Fall From Grace

carried that knowledge like a diseased person who contaminated all that he touched.

The Masque of the Red Death …

McLevy shook his head like an animal trying to rid itself from a plague of flies, but still the thoughts came.

What was his desire? In this empty darkness did he not truly wish for extinction? His own and all known things?

As if in answer, in the pitch black, came three separate and terrible flashes of light from the direction of the bridge, and then as the moon began to struggle free once more, McLevy saw by the emerging pallid light a column of steam and spray rise from the distant river as if some giant had picked up a mountain and hurled it into the waters.

He further strained his eyes; his long vision was excellent but the picture it brought to him provoked a craving for the most profound blindness.

The lunar light had grown stronger to reveal that where the High Girders had once stood so proudly, were now stumps like rotting teeth.

The bridge was down.

The unlooked-for wish had been granted.

Had the train also fallen?

James McLevy fell from the stone bench to his knees and bowed his head in prayer for the lost souls.

Because if the train had plunged deep like a diver, no one could survive that fall.

No one did.

These were not toys.

30

For secrets are edged tools,

And must be kept from children and from fools.

JOHN DRYDEN,

St Martin Mar-All

Lieutenant Roach looked at the calendar on his desk and sighed: 9 November 1880. He had the whole of the winter yet to endure, his blood sluggish already at seasonable ebb, and on such mornings considered his office to be little more than a railway station.

No sooner had Constable Mulholland requested an audience with his superior and the young man hardly sat down, twisting his fingers together but mercifully making no mention of impending suits of love, the potential failure of which Roach was not looking forward to divulging from his Masonic converse with Robert Forbes, than the door was rapped upon in peremptory fashion and McLevy came bounding in like a dog after a bone.

To regard the inspector, overcoat damp with the morning mist, wiry hair on end indeed giving him the appearance of a vibrant canine, it could never have been suspected that he had spent the night in broken sleep to awaken with a severe stitch in his side plus a head full of bad memories.

Thus the past afflicts the present like an uninvited guest, a spectre at the masked ball.

Job had his plague of boils and McLevy had the Bouch case. That treacherous pissful slippery bastard Hercules Dunbar was still at large and it was doubtful if he would ever be recovered; everyone else was dead except Margaret Bouch who was far too actively alive and kicking.

The dreadful picture of the spray rising from the wild river to mark the death plunge of that train almost a year past, had seared its way into his brain and would be with him always.

But, out of the void, comes action.

The empty feeling in the pit of his stomach had been filled with two strong cups of coffee; he had then made early rendezvous with his omniscient provider of financial lore and his inquiries had borne lustrous fruit.

Ripe enough to sink his teeth into, and if juice dribbles down the chin, so much the better.

As he walked by Great Junction Street towards the Leith station, the morning sun made an unexpected appearance thus dispelling the mist and, to the alarm of some passers-by, the inspector raised his arms towards it, closed his eyes and bathed delightedly in the weak November rays.

‘Hallelujah!’ he announced to the sky above.

It was often thus with McLevy. A state of inertia as if the very blood had been sucked from his veins was followed by a frenetic burst of activity and high spirits, tending towards the manic and hard to resist.

He stood in the doorway as if an electric charge had been shot through him and winked at Mulholland who, now that the inspector had arrived on the scene, was searching for an altered formulation on how to break his own news.

Roach merely dug his backside deeper into the padding of the chair like a man would ground his feet before a shot out of a deep trap.

He could recognise the signs. Time to anchor down.

Queen Victoria from her position on the wall clasped her plump hands together a trifle anxiously as McLevy almost hopped in the air with satisfaction.

‘Our friend Mister Oliver Garvie is facing financial ruin.’

This statement produced a muted response. Mulholland, who would previously have cheered this to the echo, had his own possible ruin to face and Roach had learned that when McLevy was running wild, to be sanguine was to be sagacious.

‘How so?’ he asked, jerking his jaw to the side.

The inspector hopped again, undismayed by such dull audience.

‘He has been hammered at the gaming tables. Gambled the stock exchange and lost. Plunged heavily to recoup. Lost once again with a vengeance. And now?’

McLevy raised a heavy eyebrow like an actor in a melodrama.

‘He has nothing left to gamble.’

The inspector looked to Mulholland but received pallid response which annoyed him: the man should be full of beans at the prospect of a rival unravelled, but looked like John the Baptist just after Salome cut loose.

‘So says my banking confidant,’ he ended tersely.

‘Is he reliable?’ Roach questioned.

‘He runs the bank.’

That was that, then.

Mulholland took a deep breath but McLevy severed, like Salome, the intended contribution.

‘I think I may be able –’ began the constable.

‘Hold yet, Mulholland,’ was the grandiose response. ‘The lieutenant and I are in communication.’

‘So, what is your thinking, McLevy?’

The inspector smacked his lips like a man dining out on crime and strode around the office, almost skipping at times.

‘Twenty thousand pounds insurance money!’ he exclaimed. ‘My banker friend assures me that no amount approaching that sum has gone abroad from Garvie’s account to pay out for this supposed cargo.’

‘He may have had the money in other forms,’ Roach threw in. ‘Securities, bonds, liquid cash, who knows what businessmen get up to?’

‘Who knows indeed?’ the inspector answered back, a wicked gleam in his eye. ‘Who knows what swindles they may perpetrate?’

Mulholland winced and opened his mouth again but this time it was the lieutenant beat him to the punch.

‘All very circumstantial, inspector. To move against a man of Garvie’s standing, I need hard evidence.’

Mulholland thought of the cigar box nestling in his coat pocket where it hung on a hook in the station cubby-