Quint Dalrymple 01 - Body Politic by Paul Johnston
Author:Paul Johnston [Johnston, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Mystery, Thriller
ISBN: 9780312202798
Google: daFgHQAACAAJ
Goodreads: 1425208
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 1957-08-12T22:00:00+00:00
Chapter Eleven
I WALKED AWAY from the infirmary into the night. The breeze still carried the smell of smoke, though the fire at the hotel had been out for hours. I tried to make sense of what was going on. In the afternoon I had checked Adam Kirkwoodâs flat and found it exactly as it had been. Was he the transvestite his sister had seen? I had no evidence, but I had bugger all evidence for anything. Thatâs why I was reduced to following up marginal leads.
A car braked and stopped just in front of me on Lauriston Place. It was Billy Geddesâs Toyota.
âGet in, Quint.â
âWhat are you doing around here?â I got in without any show of enthusiasm. âNo sex clubs in this part of the city.â
Billy accelerated away. âLooking for you.â His hands gripped the steering wheel hard.
âOh aye.â I was instantly curious. âNeed to get something off your chest, maybe?â
âYou donât make things easy, do you?â He shook his head. âFucking smartass. As it happens, I have got something to tell you.â
âCome home for a nightcap. Iâve got some unusually good whisky.â
âWonder where you came by that. Spare me your pit. Iâll take you to my place.â
âGreat, Billy.â At least it would be interesting to find out if his years in the Finance Directorate had left him with any understanding of what telling the truth entails.
I wasnât much the wiser after my first hour in Heriot Row. Billy had led me up the ornate Georgian staircase to his apartment on the first floor. From the high windows I looked out over the lights in the street below. The voices of a group of auxiliaries jogging on the all-weather track in the gardens beyond floated up in the still night air. Well, it wasnât that still. From the gaming tents in Charlotte Square came the pounding of music, interspersed by the raucous yells of the winners.
Although even senior auxiliaries are supposedly issued with the same furniture as us ordinary citizens, their residences in the streets near Council membersâ accommodation arenât checked by Supply Directorate inspectors. I recalled the Latin question my father came up with all the time in the early years of the Enlightenment: âQuis custodiet ipsos custodes?â It didnât look like anyone was keeping an eye on the next generation of guardians.
âLook at this.â Billy nudged me and took me over to the polished Regency table that stood in the centre of his large sitting room. âItâs a first edition of Humeâs Treatise.â
âBloody hell.â I ran my hands over the stiff pages of the old book carefully. âWhere did you get it?â
Billy raised a finger to his nose. âContacts, Quint. Thatâs what itâs all about.â He went over to the drinks cabinet by the Adam fireplace and raised a decanter. âThis is from Jura.â
I was seriously tempted to taste the whisky. Brands like it had disappeared from the city when relations with the unstable states in the north and west were cut after independence. The whisky available to ordinary citizens was a low-quality blend from the few distilleries around Edinburgh.
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