familial trail? – thence to the idea that the ether might be jam-packed with whirling ghosts jostling impatiently to get a word in edgeways and full of as many complaints as they had enjoyed in real life.
Mrs Roach had a somewhat sporadic, impulsive mind which, when activated, was capable of jumping from one subject to the other with no discernible link or lack of pace. For some reason her thoughts had ended up in a whist game where her partner Muriel Grierson, whom they had seen at the gathering and barely acknowledged, had played a card so bereft of intelligence that she cost their side the game.
A certain coolness had existed between the ladies since then but when Roach reluctantly vouchsafed the information that the woman had been burgled, he was subsumed in a welter of demand for details and a sudden gush of sympathy for the dear soul; not one of nature’s brightest creations but undeserving of rapine and pillage or whatever had been visited upon the poor creature.
Though there had been certain rumours of her being seen with a mysterious man in out-of-the-way places, these were only stories and it was ever a widow’s fate to have insinuations follow her, which Mrs Roach hoped would never be her own doom.
Roach agreed somewhat dryly and finally the woman ran out of steam. Just before they closed their eyes in the bed of matrimony, however, she had one more shaft of intuition.
‘Robert,’ she asked, in the merciful darkness. ‘Have you anything you would wish to tell me?’
‘About what?’ Roach responded tersely.
‘Anything…
The lieutenant was not sure whether his wife was referring to an all-seeing God or the swirling spirits and hoped sincerely that the balance came down on the Christian side. But then he had to consider the question.
Do we all not have something so petty and shameful hidden away as to make us cringe within?
Not a huge offence such as regicide or bank robbery and the like – these can be dealt with by the authorities – but something so small and so morally miserable that not even our worst enemy could conceive that we might sink so low as to commit this act.
And the one who cannot forgive us or forget is not the Almighty or a plaintive spectre but ourselves.
In Roach’s case, inevitably, it had to do with the game of golf.
From an early age the prospect of a green fairway and a white ball curving in a graceful trajectory to land and then skip like a free man onwards to a destination marked by a red flag, only the top of which was visible waving in the breeze above the undulations of green hills – this vision had taken root in his soul.
Late spring in the President’s Cup, however, while searching amidst the early morning heather for his chief constable’s misdirected drive – a man who had distracted him the year before by jingling coins in his pocket while Roach contemplated then missed a tricky putt, a man who was a fellow Mason to boot and higher in the golden chain than his lowly lieutenant and therefore should know better, a man who puffed cigar smoke so that it drifted across the line of a complex mashie niblick shot – Roach rested his case there – but the memory of his own heinous offence against the gods of golf almost set off the onions once again.
He had stood on the man’s ball while it nestled in the wiry gorse. Not only stood but with full weight bore down.
There was the excuse of a whipping east wind stinging at his eyes and fooling his feet, he not seeing the ball buried like a murder victim in the bonny blooming heather.
It was his heel however that did the damage. And having done so, Roach did not say a word until Sandy Grant, the aforementioned chief constable, stumbled upon the impacted body himself. Under Roach’s watchful eye, of course, lest the ball in some miraculous fashion be resurrected into a decent lie.
It took Sandy three hacks to dislodge the thing and by that margin he lost the round.
Of course the man could have taken a drop. But that was not in his character.
And what of Roach’s own persona?
What is the fine line between accidental mishap and a cognisance that refuses to cognise itself?
While the lieutenant had thus pondered he realised that his wife had fortunately gone to sleep.
And when he uncloaked his guilty eyes in his station office, these thoughts having flooded inappropriately into his mind, he found himself staring at Constable Ballantyne.
‘I knocked the door, sir,’ stammered the young man, his birthmark already a rising tide of red. ‘Ye didnae answer.’
Ballantyne indeed, having tapped timidly to no response, had pushed gently at the door, which had to his dismay sprung open like a yawning pit.
He had received a summons at his desk and expected the worst even though he had avoided mirrors like the plague.
Roach frowned. It came easy to his countenance.
‘Ballantyne,’ he announced severely. ‘I have decided to overlook that unfortunate happening in the uniform quarters and trust it will not be repeated.’
The constable nodded gratefully.
‘We all make mistakes,’ said Roach. ‘Now, go away and make yourself useful somewhere.’
He closed his eyes but when he prised them apart once more, Ballantyne was still in the office.
‘I was wondering, sir,’ declared the constable, emboldened by reprieve. ‘If I might have another try at the patrolling?’
The last venture on the streets had ended somewhat ignominiously; a female pocket delver had dipped his police whistle and when Ballantyne had raised hand to lip in order to signal alarm, he found it empty of purpose.
‘I will consult the inspector,’ said Roach, who felt an irrational anxiety suddenly seize him. ‘Now, go away.’
This time when he shut his eyes the door closed with a satisfying thud but after a few moments it banged open once more. Roach was irritated beyond his usual level because the events of last night, not to mention the recalled
‘Whit do you damned well want now?’ he snapped.
‘Ye need tae get that door fixed, lieutenant,’ said James McLevy. ‘It runs the risk of unwarranted entry.’
Roach sighed and blinked open weary eyes to see his inspector, glowing with health and efficiency, standing at what even might have been claimed as attention before him.
Just behind McLevy on the wall, Queen Victoria also stood with her hand resting on the back of a chair.
It was said she had attended a seance at the Royal Palace to contact her beloved, deceased Albert. Sadly the departed consort had failed to put in an appearance, which might explain the disappointed look on her face as she gazed out of the portrait photograph, which Roach himself wiped clean every morning with averted eyes, lest her Majesty think him intrusive.
Intrusive, however, was exactly the word for McLevy.
‘The morning had hardly started,’ Roach declared, ‘and I already received a complaint about you, inspector.’
‘Logan Galloway?’
‘The same. He claims you took Jean Brash’s part against him, his wallet rifled at the Just Land, his own well-being insulted and physically threatened by the police who are for the protection of respectable citizens –’
‘If he’s all that winsome, whit’s he doing at a bawdy-hoose?’
‘Exactly the point I made before I sent him packing,’ said Roach, surprising McLevy by a change of direction; now and again the lieutenant was capable of something that suggested his mind did not entirely run with the Masonic pack. Not often, but now and again.
‘I don’t like the stupid wee gomeril and I like his father even less,’ Roach continued, ‘but if you must side with a bawdy-hoose keeper can you do it in a way that doesn’t threaten the bedrock of society?’
Now the lieutenant was back on track. He disapproved mightily of McLevy’s close entanglement with Jean Brash, believing there might be more to it than a love of coffee.
But McLevy could deal with this in his sleep.
‘Galloway was rantin’ fou,’ he replied. ‘And I didnae lift a pinkie. It was Mulholland and some fish.’
Roach knew better than to follow that trail.
‘What, I repeat, do you want in my presence?’
‘Morning report, sir!’
