Chapter Text
The council office in Edinburgh wasn’t notably different from any other establishment of its kind: purgatory, level 1. Smell of wet cat and oversteeped tea. The hum of fluorescent lamps that reminded Q of a morgue.
His ticket read 093. The digital board displayed a philosophical 002. Q sighed. Of all indignities, municipal queueing was the worst.
“First time?” asked a voice to his left.
Q glanced over. The man leaned on the radiator, hands stuffed in the pockets of a worn jacket. Forty-something, unshaven on purpose, eyes like a storm painted in watercolour.
Q briefly missed his old parka. The wool coat had been a mistake. As usual.
“No, I’ve queued before,” Q admitted.
The man’s mouth ticked upright; his slouch didn’t. His watered-down eyes flicked over Q, taking him in with a precise sort of suspicion: breaking him up into categories; shelf this, label that. Q bit back a smirk.
“What are you here for?” the man asked, like a detective would ask a suspect on the case.
Bedside manners.
“Forty-one?” The clerk at the counter shouted. “Oh, no, wait - Sixty-one? No? Sixty-two then? Oh, for Pete’s sake…”
Q waited until the lucky number of sixty-four, then turned to the man properly and gave him a bland, polite smile and a thorough once-over. “A minor property matter.”
“So, something complicated and nobody wants to deal with it,” the man concluded. Annoyingly succinct.
“That’s what purgatory is for,” Q hummed, and the man scoffed, muttering something about 'posh kids.'
Q curved one elegant eyebrow at him – the expression that, in other circumstances, had the potential to make people cry. “Indeed, I have better things to do than to navigate Kafkaesque bureaucracy.”
He wouldn’t be here if not for a dead friend who kept causing him trouble even from the grave, and if Medical hadn’t put him on sabbatical due to a case of ‘extreme mental exhaustion’.
They made it sound like he’d had a psychotic episode at work. He had not. Not at work.
“Sixty-five?” the clerk called.
The man watched Q the way a cat glared at an empty bowl. “You’re not local,” he concluded.
Q scoffed. “How very perceptive.”
The man’s gaze took him in again: the wool coat, chequered scarf, striped cardigan. “You are also soft. This place eats soft.”
“Oh?” Q felt his lips stretch in a smile he couldn’t quite contain. “Is this a threat? Or a promise?”
The man blinked and proceeded to look vaguely irritated. “A category,” he muttered and slouched harder.
“I presume you are ‘rough’, then?” Q suggested idly. “And we have this chat standing in the same queue – why?”
The man ignored the jab. “What’s your problem?”
Persistent.
Q smiled beatifically and tipped the top page of his stack for the man to see. “Inheritance boundary dispute. Pre-1900 plans are said to be re-narrated in 1941. Historical listing, and easement appears to be granted to a man who’d died in 1894; it should’ve been acknowledged about 1990-91. I need plans and deeds.”
The man whistled. “Skyfall. That was the one with the firefight and the explosives that didn’t go off?”
Q's eyes cut to the man’s face. “Do you have so many of those you need to ask?”
A board pinged, and the number changed to 003.
The man pushed off the radiator and moved with the arrogant nonchalance of a man who used to shoulder through the crowds of annoyed people. “Come along, Dante.”
Q checked the time. Decided he was bored enough to be reckless and followed.
The woman at the counter looked up and stared at the man with a weary patience of someone who had faced the problem they’d dealt with before.
“Detective Morck,” she said. “Brought me trouble again?”
“Always,” the man – Detective Morck, apparently – gestured to Q. Q passed the papers.
The woman gave them both an unimpressed look. “An archive. Old reference index.”
“Of course,” Morck smiled blandly.
“Downstairs, third door.”
They went.
The room behind the third door smelled of mushrooms and was filled with metal shelves and drawers packed full of… stuff. A reference index was perched on the metal table like an underwhelming spellbook.
The detective ignored it and went straight to the tower of drawers labelled PLANS PRE1950. Q was a little surprised, but approved the efficiency.
“You take wayleaves,” the detective commanded with the casualness of a man who easily confused brevity and rudeness.
Q hunted what he needed – Wayleaves and Street works, 90-92. Shelf K, third from the top. Q weighed the binder in his hands, thumped it onto the table, and shrugged off coat and scarf. It would take a while.
“May I ask what your business is, Detective?” Q asked, opening the volume and tracing columns with a fingertip.
“You may,” the voice answered, suddenly too close. The detective leaned in to peer at the index. “Cold case. Need to take a look at the property that belonged to a man who knew a man who didn’t die when the record says he did.”
Q hummed. Interesting. “So, alias?”
“Yes,” the detective said, squinting at the microfiche he had just retrieved.
Q gave his sideways look. “You know there’s technology for that?” he pointed at the viewer and the dusty monitor beside it, placed in the corner.
The detective scoffed but went, sliding the film into the machine.
Q opened the binder in 'January, 1991' and tried not to despair.
“And you search for this here – why?”
“Because the alias paid his friends’ rates and repair permits in Leith. 1990-92.”
“Ah,” Q chuckled. “What’s the name?”
He glanced away from the screen to look at Q for a beat, considering.
“Come now, Detective Morck,” Q teased. “I’m a soft lad to be eaten.”
“You were local at some point, though,” Morck said, tilting his head at the pile of fiche.
“What? No, god no. Skyfall isn’t mine,” Q laughed. It was ridiculous.
“Why are you down here, then?”
“Because the man who owned it is farther down than I am.”
The detective grunted. Changed the fishe in the viewer. “Martin Arnfred.”
The basement hummed. Morck swapped films a few more times and groaned, rubbing at his eyes. Q smirked.
“Want to switch?”
“No,” the man grunts. “Why the hell do people feel compelled to own the bog?”
“To hide corpses?”
“Ha bloody ha.”
Another half an hour of damp misery, then – two low, gruff sounds of triumph, overlapping. They both shut up and looked over at the other.
“Found your deed.”
“Found your dead man. On my servitude.”
“Shut up,” the detective prowled over and stood next to Q again. Q realised belatedly that he liked how the man smelled. Or maybe that was just three hours of mould talking.
Q helpfully nudged the document toward him. 1991, ‘Acknowledgement of easement,’ witness: Martin Arnfred.
“Huh,” the man said.
“Show me yours, then,” Q willed, and it earned him almost an eye roll.
Here it was. Sasine ref. 1941/324.
“Is there a way to hunt down the original?”
“If you want another hour in another damp room, maybe,” Morck shrugged.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Q frowned. “All right. I can use Martin Arnfred to bully the title into behaving. You can use Martin Arnfred to bully your corpse into standing up.”
Morck found a clerk to bully to get forms and prints; a sealed extract for Sasine and a certified copy of an acknowledgement for Q’s lawyer and detective’s… whomever.
When they resurfaced back to the room with the queue, the clerk called number ninety-nine. Q was properly appalled and looked at his detective with big eyes.
“Soft,” the bastard mouthed.
***
Stepping outside was pure joy. Like parole.
Q supposed it was only polite to buy the man a beer. He realised that as a civilian, he’d never have been allowed into the archive alone. He would’ve been assigned a clerk. He'd have to wait... Two weeks? A month? Who knew.
“What’s your name, Detective Morck?” Q asked, reaching for his copies. The bastard lifted them out of reach. He was offensively tall.
“Carl. Who are you?”
“Quentin,” which wasn’t his name, but it was silly enough to justify its use.
“Really?” the man scoffed.
“What? Carl is unusual, too. Why not just ‘Charles’? Old-fashioned charm? Or were you born somewhere north of sensible?”
“Ask stupid questions over beer,” Carl said.
“It’s barely past lunchtime,” Q said just to make a point.
“See? Soft.”
“Sure. I'll take soft over an alcoholic,” Q smiled, bright and unhelpful. “Lead the way, I guess.”
Purgatory, level 3. Getting better.
***
The pub was quiet. Lunch time had passed, and it was too early to start drinking. His new friend had no reservations about it; he appeared with two pints while Q was setting his laptop down.
“You’re paying,” the charming detective announced, dropping into the chair and thudding glasses down.
“Of course. Your treat – mouldy retreat. My treat – libation instead of lunch,” Q agreed.
“I ordered lunch. Or, something.” Carl slid one pint over.
Q hummed an idle ‘uh-huh’ and took a cautious sip, preparing himself for an assault. Instead, fruity cider kissed his tongue. He blinked at the glass. “Oh.”
“Guessed you're a cider kind of guy,” Carl said. He stared at Q with a tilt of his lips that was not quite a smile.
“What kind of guy is it?” Q huffed as he nudged a napkin under his pint.
Detective Morck shrugged and made it look like this was an answer enough.
“Right,” Q rolled his eyes and typed. “Well. Next step. You could take me on another spin and we spend another two days bathing in mushroom spores and despair, or…”
“Conveyancer.”
“Mm,” Q tilted his head. “I don’t expect him to keep practising, but…”
Q typed and typed a little more. Some kind of sustenance arrived. Q tried one. Regretted it. Tried another one anyway. “Ugh. Why are these legal?”
Carl’s mouth almost smiled. “What are you searching for there?”
“Our guy retired to… huh, Leith. Flat, not a house. So, the boxes will be in the storage, and he’ll complain about his knees.”
“How do you know?”
“Pattern recognition,” Q shrugged airily and ate another piece of food-thing and drank some cider. “Also – should you be drinking in the middle of your shift?”
“I’m also working.” Carl drank like proof.
“Cops,” Q said to the ceiling. “Old knees or old mould?”
“Knees. Faster.”
Q tilted his head in agreement. The archive wouldn’t go anywhere. He closed the laptop, sipped, glanced up. “We’re on the same page, then. What do you plan to get from him?”
Carl took a drink. “Photocopy of witness sheet with an address. True copy of the acknowledgement. His memories. I can pull the thread backwards. You?”
“I do hope his administration is better than the archive’s. It’s a small firm; they have time to be thorough, so he must have some pretty things that won’t go to the archive. A simple plan with a grid ref, with the right of way traced in a fat red line. Maybe even some letters from the owners to the solicitor.”
“You charm, I intimidate.”
“I charm, you’re trying not to be an arse.”
“It’s a habit.”
“Make it not my problem.”
Carl’s mouth twitched again. He looked at Q the way one looks at something he was not supposed to want because it’d be trouble. “Mouthy, are you?”
“Experienced.”
“Competence? Seductive.”
Q snorted into his cider and arched an eyebrow.
“I’m not flirting with you,” Carl said, conversational. “No need for that look.”
“Of course not,” Q said. “You’re obviously, painfully straight. Probably divorced. Once.”
“How can you tell?”
“I can’t. You just did.”
Carl shook his head and gulped the dregs.
Q ate more of the strange food. The detective waved the barman a gesture that probably meant ‘again’ and reached across to Q. Long fingers plucked a crumb from his cardigan - honestly incongruous. It was the most intimate thing anyone had done for him in months.
In a pub at three in the afternoon. Which was even more ridiculous and alarming.
Second pints landed. Q aimed a look over the rim. “Tea after the old man who has our papers.”
“If it’ll go well.”
“It will go well,” Q reassured.
The man’s look slid over him, landing somewhere that wasn’t strictly professional. “Getting used to winning is dangerous.”
“Are you worried, Carl Morck?”
“Not about the things I should be worried.”
“To moderate self-awareness,” Q said, touching his cider to Carl's beer.
It earned him the first grin – gloomy, but real.