dragged off like a captive, who knows?
In fact, Fate once more intervened.
First it had been in the guise of a walnut tree, and now it struck in the form of a ravenous seagull.
The bird had been circling above after an unsuccessful effort to wrest a piece of stale bread from the beak of a razorbill only to find that its heavy-bodied opponent was surprisingly stubborn and had a whole flock of relatives who descended upon the bigger bird and chased it for dear life.
Thus the gull was hungry, chastened and desperate; so when it glimpsed below the white of McLevy’s cuff as he lifted the revolver, that colour only because his landlady Mrs MacPherson had bleached, washed and ironed his shirts before they yellowed beyond measure, the bird, through the tendrils of mist mistakenly thought it saw the white paper of a leaving cake.
Conditioned reflex did the rest.
It dived straight as an arrow, through the fog, neck extended, to jab a lethally sharp beak into the inspector’s outstretched hand.
McLevy howled in pain and the revolver flew out of his grasp to skitter along the wet planking until it was lost from view.
He hammered the bird on the head with his free hand till it pulled the beak away then dropped at his feet but, in the meantime, Hercules Dunbar had spun round, and seen the form of the inspector outlined against the faint lights of the ships in the far distance.
Dunbar dropped his shoulder and rushed at McLevy, driving him backwards so that they both fell off the end of the pier into the dark waters below with a muffled splash.
All that remained behind was a dropped revolver, a piece of rope with a fashioned slip knot and a bedraggled semi-conscious seagull.
In the distance, from the West Pier, the fog-bell tolled like an intimation of mortality.
Meanwhile James McLevy was about to make peace with his maker –though the situation was far from tranquil.
In fact it more resembled a nightmare from which the sleeper struggles to awake, where every breath jolts the heart with a premonition of impending doom.
When they had hit the water, the coldness had shot through his body and shocked him like a lightning bolt.
The inspector was enveloped in darkness near infernal, immersed in an element he had always feared would be the death of him, and locked in combat with a man who seemed intent on giving him an undesired and fatal baptism.
The two men were clasped together in a deadly embrace, McLevy clinging like a limpet round Dunbar’s neck because it was the only way to keep afloat. He also knew that if Dunbar were granted any space to exercise those powerful forearms, he would be drowned like a rat.
Which was happening in any case, as Hercules took a deep breath then dived under the water taking McLevy with him. The policeman managed to grab a gulp of air before the sea claimed them both but his lungs were being stretched to breaking point and his whole being thrashed in dreadful panic as the most primitive fear overwhelmed him.
His mouth was shut but the water coursed up the nostrils, into his eyes, the salt blinding and the desperate need for inhalation building up into a silent scream.
The weight of his heavy overcoat threatened to drag him even deeper as he tried to hold on to his adversary because if he let go he would drown like a dog. Then Dunbar drove his fist into McLevy’s distended solar plexus.
The last remnants of air whooshed out in a trail of bubbles and McLevy spluttered as water rushed in to replace the other element.
Then just when he thought he could bear it no longer, Dunbar drove up to the surface again, the inspector still clinging on like a limpet.
They were locked together face to face, both breathing heavily but Hercules had enough to spare for last rites.
‘I am sorry James McLevy,’ he wheezed a trifle painfully. ‘As you say. A long journey. Take my secret with you.’
With this remark, Hercules Dunbar drew in another deep breath and plunged them once more into the cold deadly sea.
This was the final act. McLevy felt his whole body freeze as it recognised imminent annihilation.
Again the water swirled around him, drowning the world in a clammy dank embrace and he was sinking deeper into the flood, his consciousness failing, darkness at the back of his eyes, ready to welcome extinction.
What had saved him would now be his death. Dunbar would hold him under till his lungs collapsed.
As a dying man is supposed to experience his life flashing before his eyes, so McLevy had a vivid picture of the moment Dunbar and the other boys had held his head under the Water of Leith, then released him to lie gasping on the bank, howling with laughter as they ran away to leave him alive and swearing vengeance.
Vengeance. And he had wreaked it. With two kicks of his tackety boots.
And suddenly there was another howling. The wolf would fight for its existence, consciousness be damned.
McLevy let out a bloodcurdling scream regardless of the water that rushed in, prised himself away from Dunbar and kicked the man just below the kneecap with all the force he could muster.
Dunbar’s grip slackened. One more kick. The other knee.
Now, whether the cartilage tissue at that spot had its own historical memory of pain and humiliation or it had been grievously weakened by the blows from all these years ago, in truth mattered very little, but the end result was that Dunbar loosed his hold from the terrible agony incurred.
The inspector grasped the man by his waterlogged hair, pulled the head back to expose the throat and hammered a series of devastating blows into the soft flesh. Dunbar reached out to try a catch at McLevy’s eyes with his hooked fingers, but they found no purchase.
Another few blows and suddenly Hercules Dunbar had gone, down into the depths of the sea and McLevy was heading in the opposite direction like a cork out of a bottle.
He broke the surface of the calm water, gasping and retching for breath, then began to sink immediately, for as has been previously related McLevy could not swim a stroke and he had just destroyed his only means of flotation.
The inspector tried to shout but his voice had been strangled by the salt of the sea, and the darkness before him lay unbroken like a waiting shroud.
The heavy coat was yet again dragging him under and though he thrashed around desperately, it was a losing battle.
As if to emphasise this, something thudded painfully into the back of his head. He grabbed at it in the darkness and his fingers made contact with the splintered rough surface of the large piece of timber that the wild young boys had thrown into the sea.
A blessing on the wild boys.
McLevy hoisted himself on to the spar, the upper part of his body sprawled across while his legs dangled in the sea.
It was deathly cold and he felt his senses slipping but he wedged himself as best he could and thus drifted off into the misty darkness.
However the tide had now turned and Inspector James McLevy was heading out to sea, where he might join with the shipwrecks and ghastly mariners who inhabit the edges of the watery main.
Once more the fog-bell sounded in the night.
38
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wracks;
