with what Donnie took for fear, nodded gingerly and reached slowly into his inside jacket pocket.

But as he did so, he dropped the woman who landed on her backside with a howl of pain and split the knifeman’s attention for a moment.

It was enough. What Mulholland produced from his pocket was not a purse but a large bony fist which he planted into the middle of Donnie’s face, crunching back his nose and sending the man hurtling in reverse for at least three feet to land on his hands and knees, spitting blood with a terrible ringing in his ears.

Jug’s mouth dropped open, this was their first plunder in Leith, and no one had prepared him for such violence.

He stepped forward, drawing out his lead piping but the beanpole simply walked up and kicked him in the groin.

Mulholland’s Aunt Katie had always advised him thus, ‘When in doubt, go for the crown jewels.’

Or as McLevy also counselled in the early days when a wee street keelie had laid the callow young constable low during a resisted arrest, ‘Hit them first. And hit them hard.’

Jug joined Donnie in a groaning chorus on the ground and Mulholland cursed the fact that, having changed into civilian clothes to escort Mary Rough homewards, he had neither restrainers nor his lethal self-fashioned hornbeam truncheon to hand.

He moved in anyway, another couple of blows would do it, knock the wits out of them long enough for him to borrow a cart from somewhere and wheel them to the station.

This intention was somewhat forestalled however when Mary, in her befuddled state and the gloom of the wynd not helping one bit, took him to be in danger, threw her arms around his legs and clung on like a leech.

‘I’ll save ye, constable!’ she bellowed.

That word alone was enough to send Donnie and Jug off as speedily as their crippled condition allowed, while Mulholland tried in vain to disentangle himself from Mary’s vice-like grip of his kneecaps.

By the time he had achieved this, hauling her up to face him, the thieves were long gone.

‘Jist as well I’m here, eh?’ said Mary.

Mulholland sighed. Though he was not too downcast. He had noted the faces; they would meet again.

‘Just as well, ma’am,’ he replied politely.

Mary drew herself together in queenly manner.

‘Ye can let me go now, constable. I’ll sail under my own steam.’

And that she did. Not without the odd tack to the wind but kept her dignity and footing, through the narrow alleys, into one of the closes; even after some unsuccessful passes at the lock of her door with a bent key, Mary still achieved a ladylike decorum as she handed it to the constable.

‘You do it so. My eyes betray me.’

He did as instructed. She walked into the single room where she lived her life, sat in a crooked chair, directed him to light a candle in case the bogeymen arrived to steal her Catholic soul and promptly fell asleep.

Mulholland lit the candle and looked down at her with obscure affection. She reminded him of the old women he had grown up with in Ireland; life had washed over them like a violent sea, leaving barnacles for eyes, strands of weed for hair, and wrinkled skins from the blasts of salt.

Yet they survived. Endured. And laughed.

As Mary had in the Old Ship. Mind you she had reason to be cheerful, it was Mulholland buying the drinks. For him weak beer, for her a hooker of the hard stuff.

She alternated between tears for her dead son and raucous mirth over some of the scrapes that had landed upon her in life.

She’d had to steal her own wedding dress from a department store, and the man she married, Andrew Rough, a skylighter of note, had fallen from a roof in the course of a burglary, landed in a waggon full of pigs heading for the slaughterhoose, and stank for years.

Tall tales from long ago. Andrew was departed like his son, the poor man had caught a wasting disease in the Perth Penitentiary and died skin and bones.

She had no fear to tell the constable of past crimes, because now she was as pure as the driven bloody snow.

Mary laughed once more though the pain was never far away and Mulholland also wondered if she was testing him out to see if he was after something, which he indeed was, but he gave no hint of such, smiled bashfully and not once put in a question about the fire.

Another thing learned from McLevy. Never ask the anticipated.

However he did have to tolerate many amused glances from the regulars of the tavern who knew him for a clean-living fellow and no doubt wondered what he was doing with such a disreputable old biddy.

When they were drinking in the curtained booth it was satisfactory enough but as it came time to leave, Mary had leant heavily upon him, announcing loudly to the assembly that he was a fine big specimen, and she’d wager that he was all in proportion.

Mulholland hurried her outside ignoring the open laughter at his back, and when the night air fermented the alcohol content in her blood, had no option but to stagger along with her, grit his teeth when she lifted her voice in song, and pray that he did not encounter anyone of note.

Robert Forbes, for instance. Or Emily. Or both.

But all he had encountered was a knife at his throat, a mere bagatelle.

Mary snorted in her sleep and Mulholland prepared, like her eyes, to betray the old woman.

The room was clean enough and bare of furnishings with a small bed stuck into the corner. The inventory included a chipped and battered chest of drawers which stood on three feet with a lump of stone stuck under to make a fourth, a recess where some tawdry clothes were hanging, an empty fireplace, a wee coalbunker and any amount of floorboards, cracked and creviced, that might provide a hiding spot were there a policeman in the house.

Which indeed there was.

When they had questioned Mary earlier he had noted the inspector’s eyes sweep round the room appraisingly and Mulholland now did the same.

Where to begin?

McLevy had recommended, when she is least expecting, look for an opening.

The woman was asleep, unconscious, a less expectant state could hardly be envisaged.

Mary was too crafty to undo herself with a word. Yet, the inspector was sure that she was hiding something.

So, where was the constable to begin?

If, for instance, the expired mouse under Mary’s bed had been alive with eyes to see, it would have witnessed the tall figure of a man swiftly, surely and always most neatly, sift through the pitiful contents of the chest of drawers, rifle the threadbare hanging clothes, tap the walls and boards for hollow spots, look below the mattress and sheets, then beneath the frame to find amid the dust, for folk with no carpets to sweep things under have to sweep it somewhere, a lifeless rodent body.

But a dead mouse cannot look for or at itself, and so the circle was complete. Apart from a mercifully empty chanty-pot, Mulholland had found nothing.

Little bubbles of saliva were forming at Mary’s mouth where she blew out gently in her sleep; then she started and almost came awake.

Hypnos, however, once more received her in his arms, and, as Mulholland’s head had whipped round in alarm at her stirring then watched her be claimed anew by the God of Sleep, his attention was taken by the fireplace.

The grate was empty but that was not his target.

The small coalbunker.

McLevy was a great man for extremities. It was his assertion that the hands and feet could tell you just about all you wanted to know.

Faces, however, were the very devil.

The constable had noted that as Mary tucked in with relish to her hookers of whisky, two of the nails on her right hand were crusted with a residue of black. The woman, despite her aptitude for knocking back John Barleycorn, maintained herself  diligently enough. A habit from her former criminal days when a decent shoplifter

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