Trick of the Light

to hell along with it, seemed to be of no concern to his superiors.

Roach had buried the matter like a bad drive in a bunker and McLevy, a man for whom Mulholland had risked life and limb on more than one occasion, had the cheek to look aggrieved when recently informed that he, the inspector, was making an eejit out of himself by reason of hanging a tea towel round his neck like a washing line.

A bitter residue still lingered in Mulholland’s heart from that unlucky time of lost emotion. He had been unjustly castigated for inadvertently causing the father of his budding beloved, Emily Forbes, to hang himself by the neck with a pulley rope as a by-chance of trying to solve a case all on his own and therefore gain promotion with the welcome addition of a blushing bride; something any red-blooded young fellow would surely attempt. Surely.

But it put somewhat of a damper on the wedding prospect because, as McLevy had remarked at the time, it is difficult for a father to give away the bride with his neck at a funny angle and his tongue hingin’ oot.

Hilarious.

Anyhow, it was a bitter residue.

And not his fault.

The welter of self-justification has ensnared many a stalwart man but Mulholland was sprung like Perseus from the labyrinth when Roach turned and asked, ‘Well constable – and what is your opinion?’

Mulholland had drifted away on the tide and so missed the previous part of Roach’s diatribe but he had enough on hand to take refuge in ancestral wisdom.

‘Terrible, terrible, sir,’ he avowed. ‘My Aunt Katie always says that a man who looks into his own face overly much often, is looking at catastrophe.’

‘Does she indeed?’ muttered Roach, who considered Mulholland’s Aunt Katie an Irish myth whose effect was not unlike the sea haar that descended on a clearly defined golf course and fogged up a perfectly decent approach.

He turned his baleful gaze back onto Ballantyne who, in truth, was a harmless, innocent soul and totally unfitted to be a policeman.

‘I will not have mesmeric conjuration within the legal boundaries of the Leith police station,’ Roach thundered like some prophet from the Old Testament. ‘I will ask you once more, constable. Was there, at any given moment, demonic intention in your mind?’

The young constable blushed anew and struggled for words, which were never his friends at the best of times.

‘It wisnae the devil, sir.’

‘Then whom were you regarding?’

‘Me. Jist me.’

‘And the gesturing of your own appendages?’

Ballantyne looked down at his hands, the long and finely tapered fingers at odds with rest of his awkward body, as if they might supply an answer.

‘Have a life of their own sometimes, sir.’

‘And what was in your mind?’

Ballantyne bit his lip and almost swallowed the words rather than let them see the light of day.

‘Jist – hocus-pocus.’

‘Hocus-pocus?’

Roach let out a baffled growl and Mulholland who, in truth, was wondering why the lieutenant was getting himself into such a twist over a piece of daft behaviour, decided to bring some much needed intelligence into the situation.

‘This mesmerism stuff is all over the city now, is it not constable?’ he asked with a friendly smile.

Ballantyne cheered up at the encouragement, little suspecting what might be behind the facade; the boy was, as has been noted, too trusting for his chosen profession.

‘Aye. Everybody’s talking.’

‘And you thought to have a pass, eh?’

‘Aye.’

‘A bit of innocent fun?’

‘Uhuh.’

‘Not a thought in your mind.’

‘No’ really.’

A hesitation, and the interrogator in Mulholland was onto it like a flash; it is astounding how often humanity begins with apparent intent to assist the afflicted and ends up screwing down the coffin lid.

‘But there was something, eh? Some little thing. What was it now?’

Roach watched in silence, instinctively sensing that Mulholland was close to something. The tall constable flicked a glance his way as if to acknowledge the subtle interplay between them.

Neither of these prescient beings noticed a figure slip in at the back and rest up against the wall.

Softly does it, thought Mulholland, not hammering in like a certain abject personage.

‘What was that little thing?’

Ballantyne hesitated once more, then looked up into the blue Irish eyes of his fellow constable and blurted out the pitifully painful truth of the matter.

‘They say it can make things disappear.’

‘So you looked in the mirror to put the ’fluence on and do a vanishing act?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And what would you want to make disappear?’

This was the moment when the lieutenant might re-evaluate his promotion prospects if Mulholland displayed a continuing talent for such fine-milled investigation.

Ballantyne fell silent.

They waited. Hounds on the trail.

One of Ballantyne’s hands, which indeed had a life of its own, crept unconsciously up to touch the livid birthmark that disfigured his face.

It was as if something had kicked Mulholland hard in the pit of his stomach; in the name of his own cleverness, showing off in front of his lieutenant he had humiliated a fellow constable, a fellow human being, and if the ground had swallowed him up like another vanishing act, he would have accepted it as part of his just desserts.

Lieutenant Roach though was made of sterner stuff. He searched in his mind for a phrase to indicate that whatever mitigation of physical defect, he, as premier authority in the Leith Police station, could not allow mystic influences of any kind access to a cracked mirror.

Strangely enough, nothing much came to mind.

Out of the ether, however, a voice sounded forth.

‘Away ye go, constable,’ said James McLevy. ‘And tidy up your desk, it looks like a midden.’

As the grateful Ballantyne quit the scene, the lieutenant reflected, not for the first time, how his obstreperous, noisy subordinate had the ability to ghost up out of nowhere.

At the most inopportune moments.

McLevy shot the shamefaced Mulholland a look to blister tarmacadam, and then turned to gaze enquiringly at Roach.

The lieutenant found he had an obscure need to defend his actions, but why should he? He was the superior and he had no need to vindicate his conduct.

‘I caught Ballantyne in the act of gazing wilfully into his own personal likeness,’ he vindicated, nevertheless.

‘I gathered that,’ was the terse response.

‘Mesmerism has no place in my station!’

‘It’s all the rage,’ said McLevy, annoyingly. ‘I’m sure Mrs Roach is intrigued, is she not?’