by David Ashton
The constable was accustomed to his hornbeam stick wreaking havoc amongst the Fraternity, but McLevy was a close-quarter man when necessary and knew the dark arts of that species of encounter.
Somewhere Mulholland still believed in fair play.
A hellish misconception.
‘A wee word, Gash!’ McLevy bellowed. ‘If your snivelling scunnerbags interfere in any way, I’ll shoot them where they stand. You hae my word upon it.’
‘Don’t you worry, McLevy,’ came a cry in response. ‘I willnae need them. Tend tae yer own midden!’
With that contemptuous gibe, Mitchell turned to huddle with his crew.
‘Watch his eyes,’ said McLevy to the set-faced Mulholland. ‘His first move will signal there.’
For the constable it was as if his whole life had led him to this point.
One time, in the hills above the village, a young boy, he had come upon a March Hare. The beast showed no fear, bounded up and looked him in the eyes.
He knew by country lore he should kill it. Knife or gun or in his case a catapult, but he gawped and did nothing.
The hare looked him in the eyes and bounded off.
He felt then the throbbing life in the beast.
A precious gift.
So even when he stood side by side with McLevy and meted out the hammer blows of his hornbeam stick, it was without Satan’s violence driving.
Though, to be sure, those who felt the whacks possibly did not notice the difference.
But he did.
And now he was face to face with dark brutality. The memory of a young girl’s pitiful dead body his own driving force.
Bare handed.
He and Gash Mitchell stood not far apart, a watchful McLevy to the side and Mitchell’s men a respectful distance behind their man.
What was it the inspector said?
At that moment the apelike figure of Gash Mitchell made his move.
Under cover of the huddle, he had bent down and scraped up a mixture of gravel and dirt, saturated with dirty water.
For a moment his eyes narrowed and then from a massive paw he threw the mixture directly into Mulholland’s face, to sting and blind.
Gash now aimed a kick straight at the groin, that just missed to land on the fleshy inside of the upper thigh, and then went to work.
He butted his head in under Mulholland’s chin and hammered blows into the guts and belly, revelling the while that his opponent could hardly see.
Mitchell had also managed to crunch his heel on top of Mulholland’s boot, which not only anchored and agonised as Gash cruelly twisted but gave him purchase for the brutal thrash of his fists.
At the moment Mulholland’s arms were absorbing some of the force, but soon he would become weakened and all his attention would be caught in that area – and then Gash would draw back his head and smash the granite top of it into the unprotected face, breaking the nose, blooding the already damaged eyes. After that, it would just be the boot.
The constable gasped in pain and Mitchell judged it time to make the cranial strike.
Draw back – in like a battering ram!
Then a terrifying crack close by split the heavens and pinned all of them to the spot.
McLevy stood with the revolver pointing at the sky where he had aimed the shot.
The noise, near to hand, was deafening and both combatants staggered back for a brief moment – but the inspector seemed unperturbed.
‘The round is over,’ he announced.
Mitchell was outraged, while Mulholland simply gasped for agonised breath.
‘It’s no’ a bastard boxing match!’ howled Gash.
McLevy negligently waved the revolver to indicate a further parting, the barrel pointing at Mitchell and his men, who shuffled back while the inspector pulled his constable to the side.
As Mulholland bent over trying to coax some air into his bruised and crippled body, he became aware that McLevy was talking quietly into his ear.
‘You are fighting a monster, a brute, a barbarian. Unless you find the same within, there will be nothing left tae pick up. No holds barred, ye gave him that. I cannot stop it again mid-stream. This time it’s to the end.’
‘I’m not the same as him!’
‘We all are. It is merely a matter of how deep you wish to delve. In order to survive.’
McLevy’s one good eye had its cold lupine stare; there was no pity to be found.
Anywhere.
And no hiding place.
Martin Mulholland said goodbye to the civilised man and finally nodded assent.
‘Good. Now – a wee word before ye go.’
The inspector whispered for a moment, then left him to it, turning away abruptly.
‘I can do no more for you!’ he announced loudly. ‘On your own. No mercy, remember!’
Gash Mitchell grinned, taking this as condemnation rather than salutary advice.
He shifted with a swagger as Mulholland shuffled painfully towards him – easy meat.
The strike was fast and ruthless.
The constable’s body was in sore distress but his legs, honed on the saunter and wild hurling matches of his youth in Ireland, were not.
McLevy’s guidance had also given him an edge.
Act worse than ye are. Then hammer in. No mercy.
One foot was pained, but that was the left, thank God, and it was the other that swept forward.
The instep of his boot hit Gash Mitchell flush in the groin; the squat massive frame shuddered in shock and then the man doubled over as the agony shot through his body like a lightning bolt. But there was more to come.
God is bountiful.
Mulholland held him by the back of the neck while unleashing a series of uppercuts with his right fist.
Into the face and he never missed once.
Then he hauled the groaning monster up by his straw coloured hair and smashed his knuckles into the exposed throat before standing back to watch the man collapse to his knees.
Another kick sent Mitchell sprawling onto his back, then the constable leapt onto the recumbent body to batter in with a further series of blows.
No holds barred.
Rose Dundas. Her corpse lies still. The face white, the eyes closed, the neck snapped.
Her corpse lies still.
How long Mulholland lambasted like a madman he lost track, but another thunderclap shot rang out to bring him out of his frenzy.
‘End of the bout,’ announced McLevy.
One of the constable’s hands was still clamped around Mitchell’s inflamed throat and the inspector carefully prised it loose.
Mulholland’s eyes were dazed, almost bewildered, as if he had been in a far country.
‘I’ve jist been chased stupid wi’ two murders so far,’ said McLevy stolidly. ‘I don’t need witnessed manslaughter tae boot.’
He pulled the assailant up and away, led him aside to recover his wits, then returned to stand over the unmoving body of Gash Mitchell and address his confederates.
McLevy, with his half closed eye and fell expression, resembled something dragged from the depths of hell.
‘He is naething now. My constable cut him tae bits.’
He prodded the body with the toe of his boot.
‘Ye can pick him up and take him home or ye can leave him lay. Tae lie there in the muck. Where he belongs.’
The three men turned without a word and quit the scene.
McLevy leant down and whispered a malediction into Mitchell’s ear, and only by the merest flicker of the eyelids might it be discerned that the man was conscious at all.
But the inspector knew better.
His words would penetrate like a gutty knife.
‘As previously stated, Gash Mitchell, you are nothing now. The word will fly round. A’body will know. The young keelies will laugh in your face. No-one will fear you – you have lost it all. Teeth will fasten round your throat and the herd will tear you to pieces. You are nothing. A dead man
walking. Welcome tae the prospect.’
McLevy straightened up and walked over to where Mulholland wavered uncertainly on his feet.
‘I lost myself,’ he muttered.
‘Easy found again,’ was the breezy response. ‘Time tae get ye home.’
The constable did not move, his eyes deflecting back to the prone figure of Mitchell.
McLevy frowned. ‘I warned ye not tae wear that white shirt; it shows the blood something terrible.’
‘I have a last word to say – ’
‘It’s already been said. Come on!’
And none too gently he shoved Mulholland into his policeman’s cloak from where it had been neatly laid aside and stuck on the helmet.
‘A sight for sore eyes,’ was McLevy’s verdict.
For a moment Mulholland’s gaze met with his inspector’s.
‘I am not that beast,’ he said quietly.
‘So long as ye know where to find him,’ replied James McLevy. ‘That’s the main thing.’
‘I have done my best by Rose Dundas.’
‘That ye have. Now let us take our leave.’
As the two made their way out of the wynd into the harbour streets, seagulls screeching overhead, the inspector burst into song.
In truth he could scarce carry a tune, but had never let this hinder him in any way.
However, instead of one of his usual Jacobite refrains, McLevy let rip with a favourite of the tarry-breeks, the sailors flooding off the ships into the Leith taverns, who could be wild as a brattling gale or innocent as children.
What shall we do with the drunken sailor?
What shall we do with the drunken sailor?
What shall we do with the drunken sailor?
Earl-aye in the morning?
Scrape his guts with a hoop-iron razor,
Scrape his guts with a hoop-iron razor,
Scrape his guts with a hoop-iron razor,
Earl-aye in the morning!
As his voice faded into the night, one arm hooked firmly into his constable’s to guarantee safe passage, a rat came creeping out of a nearby drain and cautiously approached the unmoving body.
A hank of Mitchell’s dirty blond hair lay in one of the puddles, and the rodent had a wary nibble before scuttling off a little, as a groan emitted from the lumpen carcass.
The rat would return later.
Everything comes to he who waits.
Chapter 53
I’ll sing thee songs of Araby,
And tales of fair Cashmere,
Wild tales to cheat thee of a sigh,
Or charm thee to a tear.
William Wills, ‘I’ll Sing Thee Songs of Araby’
Diary of James McLevy.
15th May, 1887.
Having headed the page, James McLevy paused for thought. The cat Bathsheba had already come and gone, turning up her nose at the mixture of cold coffee and milk he had so diligently prepared.
Fair’s fair. He couldnae blame the beast. When he looked in the tin mug, there were unidentifiable flakes that seemed – or was it his imagination? – to be growing larger by each making in his iron pot.
He slurped, caught a flake in his teeth, sniffed at it, then flicked it away towards the fireplace.
The inspector was sitting at his rickety table, facing the large window that looked over the city.
He could make out the outline of a few scabby Edinburgh pigeons sliding on the oily slates. One in particular had a crabbed foot that tilted it comically from side to side and put McLevy in mind of Mulholland’s enduring torment of the sharp cobblestones upon his injured foot.
The constable was not used to being amongst the halt and the lame, and another thing that seemed to perturb him was his inspector’s high spirits.
After a rousing if tuneless version of ‘The Drunken Sailor’ McLevy had then sought the safety of dry land with ‘The Piper o’ Dundee’ and much to Mulholland’s relief, this ditty lasted sufficient to bring them to his lodgings.
The constable’s ribs were on fire and his guts and belly a maelstrom of conflicting distress – it did little to quell the suffering to hear his superior say that he could have the day off tomorrow and Lieutenant Roach be told that one of Mulholland’s bees had stung him in parts private.
While McLevy roared with laughter at such a fancy the constable’s face was sombrous as a church door.
And yet?
And yet.
A different outcome without this hooligan.
Having managed to open the portal, Mulholland turned back to the grinning eyesore.
‘I’ll lie one day in bed but – day after tomorrow. On the saunter?’
‘On the saunter.’
For a moment they held each other’s gaze.
It would seem they had spent a lifetime together blowing smoke in the devil’s face.
McLevy grinned and tapped the crown of his bowler.
‘Here’s tae murder and mayhem!’
‘And more to come.’
Mulholland’s sober response was a signal for the two to part company without another word, the door closing while James McLevy walked off into the night.
And now?
What of this present moment in his wee attic room?
Jessica Drummond’s locket had been placed in the cupboard to lodge beside strangler’s gloves, a cricket ball with darker red smears than natural, a sliver from a piece of driftwood that had saved McLevy’s life in an empty ocean, a small but murderously sharp axe, a pulley rope that had ended a decent but weak man’s existence, and various other artefacts pervaded with past criminality.
McLevy hoped the keepsake wouldn’t be too upset by its surroundings, but as the bard put it,
Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.
Though the remarkable happenstance was that he himself, James McLevy, felt anything but miserable.
With that in mind, he picked up his pen and began to write in the red ledger.
Is violence more important to me than love? It is as if these feelings of desperation and need have been scoured from my system by the searing necessity of life or death.
Had Mulholland fallen the second time, he would not have risen.
I would have had to kill or at least maim Gash Mitchell and if not watch my comrade splintered to pieces.
Thus breaking the very rules I had set into motion.
And when it was over I felt release, as if I had triumphed over the most heinous adversity.
An exultation that blew the sticky cobwebs from my heart and left me dancing with abandon.
That may be a wee bit far fetched.
For a start, Mulholland did all the work.
But it is as if a curtain was lifted.
Maybe I was suffering an illusion?
They say dry men in the desert see fountains of water.
Now when I think of Jessica Drummond, I feel nothing – I see in my mind a bonny face and strong bones, but that fades away like a glimmering snip of light.
I am free.
Like the hero in a fairy tale under a magic spell, though that usually involves some ugly auld besom.
What was it Jean Brash said?
‘Love is the very devil.’
Perhaps that’s what she meant. Jean is deep, no doubt.
Time will pass.
Time will pass, her wounds will heal, and the savage attack she suffered has met with due retribution.
Mulholland has avenged Rose Dundas.
Agnes Carnegie, a miserable old besom, nevertheless had her will delivered and murder solved.
Mary Dougan, poor soul, has also been avenged, though I fear she will find it sma’ comfort. Killed by her own son, father unproven.
And the twisted, tortured spirit of John Gibbons may have found some peace, but I doubt it.
And how did Stevenson feel about his part in all this, or did he somehow see it as a story from imagination spilled into real life?
We’ll never know, for he’s a devious bugger.
And me?
As Mulholland said – I’ve done my best.
To the limit of my compromised ability.
As regards the jellyfish, I think the best thing is to let well alone.
McLevy laid aside the pen and walked to the window. His city sparkled in the darkness.
Above in a clear sky, the stars did likewise.
Take the light and love the dark.
What more could a man desire?
Chapter 54
Is not old wine wholesomest, old pippins toothsomest, old wood burn brightest, old linen wash whitest? Old soldiers, sweethearts, are surest, and old lovers are soundest.
John Webster, Westward Ho
Some two weeks later at the Just Land, Hannah Semple, in a rare flurry, burst in on Jean Brash as she laboured over accounts in the small office next door to her boudoir.
‘There’s a muckle great body in the garden!’
‘Talk sense, woman,’ snapped Jean, who was never in the best of moods when confronted by arithmetical challenge.
‘See for yourself.’
Jean waited for further elucidation, but when none came heaved up from the desk and made for the window.
She had a slight stiffness still in neck and back, but was dressed to kill, accounts or no accounts.
And there he was. In the garden. Staring with great concentration at a robin redbreast that had found itself a perch on the curly head of Cupid.
The bird’s tail flew up as it deposited an avian verdict on the boy god, and then it departed in search of a worm worthy of disengaging from the soil.
As the inspector turned to follow the flight his eyes scanned the upstairs window. Jean Brash withdrew abruptly, leaving Hannah gawping out like an idiot.
‘Whit does he want?’ Jean hissed.
‘How would I know?’
While Hannah scrutinised further Jean’s mind replayed the fact that McLevy had visited a fortnight back to bring her tidings of the solved murders.
This, of course, included the conclusion of what lay behind the brutal assault on her own person.
Having delivered the relevant summation, the inspector had abruptly left.
Not even scrounged a coffee.
