Nor Will He Sleep

by David Ashton

  The parents followed, blissfully unaware of what they had almost stumbled upon.

  As these innocent wayfarers vanished, McLevy turned to face the baleful presence of Gash Mitchell.

  ‘Go,’ he said quietly. ‘Not one word. Or it will be the worse for you.’

  Mitchell smiled malevolently, but McLevy’s hand had slid inside his overcoat once more, and while Mulholland might always play fair like a stupid Irish bastard, the inspector was not to be trusted.

  Had he not killed people with bare hands, shot them down like a dog, drowned them in the open sea, even though the man couldnae swim?

  And chopped down a killer with his own axe?

  These were the stories told.

  Wait for a better time, when such a slaughter merchant was nowhere to be found.

  And so Mitchell turned on his heel and left, his three men trailing after.

  They were gone. Simple as that.

  To leave silence and the sea-haar.

  ‘Come along, constable,’ McLevy commanded breezily, as if nothing had transpired worth a damn. ‘A double murder waits for no man.’

  Mulholland uttered his first words in a long while.

  ‘I used to have a hoop,’ he said. ‘When I was that size. Round and round it went. Never stopped rolling.’

  Chapter 26

  If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each person’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

  Longfellow, Forgiveness

  George Dunwoody splashed the water from the basin up into his face, dried it with a scrap of towel and lifted a square of reflecting glass up to see the effect.

  ‘Ye have a coontenance like a monkey,’ he informed the image. ‘A fusty auld monkey. I cannot tell a lie.’

  Indeed his face was small and pinched, his eyes wrinkled, wisps of hair hung down from a bald pate and the false teeth on the upper half of his mouth stuck out as if permanently bared in a welcoming smile.

  He was proud of these teeth; he had found them on a market stall and the previous owner may well have been a man of substance, for they were good quality. The bottom set not so well fitting, therefore shoogled to and fro uneasily, but they were white enough.

  They wouldnae tempt a rich widow mair’s the pity, but a man has to take comfort where he can.

  George was in truth not a gloomy old birkie, lively enough in his limbs despite them creeping together with age, with a brightness to his gaze, and his small body tidily framed with clothing of a frayed but decent character, again from the market stalls where he used to deal himself; so he knew all the sellers.

  In fact when he thought of it, there was not a thing he wore apart from singlet, drawers and socks that had not at one time belonged to someone else.

  Dead men’s vestments.

  They wouldnae mind.

  It aye went down well to present a decent front.

  His small room in a wee close off Broad Wynd was kept clean, with everything in place.

  Not that he had much with which to wrestle.

  Save for the hoped-for bounteous widow, every old sailor’s dream, his carnal needs were few and far between, so therefore he might keep a tidy ship.

  For women were messy creatures, best left to their own devices or admired from a distance.

  Naked on a photograph say – Eve with the Serpent.

  George gathered his thoughts. He had a task to perform as circumstance dictated. His mind liked to jump about, but this was not the occasion.

  He had lived so long alone that he wondered at times if other folk in the world existed at all, or if he just made them all up like a raree show.

  But no. They did. All to his benefit.

  He would sit in the tavern, nurse his one sma’ beer and listen tae the gossip.

  For George loved to gossip.

  His agile mind would link all the tittle-tattle thegither and store it away, for you never knew when it might come in useful.

  Secrets are money.

  But now he had a task to fulfil.

  His own wee secret.

  A servant of justice.

  He put on a coat that was ower long, but not by too much, and might have once belonged to some office clerk who had stabbed himself to death with his own pen, or perhaps run away to sea with a mermaid and never been seen again.

  All things were possible when you wore other folk’s clothes.

  He cackled to himself at that thought, then snuffed out the candle and left.

  As the door closed and was carefully locked, the spiral of smoke from the meagre wax sentinel rose in a spiral like a will o’ the wisp.

  Hanging in the air.

  * * *

  At the station, Constable Ballantyne was beside himself with excitement.

  When McLevy and Mulholland had arrived back, the tall constable, white as a ghost, had been dispatched in the direction of Roach’s office to bring the lieutenant up to date with recent discoveries.

  Ballantyne had been keeping his head low, having discovered a nest of centipedes amongst the dirty socks in the constable’s boot room, then swiftly transferring them to an empty apothecary’s box of which he received a never-ending supply from his mother’s work at the hospital.

  This one had a label specifying the treatment of gout, which he trusted would not adversely affect the centipedes, since they were endowed by nature with a multiplicity of feet, but since it was a cure not a curse Ballantyne felt relatively at ease.

  He would wait for a quiet time to sneak outside and shake away the insects, but felt a quiver to the backbone when he looked up from his desk to see the inspector’s menacing face, part hidden by the low-brimmed bowler, like a gibbous moon.

  McLevy said nothing.

  Ballantyne also remained silent, but he was almost certain he could hear a scratching noise as the centipedes writhed indignantly in their prison.

  Just then a new shift of young and noisy constables surged out as the street patrols came in like a herd of bullocks.

  ‘I have a job for you, Ballantyne,’ remarked the inspector quietly. ‘I want ye tae listen. Shake your head if anything is beyond comprehension, but if you hae understood nod like the devil and do not fail me upon your life.’

  ‘Are ye sure I’m the right man for the undertaking, sir? There’s bigger than me and mair clever.’

  To this worried response McLevy nodded agreement.

  ‘True. But there’s no-one with your ability to look daft and act the opposite.’

  The inspector took a swift glance at the boot room door, behind which the constables were throwing smelly socks and letting rip wind at each other in the time-honoured fashion that young men mistake for wit.

  He then leant in close.

  As McLevy began to whisper, Ballantyne began to nod.

  * * *

  Mary Dougan might have wondered what all the fuss was about as she lay in the cold room. Sadly the fact that her death was being treated with more decency and care than her life was an irony that she could not appreciate.

  She lay under the sheet, her body sponged clean the day before by a respectable Police Surgeon; her fate had been discussed by highly regarded officers of the law; and then a benediction of sorts pronounced by a world-famous writer who seemed both to mourn her passing and commend her bonny face.

  What more could a girl ask?

  A light in the eye perhaps? A lark’s song in the morning mist? A silly wee lamb in the cold frost?

  Too much to hope it would seem.

  She did not hear the door to the cold room click softly open, nor see a figure slip inside.

  The room was poorly lit, with a few high windows and a small oil lamp on a nearby table where the surgeon laid his tools.

  He had cut her open, found little of interest in the stomach and guts, and then stitched her back together again.

  Her wounds had been catalogued, the evenness of spacing noted, plus keen similarity to the first murder and then with no more t
o divulge, Mary had been left in merciful peace.

  Until now.

  Now a hand peeled back the sheet, and her body was hastily turned to the side and over, so that she lay without dignity on a surgically sliced belly, her buttocks exposed without so much as a by your leave.

  Unhand me sir, I’m a good girl, I am!

  Before she might suffer further humiliation a voice sounded in the empty silence.

  ‘Aye, Billy. The marking is not upon the flesh. It never was. Greed is a terrible thing, is it not?’

  Constable Billy Napier froze as if caught by an icy hand – he replaced the sheet but his breath puffed out in the cold air like a spoor of guilt.

  James McLevy stood at a door he had opened equally quietly. Just behind him stood Mulholland, and a grim-faced Roach had slipped in to make up the trio.

  Napier opened and shut his mouth but no words emerged, so the inspector continued talking as he entered further, the other two following, Roach closing the door as if cutting off an artery of escape.

  ‘I’ve had my eye on you for a wee while, Billy,’ said McLevy softly. ‘But I did not wish to believe the stories. A few o’ the street kitties tellt me that you had been asking benefit of their charms as part of your shift and lifting a wee touch money or you’d run them in.’

  For some reason he whistled the old Jacobite tune, ‘Charlie is my darlin’ ’, through his damp moustache before carrying on.

  ‘Of course some of these girls make up fictions for fun jist tae pass the time so that might not hold water, but one o’ the auld lags this morning passed me word that he’d glanced one of my men lifting glass wi’ Sim Carnegie. The fellow had a heavy coat over his uniform but it fell aside enough that our station badge was seen and his big polis boots stuck oot a mile.’

  A mirthless chuckle came from the inspector but inside he was boiling with fury.

  ‘And here is the description. Hefty big callan, loud voice, laughed a lot, wavy black hair, kept running his hand through the foliage front tae back.’

  ‘You never told me this,’ muttered Mulholland.

  ‘How much aggravation do ye need these days?’ was the edgy retort. In truth the inspector had kept this under his hat because the very thought of it had made him nauseous.

  McLevy stepped forward and carefully turned the corpse over on her back so that she was more decorously arranged, while talking in an almost conversational tone.

  ‘The portrait fitted you, Billy, but it could do others in this station; fair is fair, however that made two counts.’

  He meticulously pulled the sheet up so that it was just under Mary’s chin.

  ‘And this – makes three. Three – is one too many.’

  Napier, despite the cold, broke out in a sweat as he tried to bluster his way out of the chasm.

  ‘I wis jist – curious. Tae see. A deid body. Ye’d want tae see – ’

  ‘Liar.’

  One word. Flat and cutting. But not from McLevy. It came from Roach.

  Mulholland had seen them once before have this strange accord, but that time it had been turned on him.

  He was younger then. Now he would fight his corner.

  It was a dark corner at the moment, because he could not get the leering face of Gash Mitchell out of his mind.

  ‘Greed,’ repeated McLevy. ‘Sim Carnegie paid you to pass information as regards the white favour on the first corpse, so when Constable Ballantyne told you that he had heard Mulholland and I talking that the killer had left a strange sign, Masonic even, carved upon the woman’s back – ye couldnae resist.’

  With a sickening jolt, Napier realised he had fallen into their trap.

  Word had got round there was another corpse in the cold room but no more than that. When Ballantyne had blurted out what he claimed to have overheard and the three now facing him were supposedly ensconced in Roach’s room in deep discussion, it took a matter of seconds to sneak in when no-one was looking, turn the body and find out the secret.

  That would be something to sell!

  Greed.

  The four half crowns Carnegie had slipped into his hand with the promise of more to come.

  ‘I only did it the once,’ was his pathetic excuse.

  The contempt was palpable in their eyes.

  ‘Get out of this station,’ said Lieutenant Roach, the words like coal-spit in his mouth. ‘Thank God you are now out of uniform – you can disgrace it no longer.’

  ‘Ye can keep the boots,’ added McLevy with a feral grin. ‘They played their part in your undoing.’

  He and Roach stood aside so that Napier was forced to walk between them like a man on the way to the hangman’s noose, and as he went by Mulholland he received a final malediction.

  ‘Your name is mud in this city. Not one will respect you. Not the keelies, not the Fraternity, not your own kind. Not even scum like Carnegie. Ye’ve lost it all.’

  Napier finally passed through, Mulholland closed the door behind and there was silence for a moment.

  ‘A clever ruse,’ Roach said without pleasure. ‘And why did the sign have to be Masonic?’

  ‘Gave it a particular . . . application,’ McLevy replied.

  ‘A clever ruse right enough,’ Mulholland remarked thoughtfully.

  ‘Greed is aye stupit.’

  A sudden sound of a raised voice in the station tailed on to this dismissive remark of the inspector’s and the three made their way quickly out into the hall.

  Napier, whose humiliation had been complete and who had cowered under the contempt heaped upon him, now looked for some way in which to redeem himself in his own eyes.

  His gaze had fallen on Ballantyne, who was sitting quietly at his desk wondering what had transpired next door. Billy saw in the constable’s vulnerable form the source of all his misfortunes.

  It is aye a mark of humanity to blame others for their own sins and the weaker the target might seem, the louder the flood of vituperation.

  ‘Ye dirty traitor!’

  This screamed, he hauled Ballantyne up and tried to land a vicious punch on the scarlet birthmark that spread down the side of the constable’s neck.

  Ballantyne managed to block the blow, but the force of it sent him sprawling to the floor.

  For a moment Napier felt a brief exultation. No-one dare meddle wi’ him – see whit ye get –

  The whole station was staring and he gloried at the fear in their eyes before realising that its focus was something else.

  James McLevy stood quietly; Mulholland and Roach eased off to the side.

  ‘Ye’re hammering at the wrong door,’ the inspector said. ‘It was my idea. I jist tellt Ballantyne tae keep an eye on the cold room portal and let us know if ye swalleyed the bait. I’m the one you need tae batter.’

  Billy Napier was a hefty specimen. He had been a bully at school and never beaten in a fight. Nor had he been bested since, for he made it his business to aye land the first smash, hard and true. Fell them where they stand.

  Then the boot can go in. No quarter given.

  His blood was up now – he had been tricked and cheated and he saw before him a man of older years, tired and slow, and who knows but one stave of his big fist might shatter that reputation and leave Billy a heroic figure?

  If he could take McLevy in his own back yard?

  It would be the making of him.

  A giant among men.

  The inspector had not moved, his hands hanging limp by the side; through his open overcoat Billy could glimpse a soft, round belly straining against the watch-fob.

  If he could sink his fist there!

  McLevy wheezed and sniffed in the silence like an old seal at the circus.

  ‘I’ll give ye first swing,’ he remarked – and still he had not budged.

  Billy made his move sudden. Give no warning, yell at the same time to startle the side of beef, pull back and hammer in!

  Indeed a fist did sink into an exposed gut but it was McLevy’s hand – as Billy shifted weigh
t to deliver the blow, the inspector hit him so fast his fist was a blur.

  Full in the breadbasket. Bent him over and then hit him again, full in the face, one, two, three times, straightened him up but broke the nose, bent him back over with one more savage sinking punch; then grabbed him by the collar and the belt of his pants and ran the gasping wretch out of the station headfirst into a lamppost which, unluckily for Billy, was directly opposite the station door.

  There was a sickening distant crunch, then silence.

  After a few seconds McLevy walked back into the station, and for a moment regarded the massed ranks of his young constables.

  They would not be human if somewhere they hadn’t hoped to see the old bull brought down; now they knew better and all the stories they had heard were no doubt true.

  The violence they had witnessed, however, was nothing compared to the violence they had never seen.

  So not one was prepared to meet his eye, save for Ballantyne who, though rubbing at his neck, was not avoiding that stony stare.

  ‘Billy Napier sold out this station,’ the inspector proclaimed, his voice calm as if he had just gone outside to check the weather. ‘He received his just deserts as would any person of a similar proclivity. A word tae the wise, eh?’

  To their credit the assembled motley crew scratched their heads before nodding assent; it would seem the thought of betrayal had never occurred to them.

  Besides Billy Napier was not a popular man. A tormenter of the weak whose farts would fell an elephant.

  Good riddance tae bad rubbish.

  ‘Whit happens here, stays in here!’

  Lieutenant Roach had his own silent caveat to this last declaration from his inspector. Word of the fight would get round Leith in about thirty seconds.

  All grist to the mill.

  Though it did not solve a double murder.

  However, one way or the other, time for a superior officer to take command.

  ‘One of you constables search out a bucket and mop,’ he announced crisply. ‘There may be blood on the paving outside and we must discharge at all times our civic duty.’

  ‘There’s some on the flagstones here as well,’ added Mul-holland, equally unperturbed. ‘Ye don’t want it to be soakin’ in. Blood is terrible for that.’