Nerves, that was it. Before going into action. Not long now, this was the tricky one, trick o’ the light, all depended on the timing, repeating himself, not a good idea.
He moved away from the mirror and took stock. He knew the time and place, the mark was set, part of the money paid, the route reconnoitred; all he had to do … the Serpent took a deep breath. Relax. Not the first time, old chap. Think of yourself … as the Hand of God. Royal appointment. Relax. That’s the stuff to give the troops.
He summoned up a picture that always turned his bones to water. The first time she had come to him, the little fleshly beast.
The Serpent had been asleep and awoke, heart pounding, to find her at the foot of his bed, golden hair loose to her shoulders. She wore a nightdress he himself had approved and bought. Appeared chasteness itself in the shop, a thick cotton swathe behind which youthful modesty might rest, but now it seemed the very emblem of temptation.
And then it fell, by some strange motion, as if a snake had sloughed its skin, to the carpet.
A naked female is the most terrifying mystery.
She was part in shadow, he could make out the shape of her long young body glowing in the dark. But all that was immediately visible, a shaft of moonlight through a high window playing the pander, was one bare foot.
One slender white foot, on a red carpet.
And then it moved. Towards him. And all else followed. Foot, ankle, calf and thigh. Then perdition.
He’d tried to resist, to protest, but such speech is difficult when the mouth is so otherwise occupied.
From far below the castle walls, there came the sound of laughter. Harsh, jeering laughter from an unknown source.
The Serpent found his lips dry. Surely a cigar was called for? His case was on the table. He crossed, took one out, Dutch, can’t beat the Dutch, lit it up, and found he was calm again.
The operative had her part to play. And so had he. Flesh could wait.
Somewhere a church bell struck nine hours. Not long, now. Not long, now. Action.
28
Behold I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep,
But we shall all be changed.
I CORINTHIANS, 15:51
The Old Ship was one of the finest taverns of the Leith port, not like some of the other dives in and out of which McLevy had fought his way, hauling to a reckoning many a thief, while the man’s
Indeed there were drinking dens in the harbour area which fell silent and lost half their customers at the sight of himself and Mulholland walking through the door.
The constable was feared for his hornbeam stick plus the skill with which he wielded the implement and McLevy for his fury of response should violence threaten.
The story still did the rounds of the night he, as a young constable, and Henry Preger, a notorious lifetaker and close-quarter mangler whose massive fists had smashed many a policeman to his knees, battered hell out of one another in the Foul Anchor tavern while Preger’s wee pillow-wanton, Jean Brash, looked on in pure amazement.
Preger had made a sneering comment about the death of Sergeant George Cameron, and his hope that the worms were crawling up a certain orifice to enjoy a fine Highland feast. Teuchter pudding.
Then, as Milton put it so poetically, all hell broke loose.
Some say the fight lasted near one hour and a half, some say longer. But, at the end of it, Preger lay bruised and writhing on the sawdust planks while Jamie McLevy walked out of the door into the night without a backward glance.
That night, he made his name. He had taken everything Preger could throw at him, and, at the end, danced a wild jig round the body of his foe, howling out a Jacobite song, and putting the fear of God into all who watched.
McLevy was not so sure he could do it now. He was carrying a bit of weight these days, but that could work in his favour. Ye might assume the bulk would slow the motion, but he still possessed fast hands. And feet.
McLevy had a dram of peat reek whisky set out before him. He lifted it and drank. A dark thought came. It is often so with whisky.
Fast hands, but they hadnae been fast enough to save George Cameron. His vanity had seen to that. Perhaps one day he would forgive himself, perhaps one day, when the promise was fulfilled.
The inspector sighed and looked around the tavern.
The Old Ship. He felt at home here, well as much home as anywhere. The place had a generous size to it, great staircases, thick walls and the cosy rooms panelled with moulded wainscot. He loved the big stone fireplaces that had witnessed many a deep carouse, and appreciated most keenly the wooden cubicles where a lone man might be private unto himself.
On return from West Calder, Mulholland had sprung a surprise on him. Often it was their custom to share a glass at the end of a week and chew the fat till closing time, but it would seem that your man had begun to develop social pretensions to go with his general sookin’ up, and he was away to a musical recital in a respectable house. The Roach house no less. This very night.
Seemingly the constable had a fine tenor voice and Mrs Roach, the good lieutenant’s wife, had noted his prowess in their church, which Mulholland had chosen to attend, no doubt to ingratiate himself even further.
Despite the constable’s lowly office, she had roped him in with a view to future duets amidst some of the young ladies of her artistic circle. Tenors being in short supply.
McLevy had been firmly discouraged from any possible attendance in case he brought down the tone, an element of revenge for Mulholland after his being made to look like an imbecile at the Gladstone meeting. The inspector told himself he did not mind because he hated that tight-arsed cultural genteelity which had no connection to any kind of life he had ever come across.
Though, truth to tell, he was a bit sore nevertheless at the exclusion. McLevy disapproved people keeping secrets except, of course, for himself.
He had wrung from the constable at least that Mulholland would make no mention of their tiptoeing to West Calder should he be offered a shortbread biscuit by the man of the house, but say merely that the investigation was continuing its course.
It comforted the inspector somewhat that Lieutenant Roach would have to sit through the entire programme of high-flown musical tributes to the sensitivity of human nature, because one thing that he and Roach shared was a profound distaste for such functions.
The lieutenant’s wife was one of these women who were always doing good or something approaching it, and spent her life wrenching the poor bugger from one committee meeting to another when the man would rather have been at home reading his golfing periodicals or out on the course.
Doing good. The unco guid. What they preach, they do not practise. McLevy’s lip curled. The dirty squalid world they sought to alleviate was created almost entirely by a financial system and usage that they themselves supported with great enthusiasm.
If you scratched these good folk hard enough, you would find nothing but a fear of contamination. They would seek to forget the painful, suppress the disagreeable and banish the ugly. The city council was even now, under the Chambers Improvement Act, engaged on pulling down the slum buildings and erecting in their place so very little and, such as it was, laid aside for those they considered honest hard-working artisans and the like, so that the poor were more and more crushed together like rats in a cage.
And the respectable citizens of the New Town who had left so much of the Old Town to rot, walked on the maze of small bridges and pathways above, making sure that no one was keeking up their skirts.
