The Edinburgh Dead

The Hounds of the Old Town

Quire did not know whether or not he should regret his actions at the exhibition of the American Woodsman’s paintings. He knew what Robinson’s judgement on the matter would be, if news of the encounter between Quire and Ruthven at the Royal Institution found its way back to him, but that could not be helped. What was done was done, whether it was ill done or not. He spent the better part of two days expecting repercussions. There were none. Perhaps on this occasion that anger he had brought home from the wars, and which it had taken him so long to set reins upon, had not done his cause too much harm.

He sought to lose himself, for a few hours, in more normal and less contentious duties. It seemed wise to avoid the main police house, so he went round half a dozen watch-houses—the generally grubby, rather gloomy little posts the men of the day and night watches used for shelter and sustenance and storage—checking that there was nothing needing his attention.

He chased a lad who stole a loaf of bread from a baker’s window right before his eyes; chased him all the way from the well at the east end of the Grassmarket, up Candlemaker Row and through the works for the new George IV Bridge over the Cowgate. And then gave up, for his legs were sore and the boy looked like he needed a good feed in any case.

He spent the better part of an hour trying to persuade a drunk youth to come down from halfway up the cliffs beneath the castle walls, fighting to get himself heard above the cheerful throng gathered to see what happened. Eventually, the boy fell asleep up there, sitting on a narrow ledge, bathed in sunlight. It looked, Quire conceded, a rather pleasant perch, but he sent some men to bring the sleeper down in any case.

A day spent in such a way seemed almost restful to Quire, in comparison to his recent experiences. It left him, if not exactly contented, certainly restored to a kind of calm.

He stopped, on his way down towards the Canongate, to buy an apple from a stall. As he walked on, crunching through the hard, sour flesh, he watched the evening sun light up the roofs of the tenements on either side. The High Street was in shadow, but up there every chimney, every roof tile, was washed with a sheen of gold, as if each dour building had been crowned.

He stopped in at Calder’s before climbing the stair to his apartment. A pint of ale and a thick slab of bread were enough to carry him through to the fall of night. He found a not unpleasant weariness settling over him, a gentle weight in his limbs and a stillness into his thoughts.

As he sat on his bed, pulling his stiff boots from his feet and setting them side by side on the floor, his mind, of its own accord, settled upon the notion that he would have done better to leave Ruthven to enjoy the paintings in peace, but that if no harm came of it, he need not condemn himself too harshly.

The South Bridge carried, on its vaulting arches, the city’s life and traffic over the shadows of the Cowgate. The huge new bridge being built on a parallel course a little to the west would do the same, but for now it was barely begun. Its gigantic stone legs were sprouting from amongst the teeming tenements that they would in time merge with, or bury, or accommodate.

In the deepest part of the night, down there in the darkness of the lower city, a stillness reigned. There were no gas lamps here, as had sprouted on the streets of the New Town, nothing to blunt the severity of night’s grip. The last of the drinkers and the indigents had found shelter, and left the shuttered shops and dark doorways to the explorations of rats. The wynds were empty of sound, save some occasional cry or cough or curse emanating from within the towering tenements.

But the city had stiller, and darker, places yet. Up and ever up the buildings had soared, built one atop the other. Layers of rooms, of cellars, and of tunnels had been all but entombed. Dank and silent corners, nestled into the deep fabric of the city like ossified voids, had been consigned to the past by a populace that no longer needed them, and chose to forget them. Some could yet find a use for them, though.

In that deserted night, a lone figure came softly beneath an archway and into a tight, grimy quadrangle enclosed by tenements. The man turned to an old and scarred door that had been little enough used to allow dirt and straw and the droppings of rats to accumulate at its foot.

There was no handle or lock apparent on the door. The man pushed at it gently. It creaked back to give admittance to the bowels of the city.

The air within was fetid and heavy, hardly disturbed for years and grown old just as the crumbling walls that enclosed it had done. There was no light, not the slightest sliver. The man closed the door behind him, and advanced into the gloom.

Only the sound of his feet on dirt and stone dust gave some hint of the smallness of the passageway, and even those feeble echoes were dulled by the sodden air. He went carefully but without hesitation, unhindered by the utter darkness.

After a few paces he turned aside and ducked his head, avoiding the invisible lintel of an aperture that opened into a side chamber. And there, a new sound arose in response to his arrival. A shifting, a movement, a rustling. He stood quite still, and bodies brushed against his legs, pressing close. With unhurried precision he loosened each finger of the glove on his right hand and pulled it free. He reached down.

Matted hair greeted his touch. Coarse fibres crusted with grime and worse things. He ran his hand down the line of the backbone, then lifted it and stretched his arm further into the dark. A cold, dry tongue drew its rough surface over the palm of his hand, and he dipped his fingers to let it curl over the back of them. There was a crust of dried blood upon the harsh lips that couched that tongue.

“Be still, little brothers,” the man said, his voice gentle. “Be soft. I’ve something here for you.”

From an inner pocket of his coat came a scrap of material. A sleeve, torn from a shirt. He squatted down, holding the rag stretched between his hands, extending his arms so that the beasts could gather round it, and press their noses to it, and taste it.

“Do you have it?” the man whispered. “Do you have what you need?”

He balled the sleeve up and pushed it into each of the three mouths that opened, one after another, to greet it. He pressed its fabric against teeth.

Dim and distant sounds reached in, the creak of muffled wheels on cobbles, the tread of hoofs sheathed in cloth. The man rose to his feet, and folded the shirt sleeve away into a pocket once more.

“Your carriage is here.”

The shapes that shared that dark hiding place with him grew more urgent in their movements. Claws scraped on the floor.

“Hush,” he hissed, nothing gentle to his words now, nothing but the crack of the whip. “Not a sound, or it’s to the fires with you. The flames and oblivion for any who betray us.”

And they were still at that, cowed.

The man retraced his steps and opened the door to peer out into the night. A cart was drawn up on the street beyond the low archway, its driver already pulling back heavy canvas sheets to reveal the cages it carried.

The man turned back and spoke into the blackness of the undercity, where his beasts waited.

“Come, then. There’s work to be done tonight. It’s not far. Not far at all.”

Quire was torn from sleep by a pounding at his door. His waking was so abrupt and violent that for an instant he was bewildered, wondering what the noise was. Then the door shook again, beneath repeated blows, and he was scrambling to haul himself up out of the bed.

“Who’s there?” he called, but there was no answer.

He snatched his trousers up from where he had dropped them on the floor and clambered into them, almost toppling over as he hopped briefly on one foot. He pulled on his boots. The cold leather was not pleasant against his bare feet. He heard a heavy tread on the stair outside.

It was not quite fear that was in him, but it was something close kin to it. He shrugged his long coat on over his naked shoulders, and took hold of the door handle. Before he lifted the latch, he thought better of such incaution.

He unhooked his police baton from the belt draped over the back of a chair. He held it ready as he carefully lifted the latch and let the door come open just enough to give him a view of the stairway. Nothing but darkness there, a faint shaft of moonlight falling from a tiny window. But he heard those footsteps again; down below this time, retreating hurriedly.

“Who’s there?” he shouted again angrily, and began to descend the stairs.

He went cautiously, concerned to ensure that no ambush awaited him in the gloom. That was answered soon enough by ear, rather than eye: the slap of shoes on cobblestones told him his visitor was out of the stairwell and into the close.

Quire followed, but still did not rush. He saw a figure, difficult to make out clearly, making off towards the South Back of Canongate, the lane that ran along between a row of workshops and the small, walled fields that marked the edge of the King’s Park. He had suspected this might be some youth, drunk as likely as not, thinking it clever to play a prank on the sergeant who lived above Calder’s. Watching that figure vanish around the corner on to the South Back, he thought not. It was a full-grown man, clad in heavy coat and soft, formless hat.

Quire fastened a couple of the buttons on his own coat, closing it up. It was by no means cruelly cold, but nor was it the kind of night to be running around bare-chested. There was an eerie silence settled over the Canongate, he noted as he jogged down towards the South Back. That alone was enough to tell him that it must be the very dead of night, for it was only then that no one was to be found abroad.

He glanced up, found the moon high on its course, shining dimly through a sheet of thin cloud. Almost enough light to go chasing after whatever miscreant this was, but perhaps not quite. The last time he had done something similar, he had ended on the ice of Duddingston Loch. That was not the sort of experience he longed to repeat.

He peered down the South Back. On one side of the lane, the high walls and locked gates of workshops and yards and small breweries; on the other, a much lower dry-stone wall, beyond which lay only a narrow field and then the great black natural fortress of Salisbury Crags. From where Quire now stood, those ramparts obscured a great swathe of the eastern sky, and hid their approaches in impenetrable night.

He could see a little further along the line of the South Back. There, just about to disappear from view, the man who had been beating at Quire’s door was moving steadily away. He was trotting down the centre of the lane. Not looking back, not running. Apparently not greatly concerned at the possibility of pursuit.

Quire advanced a little further. These circumstances were too strange for him to trust them entirely. He walked along South Back, drifting closer to the wall bounding the fields on his right, so that he could look over it and sweep his gaze across the open grass. Nothing. He looked back towards the man, and in that very moment the night closed about that retreating figure and hid him from view.

Quire stopped, and stood there staring. The cold was starting to get in and lay its fingers across his chest. He shivered. He would not sleep again now, he knew. Not with the memory of that sudden assault on his door so fresh. He would be relieved, though, if all this mysterious encounter cost him was the loss of half a night’s sleep.

Then he heard, faint, out there in the darkness that had swallowed the man, a soft cry. Not frightened, but pained. There was a muffled, indistinct thump, as of something falling to the ground. Quire took a few more steps in the direction of the sound, wishing the clouds would be kind to him and permit—even if only for a moment—the moon to throw its full light over this small portion of the city.

A part of him wanted to call out, but the greater part was too uneasy to accede. One more stride, and he could just make out, slumped in the middle of the lane, a prone form. He looked behind him. Still he was entirely alone. He frowned at the fallen man. Could it be, he thought, that this was nothing more than a fool, hopelessly drunk, beating at random doors in the Canongate and now overcome by his own excesses? That would be annoying, but at least he might get himself another hour or two of slumber, if there was no need to fret about what might happen as soon as he closed his eyes.

The man was not moving at all. Quire wondered whether he should go down there and give him a good kick; see what that revealed. In the next instant, all thought of drunks, and of sleep, was utterly gone.

Out of the darkness beyond the prostrate man, stepping over and around him, came hounds. Three of them. Huge, rangy beasts, perhaps wolfhounds. Quire’s breath caught in his throat. The beasts arrayed themselves in a line across the South Back. Quire could not be certain, but they looked to be unkempt, their coats scrawny. They stood there, staring at him. He stared back, thoughts of Edward Carlyle’s torn corpse flickering through his mind. Behind the hounds, the man who had been lying on the ground rose, entirely unhurt, entirely sober. He kept his back to Quire and walked away into the dark, as casual as anyone heading out for a lazy stroll on Arthur’s Seat. The dogs never once took their eyes off Quire.

He turned and ran. He heard their claws scrabbling on the cobblestones as they sprang after him. They would be far too fast for him. He put everything into the sprint, but he knew they would have him. His arms pumped. He expected at any moment to hear the hounds give voice, but there was nothing; not a sound from them but that of claw upon stone.

Quire stretched his mouth open, slapped his baton in there crossways and clenched his teeth tight on it. He veered sharply towards the high wooden gate of some manufactory yard. They were nearly on him now. He could feel them there, at his back.

He threw his arms up and leaped for the top of the gate. It had looked good and solid, but it swayed and groaned as he hit it and grabbed hold. He smacked his face against the wooden planking, and almost spat out his baton.

He scrambled with his feet, hauled with his arms, and managed to get an elbow hooked over the top. Then there was a hard blow to his left boot, and he looked down to see one of the dogs biting on it, shaking its head from side to side. He felt no pain, so could only guess that its teeth had sunk into the low heel.

The other two hounds were rushing up, and within that one quick glance, he registered the wrongness of them. Matted hair, caked with all manner of noisome dirt; jaws agape, but entirely dry, no sheen of spit even on their pale and limp tongues; lifeless eyes. Silent, as surely no dogs would be at such a moment.

Choking back what might easily become blind terror, Quire struggled to drag himself up and over the gate, but the weight of the creature pulling at his leg was too much. Another of them sank down and began tearing at the foot of the gate with teeth and paws alike. The third jumped at him. Somehow he managed to sway his body just enough to avoid its teeth. It fell back, lost its footing and rolled.

Quire straightened his left ankle, pointing his naked foot. It slid free from the boot and the dog dropped back to the ground, trophy firmly grasped in its jaws. In an ungainly windmill of legs and arms, Quire pulled himself up and toppled over the gate. He hit the paved yard on the far side hard enough to knock the wind from his lungs and set his head spinning. He let the baton fall from his mouth and lay on his back, groaning.

A furious attack was now launched upon the gate. There was a gap of perhaps half an inch between it and the ground. It was a chaos of snapping teeth and scraping claws. All three dogs were breaking away fragments of wood, sending cracks running up through the planks. They were sure to do themselves harm with such ferocious brutality, but Quire was almost certain that that would be of no great consequence or concern to them. These were surely beasts of the same kind as the man he had fought on the ice. The gate would yield before they did.

Quire rolled carefully on to his hands and knees. His fall had done him no lasting damage, but it felt as though most parts of him were aching. He looked about, trying and failing to ignore the ever more ominous sounds of wood breaking apart. It was a cooper’s shop and yard. The walls were higher than the gate, though there were several barrels standing about that might give him enough of a start to get out and over without doing himself worse injury than he had already suffered.

He got to his feet, cursing as his bare foot inevitably found a tack or sharp pebble the night had hidden. One of the dogs had got its paws and a good part of its head through a ragged hole in the bottom of the gate. Some of the planks were splitting away from one another and starting to lift as the beast thrust itself forward again and again. Quire stopped and picked up his baton. It was heavy, but he was not sure it would crack open a dog’s skull quickly enough. The doors of the workshop itself were shut, and had a light chain and lock across them. He went to the window to look inside, but could make nothing out. The gate creaked and cracked ominously behind him.

Quire kicked at the workshop doors once, twice. Thrice, and the lock gave, the chain fell slack and he was in. It seemed to him that running was not likely to improve his position greatly, and if the dogs were set on coming in under the gate, that would give him as good a target to aim at as he was ever likely to get. He had seen coopers using some vicious-looking tools to work wood in the past; he could only hope that this one was no different. Any craftsman in his right mind would have his best tools away home with him, but the old ones, the no longer used ones, they might still be here.

Within moments he re-emerged into the yard clutching a broadaxe. It was short-handled, wide-headed. Not of the sharpest sort, as best a quick run of his thumb along the blade could tell, but a great deal better than a baton.

He had to move more quickly than he had anticipated, for the first of the dogs was almost in. Its mouth a mass of broken teeth and wood splinters, it was dragging itself through on its belly. It snapped at him as he drew near, and lunged, but the gate was strong enough—just—to keep it pinned for a moment longer.

That was all Quire needed. He hacked down at the dog’s neck. That first blow did not go deep, but it parted the skin, and it taught Quire the weight and balance of the weapon. His second opened a yawning wound, exposing meat and bone and gristle. The third widened it, and the fourth went through and separated head from shuddering body.

The jaw still worked, as that head rolled free. It snapped shut, and slowly opened. The headless torso still scraped feebly at the ground. There was no blood. Just a spreading slick of some stinking liquid of imprecise, pallid shade. A stench of decay and rot burst from the stump of the neck.

The other two dogs were still ripping the gate to pieces, bit by bit. If they came both at once, Quire suspected he might have a problem.

Someone was shouting. Quire looked round and up. At one of the windows high on the Canongate tenements, a woman was leaning out, a lantern in her hand.

“Watch! Watch!” she was screeching, and a fairer sound Quire had never heard. “Thieves in the yards! Thieves on the South Back!”

Another window was lifted, another voice—a man’s this time—added to the hue and cry. Through it, Quire heard a single long, thin whistle, coming from somewhere out on the South Back. At once, the two remaining dogs broke off from their attack, and Quire heard the soft tap-tap of their brisk walk away.

He waited for the span of several deep, restorative breaths, revelling in the continued accusatory yells coming from that blessed woman. He doubted she could even see him, especially waving a lantern around in her own face, but he blew her a kiss anyway.

Then he dropped the broadaxe, sat down heavily on his backside and stared at the dog’s head lying at his feet.