The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [40]
The first landing was deserted, which did not surprise Quire. The rest of the city might be about the day’s labours, but those who called the Holy Land home kept a different routine. Most of them would not be found out and about before midday; some were owlish creatures, rarely stirring from their lairs until the day neared its end.
From above, drifting down the gloomy stairwell, came the faint and indistinct sound of someone singing. A woman, with a sweet voice. She was drunk, of course, but still: sweet. Quire paused, just for a moment, and listened. The passing thought that here was some intoxicated, and apparently quite happy, siren calling him on to whatever rocks lay above put a wry smile on his face. Then the song collapsed into fading coughs, and the stair was silent again.
He ascended, and found two figures waiting in the shadows of the next landing. They stirred themselves and straightened as he arrived, and held their arms loose and ready. Though it was difficult to be certain in the muddy light, Quire did not think he knew either of them by sight or name. Their demeanour, however, told him all he needed to know.
“I’m not after any trouble,” he said promptly. “Just visiting a friend.”
“Is that so?” one of the men—the nearer of the two—grunted. He had big hands, and an accent fresh from the heather. Men from the north, then. A bit desperate, like as not, and thinking the sort of customers frequenting the Holy Land stair of a morning would be easy pickings.
“The thing is this,” Quire smiled, “it’s police business I’m on, and you, I would guess, might be new in the town. Now maybe you don’t know that the Widow won’t take kindly to strangers disturbing her house, and you certainly don’t know that I’m having the sort of day as’d put a saint in a foul temper, so let’s just say you go along, and we’ll not be troubling one another further.”
It was never likely to work, not with men who had encountered neither him nor his reputation before, so Quire was unsurprised when the man moved. Those big hands came up, and reached. It was slow and obvious by the measures Quire put on such things. He kicked the man, hard, in the crotch and, as he squealed and folded down, broke his nose with a rising knee.
“Don’t be stupid,” Quire told the second of them, and that was all it took to put an end to it.
“Pick him up and get him downstairs. I don’t suppose you’ve the sense for it, but I’ll tell you anyway: there’s not much room in this town for newcomers to squeeze themselves in to the sort of business you’ve chosen. Find yourselves a less perilous occupation.”
The fallen man spluttered bloodily and moaned as his comrade hauled him to his feet and helped him hobble off down the stairs. Quire stood patiently listening to their unsteady descent, just to be sure that there would be no sudden resurgence of courage or vigour. He felt sorry for them: Highland men, probably evicted from their lands, destitute, short on options. He, or his colleagues in the police house, would likely be coming across them again.
Quire turned to the nearest door. It was battered and split, clinging to its hinges with no more firm a grip than a swaying drunkard in the street might apply to some convenient railings. Disrepair was the permanent condition of most doors in the Holy Land; there was no point in mending that which the police, or the inhabitants themselves, would soon unmend. He pushed gently, advanced across the threshold and was greeted by smiles.
Emma Slight was bent over a low table, pouring whisky from an unmarked bottle into a china teacup. She was wearing only a loose, long nightgown of thin white material that did nothing to hide the weight and contour of her breasts. Catherine Heron—who was a great deal better known to Quire than was Emma—sat upright on a rickety bed, light from the narrow window above giving her limp auburn hair a hint of life. She was