The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [63]
Knox’s name was one that had not been in his thoughts for a long time, and it came with an unsettling cargo of memory and connection.
“I’ll be away,” he said to Christison. “Let you get on with your proper work. Do you want me to take this?”
He indicated the dog’s torso and head.
“No, don’t trouble yourself,” Christison said. “I’ll have it burned.”
Quire nodded, rolled up the empty sack into a loose ball and threw it on to the slab beside the dog. He pulled open the door.
“We really don’t live in a world in which dead dogs kill people, you know, Sergeant Quire,” Christison said behind him.
“You might not, sir, but it seems I do,” Quire said quietly without looking round.
Surgeon’s Square was a sedate and graceful enclave, nestled into the south-east corner of the old city wall, no more than a minute or two’s walk from the Infirmary. Grand frontages clustered about a small garden, rather austere, but neat and well ordered. The square was an interloper, like a fragmentary forerunner of the New Town nestled into a hidden corner of the Old. Here, many of the men who had built Edinburgh’s mighty reputation in the medical sciences had for years plied their trade; and a lucrative trade it had been, as the buildings so clearly evidenced.
The Royal Medical Society stood on one side; the old hall of the College of Surgeons on another. Quire’s destination was nestled between them, and though not quite so grand, it still presented a distinguished façade. Number Ten, Surgeon’s Square. The teaching rooms of Dr. Robert Knox.
Quire paused on the doorstep. He could not bring himself to reach out and make his presence known. Robert Knox. He had not seen the face that went with that name in more than ten years, and in truth remembered its features imperfectly. He remembered the circumstance of their meeting all too well, though. Better than he would have liked.
Coming here had been an instinctive reaction to Christison’s mentioning of the name. To hear it so unexpectedly, after so much time, had caught Quire off his guard. Now, as the vigour of the impulse faded, he mistrusted it. But still: it seemed he was caught up in a struggle to the death, and one he felt in imminent danger of losing. An approach to Knox might well be fruitless, but the most unpromising of handholds would look attractive to a drowning man.
The soft, deliberate clearing of a throat disturbed his line of thought. He turned to find a slight man with decidedly sharp and hawk-like features standing there, already dipping his head in submissive greeting. The little bowl of a hat he wore bobbed.
“Can I be of assistance, sir?” the man asked.
“I don’t know,” Quire said, letting loose a little of the irritation at his own indecision. “Who are you?”
“Paterson, sir. Doorkeeper.” He held up a little package, brittle paper tied with string. “Been to get some ink for Dr. Knox, or I’d’ve been here to greet you. If it’s greeting you wanted.”
“I wanted a word with Dr. Knox.”
“Who should I say is calling?” Paterson asked, moving smoothly past Quire and reaching for the door.
Quire held aside his coat to show the baton hanging at his belt.
“Sergeant Quire,” he said.
“So, you’ve taken it upon yourself to lecture me, have you?” Robert Knox cried. “I won’t have it. I won’t!”
It was a fearsome display. The doctor’s fury seemed entirely uncontrived, a wholly natural thing welling up from inside him. It put a beetroot blush into his cheeks and a wild gleam into his one good eye; the left socket was unnervingly empty. He had less hair than Quire remembered—a balding pate ringed by slightly greying fringes and sideburns, though he was no older than Quire—but what there was of it trembled now with his anger.
Quire stuck stubbornly, if with rapidly faltering enthusiasm, to his course.
“I mean only to say, sir, that these grave robbers have…”
“And you presume some connection between them and me?”
The strength of his indignation appeared to exhaust Knox. He slumped back in his chair, away from the great desk, and regarded Quire with something approaching