by David Ashton
One massive piece of good fortune was that, when he pulled the small curtain away, the porthole of the cabin looked on to the harbour side of the ship.
The vessel itself was riding high on the sea, the tide just about to turn and from this vantage he could peer upwards to see the outlines of the folk beginning to mass by the gangplank. Women were no doubt weeping, men chewing on their pipe stems, children unaware of parting sorrow sliding on the wet wooden planks of the pier, hoping to grab a piece of the leaving cake in its white wrapping.
All grist to the mill.
But when they made their move, so would McLevy.
He turned back to address the rigid, gagged figures.
‘Hannah Semple survived that vicious dunt to the back of her head. I am sure that will please you?’
He waited till both nodded. They already seemed to have lost identity and character. Peas in a pod.
‘Unfortunately,’ he added genially, ‘Robert Forbes hung himself from the head of a stag. He left a letter that incriminates the pair of you. A voice from the grave, eh?’
This time there was no response, save for a choked sob from Rachel though that may have been gathering mucus.
The inspector glanced back through the porthole to calculate the odds once more and then his own blood froze.
Fleetingly the fog had lifted and the lamps outlined the shapes of a man and woman passing by heading further up the pier to where another ship, at a later hour, was preparing to depart for the New World. The woman was a buxom type, waddling a little as she clung on to the arm of her escort, a tall bearded fellow, who walked solemnly beside her, his head inclined a little to the side, looking downwards as if to guard against a slip and fall.
His face was turned towards the Dorabella and McLevy would have known it in the grave.
The sea mist returned, the man and woman lost to sight.
For a moment McLevy was almost paralysed by shock, and then his heart started pounding like a steam shovel. His mind was likewise throbbing; what the hell was going on? Was Fate intending to make a monkey out of him? What happened to that pitiable monkey anyway?
Never again would he grant Mulholland leave of absence; not even if the father of every female he cast his glaikit Irish eyes upon, hung themselves like a row of Christmas decorations, not even then!
He pulled himself together and glanced at his timepiece. Thirty minutes till the ship sailed. He could do it. Just. Was he not James McLevy inspector of crime? Or was he just a monkey on a stick?
In for a penny, in for a pound.
McLevy dragged the couple over to a slim iron stanchion that acted as a support in the cabin, running from floor to ceiling; he unlocked their restrainers for a second then refastened them so that the pair were pinioned arms behind, with the stanchion as jailer. Their eyes were fearful and bewildered which was only right and proper.
‘I’ll return shortly,’ promised the inspector. ‘Meantime behave yourselves or I’ll dump you at the Just Land for the benefit of Jean Brash.’
Then he was gone, the door locked behind.
Oliver and Rachel shuffled round so that they could gaze into each other’s eyes.
Tears and pain.
Love is the very devil.
The ginger tomcat thought the same as it was rudely shoved aside by McLevy’s foot while the inspector made his way swiftly back up the corridor. The cat had taken a perverse liking to this strange human and yowled plaintively as it followed the policeman.
His decision to maroon the fugitives in their cabin was more than justified when he encountered two of the crew before ascending the stairs to the deck.
They mistook him for a passenger but if he had been propelling bound and gagged prisoners, he doubted they would have come to the same conclusion.
Up on deck, ghost once more to the gangplank, leave the bloody cat yowling on ship, and then?
In for a penny, in for a pound.
37
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored
JULIA WARDE HOWE,
Battle Hymn of the Republic
The bearded man stood at the very edge of the pier and gazed back eastwards where he imagined Edinburgh to be as a lone seagull screeched overhead; another hungry bird.
Typical of his native city that it would be hiding at the very moment he was about to depart.
The place had done him few favours and left many scars but he would miss the harsh beat of that stony Midlothian hammer, pounding him into shape from birth. It was good his companion had gone on board and left him to have this last moment of fogbound privacy.
She was a good woman, and he would do his best to grapple with her for ever.
He lifted one bony big-knuckled hand in farewell to his native land. Good riddance. A New World beckoned.
But the Old World was not finished with him yet.
A soft tune was whistled from westwards behind him and the bearded man froze at the fragment of melody.
‘Charlie is my darling, the young Chevalier.’
He turned to find James McLevy in the mist.
‘Well Herkie,’ said the inspector quietly. ‘It’s been a long journey.’
McLevy held his revolver loosely at the side and in his other hand carried a length of rope he had picked up from the deck of the ship.
His plan was to stun Dunbar if necessary, bind the man then drag him back to the Dorabella, leave him dockside with the two strongest men he could find amongst the respectable throng, deputise others as special constables and retrieve his fugitives from the stanchion of justice.
With witnesses to hand, the captain would not dare interfere.
That was his calculation, but first things first.
Of course he could have sneaked up on the man and felled him where he stood but somehow that did not seem fitting for his old enemy.
So, he preferred to whistle instead. And now they were face to face.
Hercules Dunbar had lowered his head at the sight of his nemesis but now raised it again to speak.
‘I am a changed man, McLevy.’
Indeed his eyes and voice were level and considered but that cut no ice with the law.
‘Your past actions cannot change,’ was the inexorable response. ‘And they have caused many deaths.’
The inspector moved slowly towards his quarry, and as he did so, pronounced judgment.
‘I absolve you from the butler’s demise though you are more than implicated, but what of your only friend, Tommy Loughran?’
The guilt McLevy had intuited in the man was uncovered like a nest of maggots and Dunbar flinched as if he had been struck in the face.
‘He died in the February storm when three High Girders fell; it was believed the cause was that they had not been securely moored in place. But in your heart, you suspected that it was due to the bad practice in your foundry.’
There was now hardly an arm’s length between them and McLevy was intent on pressing home bleak advantage.
‘The wee riveter. Your best pal. He died. Of your neglect. Of your transgression.’
A look of fear passed over Dunbar’s face as if he was being drawn back into a terrifying past.
‘I sent money tae his wife, out of my own wages!’
‘I am sure that compensated her mightily,’ was the ironic rejoinder. ‘But for three years after that, you continued. Knowing that you were sinning against both God and Tommy Loughran. On and on you went.’
‘I did what I was told,’ Dunbar muttered.
‘That’s not good enough,’ replied the inspector who was suddenly brought to mind of the little girl who gifted him barley sugar and then saw the death of her father in McLevy’s face. ‘Not remotely.’
He brought the revolver up to point at Dunbar.
‘I cannot prosecute you for the poor bastards who died that night the bridge destroyed itself, but I have you in the frame for robbery, violent and duplicitous
assault of a police constable, breaking out of Lieutenant Roach’s jail and pishing in my face.’
‘Ye deserved that,’ was the rejoinder.
‘Turn round, Herkie,’ said McLevy. ‘Put your hands behind your back. The game is over now.’
As Dunbar slowly did so, he threw a plaintive remark over his shoulder.
‘I could’ve taken the boat from Glasgow, but I wanted to see Edinburgh for a last time.’
‘You can watch it on the way to the penitentiary.’
‘Can ye not let me go McLevy? I have a good woman on hand. We will get married in the New World.’
‘She’ll have to find another class of criminal. Now clasp your paws together and stick them straight out!’
Dunbar did so, arms extended backwards, and McLevy approached cautiously; he had fashioned a slip knot in the rope and planned to drop it over the man’s hands, pull it tight, then make it fast possibly round the fellow’s neck.
From Hercules’ point of view, although he had pitched his voice to pleading, he knew that to be a waste of time; however he had too much to lose. Indeed he was changed, this woman had been the making of him; they had hidden out in the country with her relatives who owned a farm, and he had found a peace and harmony that he never believed could ever have been possible in his life.
She had sold the house in Magdalen Green and they had money to spare.
In the New World, as he had promised her, they would get married and then have their own farm.
He would kill for that dream.
In a strange way, he had not been surprised to see McLevy; the two of them were linked like birth and death.
And so though he presented an abject figure, his every sense was tuned to the moment when McLevy’s balance shifted, and then he would make his strike.
The inspector, in turn, perceived the coiled tension of the other and, sleeve riding back to expose an expanse of white cuff, lifted his revolver in warning to lay it right behind the man’s ear.
‘Softly does it, Herkie. If she loves you, she’ll be waiting when you emerge from the Perth Penitentiary thirty odd years from now.’
Who knows what might have happened at that moment, perhaps Dunbar would have swung desperately round, McLevy forced to shoot him where he stood, or the rope pulled tight upon the defeated wrists, then Hercules dragged off like a captive, who knows?
In fact, Fate once more intervened.
First it had been in the guise of a walnut tree, and now it struck in the form of a ravenous seagull.
The bird had been circling above after an unsuccessful effort to wrest a piece of stale bread from the beak of a razorbill only to find that its heavy-bodied opponent was surprisingly stubborn and had a whole flock of relatives who descended upon the bigger bird and chased it for dear life.
Thus the gull was hungry, chastened and desperate; so when it glimpsed below the white of McLevy’s cuff as he lifted the revolver, that colour only because his landlady Mrs MacPherson had bleached, washed and ironed his shirts before they yellowed beyond measure, the bird, through the tendrils of mist mistakenly thought it saw the white paper of a leaving cake.
Conditioned reflex did the rest.
It dived straight as an arrow, through the fog, neck extended, to jab a lethally sharp beak into the inspector’s outstretched hand.
McLevy howled in pain and the revolver flew out of his grasp to skitter along the wet planking until it was lost from view.
He hammered the bird on the head with his free hand till it pulled the beak away then dropped at his feet but, in the meantime, Hercules Dunbar had spun round, and seen the form of the inspector outlined against the faint lights of the ships in the far distance.
Dunbar dropped his shoulder and rushed at McLevy, driving him backwards so that they both fell off the end of the pier into the dark waters below with a muffled splash.
All that remained behind was a dropped revolver, a piece of rope with a fashioned slip knot and a bedraggled semi-conscious seagull.
In the distance, from the West Pier, the fog-bell tolled like an intimation of mortality.
Meanwhile James McLevy was about to make peace with his maker –though the situation was far from tranquil.
In fact it more resembled a nightmare from which the sleeper struggles to awake, where every breath jolts the heart with a premonition of impending doom.
When they had hit the water, the coldness had shot through his body and shocked him like a lightning bolt.
The inspector was enveloped in darkness near infernal, immersed in an element he had always feared would be the death of him, and locked in combat with a man who seemed intent on giving him an undesired and fatal baptism.
The two men were clasped together in a deadly embrace, McLevy clinging like a limpet round Dunbar’s neck because it was the only way to keep afloat. He also knew that if Dunbar were granted any space to exercise those powerful forearms, he would be drowned like a rat.
Which was happening in any case, as Hercules took a deep breath then dived under the water taking McLevy with him. The policeman managed to grab a gulp of air before the sea claimed them both but his lungs were being stretched to breaking point and his whole being thrashed in dreadful panic as the most primitive fear overwhelmed him.
His mouth was shut but the water coursed up the nostrils, into his eyes, the salt blinding and the desperate need for inhalation building up into a silent scream.
The weight of his heavy overcoat threatened to drag him even deeper as he tried to hold on to his adversary because if he let go he would drown like a dog. Then Dunbar drove his fist into McLevy’s distended solar plexus.
The last remnants of air whooshed out in a trail of bubbles and McLevy spluttered as water rushed in to replace the other element.
Then just when he thought he could bear it no longer, Dunbar drove up to the surface again, the inspector still clinging on like a limpet.
They were locked together face to face, both breathing heavily but Hercules had enough to spare for last rites.
‘I am sorry James McLevy,’ he wheezed a trifle painfully. ‘As you say. A long journey. Take my secret with you.’
With this remark, Hercules Dunbar drew in another deep breath and plunged them once more into the cold deadly sea.
This was the final act. McLevy felt his whole body freeze as it recognised imminent annihilation.
Again the water swirled around him, drowning the world in a clammy dank embrace and he was sinking deeper into the flood, his consciousness failing, darkness at the back of his eyes, ready to welcome extinction.
What had saved him would now be his death. Dunbar would hold him under till his lungs collapsed.
As a dying man is supposed to experience his life flashing before his eyes, so McLevy had a vivid picture of the moment Dunbar and the other boys had held his head under the Water of Leith, then released him to lie gasping on the bank, howling with laughter as they ran away to leave him alive and swearing vengeance.
Vengeance. And he had wreaked it. With two kicks of his tackety boots.
And suddenly there was another howling. The wolf would fight for its existence, consciousness be damned.
McLevy let out a bloodcurdling scream regardless of the water that rushed in, prised himself away from Dunbar and kicked the man just below the kneecap with all the force he could muster.
Dunbar’s grip slackened. One more kick. The other knee.
Now, whether the cartilage tissue at that spot had its own historical memory of pain and humiliation or it had been grievously weakened by the blows from all these years ago, in truth mattered very little, but the end result was that Dunbar loosed his hold from the terrible agony incurred.
The inspector grasped the man by his waterlogged hair, pulled the head back to expose the throat and hammered a series of devastating blows into the soft flesh. Dunbar reached out to try a catch at McLevy’s eyes with his hooked fingers, but they found no purchase.
Another few blows and su
ddenly Hercules Dunbar had gone, down into the depths of the sea and McLevy was heading in the opposite direction like a cork out of a bottle.
He broke the surface of the calm water, gasping and retching for breath, then began to sink immediately, for as has been previously related McLevy could not swim a stroke and he had just destroyed his only means of flotation.
The inspector tried to shout but his voice had been strangled by the salt of the sea, and the darkness before him lay unbroken like a waiting shroud.
The heavy coat was yet again dragging him under and though he thrashed around desperately, it was a losing battle.
As if to emphasise this, something thudded painfully into the back of his head. He grabbed at it in the darkness and his fingers made contact with the splintered rough surface of the large piece of timber that the wild young boys had thrown into the sea.
A blessing on the wild boys.
McLevy hoisted himself on to the spar, the upper part of his body sprawled across while his legs dangled in the sea.
It was deathly cold and he felt his senses slipping but he wedged himself as best he could and thus drifted off into the misty darkness.
However the tide had now turned and Inspector James McLevy was heading out to sea, where he might join with the shipwrecks and ghastly mariners who inhabit the edges of the watery main.
Once more the fog-bell sounded in the night.
38
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wracks;
A thousand men that fishes gnawed upon;
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scattered in the bottom of the sea.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
Richard III
The woman’s body was facing away. Her black hair streamed behind like sea snakes in the water of the deep.
His mother, Maria McLevy, hand still clutching the shearing scissors used to cut her throat.
