The Edinburgh Dead

Edinburgh, 1828

The sky came in brutish on Edinburgh, bearing rain and sleet on its turbulent wings. Hard weather always came out of the west, breaking across the castle on its rocky promontory like waves beating at the prow of a rising ship, spilling over and around its walls and tumbling on down across the Old Town. At such times, those city folk who could not avoid venturing forth encased themselves in high-collared coats and capes and low, tight hats, leaned into the sky’s blustering force and went on about their business with dogged resignation.

Dogged resignation was as good a description as any of Quire’s demeanour as he trudged up the High Street. The weather, though, weighed less heavily upon him than did his own thoughts. He was preoccupied by the image of Edward Carlyle’s ravaged body. That was unfinished business, and it nagged at him. Once or twice, it had even dislodged memories of Hougoumont, of Jamie Boswell and of fire from their dominion over his dreams. Visions of teeth had come to him in his sleep, and set Quire himself fleeing through an endless maze of closes with a pack of spittle-spewing wolves upon his trail.

As he strode towards the police house, head down into the wind, eyes narrowed against the flecks of sleet riding the gusts, one figure amongst the few braving the foul elemental mood caught Quire’s attention. The sight drew him to a halt, and turned him about to observe: a slightly stooped man hunched up beneath a rain cape, wearing black gloves. Blegg. Ruthven’s man. Hurrying along with an air of intent, so focused upon whatever his mission might be that he passed within two dozen paces of Quire without noticing him.

Quire watched the man disappear into the narrow maw of Toddrick’s Wynd, a straight, steep close running down towards the Cowgate. Not a place of obvious and natural interest to the household of a man like Ruthven. He followed to the head of the wynd and peered down its gloomy length. Blegg hastened between the tenements, and met a dishevelled, rangy youth waiting in a very particular doorway. The two of them conferred briefly, and Quire shrank out of sight behind the corner as they looked about them. When he ventured to peer down the wynd once more, they were gone. Which was of great interest to Quire, given what—and who—lay behind that door.

He waited, buffeted by the ill-tempered sky, feeling slugs of melting sleet slip from his hair and inside his collar. It did not take long to tire of that. He sought refuge in Mallinder’s dairy, a dingy little shop opposite the entrance to the wynd.

“You don’t look like a man after milk,” Mrs. Mallinder observed despondently as Quire took up station just inside the threshold.

“No,” Quire admitted without looking at her. “Just a bit of shelter.”

She went back to folding paper around the slabs of butter on her counter.

“Well, fine,” she muttered. “Don’t you worry. You make whatever use you like of my roof. It’s there anyway. Costs me nothing, of course, to keep a shop for the service of them as don’t like a bit of rain or wind. My wee ones eat air and wear sackcloth, so it’s nothing to me if I never see the King’s head in my hand all day. Which I’ll probably not, unless this dreich weather softens up a bit.”

Quire backed up and spilled a few tiny silvery pennies on to the counter.

“There you are. Feast your eyes on good King George all you like.”

Mrs. Mallinder grunted.

“Fine man, no doubt, but he’s no treat for the eye. Here.”

She slapped a wrapped block of butter into Quire’s palm before he could withdraw his hand. He glanced down at it.

“I’m not wanting butter,” he said a touch plaintively.

“That’s as may be, but you’ve bought it fair and square. I may not be running a charitable shelter here, but I’m not after the charity of others either. You take it; that way I’ll not have to take offence.”

Bemused, and rather disappointed with the way the exchange had turned out, Quire slipped his purchase into the pocket of his greatcoat and resumed his position at the open door.

“Could you not shut the weather out?” Mrs. Mallinder enquired.

“No,” Quire replied, and that was the end of that.

It was perhaps a quarter of an hour or so before Blegg reappeared, striding out of the close, turning into the teeth of the wind and making his determined way off up the High Street. Quire watched him go, and rubbed his bristly chin thoughtfully for a moment or two. He was curious about what the rest of Blegg’s itinerary for the day might be, since it had had such an interesting start, but he was more curious still about what his business had been in Toddrick’s Wynd, and that trail might go cold all too quickly.

He crossed the High Street smartly and ducked into the close. The door to which he went was nondescript, a little broader and more solid than most of those lining the looming tenements, but unremarkable. Inside, though, was different.

A short, cramped passageway opened out into a wide hall with a low ceiling, the beams of which had turned almost black from long exposure to smoke and other fumes. The floorboards creaked beneath Quire’s feet. They were cracked and worn and scratched. There were benches around the edges of the hall. On one of them a woman of indeterminate age was asleep, bundled up in threadbare, moth-shot blankets. On another, a creased old man was sitting, blowing out a reedy, sharp tune on a wooden whistle. His crooked fingers jerked up and down as they tapped away at the holes. Before him, eyes closed, a girl of perhaps sixteen or seventeen was dancing alone, jigging about wearily as if long spent but driven by the melody to continue. Not that her movements, so far as Quire could see, bore any relation to the old man’s tune. Other than that, the Dancing School was deserted.

He had hoped to find the youth Blegg had met still here, but the thicket of tables and chairs at the far end of the hall was unoccupied, save for a scattering of empty bottles and cups, and a sheen of broken glass strewn across the floor beneath them. He picked out a path between the tables, the brittle debris crunching and crackling beneath his feet.

The door to the kitchen was of the sort a farm cottage might have, top and bottom halves separate, and individually hinged. The lower section was locked, but the upper swung easily back when he pushed on it. He leaned over and peered around.

“Only whisky,” said the portly man bent over the sink without looking round. “Not a drop of ale left, if that’s what you’re after.”

“I’m not a man for the early drinking, Donald. Glad to see you washing your own dishes, though.”

The man turned about and rolled his eyes.

“Quire. Just the face I want to see at the start of a day.”

Donald MacQuarrie was not the owner of the Dancing School—that distinction belonged to a clutch of men a good deal more reclusive than him—but he had run the place for as long as Quire had been in the police service, and that he had not yet found himself jailed for it was a bitter miracle built out of wit and corruption and the playing of dangerous games. Nobody—or not many, Quire might grudgingly concede if pressed—came to the school to learn to dance.

“Where’s your kitchen lad, then?” Quire asked as MacQuarrie shook dishwater from his hands and dried them on the breast of his shirt.

“The Infirmary. Had an accident wi’ some glass last night. Fell on it.”

“Fell on it?” Quire snorted. “Come out here, Donald. I’ve a question or two for you.”

“Get away, Quire. There’s a lot of good money gets paid over so your kind’ll no be coming round here asking questions.”

“Aye, but it’s not paid to me, so keep me in a good humour and come out here. There’s none to see but these three folk, and there’s not one of them looks likely to remember a thing about this morning.”

The dancing girl stumbled a little as MacQuarrie reluctantly emerged to join Quire at one of the rickety tables, but the shrill song of the whistle did not falter, and caught her up again and set her turning in another unsteady reel.

Quire swept the table clear of the night’s detritus with the back of his arm, and tipped a chair up to drain some of the stale beer from it before he sat down. MacQuarrie’s weight set his own chair to groaning, but it stood up to the task.

“None of the other uncles about?” Quire asked innocently.

The school had three trades, once the pretence of teaching dance was discounted: the unlicensed selling of untaxed drink, whoring, and the pawning of stolen goods. Every night, a handful of the so-called uncles could be found at these very tables, waiting for their broking services to be called upon by the city’s thieves. MacQuarrie himself, Quire knew but could not have proved in law, was one of those uncles.

“Don’t waste my time with questions you ken fine I’ll no answer, Quire. Thanks to that wee fuck of a lad getting himself cut up, I’ve work to be doing this morning.”

“Two men just in here,” Quire said. “And don’t tell me you didn’t see them, since there’s nothing else here to look at.”

MacQuarrie maintained a glowering silence. He was not one to be easily cowed by a mere officer of the police.

“One of them not much more than a boy, the other a weasel of a man in black gloves,” Quire persisted.

“What of it?”

“I want to know their business.”

MacQuarrie shrugged and turned his attention to the dancer and her musician. He watched with flat indifference for a moment or two and then suddenly shouted, “Can you no shut that whining up, Stevenson?”

The old man with the whistle did not pause, or miss a beat. He whined on, oblivious. MacQuarrie grunted, and spat on to the floor.

“All right,” said Quire. “Give me a name, then. I know the one, but not the other. Who’s the young one? Where does he stay? How does he keep himself busy?”

“Can’t help you,” frowned MacQuarrie. “Not with either of them.”

Quire caught the whiff of the lie in the quickness of the response, and the shuffle of MacQuarrie’s eyes.

“I’ll not be well pleased if you’ve made me suffer the stink of this place for nothing, Donald. I can take a grudge for a lot less, and I’ll take it all the way to the excise men if you like. Get them in to measure just how many quarts of beer your customers are pissing out in the close each night.”

MacQuarrie laughed at that.

“You’re a wee man, Quire. No big enough by half to put a fright into me. You’re only the police, and you’re surely no thinking it’s the police that…”

Quire lunged across and pinned MacQuarrie’s hand flat to the table. He whipped his baton free from his belt and held it over the splayed fingers. MacQuarrie tried to jerk free, but Quire had all the strength of his good arm pressing down.

“You’ll not be washing many dishes with cracked knuckles, will you?” he said calmly.

“Do that and it’ll no be you with the grudge, and I ken plenty of bigger men than you.”

“Maybe, but you’ll still have a broken hand. And I’m thinking you know I’m not that easy frightened.”

MacQuarrie slackened, and gave a dry smile.

“By Christ, Quire. Can you no take a joke? Settle yourself down. I’ll give you a wee morsel, if it’ll get you out.”

Quire settled back into his seat and released MacQuarrie’s wrist. The big man shook his freed hand, and shook his head at the same time, as if in disappointment.

“I’ve only seen the younger one before,” he muttered, just loud enough for Quire to pick the words out from amongst the strains of Stevenson’s shrill tune. “Been in here once or twice. Likes seeing the lassies about, but no man enough to buy any more than the seeing. I’ve no heard his name, but I ken he stays out in Duddingston. Does labouring on the farms, I think. And digs graves.”

“He’s a gravedigger?”

“Aye. I think so. And maybe I caught mention of a burial when they were talking. Maybe there’s a man going into the ground at Duddingston Kirk tomorrow. You tell anyone you had that from me, though, and I’ll no be a happy man.”

“Hah.”

Quire leaned back in his chair, more than a little surprised. Whatever he had expected, however out of kilter he had thought the mood of Ruthven’s house and whatever scent of wrongness he had caught there, he had never thought it might lead to this. The discovery imbued him with a sudden vigour, like a child glimpsing if not the solution, at least a hint of the solution, to some frustrating puzzle toy.

“Do you know a man called Carlyle?” he asked. “Edward Carlyle.”

“I’m spent, Quire. I’ll no be spilling anything more for you this morning.”

“Something to spill, then.” Quire grunted. “Listen, Carlyle’s dead. There’s no trouble you could bring down on his head that’d bother him now. You tell me something about him, it means I don’t have to come back and start bothering your customers on the matter.”

MacQuarrie sighed.

“You’re just too dim-witted to ken when to stop aggravating folk, aren’t you, Quire? Look, there was a Carlyle in here a few times, the last month or two, with Emma Slight. He made for a bad drunk, and we threw him out. Told Emma not to bother bringing him round here again. That’s all.”

“Emma Slight. She’s one of the Widow’s tenants, isn’t she? In the Holy Land?”

MacQuarrie gave an ill-tempered shrug.

“You charge a penny entrance, is that right?” Quire asked as he pushed his chair back and rose to his feet.

“Aye,” grunted the proprietor of the school.

Quire withdrew Mrs. Mallinder’s carefully wrapped slab of butter from his pocket and slapped it down on the table. Its sharp edges had just begun to lose their definition. The two men regarded it in silence for a moment, both rather surprised at the noise it had made as it flopped down, and at how strange and unexpected it seemed, lying there in all its boneless softness on a table in the Dancing School.

Quire roused himself first.

“There you are, Donald. Keep that for yourself. At least you’ll have made a profit on the morning’s business.”

He left MacQuarrie staring at the slumping pat of butter in quizzical silence, as if he had never before encountered such a baffling object.

“No, you cannot have any men,” snapped Lieutenant Baird. “There’s two hundred thousand living souls in this city, Quire. Living, mark you, not already dead and beyond all earthly concerns. And we’ve a hundred and a half on the city police, if you include every last grubby little member of the night watch. Does that sound to you as though we’ve the men to spare for standing guard on a graveyard all night because you’ve heard some tall tale from Donald MacQuarrie? The master of the Dancing School, no less, and he’s got you dancing to a silly tune right enough, hasn’t he?”

Quire made to reply, but Baird was in full, acerbic flow.

“If it was one of the city yards, maybe, but Duddingston?” the lieutenant sneered. “No. Not a single officer, not chasing off after some fancy of yours just because you think one man might have been talking to another in a cesspit on Toddrick’s Wynd. Not today, not any other day.”

“You know fine there’s only one reason for a man to be meeting a gravedigger in a place like that and asking after a burial,” snapped Quire, his patience—never the most robust of his qualities—faltering. “And you know just as well that the body snatchers like to do their digging outside the city these days. Less well guarded, less closely watched.”

“Fine by me,” Baird grunted, settling back in his chair and crossing his arms. “Let them dig away, so long as it’s not under our noses. If they think the body’s worth the snatching, the Duddingston folk’ll have a watch on it themselves. They know how these things go.

“What is this morbid fascination for the corpse trade you’ve suddenly acquired, anyway? It’s not to do with that body in the Cowgate, is it?”

“Not really,” Quire said.

Lying to Baird was not an unfamiliar experience for him.

“I hope not. Way I hear it, Christison’s called it animals, not men, that finished that fellow off. No great loss, a drunk falling asleep in a close and getting himself gnawed on. And we’ve not found a single soul who’s seen anything prowling about in the Old Town that might do such a thing to a man. It’s nothing to trouble us overmuch.”

Quire had long since lost any interest in Baird’s opinion of how he should conduct himself. The lieutenant had always been at him like a baiting dog at a badger, fired up by the rumours of Quire’s drinking and acquaintance with dubious women that had attended upon him in the earliest days of his employment.

Baird was a man with an eye on advancement. He cared, as best Quire could tell, hardly at all for the substance of police work, only for the opportunities of promotion it might offer him; opportunities he had concluded would not be enhanced by association with a man like Quire.

“Turning a blind eye to the theft of corpses from their graves doesn’t sit right with me,” Quire said stubbornly. He had tired of the exchange, knowing defeat when it arrived, but his dislike of Baird would not allow him to retire gracefully from the field. “You’d not like some brother of yours digging up and carting off to the medical schools, would you?”

“It’s not something the city fathers want us bothering ourselves with too much, Quire. There’s more important matters to worry us, and you might think you get to choose how you spend your time, but I know better.”

Baird was pleased with himself, enjoying the exercise of his authority.

“Know your place, Quire,” the lieutenant said. “That’s always been your problem.”

In the entrance hall of the police house, Sergeant Jack Rutherford was pinning a recalcitrant visitor to the floor with the help of a couple of others. Quire recognised the subject of their rather weary efforts: Tam Wilkinson, a thief, well-known in certain quarters, who was evidently being invited to answer for his crimes at last. Wilkinson’s one free hand was scrabbling over the floor like a palsied crab, edging erratically closer to a little knife of a sort best used for peeling apples.

“Lend a hand, Quire,” Rutherford suggested equably. He was fully occupied holding down Wilkinson’s head and shoulders, while his two colleagues struggled to master one flailing leg apiece.

Quire advanced, and paused a moment to judge the movement of Wilkinson’s hand. Then he trod on it, firmly enough to prompt a howl of protest.

“Is Robinson about, do you know?” Quire asked as he bent down to retrieve the knife. A silly little thing, he thought, looking down at it in his palm; but still, careless of them not to strip him of it before dragging him in here.

“Laid up with the gout, I heard,” Rutherford grunted. He adjusted his grip, locking an arm around Wilkinson’s neck preparatory to hauling the now compliant miscreant to his feet. Quire puffed his cheeks out in frustration.

“Might be he’s just worn out, of course,” Rutherford said. “Rumour is, he’s taking a beating from the Police Board these days. Folk with no better use for their time than making other folk’s lives difficult.”

“Aye, there’s a few like that around here.” Quire nodded.

He went out on to the High Street, despondent twice over. First for the troubles befalling Robinson, a man as far as Quire could tell entirely undeserving of the wrath of his masters; second, more selfishly, for his own inability to appeal Baird’s obstinacy to a higher authority. Without Robinson, it was a matter between Baird and Quire, and that was not the kind of matter that was likely to have a happy outcome. Still, some things could not be helped.

For years, Quire had marched and fought in obedience to the orders of those above him. That had eventually led him into a state he would never willingly revisit: not knowing why, beyond that mere obedience, he did what he did; not knowing, in his heart, upon which side of the divide between right and wrong his terrible deeds were placing him. The uncertainty had stayed with him, through the years of drinking and wandering and labouring after he left the army, though he had not recognised its corrosive persistence at the time. Only becoming an officer of the law had quieted it, and instilled in him a sense of convinced purpose. If he was to retain that precious, protective clarity, he had no choice but to follow where it led.

One or both of Ruthven and Blegg were involved in something they should not be, of that he had no doubt. Whether that something had played a part in Edward Carlyle’s death was unclear, but Quire had no intention of letting it remain so.

It began to snow as he wandered thoughtfully down the High Street. He paused at the great crossroads where the North and South Bridges pointed their respective ways out from the Old Town and looked up at the flakes swirling in ever thickening congregation around the steeple of the Tron Church.

It had been unseasonally and bitterly cold for days now. Winter appeared stubbornly unwilling to yield its dominion.