moment. Are we to understand there is some doubt that the Ear, Nose and Throat Man is involved?â
âAbsolutely none,â said Hamilton, as firmly as a member of the Inquisition whoâd just been asked if there was any possibility Galileo could be right about the solar system.
The deputy senior guardian didnât buy it. She turned to me. âCitizen?â
It was a tricky one. Life would have been a sight easier if Iâd told them what happened to the ENT Man. They probably wouldnât even have thrown me into the cells for keeping quiet about it for five years. At least until I caught this killer. But it wasnât just my secret. It was all I still shared with Caro, lost beautiful Caro, whose photo, thank Christ, was obscured by Hamiltonâs head.
âWeâre waiting,â prompted the speaker, her voice sharper.
I let Caro fade away. And decided to keep our secret. âWell, there are a lot of inconsistencies in the modus operandi. The ENT Man removed organs from his victims, but he also took their ears and blocked their noses, sometimes with earth, other times with pieces of cloth.â
âHe may have run out of time in Stevenson Hall,â said Hamilton.
âYou think so? This murder looks to me like a carefully calculated killing. The person who did this knew how to avoid the patrols and gain entry to a protected building.â
âWhereas the otolaryngologist,â said the medical guardian, his fingers forming a pyramid under his chin as he repeated the term, âthe otolaryngologist tended to keep out of the way of guard personnel.â
Except in two cases, I thought.
âAs I remember,â the shrivelled finance guardian said, âhe didnât clean up after himself either.â The old man glanced at the photos and twitched his lips.
Hamilton was shaking his head. âThe woman was strangled, mutilated and sodomised. What more evidence is necessary?â
âEvidence that will enable citizen Dalrymple to catch him,â said the deputy senior guardian. âThere seems to be precious little of that.â She looked at me again. âIf you are dubious that it is the same killer, what grounds do you have for expecting more murders?â
It was a good question. They might give the impression of inhabiting a world light years away from the rest of us, but thereâs nothing wrong with the guardiansâ intellects. Except perhaps the public order guardianâs.
âThere was an outburst of serial killing in the years before the UK broke up. I read all the reports. The likelihood of a murderer who gets away with a killing of this kind doing it again is overwhelming.â I was trusting a hunch as well, but I didnât think that would impress them.
âYouâd better make sure you catch him then,â said Hamilton grimly. âI propose that we increase the number of patrols in the tourist area at night. And that we continue to suppress all news of the guardswomanâs death.â
âYou realise that every auxiliary in the city knows about it by now,â I observed, giving him a grim look of my own.
âAuxiliaries are sworn servants of the city,â said the speaker loftily. âThey will not divulge the news to ordinary citizens.â
And a formation of pigs had just been spotted over Arthurâs Seat. âEven if they donât,â I said, âitâs possible that the killer needs publicity. By denying him that we may increase the chances of him doing it again.â They all looked at me sternly. âLetâs face it, censoring the news of the ENT Manâs activities didnât exactly help us catch him.â
I caught a glimpse of the bust of Plato at the rear of the chamber. The Enlightenment used his ideas as the basis of the new constitution and theyâre still debated every week in all the barracks. âYouâre the students of human nature,â I said, trying to
Sharon Kleve, Jennifer Conner, Danica Winters, Casey Dawes