The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [43]
The Resurrection Men
“We’re wasting our time,” Quire observed.
Sergeant Jack Rutherford appeared entirely unperturbed by Quire’s doubts. He appeared, in fact, in thoroughly equable mood.
“He’ll turn up sooner or later. I’ve got it on good authority.”
“I mean we’re wasting our time chasing the man in the first place.”
“The city fathers put coin in my pocket every week for the very purpose of buying my time,” Rutherford said, peering into the bowl of his little pipe. “I’ve sold the stuff already, so I’m not bothered how they decide I should occupy it. Pay’s the same.”
“I’d want paying better, myself, if I was selling my time just for the wasting. I’d rather be doing what needs doing.”
“That’s where you go wrong you see, Adam,” Rutherford said with a wry smile. “The thing is to be doing what you’re told to do, not what needs doing. That way lies a peaceful life, and a decent pension.”
He tapped his pipe gently against the stonework of the bridge. Spent tobacco spilled out and fell in a scattering cloud about their feet. The two of them were leaning on the parapet of a low, single-span viaduct across the Leith Water. The river rushed along beneath them, in eager haste to reach the sea. Or in haste, perhaps, to escape the clutches of the mills and distilleries clustered along its banks, a great congregation of brick and stone behemoths gathered to drink deep of its sustaining flow. So close and steeply did some of the buildings press that they made a dark and sheer-sided ravine for the river.
From their vantage point midway across the bridge, Quire and Rutherford could see into the yard of one of the smaller distilleries, a rather gloomy little square bounded by featureless brick walls. There were any number of empty barrels stacked up down there, and now and again booted and aproned workmen emerged from the enormous doors—like those of a huge barn—that stood ajar, but in the main nothing was happening, as it had been for close to an hour.
“You’re the one made the Resurrection Men so popular in the first place, so why you’re complaining now, I don’t know,” Rutherford said. “We’re not to let a single one of them rest easy till the Duddingston murderer’s found, that’s the word from on high.”
“Aye, except I’ve already told them where to look. Merry Andrew’s nothing to do with it. I was there, and it wasn’t him waving a shovel around at Duddingston.”
“The way I heard it, looking where you told them didn’t get them anywhere. So every other body-snatching crew gets the benefit of our attention, and no doubt we’ll be turning up stones and prodding the worms beneath until the end of our days. Or until someone more important than us loses interest.”
“It wasn’t normal, what happened that night. When did any body snatcher kill a man, before Duddingston? Half of them are students, for God’s sake. They’d piss themselves at a harsh word.”
“Maybe,” Rutherford nodded, “but there’s nothing soft about Andrew Merrilees and his lads. There’re students and then there’s them that make a business of the trade. That’s two whole different kettles of fish, as you well know.”
“Aye. I’m not saying he’s not deserving of a bit of our attention. Just that he’s not the man I’m after.”
“The man we’re all after, Quire. That’ll be what you mean?”
“Aye. Aye.”
“Nights are drawing out,” Rutherford said companionably. “Merrilees and his like should’ve hung up the tools of their trade for the summer by now. Too much by way of light. Word is he’s short of coin, though. Needing to do the work out of season.”
Quire stared down at the racing current below. The Water of Leith was nowhere very deep, not until it got down almost to its mouth on the Firth of Forth, and he could see the rocks of its bed quite clearly. There were a few traces of green weed streaming out from them like storm-stretched pennants. A pair of ducks were paddling furiously, making no progress upriver but holding station