Body Politic by Paul Johnston Page B

footwear had made them – non-nailed citizen-issue boots, size twelve. That was all I needed. The Ear, Nose and Throat Man took size twelves. That’s how I was sure the man in Princes Street Gardens that night was him, even before I got close. He was wearing a pair of ancient cowboy boots with square toes – I’d found prints from them at several of the murder sites. Jesus. He couldn’t still be alive. I clung to that certainty. After he skewered himself, I pushed him into the foundations of the stand they were building beside the new racetrack. Then I heaped a great load of earth over him till I passed out because of the loss of blood from my finger. But I came to before the workmen arrived the next morning and I saw them pour the concrete over him. It was a coincidence, the shoe size, but it shook me for longer than it should have.
    I crawled around with my magnifying glass but found nothing else in the way of traces. No fibres from clothing, no buttons torn off in the struggle, no strands of hair.
    Davie came in on his hands and knees, carefully avoiding the marks I’d drawn around the footprints. He looked across at the body and grimaced. “How long do you think he’s been here?”
    I couldn’t put it off any longer. “I was just getting round to having a look.”
    Davie was holding a handkerchief to his face. “After you.”
    â€œThanks a lot.” I moved forward. The man was lying on his left side, his limbs swollen under greenish purple skin. The abdomen was grotesquely distended. A couple of yards behind his head was a neat pile of clothes, boots placed on top. He was short, no more than five feet five inches, and heavily built. At least I could be sure he wasn’t Adam Kirkwood. I could also be sure that something violent had been done to the lower part of his back.
    Taking a deep breath, I bent over the blackened hole. And almost threw up. It was seething. I had an idea there would be insect infestation, but not this much. The temperature under the fog carpet hadn’t been too low so the maggots were fat, clustered over what was left of the flesh around the ribs. I reckoned they were in the third instar of growth. The flies had laid their eggs in the cavity which had once been occupied by the dead man’s right kidney. I turned towards the upper part of the body and froze solider than the permafrost on a Siberian steppe. Something had moved.
    â€œWhat is it?” Davie asked immediately.
    I shook my head to shut him up. Again there was a quick, confined flurry. It came from the right armpit. I leaned forward slowly, drawn on despite the urge to escape my stomach manifested by the mug of coffee I’d drunk earlier. Then I saw it.
    The rat was so bloated that it could hardly pull itself out of the corpse. It looked at me with glassy eyes then opened its mouth to pant. Its head twitched from side to side as it calculated angles and distances for its escape. I wasn’t planning on getting in its way.
    It made its move with surprising speed. The long hairless tail was past me even before I could sit back. But it hadn’t taken account of Davie. He grabbed the tail and held the animal at arm’s length. I hadn’t put him down as a pet lover. The rat wriggled frantically and tried without success to bite him. It was too fat to double up.
    â€œDon’t we want to examine it?” Davie asked. “The stomach contents might . . .”
    â€œJesus Christ, let the bloody thing go. We’ve got a whole, well, almost a whole body to dissect. Not to mention about a million bluebottles.”
    There was a rustling noise behind me.
    â€œWhat have you got there, guardsman?” asked Robert Yellowlees. “We can always use those in the labs. Give it to my assistant.”
    Davie grinned at me and departed.
    The medical guardian inspected the body, running his rubber-sheathed hands over the limbs and sniffing like a discerning wine