The Edinburgh Dead by Brian Ruckley Page B

length, Dunbar pushed back his chair and took hold of Quire’s mug as well as his own. Quire had not emptied it, but he raised no protest.
    “I’ll buy you some more comfort, then,” Dunbar said. “That I can do.”
    He sank into the crowd, and Quire was left to ponder the mysteries of the tabletop. And to pick away at the knot of his problems. Baird had kept him well away from the aftermath of the events at Duddingston. Well away, and well aware of where Baird thought responsibility for the disaster lay. Quire could have done with the protective arm of James Robinson about his shoulders, but the superintendent was still sick, confined to his quarters atop the police house with none but wife and the gout for company.
    Quire had told them to go after the gravedigger—Davey Muir, it turned out his name was—but the youth was, as yet, nowhere to be found. He had told them Blegg’s name, too, and where to find him, but that had proved equally fruitless. The men dispatched to Melville Street had been sent on their way in no uncertain terms by John Ruthven, who swore upon God’s judgement that he could vouch for Blegg’s whereabouts on the night in question. And a man such as Ruthven was not to be gainsaid by a mere sergeant of police, not without the weight of some evidence or incontrovertible testimony behind him; such testimony could only come from Davey Muir, in all likelihood, and Quire doubted the boy would be seen in these parts again.
    But Quire did not feel in need of more evidence, or testimony, to render his own judgement. He had no name for the ponderous hulk of a man he had shot, nor an explanation for the failure of musket ball and icy loch alike to kill him; but he was as sure as he could be, allowing for the darkness of the night and the rapidity of events, that it had been Blegg disappearing over the kirkyard wall in Duddingston, and away into the night. If he was right in that, Ruthven had lied. And that made him, at the very least, accomplice to grave robbing and murder.
    “I saw Catherine Heron in the street the other day,” Dunbar said, setting a pair of brimming tankards down on the table.
    “Did you?”
    Quire was taken aback by the unexpected turn in the conversation.
    “She’s a good lass, for what she is,” Dunbar observed as he sat himself down.
    “She is,” Quire agreed. “Have you a point beyond the flattery of someone who’s not here to listen?”
    “Ballast, that’s my point. For a while, I thought the two of you might be going to set each other on an even keel.”
    “And I thought you’d decided to keep quiet on the subject of ballast for tonight. You know fine well why that broke off. I’d not have my work now if I’d kept on down that path.”
    Dunbar shrugged, and made a show of looking around the smoky tavern.
    “Just a thought,” he said lightly. “Never you mind it. How about this, then: I’ll educate you in the fine art of making kites. I’ve been fashioning a pair for my boys, and you’d not credit the time it takes to do the thing right.”
    Quire listened patiently to Dunbar’s disquisition on the subject. He noted—not for the first time—the miraculous transformation that marriage and fatherhood and the passage of years had worked upon his friend, turning as capable and willing a soldier as Quire had ever known into a model of domestic affection. For all his truculent instincts, Dunbar carried within him a kernel of peace that Quire could only envy. He had nothing in his own life to which he could hold quite so firm, save perhaps his work, and his doing of it.
    The night subsided into gentle sloth as Dunbar’s company worked its gradual charm. Inconsequential talk and the steady flow of beer put just enough of a distance between Quire and his worries to soften them, and blur their outline.
    The two men were the last to depart from the tavern. Mrs. Calder permitted Quire a latitude few other of her customers could hope for, so they finished their last