The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [24]
“Lend a hand, Quire,” Rutherford suggested equably. He was fully occupied holding down Wilkinson’s head and shoulders, while his two colleagues struggled to master one flailing leg apiece.
Quire advanced, and paused a moment to judge the movement of Wilkinson’s hand. Then he trod on it, firmly enough to prompt a howl of protest.
“Is Robinson about, do you know?” Quire asked as he bent down to retrieve the knife. A silly little thing, he thought, looking down at it in his palm; but still, careless of them not to strip him of it before dragging him in here.
“Laid up with the gout, I heard,” Rutherford grunted. He adjusted his grip, locking an arm around Wilkinson’s neck preparatory to hauling the now compliant miscreant to his feet. Quire puffed his cheeks out in frustration.
“Might be he’s just worn out, of course,” Rutherford said. “Rumour is, he’s taking a beating from the Police Board these days. Folk with no better use for their time than making other folk’s lives difficult.”
“Aye, there’s a few like that around here.” Quire nodded.
He went out on to the High Street, despondent twice over. First for the troubles befalling Robinson, a man as far as Quire could tell entirely undeserving of the wrath of his masters; second, more selfishly, for his own inability to appeal Baird’s obstinacy to a higher authority. Without Robinson, it was a matter between Baird and Quire, and that was not the kind of matter that was likely to have a happy outcome. Still, some things could not be helped.
For years, Quire had marched and fought in obedience to the orders of those above him. That had eventually led him into a state he would never willingly revisit: not knowing why, beyond that mere obedience, he did what he did; not knowing, in his heart, upon which side of the divide between right and wrong his terrible deeds were placing him. The uncertainty had stayed with him, through the years of drinking and wandering and labouring after he left the army, though he had not recognised its corrosive persistence at the time. Only becoming an officer of the law had quieted it, and instilled in him a sense of convinced purpose. If he was to retain that precious, protective clarity, he had no choice but to follow where it led.
One or both of Ruthven and Blegg were involved in something they should not be, of that he had no doubt. Whether that something had played a part in Edward Carlyle’s death was unclear, but Quire had no intention of letting it remain so.
It began to snow as he wandered thoughtfully down the High Street. He paused at the great crossroads where the North and South Bridges pointed their respective ways out from the Old Town and looked up at the flakes swirling in ever thickening congregation around the steeple of the Tron Church.
It had been unseasonally and bitterly cold for days now. Winter appeared stubbornly unwilling to yield its dominion.
The Duddingston Ice
In the falling dusk, Adam Quire walked around the southern flank of Arthur’s Seat, serenaded by jackdaws tumbling raucously beside the rock faces. There was a thin cloak of snow on the ground, and a cruel, deep cold to the air now that the clouds had cleared away, leaving a sea of emergent stars. Quire paused where the track cut through a notch in the hill and turned, looking back towards Edinburgh. The setting sun lit the western sky with a rosy wash. Sprawled between that vast, glowing canvas and the looming crags of Arthur’s Seat, the city looked small, almost humble: a dark encrustation upon the land, studded with spires and a forest of chimneys. Pennants of smoke streamed from its innumerable mouths, a grey froth ascending into, and merging with, the darkening sky.
Quire had brought a lantern with him, but he did not light it yet. There was a certain peace to be had in the gloaming, which man-made illumination would dispel.