by David Ashton
‘She was sent up. Tae service him. Keep her mouth shut. But she tellt me only. Frae the same street ye know?’
‘Uhuh.’
The door to the tavern swung open and McLevy cursed under his breath lest it might be Molly, the once-arrested shoplifter, but it was just a chimney-sweep, covered in soot and thirsty for beer.
For a laugh to celebrate the Halloween, which had finally arrived, he had gouged off the soot round his eyes and the white skin made him look like a daylight demon.
‘A horrible wee pot-belly man,’ Maisie continued. ‘Wi’ a whiney kind of voice and he –’
Her voice almost trailed away. The inspector waited, trying to make himself inconspicuous as if she might be talking to herself.
‘– he pits a knife against her bare breast.’
‘Whit happened?’
‘She started tae howl tears and he kicked her out.’
‘Top room, you say?’
‘Ye cannae get higher.’
McLevy fumbled in his pocket.
‘I have a likeness of this man, I want Lizzie to –’
‘No!’
The word came out with enough vehemence to turn the sweep back from the bar and he wondered for a moment what the man had said to cause the woman such distress.
His white-rimmed eyes blinked comically at them for a second before he went back to his beer.
‘No,’ Maisie repeated less loudly, but with gritty resolve. ‘I’ve taken my life in my hands enough and if my mother sees me sitting wi’ you, she’ll hae a convulsion.’
She pointed to the door.
‘You get tae hell out of here, McLevy. I don’t wish to be seen in your company. I have a reputation tae keep.’
And so he took her advice, nodding politely to the sweep, who grinned, broken teeth in the black face.
‘It’s my birthday,’ the man announced. ‘Born on Halloween. Whit a nonsense, eh?’
But he was talking to a closed door. The man had vanished. So he turned back and smiled at the woman.
A fine big specimen. Happy Birthday.
Meantime, Constable Ballantyne sat in the records room and counted the number of dead beetles he had found inside the folder pages like so many bookmarks. He had arranged the insects in a neat echelon all along the dusty surface.
Fourteen. Most the same kind as far as he could see, with a little yellowish marking on their back shell.
A tribe perhaps on their way to the Promised Land when they got sidetracked into the annals of crime.
Larder or Bacon Beetle – Dermestes lardarius – unless Ballantyne missed his guess. He had been reading up on the targets of his merciful interventions and these fitted the book description.
Very destructive to paper. But one bite of Leith’s past criminality seemed to have put paid to the whole clan.
Ballantyne sighed. He had found it oddly peaceful in the records room, no-one to bother him, a line-up of dead insects for company and he, like the curator of a museum, lost in the dusty tomes of ancient homicidal lore.
To wit, approximately eighteen years ago when a brutally shot body was discovered in the Leith Docks.
Inspector McLevy had set him the task of finding the relevant dossier and this had taken most of the morning.
But here it was. The gist of it anyway.
The writing was in large block capitals by a certain Inspector Brunswick who had retired not long after and returned to his native Stirling.
Name of corpse: Jonathen Sinclair, identified from papers as American citizen. No trace of address in Edinburgh.
Cause of death: Two bullets. One to the body. The other from close range to the face, causing great damage.
Motive for killing: Undiscovered. Lack of evidence.
Case closed: Three months later. Lack of evidence.
Further notes: the American Consul in Glasgow, Warner L. Underwood, disclaims all knowledge of the man save that he was suspected of being a Confederate agent who may have been attempting to buy ships for the South and who deserved what he got. We have enough troubles in Leith without other folk bringing their mess here.
On that somewhat personal note, Inspector Brunswick ended his report.
There were a few other additions but Ballantyne reckoned he had absorbed the substance and anyway it was for McLevy to peruse and cogitate upon.
Accordingly he swept the defunct insects into a small piece of paper, which he wrapped around neatly to be shaken out with due ceremony from the back window of the station at a later juncture, tucked the folder under his triumphant arm, and walked off with mission accomplished.
In Roach’s office, however, little was consummated and tempers were rising.
The lieutenant was sitting at his desk, McLevy leaning over, Mulholland at the door; again not unlike their usual automatically assumed interrogation positions but this was more the other way round.
McLevy had laid out his whole case but his superior was unconvinced.
‘It is not enough,’ Roach remarked. ‘Not by a long swipe, McLevy. You are at least two clubs lengths short.’
This golfing reference sailed over the inspector’s head as he tried to rein in his frustration.
He took a deep breath and drove in again to restate the case for the defence.
‘Doctor Jarvis agreed wi’ me, sir –’
‘A wonder in itself, I know, but still not enough –’
‘A professional job, atween the third and fourth ribs, straight into the heart, one thrust.’
‘Scientific, almost,’ Mulholland offered.
‘A practised killer. Too professional. Even for Jean Brash.’
‘You think so?’ Roach looked across at Queen Victoria who seemed doubtful as well.
The monarch had been on that wall for a while. Stasis breeds doubt, no denying that.
‘Jarvis remarked the wound to be a touch wider than Jean’s blade.’
‘She may have sawed it back and forth to extract the weapon she had just used for murder. Not very professional, of course, which destroys your previous argument.’
Roach was pleased with this and glanced to see if Mulholland had appreciated the subtle riposte but for some reason the constable’s face registered a blank.
‘Again,’ McLevy hammered out, undeterred, ‘Jarvis agreed with what both Mulholland and I had previously noted; Galloway was stabbed from the left. “Sinister”, said he.’
‘Jean Brash is right-handed,’ Mulholland added.
‘Her only orthodoxy,’ said Roach dryly, however it did make some impression on him; left-handers were the bane of his life, he had lost in the President’s Cup to one not two months ago.
However it was still not enough.
‘All very circumstantial and does not justify an official search warrant to enter the property.’
This was the rub.
To apply successfully for such a warrant through official channels needed a lieutenant’s approval.
Of course McLevy could barge in unofficially and rampage through the Countess’s hotel but if resisted, if there were problems, he would need a force of men.
Without endorsement he could only rely on Mulholland at best and even that was not sure; and if by any chance the raid was unsuccessful the inspector ran the risk of the instant discipline of demotion.
McLevy had too many black marks on his record as it stood. A series of heavy scores. He had once got across the present prime minister, Gladstone, and was only rescued by the fact that he saved the man’s life.
The inspector indicated the cable that lay on Roach’s desk, read by the lieutenant but not, McLevy was certain, appreciated to full extent.
‘The knifeman frae the Rustie Nail, the acid-pourer at the market –’
The likeness of Lily’s was beside the cable and McLevy gestured again to make sure Roach realised the burgeoning significance of it all.
‘I sent the description to a colleague of mine in London…a professional killer, plump, left-handed, looks like a
squashed toad, and he came back with a name. Alfred Binnie. A hired assassin. Apprentice at one time to Tom Partridge of Shoreditch, who was top of his trade. Binnie took over the mantle. Some say he killed his master to be the only one on hand.’
‘This colleague has done you proud,’ Roach muttered, skimming the contents once more.
‘Binnie has not been seen around his usual haunts in Shoreditch for a wee while. I believe he is in Edinburgh.’
‘And where does that get us exactly?’
This from Roach was quite hopeful in that he had not dismissed the cable out of hand.
Mulholland had been well briefed by McLevy before they entered and though he may have had lingering doubts himself, he took a deep breath as they went for broke.
‘Jean Brash may have walked into a trap, sir,’ he opined, moving off the door to the side so that they flanked Roach as if he indeed were a suspect.
‘Binnie made the kill. Laid it on Jean,’ McLevy said.
‘The Countess is behind it. A war between them, sir.’
‘I have a witness who has seen Binnie in the lair of the Countess,’ McLevy added, his eyes gleaming with hunting fever. ‘I know his hiding place. Take him and we crack the case but I need to get in the front door!’
‘We’ll cover the back with a few men,’ Mulholland said hopefully. ‘Diversion and deception, sir.’
Which might well describe what the two were about with their own superior officer.
‘Who is this witness?’ asked Roach, unmoved by all this diversification.
‘Her identity must be secret. For the moment. But I guarantee her veracity.’
The lieutenant sniffed at that unsatisfactory reply from his inspector and then asked the question that had been in his mind since the two had entered his office.
‘Inspector. Are you sure your feelings are not personally involved and that you are therefore indulging in what I can only describe as…wishful thinking?’
McLevy froze like a statue and Mulholland tensed, wondering if, as his Aunt Katie would have put it, the fox has bit the hen and watch the feathers flying.
‘I have no personal feeling where justice is concerned,’ the inspector said quietly. ‘But I believe there is a danger we may fail innocence in this case no matter how unlikely the accused is to deserve such designation.’
‘Belief?’ said Roach seizing on the word. ‘I need more than that. I need proof. Facts. Indisputable facts.’
‘Then you may have to take my word for it, sir. That we will find proof. Behind the door of the Countess.’
Roach said nothing.
Over the years he had borne witness to the fact that McLevy’s instincts had their own truth to tell. But they also invariably got the lieutenant into hot water.
Scalding, on occasions.
This could be one of those times.
Mulholland thought to say something more but a slight movement of his inspector’s hand stilled the voice within.
In the stretched silence there was a timid knock at the door and it sprang open, breaking the tension, to reveal the figure of Ballantyne who held out a dusty folder like some sort of sacrificial offering.
‘I found it, sir,’ he said. ‘It was gey well hidden.’
‘My thanks, Ballantyne,’ replied McLevy accepting the folder with due gravity. ‘We are lost without you.’
He turned to the questioning look of his lieutenant.
‘The Morrison case,’ he said. ‘Key information.’
‘Oh? You haven’t forgotten it then?’
To this waspish retort the inspector inclined a dignified nod. Dignity, as a poet had once told him, is a good way to keep your hat on your head in a howling gale.
‘My mind is full of many things, sir. Many of them awaiting action.’
Back to Roach.
His long jaw twitched from side to side, a sign of intense cogitation.
McLevy, a man who was rarely still, once more resembled a statue.
Ballantyne looked at Mulholland, who was taller than everyone else and could therefore stare off into space without being interrupted.
The young constable apprehended something was going on but he was buggered if he knew how it was constituted.
Then he saw to his dismay that just past Mulholland’s lanky figure, on the wall, a small insect was making its way up the portrait of Queen Victoria.
It looked like a churchyard beetle, which had the habit, when disturbed, of squirting a smelly, yellowish-brown fluid from the raised tip of the abdomen.
What if it did so over Queen Victoria?
However if Ballantyne raised the alarm, either one of these three merciless men, in defence of the realm, would spatter the insect where it strived.
But could he stand by and let such a creature crawl over the face of the monarch?
Decision, decisions.
32
Three merry boys, and three merry boys,
And three merry boys are we,
As ever did sing in a hempen string
Under the Gallows-Tree.
JOHN FLETCHER,
The Bloody Brother
The Countess read the search warrant, seemingly unperturbed as police prepared to file past her into the crevices of her bawdy-hoose.
‘This appears to be in order,’ she observed. ‘And it is such a pleasure to meet you in the flesh, lieutenant.’
The only part of his anatomy Roach could see was the hand holding the warrant and he wondered, not for the first time, if he had made a mistake by insisting that he come along to keep an eye on proceedings since it was his name on the warrant just under the sheriff officer’s.
‘You have been pointed out to me at the opera,’ the Countess continued serenely. ‘I believe it was La Traviata. Such a sad story. The Wayward One.’
Verdi’s tale of a noble-hearted courtesan rang too many bells for Roach at this moment so he contented himself by taking back the search warrant, and signalling his men to move past into the bowels of the house.
‘Don’t break anything,’ he ordered, with a warning glance to Ballantyne who sped past, eager to take part in his first official raid.
McLevy had been chafing at the bit behind and now the courtesies had been observed, trampled them underfoot.
‘Alfred Binnie – where is he?’ he demanded, almost shoving in front of his lieutenant.
‘I beg your pardon?’ she replied but in the beat before this, he noted her eyes flick for a moment to the flight of stairs that led to the upper rooms.
‘The object of our search, madam,’ said Roach.
‘A hired assassin and acid-pourer, his speciality is the knife,’ McLevy threw at her.
It worried him slightly how calm the Countess was being; hopefully all that would change.
‘I do not know who you might mean, inspector –’
‘Then let me find him for you!’
Rudely interrupting her measured tones, he pushed past and moved with surprising speed up the stairs, his old black revolver in his coat pocket bumping reassuringly against his leg as he thrust upwards.
‘Bring some men with you!’ Roach called unavailingly, but then an uproar from the main salon distracted him.
An irate voice, one that the lieutenant found disturbingly familiar, rang out into the hall.
‘Take your hands from me, ye illiterate extraction!’
Then there was a roar of indignation and outrage before Ballantyne emerged with what looked like a brown wig in his possession.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he explained in some confusion. ‘The man resisted being moved and this came away in my hands.’
Another roar of outrage and Roach, to his horror, finally placed the voice. At the same time the butler who had admitted them at the door, then retreated out of sight, suddenly reappeared from the door of the salon, snatched the wig from Ballantyne and darted back inside to restore it to the rightful owner.
Another bellow resembling something that might have greeted Perseus from the
middle of the Labyrinth came from the unseen presence, followed by some alarmed female shrieks a little further away.
Roach’s face was ashen.
Ballantyne’s strawberry red.
The sonorous baritone of the butler sounded, trying to calm the situation.
More shrieks in chorus.
The high tenor of outraged authority.
The Countess laughed softly.
‘Just like the opera,’ she murmured.
Meanwhile James McLevy had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had found the room, he was certain of that. It bore the marks of sequestered occupation – a single mattress bed jammed into a corner, a glass with dregs of stale beer, biscuit crumbs, a cheap case with a few items of male clothing – but nothing else.
The bird had flown.
He hauled up the window and looked down into the back garden where the snarling yelps of dogs could be heard.
Mulholland plus a few men were milling around in uncertain fashion and the constable looked up at McLevy with annoyance on his face,
‘That was the very devil!’ he shouted up. ‘Getting these dogs back in their kennel. Two of the men got bit.’
‘Never mind that,’ the inspector bawled back. ‘Did ye corner him?’
‘Binnie? No – do you not have him?’
‘No. Are ye sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure!’
‘Bugger!’
McLevy slammed the window shut again and scrabbled in the suitcase to see if there might be some clue as to where the fellow had gone.
But there was nothing but dirty underpants and smelly socks. The man was not house-proud.
And this was not proceeding according to plan.
Ballantyne came though the open door, which bore the mark of a hefty boot that McLevy had dealt the lock before charging in to find nothing behind it.
‘The lieutenant wishes your presence downstairs, sir.’
McLevy thought to ask why but decided to find out for himself; one thing for sure, it would not be congratulations on a job well done.
In fact he met Roach part way up the stairs, the lieutenant trying to put some distance between himself and looming catastrophe.
Just before they began talking there was the crash of china and a muffled cry from the Countess.