The Edinburgh Dead

Cold Burn Farm

Quire came in towards the farm buildings along hedgerows. He felt foolish, creeping under cover as if he was back in the Peninsula, fearful of an ambush, rather than scrambling across wet fields on the edge of the Pentland Hills; but his every instinct had told him this was the way to do it. Perhaps if Durand’s despondent fear had not been so apparent, Quire might have marched straight up the main farm track and hammered on the door of the farmhouse. But he had seen just how frightened the Frenchman was, and he had apprehension enough of his own as to what might await him here. So he came at the farm along hedgerows, and waited for dusk to fall before going down amongst the buildings.

It was a long wait, for the Carlisle mail had put him out at the side of the road not long after noon, and though it was a fair walk from there to Cold Burn Farm, it did not take Quire much time to get on to a rise of ground from where he could look down into the main yard. The Pentland Hills were at his back, a chain of rounded heather-cloaked mounds rolling away into the south. The moon came up; a vast yellowish orb hanging over the shoulder of those gentle peaks.

What Quire saw caused him some puzzlement. He knew a working farm, and a well-kept one, when he saw it, and this looked like neither to him. There was a thin trail of smoke drifting up from the farmhouse chimney, so the place was clearly occupied. But there were slates missing from the roof of the biggest barn. There was a broken-down cart, missing a wheel, collapsed on to its axle and lying there in a corner of the yard like a skeleton. At the edge of a field where it backed on to a long, low cowshed, there was a wide black stain, a circular scab of ash and soot and burned grass. Even the hedgerow beneath which Quire sheltered had a look of neglect; its thorns had grown leggy and gnarled and gappy. Too long since they had been laid or cut. He could neither see nor hear any animals, not in the fields, not in the yard. So why did Ruthven keep a farm at all, if it was not being worked?

Night came on, and Quire tired of his vigil. He eased himself up, flexing his legs to break out the stiffness in his knees, and trotted down towards the buildings. He kept in the lee of the hedge, and ducked his head down to ensure he did not break the skyline, or frame himself against the lambent moon.

A soft light was in one window of the farmhouse now; the kitchen, he would guess. He made that his first target. If there was a whole gang of brawny farm lads waiting to spill out and kick him around, he wanted to know about it. Durand’s insistence that Quire should not come to this place alone had been easily, if regrettably, dismissed: the Frenchman could not be expected to know that the Edinburgh police had no authority out here beyond the city bounds, nor that Baird, the current master of the police house, would sooner gnaw off his own thumb than pay heed to any suggestion, on any topic, emanating from Quire. In fact, Quire had taken it as his life’s calling to stay beneath Baird’s notice, as far as that was possible.

It was easy enough to reach the corner of the big barn unseen. There was no smell of animals on the still night air. None of the straw or hay he would have expected to see scattered about. He watched the lighted window of the house across the yard for a little while. It was blurred by condensation, so he could not be certain, but there was no obvious sign of movement within. Only the faintly inconstant light of candles; and that thread of smoke, still just visible ascending from the chimney into the moonlit sky.

Quire knew better than to run, even though the beating of his heart told him his body wanted it. Instead he went slowly and silently across the yard, bent low, hands almost brushing the ground. He balled himself up against the wall beneath the window, straining his ears for any human sound leaking out. Nothing. No voice, no movement. He breathed deeply. And ventured a quick look.

He put his head above the sill of the window, and squinted in. The steam beaded on the glass made everything vague, but he could see enough to know it was indeed the kitchen. An empty one, as best he could tell with the moment’s examination he permitted himself. He settled back down on to his haunches.

Then, footsteps, and a rattling of the handle on the farmhouse door just a few yards from where he squatted. A tingling excitation of fear ran through the skin of his hands and arms. The door jerked open with some violence, and a lurching figure emerged in a flood of light.

A big man, but all his strength was in his chest and arms, for his hips were narrow and his legs spindly. Not someone Quire recognised. He staggered a little as he came out from the farmhouse, taking a few steps in and out of the pool of light falling from the open door. He laughed to himself as he did it, amused by his own incoherent feet. First belch, then fart escaped his swaying form. At which he laughed again.

Quire shrank back into whatever meagre shadows there might be beneath the window; he willed himself to fade, become thin and faint, and berated himself for not waiting for some cloud to veil that vast moon. He pressed his shoulders to the wall, narrowed his eyes to slits lest the whites of them should give him away. He held his breath.

Peering out between his touching eyelashes, he watched as the man set one wide hand against the wall of the farmhouse, leaned heavily on it and with the other unbuckled his trousers. A heavy ring of keys clattered on his belt as he did so. A strong stream of piss played over the stones. The man was humming to himself as he urinated. The flow faltered, and dwindled in fits and starts to nothing.

The man hauled his trousers up once more and fumbled clumsily with his belt. Still Quire did not breathe. He could feel a crushing tightness building in his chest and throat, but he kept his jaw clamped shut, and wished with all his might for this drunken fool of a farmhand to remember how to buckle his own belt.

A fox barked, some little way off in the fields behind Quire. The man straightened and looked that way, hands still at his waist. He blinked stupidly and frowned into the darkness. Quire counted his own heartbeats; fought with his desperate need to suck in some air. And the big man’s gaze dropped, fell upon Quire’s face, slipped drunkenly away from it. But then the eyes sharpened a touch. The gaze returned to Quire. The man opened his mouth.

Quire surged up, emptying his burning lungs and filling them again in the space of one long pace. He put his shoulder into the man’s midriff and lifted him bodily from the ground. It was not easy, to turn in mid-stride with that much weight across him, but he did it, and punched the man back against the farmhouse wall. He heard the bony crack of the man’s skull against stone, but had brawled with enough drunks to know that beer was a mighty shield against blows that would take any sober man down. He put a pair of hard, quick strikes in under the ribcage with his right fist; pushed up with his left hand under the chin to smack head against wall again. Then he could feel the strength go from the man’s legs, could feel his weight sinking him.

Quire lowered him to the ground and knelt beside him. His knee was in the pool of urine, and he could feel the last vestiges of its quickly fading warmth through his trousers, but he ignored that. He listened. Nothing. No cries of alarm, no pounding feet. The farmhouse door still stood open, its light and warmth flooding into the night, but no one emerged.

Quire put a hand under each armpit and dragged the insensible man across the farmyard. Hard boot heels scraped on the cobbles, but that seemed unlikely to rouse any pursuit if it had not already been sparked. He could smell the drink coming thickly off his captive. Hopefully any companions he had left behind in the farmhouse were similarly befuddled. All Quire wanted now was a bit of time. He knew better than to taunt the gods of luck. Discovered once was more than enough.

The closest of the farm’s many buildings was the long, low, rather decrepit cowshed at one end of the yard. The moonlight was falling full upon its face, and Quire could see a heavy bar across its door, secured by chain and padlock. He unceremoniously pulled the ring of keys from the man’s belt and examined them. One looked a likely fit for the lock.

He clamped the key crossways between his teeth and, one step at a time, hauled his captive towards the shed. Any unconscious man—or a dead one, for that matter—had a terrible weight to him, and Quire knew that. He had not expected, though, quite how quickly his damaged left arm would weary of the task. He could feel it slipping out from under the man’s shoulder, moment by moment.

Had the shed been a few yards further, he might have lost his grip. As it was, he reached the door with his left arm trembling and cramping. He took the key with that hand, bearing the man’s full weight on his right arm and hip. He was relieved at the ease and quiet with which the padlock clicked open. The chain made a little more noise as it came free, and the key fell from the lock and rang softly on the ground before skittering into shadows. Quire glanced back towards the house. There was still no further sign of life. It might be that fortune had belatedly chosen to smile upon him, and there was no one else around to trouble him.

He lifted the bar and eased the door open; not much, just enough to let him enter. The silence and darkness that awaited within were welcome. A few last, painful heaves and he and the farmhand were inside, and the door closed behind them.

Quire sat for a moment on the hard floor, sucking in a few deep breaths. He reached blindly in the darkness, found the man’s arms and folded them across his chest. He let his hand rest there, feeling the rise and fall of the ribcage. Satisfied that no lasting harm had been done, he ground a thumb into his left palm, trying to ease some of the taut discomfort in the muscles. As he did so, his surroundings slowly, subtly impressed themselves upon his senses.

The place smelled like no cowshed he had ever encountered. It had a dry, almost herbal scent to it. And the distinctive stink of goat. As his eyes adapted themselves to the traces of moonlight seeping in through the ill-fitting door, he picked out a strange complexity of shapes. There were no byres, no stalls, as best he could tell; none of what was needed to handle cattle. Only some odd constellation of objects—he could not tell what in the gloom—hanging from the rafters above him. Jars or other storage vessels along the walls. Down at the far end, at the very limit of what his eyes could detect, perhaps tables or desks.

And sound. So faint, so tenuous, that he had to hold his breath to track it. In the most distant corner, where the darkness was complete and impenetrable. Cloth brushing against flagstones. Something—fingernails?—scratching on wood.

Quire tugged his pistol out from the deep pocket inside his coat. Its weight in his hand was a comfort of sorts, but he sincerely hoped it would not be needed. The noise would dispel any last hope of concealment, and he had brought only enough powder and balls for three shots. He had come meaning only to look, not to fight.

He peered into the furthest corner of the shed. There was something there, something moving. Something or someone. But he could not see anything, only hear the telltale frictional scrapings.

Quire’s legs wanted to run, carry him out into the fields and away from this strangely desolate and dark farm. The unconscious man at his feet might wake at any moment; some other curious guard might emerge from the farmhouse. But he had not yet seen anything to explain Durand’s fear, or the importance of this place.

Though there was a hollow foreboding taking root in his guts, Quire set himself on his haunches and whispered: “Who’s there?”

The response was immediate. A thrashing about in the darkness. Limbs battering against walls or furniture. Not a word, though. Nothing to say if it was man or beast that lurked there. Quire could hear objects falling to the ground, breaking.

He tightened his grip on his pistol and cursed his misfortune. Or ill judgement, perhaps. It hardly mattered now which it was. He turned his back on the tumult in the shadows, his spine tingling with apprehension at the act, and peered out between the doors of the shed, angling his head to get a narrow view of the door to the farmhouse. Still open, still spilling light.

He heard wood cracking, splintering in the darkness behind him. His heart hammered. He looked back, blindly, into the depths of the cowshed. The frenzied thrashing grew louder still.

He slipped out of the shed and settled the bar down across its pegs on the door. He reached for the chain, at his feet, and found it tangled. He spent a precious moment or two trying to get it back in its place, but heard something overturned, a terrible crashing, from within; no longer in that far corner of the shed, he thought, but closer to the door. Time, he judged, was against him.

He let the chain fall and went on his toes—quickly, but quiet—to the corner of the shed and around into the deeper moon shadows. There was a crude outhouse of some sort leaning against the stone wall, with a sloping roof like a chicken coop. Quire brushed against it as he passed, and there was an eruption of excitement within. He recoiled from it, stifling a cry of alarm in his throat. This noise he could decipher more easily than the chaotic racket that still emanated from the main shed; this time, he could hear blunt claws scrabbling against the wooden planks. His nostrils caught the sharp, rotten stink of dog. Fear took hold of him. Simple, deep fear.

He ran, no longer caring about concealment. He pounded across the yard, the tail of his long coat flapping behind him, pistol still clutched in one hand. The light falling from the open farmhouse door bathed him, then he was beyond it and into the moon-softened darkness again.

Behind him he heard the doors of the cowshed shaking and groaning beneath sudden assault. He did not look back, not even when he heard the beam that held them shut fracture, the deep, booming breaking of its back unmistakable.

He ran straight down the curving rough track. No time now for retracing the steps of his more cautious approach across the fields. The surface was a hopeless mess of humps and hollows, ruts and stones, that set him stumbling and made his flight ever wilder. The path fell in amongst trees, and the lantern of the moon’s face was taken from him. His eyes failed him. He almost fell, but staggered instead to lean against the trunk of a birch. He was panting, as much out of the anxious urgency of the moment as his exertions.

He looked back the way he had come. The steading was a black and menacing outline against the moon now, the line of smoke from the chimney laying a crack across that pale orb. More troubling was the heavy sound of footsteps. They were drawing near. Quire peered into the gloom.

It was a lone man, and not a large one at that, coming steadily down the track. He ran with his arms hanging loosely down at his sides. Trailing from one of them was a cord or rope of some sort, and still bouncing along at its end the iron ring by which it must have been secured to the wall. Quire could not see his face.

“Hold up, there,” he shouted, stepping into the centre of the track. “Are you a prisoner? I’m with the police.”

The approaching figure made no reply, just came jogging on, into the darkness cast by the trees crowding in on either side.

“Can you not talk?” Quire demanded uneasily, lifting his pistol.

Without breaking stride, the lean, rangy man swept up one arm and brought the iron ring roped to it lashing round in a wide curve towards Quire’s head.

“Jesus Christ,” Quire exclaimed.

He ducked, and the ring went hissing over his head. He leaped to one side as his assailant rushed at him, but his ankle turned on the lip of a rut in the track, and he fell to one knee. Before he could rise, there was a hand on the lapel of his coat, and another scrabbling at his belt.

Quire discharged the pistol into the man’s stomach. The flame and noise and smoke erupted between them, blinding him, burning up into his nose. The shot had no effect upon its target.

The man got a hold on his belt, and in the space of a single heartbeat Quire was off the ground. He was taller and broader than his opponent by some way, yet he was lifted bodily into the air. He tried to club the man in the side of the head, but could not land a sure enough strike. And then the man threw him.

Branches slashed at Quire’s face. He hit a tree trunk with his hip. It spun him round and he fell head first amongst bushes. The pistol slipped from his grasp. Dazed, he rolled on to all fours and began scrambling through the undergrowth. He could see almost nothing in the deep shadow beneath the canopy, in the thick scrub. But he struggled forward, stems and thorns scraping his face and arms, driven on by the sound of crashing pursuit behind him.

He forced himself up on to his feet and blundered ahead, beating away saplings in his path. As he went, he took his baton from his belt; used it to flail at the vegetation before him. There was that emptiness in him now which he had not felt with such clarity for years; the dread simplicity of being in the presence of imminent death. As it had always done, it lent strength to his limbs.

He burst out from the copse and into the moonlight once more. His feet went from under him and he fell on his side into a ditch running along the edge of the field. It was clogged up with dead wood and fallen branches, but there was a foot or more of water in it too, and he sucked some of that into his lungs before he could get his head up.

The moon was abruptly obscured, and a great weight landed on Quire’s back, punching him down into the bottom of the ditch. He rolled over, spitting filthy water, flailing for a hold to pull himself up. Brittle wood broke beneath his grasp. Hands pressed down on his chest, forcing his head underwater. He blinked as he went under, caught a glimpse of a face above him, one side of it gilded by the moon. It was Davey Muir, the gravedigger he had seen with Blegg at the Dancing School.

Muir got a hold of Quire’s throat, and the fingers were like steel bands. Spots of colour flared inside Quire’s eyelids. Water was in his nose. He clubbed with his baton at the arms holding him down, but it made no impression. The boy had an impossible strength. It was as if he was made of stone.

Quire’s body was howling for air. He let his baton fall, and instead took hold of Davey’s left hand; broke the third and fourth fingers backwards. It did not seem to bother Davey, but it did weaken his grip a fraction. Just enough. Quire managed to force that crippled hand away from his throat. He got his feet into Davey’s stomach and kicked out with all the desperate strength he could summon. It tore Davey free, and Quire burst up out of the water, roaring in fear and fury. And pain, for those fingers ripping away from his neck had felt as if they were taking his windpipe with them.

Quire got to his feet. His coat was as heavy as lead, soaked through. Water poured from it. He spat and sputtered. Davey was rising in front of him, the iron ring on its rope still hanging from his wrist like a manacle.

Quire fumbled about at his feet and dragged up a length of knotted branch. He swung it at Davey’s head. The gravedigger got an arm up, and the branch broke in two across his elbow, leaving Quire with just the stub of it.

Davey surged forward, piling up the filthy ditchwater in front of his pumping legs. Quire threw himself to one side, sprawling on the bank amidst a fringe of rushes and rotting logs. He tried to push himself, backwards, up and out into the field beyond, but the soft earth gave beneath his hands and heels and sucked him back down. Davey loomed over him, the light of the moon spilling over his shoulders, and flailed at him with the rope-tethered ring. It thudded into the ground by Quire’s head, spattering his cheek with wet mud.

Quire rose, sheer terror for once giving his left arm the strength to do what was needful. He threw himself inside the reach of the descending circlet of iron, and stabbed Davey in the eye with the broken stump of wood, leaving it planted there in the socket.

There should have been a scream. Writhing; panic; something. Davey simply faltered for a moment, and pawed rather ineffectually at the shaft of wood lodged in his skull. Quire hooked a leg behind Davey’s knee and barged him over. The youth toppled back, half in and half out of the water. The moonlight fell full on his face then, and Quire could see the ruin he had wrought. No blood, though.

He saw, too, the remaining eye staring up at him, and that filled him with resurgent terror, for it was an empty, animal eye, devoid of human intelligence, or sentiment, or awareness. He felt no kinship of any kind with whatever lay behind it.

Already Davey was trying to rise, hampered only by the slippery mud and unstable banks of the ditch, not by his broken bones or destroyed eye.

“God damn you,” Quire cried, shaking.

He did not know why he shook, whether it was from fear or anger. He did not care; he only cared that Davey should stay down, that this should end. For the first time, he could see the youth’s hands clearly, and they were a mass of little dark scrawlings, far too small for Quire to make them out in the darkness. It was as if some fine-handed scribe had taken a quill to the boy’s skin. Not tattoos, as best he could tell, but what else they might be he had no idea.

As Davey rolled on to his front, the better to push himself to his feet, Quire put a foot into the back of his right knee and took hold of his ankle. He might have baulked at what came next, had he thought about it. But there was no time, no thought; there was only life and death, and the cold, old Quire who knew precisely what it took to stay on the right side of the divide.

He stamped down with his foot, twisted with his arms, spun himself and put his whole body weight into the task of breaking out Davey’s knee joint. He felt it go, heard it crackle and tear, but he didn’t release Davey’s leg. He lay across it, and kept pushing, kept trying to turn the ankle further, until he was certain that limb could not bear the gravedigger’s weight. And never would again, most likely.

Even that, even the destruction of his knee, brought no wail of protest from Davey. Even though his foot projected at an absurd angle, his lower leg limp and twisted and loose, even with all that, he simply tried to rise, tried to reach Quire.

“God damn you,” gasped Quire. “God damn you.”

He had to lean back against the far bank of the ditch then, for he was trembling so violently that he thought he might fall. As it was, he only vomited, heaving his guts up into the dark water at his feet, while Davey slipped slowly down the opposite bank, still staring at him with that single, unblinking eye.

Quire turned away and pulled himself laboriously up into the field. He got unsteadily to his feet and staggered away, quite numb. He did not know if anyone—or anything—else would come after him. If they did, he had nothing left with which to oppose them. All he knew was that he needed to put as much ground as he could between himself and the gravedigger, still stirring feebly in the drainage ditch. Get himself away from this foul farm and out from under the light of this leering moon.

Beneath the powerful mid-morning sun, Davey Muir’s hand clawed weakly at the soft earth. His fingers dug in, gouging out little ruts, piling up the grass between them. He had left a scrabbled trail of mud through the field, where he had hauled himself from the ditch, dragged his broken body another few dozen yards.

Blegg stood looking down at him. The lower half of Davey’s left leg was rotated a good quarter-circle further than it should have been, the knee joint ruptured. A stick protruded a few inches from the ruined socket of his right eye. He made no sound. Just reached, and took a feeble handful of soil and grass, pulled it towards him. Reached, and held, and pulled.

“Go back to the farm,” Blegg said without looking round to the man standing disconsolately behind him. “Get a fire started.”

The man did not move at once. He stared in dumb horror at the crippled form on the ground.

“Wallace, did you get deaf as well as drunk and stupid last night?” Blegg snapped.

“No. No.”

“Then go back to the farm and get a fire started. Same place as we did the one got shot at Duddingston. I’ll bring this.”

Wallace turned and began to trudge away, sluggish. Blood still crusted his hair where his head had been cracked against the farmhouse wall. As he walked, he favoured his left side, protective of the aching bruises put there by a couple of good punches.

“When we’re done, you’ll need to start loading the wagon up,” Blegg called after him. “Everything. This place isn’t safe any more. Not after this. Ruthven’s equipment’ll be needing another home.”

Blegg bent down over Davey and pulled the stick from his eye. Fragments of skin and eyeball adhered to it. Blegg threw it casually away. He regarded the sluggishly moving figure for a moment or two, then turned to shout at Wallace’s receding back.

“Have you a knife?”

Wallace paused and looked back.

“Not on me.”

“Get one from the kitchen, then. I may have a use for a part of this thing yet.”

Blegg picked Davey up, slung him without difficulty over his shoulder and began to walk after Wallace.

“Quire,” he murmured, with a strange mixture of loathing and relish.