Shadow of the Serpent

‘Sadie Gorman. These many years. She used to be a pretty wee girl.’

‘She’s left that far behind. A broken doll.’

McLevy looked down at the waxy face of the corpse, powder-caked, red mouth open as if to laugh.

‘She had spirit,’ he said. ‘She deserves justice.’

‘You sound like a parrot, McLevy. Ye’ll end up in a cage, chewing betel nuts and defecating all over the floor!’

Jarvis, considering this enough of a bon mot to be leaving on, sprang the door with a flourish and cast a last disparaging look at the corpse. ‘I’m away to my club, a glass of claret will restore my faith in the beauty of women and the delicacy of their intentions. I’d invite you along, inspector, but it’s medical men only.’

The door shut behind him then it suddenly opened again and the doctor stuck his head back inside.

‘What is it you often call these creatures, by the way? It has slipped my mind.’

‘Nymphs of the pave,’ was the sardonic response.

‘Nymphs! What a treasure you are to me, inspector, that’ll keep me going all through the roast. Nymphs! Oh, and by the way, she doesn’t have the pox so you won’t get cuntbitten.’

The door closed. There was a long silence. McLevy put his five fingers to his nose, pursed his lips, then made a loud farting noise through them. It was aimed at the door and would seem to indicate his opinion of the departed medical man. Mulholland did not bat an eye.

Having released this salvo, the inspector returned to the slab, twitched back the sheet again and looked at the gashed body, ribcage broken, bones sticking out like the spars of a ship.

‘You noted that the good doctor was about to say something when he looked into this … desecration?’

‘I did indeed, sir. But then he thought better. What could it have been, I wonder?’

‘These pillars of genteelity, they need their whores but they despise and hate themselves for it. And some of them hate the whores even worse.’

‘That’s very profound, sir.’

McLevy looked sharply at his constable but the face before him seemed smooth and untroubled by irony. The inspector pushed out his lips and took on the air of a child playing at being a portentous adult.

‘He may have been about to say, “I might have done this, I might have chopped the sin out of her body.”’

‘Just as well he kept it to himself, then. Otherwise he could end up suspect,’ said the constable.

‘I’m sure he has an alibi.’

Mulholland nodded solemnly. ‘Mrs Jarvis. They’d be locked in matrimonial embrace all night.’

‘Indeed. Shackled thegither.’

A glint of mischief between the two. The younger man had walked the conglomerates of Leith these many years now with McLevy. He knew the humours and most especially the rages which burned in the inspector’s breast. Not that it didn’t stop him having a wee provocation now and again, but he tried always to follow his Aunt Katie’s advice. ‘If you’re going to poke the anointed pig, make sure you’re well behind the fence.’

‘One more thing.’ McLevy pointed at a smear of blood on the side of the dress, separated from the dark red river which stained the rest of the material. ‘What do you make of that?’

‘Her hand perhaps? Clutched at her wounds and then – ’ Mulholland stopped. The pained look on the inspector’s face did not encourage further speculation.

‘Look at the line of blood. Straight. As if, perhaps, something was wiped clean.’

‘The murder weapon? A cool customer.’

‘Or someone … detached. Who looks down on humanity as if it were just so many insects, crawling under his feet.’

There was a mystical intuitive side to the inspector which Mulholland found more than a little worrying. An ability to empathise with the criminal mind which one day, if the wind was in the wrong quarter, might lead to demonic possession.

Don’t turn your hinder parts on the black bull, leave that to the cows.

One of Aunt Katie’s more cryptic sayings. God knows why it should come into his head at this moment.

He watched McLevy replace the sheet up to the neck of the corpse and then carefully pack away the broken feather in the top pocket of his tunic. How would he describe the man, now? Average height, heavy set, dainty little trotters, the comical thing being if the inspector ever had to run, which he hated with a vengeance, only the arms and legs moved, the rest of the body was perfectly still, as if in protest.

The features now, would suet come to mind? But behind that fleshy casing was a substance the like of which you might see down by the Leith shoreline where the east wind over time had stripped the rocks back to their very essence.

The face at times was that of a pouting child and then again something carved out from the Old Testament.

Pepper-and-salt hair stood up like a wire brush. And yet the whole, and this irked Mulholland profoundly him not having the physicality for it himself, could become easy invisible. You might pass this by in a crowd. Unless you caught sight of the unguarded eyes, then were you a woolly animal you’d be heading back to the fold praying not to feel the hot breath of the wolf upon your neck.

The white skin on that big face; if Mulholland was out in the wind for five minutes his cheeks were of the damask rose, but the inspector’s never changed. Like parchment. He might have been Ancient Egyptian.

‘What’re you grinning at?’

‘Not a thing. It’s a serious business, sir.’

‘It is indeed. A ferocious business. Enough force behind that blow to split the Scott Monument. A savage hatred that never leaves the streets.’

Something in the tone alerted the constable but he contented himself with watching as the inspector shook out a reasonably clean handkerchief, which he laid gently over Sadie’s face.

‘She has fallen at my feet. She will have justice, Mulholland.’

‘I’m sure she will. Is there … perhaps something you yourself are not revealing at this point in time, sir?’

‘Me?’ McLevy spread his hands, his face a parody of hurt innocence. ‘I am an open book, constable. As you well know. An open book.’

4

As you pass from the tender years of youth into harsh embittered manhood, make sure you take with you on your journey all the human emotions.

Don’t leave them on the road.

NIKOLAI GOGOL, Dead Souls

Leith, 14 April 1850

George Cameron watched in grim amusement as the young constable spewed his guts all over the baker’s shop doorway. A nice filling for the cakes.

That’s the bother with these Lowlanders, no ballast. He glanced over to where the girl’s body lay slumped against the wall; ye could not blame the boy, I suppose, first night on patrol with his big Highland sergeant, excuses himself to go up a back street then finds he’s near relieved himself upon a corpse.

The constable had nothing else to offer but his shoulders still heaved. Dearie me. The dry boke. Few things are worse.

Unless you’ve had your brisket mangled. He turned away from the grovelling young buckie, took a deep breath and delicately pulled away the girl’s dress. My God, she’d been split apart.