The Blood Tree (19 page)

“Do we know what the missing kids were doing prior to their disappearance?” I asked, striding to catch up with him.

Hamilton supplied the answer. “Adam 102 told me that they went for the normal morning run with a physical training auxiliary at seven. They were supposed to be working on an unsupervised group project after that. They were seen walking in the grounds around ten o'clock, despite the weather. The alarm was raised when they didn't turn up for the daily Platonic philosophy lecture at ten-thirty.”

“Who saw the bogeyman in the cloak?” I asked.

“A gardener,” Davie replied. “He's down at the wire.”

“Why on earth didn't he report it earlier?” the guardian demanded.

“He couldn't,” Davie said. “He was bound and gagged. One of his mates found him at ten-forty, not long after the alarm was raised.”

“What about the physical training guy?” I asked.

Davie shook his head slowly. “No sign of him yet. I've got search parties out in the area beyond the wire.”

We reached the fence a couple of minutes later. Three guard vehicles had been parked in front of it. I made out white-overalled figures moving around, examining the ground and the wire.

The scene-of-crime squad leader came to meet us. “Guardian, commander, citizen,” he said, choosing his word order carefully. It wouldn't do for an efficient young auxiliary to prioritise the likes of me, special investigator or not. “There are a lot of prints on the ground. Several auxiliary-issue training shoes – presumably the inmates'; we're checking their shoe sizes – and several other prints.”

“Not by any chance workmen's boots like those you found beneath the Assembly Hall and in the Botanics?” I asked.

“Some of them are, I think,” the auxiliary replied. “I'll confirm that as soon as the casts are compared.”

“What about the wire?” Davie asked.

“Cut from four feet to ground level, pulled back and fastened to the ground with a couple of two-foot wooden stakes.”

“Any equipment left behind?” I asked, thinking of the dead man's injuries and the idea that a mallet or the like might have caused them.

“No, citizen.” The auxiliary led us past the marked footprints to the fence. The ends of the stakes had been knocked in with a heavy blunt instrument all right. Could it be the one that had smashed in the side of Knox 43's skull?

Davie was looking ahead into the mist. “The firth's less than a mile down there,” he said.

I raised my left arm. “And City Farm Number 7 where Knox 43 was caught is just over there.”

Hamilton frowned at me. “You think there's a connection?”

I shrugged, turning back to the scene-of-crime squad leader. “Any signs of a struggle? Heels dug in, that sort of thing?”

He shook his head. “Not really. One of the inmates slipped over here—” he pointed to a shallow furrow. “The ground's so damp that he or she could easily have done that accidentally.”

“What are you getting at, Dalrymple?” the guardian asked. “You think they went willingly?”

“Could be. On the other hand, they might have been so terrified by the guy in the cloak that they did everything he said.” I looked across to a slumped figure in the front of one of the Land-Rovers. “Time to talk to our witness.” I turned to the others. “I'll do this. You know how most ordinary citizens react to guard uniforms.”

Lewis and Davie weren't happy but I wasn't going to let them argue. I turfed the guard driver out and sat down on the warm seat. The crumpled figure next to me didn't bother to look up.

“I'm Dalrymple,” I said. “Call me Quint.”

He glanced round and took in my citizen-issue clothes. “You one of us?” he asked in a low voice.

“Aye. What's your name?”

The gardener still wasn't sure about me. “You're no' an undercover shite?”

“Naw, I'm a fully out-in-the-open shite, me.”

He gave a laugh then choked it off abruptly and sat up straight. Now I could see that his cheeks were marked where a gag had been tied tightly around his head. His eyes were jerking about uncontrollably. I guessed he was around fifty but he could have been less – ordinary citizens age quickly in Enlightenment Edinburgh.

“What's your name?” I repeated.

“Didn't your friends outside tell you?” he responded, sullen again.

“I told you, I'm not one of them. I work with them, sure, but that doesn't mean I share their views about where ordinary citizens belong.”

“In the mud with the worms and the dead leaves,” he said. Pretty poetic for a gardener, I thought. “Andy Skinner. What do you want to know?”

“What did you see, Andy?”

He grunted. “Fuck all. This bastard weather. You know what it's like being outside all day in this wet without a decent coat. Those fuckers in the guard have their special waterproofs, but what do we get?” He spread his arms in a sodden donkey jacket that matched my own. “These things keep you about as dry as a tart's mattress.”

“True enough,” I said. “So what did you see, Andy?”

“I wasn't joking, pal,” he insisted. “I saw fuck all. The shites must have crept up on me. Before I knew it I was in the bushes with my mouth stopped up and my hands tied to my ankles.”

“How about the three inmates? What were they up to?”

“I didnae see them.” Then, having led me up his garden path, he gave me a weak smile. “But I heard them.” He shook his head. “Bastard know-alls. They were on about how easy it was to con their tutors in some project.”

That didn't sound like teenagers who were about to abscond. “You heard them before you were attacked?”

Andy Skinner nodded. “Aye, for a minute or so. I was over by that herbaceous border.” He pointed to a strip of earth near the fence.

“Then you were grabbed. How many guys?”

“Three, I think. Two of them got hold of me. They didn't exactly attack me though. Just dragged me over to the bushes there.”

“Did you see them?”

“No. They got something round my eyes pretty quickly. They stuffed it in my mouth afterwards and tied something thicker round my eyes.”

I looked at him. “But you did see something before they blindfolded you, didn't you, Andy?”

His jaw was slack. “Aye . . .” He shook his head. “Some
thing
is right. Jesus Christ, I almost pissed my pants. This big fella's coming towards me like he really means business. He's wearing a fuckin' great cloak that's spread out around him like a pair of wings. And he's got a fuckin' great mallet in one hand.”

“Anything in the other hand?”

The gardener looked at me curiously. “I don't think so. Why?”

I ignored his question. “What about his face, Andy? What did he look like?”

A tremor shook his body and he stared at me, his lower jaw hanging loose. “Christ, he was a right monster. He must have spent his life fighting, his face was that torn up.” He straightened up again. “I'll tell you something though. His beard didnae look real.”

His beard and what else, I wondered. “Did you hear him speak?”

Skinner shook his head. “Uh-uh. He came up after I'd been blindfolded and I heard him breathing.” He shivered again. “Christ, it was weird, like a kind of gasping. Then I was dragged off and dumped in the bushes. They rammed the blindfold into my mouth and left me there. I couldn't see anything. I was behind a tree trunk and anyway, the mist was as thick as a guardsman.”

I smiled. I reckoned he'd given me all he had.

There was a tap on the window. Davie.

“Quint, come over here,” he said. There was tension in his voice.

I followed him to the fence.

“One of the search units has found the physical training auxiliary who was with the kids earlier in the morning.”

Hamilton appeared at Davie's shoulder. “What's going on, commander?” he asked.

“They've found the trainer,” Davie said, his face pale. “Dead.”

“Bugger,” the guardian said, lapsing from normal standards of auxiliary language.

“That's not all,” Davie added. “He's got a branch over his face like Knox 43.”

Chapter Nine

A young guardswoman came out of the mist beyond the wire. “This way, guardian,” she called nervously. I got the feeling this was a big day for her – first violent death and first encounter with Lewis Hamilton. I wasn't sure which was making her twitch more.

We followed her past auxiliaries who were crouching to examine footprints in the mud, and entered the woods. A maroon and white tape had been run along the ground to indicate more prints and traces. We kept to the left of it and tried to avoid the heavy drops of accumulated rainwater that were falling from the branches. As we got deeper into the trees, the birdsong faded away. The blackbirds and thrushes were keeping well clear of the body we had to confront.

“It's . . . I mean he's over the wall there,” the guardswoman said, gulping hard.

“All right,” Hamilton said gruffly. “Stand back if it's too much for you.”

The female auxiliary swallowed again, caught between the desire to impress her superior and the urgent need to empty her stomach. The latter took priority.

We straddled the low dyke and approached the search squad members. They were standing in a huddle on the pot-holed asphalt of the Cramond Road but when they spotted us, they dispersed like a flock of frightened sheep.

“Bloody hell,” Davie said under his breath. “The branch is from the same kind of tree.”

I kneeled by the corpse after looking quickly at the road surface to check for prints. There was nothing obvious. The dead man was wearing an auxiliary-issue tracksuit and mud-encrusted running shoes. He was lying on his left side, his knees drawn up like Knox 43's had been in the Botanic Gardens. I pulled on protective gloves and picked up the right hand. The skin was clammy and the joint was still loose. He hadn't been dead for very long. The fingers were closed around a branch of blood-drenched copper beech that was covering his head and right shoulder. Some of the reddish-brown leaves had fallen away and a mutilated face was visible through the remaining foliage.

“See if you can find the tree this was taken from, Davie,” I said over my shoulder. “There might be prints on or around it.”

“Right.” He moved away, to be replaced by the public order guardian.

Hamilton steeled himself to look at the mass of blood that had hardened around the hole in the forehead. An eyeball was protruding from the shattered bone, staring back at us at a crazy angle.

“Good God,” the guardian exhaled.

“The Council says there isn't any god, good or otherwise,” I reminded him.

“This body is evidence of that,” Hamilton said with a shiver. He stood up and took a couple of paces back. “It's the same killer, isn't it?”

“Looks like it,” I said. “Same modus operandi, same body position, the branch is from a copper beech again.” I rocked back on my heels. “I wonder if they're devotees of Sherlock Holmes. There's a story called ‘The Copper Beeches'.”

“They?” the guardian asked, ignoring the literary reference.

“The gardener reckons there were three of them, which would square with the footprints around Knox 43's body,” I said, standing up and shaking the pins and needles from my legs.

The scene-of-crime squad leader climbed over the wall and came up.

“Another customer,” I said to him. “You'd better get going with the photos and trace searches. I want the body taken away for post-mortem as soon as possible.”

The auxiliary nodded.

“What's the hurry?” Hamilton asked. “The cause of death is pretty obvious.”

“I want to get some idea of the time of death,” I replied. “The missing kids went for a run with the dead man at seven o'clock, but they were seen outside again around ten. If this guy was killed soon after he finished the run, it would mean that the kidnappers were hanging around for several hours. In that case they would have left traces somewhere.”

“Quint!” Davie called from beyond the wall. “We've located the tree the branch came from.” His face broke into an unlikely smile. “And that's not all we found. There's a cigarette butt on the ground by the trunk that looks very like the ones found in the Botanics.”

We split into pairs and searched the woods. A few isolated footprints were found, but most were concentrated in a small clearing inside the tree line on the castle side and on a track leading to the hole in the wire. All of those were confirmed as matching the prints in the Botanics.

“What about the prints I found at the tree?” Davie asked when we broke off to compare notes. “They aren't from workmen's boots.”

“No, they aren't, commander,” the scene-of-crime squad leader said. “They run from the copper beech to the wall and then to the roadside ten yards from the body.” He shook his head. “I can't identify them without recourse to the files in the castle but I don't think they're Supply Directorate issue.”