The Blood Tree (28 page)

“I'm glad you're in a position to give us the benefit of your expertise, Quint,” he said suavely.

“I'm not exactly in a position to refuse,” I said, trying to keep my interest hidden.

He gave me a tight smile. “I feel the Major Crime Squad needs all the help it can get with these killings. Provide that help and you will not find me ungrateful.” He sounded just like an Edinburgh guardian.

“The inspector's not exactly overjoyed by my presence.”

Duart glanced over at Hel Hyslop. “The inspector will do as she's told.”

“Very democratic,” I said.

He ignored the jibe. “And she's been told to work this case with you.”

I turned away from the dead youth as the inspector and the crime-scene squad came back to it. “This case? I thought I was here to squeeze the suspect you have in custody.”

Duart gave me a curious look. “Is this death not connected with the others?”

“Probably. We're not talking suicide, are we?”

“If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out . . .”

“For it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire,” I completed.

“Matthew 18:9.” Duart looked at me thoughtfully. “Not bad for an atheist. I didn't think the Bible was read in Edinburgh any more.”

“Oh, we read it,” I replied. “We just don't believe it.”

He shook his head. “Unlike many of the cults we have in Glasgow. Crazy people, most of them, but they're harmless in the main.”

Hel Hyslop came closer. “I'm not so sure of that. We've just found this in the dead boy's pocket.”

Duart and I craned forward and clocked a lurid handbill. There was a picture of a kingly figure in robes and crown holding a sword that dripped blood. The lettering was in crimson ink and read “Macbeth – Die for the Experience, Live Forever!”

It seemed Dougal Strachan had only managed the first half of that exhortation.

Duart left soon afterwards. Hyslop and I watched the medical examiner and the crime-scene personnel work for a while. We were given cups of strong, sweet tea from time to time – unlike at Edinburgh scenes of crimes, there was plenty of milk available.

“Any identification?” I asked. I wasn't going to tell anyone who the dead adolescent was until I found out why he was in Glasgow.

The inspector shook her head. “Nothing. No wallet, no credit cards—”

“What are they?” I asked.

Hel looked at me like I was retarded. “Credit cards? You use them to buy . . .” She broke off when she saw my smile.

“I remember them from pre-Enlightenment times,” I said. “At least with our voucher system you don't run up enormous bills and pay interest rates that a loanshark would think twice about demanding.”

She frowned at me. “As I was saying, there's nothing to identify him at all. We're pretty sure the clothes and shoes are from Glasgow shops so the chances are he was a local.”

In your dreams, I thought. The clothes were interesting though. How had the teenager got a hold of them so quickly?

“The doctor reckons he was dead before the eye mutilation,” Hyslop added. “Subject to the post-mortem, of course.”

“It looks like he took a blow to the side of the head then crawled through the grass until he died,” I said. “How about time of death?”

“The temperature suggests around three hours ago. The police patrol found him at eleven thirty-seven.” Hyslop looked at her watch. “An hour and a half ago, so he lay undiscovered for over an hour.”

“No witnesses?”

“We're still canvassing the area. Nothing yet.”

“Have the blood spots been traced back?”

She nodded. “The first ones we found are on the grass this side of the bridge.”

“Suggesting he was first hit there. The killer may have left footprints.”

Hylsop nodded. “We're looking for traces.”

I thought about the other missing adolescents. If this had happened to Dougal, what was in store for them?

“Quint?” Hel's insistent tone brought me back to the scene. “What happened to you? You looked like you were on a trip.”

I smiled at her coldly. “I am on a trip, inspector. The worst one of my life.”

Hyslop drove me back to the hotel. As we went past the lights of the hospital, I remembered Hector. Christ, how was the old man? He was lying in a recovery ward while I was stuck in the middle of an investigation in the city Edinburgh had been demonising for decades. I hoped he was all right. And that he hadn't antagonised too many nurses.

“What about the Macbeth cult then?” I asked, remembering the handbill found in the dead boy's pocket.

“Don't worry. I've already upped the surveillance on it. Tomorrow we'll check the Macbeth out in depth. There's a squad in the department that keeps an eye on the cults.”

“Keeps an eye on them?”

She shot me an angry glance. “That's not funny, Quint.”

“Suit yourself. Can I see the files on the previous killings?”

She looked at me, her eyes open wide. “They're classified.”

“Do you want me to ask Duart for them?”

She looked back at the road. Ahead of us the city centre glowed brightly. The balloons floating above each ward were lit by spotlights.

“No, I don't want you to ask Duart,” she said leadenly. “I'm getting enough hassle from him already.”

“How about sending them round to my room as soon as possible? I don't think I'll be sleeping much tonight.”

“All right. Anything to keep you quiet.”

It would take more than a heap of files to shut me up, but who was I to get in the way of the inspector's delusions?

Back on the seventh floor I called room service and ordered a bottle of top-notch Islay malt, a steak sandwich and all the local newspapers – well, I needed something to keep me going till the files arrived. I also experimented with the television. I hadn't seen one of those since I was in my first year of university, before the last election in Edinburgh. I was reassured to see that I hadn't missed much. All the channels had late night shows involving partial or total nudity – the newsreader's breasts were bare, the weather-forecaster had his foreskin on display, there was even a game of mixed football in which the participants were wearing only boots. I was thankful that most people were the right side of thirty. Then I found the over-sixties channel and hit the off-button pronto.

The newspapers were a bit more interesting. Not as regards content. That was as ephemeral as the papers before the break-up of the United Kingdom – fawning features on fashion icons (I remembered that Glasgow fancied itself as a design capital), interviews with people who reckoned they'd been shagged by extra-terrestrials, horoscopes, etc., etc. No, what was fascinating was the reporting of politics and current affairs. In the supposedly democratic city-state of Glasgow there was as much propaganda and opinion dressed as objective comment as there is in the guardians' Edinburgh.
Plus ça change
.

Then the murder files arrived and I got down to some serious reading.

Chapter Thirteen

I tried to keep at the files, but the malt whisky was as subtle as a top-rank pickpocket. It removed my insomnia without me noticing and left me flat out on the hotel room's wide and welcoming double bed. Not that I slept well or for long. The photos of the eight murder victims kept flashing in front of me and I was awake again by five in the morning. So I called room service for a bucket of coffee, failed to resist the jumbo croissant with heather honey that they specially recommended – after all, Glasgow was picking up my tab – and got back to work.

Eight victims before the Edinburgh teenager, the first nine weeks ago and the last ten days back. Alternately male, female. Murder scenes all over the city, from Milngavie and Chryston in the north to Nitshill and Pollokshields south of the Clyde. No obvious pattern as regards age, social background, work, sexuality, race, religious denomination, whatever. The only thing that linked the killings was the modus operandi – heavy blows to the side of the head with a blunt instrument and the same third-eye mutilation that I'd seen in Edinburgh. There was one difference though – only the last of the victims, Dougal Strachan, had a branch over his face. I wasn't sure what to make of that link to the murders back home.

The Major Crime Squad's files weren't exactly a picture of bureaucratic rectitude. That would have made Lewis Hamilton gloat. For a start, the Public Order Directorate back in Edinburgh was much more demanding when it came to victim profiling. Maybe people in Glasgow told the police where to stick their questions – that was hardly a realistic option in my home city. Or maybe Hel Hyslop's team was just massively overworked. Whatever the reason, they'd dug up only the scantiest details about the deceased. Only a couple of each victim's relatives and friends had been interviewed and their work histories only covered the last two jobs they'd had. There were plenty of other gaps too. If I hadn't seen the inspector in action, I'd have got the impression that she ran a ship manned by the crew of the
Marie Celeste
.

None of which speculation got me much further as regards the dead youth or Leadbelly. The latter knew more than he was telling, but I could see why he wanted an insurance policy. Hyslop and Haggs needed a killer and he fitted the bill for at least one of the murders. Too well, I reckoned. I could smell a set-up even more pungent than the reek from the former drugs gang member's armpits. But why him? And where had Dougal Strachan been since he arrived in Glasgow?

I went over to the window and drew the heavy velvet curtains. There was a mist over the city. It was keeping the dawn's light at bay, swaddling Glasgow and its river in an insulating blanket. I thought of the paddy fields at Kelvingrove and the ploughing I'd seen on the way in. Global warming had apparently made the west of Scotland more fertile than it had ever been. Then I thought about Leadbelly's Baby Factory. More fertility there, by the sounds of it. Was there some connection between it and the deaths, or had Dougal Strachan been in the vicinity by coincidence? I wondered how I could find out about the Rennie Institute and the hospitals near the latest crime scene without telling Hyslop what I knew. That was something I was definitely not keen on doing. Like Leadbelly, I wanted to use what I could for my own ends.

I went towards the centre of the luxurious room and looked at the giant television screen. That was it. When I was jumping from one shitty channel to another last night I'd come across a menu page. One of the options was called “Library and Information Services”. Digital archivist dreamland. I grabbed the handset and called up the menu, then highlighted my selection. That gave me a surprise. A keyboard layout appeared on the screen and I was invited to type in what I wanted. There was a voice option as well but I didn't fancy having a conversation with a machine. Touch screens and voice interaction don't exist in Edinburgh as most of the computers hogged by the guardians and auxiliaries date from before the millennium.

I requested information about the Rennie Institute, not expecting to be told much apart from “Piss off, ya nosey Embra shite”. But no, in democratic Glasgow it seemed that information was in the public domain. The institute had a mission statement that must have been written by a public relations expert who spent his spare time on the hot line to the almighty:

The Rennie Institute is dedicated to the sanctity of human life. Our research is intended to enable human beings to achieve their full potential, to live without fear of hereditary disease, to bring healthy and highly intelligent children into the world. At the Rennie, nothing is impossible – humanity can reach the stars!

There was plenty more of that; plenty more self-satisfied bullshit that didn't mention the words “genetic engineering”, but made it pretty clear that's what they were into in a big way. I sat back on the bed and thought what that might mean. The Rennie was a baby factory, the Rennie carried out research into humans' “full potential”, whatever that was; and the Rennie was located in the southern of the two hospitals in Kelvingrove, the one that was a few minutes' walk from where Dougal Strachan was found. I remembered the break-in at the Parliament archive. Could there be some connection between the Genetic Engineering Committee file attachment that had gone missing and the murders in Glasgow, as well as those in Edinburgh?

A key rattled in the lock. I leaped to the screen and cleared it just before Hyslop and Haggs walked in. They were both wearing casual clothes – all the better to perform surveillance operations with, presumably.

“You're up early,” Tam said. He sounded disappointed. No doubt he'd been looking forward to giving me a wake-up kick. He looked at the files I'd strewn across the floor. “Where did you get those?” he demanded.

“It's all right, sergeant,” the inspector said. “Quint was to be fully briefed – Duart's instructions.”