Shadow of the Serpent

dress up for me?’

‘In case I was described, there would be nothing to connect the woman with Jane Salter. In any case, you were a hard nut to crack, inspector. I needed every weapon at my disposal.’

She smiled. He did not respond.

‘And I bear you no grudge for his death.’

‘He deserved it.’

McLevy’s eyes were hard and without pity.

She was glad of that. She whispered close, her own eyes mocking.

‘But does not one thing puzzle you, inspector?’

‘What is that?’

‘The scrap of material found on Mae Donnachie’s body. I thought it a great stroke of luck that I could weave it into the story. But what if the story of long ago was true?

‘What if the man we led you towards was in fact the man you sought? What if we were God’s agents instead of Satan’s helpers?’

McLevy felt the barbs going into his flesh.

‘Just a scrap. The rest was conjecture and lies.’

‘But what if some of it were true? Now, you will never know. You’ve cut your own throat.’

She laughed softly.

‘You have lost as well, inspector.’

‘I have lost many times in life,’ said McLevy. ‘The feeling is not unknown.’

He stood abruptly and walked to the door where he turned to look back at her. The quality of his gaze was measured and dispassionate. It took Joanna by surprise but she managed a crooked smile lest he sense the emptiness and pain that twisted in her heart.

‘You will never hear of me again. I shall disappear. As if I had never been. Burnt at the stake, old boy.’

The tones of the Serpent.

McLevy left without goodbye.

Though, outside the door, he gazed back through the judas hole.

The woman in the corner stood. She walked over and laid her hand on Joanna’s shoulder. The seated woman shivered a little at the contact.

He closed the grille. Joanna Lightfoot was gone.

43

The warlock men and the weird women,

And the fays of the wood and the steep,

And the phantom hunters all were there,

And the mermaids of the deep.

BORDER BALLAD

McLevy sat by his window and watched as dusk fell on his beloved city.

Behind every window was a potential crime. He would rest content with that observation.

The events of the last few days filtered through his mind like flakes of quartz which float for a while in the stream then fall to join the sediment of the river.

A strange thing but it was mostly dead faces that swam in his mind always.

Sadie Gorman, Mae Donnachie, the wee dollymop, Frank Brennan and, of course, George Cameron, waiting eternally in that hospital bed for the solving of a murder.

Last but not least, Sir Edward Graham, to give the murderous bastard his proper name, also had his place in the parade. The father.

And Joanna Lightfoot? The first moment met, he had looked at her bosom instead of her face. Mis-direction. And it had never changed. Yet, those dark-blue eyes would live with him. Empty and damned. The daughter.

He pulled his diary towards him, opened it at a blank page and took a slug of coffee. It was bitter as a tinker’s curse. Where the hell did Mrs MacPherson get the stuff?

He must ask Jean Brash for her supplier, though it was probably some Levantine smuggler with an eye-patch and gold tooth to boot. Snaggled no doubt, the tooth.

He began to write.

The Diary of James McLevy

I feel a lowering of spirits which is customary at the conclusion of a case.

I have found much to surprise me, especially about myself.

In the personal, to wit … my father is apparently an Italian sailor. If alive, he’d be a good age now, but Tarry Breeks are soaked in brine, he may well yet survive.

Perhaps he lives in a wee village beside the sea where his grandchildren gather round his knees to hear of his adventures in far-off lands.

Every Easter I can remember, my mother would take me down to watch the ships come in and then we would go home and she would wait for the knock at the door.

She told me often enough it was my fault the angel never came and I was too young then to question her, like a proper policeman should, as to how she arrived at that conclusion.

My real father and mother are wrapped up in the one body. Jeannie Scott. I will admire that woman till the day I die. I regret spilling that beetroot on her best tablecloth. I was overcome by greed, my eyes on the black pudding. I am glad she found it in her heart to grant me absolution.

In the general, to wit … politics is a dirty business and attracts the lowest type. Now and again an honest man may appear but he will be one light shining in eternal darkness.

They are addicted to power. It is their opium. Hell mend them. I have lost interest.

McLevy closed the page. Brevity becomes the soul.

Darkness had fallen on the streets below. On the coping of the roof, some part to the side, he saw the silhouette of a cat outlined by a stray beam of light.

It was Bathsheba, he was sure of it, and was not her belly hanging lower than previous?

He whistled but the cat paid no heed and disappeared into the dark. Never mind. With a bit of luck, she would return.

With women, you always need a bit of luck.

And what of the Gladstone affair?

The mother-of-pearl box lay on the table before him. He laid his hand upon it gently and, in his mind’s eye, he could once more see George Cameron shaking his big Highland head in severe disappointment. What a snowflake, he would be thinking and McLevy had to accept that judgement. One day he would take up the trail again but for now he must accept his impotence, like a dull pain that never leaves the body and irritates the soul.

A noise brought his attention to the street below. Some kind of torchlit procession, Home Rulers perhaps, part encouraged by the noises the Liberal party was making, but we’d see if they came up trumps.

Every time the Irish trust the English it ends in grief.

McLevy finished the dregs of his coffee and looked downwards once more.

The procession. Another parade of power.

It was led by one bright torch and the lesser lights snaked out behind it.

Like a serpent.