You're as much to blame as they are. You should have seen where this would lead.”

I didn't have a clue what he meant, but it was usually worth giving him some slack. “Which is where?”

“It's obvious, isn't it?” he shouted. “Why did I resign from the Council?”

I'd had enough of riddles. “What's that got to with it?” I shouted back.

“Answer the question, boy!”

The only way was to humour him. I bit my tongue. “All right. You left because you thought the guardians were going beyond the principles of the Enlightenment and taking too much power for themselves.”

“Exactly.” He was nodding his head like a teacher whose thickest pupil had just grasped that two and two don't make five. “Which, for all the high-mindedness of the first Council members, would inevitably lead to corruption.”

“And murder?”

“Why not? I'd say that this killing is a direct result of the Council's concentration of power in directorates personally controlled by its members.”

Now he'd lost me. “Hang on a second. Lewis Hamilton's got about as much idea of how to handle a murder case as I have of respecting my elders and betters, but you can't deny his directorate's cut down crime in general. What's corrupt about that?”

Hector shook his head. “You're taking what I said too narrowly. I'm talking about the regime as a whole. If there's no debate, no opposition, as has happened now that absolute power rests with the Council, there's bound to be a lowering of standards, just like there was in the House of Commons before it self-destructed.”

He may not have been a guardian any more but he still spoke in the long sentences favoured by that rank. Still, what he'd said about corruption had made me prick up my ears. “How come you've never spoken about this before?” I asked. “Have you given up on the Enlightenment completely now?”

“Of course not.” The old man went over to his desk. “When we founded the Edinburgh Enlightenment at the turn of the century, we were convinced that the only way out of the political and economic nightmare in the United Kingdom was by decentralising power. Not the feeble assemblies that some of the old parties had set up, but the real thing – regional government by bodies of experts, some of them even philosophers like Plato's guardians. Here, I want to show you something.” He started rummaging around in his papers.

I thought about the early years. I was still at school when the party was formed – sixteen, and almost as fascinated by Edinburgh's new politics as I was by the blues. The world was changing day by day. Oil in the Aegean had lead to the end of American investment in the North Sea and a slump in the UK's already weakened economy. At the same time China, bolstered by the return of Hong Kong, had become the dominant economic power and the USA had reverted to the self-obsession that's a hallmark of their history.

It wasn't long before crime reduced the majority of British cities to battlefields. Drugs were the country's only significant industry. The government reintroduced the death penalty in 1999 and became increasingly assertive in its handling of foreign policy, egged on by the tabloid press. Following a European Union directive to withdraw British forces from Gibraltar, Downing Street threatened the use of nuclear warheads against Spanish ships. This resulted in international sanctions and the sealing of the Channel Tunnel. The catastrophic accident at the Thorp installation at Sellafield in 2003 was the final straw. The country fell into total disorder and the Enlightenment got the opportunity it needed. Edinburgh citizens voted the party in with a huge majority after a London mob barricaded MPs in the chamber during their last emergency debate and burned the place to the ground. I can't say I was too upset.

“Got it.” Hector held up a piece of paper triumphantly. “Read that.”

I looked at the typed sheet. It was a page from the minutes of a Council meeting six months after the election victory. I studied it with mounting amazement. “‘As a result of negative votes by the education and public order guardians, we do not approve the information guardian's proposal that the Council commit itself to resign en masse if evidence of corruption in any directorate is brought to light.'” I glanced at my father and whistled. “Jesus. You tried to get them to agree to that and they refused?”

His eyes were unusually wide open. “You see what I mean? That proposal was an integral part of the Enlightenment's planning from the beginning – it was the ultimate safeguard. But once we were in power, people's priorities changed.”

“I'm not surprised Hamilton voted against it, but the education guardian . . .”

“Who is now the senior guardian.” The old man sat down, his limbs suddenly loose and his jaw slack. “From that day on I never felt the same about the Council. I stuck it out for another nine years, but organising propaganda is hard when your heart isn't in it.”

It was one of the few times I'd seen my father looking like he needed support. I wish I'd shown him that I felt for him, but neither of us was ever much good at displays of emotion. The Enlightenment deadened us completely.

Pretty soon afterwards Hector sat up straight. His periods of introspection were always short. “Look on the bright side, Quintilian,” he said. “People are better off than they were and they know it. Electricity and water may be in short supply, but there's enough. There are no cars or private telephones or personal computers. There's no television, though only a cretin would choose to sit in front of what used to be served up every evening. But think of all the benefits: jobs, a reliable health and welfare system, safety in the streets, education throughout their lives for all.” He glanced at me and smiled ironically. “Except for people who've been demoted, of course.” He looked away, shaking his head. “Those were our ideals and they've actually been achieved. Sometimes I still find it hard to believe.”

I admired his ability to criticise the regime and then salute its achievements, but I wondered how close he was to the reality of life in the city now. “I saw Billy Geddes last night,” I said, then told him about the Bearskin.

“Sounds like he's turned out to be one of the backsliders I was talking about,” Hector said scathingly. He was never keen on what he referred to as “affairs of the cock”.

“Maybe he isn't that bad,” I said, scrabbling around for something to put up in mitigation. “Maybe he's just keen on cars and flash clothes.”

“I'd have him down the mines before he could zip himself up.”

He had a point. I was having a hard time with Billy myself.

“I never agreed with all that entertainment for the tourists,” the old man added. “At least the gambling and whoring. I'm no Calvinist, but to me that's just dirty money.”

I had a sudden vision of the perfect woman on the stage and wondered how she'd got involved in that kind of work. “The Medical Directorate checks all the women regularly,” I said. “There hasn't been a case of AIDS for years.”

“Not that we've been told about,” Hector said. “There hadn't been a murder . . .”

Boots were pounding up the stairs. The noise grew louder, then Davie burst in, my mobile phone in his hand.

“Quint, you're wanted. Come on.”

“What is it?”

Davie struggled to catch his breath. “They've found another body . . . in Dean Gardens.” He looked at my father, then back to me. “Male this time . . . same modus operandi, it seems.”

Hector was looking worried. I didn't feel too good myself.

“Sounds like you've got a psychopath on your hands, Quintilian. Be careful.”

Davie set off out the door and I followed. “I'll try to come again next Sunday. Keep well, old man.”

Halfway down the stairs I heard him calling out. Something about me not telling him if I'd seen my mother. At that moment, she was the last thing on my mind.

Chapter Six

“Shit, Davie.” I clutched the seat. “I told you, I don't want to die.”

“Don't worry. There hasn't been a fatality on the roads for years.” He kept his foot on the floor and called ahead to the next checkpoint. We raced through and were soon crossing the Dean Bridge. The parkland dropping steeply down to the Water of Leith was bright green in the sunlight, the only trace of the days of fog a silver sheen on the leaves and grass that had almost evaporated. Along with the last slim chance of this being a one-off killing.

Then the Land-Rover swung round hard into Academy Place and I remembered two things. The first was irrelevant, a desperate attempt by my mind to distract itself from what lay in the park; it had come to me that the street used to be called Eton Terrace before the Council took steps to change all names with suspect cultural connotations. The second thing gave me a jolt of electric-chair proportions. Adam Kirkwood's flat, where I'd been with Katharine two days earlier, was a couple of hundred yards further on. I hoped to hell he wasn't the latest corpse.

I counted six guard vehicles, including the public order guardian's with its maroon pennant. The windows of the houses lining the street were filled with spectators. No chance of the Council keeping this killing quiet.

Lewis Hamilton emerged from the gap in the railings where the gate to these formerly private gardens had been. “Dalrymple, it's about time you turned up.” His cheeks had an unhealthy tinge and I reckoned he'd been closer to the dead man than he would have liked.

“Who found the body?” I headed down the slope to the bushes where a group of guardsmen and women stood.

“We did,” said the guardian. “A woman who refused to identify herself telephoned from the callbox at the end of the bridge. Probably one of the local residents who didn't want to get involved.”

“Very public-spirited of her.”

“There are rotten apples in every barrel, citizen.”

That was too inviting to ignore. “I thought your directorate had got rid of all of them.”

He gave me a glare that made me feel a lot better. “Clear the way,” he ordered curtly. It wasn't the first time I'd seen him taking things out on his auxiliaries.

I pulled on rubber gloves and dropped to my knees. There were a lot of footprints on the grass at the edge of the bushes but it was clear they were all recent – from the guard and the woman who'd raised the alarm. It was also obvious what had drawn her to the spot. The stench of decomposing flesh was like a curtain I'd just poked my head through. Beyond the branches a discoloured mass was visible. Even at ten yards' range I could see that the body was completely naked.

There was a small clearing beyond the outer foliage. I approached from an oblique angle to avoid touching any footprints. As I got nearer the corpse their number increased and I marked the deepest indentations so that casts could be taken. I already knew what kind of footwear had made them – non-nailed citizen-issue boots, size twelve. That was all I needed. The Ear, Nose and Throat Man took size twelves. That's how I was sure the man in Princes Street Gardens that night was him, even before I got close. He was wearing a pair of ancient cowboy boots with square toes – I'd found prints from them at several of the murder sites. Jesus. He couldn't still be alive. I clung to that certainty. After he skewered himself, I pushed him into the foundations of the stand they were building beside the new racetrack. Then I heaped a great load of earth over him till I passed out because of the loss of blood from my finger. But I came to before the workmen arrived the next morning and I saw them pour the concrete over him. It was a coincidence, the shoe size, but it shook me for longer than it should have.

I crawled around with my magnifying glass but found nothing else in the way of traces. No fibres from clothing, no buttons torn off in the struggle, no strands of hair.

Davie came in on his hands and knees, carefully avoiding the marks I'd drawn around the footprints. He looked across at the body and grimaced. “How long do you think he's been here?”

I couldn't put it off any longer. “I was just getting round to having a look.”

Davie was holding a handkerchief to his face. “After you.”

“Thanks a lot.” I moved forward. The man was lying on his left side, his limbs swollen under greenish purple skin. The abdomen was grotesquely distended. A couple of yards behind his head was a neat pile of clothes, boots placed on top. He was short, no more than five feet five inches, and heavily built. At least I could be sure he wasn't Adam Kirkwood. I could also be sure that something violent had been done to the lower part of his back.

Taking a deep breath, I bent over the blackened hole. And almost threw up. It was seething. I had an idea there would be insect infestation, but not this much. The temperature under the fog carpet hadn't been too low so the maggots were fat, clustered over what was left of the flesh around the ribs. I reckoned they were in the third instar of growth. The flies had laid their eggs in the cavity which had once been occupied by the dead man's right kidney. I turned towards the upper part of the body and froze solider than the permafrost on a Siberian steppe. Something had moved.