The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [140]
“Aye,” Rutherford said, looking that way, “that’s…”
Quire’s hand was over his mouth, his arm about his chest, dragging him violently backwards. Rutherford kicked and scrabbled to get his feet back under him, but Quire was the bigger and stronger of them by some distance. He hauled Rutherford into the nearest stair, and threw him down on to the first few steps. Rutherford turned on to his back, but did not rise.
Quire loomed over him, blocking out what little light there was in the courtyard. He held a pistol in his upraised hand, brandishing it like a cudgel.
“I’ll beat your head in if you give me the reason,” Quire hissed.
Rutherford lifted his hands, set them between him and Quire as if to fend him off.
“You’ve gone mad,” he said, as loudly as he dared.
Quire gave the pistol a warning shake.
“You keep your voice down, or that’ll be the reason for breaking your head,” he said quietly.
“All right, all right.”
The only thing Rutherford could think to do was delay matters, stretch them out, until some passer-by should disturb them and save him from Quire’s wrath. Quire, unfortunately, had always been a man inclined to hurry right to the meat of any talk.
“You’re the one told them I was going to the Assembly Rooms. You tricked it out of the boy bringing the message, somehow. If you lie, I’ll know it.”
Rutherford believed that to be true, so he chose to say nothing at all, merely giving out a faint whimper that he hoped would sound at least as piteous and frightened as he felt.
“Told Baird, too, that I’d been talking to Cath, maybe? Lost me my wage and my calling, in that case. Were you watching me, Rutherford? Spying on me for Ruthven and Blegg? Baird, too?”
Rutherford snorted.
“Baird’s a prancing prig.”
Quire suddenly hit him in the face with his free hand, looping it around outside the shield Rutherford had made of his arms. The blow broke open the corner of his lip, and punched his head back against the sharp edge of one of the stone steps. He moaned, and blinked in surprise and pain.
“For God’s sake, man,” he gasped.
“Hold your tongue.”
Rutherford had never heard quite such steady contempt and threat in a man’s voice. Quire had always carried a rather intimidating presence about him, but this was something different. This was cold, purposeful determination undiluted by any pretence at fellow feeling or human concern.
“Just tell me this, and I’ll leave you be,” Quire said. “It’s not you I’m after, Rutherford. You’re just the rat running around the edges. But tell me this: you’ve taken Ruthven money, and you told them I was going to the Assembly Rooms.”
Rutherford tasted blood in his mouth. He licked at the wound with his tongue, buying a fragment of time in which to think. This was not entirely the Quire he had known; he did not know precisely by what rules he now worked.
“Listen,” Rutherford murmured, making his choice and praying for a bit of good fortune. “You’re not wrong. I’ve a family, and I needed the money. Nothing more to it than that, Quire. You know how it is. It was nothing much they wanted of me, just a word now and again of what got talked about in the police house. Letting them know if any name they might be interested in ever came up, their own most of all.
“But that business with you getting turned off the force, and then the Assembly Rooms… aye, I might have played a wee part in all of that, but I broke with them after, Quire. I swear to you, I wanted nothing more to do with them after that. It was all getting too rich for my blood, and I never thought it would come to such a pitch. Taking a man’s profession and living away from him, that’s not right, not right at all.”
He waited with held breath to see the effect of his confession upon Quire. The result was not precisely what he had hoped for.
“Except you didn’t, did you? Break with them. You’ve been taking Isabel Ruthven to see William Hare in the Calton Jail, haven’t you?”
Quire made to bring that cruel-looking pistol down, and Rutherford flung up his arms to