He then found an odd event to transpire.
As if by unseen force his expensive jacket was sliced open from side pocket all the way up to the armpit.
As he gazed, violent act arrested, at this rent in his fashionable attire, as if by magic a female form appeared before him. The apparition had green eyes and red hair.
‘You may leave us now,’ said Jean Brash, who had abandoned her stately approach through force of necessity.
Galloway staggered back but then recovered his nerve as he realised Jean was on her own. No Hannah Semple, no Angus the enforcer, just a single woman.
With a straight gleaming blade in her hand, but that might be overcome.
He signalled to his cronies and they began to close in. Now there were no more threatening oaths but the danger was more real. Jessie scrambled on her hands and knees further back towards the house and stifled shrieks came from the watching magpies.
Jean remained calm but it was one thing to cut lumps out of a swankie young halfwit’s jacket and another to inflict physical damage. You could get arrested for that.
Especially if you did it in the public eye.
A cruel drunken light in Galloway’s eye; companions, equally aroused, egged him on with grunts of encouragement.
Strong drink and a weak mind are bad company.
Galloway grinned like a rat and feinted to catch at her but before it was possible to see how far this confrontation might progress, a voice from the darkness moved into and across matters.
‘Aye, Jean. Cutting back the weeds, eh?’
James McLevy stood in the semi-darkness on the fringe of the arc where the house lights expired, with Mulholland by his side.
Both men then moved forward unhurriedly; Mulholland’s hornbeam stick hanging loose at his side as he loped forward, the inspector with the deceptively benign air of a man out for an evening constitutional.
The policemen had met up again at the station where the constable reported that he had got nowhere with the Grierson robbery enquiries, and were out on their usual evening saunter round the streets of Leith when word came that, amongst a few other incidents of note, Patrick Fraser had received a severe kicking that involved the bridge of his nose being squashed like a cowpat.
Retributive action was being sworn by his gang.
McLevy had planned to head this off should the vengeful crew have made for the Just Land but found instead another altercation.
Halloween often bred them.
‘Inspector. Well on hand. This witch has attacked me!’ Galloway blustered.
‘Just a wee snip,’ said Jean.
The jacket flapped dismal agreement as Galloway continued his litany of complaint.
‘I have been most foully robbed in this woman’s establishment. My wallet emptied!’
‘While you danced the Reels o’ Bogie?’ McLevy enquired sardonically, this being the poet Robert Burn’s allusion to copulation of a frenzied nature.
A shrewd shaft dismissed by the justified sinner.
‘I deserve and demand satisfaction.’
‘Demand away,’ Jean muttered, wondering how the hell McLevy seemed to manifest all over Leith. Her people had reported him down by the docks the last she had heard and not that long since.
Mulholland had been silent so far but curled his lip at Galloway’s protestations.
‘You don’t deserve a damned thing,’ he pronounced. ‘Look at the odds on hand. Three to one. That’s shameful.’
‘I was here!’ said Jessie, who had reappeared at Jean’s side now that matters were less turbulent.
This was ignored as the two policemen placed themselves directly in front of the sullen malcontents.
‘What would your Aunt Katie say tae these specimens?’ McLevy asked mildly of his constable. To a certain extent things had been a little strained between them and it was nice to get back into an old routine.
‘Get out o’ my sight, you’d give the dry boak to a dead badger,’ was the uncompromising response.
‘What a woman,’ said McLevy admiringly.
He suddenly moved in very close to the young men.
‘You heard the constable, Galloway, absent yourself while you have the chance. I catch you or your friends near these grounds again, I’ll run you in for trespass.’
There was a mean glitter in the inspector’s eyes; it had been a long day and he was in no mood to suffer fools.
The other two had piped down immediately at the sound of his voice but as they slouched off towards the gates Galloway turned round to indicate he had some puff left.
‘I shall complain to your Lieutenant Roach!’ he cried.
‘Do that,’ replied McLevy. ‘He could use some humour in his life. Now – honour us with your departure.’
Mulholland moved threateningly to the loitering Galloway who stepped away to splash his foot into the water in Jean’s fishpond, thus alarming the large piscine inhabitants and causing great amusement to the audience of magpies who hooted further as his fashionable shoe became entangled in some exotic fronds.
As he shook his leg unavailingly to clear it of the weed’s fond embrace, Galloway strived for the last word.
‘This is not finished, Jean Brash. I was robbed, I can assure you, and I will have lawful redress!’
‘Fear grips me by the throat,’ she called back, mockingly. However she was annoyed to find herself in the situation of arguing with a runty snab under McLevy’s amused gaze. She shot Jessie a look to indicate that there would be words exchanged as soon as the chance presented itself.
The swankie boys finally quit the scene, slamming the iron gates shut to indicate their manhood was still intact, which left four survivors of the incident.
Jean became aware that McLevy was looking with interest at her hand and realised she was still holding the implement which had changed the shape of Galloway’s jacket.
‘That’s a fine sharp knife you have,’ he observed.
Jean had taken it out as a precaution, it fitting snugly into the reticule on her arm. In fact, if you discounted the fact that she kept a bawdy hoose and sliced folk up to the armpit, the woman cut an impressively respectable figure in her evening coat and elegant bonnet.
‘It’s for pruning the roses,’ she answered. ‘Anything that protrudes, in fact.’
McLevy extended his hand and she placed the knife carefully across the palm. He peered at it closely in the gloom, and then passed the weapon to Mulholland.
‘What d’you make o’ that, constable?’ he asked.
Mulholland hefted the blade expertly in the manner of a man who had read
‘Well balanced. Finest Italian steel.’
‘It’s from an admirer,’ Jean offered.
‘A cutpurse?’ McLevy asked, retrieving the thing from Mulholland who was waving it around in deft circles.
‘No. A surgeon.’
Her dry response provoked a whoop of laughter from the inspector. He was beginning to enjoy himself; life had been a bit quiet recently other than his outlandish dreams.
Now, to paraphrase the great John Milton, McLevy had a feeling that all hell was about to break loose and it cheered him up no end.
The inspector nevertheless wasted his breath in one more warning to the mistress of the Just Land, stepping in close so that the conversation between them was low, like lovers in the shadows.
‘Ah Jean, Jean,’ he murmured. ‘The path you travel can have but one destination. A prison cell. I shall sweep it clean with my own hands.’
‘Don’t delude yourself,’ she murmured also. ‘And may I have my pruner returned?’
