The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [133]
“You’re not making much sense, Adam. I ken you fine, but I ken you’re no policeman too, not any more. You’re just a man, and that’s not the kind of folk who get in to see William Hare.”
Quire gazed out of the office’s barred window in disappointment. It faced on to the main prison, and he could very faintly hear hand bells being rung in there. Feeding time. He had been there, once, when the inmates got their food, and it had been the worst slop he had ever seen, in or out of the army. Hardly fit for pigs.
“There’s been some got in to see him before,” Quire complained. “Reporters and the like; so they claim in the newssheets, anyway. I thought I’d have a chance at getting a word with him.”
“There’s no man here had more visitors than he did before the trial,” Maclellan grunted. “Lawyers and priests and all sorts. Aye, and maybe a reporter or two. But nobody sees William Hare now. Not unless they’re police, or have their permission and escort. That Jack Rutherford was the last, bringing the Ruthven woman. You must know him well enough. Ask him to bring you along, and maybe we’ll see about getting you in.”
Quire did not say anything. He remained quite still, staring out through the thick, speckled glass at the jail.
“It’s the best I can do, Adam, you must understand. This Hare… Jesus, he’s not just another prisoner. The city’s on the boil over the whole business. Everyone’s calling for his head. And he’s stopped talking, in any case. Hardly saying a word to anyone.”
“Isabel Ruthven, was it?” Quire asked, still not looking at the guard captain.
“Aye, might have been. I don’t particularly remember the name.”
“What was her business with Hare, do you know?”
Maclellan sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest.
“I’ve no idea, Quire. Maybe a relative of one of the victims or something. I’ve no idea.”
“Would you do something for me?” Quire leaned across the desk, and put every ounce of sincerity and gravity he possessed into his appeal. “Would you just get a message to me if either of those two come back to see Hare? Rutherford or Isabel Ruthven. Either of them, or both. Send a message to my house—I’ll tell you where to find it—to let me know they’ve been.”
“And why would I do such a thing?”
Maclellan sounded more puzzled than affronted by the suggestion.
“Just because it might be very important to me,” said Quire, his mind working quickly, trying to tease sense out of the tangle of his thoughts. “It might be nothing, but it might not.”
He could see the hesitation in Maclellan’s face. So he gambled.
“And because I’ll put ten pounds your way if they come and I know of it within the hour.”
XXXI
Burke’s Last Day
A bloodlust had hold of Edinburgh such as it had not felt in centuries. Perhaps ever. It was in ferment, so bloated with outrage and accusation that it trembled upon the brink of riot. There was but one thing that might stay the mob’s fury, for a while at least, and that very thing was about to be delivered unto them.
It had rained prodigiously in the early hours of the morning, cataracts spilling from the countless jostling rooftops of the Old Town. The rainwater had run in a myriad little rivers down the length of the High Street, gushing down the closes, sending even the rats scurrying for shelter and making the scavengers retreat with their barrows to the watch-houses to wait out the storm.
The rain did pass, but it left every eave dripping, every crease and crevice in the cobbled streets a pool. None of which did anything to deter the assembly of the greatest crowd the city had ever seen. They filled the Lawn Market, that highest part of the High Street, at which it approached the last narrow run up to the castle. Thousands upon thousands of them, standing shoulder to shoulder, all waiting; and all manoeuvring, as best they could in such a close-pressed throng, for a better sight of the gallows.
The most fortunate ones were those leaning from every window in every high tenement around the place of execution. They hung