The Holy Land
Superintendent James Robinson was propped up in a chair with a high, curved back of solid oak. Cushions and pillows were packed in behind him, and under his arms. He looked a touch wan, a touch red around the eyes, and as tired as Quire had seen him in a long time. His wife was an intermittent, solicitous presence, drifting in and out of the room and each time casting a surreptitious glance of concern her husband’s way. Quire suspected that she did not entirely approve of his presence in their apartment atop the police house, but it had been Robinson who had asked to see him.
“The gout still afflicting you?” Quire asked.
“That, and a fair herd of other things,” Robinson replied. “Most of them nothing to do with the failings of this carcass of mine. The board find some new petty fault to charge me with every week, it seems. The Provost has never much liked me, truth be told, nor I him. He relishes every chance to prick me. Including that offered by dead kirk elders in Duddingston. And now there’s this complaint.”
“Complaint?” said Quire, and then, realisation dawning: “Against me?”
Robinson gave a curt nod of his head.
“It’s a serious charge. Not one I believe a word of, and I’ve made that clear, but it’ll take a bit of tidying away. A Mr. John Ruthven has reported that you tried to sell back to him some stolen property of his that you recovered. A silver box. Says when he refused to pay, you let him have it only after lengthy dispute, and that you’ve now accused his man of involvement in body snatching by way of revenge.”
Quire snorted in contemptuous disbelief.
“That’s a lie.”
“Of course it is. You’ve your fair share of faults, Quire, but stupidity and venality are not amongst them. But still: when you were drinking and keeping the wrong kind of company, those charges I could quiet easy enough; this is a different sort of thing.”
Quire sprang to his feet and began to pace up and down on the thick rug. These rooms were in sharp contrast to the police house at the summit of which they perched. All carpets and cushions and homely understatement. Soft. The place felt comfortably inhabited, in a way no abode of Quire’s had ever achieved. It was all entirely out of tune with the mood now taking hold of him.
“That bloody bastard,” he growled.
“Sit down, man,” Robinson muttered with a placatory wave of his hand. “It’ll go no further, if I have my way. But you need to keep your wits about you. Ruthven’s not the kind of man you’re used to dealing with. I gather he went straight to the Sheriff Depute with this, favoured him with a lengthy discourse on the shortcomings of the city police. The Sheriff was not best pleased.
“It’s a cosy little fellowship that occupies the heights of our city’s society. They are a collegiate body of men, few of them inclined to think themselves fit subjects for police enquiry. I’m not sure you have ever entirely understood that, but you would do well to give it some thought. Goad one, and that one can make sure plenty of others feel it.”
“I’ve done nothing but what seemed right,” Quire said, still standing.
“I know that. And I know you: you’ve a rare affection for justice—or what you decide is justice, at least—and the stubbornness of an ill-tempered mule. Laudable attributes in many ways, and neither of them as common beneath this roof as they should be; which might be, in part, why you’ve not made yourself quite as many friends and allies here as you could do with now. But if you mean to hold your course on this, you will need to learn discretion.”
“Will you take some tea?” the superintendent’s wife asked from the doorway. “There’s no better poultice for the nerves.”
It was a genteel but pointed suggestion. Quire understood her desire to swaddle her recuperating husband in calm. He shook his head, and forced himself to fold his tense limbs down into a chair.
“No, thank you. No.”
She nodded and retired once more.
“I’m curious, though.” Robinson sniffed, pulling a blanket from the arm of his chair and settling it across his knees. “You must have shaken something loose, to drive Ruthven into making false accusations. This started with that man dead in the Cowgate, did it?”
“Edward Carlyle. Yes. He was in Ruthven’s employ, so there’s been one of his men torn to pieces in the Old Town, and another digging up graves in Duddingston. Whatever’s happening, Ruthven’s at the heart of it.”
“You’re sure of that, are you? That it was this fellow Blegg in the graveyard?”
“As sure as I can be. It was dark, and I only had a glimpse of him. It’s nothing I can prove, though.”
Robinson sniffed again.
“Makes no sense. There’s not enough coin in the corpse trade to interest a man like Ruthven. Still, he’d hardly be trying to pull you down if there was nothing to it.”
“I’ve had someone break into my home, too,” Quire muttered bitterly. “Might not be part of it, but it was like no housebreaking I’ve seen. Nothing taken but a shirt.”
That put a frown on Robinson’s brow. He leaned forward a little.
“You be careful, Adam. Could be that you’ve made yourself some bad enemies here. They’ve already killed at least one man, and that’s not the sort of folk you want knowing where you live.”
“I’ve had the same thought. Bad enough someone trying to kill me out on the ice at Duddingston, without them digging around in my home. And spreading lies about my conduct. I don’t take well to being the hunted.”
“Yet that’s what you are, it would seem.”
“If so, they’ve made themselves a worse enemy in me than they could ever be, and I know fine where Ruthven lives. If he wants to make it a personal matter between him and me, that’s a game I can play.”
“Steady, steady,” Robinson muttered. “This isn’t some street brawl or army grudge you’re mixed up in now. Needs a bit of discretion, as I said. I recommend the cultivation of it to you, one old soldier to another. You need to keep yourself clean and quiet for a bit, or the Police Board’ll have you, no matter what I might say.”
Quire ground his fingers into his temples, staring blankly into the middle distance. There was a rare ire burning in him, unlike anything he had felt for years. It had taken him a long time to get his life on to some sort of steady path, and his eyes clear enough to see it. He despised Ruthven for threatening that, and for making him angry enough that he might even threaten it himself.
“What do you mean to do?” Robinson asked quietly.
“Baird wants me to leave the Duddingston thing to others.”
“That’s good sense, for now at least. I don’t suppose he’s saying it for your good, but it’ll do you no harm to keep out of sight on that matter.”
“Ruthven told me he’d had some falling-out with the Society of Antiquaries. Might be they know something of his habits. And there’s still Edward Carlyle. I’m not ready to believe there’s nothing more to that.”
“Dogs, I hear.”
Quire gave an unguarded, derisive snort.
“When did dogs ever kill folk in the Old Town? The man breaks with Ruthven and he’s dead inside a few weeks. It’s not coincidence that stinks of. I’ve got the name of the woman he was passing time with before he died. She might be worth the talking to.” He glanced apologetically at the superintendent. “I’ll need to pay a visit to the Holy Land.”
Robinson rolled his eyes.
“Did I not just explain the merits of discretion to you, Quire? Of keeping yourself clean? You and the Holy Land don’t mix well. Was almost losing your job once before not enough for you?”
“I’m not about to start digging myself back into old holes,” Quire said quickly, anxious to reassure his patron. “I’ll be quiet about it. Quiet’s often better in the Holy Land, anyway.”
“Quiet’s always better, Adam,” Robinson grunted. “I’m glad you know as much, though the knowing and the doing seem the most distant of cousins in your case.”
The Holy Land stood shoulder to shoulder with the Happy Land and the Just Land in Leith Wynd, a narrow roadway running north from the High Street. Of the three ill-reputed tenements—each of them named with the dour
