The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [46]
“Right,” growled Quire, fumbling for his baton.
Something in his tone, rasping out over the cart’s creaking protests, or perhaps the way the horse slowed now that it was no longer subjected to the whip’s encouragement, drained the resistance out of Merrilees. He slumped slightly, in so far as anyone of his elongate construction could be said to slump, and lowered the switch. Horse and cart came to a groaning halt.
Quire stood up and surveyed their surroundings. Open fields on one side, the grounds of a small and austere orphans’ hospital on the other. He looked back, over the narrow valley of the Leith Water, and could see clear across the receding terraces of the New Town to the castle on its high rock.
“Turn us around and get us back,” he instructed, and sat down heavily. His legs were tired, now that the immediacy of the chase was gone.
“You’re a lucky man I’m not in the mood to lay a beating on you for your stupidity,” he added for good measure.
“Who are you, anyway?” Merry Andrew asked as he pulled on the reins to bring the horse about.
His voice had an eccentric, spiky shape to it, of a piece with his appearance. He did not seem overly concerned at his capture, for all the sincerity of his efforts to evade it.
“Sergeant Quire.”
“Oh, aye? I’ve heard of you.”
“I’m honoured.”
“Speak well of you, some folk do. Say you’re a fair man. Fair as any bastard police can be, at any rate.”
Quire regarded the cloth-wrapped parcel beside which he sat. He tugged at one of the ropes securing it, and finding it loose, opened up the whole thing. Within, all tied up with their own cord, were a lantern, a spade, a crowbar and a pair of large canvas sacks.
“Would you look at that,” Quire said.
Merrilees glanced round, and sniffed in mock indifference.
“Got a job doing some fencing out west,” he said.
“Is that right? Fencing with a spade and a crowbar? At night?”
“Fencing. Aye. Early start tomorrow morning.”
The flat assurance of Merry Andrew’s voice said he cared not at all whether Quire believed him.
“Are you armed?” Quire asked, reminding himself, perhaps belatedly, that this was not a man to be taken lightly.
“Not tonight. Not for fencing,” Merrilees said, and smiled maliciously at him.
They trundled back towards the bridge. Quire settled himself against the side of the cart, his legs stretched out over the grave robber’s tools.
“We were only wanting to talk to you, you know,” he told Merrilees. “It’s not you we’re after. There’s another lot of men about, doing work at night. Might be you’ve come across them?”
Merry Andrew said nothing, but he laid a sharp blow across the horse’s hindquarters that gave it a start.
“Killed a man at Duddingston,” Quire went on. “You heard about that?”
“Might’ve done.”
“Might you have heard about who did it, then?”
Again, Merrilees fell abruptly dumb. A flight of seagulls went squalling raucously overhead, following the course of the Leith Water towards the ocean. Merrilees glanced up, and watched them go, and then turned his eyes back to the road. The horse went sluggishly out on to the bridge.
“We’ve got our orders,” Quire said. “No peace for you and your kind. You’ll not be able to lift a finger, nor take a piss, without there’s one of our boys watching you. Annoying you. Stealing a body or two, that’s one thing, you see, but killing a man, that’s another altogether. That’s the kind of thing that can make life miserable for everybody.”
“Aye, it is,” grunted Merry Andrew, his demeanour now entirely out of kilter with his name.
Quire looked ahead. Rutherford was standing in the middle of the lane. Spune sat cross-legged at his feet, despondency incarnate. Merrilees could see them too, but he abruptly pulled the horse to a halt, and turned about on his seat; an ungainly manoeuvre.
“See a lot of things when you’re doing your work at night,” he said levelly to Quire, who nodded and raised his eyebrows in expectation of more. Merrilees sniffed.
“This last winter, there were some bad folk out and about.