by David Ashton
This comparison to the great Israelite, who, though initially a wise ruler, was brought low by idolatry and fleshly inclination, brought Forbes snapping to attention.
‘A judgment?’
‘As regards his honourable intentions towards your daughter – what are his prospects?’
The succinct question produced an equally concise reply.
‘Poor. Emily is too young. She does not know her own mind. Or heart.’
Roach nodded. In a strange way, he was growing into the function he had reluctantly assumed.
‘I would agree with that. But perhaps … in years to come?’
‘It would be many years.’
‘The young man may believe that your daughter is worth waiting for.’
‘He may wait. But what of her?’
‘She has, I am told, expressed some … fondness?’
The forefinger of Robert Forbes began to tap upon the table, indicating a mite of agitation within.
While the man tapped on, Roach observed him with a professional eye. A widower of some three years’ standing and well enough presented. The eyebrows were somewhat tufty and the face though not exactly pudgy had some flesh to spare but his posture was erect and his hair carefully combed to conceal an incipient bald spot at the back.
A small man. But he carried himself like the church elder he was and the darting restless eyes missed nothing.
Light brown in colour, the eyes. Hazel almost. An odd contradiction to the surrounding rectitude.
He pronounced judgment.
‘As regards … fondness?’ The word sat strangely in his mouth, like a sour plum. ‘Emily is prone, I am afraid, to whims. I indulge her far too much myself. One day, it’s one thing. One day, another.’
Somewhere in the room a floorboard creaked as if a ghost had joined the party.
Roach glanced around, but there was only himself, Robert Forbes and the long table.
‘So you see little future, only a whim?’
‘I cannot tell the future,’ Forbes responded, shifting in his chair and showing unmistakable signs of wishing to curtail the discussion.
But Roach did not move and Forbes was provoked into setting up a further obstacle.
‘Then there is position. In society. The constable has a long way to go.’
‘But, I would have thought that you of all people –’
The lieutenant had blurted out the words before taking account of their effect and stopped abruptly as Forbes stiffened in his seat.
‘Aye? What of me?’
Roach was committed now, too late, the cat out of the bag, forgetting that though it was common knowledge Robert Forbes had worked himself up from the ranks, the man himself obviously harboured some sensitivity about his origins, and the subject must be approached with delicacy.
Thank god it wasn’t McLevy on hand, though Forbes had mentioned that the inspector had landed up at his office not long ago that night with some annoying inquiries and the lieutenant would catch hold of him tomorrow to ask his subordinate what he was up to this time.
Forbes was still waiting. Roach twitched his saurian jaw and tried a smile but crocodiles are more noted for their rending teeth.
‘That you would understand the possibilities of rising to the heights from another … level, as it were.’
And there Roach ground to a halt as the face before him went a dangerous shade of puce.
‘I have worked my fingers to the bone to get where I am,’ said Forbes tightly, ‘there’s few men with my energy or application!’
‘I’m sure that’s true.’ A mild observation that did not placate the man one bit.
‘I have sacrificed much and will again, what is so dearly bought, cannot be lightly thrown away.’
‘Dearly bought?’
Forbes suddenly rapped the knuckle of his hand upon the table to emphasise the words.
‘Respect! Position!’
The lieutenant was getting out of his depth, this was the sort of morass McLevy would have revelled in, Roach had often observed that the angrier folk got, the happier the inspector became.
He took a reluctant leaf from his subordinate’s book, and remained silent, with a slightly surprised look on his face as if to say, ‘I know I’m missing something but I am unsure of what it might be. Clarify my addled wits.’
Roach couldn’t quite manage the stupid expression McLevy produced on his face on such occasions, but he did his best.
It provoked an illogically fierce response.
‘Emily is too young. She must be protected!’
‘Protected? From the constable?’
‘From life itself. She is my daughter!’
The father’s eyes were burning from some internal combustion and Roach decided to opt for discretion, although he could not quite keep a slight chill out of his voice.
‘I shall convey these sentiments to Mister Mulholland.’
Forbes stood and nodded somewhat jerkily then made for the door. He turned from there to have the last word.
‘I have nothing against the man.’
‘I can see that,’ was the dry response. ‘Good night, Mister Forbes.’
‘Good night, Lieutenant Roach.’
The heavy door closed with a dismissive thud and Roach was left in far from splendid isolation. He flexed his jaw thoughtfully from side to side; he and Mrs Roach had not been blessed with progeny and it no doubt part accounted for the energy with which she threw herself into the giddy affairs of the young.
The lack also deprived him of understanding the disquiet that must burn in a father’s breast at the prospect of losing a daughter and gaining what he might consider to be a dead loss.
For a moment he felt a strange pain and emptiness as he allowed himself to wonder what it might have been like to be a progenitor.
If a boy, he would have gained a caddie. Not to be sniffed at. The older you get, the heavier the golf bag.
And if a girl? Two Mrs Roaches, cheerful and chirpy, always on the go, flitting to and fro. Always. Chirpy.
Perhaps the Almighty, in His wisdom, knew best.
17
Come sing now, sing; for I know you sing well,
I see ye have a singing face.
JOHN FLETCHER,
The Wild-Goose Chase
The two thieves grinned nervously at each other as they waited in the darkness of the wynd. This should be easy, a drunk man and woman, easy pickings. However, though they were good at their trade, they had but recently arrived in Leith and so were still finding their feet.
That is they knew how to freeze a mark to the wall with one knife to the throat and cut his purse loose with the other blade, but geography and local rules of engagement were yet to be fully discovered.
They were about to receive a lesson.
Donnie Stevens and Jug Donleavy – hard men, well known in their native Paisley, but forced to quit the place owing to the inadvertent death of a fellow robber over an argument as to whose turn it was to buy the next round of rustie-nails, a large measure of cheap whisky that brought down the red mist like no other. So it had proved and the man had died. The inadvertent part being he had four brothers, evil bastards who would not listen to reason.
Donnie was a small rat-faced specimen with a vicious temper, it was he who had stuck the fellow robber; Jug was an amiable thickset thug whose ready smile had lulled many a victim off guard.
That smile and the fact that his ears stuck out like an elephant’s gave him a gormless air but his favoured weapon was a length of lead piping which broke heads, noses and collar bones with a fine disregard.
The drunk woman was singing, a hellish caterwauling of Robert Burns’ beautiful love song,
‘Flow gently Sweet Afton, amang thy green braes,
Flow gently I’ll sing ye, a song in thy praise;
My-yy Mary-eees a-a-sleep –’
Her voice cracked on the note and dissolved into maudlin tears as she staggered heavily in the narrow wynd, causing th
e beanpole drunk supporting her to stagger also and find himself unexpectedly on the point of Donnie’s knife, the tip resting just under his chin.
‘Not a move,’ said the vindictive Donnie, ‘or I’ll cut ribbons out of ye.’
‘He will that,’ agreed Jug. ‘Jist hand over yer wee poke of money, kind sir, and we can all go home. Safe and sound.’
As Jug laughed at that thought, Donnie dug the knife in for emphasis and the beanpole, his blue eyes wide with what Donnie took for fear, nodded gingerly and reached slowly into his inside jacket pocket.
But as he did so, he dropped the woman who landed on her backside with a howl of pain and split the knifeman’s attention for a moment.
It was enough. What Mulholland produced from his pocket was not a purse but a large bony fist which he planted into the middle of Donnie’s face, crunching back his nose and sending the man hurtling in reverse for at least three feet to land on his hands and knees, spitting blood with a terrible ringing in his ears.
Jug’s mouth dropped open, this was their first plunder in Leith, and no one had prepared him for such violence.
He stepped forward, drawing out his lead piping but the beanpole simply walked up and kicked him in the groin.
Mulholland’s Aunt Katie had always advised him thus, ‘When in doubt, go for the crown jewels.’
Or as McLevy also counselled in the early days when a wee street keelie had laid the callow young constable low during a resisted arrest, ‘Hit them first. And hit them hard.’
Jug joined Donnie in a groaning chorus on the ground and Mulholland cursed the fact that, having changed into civilian clothes to escort Mary Rough homewards, he had neither restrainers nor his lethal self-fashioned hornbeam truncheon to hand.
He moved in anyway, another couple of blows would do it, knock the wits out of them long enough for him to borrow a cart from somewhere and wheel them to the station.
This intention was somewhat forestalled however when Mary, in her befuddled state and the gloom of the wynd not helping one bit, took him to be in danger, threw her arms around his legs and clung on like a leech.
‘I’ll save ye, constable!’ she bellowed.
That word alone was enough to send Donnie and Jug off as speedily as their crippled condition allowed, while Mulholland tried in vain to disentangle himself from Mary’s vice-like grip of his kneecaps.
By the time he had achieved this, hauling her up to face him, the thieves were long gone.
‘Jist as well I’m here, eh?’ said Mary.
Mulholland sighed. Though he was not too downcast. He had noted the faces; they would meet again.
‘Just as well, ma’am,’ he replied politely.
Mary drew herself together in queenly manner.
‘Ye can let me go now, constable. I’ll sail under my own steam.’
And that she did. Not without the odd tack to the wind but kept her dignity and footing, through the narrow alleys, into one of the closes; even after some unsuccessful passes at the lock of her door with a bent key, Mary still achieved a ladylike decorum as she handed it to the constable.
‘You do it so. My eyes betray me.’
He did as instructed. She walked into the single room where she lived her life, sat in a crooked chair, directed him to light a candle in case the bogeymen arrived to steal her Catholic soul and promptly fell asleep.
Mulholland lit the candle and looked down at her with obscure affection. She reminded him of the old women he had grown up with in Ireland; life had washed over them like a violent sea, leaving barnacles for eyes, strands of weed for hair, and wrinkled skins from the blasts of salt.
Yet they survived. Endured. And laughed.
As Mary had in the Old Ship. Mind you she had reason to be cheerful, it was Mulholland buying the drinks. For him weak beer, for her a hooker of the hard stuff.
She alternated between tears for her dead son and raucous mirth over some of the scrapes that had landed upon her in life.
She’d had to steal her own wedding dress from a department store, and the man she married, Andrew Rough, a skylighter of note, had fallen from a roof in the course of a burglary, landed in a waggon full of pigs heading for the slaughterhoose, and stank for years.
Tall tales from long ago. Andrew was departed like his son, the poor man had caught a wasting disease in the Perth Penitentiary and died skin and bones.
She had no fear to tell the constable of past crimes, because now she was as pure as the driven bloody snow.
Mary laughed once more though the pain was never far away and Mulholland also wondered if she was testing him out to see if he was after something, which he indeed was, but he gave no hint of such, smiled bashfully and not once put in a question about the fire.
Another thing learned from McLevy. Never ask the anticipated.
However he did have to tolerate many amused glances from the regulars of the tavern who knew him for a clean-living fellow and no doubt wondered what he was doing with such a disreputable old biddy.
When they were drinking in the curtained booth it was satisfactory enough but as it came time to leave, Mary had leant heavily upon him, announcing loudly to the assembly that he was a fine big specimen, and she’d wager that he was all in proportion.
Mulholland hurried her outside ignoring the open laughter at his back, and when the night air fermented the alcohol content in her blood, had no option but to stagger along with her, grit his teeth when she lifted her voice in song, and pray that he did not encounter anyone of note.
Robert Forbes, for instance. Or Emily. Or both.
But all he had encountered was a knife at his throat, a mere bagatelle.
Mary snorted in her sleep and Mulholland prepared, like her eyes, to betray the old woman.
The room was clean enough and bare of furnishings with a small bed stuck into the corner. The inventory included a chipped and battered chest of drawers which stood on three feet with a lump of stone stuck under to make a fourth, a recess where some tawdry clothes were hanging, an empty fireplace, a wee coalbunker and any amount of floorboards, cracked and creviced, that might provide a hiding spot were there a policeman in the house.
Which indeed there was.
When they had questioned Mary earlier he had noted the inspector’s eyes sweep round the room appraisingly and Mulholland now did the same.
Where to begin?
McLevy had recommended, when she is least expecting, look for an opening.
The woman was asleep, unconscious, a less expectant state could hardly be envisaged.
Mary was too crafty to undo herself with a word. Yet, the inspector was sure that she was hiding something.
So, where was the constable to begin?
If, for instance, the expired mouse under Mary’s bed had been alive with eyes to see, it would have witnessed the tall figure of a man swiftly, surely and always most neatly, sift through the pitiful contents of the chest of drawers, rifle the threadbare hanging clothes, tap the walls and boards for hollow spots, look below the mattress and sheets, then beneath the frame to find amid the dust, for folk with no carpets to sweep things under have to sweep it somewhere, a lifeless rodent body.
But a dead mouse cannot look for or at itself, and so the circle was complete. Apart from a mercifully empty chanty-pot, Mulholland had found nothing.
Little bubbles of saliva were forming at Mary’s mouth where she blew out gently in her sleep; then she started and almost came awake.
Hypnos, however, once more received her in his arms, and, as Mulholland’s head had whipped round in alarm at her stirring then watched her be claimed anew by the God of Sleep, his attention was taken by the fireplace.
The grate was empty but that was not his target.
The small coalbunker.
McLevy was a great man for extremities. It was his assertion that the hands and feet could tell you just about all you wanted to know.
Faces, however, were the very devil.
The constable had noted tha
t as Mary tucked in with relish to her hookers of whisky, two of the nails on her right hand were crusted with a residue of black. The woman, despite her aptitude for knocking back John Barleycorn, maintained herself diligently enough. A habit from her former criminal days when a decent shoplifter always had to look respectable.
Despite the damp weather the fire had not been set, nor were there any ashes to be seen.
So, why the black crust?
The constable opened the bunker and gazed inside. Coal, to be sure, filled it halfway up; of the lowest quality, crumbling and powdery, just perfect for getting under the fingernails.
Which Mulholland was about to experience as he reached in and searched amongst the brittle fragments.
As his fingers probed further, he came across a sharp edge that was certainly not a lump of cheap coal.
Both hands in now, to lift it out into the light.
A smallish box. He blew the coal dust off it towards the fire grating, no point in making a mess.
A thin wooden box with a marking on it which stirred a vague memory, then when he opened it up and sniffed the contents, the memory sharpened.
A smile spread across his face.
A smile of triumph that promised retribution but took little account of the vagaries of Fate.
At that moment Mary awoke to see the constable and what he held in his hands.
She bowed her head, and Mulholland moved in for the kill.
18
Revenge is a kind of wild justice.
FRANCIS BACON,
Essay
Leith, 1836
Herkie Dunbar tried to keep the fear at bay as he limped down the sharp cobbles, and turned into the alley that led to the wynd where he lived.
He was big for his age, raw-boned, hard-knuckled and king of the gang, but at this moment in mortal dread because of the following set of circumstances.
Along with the wild straggle of boys who terrorised all the smaller, younger children in the wynds, with particular attention paid to any pretty girl with fair hair who would be surrounded and spat upon until she was covered from head to foot with saliva and in hysterics, tears and spittle running down her face in equal measure, it was his custom to bathe every Saturday morning in the nudie, bare scud, under the hot summer sun, in Puddocky Burn, their name for the Water of Leith.