Free Body Politic by Paul Johnston Page B

you’ve had time to cool off. And now I hear you’re back in favour—” He broke off to examine the small, blurred photo of Caro on the wall, the sharpness in his expression dissipating. The three of us had been at the university together. He looked like he was going to say something about her, but the glare I gave him made him change his mind.
    â€œAs for finding you, that was easy. I’m deputy finance guardian, remember. All I had to do was pull your rates sheet.” He sat down gingerly on the sofa after inspecting it for anything that might damage his suit. Personally I’d have stayed upright if I’d been him.
    â€œDeputy finance guardian? You look more like a stockbroker. Remember them?”
    Billy laughed. “The clothes are nothing. You should see my flat.”
    â€œNo, thanks. I’m only a citizen. Luxury’s bad for my character.” So’s jealousy. I couldn’t resist having a go at him. “Or so they used to say in the Enlightenment, didn’t they?”
    â€œSomething like that,” Billy mumbled, his cheeks reddening. The party had alway taken second place to his personal ambitions. Obviously they were now in the process of being achieved. “Listen, Quint, how about a night on the town? I’ve got a car.”
    â€œYou’re full of surprises.”
    â€œThere’s a new nightclub in Rose Street.”
    â€œNightclub? You mean a place where semi-naked women prance around and tourists pay inflated prices for shitty whisky?”
    â€œSo you’re interested.” Billy raised an eyebrow. “You’ll need a change of clothes.”
    I drained my glass. “I’ll wear a tutu if I have to.”
    As I dragged my only suit out of the wardrobe, I almost managed to convince myself that I was only going because I wanted to find out why Billy had turned up after five years. But as I always turned the light out during sex sessions, it was also a long time since I’d seen a woman in anything less than a layer of off-white Supply Directorate underwear. Men are animals.
    The Toyota that Billy drove might well have been the newest vehicle in the city. I decided against asking him where he found the petrol to run it. He’d either have ignored the question or revealed some deal I didn’t want to know about. The Council banned the private ownership of cars because it was unable to negotiate a favourable price with the oil companies for anything except poor quality diesel. I wondered what its members thought about the deputy finance guardian’s wheels. I had a flash of the clapped-out 2CV he used to have when we were students. The problem then wasn’t obtaining fuel, it was finding somewhere to park. Now Lothian Road stretched ahead of us like a long deserted runway whose controller had turned the landing lights on in the forlorn hope of attracting some passing trade. Looking around, I realised that the fog was less thick.
    Billy accelerated hard down the hill past Stevenson Hall and jerked a thumb. “It happened in there, didn’t it?”
    I might have known. He wanted me to fill him in about the murder. I fed him some scraps which he accepted impassively but which, I was sure, he was storing away in his memory. At school Billy was famous for his ability to memorise pages of material in seconds. Coupled with his business acumen, that had sent him straight into the Finance Directorate in the early years of the Council.
    â€œYour parents all right?” he asked as he swung the car into the pedestrian precinct of Rose Street and acknowledged the guardsman who waved him through. When we were boys, Billy was a constant presence in our house in Newington. His own parents were divorced.
    â€œGrowing old with about as much grace as those archbishops the mob walled up in St Paul’s years ago – the old man especially.” Then I remembered that the next day was Sunday. Despite the investigation,