Trick of the Light

talking as the constable rose above his midden of a desk like Venus from the waves and came eagerly in response, his mark of birth pulsing with excitement.

‘Because inspector,’ Roach continued. ‘We have another murder on hand but, unlike yourself, Constable Ballantyne has brought in the guilty party.’

Ballantyne caught the tail end of that remark and didn’t know where to put himself.

‘Another murder?’

‘The body lies in the cold room.’

Roach waved a hand at the constable as if inviting contribution.

‘I was on patrol,’ said Ballantyne, in what he hoped was a formal tone of report. ‘I found him dead. On the floor. Wi’ a knife stuck in him, inspector. Stuck right in.’

‘Did you touch it?’

‘Aye. I pulled it out.’

‘Why?’

‘In case he was still alive. Ye never know.’

McLevy closed his eyes for a moment.

‘Did ye do anything else, Ballantyne?’

‘Aye, I blew my whistle. Naebody stole it this time.’

Ballantyne stood proudly and the inspector just didn’t have the heart to tell him that he should have left the damned knife in the damned body.

McLevy marched away from both lieutenant and constable to the cold room door which he wrenched open.

Then he stopped.

A body indeed lay on the slab.

Logan Galloway had not been handsome in life and death marked no improvement.

His long horsey countenance faced mournfully towards the ceiling, the eyes shut, the mouth closed and his thin corpse made little impression under the covering as if shrinking already into oblivion.

McLevy twitched the sheet aside to reveal a neat wound on the right hand side of the waxy body.

‘Between the third and fourth back rib,’ Roach announced from behind, having followed with Ballantyne tagging along. ‘Straight into the heart. We await Doctor Jarvis for further elucidation.’

Jarvis was the police surgeon, a man McLevy did not admire and who more than returned the compliment.

The good doctor had examined the Morrison cadaver and come to the profound conclusion that the murder weapon was the poker and the force used excessive.

‘He’ll be on his second bottle of claret by this time,’ McLevy rejoined, bending over the cadaver, which, other than the wound, seemed remarkably untouched.

‘Drunk or sober,’ Roach said grimly, his face changing to reflect an inner resolution. ‘He does his job. What more can you ask of a man?’

The murder weapon lay on a shelf, also waiting for the doctor’s visit. McLevy picked it up and slid the blade gently into the wound. Fitted well enough. Slid in, slid out.

Professionally executed.

As the inspector put the knife back and replaced the sheet, Roach finished his train of thought.

‘And now inspector, you must do yours.’

‘My job?’

‘Indeed.’

‘That’s no great exertion. Whit I’m paid for.’

McLevy caught a glimpse of ironic amusement in his lieutenant’s eyes, plus a keen curiosity as to how his inspector would play out the hand.

‘Ballantyne,’ said Roach, quietly, ‘you have acquitted yourself well, so far as becomes an officer of the law. Now show the inspector the fruits of your labour.’

‘The guilty party?’ asked McLevy.

‘Red-handed,’ Roach replied with a lopsided smile.

McLevy followed the embarrassed Ballantyne who found the idea of leading his inspector anywhere excruciating, especially through the station where it seemed every eye was upon them.

As they passed Mulholland he murmured, ‘I have the interview room entirely prepared, sir.’

The inspector grunted in annoyance. All this secrecy was getting on his nerves; who did they have in there, Pope Leo the Eighth?

He followed Ballantyne, not to the main cell quarter but to a door which led to a smaller, more secluded part of the jail for the more delicate, highborn prisoners.

Perhaps it was the Pope.

Ballantyne went ahead inside and then pointed vaguely at someone who rested behind bars.

‘There ye are, sir,’ he announced. ‘Found on the scene. Recumbent.’

But unless the supreme pontiff had red hair, green eyes and female form, McLevy had guessed wrong.

‘Jean Brash,’ he said softly.

She had been lying down on a hard bunk, sleeping or pretending so.

The Mistress of the Just Land behind bars.

A sight to behold.

No wonder the lieutenant was laughing up his sleeve.

27

Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.

JOHN MILTON,

Aereopagetica

McLevy and Mulholland had broken many suspects in the interview room.

It was a cold, bare chamber with incriminating smears on the walls; the only furniture was a single unsteady table, which had been hammered on so many times by the inspector’s fist that the legs splayed and were almost coming off their mastic moorings.

Two chairs of the same ilk faced each other under and across the table. Jean Brash, composed enough but a little shaken from events so far, sat in one of them.

McLevy was in the other with Mulholland occupying the usual place, leaning against the wall by the door.

He and the inspector swapped positions, depending on the suspect. This time there had been a tacit assumption that McLevy would be a close, if not intimate, interrogator.

For this was no normal interrogation.

It was a well known fact that McLevy and Jean Brash were companions in coffee and rumour had it more than that in past times, though Mulholland had never seen evidence of such. But there was an undeniable connection.

She was queen bee of Leith and McLevy was king of the streets. A compromised royalty between them.

Whether love or congress had ever taken place, was no business of anyone’s save the two who faced each other.

So far the interview had been conducted in a civilised manner; Jean had calmly explained the circumstances right up until, according to her version, the lights went out.