Trick of the Light

by David Ashton

  After giving him the slip, they had met with a similarly inclined young lout, drunk like sand-beds in the tavern, and presented themselves at the door of the Just Land for further recreation.

  But something had gone agley.

  As Jean slipped up by the shadows, the combatants were well into their stride.

  ‘You little hure!’ screamed Galloway, face flushed and eyes glazed. ‘You stole my money!’

  ‘I stole nothing,’ said Jessie. ‘Ye spent it.’

  ‘You’re a liar!’

  ‘And you’re mortal fou,’ said Jessie, a hint of insolence creeping into her tone.

  A few catcalls from the lighted windows added to the fun and Jessie played up to the watching magpies.

  ‘Ye spent your money, ye had your pleasure. Now, away an’ cock yer feathers on the dunghill.’

  More laughter from the windows.

  Galloway’s countenance, which was not unlike some of the wretched horses his father shipped across the Channel, in that it was long, bony, and swivel-eyed, near sundered itself in wrathful umbrage.

  ‘How dare you address me so, ye little bitch,’ he almost foamed at the mouth. ‘I’ll split your insolent face!’

  Galloway unexpectedly, for Jessie had him pegged as a wee bag of wind, threw out a haphazard fist and hit a glancing blow on the shoulder that tumbled her to the ground.

  Flushed with this triumph and the sudden silence of the jeering magpies, though this may have been in part due to something else they had just noticed, Galloway lifted his hand to swipe the impudent wee hure flat across her mouth.

  He then found an odd event to transpire.

  As if by unseen force his expensive jacket was sliced open from side pocket all the way up to the armpit.

  As he gazed, violent act arrested, at this rent in his fashionable attire, as if by magic a female form appeared before him. The apparition had green eyes and red hair.

  ‘You may leave us now,’ said Jean Brash, who had abandoned her stately approach through force of necessity.

  Galloway staggered back but then recovered his nerve as he realised Jean was on her own. No Hannah Semple, no Angus the enforcer, just a single woman.

  With a straight gleaming blade in her hand, but that might be overcome.

  He signalled to his cronies and they began to close in. Now there were no more threatening oaths but the danger was more real. Jessie scrambled on her hands and knees further back towards the house and stifled shrieks came from the watching magpies.

  Jean remained calm but it was one thing to cut lumps out of a swankie young halfwit’s jacket and another to inflict physical damage. You could get arrested for that.

  Especially if you did it in the public eye.

  A cruel drunken light in Galloway’s eye; companions, equally aroused, egged him on with grunts of encouragement.

  Strong drink and a weak mind are bad company.

  Galloway grinned like a rat and feinted to catch at her but before it was possible to see how far this confrontation might progress, a voice from the darkness moved into and across matters.

  ‘Aye, Jean. Cutting back the weeds, eh?’

  James McLevy stood in the semi-darkness on the fringe of the arc where the house lights expired, with Mulholland by his side.

  Both men then moved forward unhurriedly; Mulholland’s hornbeam stick hanging loose at his side as he loped forward, the inspector with the deceptively benign air of a man out for an evening constitutional.

  The policemen had met up again at the station where the constable reported that he had got nowhere with the Grierson robbery enquiries, and were out on their usual evening saunter round the streets of Leith when word came that, amongst a few other incidents of note, Patrick Fraser had received a severe kicking that involved the bridge of his nose being squashed like a cowpat.

  Retributive action was being sworn by his gang.

  McLevy had planned to head this off should the vengeful crew have made for the Just Land but found instead another altercation.

  Halloween often bred them.

  ‘Inspector. Well on hand. This witch has attacked me!’ Galloway blustered.

  ‘Just a wee snip,’ said Jean.

  The jacket flapped dismal agreement as Galloway continued his litany of complaint.

  ‘I have been most foully robbed in this woman’s establishment. My wallet emptied!’

  ‘While you danced the Reels o’ Bogie?’ McLevy enquired sardonically, this being the poet Robert Burn’s allusion to copulation of a frenzied nature.

  A shrewd shaft dismissed by the justified sinner.

  ‘I deserve and demand satisfaction.’

  ‘Demand away,’ Jean muttered, wondering how the hell McLevy seemed to manifest all over Leith. Her people had reported him down by the docks the last she had heard and not that long since.

  Mulholland had been silent so far but curled his lip at Galloway’s protestations.

  ‘You don’t deserve a damned thing,’ he pronounced. ‘Look at the odds on hand. Three to one. That’s shameful.’

  ‘I was here!’ said Jessie, who had reappeared at Jean’s side now that matters were less turbulent.

  This was ignored as the two policemen placed themselves directly in front of the sullen malcontents.

  ‘What would your Aunt Katie say tae these specimens?’ McLevy asked mildly of his constable. To a certain extent things had been a little strained between them and it was nice to get back into an old routine.

  ‘Get out o’ my sight, you’d give the dry boak to a dead badger,’ was the uncompromising response.

  ‘What a woman,’ said McLevy admiringly.

  He suddenly moved in very close to the young men.

  ‘You heard the constable, Galloway, absent yourself while you have the chance. I catch you or your friends near these grounds again, I’ll run you in for trespass.’

  There was a mean glitter in the inspector’s eyes; it had been a long day and he was in no mood to suffer fools.

  The other two had piped down immediately at the sound of his voice but as they slouched off towards the gates Galloway turned round to indicate he had some puff left.

  ‘I shall complain to your Lieutenant Roach!’ he cried.

  ‘Do that,’ replied McLevy. ‘He could use some humour in his life. Now – honour us with your departure.’

  Mulholland moved threateningly to the loitering Galloway who stepped away to splash his foot into the water in Jean’s fishpond, thus alarming the large piscine inhabitants and causing great amusement to the audience of magpies who hooted further as his fashionable shoe became entangled in some exotic fronds.

  As he shook his leg unavailingly to clear it of the weed’s fond embrace, Galloway strived for the last word.

  ‘This is not finished, Jean Brash. I was robbed, I can assure you, and I will have lawful redress!’

  ‘Fear grips me by the throat,’ she called back, mockingly. However she was annoyed to find herself in the situation of arguing with a runty snab under McLevy’s amused gaze. She shot Jessie a look to indicate that there would be words exchanged as soon as the chance presented itself.

  The swankie boys finally quit the scene, slamming the iron gates shut to indicate their manhood was still intact, which left four survivors of the incident.

  Jean became aware that McLevy was looking with interest at her hand and realised she was still holding the implement which had changed the shape of Galloway’s jacket.

  ‘That’s a fine sharp knife you have,’ he observed.

  Jean had taken it out as a precaution, it fitting snugly into the reticule on her arm. In fact, if you discounted the fact that she kept a bawdy hoose and sliced folk up to the armpit, the woman cut an impressively respectable figure in her evening coat and elegant bonnet.

  ‘It’s for pruning the roses,’ she answered. ‘Anything that protrudes, in fact.’

  McLevy extended his hand and she placed the knife carefully across the palm. He peered at it closel
y in the gloom, and then passed the weapon to Mulholland.

  ‘What d’you make o’ that, constable?’ he asked.

  Mulholland hefted the blade expertly in the manner of a man who had read The Count of Monte Cristo.

  ‘Well balanced. Finest Italian steel.’

  ‘It’s from an admirer,’ Jean offered.

  ‘A cutpurse?’ McLevy asked, retrieving the thing from Mulholland who was waving it around in deft circles.

  ‘No. A surgeon.’

  Her dry response provoked a whoop of laughter from the inspector. He was beginning to enjoy himself; life had been a bit quiet recently other than his outlandish dreams.

  Now, to paraphrase the great John Milton, McLevy had a feeling that all hell was about to break loose and it cheered him up no end.

  The inspector nevertheless wasted his breath in one more warning to the mistress of the Just Land, stepping in close so that the conversation between them was low, like lovers in the shadows.

  ‘Ah Jean, Jean,’ he murmured. ‘The path you travel can have but one destination. A prison cell. I shall sweep it clean with my own hands.’

  ‘Don’t delude yourself,’ she murmured also. ‘And may I have my pruner returned?’

  He handed it over with ceremony and then tipped back his low-brimmed bowler with one finger to a rakish angle.

  ‘Well, constable,’ he announced, loudly, ‘best be on our way. Duty done. Fair maidens saved.’

  ‘The fair maiden sings your praises,’ Jean remarked ironically to his departing back.

  He did not turn round, indeed the rest of the exchange was conducted with him marching off into the darkness, the lanky figure of Mulholland trailing behind.

  They made an odd contrast but she had seen them both in action and the swankie boys didn’t know how lucky they had been that the stramash had not spiralled into further violence.

  Mulholland dealt it out dispassionately with that hornbeam stick like the hand of God, and McLevy? He was the most physically dangerous man she had ever witnessed and had a reservoir of fury profound as death itself.

  She recalled him as a young constable lying on the tavern floor and a thug ready to bring his boot crashing down into the upturned face.

  Jean was a nascent whore working in the Holy Land then, and her pimp, Henry Preger, was the thug in question. A vicious bastard she hated with good reason.

  In the moment before Preger brought his boot down, she had winked at the young policeman, to provoke, to encourage, who knows, but he came off that floor like a madman and battered Preger from one end of the tavern to the other.

  The man died not long after and folk were inclined to put it down to the after-effects of that beating but Jean would have put her money on poison.

  And she should know.

  These were her thoughts as she watched McLevy walk away.

  ‘By the by, Jean,’ the inspector called over his shoulder, ‘I hear that Patrick Fraser had a nasty accident.’

  ‘He keeps bad company,’ she shouted over.

  A raucous laugh came in response.

  ‘Oh, you and the Countess…’ sounded his voice in the gloom. ‘Well matched, the pair o’ ye.’

  As the policemen strode past the pond, Mulholland shook his head in disapproval.

  ‘They want to put a net over that,’ he announced gravely. ‘Birds of prey will be queuing up for these fish.’

  ‘I’ve tellt her,’ said McLevy, who in fact had not done so, he had just thought it. However, it was nearly the same thing. ‘When have you ever known a woman take a telling?’

  ‘Not so far in my life,’ was the solemn response, as the constable thought to the past where his beloved Emily had refused further communication on account of her father having hung himself high by the neck.

  Mind you, it was a hard thing to get round right enough. Walk under, but not get round.

  They had reached the gates, which were still reverberating from the previous abrupt closure and McLevy at last turned to survey the Just Land.

  It was a strange sight, the place ablaze with light and a woman’s face in every window.

  Jean remained where he had left her, with Jessie’s figure standing to the side like a rejected conspirator.

  For a moment the inspector’s face was thoughtful, then he grinned and bawled out a last piece of advice.

  ‘Watch your back, Jean…gardyloo!’

  McLevy then observed his constable’s face to be somewhat overcast and guessed that memory had made an unwelcome intrusion.

  Young men bruise easy.

  ‘Come along, Mulholland,’ he declared in hearty fashion to cover any trace of what would be an equally unwelcome show of compassion. ‘We’ll away tae the Auld Ship, chap at the back door, see if they can rustle up a twa-eyed steak.’

  Mulholland shivered at that prospect, which was a strong smoked herring in Leith parlance.

  ‘It’ll repeat on me all through the night,’ he said.

  ‘All right then, my mannie,’ rejoined McLevy. ‘I’ll tackle the fish and we’ll scare you up some sheep’s heid broth.’

  And so melancholy was banished in favour of a stewed head of mutton but as they began to walk down the brae, a thought occurred to the constable.

  ‘You didn’t mention that knifing at the Rustie Nail?’ he said. ‘Sounds like the man she’s after.’

  ‘No, I didnae mention it,’ replied McLevy, ‘and neither did Jean Brash. I’ll let her think she’s got one over on me. When folk think that, is when they make mistakes.’

  Mulholland shook his head at the sleekit depths of his inspector and McLevy began whistling an old Jacobite air.

  ‘Charlie is my darling, the young Chevalier.’

  The strains of the tune made its way back to the garden of the Just Land where Jean watched the two men disappear into the night.

  For a moment she felt oddly moved, as if something that had been a fixed point was changing and would never be the same again. That melody she always associated with a side of James McLevy that no-one ever saw.

  The fighter of lost causes.

  Madness in his mind.

  The law was his life. He had no other.

  And as for love?

  God knows what feeling existed between her and him, but it was deep.

  A sensation of loss swept over her.

  With an effort she shook herself free of premonition and then turned to Jessie.

  Back to the real world. Burnt backs and drunken half-wits. She gestured to where Galloway had been ranting.

  ‘How did this happen?’

  The Paisley girl shrugged.

  ‘They spent a’ their money on champagne, or better he did. The other two were sookin’ on his titties. Then he opened his pocketbook. His money was gone and then he got rambunctious. Then I pit him out the door. Then he started yallyhooing. Blood in his eye.’

  A pithy enough summation but Jean was not impressed.

  ‘Hardly through the door yourself, Jessie Nairn. How come you stuck your nose in?’

  Jessie shrugged again. She was wearing her working assemblage; that is, a simple dress with a certain amount of décolletage but not overly so. Jean did not approve of too much vulgar show, despite the Countess’s jibe about the flesher’s slab and the contents thereon.

  The dress was however somewhat skimpy and now that the furore had abated, Jessie felt the dank October night.

  She shivered uncontrollably, her sharp feral little face screwing up. Jessie was no great beauty but there was an impudent gleam in her eye and a proud lift of the head that provided her own pert brand of desirability.

  Her apparent discomfort was not intended to garner sympathy from Jean nor did it receive such.

  ‘I asked,’ said the mistress of the Just Land, ‘how come you stuck your neb in?’

  ‘Naebody else did. He was kicking up hell.’

  ‘What about Big Annie Drummond?’

  ‘She doesnae like a rammy.’

  This was unde
niably true, Annie was a motherly figure to all the magpies and could command a certain authority but, unlike Hannah Semple or Jean herself, she was a gentle soul. In fact if Jean was being fair she might acknowledge that Jessie had done her a favour of sorts but she was not in a rational frame of mind. Things were falling apart, inside and out – evil spirits abroad.

  Therefore she behaved like a sour-faced scold and Jessie was confirmed in the way she had always been treated in life. Even if she had to create the circumstances for herself sometimes.

  We are all complicit in our own persecution.

  ‘I thought I had explained the rules of the house to you, Jessie Nairn,’ said Jean with a sniff because the cold air was beginning to get to her as well. ‘If a customer is too puggled to know what he’s done with his money, humour him, sit a girl on his knee, coddle him like a wee baby.’

  ‘You didnae do that,’ Jessie quite reasonably pointed out.

  ‘It was too late then!’ Jean snapped grouchily, aware she was losing the exchange. ‘He was beyond redemption.’

  ‘That’s whit I thought,’ said Jessie.

  Another reasonable remark.

  This time, unanswered.

  The Paisley girl shivered once more.

  ‘Ye better get inside,’ said Jean.

  Jessie shrugged, a mannerism that could easily get on the nerves, and walked slowly back towards the house.

  The windows began to empty of magpies as they caught the power of Jean’s cold gaze. Annie Drummond, who filled a frame all by herself, looked shamefaced and bowed her head but two figures who remained in view were French.

  Simone cut a frail portrait at the high window of the nursery room with Francine just behind, a proprietorial hand on the other’s shoulder.

  Jean shook her head. She could smell trouble a mile off in that configuration, and where was Lily Baxter?

  Come to think of it, where were all the clients?

  ‘Are there no gentlemen callers this evening?’ she enquired of Jessie who had finally got to the door and was on the point of disappearing out of sight.

  ‘Some early birds, but they pecked and ran,’ Jessie called back. ‘A quiet night. Except for the rammy.’

  The door closed. Jean looked up again at the two figures. The French. Trouble and strife.