Trick of the Light

Jean Brash is dead meat unless you help me, had been his opening remark.

It got her attention and he still had it, no matter how grudging.

‘I’m looking for a man. Small, plump, nasty piece o’ work. Maybe has a London cant,’ he murmured, re- pocketing the ring.

Maisie hesitated. She had heard what had happened to Simone. This could be dangerous for the health.

‘Whit’s he to do wi’ Jean?’

‘She is in the frame for murder. I think he hung the picture round her neck. Him and the Countess.’

Now it was a shiver. The Countess ruled by fear. One glance from the eye was enough. She paid well and looked after the herd of whores like prime cattle. But you did what you were told. You took your licks.

He noted the hesitation as this thought passed through her mind and resisted the temptation to push further.

Finally Maisie spoke slowly, softly, unlike her usual strident tone; so quietly that he had to lean in at the table where they sat.

‘The top room. A man stays up there. Since a wee while ago. We never see. He comes and goes by the back.’

‘Whit about the dogs?’

‘They must like him.’

‘Ye never see? Tell me a wee bit more.’

She took a breath.

‘Thank God it wisnae myself.’

‘Tell me, if you please.’

‘Lizzie Jessock. Big lump o’ a girl. She didnae last.’

McLevy raised his eyebrows enquiringly; not another murder surely?

‘She was sent up. Tae service him. Keep her mouth shut. But she tellt me only. Frae the same street ye know?’

‘Uhuh.’

The door to the tavern swung open and McLevy cursed under his breath lest it might be Molly, the once- arrested shoplifter, but it was just a chimney-sweep, covered in soot and thirsty for beer.

For a laugh to celebrate the Halloween, which had finally arrived, he had gouged off the soot round his eyes and the white skin made him look like a daylight demon.

‘A horrible wee pot-belly man,’ Maisie continued. ‘Wi’ a whiney kind of voice and he –’

Her voice almost trailed away. The inspector waited, trying to make himself inconspicuous as if she might be talking to herself.

‘– he pits a knife against her bare breast.’

‘Whit happened?’

‘She started tae howl tears and he kicked her out.’

‘Top room, you say?’

‘Ye cannae get higher.’

McLevy fumbled in his pocket.

‘I have a likeness of this man, I want Lizzie to –’

‘No!’

The word came out with enough vehemence to turn the sweep back from the bar and he wondered for a moment what the man had said to cause the woman such distress.

His white-rimmed eyes blinked comically at them for a second before he went back to his beer.

‘No,’ Maisie repeated less loudly, but with gritty resolve. ‘I’ve taken my life in my hands enough and if my mother sees me sitting wi’ you, she’ll hae a convulsion.’

She pointed to the door.

‘You get tae hell out of here, McLevy. I don’t wish to be seen in your company. I have a reputation tae keep.’

And so he took her advice, nodding politely to the sweep, who grinned, broken teeth in the black face.

‘It’s my birthday,’ the man announced. ‘Born on Halloween. Whit a nonsense, eh?’

But he was talking to a closed door. The man had vanished. So he turned back and smiled at the woman.

A fine big specimen. Happy Birthday.

Meantime, Constable Ballantyne sat in the records room and counted the number of dead beetles he had found inside the folder pages like so many bookmarks. He had arranged the insects in a neat echelon all along the dusty surface.

Fourteen. Most the same kind as far as he could see, with a little yellowish marking on their back shell.

A tribe perhaps on their way to the Promised Land when they got sidetracked into the annals of crime.

Larder or Bacon Beetle – Dermestes lardarius – unless Ballantyne missed his guess. He had been reading up on the targets of his merciful interventions and these fitted the book description.

Very destructive to paper. But one bite of Leith’s past criminality seemed to have put paid to the whole clan.

Ballantyne sighed. He had found it oddly peaceful in the records room, no-one to bother him, a line-up of dead insects for company and he, like the curator of a museum, lost in the dusty tomes of ancient homicidal lore.

To wit, approximately eighteen years ago when a brutally shot body was discovered in the Leith Docks.

Inspector McLevy had set him the task of finding the relevant dossier and this had taken most of the morning.

But here it was. The gist of it anyway.

The writing was in large block capitals by a certain Inspector Brunswick who had retired not long after and returned to his native Stirling.

Name of corpse: Jonathen Sinclair, identified from papers as American citizen. No trace of address in Edinburgh.

Cause of death: Two bullets. One to the body. The other from close range to the face, causing great damage.

Motive for killing: Undiscovered. Lack of evidence.

Case closed: Three months later. Lack of evidence.

Further notes: the American Consul in Glasgow, Warner L. Underwood, disclaims all knowledge of the man save that he was suspected of being a Confederate agent who may have been attempting to buy ships for the South and who deserved what he got. We have enough troubles in Leith without other folk bringing their mess here.

On that somewhat personal note, Inspector Brunswick ended his report.

There were a few other additions but Ballantyne reckoned he had absorbed the substance and anyway it was for McLevy to peruse and cogitate upon.

Accordingly he swept the defunct insects into a small piece of paper, which he wrapped around neatly to be shaken out with due ceremony from the back window of the station at a later juncture, tucked the folder under his triumphant arm, and walked off with mission accomplished.

In Roach’s office, however, little was consummated and tempers were rising.

The lieutenant was sitting at his desk, McLevy leaning over, Mulholland at the door; again not unlike their usual automatically assumed interrogation positions but this was more the other way round.

McLevy had laid out his whole case but his superior was unconvinced.

‘It is not enough,’ Roach remarked. ‘Not by a long swipe, McLevy. You are at least two clubs lengths short.’

This golfing reference sailed over the inspector’s head as he tried to rein in his frustration.

He took a deep breath and drove in again to restate the case for the defence.