The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [23]
Quire roused himself first.
“There you are, Donald. Keep that for yourself. At least you’ll have made a profit on the morning’s business.”
He left MacQuarrie staring at the slumping pat of butter in quizzical silence, as if he had never before encountered such a baffling object.
“No, you cannot have any men,” snapped Lieutenant Baird. “There’s two hundred thousand living souls in this city, Quire. Living, mark you, not already dead and beyond all earthly concerns. And we’ve a hundred and a half on the city police, if you include every last grubby little member of the night watch. Does that sound to you as though we’ve the men to spare for standing guard on a graveyard all night because you’ve heard some tall tale from Donald MacQuarrie? The master of the Dancing School, no less, and he’s got you dancing to a silly tune right enough, hasn’t he?”
Quire made to reply, but Baird was in full, acerbic flow.
“If it was one of the city yards, maybe, but Duddingston?” the lieutenant sneered. “No. Not a single officer, not chasing off after some fancy of yours just because you think one man might have been talking to another in a cesspit on Toddrick’s Wynd. Not today, not any other day.”
“You know fine there’s only one reason for a man to be meeting a gravedigger in a place like that and asking after a burial,” snapped Quire, his patience—never the most robust of his qualities—faltering. “And you know just as well that the body snatchers like to do their digging outside the city these days. Less well guarded, less closely watched.”
“Fine by me,” Baird grunted, settling back in his chair and crossing his arms. “Let them dig away, so long as it’s not under our noses. If they think the body’s worth the snatching, the Duddingston folk’ll have a watch on it themselves. They know how these things go.
“What is this morbid fascination for the corpse trade you’ve suddenly acquired, anyway? It’s not to do with that body in the Cowgate, is it?”
“Not really,” Quire said.
Lying to Baird was not an unfamiliar experience for him.
“I hope not. Way I hear it, Christison’s called it animals, not men, that finished that fellow off. No great loss, a drunk falling asleep in a close and getting himself gnawed on. And we’ve not found a single soul who’s seen anything prowling about in the Old Town that might do such a thing to a man. It’s nothing to trouble us overmuch.”
Quire had long since lost any interest in Baird’s opinion of how he should conduct himself. The lieutenant had always been at him like a baiting dog at a badger, fired up by the rumours of Quire’s drinking and acquaintance with dubious women that had attended upon him in the earliest days of his employment.
Baird was a man with an eye on advancement. He cared, as best Quire could tell, hardly at all for the substance of police work, only for the opportunities of promotion it might offer him; opportunities he had concluded would not be enhanced by association with a man like Quire.
“Turning a blind eye to the theft of corpses from their graves doesn’t sit right with me,” Quire said stubbornly. He had tired of the exchange, knowing defeat when it arrived, but his dislike of Baird would not allow him to retire gracefully from the field. “You’d not like some brother of yours digging up and carting off to the medical schools, would you?”
“It’s not something the city fathers want us bothering ourselves with too much, Quire. There’s more important matters to worry us, and you might think you get to choose how you spend your time, but I know better.”
Baird was pleased with himself, enjoying the exercise of his authority.
“Know your place, Quire,” the lieutenant said. “That’s always been your problem.”
In the entrance hall of the police house, Sergeant Jack Rutherford was pinning a recalcitrant visitor to the floor with the help of a couple of others. Quire recognised the subject of their rather weary efforts: Tam Wilkinson, a thief, well-known in certain quarters, who