Trick of the Light

by David Ashton

  ‘That’s my secret,’ he said.

  In the silence following that unhelpful comment, a strangled scream came from the direction of the main station room outside.

  McLevy wheeled; Roach, showing a surprising turn of speed, followed after, and when they emerged it was to find a macabre scene being re-enacted before them.

  An old man staggered around in the main hall, his hands covered in blood, streaks of the same in his white hair that then ran down his face.

  King Lear in Leith.

  His mouth opened and closed without a sound, the previous shriek having drained his vocal cords.

  The young constables who were just about to depart on the morning shift stood frozen at the sight. Sergeant Murdoch, who had not even noticed the man pass like a ghost beyond the reception counter, was also fixed in time and space; Ballantyne had risen from his untidy desk, a blotting paper that had held a large beetle falling limply from his hand to let the insect scuttle off towards its own fate.

  Mulholland who had been gazing glumly at his face in the cracked mirror emerged from the cubby-hole and swiftly moved to catch the old man before he came to harm on one of the stone pillars that held the very building in place.

  He helped the old fellow gently down onto one of the chairs as McLevy moved to join them.

  Fergus MacLean was the old man’s name. He was a servant who did not live in with his master but arrived each morning to light the fire and heat the house.

  He was badly paid, his diligence unappreciated by his sovereign lord but, as is the manner of those who serve, regarded it as part of his drudgery.

  No longer. No more. The kindling and the coal were in the bunker but they would not be utilised this day.

  McLevy and Mulholland stood looking down at him till Fergus finally found some words.

  ‘The maister…’ he croaked. ‘He lies. In blood. I could not raise him.’

  So the streaks of gore were not his own, though the man’s face was full of sorrow and fear as if life would never be the same.

  Death is enough to give any man doubts.

  20

  The smyler with the knyf under the cloke.

  GEOFFREY CHAUCER, The Knight’s Tale

  When Alfred Binnie was born there were no celebrations of fireworks or grateful peasants gathering under the castle windows to shower the newborn infant with gifts from the harvest table.

  His mother dropped him like a crouching animal to grow as best he might manage and join the brood of children that swarmed onto the streets of Shoreditch like maggots.

  Cholera had come and gone but the stench remained, safely ensconced in the dead bodies of the dogs, cats, and rats that littered the highways.

  The mudlarks went to scour the mud of the Thames for coal dropped by the cargo boats but Binnie stayed in the crevices of alley and side-streets, his cunning round face disguising the predatory purpose within.

  He was apprenticed by his kidsman to a pocket delver and learned the trade well. Alfred had swift, dexterous hands – lightning swift, despite his mole-like appearance.

  He also learned the gift of invisibility, how to mingle with the crowd, become non-existent almost until the moment when he struck for the pocket or razor-slit the handbag.

  The young Alfred developed apace but few found him appealing, girls especially; the little ladybirds who gave their favours with carefree abandon to other young keelies found him oddly repellent, part to do with his appearance which was, as one sharp dollymop accurately described, like something crawled out of a rat’s arse.

  The other part was not so easily defined and in fact puzzled Alfred himself.

  It was as if he starved for something, a hunger that came out of his pores like a sweat and it put an aura around him that even the most hard-bitten of street dwellers found to provoke an uneasy feeling.

  His hungry little heart could only suffer, not name its desire, only the empty yearning.

  Then one day he found it.

  Death.

  His mobsman mentor, flushed with gin, a drink that encourages the careless rapture that no harm will befall a man soused and saturated with its cloying alcoholic charm, overreached himself in a flash house, a tavern where the cream of London’s reprobates mixed with the lowest of the low. All equal under the blanket of crime.

  It was a given rule that no pocket delving was done, no sharping, no find-the-lady. Not in this tavern.

  Good behaviour between thieves.

  However the tooler could not resist the temptation of a heavy pocketbook in the side coat of a quietly dressed mark at the bar.

  He signalled Alfred to supply distraction, a clumsy trip and spilling of a beer glass that would fit in so well with the boy’s oafish demeanour.

  But Alfred hung back.

  He had noticed that there was space around this man, no-one slapped him on the back or attempted familiarity. He had been drinking alone, steadily, the best rum, not making a show or unnecessary move.

  Which was what the mobsman did.

  Bumped in, fixed apologetic smile already upon his face, fingers upon the leather of the pocketbook, then a sharp pain under his ribcage as the knife punctured his skin and pierced the heart like a blackbird’s beak.

  The executioner then placed the tooler’s hands upon the bar as if to steady him, laid down the empty glass of rum, then turned and walked unhurriedly out of the place.

  Tom Partridge, for that was the mark’s name, walked carefully through the dirty streets of Shoreditch until he became aware that someone was dogging his steps.

  When he turned, he saw a strange lumpen creature neither man nor child.

  ‘How did you do that?’ asked Alfred Binnie.

  ‘Practice,’ said Tom.

  ‘Will you teach me?’

  Partridge looked into the boy’s eyes and saw the same emptiness that met his own gaze in the mirror every morning.

  The blank, dispassionate stare of an assassin.

  He said nothing. A sudden uproar in the distance signalled the discovery of a dead man slumped over the bar with a smile fixed upon his face.

  ‘Why did you stick him through?’

  ‘He broke the rules.’

  Alfred smiled. That made sense.

  ‘What did you see?’ asked Tom quietly.

  ‘I saw your hand. The steel. But not where you kept it. That’s a mystery.’

  Partridge sighed. He had no wish to take on an acolyte but the alternative was to kill the witness.

  Any witness runs that risk.

  He turned and walked away, with Alfred taking this as acceptance, following like a dog its master.

  The boy had learned and learned well.

  Alfred Binnie allowed himself a smile of satisfaction as he thought of the pleasure in that sweep under the table when his knife cut through the thick material to find the soft flesh beneath.

  The Countess, however, who was sitting opposite him, was anything but pleased.

  She had been informed at first light as to the events in the Rustie Nail and it did not fit with her plans so carefully constructed while the city slept.

  ‘How could you do this?’ she asked.

  Alfred laughed, a strange sound.

  ‘My hand slipped,’ he replied.

  ‘You might have ruined everything.’

  ‘I don’t like being bilked.’

  The Countess fixed him with a cold stare and the pleasure drained from his face.

  ‘You were to stay here,’ she said.

  ‘I was confined to no purpose! This poky little room offends me and that woman you sent up was no such thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘All bones and elbows.’

  His face was now like that of a sulky boy and her thin eyebrows rose in some surprise. Binnie’s taste ran to large women and she had provided him with the fleshiest specimen in the hotel.

  ‘Not many would describe her so,’ she murmured.

  He laughed scornfully.

  ‘She wou
ldn’t play any games. I like games. That’s why I defenestrated.’

  Indeed after realising that what he thought of as a bit of fun had produced a look of repugnance in the woman’s eyes, Binnie had dismissed her and then suspecting that the Countess might have a watch kept on his door, swung out of the window and down the drainpipe.

  It was no strain, either for him or the pipe. Binnie was surprisingly agile despite his appearance and though plump was small enough not to weigh a great deal.

  The two large German Shepherds that the Countess kept as watchdogs had growled in their kennels but Binnie was silent in movement and possessed the odd attribute of having no body odour. His pores gave nothing away.

  He returned by the back stairs, however, not the drainpipe. Alfred Binnie was no monkey.

  His unattractive but unthreatening form had been a great boon to him in his chosen and beloved profession; many a body mouldering in the grave, if it ever got to such a resting place, bore witness to the fact that violent death can come from other sources than the belching mouth of cannon.

  She watched him as his face smoothed out again till it resembled a nondescript little man, easily overlooked.

  Binnie had come highly recommended, laid down a fierce price that would not be haggled over and the Countess, foreseeing the coming war as soon as Simone had deserted, indeed almost welcoming the opportunity, needed a secret card to play.

  Needed him badly.

  Though now that secret was somewhat compromised.

  However, even that she could use to advantage.

  The Countess took a thin, crumpled piece of paper from her pocket and placed it before Binnie.

  ‘This was delivered to me this morning from a trusted source. You are discovered, Mister Binnie.’

  He slowly unwrapped the paper to find a crude likeness of his own face staring back.

  ‘When you poured the acid, you were witnessed,’ she informed him, with a malicious edge. ‘Tut, tut.’

  Alfred said nothing but his professional pride was hurt. His speciality was the unseen strike. A witness; that was bad. The drawing was a complication but that proved nothing. The witness was another matter.

  ‘Who saw me?’ he said quietly.

  ‘A deaf mute, I am told. Lily Baxter. One of Jean Brash’s impaired whores.’

  A slow nod, the eyes blank.

  ‘She can’t live.’

  ‘That will be part of the plan. But from now on you must lie low, only out in cover of darkness, no cutting bellies in taverns, no defenestrating.’

  A sudden glint of merriment once more in the dark beady eyes; she would keep this little monster close to hand like a dog on a lead.

  But now it was time to grease the palm. Was that the phrase? English was such a slippery tongue.

  ‘Put out your hand,’ she commanded.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Which do you favour?’

  ‘The left. Always.’

  ‘Extend the same.’

  An evil little grin spread across the face of Alfred.

  ‘Are you going to punish me, Countess?’

  She said nothing. He extended the hand, and she produced a small leather bag from which she extracted ten gold coins which she dropped one after the other into his upturned palm. A sensuous smile appeared on his face; next to death this was his best pleasure, large women came a poor third at the races.

  ‘That much again awaits,’ she promised, herself excited by the quickening in her own being. ‘When we have executed what is in my mind. This night.’

  Alfred caught her bloodlust, you could almost taste it; pity she was such a scrawny type.

  ‘This seems acceptable,’ he said chastely.

  ‘You will be a good boy till then?’

  ‘You have my word,’ he replied, as he pocketed the coins, ‘but tonight, I will be a very bad boy.’

  They sat and stared at each other like two perfect embodiments of evil intent until the Countess smiled over a random thought of impending destruction.

  ‘Do you enjoy long, slow suffering?’ she remarked.

  ‘If there’s blood involved.’

  That response brought a slight frown to her face and she was moved to more precise definition of their objective.

  ‘The most exquisite torture is in the mind. We may throw in a bit of blood to keep you happy.’

  ‘I like being happy,’ he replied simply.

  For a moment she gazed at him with a curious fondness.

  ‘You are most valuable to me, Mister Binnie. I shall take very good care of you.’

  ‘I don’t like Scotch beer.’

  ‘I shall find you another kind.’

  ‘And I like big women. Something I can find in the dark.’

  ‘I will search out such a magnitude.’

  ‘Then we have an agreement, Countess,’ said Binnie with solemn gravity.

  ‘We have an agreement, Mister Binnie.’

  They each then retreated to their thoughts, his of the victim’s surprise and fear, hers of the delights to come.

  21

  I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition.

  SAMUEL PEPYS, Diary (13 October, 1660)

  James McLevy had seen some messy corpses in his time but this one took the biscuit.

  Strangely enough the trunk and limbs were untouched save for the fragments of gore and splinters of bone that had spattered over the respectable garmentation.

  The body encased and covered in a heavy suit as custom demanded, the shoes shiny, though dull red drops had given birth to thin rivulets which trickled down until they had been arrested by the edging sole of a solid brogue.

  Everything was fine until you got above the neck.

  Then it was as if someone had dropped a huge blancmange, the flesh split, and the bones crushed to a pulp.

  It was hardly recognisable as a human head and so far the inspector had hardly been able to find an eyeball that he could call his own.

  Constable Ballantyne, thrilled at being included in his first murder investigation, though merely there to stand and watch, stood, watched, and then bolted outside to boak his breakfast up all over the street.

  The other two young green-faced constables had been dismissed to join Ballantyne lest they spewed precipitously and obliterated evidence.

  Mulholland, who had looked but not boaked, was in the higher reaches of the house in search of forcible entry because nothing indicated such below.

  It was just how McLevy liked it.

  Him and a corpse.

  Plus the word.

  Daubed in blood on the wall above the mantelpiece, the letters crude and misshapen but the word clear enough.

  JUDAS.

  How that applied to the dead Gilbert Morrison was a mystery to be solved. He had been thus identified by Fergus MacLean through his clothing and a scar across the palm of his hand, the result of an accident on board a ship when a sharp metal shackle had broken free from the chain cable and cut the maister’s hand.

  Long ago. But the mark remained.

  Like that of Cain.

  McLevy had known the man and hadn’t liked him. Avaricious, cruel-eyed, thin-lipped, a dry stick of rectitude.

  None of that left now.

  Not a shred.

  The inspector carefully skirted the huddle of fleshly remains and bent over what appeared to be the implement of destruction. A heavy iron poker, the lower third of which had the metal twisted round in a spiral so that when thrust it might worm itself into the coals.

  The whirling indentation had retained fragments of tissue that might be useful, although there was enough to be going on with, scattered all around.

  He peered at the weapon and produced a magnifier to squint through but there were no foreign substances and only smears of blood upon the handle.

  McLevy had read recently in the scientific journal Nature an article by a
physician – Scots of course – Henry Faulds, suggesting that fingerprints might one day be used to identify the perpetrators of crime. The inspector looked forward to that prospect though it was still a distance off. One day. Loops and whorls.

  Though there was nothing on the handle of the poker but red smudges, whoever had wielded it with such ferocious purpose might well have worn a hand covering of some kind. A strange contradiction; the crime suggested mindless violence but was there an element of calculation involved?

  He placed the poker aside neatly, to be wrapped up and scrutinised later at the station, then moved to the mantelpiece with his magnifier.

  JUDAS. Very biblical. The betrayer of Jesus. That suggested vengeance. But who had been betrayed?

  And who desired vengeance?

  He bent down, and using the magnifier, carefully scanned the fireplace, grunting a little as his body did not take to folding over in such fashion. By the side of the grate, his painstaking search uncovered a thin strand of hair. He fished it out between finger and thumb then raised it up to the light.

  Indeed it was human filament but not the servant’s or Morrison’s. Fergus was white haired and the deceased Gilbert, from McLevy’s memory, had few hairs if any, a bald pate like a monk – it must have made a fine target.

  But this was long, darkish in colour as far as he could tell and, under the magnifier, perhaps even a little wavy.

  He sniffed at the hair and then his fingers. An acrid trace of ash from the fireplace but something else as well.

  So faint as to be near unidentifiable. A pomade of sorts? Hard to tell. McLevy’s eyes were not the best but his nose was infallible; possibly some oiling agent, some unguent? The odour though, what was it?

  Honey? A sweet smell but fading even as he sniffed; he was lucky it had lasted this long. He would store it in his olfactory bank and hope for a similar waft someday.

  McLevy diligently placed the hair into some thin paper and deposited it into the evidence bag.

  Man or woman? Long enough for either but he would wager a man.

  His little secret for the nonce.