The Blood Tree (47 page)

“Good place for a meet,” I said to Macbeth, trying to put him off his guard. Then I caught a glimpse of a red pick-up at the end of the house. It looked like it had Labour Directorate markings. Could it be the one Broadsword and his friends had used at the time of the break-in?

Rennie grabbed the vehicle's torch and got out. “Kill your lights,” he said, pulling Aurora after him roughly.

I bit my lip as I obeyed the command. Then I climbed down and followed the two of them to the entrance.

Macbeth stood listening and looking for a long time, then pushed Aurora up the steps and through the space where the door had been. He flashed the torch five times then spoke in a low voice.

“All hail Macbeth.” He repeated the line three times. Trust the self-obsessed tosser to choose that as a recognition code.

A light returned the flashes from the depths of the house.

“All hail Macbeth,” came a female voice, then a male joined in. Footsteps approached.

“There you are,” the king said. “You weren't followed?”

Shaking of heads.

“Well, well. How are you, Bell 18?” I said, recognising the spectacular features of the Labour Directorate supervisor we'd interviewed after the first murder. “Don't tell me? You believe in Scottish reunification too?”

She gave me a fierce glare. “Fervently, citizen.”

I looked at the man. He was wearing standard citizen-issue clothes and I'd never seen him before. While I was peering at him in the dull light, I moved closer to Aurora surreptitiously.

“The boat is standing by,” Macbeth said. “Dalrymple will drive us down to the foreshore and we'll be away within the hour.” His tone was clinical. I was sure his plans for Aurora and me didn't extend any further than the beach.

“Let's get moving,” Bell 18 said, brushing past me.

I had to go for it. I slammed her into Macbeth and leaned forward to sweep Aurora off her feet. I made a good job of it. Before they could recover, we were out of the door and on to the top step.

Then, in the pitch darkness, I took a heavy blow to the jaw and felt myself fly backwards. I heard shots ring out. Aurora screamed, but I couldn't do anything to help her. I was swallowed up in a vacuum that stifled my cries to her. Then all my systems shut down.

I wasn't out for long. When I came round, alternately spitting blood out and gulping breath down, I made out Macbeth. He was standing in the hallway in the light from a torch – but now he wasn't holding his pistol. He was cowering against the wall, his face finally showing some emotion. It did me a lot of good to see that the emotion concerned was abject terror. I swung my eyes round and spotted a body lying sprawled on the floor near the king. Jesus. I couldn't see how big it was. I staggered to my feet and ascertained it was an adult – the male cult follower. I couldn't see the female auxiliary and – thank Christ – I couldn't see Aurora.

The person who was terrorising Macbeth could see me though.

“I thought I'd laid you out for good, Quint,” came a voice from the shadows. “Stand still, Rennie, you shite.”

“Haggs? Is that you, Tam Haggs?” I screwed my eyes up but still failed to distinguish him. I saw a brief red glow and realised that he was smoking a cigarette.

He shone a light on his face briefly. “Aye, it's me all right. Surprised to see me in your perfect city?”

“Where's the girl?” I asked, desperate to know if Aurora was alive but also playing for time. A cascade of jigsaw pieces had begun to fall into place.

“She ran off,” Haggs said. “Lucky for her.”

I exhaled a sigh of relief that almost tore away the lining of my throat. “What are you doing here, Tam?” I asked, my mind struggling to compute the data it had just been presented with. “How the fuck did you find us?”

“Wouldn't you like to know?” he said with a bitter laugh. He shone the torch into Macbeth's eyes. “And wouldn't
you
like to know why I'm here, thane of fucking Glamis?”

Derek Rennie's eyes were bulging. He looked towards me. “What's going on, Dalrymple? What's a Glasgow policeman doing in Edinburgh?”

I closed my eyes and got a grip. Haggs the smoker. I remembered the Glaswegian cigarette butts near the murder victims. Jesus, they must have been his.

“You didn't just come to Edinburgh to kidnap me, Tam, did you?” I said, leaning against the rickety railing. “You know all about the murders, don't you, you bastard?”

Haggs dropped his butt and crushed it under his boot. “Is that right, smart fuck? So what am I doing back here now? I'm bloody sure you can't tell me that.”

I spat out more blood and wiped my mouth with my sleeve. “You came to kill the king, didn't you?”

A guttural laugh was dredged up by the stubbled sergeant. “Not bad,” he said, stepping forward into the open doorway. “But why would I want to do that?”

Neither he nor I got the chance to answer the question. There was an ear-cracking report and Haggs rocketed back against the pocked stonework of the wall, then slumped lifeless to the floor.

Lights came on at the far end of the drive and revealed that the top of Tam's head was no longer there. I can't say I shed a tear.

“Quint?” Davie's voice was loud. “It's okay, we've got the girl.”

I breathed out another sigh of relief as I stepped over Tam Haggs and collared Rennie. He was looking more like Ethelred the Unready than Macbeth – obviously being up against the business end of an automatic didn't suit him. I pocketed Haggs's weapon in case the king got any ideas and dragged him towards the lights.

As we got closer I made out Davie standing by a guard vehicle with a wide grin on his face and an assault rifle at his shoulder. Katharine was there too, her hand on Aurora's shoulder, and Hel Hyslop was behind them. She had the usual impassive look on her face, eyes narrowed to focus on me in the headlight beam.

Then everything, including my ravaged thought processes, went into slow motion. Haggs never did anything without Hel's approval – the chances of him running a one-man campaign against Macbeth were non-existent. I peered into the glare and spotted the bulge made in the inspector's breast pocket by her mobile phone. That was it. In all the confusion earlier she must have managed to send Broadsword to Grosvenor Crescent and, more recently, tell Tam where we were.

Before I could shout to Davie or duck out of the light, Hel had her police-issue pistol against his head. Now I regretted keeping Hamilton off her back when we arrived in Edinburgh – he'd definitely have confiscated it from her.

“Drop your weapons!” Hel shouted. “Both of you!”

I tossed away the pistol I'd picked up to my rear, then watched as Davie ejected the ammunition clip from the rifle and let it drop to the ground. He was shaking his head dolefully.

“You two, come closer,” Hyslop said, waving Macbeth and me forward. She shoved Davie, Katharine and Aurora into the light to join us. Then she raised her weapon and pointed it straight at my face. “I've been wanting to do this for a long time, you interfering bastard.”

I caught a glimpse of Aurora's face. Her eyes and mouth were wide open. Caro used to look exactly like that when she was surprised. I lowered my gaze, taking that image with me and losing myself in it.

I barely heard the shot when it came.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The blast and then the scream to my left made me jerk my head round.

Macbeth was on his back, blood welling from his right shoulder. I could hear Aurora whimpering. Katharine drew her closer and wrapped both arms round her.

Hel Hyslop had a faint smile on her lips. “That's just the beginning, Rennie,” she said bitterly. “Lie there and squirm. I'll come back to you later.”

Macbeth was groaning, his hand clamped over his shoulder. From what I could see it wasn't a life-threatening wound, but it sounded like it wasn't the only one he was lined up for. Davie kneeled down next to him and held a handkerchief to the source of the blood.

“Let Aurora and Katharine go, Hel,” I said, taking a pace forward. “You don't need them.”

“I'll be the judge of that, Quint,” she said. Her face was pale and drenched in sweat. Suddenly she had the look of someone who had lost control. But the gun was levelled at me in a steady enough hand.

“You and Haggs were the ones with Broadsword in the Parliament archive and when he killed the auxiliaries here, weren't you?” I said, getting the feeling that she might be wanting to come clean.

She stared at me dully then nodded. “The professor and this bastard so-called king . . .” she glared at Macbeth ‘. . . they set up the raid with John – or Broadsword, as he called him. They wanted the kids to be kidnapped and the file attachment to be taken from the Parliament archive. That attachment outlined research that was never fully developed – something very much ahead of its time to do with the application of animal genetics to humans. Then Duart ordered your kidnap because of Leadbelly and the Glasgow murders.” She raised her shoulders. “We combined the operations. Tam and I had known John for years. Christ,” she said with a sob. “They're both dead. You shouldn't have . . .”

Hyslop broke off and tried to get a grip on her breathing. It took her a while. Then she continued, still compelled to tell her story. “Tam and I, we replaced John's usual headbangers and came across in the trawler. John came back with us as well, but you didn't see him. We kept him and the teenagers in the forward hold.” She smiled weakly. “In case you're wondering, Tam and John followed us in the other boat that was in the yard last night. I managed to keep in touch with them on my mobile.”

I was struggling to make sense of this. “You knew Broadsword for years?”

Hel was looking at Aurora. “Don't worry, little girl,” she said in a voice that was unlikely to comfort a hardened guardsman, never mind a traumatised child. “We'll soon be finished here. Then you and I will go on another boat trip.”

She turned her gaze on Macbeth and nodded grimly when she saw that he was still writhing. “What?” she said, glancing back at me and finding her place again. “Oh yes, John Breck was a family friend when I was a kid. Then he disappeared when he was about twelve. It destroyed his parents and mine – they were very close.” Her voice was hoarse. “That perverted professor had been taking children off the streets for years and using them as subjects in his experiments. Tam's sister went missing too.” She shook her head. “We found out about a year ago that she died in the institute.”

“So you and Haggs set out to nail the professor,” I said.

“Yeah.” Hyslop wiped the sweat from her forehead. “But we could never find any hard evidence. He had the best lawyers on his case. Even when Duart's people got suspicious about Rennie's business dealings, nothing came out. And, of course, he made sure he donated plenty to his local ward's coffers – and to the city's central funds.”

I stared at her. “The files Broadsword was taking from the institute last night. The eight Glasgow victims were all ex-employees of the Baby Factory.”

“We got desperate. We started killing them to put the squeeze on Rennie. But the professor didn't give a shit. So when we were over here, John decided to try out the angle with the branches. We were sure this bastard was in on his brother's activities. We reckoned the Birnam Wood branch in the victims' hands would make them panic when we tried it in Glasgow.” She nodded at me. “The files made you wonder, didn't they, Quint? We wanted them so that we could construct a more coherent case against Rennie. And to deflect any suspicion away from us. But we didn't want to make it too obvious until we were ready, so we steered clear of current staff members and kept the full details out of our own files.”

Katharine looked up from Aurora. “Are you saying that Glasgow police officers were behind nine, no, eleven murders including the two here?” Her face was a picture of horror.

Hel shrugged. “John – Broadsword – did the actual killing. He was let out of the Rennie a couple of years back to act as Macbeth's enforcer. The bastards never thought he might turn against them. Or that the failed ocular experiments might have damaged more than his forehead.”

“But you stood by and let him get on with it,” Katharine insisted. “You covered for him.”

Hyslop faced up to the accusation. “Yes. I don't regret the killings. People who made their living from the institute deserved anything they got.”

“What about the auxiliaries in Edinburgh?” I demanded.

This time a look of anguish flashed across the inspector's features. “Yes, well, John had got a taste for that form of mutilation by then. I tried to stop him—”

“Not very hard,” Katharine interrupted. She looked at Aurora then glared at Hyslop. “You're disgusting. You connive in murders and now you're putting a child through a nightmare experience. How can you do it?”