The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [38]
“The gout still afflicting you?” Quire asked.
“That, and a fair herd of other things,” Robinson replied. “Most of them nothing to do with the failings of this carcass of mine. The board find some new petty fault to charge me with every week, it seems. The Provost has never much liked me, truth be told, nor I him. He relishes every chance to prick me. Including that offered by dead kirk elders in Duddingston. And now there’s this complaint.”
“Complaint?” said Quire, and then, realisation dawning: “Against me?”
Robinson gave a curt nod of his head.
“It’s a serious charge. Not one I believe a word of, and I’ve made that clear, but it’ll take a bit of tidying away. A Mr. John Ruthven has reported that you tried to sell back to him some stolen property of his that you recovered. A silver box. Says when he refused to pay, you let him have it only after lengthy dispute, and that you’ve now accused his man of involvement in body snatching by way of revenge.”
Quire snorted in contemptuous disbelief.
“That’s a lie.”
“Of course it is. You’ve your fair share of faults, Quire, but stupidity and venality are not amongst them. But still: when you were drinking and keeping the wrong kind of company, those charges I could quiet easy enough; this is a different sort of thing.”
Quire sprang to his feet and began to pace up and down on the thick rug. These rooms were in sharp contrast to the police house at the summit of which they perched. All carpets and cushions and homely understatement. Soft. The place felt comfortably inhabited, in a way no abode of Quire’s had ever achieved. It was all entirely out of tune with the mood now taking hold of him.
“That bloody bastard,” he growled.
“Sit down, man,” Robinson muttered with a placatory wave of his hand. “It’ll go no further, if I have my way. But you need to keep your wits about you. Ruthven’s not the kind of man you’re used to dealing with. I gather he went straight to the Sheriff Depute with this, favoured him with a lengthy discourse on the shortcomings of the city police. The Sheriff was not best pleased.
“It’s a cosy little fellowship that occupies the heights of our city’s society. They are a collegiate body of men, few of them inclined to think themselves fit subjects for police enquiry. I’m not sure you have ever entirely understood that, but you would do well to give it some thought. Goad one, and that one can make sure plenty of others feel it.”
“I’ve done nothing but what seemed right,” Quire said, still standing.
“I know that. And I know you: you’ve a rare affection for justice—or what you decide is justice, at least—and the stubbornness of an ill-tempered mule. Laudable attributes in many ways, and neither of them as common beneath this roof as they should be; which might be, in part, why you’ve not made yourself quite as many friends and allies here as you could do with now. But if you mean to hold your course on this, you will need to learn discretion.”
“Will you take some tea?” the superintendent’s wife asked from the doorway. “There’s no better poultice for the nerves.”
It was a genteel but pointed suggestion. Quire understood her desire to swaddle her recuperating husband in calm. He shook his head, and forced himself to fold his tense limbs down into a chair.
“No, thank you. No.”
She nodded and retired once more.
“I’m curious, though.” Robinson sniffed, pulling a blanket from the arm of his chair and settling it across his knees. “You must have shaken something loose, to drive Ruthven into making false accusations. This started with that man dead in the Cowgate, did it?”
“Edward Carlyle. Yes. He was in Ruthven’s employ, so there’s been one of his men torn to pieces in the Old Town, and another digging up graves in Duddingston. Whatever’s happening, Ruthven’s at the heart of it.”
“You’re sure of that, are you? That it was this fellow Blegg in the graveyard?”
“As sure as I can be. It was dark,