by David Ashton
Everything was in hand.
Including Jean Brash.
Must remember to get the sheets changed, he thought; women can smell each other a mile off, not that Rachel minded, she was devoid of jealousy. Like himself.
Not like that dolt of a constable, green to the gills because Garvie had flirted a little with a compliant Emily Forbes at one of the musical soirées; basically a cattle market for eligible bachelors where hopeful daughters of even more hopeful parents displayed their cultural and other wares. All for sale.
Emily was a child. Not worth the pain.
Everything was in hand, yet two separate images clicked into his mind.
One, the black charred corpse.
And two, the moment when that police inspector had laid out the prospect of justice before him. The fellow’s eyes for a moment resembled those of a wolf and Oliver had found the examination oddly disconcerting. Just as well he played the cards. A poker face is a useful acquisition.
McLevy had a reputation. No mercy, high or low. Best keep out of the man’s way as much as possible.
Oliver Garvie gazed out once more. The outlines were getting blurred. Just how he liked it.
13
Ah, my little son, thou hast murdered thy mother!
SIR THOMAS MALORY,
Le Morte D’Arthur
A howl like a soul in torment rang through the station, coming from the direction of the cold room, bringing Roach speeding out of his room and causing Constable Ballantyne to wince in sympathy.
‘What in God’s name is going on, constable?’
Ballantyne’s mark of birth pulsed an even deeper red, a sure sign that the young man was suffering some shred of compassion. Roach, on the other hand, looked much the same as usual. Buttoned up against raw weather.
‘I think it might be a mother’s grief, sir.’
‘Mothers?’ said Roach. ‘What have mothers to do with anything?’
Another howl sent him to the cold room door, which he cautiously opened to peer inside.
Three figures stood frozen, as if arranged in a tableau for a photograph or some painting by one of these French realists that were starting to infect the world with their hellish visions.
The Decay of Death, or some such dross.
Roach observed an old woman, both hands up to her head, mouth open. McLevy stood beside, eyes fixed upon her, not a shred of fellow feeling on his face, and Mulholland, on the other side of the cold slab, held the sheet in one hand as if he was about to perform some magic trick as opposed to uncovering a twisted, blackened corpse.
Mary Rough looked down at the body and the words finally found their way out of her rigid, clenched mouth.
‘Oh, my poor wee lamb, oh my God, he’s putrid burnt!’
Another heartrending wail caused Roach to flinch; he signalled at the inspector to come out and closed the door hurriedly.
McLevy gave Mulholland the nod to cover up the cadaver and scrutinised Mary as she put her head back into her hands and sobbed quietly.
Yet, when they had visited her in Horse Wynd, where she kept a single room in one of the closes, he had been struck by a certain evasiveness in her reaction to their queries.
I havenae seen him for days. A wild spark but a good boy. What has he done, now?
He’s been playing with fire, Mary.
Burnt himself to a crisp, ma’am.
Oh, god grant not. Not my wee boy, not my darling son!
The flames make no allowance. Darling or not.
But, how could it be?
Maybe somebody tipped him the word. To do a chore.
Whit kind of chore?
Break into a tobacco warehouse, ma’am.
And maybe it wasn’t the only chore. A wild spark, eh?
I don’t follow, inspector.
Are you sure of that?
I am.
And is that all you have to say?
I know nothing, inspector.
You will come with us to the station cold room. And view the body.
God grant it’s no’ my wee boy. God grant it so.
But all God had granted was his usual, now you see it now you don’t. Good and evil men were dying all over the world for no discernible reason. There’s nae justice.
Mary took her hands away from her face to find McLevy’s eyes drilling into hers. She may have been relying on some leeway as the broken-hearted mother but, from the looks of the inspector, there was little of that on offer.
‘Fire is the very devil, eh Mary?’ he said. ‘And your son dined out on flames.’
‘When he was a wee boy,’ she sniffed plaintively, ‘ye couldnae let him near the candles in the chapel. Aye jabbing away at them.’
Most of the problems in Ireland started in chapels as far as Mulholland was concerned.
‘But this wasn’t an enclosure for such jiggery pokery, ma’am. It was full of tobacco.’
‘If he was in drink, he’d aye want a wee puff.’
‘But not a warehouse. That’s a big thing.’
McLevy smiled at her like a wolf inviting the rabbit for tea.
‘A very big thing. And not his previous style.’
Mary’s legs started to shake and she swayed as if to topple on to the crackling that remained of her son.
There was another sharp rap at the door; the unseen lieutenant was champing at the bit.
‘Shall I fetch you a chair, ma’am?’ offered Mulholland, eager to demonstrate his Protestant compassion.
The inspector stopped at the door to throw Mulholland a complicit look, before offering meagre condolence.
‘Don’t hold back on your sorrow, Mary. Mulholland here will keep you company.’
A low moan came in reply and he quit the scene.
Roach was hopping from one foot to the other as McLevy emerged, the lieutenant had his lodge meeting to attend and carefully rehearsed allusions to the stratagems employed in a chief constable’s trouser pocket would come to nothing if he was late for the gathering.
‘What is going on, McLevy?’ he inquired with some asperity as Mary let out a further long bellow of grief from the other side of the door. ‘I attend enough opera with Mrs Roach, I don’t need it in the station.’
‘We have identified the burnt felon,’ replied McLevy, adopting a formal tone. ‘One Daniel Rough. That is his mother you hear, mourning her son.’
‘Entirely proper,’ said Roach. ‘Anything else?’
‘Just … a wee thing.’
‘Such as?’
‘The crime does not fit the man.’
‘Fit?’
‘He was a low thief. These are high stakes.’
Roach received a whiff of where McLevy was heading and didn’t like it one bit.
‘What are you implying?’
‘Me?’
McLevy spread his arms wide, the picture of injured innocence, and Roach glanced at his timepiece then cursed silently. Nip this in the bud.
‘Oliver Garvie is a respected businessman whose father’s meat pies are renowned throughout the city; and if, by any remote chance, there is anything awry with the events of the fire Robert Forbes will find it so, he is meticulous to a fault, is that not the case?’
‘Indeed he is, sir. Grinds exceeding small.’
‘Neat and tidy, inspector. Leave it that way.’
So saying, Roach thrust his hat upon his head and fairly hurtled out of the station, hauling open the outside door. A blast of cold air signalled his departure and Ballantyne shivered as the stream hit home.
‘I doubt that fly’ll no last,’ he worried. ‘Mebbye I should have just left it be.’
‘Things never improve by neglect,’ was the cryptic response. ‘Go next door and be nice. It doesn’t come natural to Mulholland.’
Ballantyne did as he was bidden and some moments later the tall figure of the constable came out to join his inspector.
Mulholland looked down from a great height and shook his head.
‘You’ve a heart
of stone, sir. That poor woman is grieving fit to burst.’
Having delivered that weighty remonstrance, the constable looked with a frown towards the door of Roach’s office, which had been left ajar.
‘Has the lieutenant gone?’
‘Uhuh.’
‘That’s a great pity.’
‘Why?’
‘I – he – asked me to remind him about something.’
‘And what was that?’
Mulholland spoke from on high.
‘Nothing to concern you, sir. Matter of communication. In the nature of a go-between.’
‘The function of the pander throughout the ages,’ McLevy muttered.
Back to business.
He clapped his hands together loudly as if to bring Mulholland out of a spell and spoke incisively.
‘I don’t doubt Mary’s grief to be genuine but I also know that she and Daniel were thick as thieves. She knew his every move.’
‘But the man’s dead, there ends the matter.’
‘What if he was a hired hand?’
‘Hired for what?’
‘That’s a good question.’
A silence followed. Then Mulholland leant over so that his face was, for once, level with McLevy’s.
‘Are you thinking … deliberate arson, sir? Oliver Garvie?’
‘Don’t raise your hopes, Mulholland.’
‘But why would he do that? The cargo has to be genuine. Certified so.’
McLevy sighed and nodded slowly.
‘Aye, I know. But while I still wonder, I shall continue to investigate.’
A murmur of voices indicated the advent of Mary and Ballantyne and McLevy spoke quickly before the door opened from the cold room.
‘Take her home, Mary. Play sympathy, lather it on, but when she is least expecting, look for an opening. You are in love and therefore somewhat glaikit but I am sure you noted that Mary couldnae wait to get out of her place.’
‘Of course I noted it,’ said Mulholland who had not.
‘You’d have thought the prospect of viewing her son’s burnt offering on the cold slab might have rendered her a wee bit reluctant, but no, she was out of that room like a shot. What does that recommend to you?’
‘There might be something in there she does not wish us to see,’ replied the constable berating himself inwardly for having to be led by the nose like this.
‘Exactly!’ advised McLevy. ‘So you look for an opening and if you find a thing, report to me at once. Any time. Night or day.’
‘Where will you be?’
‘On the case. Elsewhere.’
A nod between them.
‘It’s cruel,’ said the constable. ‘But I’ll do it.’
‘It’s a cruel business,’ replied McLevy as the cold room door opened, and Mary came forth holding Ballantyne’s hankie to her swollen eyes; indeed, as has been remarked, the boy was far too kind to be a policeman.
There was a burst of noise in the station as the evening shift of the Leith constabulary came pouring out of the cubby-hole, ready to confront crime wherever it raised its ugly head.
The noise and horseplay stilled abruptly when they became aware of McLevy looking in their direction.
But the inspector’s gaze was inward. Since this case had begun, he had the sense of an evil fortune, following him like a dark shadow.
Of late he had been reading his recent bookstall acquisition, one of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, ‘The Masque of the Red Death’, and this had stirred up some morbid fancies.
A spectral figure bringing death and damnation to all it touched.
He sometimes felt a wee bit like that.
A spectral figure.
Who would it tap next upon the shoulder?
14
For those whom God to ruin has designed,
He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.
JOHN DRYDEN,
The Hind and the Panther
She sat in her late husband’s study, raised the glass to her lips, and took a deep shuddering draught of whisky.
The fiery liquid coursed through her veins and Margaret Bouch threw back her head to quicken the descent.
Her family were downstairs in the kitchen where, but a year ago, poor old Archibald Gourlay had conceived an unexpected meeting with his Maker. They thought her to be ensconced in memories of sad regret and wilting graveside flowers but she hummed a tune under her breath, one dainty foot tapping in time.
One morning, early, long ago, when she could not sleep, one morning, early, an April morning when the advent of spring disquieted the blood, she had risen, the hour must have been six or so, the first streaks of dawn lacing their light into a grey sky, and made her way down to the docks.
Sir Thomas was left behind, he had become recently reliant on sleeping draughts and lay like one dead which was a merciful release as she slipped out of the bed, donned her clothes and ran away to sea.
The world was still, a slight mist weaving its way in and out of the spars of the sailing ships, and for a moment she felt as though she were the only person alive, awake, as if the universe were hers to do with what she liked.
As if she owned her life.
And then the profound silence was broken by a raucous voice as if to mock that self-delusion.
A tarry-breeks, an old sailor whose finest dream would be of a rich widow with a farm, stumbled his way up the jetty towards his ship. His hat was askew, his feet bare, boots lost to a whore from the previous night, but he hopped and skipped like a free spirit and lifted his voice in song.
‘Whit shall we do with a drunken sailor,
Whit shall we do with a drunken sailor,
Whit shall we do with a drunken sailor,
Earl-aye in the morning?’
She had watched the man skip onwards until the mists claimed him, and then finally returned to Bernard Street to be later told by her allotted spouse that he had decided to relocate the family to a house in Moffat on the borders. The children were still young enough to enjoy the delights of the countryside, Thomas Bouch had decided. No mention made of what she might prefer. No. The deed was done. His new secretary, Alan Telfer, would take care of all the details.
She protested. What did she know of the country? She loved the city.
Thomas, not yet a Sir by a long shot, frowned slightly, then turned and walked back into his study to think his great thoughts.
The secretary smiled.
What she loved was of no concern.
But, not any more.
She carried the tune now. Under her breath for the moment, though not for long.
She took another hefty gulp of whisky and sang quietly to herself.
‘Shave his belly with a rusty razor,
Shave his belly with a rusty razor,
Shave his belly with a rusty razor,
Earl-aye in the morning.’
Margaret was sitting in his armchair, leather, claret and cream insignia of the North British Railway which had now distanced itself from its former blue-eyed boy and his very efficient secretary who had most efficiently blown his brains apart in this very room while the portrait of Sir Thomas and one other present had looked down upon the act.
Two high stools, now bereft of the backsides of both men, huddled forlornly at the desk where some drawings lay, dusty, curling at the edges, abandoned.
She lifted her glass to the portrait of Sir Thomas, above her on the opposite wall. His eyes were not looking at her but then they never quite had, always found something more interesting a few feet to her side.
Where his secret was kept.
The glass was now empty and her mood swung to melancholy, transported back to a moment full of longing and shame, offer and rejection. One week past.
31 October 1880
Sir Thomas Bouch sat in the garden of Moffat house, his hair turned white, a mask of old age clamped upon his face. The living dead. Fifty-eight years old.
Margaret watched from the French windo
ws as a leaf from one of the trees landed on this broken husk of a man, then, from his shoulder fell to the ground.
‘He has lost his reason,’ she said softly. ‘After the Inquiry. After the verdict. No sanctuary.’
McLevy, who had been observing from behind her in the room, did not tender ritual condolence.
‘Perhaps it’s for the best,’ he remarked.
‘Do you have any experience of madness?’ she asked almost idly.
‘I’ve had my moments.’
‘His, is a quiet insanity,’ she murmured. ‘His mind has … slipped. To the side. I hardly noticed it depart. He has found a more acceptable place to exist.’
‘Reality can be a bugger.’
She laughed and turned to face him.
It had been like this from almost the moment they had met, as if the truth must be seen for what it was, a bringer of pain and retribution.
‘I have never loved him, unfortunately. Not for a moment.’
‘Why marry then?’
‘My father admired him.’
‘And you admired your father?’
‘That sort of thing.’
Now it was his occasion to laugh, or a sound somewhat close to laughter, like an animal coughing up a bone.
The disturbance reached the ears of the man in the garden and Sir Thomas looked round. For a moment he gazed past his wife to the shadowy figure behind as if it might be death a’ calling, then his eyes shifted and he turned away to resume contemplation of empty hospitable space.
‘It was good of you to come.’
McLevy had looked past her to witness Sir Thomas stare in at them but Margaret did not follow his gaze. Her own was fixed upon him and he felt a sudden warmth creep up under his collar.
‘I was due some period off. Oftentimes my lieutenant is glad to see the back of me and I also wanted to return you this.’
He produced from a canvas sack, a silver candlestick that he laid carefully on a side table.
‘I came across it in the evidence room. I apologise, it should have been restored long since. The perpetrator has unfortunately vanished and that episode closed.’
