The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [122]
“And you’ll not be telling them, or her?”
Quire shook his head.
“Not yet. I’m not done yet. When I am, then maybe a wee bit of the truth’ll come out, but the police aren’t what’s needed to mend all this. Ruthven’d shake them off, or slip away and disappear soon as they came sniffing round. Either way, they’ll not get him to answer to anything.”
“But you will?”
“I’m the one lifted up this rock, and set the worms to seething. I’m the one put Wilson in this bed. I’m the one’ll end it, once my leg’s fit to take my weight again.” He smiled grimly. “I’ve nothing else to do with myself these days.”
Quire’s ankle twinged. The burns on his hand and arms stung. They were not bad, those burns, but they were far worse, to his way of thinking, than any turned ankle. He dreamed of nothing but fire now, every night. If he closed his eyes while awake, even, he could see flames.
“I only stopped in to check on him,” he said.
He began to turn away, but paused when he saw the gas fittings up on the wall. They were there high above every bed: copper pipes and embrasures and nozzles. Silent and lifeless now, on a bright winter’s morning.
“He’s no great liker of gaslights, is Dunbar,” he said sadly.
“He’ll like them fine, when he wakes to see them,” Agnes told him.
Quire was bound up with his own thoughts as he limped along the tiled corridor of the hospital, so much so that he almost collided with a man hurrying in the other direction, equally distracted.
Quire held up an apologetic hand, staggering slightly as he tried to adjust his balance. It took him a moment to recognise the man he faced.
“Sergeant Quire,” Robert Christison said. “Ah, except it’s no longer Sergeant, is it? Forgive me. Force of habit.”
“Professor,” Quire nodded, wincing a little at the throbbing of his ankle.
He lifted his foot a fraction from the floor, to take the weight off the aching joint. Christison glanced down, his expert eyes narrowing.
“Are you injured? Getting treatment, perhaps?”
“It’s just a turned ankle, sir. Taking its time about healing, but it’s on the mend. I’m sorry to have got in your way there, but the ankle makes me a bit less nimble than I was.”
“Oh, don’t worry, don’t worry. I was paying less attention than I should myself. Rather distracted, I confess.”
The professor gave a sharp, sad shake of his head.
“A dreadful business, Quire. You’ll not have heard, I suppose, being no longer… well, anyway, word has not yet started to spread, though I fear it surely will.”
He glanced about suddenly, apparently to ensure there was no one else within earshot.
“I’ve a woman awaiting me on a slab downstairs, found in the cellar of Robert Knox’s theatre. Another day or two and she would have been under his knife, for the edification of his students.
“The police went looking for her there because they’ve got two Irishmen in custody and it seems—hard to credit, but evidently there’s some sort of confession already—it seems they’ve been supplying his cadavers by way of murder. Burke and Hare. Unthinkable.”
“Hare, you say?” said Quire.
“Indeed. William Hare. And Burke’s a William too, come to that. It’s incredible, quite incredible. That men should murder for profit, and not just this once, by any means. If the rumour’s true, it’s a dozen or more. Can you believe it?”
“William Hare,” murmured Quire.
“As I said. I’m to interview Knox myself, at the request of the Lord Advocate. By God, Quire, if this gets out, if it’s proved he had knowledge of how these cadavers were being procured, the scandal will be extraordinary.”
“I never had the impression you were too close a friend of Knox’s, sir.”
“I can’t stand him,” Christison admitted without hesitation. “He’s an insufferable prig, and oafishly arrogant. Takes the most unseemly pleasure in slandering the entire medical staff of the university, in the main because the Town Council did not see fit to appoint him to the chair he wanted. But the consequences if he is shown to have knowingly paid over money for the victims of murder…”
Christison shook his head once more, dismayed