Fall From Grace im-2

by David Ashton

  The terrible crushing pressure relaxed for a moment as Dunbar’s head absorbed the force of the blow. He blinked his eyes in an almost comical fashion as McLevy smashed at him again and then, while the man reeled back, the inspector dropped the stone and rolled away from underneath to land on all fours drawing great gulps of air into his tortured lungs and throat.

  The two men slowly then lumbered to their feet and while the storm howled above them in the night sky, lurched and grappled at each other like two prehistoric beasts in the primeval sludge.

  But despite Dunbar’s animal nature he lacked McLevy’s recourse to applied madness under severe stress, a ferocious lupine glare indicating the demonic possession within.

  Hercules was driven back towards the tree and one final scything blow to an area somewhere between the belly button and groin laid him writhing to the ground.

  ‘As you say, Herkie,’ McLevy gasped, wiping a smear of blood from his nose with one hand while he brought out the restrainers with the other. ‘Things change.’

  But Fate was not finished with them yet; there would be other acts of violence to play out before these two enemies from birth could truly say the game was over.

  The growth that had aided Hercules to launch his attack had creaked and groaned in sympathy while its champion had engaged in combat. It was an old walnut tree and the roots had been weakened by incessant downpour then stretched beyond their strength by the westerly gale. They snapped, and downwards it fell with a writhing motion as if in a death throe.

  Like a bolt from the blue.

  The trunk and heavy branches missed Dunbar by very little but crashed down upon the vengeful McLevy, pinning him underneath as if crucified to earth.

  He could not move, breath driven from his body and a sharp stabbing pain indicating that a few ribs were either cracked or broken and the back of his head aching mightily where the tree had first struck.

  One of the wizened fruits of the branches fell off and pinged on to his exposed forehead.

  He’d never liked walnuts; they always stuck in the gaps of his teeth.

  Again there was a curious still interlude as if the storm was gathering its strength for a final burst of destruction and in the silence, broken only by the heavy rain, came the sound of laughter.

  Hercules Dunbar staggered to his feet and looked down at his enemy.

  ‘Ye have tae admit, inspector,’ he said with delighted malevolence, ‘either God or the devil is on my side.’

  ‘I would venture, the devil,’ grunted McLevy, the pain in his crushed ribs jolting him as he tried to move.

  But he could not. He was helpless.

  He watched as Dunbar put his hand up to the side of his bruised face, swollen and blotched from the stone that McLevy had clattered against the side of his head.

  The inspector’s body and limbs were entangled and pinioned by the heavy branches that pressed him ever deeper into the earth but his head, by a quirk of chance, was clear, framed by the poor broken boughs like a portrait.

  Therefore he could observe as Hercules Dunbar searched out the flat stone, hefted it judiciously and then came back to kneel by the side of the spread-eagled form.

  Dunbar lifted up the stone.

  ‘Like for like,’ he muttered. ‘The storm will take the blame.’

  Some of the dark clouds above began to fragment and a ray from the revealed full moon glinted on the stone, as it poised in the air.

  McLevy’s eyes were steady upon the other’s face.

  ‘Can you kill in cold blood, Herkie?’ he asked; then it was his turn to laugh ignoring the shafts of agony in his ribcage as he gazed up at Dunbar’s puzzled face.

  ‘I am prepared to die. Are you prepared to end my life? Do you have the gumption for such deliverance?’

  This was his only hope, the inspector had calculated; he in fact had no desire whatsoever to shuffle off this mortal coil without at least one more pot of coffee and a plate of sugar biscuits with Jean Brash, but his chances of avoiding the grim reaper were somewhat limited.

  Pity from Dunbar was out of the question. If he begged for mercy or showed the least fear, it would inflame the man to a primitive lust for the killing blow. The balance must be altered and risk was the key.

  McLevy began to sing softly. A song that Dunbar had heard before in the interrogation room when the inspector was King of the Castle.

  ‘Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling.

  Charlie is my darling, the young Chevalier.’

  Chanted like an incantation, it caused Hercules to jerk back, nostrils flaring.

  ‘That’s Jacobite!’ he accused. ‘Ye dirty wee Papish porker!’

  ‘Then bash in my brains, because I’m going to sing it any fashion.’

  McLevy began again but stopped abruptly and roared with laughter at the look on the face of his mortal foe.

  Hercules Dunbar’s head was in a spin as the gale suddenly lashed in on them again and he was taken backwards.

  His thoughts were whirling like the wind. If he killed this demon he would be safe, no man would follow him; but while McLevy lived, Dunbar would always be looking over his shoulder, always in fear of discovery; he could persuade Jenny to sell the house, move North to her relatives he would be more secure there but even then, even then?

  Kill the bastard and be done with it.

  But how can you kill a man who laughs in your face?

  Hot laughter.

  In cold blood.

  The song began again and it drove him near mad to the point when he lifted up the stone with a snarl and hurled it downwards.

  But if with murderous intent his aim was sadly awry, for the missile crashed beside McLevy’s head and bounced harmlessly aside.

  The Jacobite air halted its jaunty progress. The wind howled and the rain beat down on McLevy’s unprotected face as the two men gazed at each other.

  ‘With any luck ye’ll drown tae buggery,’ Dunbar remarked soberly. ‘Nature will do the job.’

  ‘True enough,’ replied McLevy. ‘Water will one day be the death of me.’

  Hercules suddenly smiled and he moved forward to stand, legs astride, over the recumbent form.

  He fished in his trouser flap, produced his not inconsiderable member and a stream of urine joined the rain gushing down on the inspector’s countenance.

  McLevy froze in disbelief but he should have remembered that there were many facets to the story of the boots.

  The pupils of his eyes narrowed to a grey slit flecked with yellow, and for a second he strained up against the weight of wood that held him fast.

  Had he succeeded in wrenching free it is doubtful whether Hercules would have survived to refasten his trouser flap and kneel down once more to grin savagely as he looked into the cold lethal eyes of the deeply insulted wolf.

  ‘You and me are the same, McLevy. Under the skin. Jist the same animal. Now we are equal. Like for like.’

  Dunbar levered himself to his feet and was about to leave when a command from the depths of the tree stopped him in his tracks.

  ‘Hold it there!’

  Covered in pish or not, survive the night in doubt; in spite of ribs cracked, the inspector glimpsed a chance here.

  Questions must be asked. If the man thought McLevy to die in this place, he might reveal the truth.

  ‘The auld butler. Did you cause his death?’

  Dunbar shook his head in disbelief at the effrontery of the man but answered anyway.

  ‘I did not. I left him where I said.’

  ‘Then who killed the man?’

  ‘I wouldnae know.’

  From his disadvantaged position, McLevy probed further.

  ‘When you came to the house that Sunday, you threatened blackmail to Alan Telfer did you not?’

  This was not such a wild stab as it seemed; the inspector had been long mulling over Dunbar’s veiled allusions from the interrogation.

  The man made no response but with an insolent smile invited further
deduction.

  ‘The blind eye, you turned. The Beaumont Egg. They would be connected?’ continued the policeman.

  For a moment Dunbar considered not responding but then a gust of wind blew some muddy leaves over McLevy’s face and the effort he had to make to blow them off, jerking the breath from one side of his mouth to the other, brought home how helpless and puny was the questioner.

  And Hercules was a boaster. The appreciation he possessed as regards his own clever ploys was boundless. He could not resist this moment.

  Dunbar adopted a mysterious air.

  ‘The bridge must open on time,’ he opined. ‘The cost must not be exceeded. The ore was poor quality, the iron produced shot through wi’ holes.’

  ‘So you filled them up?’

  ‘We were ordered so and thus provided.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘Alan Telfer.’

  ‘He brought you the Beaumont Egg?’

  ‘Whenever necessary. Had it made up special.’

  ‘Yet you had no written proof. Nothing. So when you went to see him he laughed in your face.’

  ‘But I got my own back.’

  ‘A candlestick only. He’s still laughing.’

  This blunt assessment brought a scowl to Dunbar but then a sly dirty smile spread across his countenance.

  ‘I had the last laugh. I saw them.’

  ‘Saw what?’

  ‘I’ll throw it in their face one day. In front of everybody. In their face!’

  This must have been the strangest interrogation in the annals of crime; urine-soaked police inspector, poleaxed by a walnut tree, asks questions of a suspect who might yet change his mind and kill him at any moment.

  Yet it did not impinge on McLevy’s state for one moment. He had a sixth sense when a fact that might help unlock a mystery was about to be revealed, no matter the circumstances or whether the discloser realised the importance of same.

  He also realised the source of the guilt he had sensed in Dunbar as regards the death of his only friend, the riveter, Tommy Loughran, but this was not the time to bring it home; guilt causes anger and that emotion could wait until another day.

  Now it was his turn for silence; he stuck out his lower lip and shook his dripping head as if to imply, ‘What could the likes of you know? What secret could you hug close that could possibly discomfit the great Sir Thomas Bouch and Alan Telfer?’

  Hercules took up the invitation.

  ‘Before I robbed the stick, on the way through, I keeked in the bedroom, maybe a purse lying free. I saw them. Thegither. Telfer was lying on the bed in his shirt and trousers. Sir Thomas was in his nightgown, under the sheets. His head was on Telfer’s chest. They were both asleep. Babes in the wood. Dirty bastards.’

  Dunbar sniggered then looked down at McLevy to see the effect of his words.

  ‘So,’ said the inspector slowly, ‘you closed the door, went to the study, thieved your due, were about to leave and then that was when the auld fellow came in?’

  ‘That was when.’

  An ice-cold blast of wind hit Dunbar full in the face and froze the disappointment on his features.

  McLevy seemed unimpressed. To hell with him then.

  ‘A long night,’ said Hercules. ‘And cold as the grave. I doubt you will not survive. I’ll be sitting by a warm fire wi’ a good woman dishing out the hot meal. Black pudding, chappit tatties and kale. Every mouthful I’ll think of ye. And I’ll wish for your death.’

  Then he was gone into the darkness without another word, leaving the inspector soaked in urine and burning with a fierce indignation.

  There would be a reckoning for this. Only nature may pass water on inspectors of crime.

  But at least he was alive to smell the piddle.

  His mind was racing with what Dunbar had told him; if he got out of this alive, the shape of what was forming in his head would have its day.

  If he got out of this alive.

  29

  Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

  A hero perish or a sparrow fall,

  Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,

  And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

  ALEXANDER POPE,

  An Essay on Man, Epistle 1

  The rat had been flushed from its den by the rushing water and scuttled along the side of the park pond, which was like a miniature version of the writhing distant river.

  The rodent had no fear of water; its sleek coat repelled the hail of rain as it scurried across the grass towards the underbrush where it might find a ratty haven.

  In the tangle of broken branches it glimpsed white flesh and thought, like a good policeman, to investigate, but the flesh moved, a low growl emitted from direction of the white mass and so the rat passed on.

  It could always come back later.

  McLevy watched it depart with a fierce eye and wondered for the umpteenth occasion how he might remove himself from these desperate straits.

  Time had passed and the rain beaten down, with the storm, if anything, increasing in ferocity.

  The inspector was part protected by the foliage but it also might conceal him from any passers-by though, as far as he could observe, they were non-existent.

  No one but a mad person would be out in such a night.

  He averted his face as much as possible but large drips from the broken branches spattered and ran down his skin so that he had to keep his eyes shut, blow out his nostrils like a hog, and keep his mouth tight closed because his head was over an indent in the ground and if he leant it back, water coursed into every orifice.

  And yet to keep it upright was a hellish strain, the difficulty compounded by his aching ribs. In addition a sharp pain cut like a knife at the back of his head.

  It was a most unpleasant sensation and growing worse by the minute in a darkness that seemed without relief; perhaps Hercules Dunbar had postulated correctly when he thought that nature might do the job.

  The inspector’s own thoughts were of a grim cast; this was a slow torture and might last till, consciousness lost, the process could proceed unchecked.

  If he didn’t freeze to death, he would drown. A fine prospect.

  Then he heard a voice shouting above the percussive beat of the wind. It had an oddly familiar ring and he strained to discern the figure and make out the words.

  ‘Strong drink will cause the gambler to rob and kill his brother,

  Aye! Also his father and his mother,

  All for the sake of getting money to gamble,

  Likewise to drink, cheat and wrangle.’

  Only one person in the universe could write such execrable drivel but it was music to McLevy’s ears as the full moon made an opportune appearance to disclose the poet McGonagall in full flow, long coat flapping like the wings of a bat as he bawled out a rhyming diatribe against the evils of alcohol.

  McLevy tried to call forth but received an inopportune mouthful of wind and rain and as he coughed this out, further inflaming the jagged pain in his ribcage, the poet continued his bellowing lay.

  ‘And when the burglar wants to do his work very handy,

  He plies himself with a glass of Whisky, Rum or Brandy,

  To give himself courage to rob and kill,

  And innocent people’s blood to spill!’

  Finally McLevy managed to croak out the man’s name, before he passed by and was gone into the night.

  ‘William McGonagall!’

  The poet stopped abruptly and a look of fear came on his face; was that Satan on the prowl?

  Again the call.

  ‘McGonagall!’

  ‘Who summons me?’ he cried, taking up a defiant stance, his stick raised high to combat evil.

  ‘I am an Edinburgh policeman,’ came the response. ‘And I am under this fallen walnut tree.’

  McGonagall cautiously approached the source of this assertion and found at least part of it to be so. The man was definitely under a tree.

  ‘How do I know you are a p
olice officer?’ he asked, lest the fellow be a footpad in disguise.

  McLevy bit back a vitriolic rejoinder; this numskull was all he had.

  ‘My restrainers will be lying near,’ he grunted.

  Luckily William found them where they had fallen when the tree made its entrance in the drama, held them up in the blowy moonlight to verify McLevy’s profession, then produced his next inquiry.

  ‘Are you in pain, good sir?’

  ‘What does it look like?’ was the aggrieved retort.

  These things established, the poet proved surprisingly adept and practical at prising the inspector from under the heavy branches of his captor.

  He found a broken but still strong enough part of the trunk from the slender tree that had snapped earlier, jammed it under and bore down upon the lever with sufficient force to raise the dead weight so that McLevy could roll painfully free.

  It took no time at all. One moment a man looks death in the face, then a second later he is free as a bird.

  Until the next occasion.

  As the inspector got slowly to his feet he noticed that McGonagall’s wide-brimmed hat was, despite the vicious wind, still fixed upon his head.

  How did he manage that?

  ‘I am Inspector James McLevy and I thank you, Poet McGonagall,’ he uttered formally.

  The man’s face lit up and he struck a pose, leg extended before, and his walking stick over the shoulder.

  ‘You know of me, sir? My fame has spread to many parts, I believe this cannot be contradicted.’

  ‘I saw you in the tavern. With the peas.’

  ‘I am a Good Templar,’ came the oblique rejoinder. ‘Only circumstance forces the Muse into such sorrowful surroundings. I have a family to feed.’

  McLevy winced at the pain from his ribs and, as he gazed into his rescuer’s solemn eyes, felt an obscure pity that would not be denied.

  Did the man not know how absurd was the versification he produced?

  Obviously not, for William gestured around at the whirling elements as if they were boon companions in the search for truth and purity of vision.

  ‘It is your good fortune sir, that I came this way to seek out inspiration. I am composing a poem against the snares and pitfalls of the demon drink.’