Water of Death by Paul Johnston Read Free Book Online

he said quickly. “I’ll pick it up later.”
    â€œNo worries,” I said, bending down. I put the copy of Wilfred Owen’s collected poems on top of Black and Blue . “Ian Rankin and Wilfred Owen. What you might call a strange meeting.”
    Ray’s mouth opened as if he were about to speak then shook his head slowly and went back to his files.
    I hit the street and sheltered from the sun under the awning. Opposite stands what used to be the National Library of Scotland and is now the Edinburgh Heritage Centre. For tourists, mind – no locals allowed. A group of Middle Eastern women in long robes and veils had gathered on the pavement. Their guide, an Arabic-speaking female auxiliary dressed up as a society hostess from the time of Sir Walter Scott, was trying hard to whip up interest. No doubt the visitors would just love the exhibition halls stuffed with Council propaganda. The photographs of the riots in 2002, the year before the last election, are apparently a big draw – drug dealers handing out free scores on street corners, policemen being stoned, pub cellars under siege by the mob. No wonder the Enlightenment Party got the biggest majority in British history, then promptly declared independence and left the rest of the UK to mayhem and pillage.
    So, I wondered, what to do about Fordyce Bulloch Kennedy? There were several things I wanted to look into. The most obvious was Edlott. He would have a handler in the Culture Directorate, perhaps the one who’d consulted his file, to arrange his appearances as Robert Louis Stevenson and make sure he didn’t do anything embarrassing. That auxiliary was probably waiting to be packed off to the border on fatigue duty for not keeping a closer eye on him. The Labour Directorate was another possibility. They’re forever drafting citizens into emergency squads when pitprops collapse in the mines or workers desert from the city farms. The missing man may have been picked up by mistake, in which case his name should be on a list. Then there was Fordyce’s family. When she was lucid, his wife gave the impression of being worried that he’d disappeared for good but you never know. Most violence is committed by the people closest to the victim, even in this supposedly crime-free state, and it looked like the son might have been moving in dodgy circles. But there was one possibility I had to rule out before any of those. I turned left and headed towards the checkpoint.
    The guardswoman on duty was middle-aged, her fading red hair pulled back in a tight ponytail despite the recent ruling that female auxiliaries don’t have to tie their hair down any more. She raised the barrier before I got to it and waved me through, giving me a tight smile. She must have known who I was. Christ, she may have served with me in the guard years ago. Or perhaps it was just that she’d seen my photo in the Edinburgh Guardian after one of the big cases.
    I walked up to the Lawnmarket and turned left at the gallows where they still put on a weekly mock hanging for the tourists. A hot wind from the east gusted up the High Street, filling my eyes with dust. Across the road tourists were panting up the hill but I didn’t feel too sorry for them – unlike the locals, they could look forward to air-conditioning in their hotels. A couple of them turned into Deacon Brodie’s Marijuana Club. I stood for a moment and watched. Guard personnel dressed in eighteenth-century costume were checking passports, making sure no Edinburgh citizens who’d managed to slip past the checkpoint got into the premises. One of them looked across suspiciously at my faded shorts and crumpled T-shirt. I stared back then took in the garishly painted building. Like I said, there’s a lot of irony about the way the Council’s gone back on its anti-drugs policy. There’s also plenty of cynicism. The city’s a strictly no smoking zone for the natives on