‘That wouldn’t be yesterday.’
‘No. It was not. We never did find the killer.’
The inspector seemed lost in reverie and Mulholland knew better than to disturb him. Finally though McLevy shook his head and put the scraps away in his evidence bag.
‘Let’s hope we have better luck this time,’ he said.
The door opened and an ashen-faced Ballantyne entered, holding something low down by his side.
‘Ye’re back,’ acknowledged the inspector. ‘Good. Now the investigation can begin in earnest.’
Ballantyne nodded guilelessly.
‘I’ve been returned a bit, sir,’ he said solemnly. ‘I ran out of things tae bring up. I had a wee poke about in the other rooms.’
‘Did ye now?’
McLevy shot a sidelong glance to Mulholland who kept his face straight; the boy had some sand to him then, from a dry boak to searching of premises in the one fell swoop.
‘Aye, and I found this in the bottom of his wardrobe. Wrapped up in velvet.’
Ballantyne studiously avoided looking in the direction of the corpse and held up a pliant leather quirt.
In truth he was quaking inside because he had been on his way back, leaving the other two loitering in the street eyeing up some cheeky shopgirls, when he impulsively shot upstairs and through the first door, which turned out to be the one that led to the man’s bedroom.
There he ‘poked about’, a phrase Ballantyne often heard his inspector use to describe apparent rootless snuffling that often had surprising results.
His fear was that he had done something out of turn, that he should have waited for his superiors, but he wanted to prove there was more to him than opinion warranted.
Anyway. He held the quirt up like a policeman stopping a runaway carriage. Hoping for the best.
‘Whit colour was the velvet wrapping?’ McLevy asked, while he took in the tableau of Ballantyne with a quirt to hand in a murder room.
‘Red, sir.’
‘Goes well wi’ the rest of him then.’
Ballantyne’s own strawberry birthmark pulsed upon his face and he forced himself to survey the crunched remains.
Nothing more to bring up, as he had said, so he took a deep breath and held firm.
‘Were there any other horsey accoutrements?’
‘Not that I could see, sir.’
Mulholland, observing that Ballantyne’s arm was beginning to waver, took pity and reached over to pluck the quirt from him.
The tall constable swished it through the air and the slender rod cut a fine dash.
He met McLevy’s eyes.
‘I have heard rumours,’ the inspector remarked, ‘that Mister Morrison was inclined in the way of chastisement.’
Jean Brash had dropped a hint to the effect when, in friendlier times, they had gossiped over the coffee cups.
‘Inflicting, or taking on board?’ asked Mulholland.
The question was never answered because at that moment the door to the room opened and a fat man, puffed up with his own importance and splendid living, burst in.
He did not at first see the corpse, which was partly hidden behind the three policemen ranged before him.
The rest of the room of course, was untouched by death.
‘What is going on here?’ he demanded loudly.
‘Who are you when at home?’ asked the inspector.
‘Walter Morrison, no less,’ replied the fat man huffily. ‘Gilbert is my kith and kin. Your fellows had the impertinence to try to prevent me entering the premises.’
Indeed the constables had attempted to bar Walter’s entry but on his insistent blustering, they let him pass, sniggering to themselves as policemen often will, at the thought of things that come to the unsuspecting public.
‘What do you want with your brother?’
The fat man puffed up further at the inspector’s brusque enquiry.
‘We have a business appointment,’ he replied loftily.
‘I don’t think he’ll be keeping it.’
With this succinct statement McLevy stood aside to reveal the body.
Walter Morrison gasped in horror.
For a moment Ballantyne almost felt sorry for the man but he remembered what the inspector had once told him at the station when he found the constable on his hands and knees trying to catch a cockroach. The insect had shown no gratitude towards his would-be rescuer and had crawled into a narrow gap in the floorboards. Ballantyne was muttering over this event when he looked up to see the face of McLevy looming over like the dark side of the moon.
‘Folk in the main are not grateful for kindness proffered, Ballantyne. So if in this life ye treat everyone you meet as a potential guilty party and deeply suspicion each individual’s intentions, ye will not go far wrong.’
So Ballantyne held pity at bay.
Mulholland did not need to be told such. He lived by that edict as regards criminal activity.
The fat man’s face was white, like the belly of a whale. A good colour for interrogation.
‘My God. My poor brother. Who has done this?’
‘That’s what we intend to find out,’ said McLevy.
Walter bowed his head and murmured brokenly to himself but McLevy was unmoved. Despite his opening question, he had recognised and placed the man as soon as seen.
If anything his reputation was of being even more merciless in business than his brother except that Walter had the jollier appearance.
The fat man’s complexion recovered somewhat to that of a suet pudding.
‘Did yer brother say anything?’
‘What?’
‘About someone on his trail. Death threats, murder in mind, any wee thing like that?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Any recent enemies? Folk he did down. Betrayed. Ruined. Swearing vengeance upon him?’
‘My brother was a good man.’
‘Uhuh. But in the world of commerce enemies abound.’
‘We are respectable shipping merchants.’
McLevy looked hard into Walter’s eyes. He knew for a fact that the brothers had swindled and destroyed two decent men of business. Owed them money then denied the contract. Watched them go bankrupt, one man indeed dying of the strain and shame.
Just the world of commerce.
‘I need not remind you, sir,’ he said sombrely. ‘That you are accounted close to your deceased kith and kin. I would not wish your fate to mirror his.’
Walter’s eyes flicked towards the bloody heap then jerked away convulsively.
‘I would ask you once more, is there anything you can tell me, any-thing you know that might bear relevance to this hellish butchery?’
For a moment Walter hesitated then he shook his head.
‘Might it not just be simple robbery?’ he offered.
‘Simple?’
‘The thief disturbed in the act, lashes out?’
