Free Body Politic by Paul Johnston Page A

provoke a response. None of them reacted. It looked like I had them where I wanted. “By the way, I’ve taken on a guardsman as my assistant.”
    Hamilton was as reliable as one of Pavlov’s dogs. His eyes sprang wide open and his fists clenched.
    â€œHume 253 is his barracks number,” I continued. “He’ll report to me alone during the investigation. No objections, I hope.”
    If the deputy senior guardian disapproved of my tone, she concealed it. Which is more than can be said for the public order guardian. Now he looked like a dog that had just been fed something worse than standard-issue haggis.
    I hadn’t finished with them. “It seems to me that we’re failing to address the most important question raised by this case.”
    â€œNo doubt you’re about to tell us what that is,” said Hamilton in a strangulated whisper.
    I closed my notebook and stood up. “You’re right, guardian – I am. What’s behind the timing? It’s five years since the ENT Man last killed. Suddenly his modus operandi is repeated in part and a guardswoman is murdered in Stevenson Hall in the early morning of 20 March 2020. Why?”
    Back at my flat I cleared everything off the table and sat down to turn dross into gold. As I told the Council, the archives had yielded nothing worth reporting. I’d a faint hope that I would find some detail that had been omitted from the barracks documentation concerning the dead woman. Even a juicy big Public Order Directorate stamp showing that something had been censored would have done – then I could have squeezed Hamilton about it. But there was nothing. It didn’t take me long to come to the conclusion that I was as much at sea as the owl and the pussycat. At least they had a pea green boat.
    The knock on the door came as a relief. I assumed it would be Davie, then with a shock I remembered Katharine Kirkwood. Maybe she couldn’t wait until tomorrow. Her brother had been missing from my thoughts as well as from his flat. Still, the idea of laying eyes on her again was not unpleasant. I was disappointed.
    â€œBilly?” I tried and failed to sound unsurprised.
    â€œQuint, how the hell are you?” The short figure in a beautifully cut grey suit and pink silk shirt pushed past me. On his way he rammed a brand of malt whisky I hadn’t seen for a decade into my hands.
    â€œChrist, Billy, how did you find me?” I closed the door. “More to the point, after all this time, why did you find me?”
    â€œI’m pleased to see you too. What kind of a welcome is that, for fuck’s sake? I’m your oldest friend.” William Ewart Geddes, Heriot 07, one hundred and ten pounds of financial genius and calculating bastard, walked into the centre of the room and looked around under the naked light bulb. “Nice place you’ve got here, Quint,” he said with a sardonic grin. “I see you’ve still got your guitar. Not being a naughty boy and playing the blues, I hope.”
    There was a time when Billy was as fanatical about B.B. King and Elmore James as I am, but that was before the Council banned the blues on the grounds that music has to be uplifting or some such bollocks. The fact that most of the drugs gangs idolised bluesmen had nothing to do with the decision, of course.
    â€œNo, I haven’t played for years,” I said. “Not since I was demoted.” I opened the whisky and inhaled its peaty breath. “That’s the last time I saw you as well. Why the sudden interest?”
    Billy accepted a chipped glass reluctantly and sipped the spirit neat, his small grey eyes blinking. The sparse beard that covered his thin face showed definite signs of officially disapproved clipping.
    â€œYou know how it is,” he said. “No fraternisation between auxiliaries and ordinary citizens.” He grinned again, showing suspiciously even teeth. “Still,