The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [6]
“Is the superintendent about?” Quire asked.
“He’s occupied. In the court. What is it you’re wanting to trouble him with?”
Belatedly, Baird looked Quire in the eyes, and bestowed upon him a suspicious glare.
Quire shrugged.
“I was told he wanted a word with me, that’s all,” he lied.
Baird looked doubtful, but directed Quire with a flick of his head towards the staircase.
Two creaking flights carried Quire up to the little courtroom where justice was applied to those charged with minor crimes. There, amongst the benches, the Superintendent of Police, James Robinson, was in conference with a clutch of judicial clerks. They spoke softly, as if to protect the dignity of the chamber, with its wood-panelled walls and leaded windows and buffed floorboards.
At Quire’s approach, Robinson dismissed the others with a nod and a murmur. They filed quietly out, and the superintendent rose a little stiffly from his seat and regarded Quire, his eyes narrow and inquisitive. He was a man of calm authority, with grizzled sideburns, a handsome face weathered by experience—he was a good deal older than Quire’s thirty-seven years—and a deliberate manner. It imbued his gaze with a certain weight.
“You look like a man in want of sleep, Sergeant,” Robinson observed. “An early start for you, I hear.”
Quire nodded.
“A body, sir. In the Cowgate. Foot of Borthwick’s Close.”
“Ah. Is that beer I smell on you? I hope you are not testing your constitution too severely, Quire.”
The superintendent’s tone was almost casual, but carried a touch of circumspect concern. He knew more of Quire’s history than most, and that history was not one of unblemished restraint and good judgement.
It was only the patronage of James Robinson that shielded Quire against the worst effects of Lieutenant Baird’s antipathy. And, indeed, against the wider consequences he might have suffered for his occasional past infringements of law and discipline, from which that antipathy sprang. He and Robinson, bracketing Baird in the hierarchy of command, shared something the other lacked, something that inclined them towards a certain mutual regard: they had both been soldiers.
There was more to their relationship than that, though. For Quire’s part, he had a vague, imprecisely formed notion that Robinson had been a saviour of sorts to him. At his first admittance to the ranks of the police, Quire had been something of a lost soul, and a drunken one at that. The years following his departure from the army had been turbulent and troubled: peace could be testing for one schooled in nothing but war. He had carried within him a certain restless anger and rebelliousness that should, by rights, have cut short his tenure as an officer of the law. That he had avoided dismissal was due solely to Robinson’s patient, stern tutelage. For that, and the measure of purpose and worth his continuing employment had slowly brought him, Quire owed the man a debt of gratitude.
As Robinson regarded him now, his gaze wore a faintly paternal sheen.
“A night of indulgence, was it?” the superintendent enquired. “With that lackey of yours, I suppose… what’s his name? Dunbar?”
“Nothing excessive, sir,” Quire said, smothering a wry smile at the thought of Wilson Dunbar being anybody’s lackey. “I’m well enough. The drink’s not been my master for a long time now.”
The assertion was accepted without comment.
“So, this corpse,” Robinson said. “Are you done with it for now?”
“That’s the thing I wanted to ask you about. I’ve a mind to send him to the professor.”
“Why?”
“The man was… savaged. It was bloody work. Entirely out of the ordinary. I’d like to know what Christison has to say about it.”
“I’d not want him bothered without good reason,” said Robinson. “Man’s got a fair few demands upon his time, you know. I’ll not have his willingness to aid us exhausted by too many requests.”
“I’d have asked Baird, but he’d only tell me that: not to waste my time—or Christison’s—on some nobody dead in the Old Town.”
“Lieutenant Baird,” Robinson corrected him. “You might make at least some