Trick of the Light

McLevy straightened up in a parody of eager, soldier-like attention. In truth he was feeling spry as a mountain goat this day; he’d had five hours uninterrupted sleep and not one visitation from the weird sisters.

‘Report away,’ said Roach, also straightening up; business was business after all and he’d make a propitious offering to the gods of golf by deliberately missing a five yard putt the next time he played his chief constable.

‘Two sharpers sliced deep in the Rustie Nail.’

‘By the throat?’

‘Belly. They’ll live.’

‘God’s mercy knows no bounds,’ said Roach, a trifle enigmatically.

‘The perpetrator answers the description of the acid-pourer of Leith Market.’

‘A busy man.’

‘And elusive,’ said McLevy. ‘I may pay a visit to the Countess.’

‘You seem at home in these establishments.’

McLevy ignored the caustic tone of his superior.

‘Also we had a few rammies on the streets between the rival clans.’

Roach had been put in the picture as regards the conflict betwixt the Queens of Procurement, and nodded sagely. Then he put the knife in.

‘If all this escalates to proven violence, will you be able to discharge your duties?’

The only indicator of a hit was that the slate-grey eyes darkened slightly.

‘The guilty will not evade me.’

‘Even Jean Brash?’

‘Justice has no favourites.’

‘I am glad to hear that. What about the Grierson robbery?’

‘An inside job, I believe. The widow woman has a secret she keeps close.’

‘I am sure you will find it out.’

Roach was content to leave it there, because he knew McLevy would have covered all other avenues such as domestic staff with lovers and flapping tongues. He had a prurient curiosity as regards Muriel Grierson; perhaps his wife was correct, widows excite a strange inquisitory bent.

In any case, let McLevy hunt it down.

And then tell him about it.

Roach folded his hands together indicating dismissal but the inspector had yet more to contribute.

‘Ballantyne tells me ye want him out on patrol.’

The lieutenant was about to deny this indignantly when, on impulse, he decided to content himself with a nod of the head. If the constable was playing one off against the other then there was more to that boy than met the eye.

‘I don’t know if the parish is ready for Ballantyne,’ McLevy muttered dubiously.

‘How is the constable to develop else?’

Now it was McLevy’s turn to leave it be. Far be it from him to mention that other than staring into cracked mirrors and waving his hands about, Ballantyne’s other pastime was collecting live insects from the busy horde that crept around the station, carefully depositing them outside lest a hobnailed boot curtail their existence.

He nodded and turned to go but Roach had a question that suddenly popped into his mind.

It had been bothering him since yesterday morning; the passing reference to widows with things to hide and the memory of last night when a giant form rose to apprehend the two capering demons brought it back into his mind.

‘Arthur Conan Doyle?’

‘Uhuh?’ McLevy stood by the open door, his face not easy to read.

‘How did you know all that…medical boxing palaver about him?’

‘Deduction.’

Not easy to read had now become sphinx-like.

‘Deduction?’ Roach shook his head, obscurely annoyed as he often was at the outcome of certain conversations with his inspector. ‘I don’t remember you indulging yourself in that particular pastime before.’

‘Whit I do all the time. Scientific.’

‘You?’

Here the lieutenant was being unfair because he knew fine well that McLevy kept surprisingly up to scratch with forensic developments, though he tended to hide that particular light under a large bushel basket.

It is ever the Scots trait not to flaunt learning and give aye the appearance of someone who has stumbled upon erudition by accident, if at all.

‘Just got a fancy name, now.’

But Roach was not completely accepting this; he had never heard McLevy launch forth in such flowery style to such devastating effect.

‘But how did you come upon all this deduction?’

McLevy frowned for a moment, then his face lit up.

‘That’s my secret,’ he said.

In the silence following that unhelpful comment, a strangled scream came from the direction of the main station room outside.

McLevy wheeled; Roach, showing a surprising turn of speed, followed after, and when they emerged it was to find a macabre scene being re-enacted before them.

An old man staggered around in the main hall, his hands covered in blood, streaks of the same in his white hair that then ran down his face.

King Lear in Leith.

His mouth opened and closed without a sound, the previous shriek having drained his vocal cords.

The young constables who were just about to depart on the morning shift stood frozen at the sight. Sergeant Murdoch, who had not even noticed the man pass like a ghost beyond the reception counter, was also fixed in time and space; Ballantyne had risen from his untidy desk, a blotting paper that had held a large beetle falling limply from his hand to let the insect scuttle off towards its own fate.

Mulholland who had been gazing glumly at his face in the cracked mirror emerged from the cubby-hole and swiftly moved to catch the old man before he came to harm on one of the stone pillars that held the very building in place.

He helped the old fellow gently down onto one of the chairs as McLevy moved to join them.

Fergus MacLean was the old man’s name. He was a servant who did not live in with his master but arrived each morning to light the fire and heat the house.

He was badly paid, his diligence unappreciated by his sovereign lord but, as is the manner of those who serve, regarded it as part of his drudgery.

No longer. No more. The kindling and the coal were in the bunker but they would not be utilised this day.

McLevy and Mulholland stood looking down at him till Fergus finally found some words.

‘The maister…’ he croaked. ‘He lies. In blood. I could not raise him.’

So the streaks of gore were not his own, though the man’s face was full of sorrow and fear as if life would never be the same.

Death is enough to give any man doubts.

20

The smyler with the knyf under the cloke.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER,