reward in glory helping Saint Peter instal rivets to fortify the heavenly gates.
And yet McLevy sensed in Dunbar as regards his friend’s death, a personal guilt as if something was gnawing away at him inside. It would not be an issue of morality, the man possessed no such thing, therefore what was causing unease in a psyche not inclined towards the fine-tuning of conscience?
As if to confirm his somewhat coarse disposition, the fellow hawked up a wodge of phlegm from his lungs and spat it out on to the floor of the interrogation room where it bounced like a rubber ball.
‘The bastards owed me,’ he repeated.
‘For what?’ asked Mulholland.
‘Whit I did. Whit I did not. The blind eye.’
McLevy was silent thus far, his eyes fixed upon Dunbar as if trying to see behind the mask the man presented, so the constable was honour bound to continue.
‘The blind eye?’
‘Whit I turned.’
‘To what?’
Dunbar laughed harshly. He was beginning to enjoy himself with Mulholland but, in so doing, ignored McLevy at his peril. His aching belly could have reminded him of this but physical pain was so much part of his life that he kept it at distance and bore it like an animal.
‘Ye ever hear o’ Beaumont Egg?’
‘I have not,’ replied Mulholland after a moment of thought.
‘Then ye can remain an ignorant Irish pig!’
Mulholland flushed red and Dunbar tensed himself but now it was McLevy’s turn.
‘So that is why you stole. They owed you.’
‘They did. And threw me off the job for no reason.’
‘How so?’
‘That bastard Alan Telfer!’
‘The right hand of Sir Thomas?’
‘A minion! He sneaked in. I was the foreman, no bugger knew as much of the iron-moulding as me. But as soon as that bridge was built, he threw me out.’
‘There must have been a reason?’
‘He sneaked in the foundry. Witnessed me. I had drink taken.’
‘That’s a surprise,’ was the dry response.
‘It was my birthday!’ Dunbar said defensively.
Now it was Mulholland’s occasion for silence as he watched McLevy manipulate the exchange so that the other was forever on the back foot. Yet the inspector somehow gave the impression that he and Dunbar were working towards a common end, uncovering the truth together as it were, though that would change at some point, the constable would have wagered his carefully tended Protestant soul upon it.
‘So,’ McLevy mused thoughtfully, ‘to assuage your hurt feelings and empty pockets, you removed from the possession of your former employers, that which you believed rightfully belonged to yourself as compensation for unfair dismissal?’
Dunbar had momentary difficulty in following this somewhat convoluted reasoning, but got there eventually and near nodded his head off in agreement.
‘That is correct. The bastards!’
McLevy smiled and also nodded, all friends together, but then leant back again, folded his hands together, this time more resembling a Buddha than a priest, and waited.
Hercules felt obscurely summoned to contribute more.
‘And it wasnae the first time,’ he affirmed.
Mulholland’s long nose twitched in apparent bewilderment.
‘It wasn’t the first time you had broken into the place?’
‘No. Not at all.’
‘Not at all you had? Or not at all you had not?’
‘For the love of Christ,’ Dunbar muttered indignantly. ‘Not at all I hadnae.’
He shook his head at McLevy as if to say, ‘How do you endure this great gowk?’ and received a complicit headshake in reply, yet the two policemen were playing him like a hooked fish.
Hercules felt an ill-founded sense of well-being; he and the inspector might be sworn enemies but there was respect to be paid on each side.
Unlike this dozie from the bogs of Ireland.
He ignored Mulholland altogether and addressed McLevy as close to an equal.
‘It wasnae the first time I had asked for my due. I banged upon their door.’
‘And when would that be?’ asked his almost equal.
‘Not long since. A Sabbath day. Sir Thomas wasnae on the premises.’ Dunbar puffed up importantly as if he had hammered on the portal like a creditor. ‘I was taken to Alan Telfer and there I made my just demand.’
‘What was his response?’
Dunbar’s face darkened with chagrin.
‘The bastard laughed at me.’
‘He was a brave man,’ McLevy observed, a tinge of admiration to his tone as if he believed Dunbar a fellow to be reckoned. ‘Or a foolish one, eh?’
‘He threatened me wi’ the police.’
‘Well that’s where you’ve ended up, right enough.’
This comment from Mulholland was treated by the other two with the contempt it deserved, and then McLevy hopped off the table to drag over the second chair so that he and Dunbar sat together like two old men on a park bench.
‘Surely he could have just shown you to the door like a gentleman, why threaten you, Herkie?’
‘Because I threatened him,’ the man boasted.
‘With what?’
For a moment Dunbar almost blurted out what was in his mind, but then his instinctive feral cunning kicked in and he closed his eyes, shaking his head, a self-important smile on his face to indicate the depth of the secrets he held.
Perhaps it had something to do with this mysterious Beaumont Egg the man had mentioned to tantalise Mulholland, or perhaps Dunbar was giving himself airs to cover the fact that he had gone cap in hand to be treated like a doorstep beggar, but it was time now for the subject of murder.
‘So you had your vengeance, eh?’
‘I did indeed.’
‘While they were snoring, the Great Man and his secretary –’
Here, Dunbar suddenly let out a loud snigger. ‘Aye, like dirty pigs.’
The man had a sly look upon his face but McLevy did not wish to pursue this divergence from the main narrative.
‘While they were snoring,’ he continued, ‘you made a fool of them, robbed them blind.’
‘Whit was my due,’ asserted Dunbar complacently, not realising that he was in the process of tying a noose around his own neck.
McLevy leant forward from his chair, faced away from Dunbar and made a little movement with his hand like a man feeding bread to the ducks.
He spoke softly almost in a whisper, as if they were both witnessing the scene.
