and intended for the inspection of both uniform and boots before the Leith constabulary launched themselves upon the grateful populace to protect the righteous and hammer down upon the criminal classes. It had a large crack running haphazardly down its full length with a spider’s web of smaller cracks off to the one side. This side was also discoloured with what looked like a lime-green mould, and for anyone who was not in love as they gazed into the glass, the resultant image reflected was that of a personality lividly split in twain.
Roach looked upon this duality and repressed a shudder. The one was bad enough to regard; unlike most men he was not fond of his appearance.
God knows what Constable Ballantyne thought, the poor fellow being possessed of a birthmark, strawberry in colour that melted down half the span of his face.
Mulholland stood by patiently, and Roach remembered he had come in to complain.
‘I emerged from my office,’ he said querulously, ‘to find the morning shift departed, Constable Ballantyne lost in admiration of the seagull droppings upon our window panes and Sergeant Murdoch apparently in deep contemplation at the station register but, in fact, resting fast asleep on the one elbow.’
‘I don’t know how he does that,’ said Mulholland.
‘The reward of inertia is inertia,’ Roach snapped, misquoting perversely the dictum of Saint Augustine on patience. ‘The place was empty. Empty of you, empty of McLevy, of direction, meaning, empty of life itself!’
This seemed a bit dramatic to Mulholland but Monday mornings can often appear so. Vacant of purpose.
‘I’m sure it will fill up again, sir. Crime never sleeps. That’s what the inspector always says.’
Roach grunted morosely at the proffered saw of consolation and seemed lost in gloom. He hunched over his clasped hands and moved them slowly back, then forward.
Perhaps, in that emptiness, he had seen existence stretching uselessly out before him like the Dead Sea.
Or perhaps the root of his despond had a more prosaic origin.
Mulholland considered the facts before him.
The lieutenant had been playing a four ball on Musselburgh links this Saturday past. A President’s Cup match against one of his own superiors, and the constable deduced that all might have not gone according to plan.
A toss up, in that case, whether to lance the wound or let the man suppurate in silence.
Ah well, Mulholland decided. Better out than in.
‘How did the golf proceed at the weekend, sir?’
The floodgates of grievance burst asunder and spilled out a veritable deluge.
‘I had a five-foot putt on the last green to win the match for myself and partner. Just as I was about to strike the ball, just at that moment, mind you, just then, not at any other moment, Sandy Grant, my own chief constable and a fellow mason to boot,
Mulholland bowed his head in sorrow and spoke.
‘My Aunt Katie always says, “There’s no limit to the darkness in man. To win the prize, he’d murder the world.”’
This bucolic profundity lumbered past Roach, who was still seething with dejection.
The lieutenant seemed locked in a private misery of a memory too painful to further relate. His gaze was inward, lost in bleak contemplation.
Mulholland took a deep breath. Now or never.
He produced from his pocket a small jewellery box, opened the lid and waved it gently under Roach’s nose as if trying to bring the man back to consciousness with smelling salts.
‘What do you think, sir?’
The lieutenant wrenched himself from the dreadful memory of a putt sailing beyond the hole and brought his investigative instincts to bear.
‘It is a ring,’ he said.
‘An engagement ring, sir. Well bought. Hard earned.’
Mulholland delicately removed the circle from its setting and held it in fingers which had grasped many a criminal collar, but now offered up the object as if it were the Holy Grail.
Roach groaned under his breath. He had been rash enough, prompted mightily by Mrs Roach who had more than a passing interest in all this, to promise the constable some assistance in his suit for Emily Forbes.
He gazed gloomily at the golden hoop of potential matrimony; a hoop he had jumped through with initial enthusiasm and now would continue to do so, like an ageing lion a ring of fire, till the end of his days.
Mrs Roach, like many another female of a certain age and social standing, was obsessed by the memory of a romance she had never experienced and, as blood from a stone, would squeeze it vicariously from any promising situation.
This one was tailor-made. Young love.
‘You were kind enough to suggest, sir,’ Mulholland almost batted his eyelids in an attempt to portray bashful appreciation, an attempt which sat strangely on a face which though blessed with a clear skin, blue eyes and an open countenance, had seen more than its share of murder and mayhem, ‘that, in the fullness of time, you might find your way towards approaching the father of my intended Emily, and, on my behalf, notwithstanding, and without troubling yourself in any way –’
‘I shall speak to Robert Forbes,’ Roach interrupted. ‘But I vouch for nothing. He is an insurance adjuster and therefore not easily impressed.’
‘I shall accept his valuation.’
Mulholland stood before his superior; arms aloft, holding the box up in one hand and ring in another, like some sort of religious icon.
‘Put that miscellany out of sight,’ Roach commanded and, as the constable replaced the ring and carefully secreted the box on his person, the lieutenant wondered how to introduce a note of reality into the conversation.
‘Emily Forbes is a young woman.
‘I’m not in a tearing hurry, sir.’
‘There may be other suitors.’
‘I believe I have the inside track.’
‘Then don’t rush the fence.’
‘It’s the only way to get the horse over.’
A stubborn look had appeared on the constable’s face and Roach sighed. He should have known better than bandy equine metaphors with an Irishman.
‘I shall speak to Mister Forbes and see how the land lies for this galloping beast, but in the meantime –’
The lieutenant took a deep breath to indicate the importance of what was to follow.
‘You will make no mention of my part in this to anyone,
Mulholland nodded but he could not keep hope from shining in his eyes and Roach felt duty bound to dull the expectation.
‘You must keep in mind also, that Robert Forbes has attained a certain level of society, constable. Levels are … everything.’
The constable’s hand clenched into a fist. This was undeniably true. He had experienced it from some of the young men at the musical soirees where he had first met Emily. Amused condescension. A barely concealed contempt for a social status of inverse proportion to his great height. Very low, indeed. Creeping on its belly, as far as these arrogant chancers were concerned.
Mulholland also took a deep breath.
‘I shall try to rise above myself, sir.’
Roach decided to accept this flat statement at face value and signalled an end to the exchange by returning to his putting stroke and grievance.
‘By rights I should have won that game. Sandy Grant did not play fair. He
‘There’s nae justice,’ said a voice.
McLevy stood in the doorway. He had arrived silently and there was no telling how long he had been
