he entered the abode of Edinburgh’s city police with a certain relief.
The cells that packed the ground floor of the main police house were unusually quiet, even the three—the “dark” cells—reserved for the most troublesome, or troubled, guests. Perhaps the cold of the last few nights had discouraged those given to misbehaviour. The place still had its familiar stink, though: a unique medley that never seemed to change, no matter how its component parts might vary. Quire suspected it was founded on a fog of human sweat, piss and vomit that had settled into the walls. There were smaller watch-houses scattered around the city, but somehow none of them had acquired quite the depth of odour that attached itself to the Old Stamp Office Close building.
Though the place was quiet, the comparative peace had not done anything to lighten Lieutenant Baird’s mood. Quire’s immediate superior disliked him, and never troubled to disguise the fact. He also disliked his current duty. The three lieutenants of police each took their turn as officer in charge of the police house, a task that combined tedium and unavoidably close acquaintance with the city’s least appealing inhabitants. When his turn came about, Baird’s manner seldom did anything but sour. All of which led Quire to expect a gruff welcome, which he duly received.
“Took you long enough,” Baird grunted, barely lifting his gaze from the ledger in which he was scratching away.
“Would you send some men to the body in the Cowgate, sir?” Quire said as politely as he felt able. “Get them asking around. There’s one of our night men down there who needs to be away to his bed.”
Baird put an arch of irritation into his eyebrows as if consenting, solely by dint of his own near-saintly nature, to an outrageous request.
“Is the superintendent about?” Quire asked.
“He’s occupied. In the court. What is it you’re wanting to trouble him with?”
Belatedly, Baird looked Quire in the eyes, and bestowed upon him a suspicious glare.
Quire shrugged.
“I was told he wanted a word with me, that’s all,” he lied.
Baird looked doubtful, but directed Quire with a flick of his head towards the staircase.
Two creaking flights carried Quire up to the little courtroom where justice was applied to those charged with minor crimes. There, amongst the benches, the Superintendent of Police, James Robinson, was in conference with a clutch of judicial clerks. They spoke softly, as if to protect the dignity of the chamber, with its wood-panelled walls and leaded windows and buffed floorboards.
At Quire’s approach, Robinson dismissed the others with a nod and a murmur. They filed quietly out, and the superintendent rose a little stiffly from his seat and regarded Quire, his eyes narrow and inquisitive. He was a man of calm authority, with grizzled sideburns, a handsome face weathered by experience—he was a good deal older than Quire’s thirty-seven years—and a deliberate manner. It imbued his gaze with a certain weight.
“You look like a man in want of sleep, Sergeant,” Robinson observed. “An early start for you, I hear.”
Quire nodded.
“A body, sir. In the Cowgate. Foot of Borthwick’s Close.”
“Ah. Is that beer I smell on you? I hope you are not testing your constitution too severely, Quire.”
The superintendent’s tone was almost casual, but carried a touch of circumspect concern. He knew more of Quire’s history than most, and that history was not one of unblemished restraint and good judgement.
It was only the patronage of James Robinson that shielded Quire against the worst effects of Lieutenant Baird’s antipathy. And, indeed, against the wider consequences he might have suffered for his occasional past infringements of law and discipline, from which that antipathy sprang. He and Robinson, bracketing Baird in the hierarchy of command, shared something the other lacked, something that inclined them towards a certain mutual regard: they had both been soldiers.
There was more to their relationship than that, though. For Quire’s part, he had a vague, imprecisely formed notion that Robinson had been a saviour of sorts to him. At his first admittance to the ranks of the police, Quire had been something of a lost soul, and a drunken one at that. The years following his departure from the army had been turbulent and troubled: peace could be testing for one schooled in nothing but war. He had carried within him a certain restless anger and rebelliousness that should, by rights, have cut short his tenure as an officer of the law. That he had avoided dismissal was due solely to Robinson’s patient, stern tutelage. For that, and the measure of purpose and worth his continuing employment had slowly brought him, Quire owed the man a debt of gratitude.
As Robinson regarded him now, his gaze wore a faintly paternal sheen.
“A night of indulgence, was it?” the superintendent enquired. “With that lackey of yours, I suppose… what’s his name? Dunbar?”
“Nothing excessive, sir,” Quire said, smothering a wry smile at the thought of Wilson Dunbar being anybody’s lackey. “I’m well enough. The drink’s not been my master for a long time now.”
The assertion was accepted without comment.
“So, this corpse,” Robinson said. “Are you done with it for now?”
“That’s the thing I wanted to ask you about. I’ve a mind to send him to the professor.”
“Why?”
“The man was… savaged. It was bloody work. Entirely out of the ordinary. I’d like to know what Christison has to say about it.”
“I’d not want him bothered without good reason,” said Robinson. “Man’s got a fair few demands upon his time, you know. I’ll not have his willingness to aid us exhausted by too many requests.”
“I’d have asked Baird, but he’d only tell me that: not to waste my time—or Christison’s—on some nobody dead in the Old Town.”
“Lieutenant Baird,” Robinson corrected him. “You might make at least some pretence at observing the proprieties of rank, Quire.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you’re sure you’re not, are you? Wasting time, I mean.”
“No such thing as a nobody, sir. I’ve seen—we both have—enough folk of the sort Baird would call nobody die for King and Country to know that. Every man deserves a name putting to him, a bit of time spent on the explanation of his dying. The wars taught me that, and you too, I know. A man like Baird doesn’t…”
“Don’t test my patience, Quire,” Robinson muttered, grimacing. “You’re the best man I’ve got when there’s rough business to be conducted, and sharper than most, so I’ve never regretted any allowances I’ve made you, but I’m not in the best of tempers. The Board of Police are trying me sorely these days, and the gout’s got a hold of my leg something fierce.”
“I’d never want to add to your troubles, sir,” Quire said quickly. “This is the only work I’ve ever found myself good at, outside the army. I owe that to you, I know. It’s just I can’t abide the notion of one man being less worthy of our efforts than another.”
“Just tell me you’re sure this needs Christison’s attention, that’s all.”
“The body’s a mess, sir. Like nothing I’ve seen in years.”
Robinson looked dubious, but there was a foundation of trust between the two of them to be drawn upon.
“I’ll arrange for him to take a look then,” he said. “Don’t go making an issue of it with Lieutenant Baird, though.”
“No, sir,” Quire agreed with what he hoped was appropriately meek humility.
The Scavenger and the Professor
Quire found Grant Carstairs—Shake—waiting for him in the entrance hall of the police house, two days after the discovery of the corpse in the Cowgate. The scavenger sat on a three-legged wooden stool, slumped down into himself like a loose pile of clothes. When Quire appeared, Carstairs looked up with rheumy eyes that betrayed both relief and anguish.
