The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [5]
It was akin to emerging from the Stygian depths of some malodorous tunnel into another world: one filled with bustle and light and all the energy and breezes that the closes did not permit within their tight confines. Scores of people moved this way and that, avoiding the little mounds of horse dung that punctuated their paths, flowing around the hawkers and stall-holders readying their wares, dodging the carts and carriages that clattered up the cobble-clad road. The air shivered to a cacophony of trade and greeting and argument.
Quire advanced no more than a pace or three before a salesman sought to snare him.
“A tonic of universal efficacy, sir,” the man cried, with an excess of unsolicited enthusiasm. He swept up a small, neat glass bottle from his barrow and extended it towards Quire. “No affliction of the lung or liver can withstand its beneficial application.”
Quire paused, and examined the dress of the man who thus accosted him. A short stovepipe hat, a neat and clean waistcoat tightly buttoned over a paunch of some substance. The loose cuffs of an expensive shirt protruding from the jacket sleeves. Clearly the uniform of one who made a tolerable profit from the ill health and gullibility of others.
The bottle Quire was invited to examine held a pale liquid of yellowish hue.
“Looks like piss.”
“Oh no, sir. Not at all,” exclaimed the affronted hawker, peering with a disbelieving frown at the flask in his hand. “A miraculous elixir, rather.”
Quire leaned a touch closer, gave the tonic his full attention.
“Horse’s piss,” he concluded, and left the man, still protesting, in his wake.
The police house was very near, on the far side of the High Street at Old Stamp Office Close. Quire cut across the currents of humanity towards it. He refused a flyer advertising a course of phrenological lectures that someone tried to thrust into his hand; narrowly avoided a crushed toe as a handcart piled high with half-finished shoes ground past.
It was all a little too much for one who had already been awake for longer than he would have wished, and he entered the abode of Edinburgh’s city police with a certain relief.
The cells that packed the ground floor of the main police house were unusually quiet, even the three—the “dark” cells—reserved for the most troublesome, or troubled, guests. Perhaps the cold of the last few nights had discouraged those given to misbehaviour. The place still had its familiar stink, though: a unique medley that never seemed to change, no matter how its component parts might vary. Quire suspected it was founded on a fog of human sweat, piss and vomit that had settled into the walls. There were smaller watch-houses scattered around the city, but somehow none of them had acquired quite the depth of odour that attached itself to the Old Stamp Office Close building.
Though the place was quiet, the comparative peace had not done anything to lighten Lieutenant Baird’s mood. Quire’s immediate superior disliked him, and never troubled to disguise the fact. He also disliked his current duty. The three lieutenants of police each took their turn as officer in charge of the police house, a task that combined tedium and unavoidably close acquaintance with the city’s least appealing inhabitants. When his turn came about, Baird’s manner seldom did anything but sour. All of which led Quire to expect a gruff welcome, which he duly received.
“Took you long enough,” Baird grunted, barely lifting his gaze from the ledger in which he was scratching away.
“Would you send some men to the body in the Cowgate, sir?” Quire said as politely as he felt able. “Get them asking around. There’s one of our night men down there who needs to be away to his bed.”
Baird put an arch of irritation into his eyebrows as if consenting, solely by dint of his own near-saintly nature, to an