Trick of the Light

by David Ashton

  He jammed his arm and head in but that was as far as he could get, no chance of his big backside following suit and anyway he could now see that the beckoning light had its origin from a lantern held by the Red Figure, who had popped up into view once more.

  She stood by a small jetty. A rowing boat was moored in the still night-blue water where a spectral oarsman, black garbed and hunched over, rested with his back to the proceedings.

  Not a promising sight, but then his attention was usurped by the slender white hand emerging from the folds of the red cloak to move towards the hood that still obscured the figure’s countenance.

  For once in his life Inspector James McLevy abandoned the consuming curiosity of his natural bent, because he knew in his bones that once he saw that face the game was over.

  He reached down into the depths of his being, where all this turbulence was wreaking havoc, and wrenched himself up and out of it into a shocked salvation.

  Witness him bolt upright, hair aghast, thumb wedged between his lips, with the beginnings of a snottery nose.

  He removed the singed digit, wiped the seeping organ with the cuff of his crumpled nightshirt and swung out of bed, feet landing with a thump on the cold floorboards of his attic room.

  McLevy flapped his nightshirt over bare calves to create a welcome draught of cold air coursing up and over his clammy skin, then took a deep breath.

  He was still alive, conscious of crime before it even stirred in the womb of Iniquity, a renowned thief-taker in his own city, feared by lawbreakers high and low, prone to violence when necessary and sometimes just for the hell of it, a great drinker of coffee, a sharp splinter in the rump of authority. He had survived bullets, knives, strangulation by a servant of the Crown and a drug-crazed thuggee, drowning even though he could not swim a stroke, at least two lethal women and ten times that number of murderous bastard men – one of whom had tried to spatter out his brains with hobnailed boot and viciously executed downward stamp.

  The inspector realised he was muttering all this to himself: the sign of a disorderly mind.

  A charred and dented coffee pot of discoloured metal stood on a stone ledge beside the hearth, where the dead ashes of last night’s fire lay scattered. He picked it up, shook it gently to and fro with his head cocked to the one side, then poured out the thick sludgy brew into an equally discoloured cup and sifted the mixture through his teeth.

  The liquid hit the pit of his stomach like a falling stone and almost at once provoked his bowels into subdued commotion, but it did the trick.

  He was himself again. James McLevy. Inspector of police. A solid, save for the bowels, proposition.

  With measured tread he retraced his steps to the bed and shoved his feet into a shapeless pair of old socks. This action he followed by solemnly donning a nightcap with a dangling wee toorie – a birthday gift courtesy of his landlady, Mrs MacPherson, who knew well the prevailing chills of her attic rooms – and then made his way towards the large draughty window, which overlooked his beloved Edinburgh.

  En route he stopped to regard himself in a mildewed oval mirror, bought from a toothless female hawker in Leith Market who had obviously no interest in further vanity. The glass was laid at an angle against a pile of his literary and scientific books. It reflected McLevy in all his glory.

  He saw a distorted version of Wee Willie Winkie.

  A man of some bulk. Curiously dainty hands; the one holding the cup raised a pinkie in elegant acknowledgement of his own image. Sturdy enough calves, from being on the saunter so long in the streets of Leith, a barrel-shaped corpus tending to a wee bit too much heft round the stomach, the broad shoulders sloping deceptively.

  And then the face. It was on top of the body. That much you could say for certain.

  The light from the candle threw a fragile arc round the room that rimmed him at the neck so McLevy craned forward, peering down to confirm what he already knew.

  White parchment skin, pitted and creviced, full lips with a curious pout like the ornamental fish of Jean Brash’s new garden pond in the Just Land, a slightly spread nose from keeking hard up against too many windows, tufts of salt-and-pepper hair sticking out from the nightcap, and, below a gloomy brow, the eyes. Slate-grey. Lupine. Not friendly.

  Seen too much.

  McLevy turned away abruptly. Like the hawker he had no use for further vanity but had bought the damned reflector because of a recent incident at the Leith station.

  He had entered full of autumnal relish but became aware of sniggering amongst the morning shift of half-witted young constables. His own right-hand man, Constable Mulholland, hiding the amusement in his blue eyes, stooped down from a great height and informed the inspector that the dishcloth stuffed round the neck that morning to avoid the spilling content of a yolky egg at breakfast upon his whitish shirt, had failed to be removed and was hanging down his front like a dog’s tongue.

  McLevy had lost face. To know that folk had laughed behind his back. A childhood memory of similar humiliation had surfaced. It cut him to the bone.

  A gang of boys following him through the wynds, howling names, spittle and stones showering his back.

  His mother had cut her throat, mad auld bitch. Jamie McLevy would be next. Mad for certain sure.

  Thank God that Lieutenant Roach, his superior in rank if not in merit, had failed to witness the incident of the overlooked dishcloth.

  Ergo the purchase. Every morning, before setting forth, McLevy surveyed his façade in the glass, before twisting over a shoulder to make also sure the back of his thick coat held no trace of a careless repast, or the inadvertent detritus of a solitary life.

  This weakness angered him. Why should he give a damn how people thought or what he looked like? It was a recent personal tremor, a self-conscious frailty.

  Why should he give a damn? But, he did.

  He set his cup down on the spindly-legged table in front of the window, where he read and penned such thoughts as struck him worth the trouble into his diary, pulled back the faded brown curtains and gazed out over his city.

  Auld Reekie. The sky was dark as would befit the time of year, trails of street lamps on the main thoroughfares paid homage to the correlated straight lines of planned logic but off all of this mathematical probity ran crooked wynds, narrow deviating slits of passage, and sly conniving side streets – his hunting ground.

  The night was silent. But McLevy fancied he could hear the ticking of a thousand clocks, the sighs of a thousand sleepers; men, women and children all sharing the peaceful slumber denied to him.

  So be it.

  The city was like a huge beast, flanks heaving as it slept in the darkness, and McLevy felt his breath shift in rhythm to that deep motion.

  A movement on the roof to the side and he caught from the corner of his eye a slinking form padding with swift sure steps on the oily slates.

  Bathsheba. A cat that often visited but not now. She had something in her jaws. He focused his eyes; was that a tail hanging from her mouth?

  McLevy’s long sight was exemplary, though from short up the edges blurred with increasing incidence; he tapped upon the window pane and the cat halted and turned, her yellow eyes gleaming in the sooty blackness of an Edinburgh night.

  Aye. Right enough. It was a long tail. Even had a vestige of life, looping round with the cat’s swivelling turn of the head. But the rest of the body told a different story. Dead as a doornail, the jaws clamped shut around.

  From the feline point of view Bathsheba observed a disembodied bulbous white shape gawking through the window, so she slipped behind a chimney stack to enjoy the fruits of her labour in peace.

  A nearby church clock tolled out its verdict on the state of Scotland.

  Four o’clock. A distance from dawn. The Witching Hour.

  It might have been a trick of the light from the flickering street lamps but it struck the inspector that the holy spires sticking piously up into the sky to remind God that they were aye on parsimonious a
nd pious duty, were listing somewhat to the side; slanted, as if some insidious force were magnetising them from the straight and upright.

  However. It was only a trick of the light.

  October had almost gone, the dark half of the year approaching. Halloween. The old legends had it that evil spirits were abroad and it were best to be in disguise lest they steal your very soul; but all good Christians would be well protected, buttressed by faith, wrapped tight by rectitude, sin-proofed to Satan’s three-pronged attack.

  Only those with a spotted conscience need be concerned. The likes of James McLevy. Marked by madness. Or worse.

  The inspector’s thoughts returned to his dream.

  And what of these naked females, cavorting round the flames? Try as he might he could not recall their precise features, just a general impression of libidinous ecstasy.

  McLevy realised that his feet were freezing, even in the woolly socks. There was no point in going back to bed, however, not with a troupe of sleekit females lurking under the covers. He let out a grunt of amusement at that notion but could not rid himself of a feeling of foreboding.

  Who was the figure in the red cloak and why did she put such fear into his heart?

  Perhaps he might coax some flame from the ashes with judicious blowing plus a few tinder stalks, then a wee bit of coal, and rustle up another pot of coffee?

  Yet he did not move from the window.

  Perhaps they were all uncanny wraiths from the primitive depths of vanquished time, to be dismissed or at the very least taken into custody.

  Naked as sin.

  Just as well he’d had his hat and overcoat on.

  Yet what was he doing dancing in tune?

  3

  I could not get the ring without the finger.

  THOMAS MIDDLETON, Master-Constable

  To see the two women in the Princes Street tearoom, it would never have occurred to the ignorant or unwary that they might have in mind a desire to rend tooth and nail the flesh that held the opposite’s very skeleton in place.

  One was unassuming in her dress, respectable and neat as a maiden aunt, frills forbidden, small-boned and dowdy almost, a heart-shaped face, tiny almost claw-like hands, the nails a little longer than custom might prefer. Her eyes – dark, beady, like a restless bird’s – darted here and there under the lowered lids.

  Her nose was narrow, as if it had been sucked by some inner force to press up against the cartilage in order to accentuate the cheekbones on each side. The mouth in contrast was wide, small milky teeth lurking behind wet lips as she sipped the scented tea.

  The other was dressed in the height of fashion; a gown of vivid aquamarine brought out the colour of her green eyes and the red hair, swept up save for some cunning tendrils that had escaped to call attention to the contours of her neck, contrasted with the porcelain skin of her face. A mocking twist to the lush, slightly parted lips below a delicate nose completed the picture.

  A pretty female, perhaps a little empty-headed even, the observer might have concluded. Flighty. Not like the sober wee soul opposite.

  Both women had taken great care in how they would present themselves one to the other.

  The bird of paradise and the sparrow.

  Neither, of course, might be what she seemed.

  Deadly rivals they most certainly were.

  The dowdy woman was known only as the Countess and the vision in aquamarine, Jean Brash.

  They shared the same profession, that of a bawdy-hoose keeper.

  While Edinburgh matrons discussed the relative merits of French cakes, mesmeric influence and petticoat tails, the Countess poured out more tea with a steady hand.

  ‘Darjeeling. I always find the fragrance so…soothing, don’t you?’ she remarked, in an accent that more than hinted at some passing acquaintance with the Balkans.

  ‘I’m more of a coffee hand,’ said Jean. ‘Black.’

  ‘You prefer stimulation?’

  ‘I like to keep busy. Welcome all comers.’

  The Countess sighed as if this statement carried hidden undertones, which indeed it did.

  ‘I have asked you here, Jean Brash,’ she murmured, ‘so that we may not quarrel.’

  The other took a sip of her coffee and made a face.

  ‘Bitter,’ she said. ‘I don’t like bitter.’

  The older woman smiled in sympathy and then a look of concern came upon her face, as if she had just remembered something of vexation. She straightened up and her restless eyes became fixed on Jean.

  ‘You have taken two of my girls,’ she announced.

  ‘They came running.’

  The Countess put the provocation of this statement down to the bitterness of the coffee.

  ‘One of them, Simone, ma petite demi-mondaine, she is highly skilled, supple to the double joint, and represents a large investment.’

  ‘I doubt she will return,’ Jean announced, looking into the cup as if it might improve the flavour somehow.

  ‘Why not, if I may make so bold?’

  ‘Simone told me pain had begun to outweigh pleasure in her …obligations.’

  The Countess smiled in polite disagreement. ‘Pleasure begins when pain completes itself. Sometimes the Tiger needs a little …blood.’

  ‘I’ve seen the stripes,’ said Jean flatly.

  Indeed, the girl, who obviously specialised in waiflike crushed-flower creatures – what Hannah Semple, the keeper of the keys of the Just Land, would call one o’ thae lily pads – had shown Jean the livid marks a certain ship-owner had quirted on her lower back and buttocks. There was an element of seduction in the display and Jean was reserving judgement on Simone, the French aye being a tricky proposition, but one thing was for sure – the skin did not lie.

  ‘Part of the profession,’ replied the Countess.

  ‘Not in my house. Not my girls. Justice for all.’

  The older woman laughed as if genuinely amused, her eyes glittering with a sudden merriment.

  ‘But my dear Mistress Brash, your house is like a market place where everything is laid out like a flesher’s slab. In my hotel, the client may indulge himself in total privacy to the furthest extent of his wishes. I attract the most distinguished of men for that very reason.’

  Jean had lost two judges, the aforementioned ship-owner and, at the last count, at least three High Churchmen to the Countess. All with money to burn. It rankled greatly. She had stuck to her principles but it still stung like hell.

  Accordingly, she’d been delighted when the two magpies had flown over to the Just Land. And no-one was going to escape the consequences of comparing her immaculate bawdy-hoose to a flesher’s slab.

  ‘Simone tells me that a deal of your tigers are so old, they must bring medical support. And the reason they have to inflict pain is because they’re incapable of anything else.’

  Stick that up your moth-eaten drawers, she thought.

  The Countess carefully replaced her cup and tapped her nails on the rim of the saucer.

  There was a sudden hush in the tea house as the door swung open and a tall elegant young woman slipped in, accompanied by a large imposing man who sported a curling moustache of splendid proportion and whose dark magnetic eyes swept over the assembled matrons, pausing fractionally to register Jean’s cool gaze before sweeping on.

  The woman had the bleached, almost translucent quality of someone who rarely saw the light of day, her eyes lidded as if the brightness of assorted bone china and white tablecloths were blinding her where she stood.

  The man seated her with a courtly gesture, removing his soft wide-brimmed felt hat, which sported a small dark green feather in the band. This action revealed a shock of black unruly hair, carrying more length than fashion would dictate, a lion’s mane.

  He shook it from side to side as if revelling in the attention the pair were attracting from all quarters. When he smiled, his teeth were large and white, a picture of health.

  The woman’s own hair was ash blonde, lint whit
e, as the Scots might say, neatly swept under a grey buckram hat with a small crown that perched equally neatly upon her head.

  Her skin was pale, almost that of an albino, and when the eyes suddenly snapped open, they were of a dark violet hue, searing against the white skin.

  For a moment the eyes rested on Jean and, despite herself, the bird of paradise flinched slightly in reaction.

  Then the woman bent over the menu card, which listed a plethora of delectation for the Midlothian sweet of tooth, and the moment passed. The tea room breathed again, gossip recommenced, and the Countess leant forward so that her face was in close proximity.

  There was a scent of cloves from her skin and for some reason it reminded Jean of the plague.

  ‘An exotic coupling.’ The Countess smiled, the small teeth tucked behind stretched lips. ‘Do you know them?’

  ‘Not personally,’ replied Jean wrinkling her nose.

  ‘Sophia Adler and Magnus Bannerman. From the American shore. I have heard him speak. He is magnificent.’

  ‘What does he talk about?’

  ‘Events beyond the grave.’

  ‘I leave that to the minister. Reverend Snoddy. He’s awfy severe on the sinful.’

  The Countess smiled once more with a hint of condescension and Jean wondered if the woman believed the one before her to be as simple and shallow as presented; that would be more than useful.

  Of course she well knew that the couple had been doing the rounds of high society in Edinburgh, Magnus Bannerman preaching the possibilities of an ‘Unseen World’ and Sophia Adler a trumpeted conduit to the same. They had not as of yet seen fit to visit their talents upon the Just Land.

  Perhaps the incorporeal nature of their calling was incompatible with a bawdy-hoose but Mister Bannerman seemed certainly to be a man of parts.

  She would place him about forty-five years but in prime condition. A fine specimen.