Free The Blood Tree by Paul Johnston Page B

for months and, suddenly, something unexpected would remind me of my first lover. Her dark hair and brown eyes, her glowing face and her beautiful smile would return vividly for a short time, then disappear back into the void. The break-in and the file had already conspired to resurrect her, prompting memories of the time when we were first together in 2002.
    I wondered how Edinburgh would strike her now. She’d been a fervent supporter of the Enlightenment – Christ, we all were in the old days – but I was pretty sure she wouldn’t approve of the way things were coming apart. The problems with the city’s young people would have depressed her. She always loved kids, although we never considered having any of our own. We’d already broken the regulations by committing ourselves to each other in secret. Like ordinary citizens, auxiliaries at that time were supposed to take a different partner at the weekly sex session and pregnancy was controlled by the Medical Directorate’s worryingly named and now disbanded Auxiliary Reproduction Department.
    â€œQuint?” Katharine’s voice brought me back to the present.
    I went over to her. “What have you found?”
    She held up several pages of print-out with a lot of red ink on them. “Not very much. There were fifteen names on the list, right? Eight were full committee members with voting rights – that is, Members of the Scottish Parliament. In addition to them, there were five scientific advisers, a senior official from the English and Welsh Ministry of Health and a civil servant who took the minutes.”
    â€œOkay.” I pulled a chair over from the conference table and sat down beside Katharine in front of the screen. “Have you manage to track any of them down?”
    She nodded. “It’s not good news though. None of the eight MSPs is in Edinburgh now. Six of them had constituencies elsewhere—”
    â€œWhere exactly?” I interrupted.
    Katharine looked at her list. “Three in Glasgow, one in the Borders, one in Fife and one in Shetland.”
    â€œWe can write all of them off,” I said. “The democrats in Glasgow would have strung up anyone tainted by membership of the Scottish Parliament. The others will either be long dead or standing guard over their crofts.” Over the years we occasionally got reports of traditional farming methods being used in the outlying areas where the marauding gangs couldn’t be bothered to swing their battle-axes on a daily basis.
    â€œThe two from Edinburgh are no use either. One was killed in a drugs gang attack on the Parliament buildings in 2003—”
    â€œThere were plenty MSPs who went that way,” I interjected.
    â€œAnd the other died of food poisoning in 2012.”
    â€œAnother victory for the Medical Directorate.”
    Katharine nodded. “That leaves the scientists and the bureaucrats.”
    â€œWe can forget the guy from the Sassenach ministry. He’d have gone scuttling back to London as soon as the riots started. Not that he’d have been any better off there.”
    â€œI got excited when I checked the minute-taker’s records,” Katharine said.
    â€œDid you now?”
    She gave me a cool look. “Not that excited. George Darling was his name. He joined the Enlightenment Party a month before the last election.”
    â€œNo doubt he saw which way the wind was blowing.”
    â€œNo doubt. Later he was an auxiliary in the Science and Energy Directorate.”
    I sat up straight. “Oh aye. What was he involved in there?” I’d come across some nasty secrets in that directorate in the past.
    Katharine was aware of that. “Calm down. He was nailed for possession of cigarettes in 2006. They sent him down the mines for a month, but he collapsed and died after two weeks.” She shook her head. “Bastard Council.”
    I touched her arm. She’d been on the receiving