Nor Will He Sleep (36 page)

At last the journey ended at a door, which gave way reluctantly with a faint screech.

Was that not the sound he had earlier heard?

The portal opened out to a cramped space enclosed at one end by the balustrade.

There was also a man-sized rectangular opening that led to what appeared to be another flight of steps. But the inspector had no need to explore further.

The effigy leant against the wall opposite in the dim light cast from the narrow windows.

He still had his cane and McLevy still had his useless revolver.

‘I think,’ said the figure in some pain, ‘you have cracked one of my ribs.’

‘Only one? I’m getting old.’

For a moment they looked into each other’s eyes, though inspector’s right was near closed with drying blood and swollen skin.

And the effigy?

There was a curious glitter that shone like winter sun on cold water – in fact his whole presence seemed to flicker with a strange inner light that rendered the watcher unsure whether this
was a corporeal being or some strange projection from a magic lantern show.

And yet McLevy could see sadness.

Quickly as it materialised in the creature’s face, so swiftly did it disappear.

A desire to belong.

The fugitive could have easily found his way outside and disappeared into the streets while a fruitless search was made within the building.

But he did not. Had not. Would not.

Too late now.

‘Murder,’ said McLevy, lifting the defunct weapon, ‘is a vile business. I must ask you to accompany an officer of the law.’

‘You may have to kill me first,’ the effigy replied, skipping oddly this way and that.

‘That would be a last resort.’

‘My assumption also. You have had your chance and not done so. Do you lack the nerve to kill?’

‘I would not wish to do it.’

Nor did he have the wherewithal, unless it was a bare-handit proposition.

While he pondered the odds on that, the effigy made his move.

He whipped the cane high up and down, aiming at his favourite target, the side of the neck.

The inspector hunched up to deflect the blow, but as he did so, the missile changed direction and slashed into the knee of his standing leg.

Despite the trouser covering, this savage cut numbed his leg and as he lunged forward the effigy swivelled around so that McLevy now had his back to the low balustrade.

This was a parlous predicament.

One push and he would fall to the pious flagstones below and they would have no mercy; it was a steep plunge that would break neck, back, and any other bone that was in the vicinity.

Life or death.

The effigy could not know McLevy’s fangs had been drawn and so he was also playing with his own life.

Only one chance.

Bluff and be buggered.

He lifted the revolver and cocked back the hammer.

‘You leave me no option.’

The figure seemed unafraid.

‘I will back my reflexes against the move of your finger. One cut, one thrust, and goodbye.’

Whit a caper, eh?

The blood was running freely once more, so that the inspector had to turn his head grotesquely to the side in order to get a decent view of his protagonist.

Throw the gun and make a rush, though with just the one working leg that might be difficult.

Surely he wasnae going tae hop towards death?

The effigy made a dart forward and as McLevy automatically crabbed back in retreat, he felt the polished wood of the balustrade against his legs.

The cane whistled through the air again, to land with jarring force on his collarbone, and though he grabbed at it, his hand was too slippery with his own blood.

His head was swimming, as previous exertion began to take its toll and the inhabited world seemed to be fading, swirling, like a nightmare.

The effigy bared its teeth.

Killing time.

McLevy gathered his strength.

Survival.

Then a voice floated up from beneath.

The thin personage of Robert Louis Stevenson had emerged to see them high above and had taken a hand.

In the empty church his voice echoed with a strange foreboding, as he stood isolated on the flagstones.

‘John – my boy – I must tell the truth, no matter the cost!’

Words that froze the combatants for different reasons, the effigy jolted at being thus addressed, and McLevy wiped at his eye with his sleeve and wondered what the hell the man was up to
now?

It had better be good.

Stevenson cut an anguished figure as he struggled for words to address the pale, distant outline.

‘I have been to see many doctors and they have told me the same thing. My wife – ’

He broke off. An abject confessional figure in the church where he was raised.

‘My wife and I – have tried for children these many years. She has two progeny from previous liaisons, a fertile womb, but – the fault – is mine.’

The effigy was stock still as if paralysed.

‘I am sterile,’ the regretful but inexorable voice rose in the air. ‘The seed cannot find a path. It has no strength and I – I must tell you. You – could never be
my son. Fate has decreed it otherwise.’

A terrible silence.

‘Mary Dougan knew many men, rest her soul. Never, never could you be my son.’

A sudden scream issued from the effigy and he hurtled forward.

McLevy realised his intention and tried to intercept the man before he hurled himself over.

As they struggled, the effigy twisted round so that he was underneath, with McLevy grappling to retain some hold on the man, who was as slippery as a snake.

Now the death that the killer sought might well be his own, and the perversity of this attempted rescue would have amused Old Nick himself.

As McLevy looked down, the blood pouring from his wound, his opponent smiled and then spat deliberately into the inspector’s one good eye.

The shock blinded McLevy for a moment and that was enough.

The effigy twisted gracefully out of his grasp and then slipped away to let gravity take its course, spiralling headfirst through the air to land with a sickening crunch, arms outstretched like
a cruel parody of the crucified Christ.

Stevenson, with a very shaky hand, lit up another of his thin cigarettes and gazed at the newly-dead arrival.

There was another howl as a man ran forward from the front of the church. Jonas Gibbons in full ministerial garb, his mane of hair near electric at what he had just witnessed.

He cradled his son’s body up against his chest and turned a grief-stricken face upwards.

‘Murderer!’ he screamed at McLevy, who with hands and face awash with blood seemed to justify denunciation. ‘Murderer!’

Queen Victoria looked down with clear features on the three men who had gathered at an hour far beyond her bedtime.

‘What a mess,’ was Roach’s somewhat ungrateful comment on the story thus told.

McLevy said nothing. His eye was killing him, despite the pastoral care of Ballantyne, who had during the salving of deep lesions excitedly brought the inspector up to date with the Carnegie
outcome. A triumph of detection that had been accomplished by Constable Mulholland with the aid of a wee toatie insect and Ballantyne’s gimlet scrutiny.

The inspector’s leg was hurting also, but if he stuck the thing out straight, it behaved better.

Mulholland himself sat quietly enough in the office. He felt no great sense of achievement and besides there was no need to rub the battered bride’s neb in the bowl of barley.

One of his Aunt Katy’s sayings. Strange he had not thought of her in a long time. Perhaps he was developing a mind of his own?

‘And what is
your
verdict, McLevy?’ asked Roach querulously. In fact the only more annoying occurrence than the inspector laying down his version of the law was when he took
the opposite course and said nothing at all.

For a moment the anguished face of Jonas Gibbons brought itself into McLevy’s mind.

‘Don’t keep secrets,’ grunted the inspector. ‘They come back tae bite ye.’

‘I’ll keep vigil on such as regards my future conduct,’ Roach muttered.

‘What a nest of vipers,’ announced Mulholland. ‘God knows how you got through it, sir.’

McLevy tried to flex his leg and winced at the pain.

‘It wasnae easy.’

‘But you solved the case!’

‘I’m sure congratulations are in order,’ said Roach dourly. ‘I take it Stevenson will make a statement tomorrow?’

‘Unless he has some other sleight of hand tae perform.’

McLevy puffed out his cheeks.

‘The only thing ye can rely on with that will o’ the wisp is that he’ll hae tobacco on the go.’

The inspector then surprised his colleagues by banging the flat of his hand upon the lieutenant’s desk. Not in temper – more as if he were trying to banish a troublesome imp of
hell.

‘I’ve met some souple creatures in my time, but that mannie takes them all!’

His recollection switched back to one of the last moments he had spent with Stevenson.

While Jonas Gibbons wept over his dead boy, McLevy limped up beside Robert Louis, who had extinguished his puff so as not to appear sacrilegious.

‘Wis that true?’ the policeman asked aside.

‘What exactly do you mean?’

‘About the seed. And the path?’

‘My dear inspector –
who can believe what a writer tells?
’

That lie, if it was a lie, and the bugger is you would never know, had most probably saved his life.

‘The damnedest thing, though,’ he said.

‘What was that?

In response to Mulholland’s query, McLevy shook his head in genuine perplexity.

‘When we looked at the boy’s face, it had changed back. It wasnae – the other thing. Just – what we all had known. A minister’s son.’

He grimaced as a shaft of pain from his eye ran down the side of his face.

‘He had told his father he was feeling unwell at the funeral and taken the family carriage. Jonas had done his duty, buried the patriarch and then followed back to check the welfare of his
boy.’

The inspector sighed heavily.

‘A wee bit late. The welfare.’

‘It may be, of course,’ Roach uttered carefully, ‘that the authorities decide not to prosecute the case. The poor father has suffered enough, the killer is no more – I
can just envisage Sandy Robb looking at me as if to say,
let sleeping dogs lie.
’

‘The two auld women might not think so,’ replied McLevy with some weariness. ‘Especially Mary Dougan who died with an innocent heart. But it’s all gone now.
A’body’s deid and the case is solved.’

‘And what of Jean Brash?’ Roach asked slyly.

‘From what I hear, she is . . . on the mend.’

‘Good,’ was the lieutenant’s brisk retort. ‘Well at this juncture, let me direct your attention to a small matter that has completely escaped your notice,
McLevy.’

He leant across the desk while both McLevy and Mulholland tried to puzzle out this cryptic remark.

‘Completely escaped your notice!’

And so James McLevy, late afternoon next day, with a newly pounding heart, found himself in the Drummond drawing room, clutching at a badly wrapped parcel.

The frantic activity of murder and mayhem had kept these jellyfish feelings at bay, but now they were back with a vengeance.

A swirling sea for a matchstick boat.

He wondered whether to remove his bowler, but that might indicate an intention to take root.

Then if he didnae remove it, would that not portray a man of low breeding?

A lumpen Lothario?

Ach tae hell with such; he’d keep it on.

The door handle turned to end this welter of indecision and Jessica Drummond entered.

‘My God!’ she exclaimed. ‘You look like a Quasimodo.’

Not the most promising of starts.

‘What on earth has happened?’

The swollen eye and the bulge beside it had indeed rendered the inspector’s face somewhat misshapen, but surely there was no need to compare him to a creature wha hobnobbed wi’
gargoyles?

‘A hazard o’ the trade,’ he muttered. ‘Where is your brother?’

‘Daniel is . . . resting.’

‘Resting?’

‘For the last two days. He cannot stand the light.’

McLevy could have pursued this and put Jessica on the back foot, because they both knew the weakness and potential danger hidden behind that statement, but he decided to play the bluff
inspector.

‘Well ye can tell him tae stick his head out the window. The case is over.’

‘You found the killer?’

Quasimodo nodded a painful assent.

‘And he found me.’

‘I shall inform Daniel. He will be much relieved.’

‘Good. Now we can get down to business.’

He unwrapped the parcel and with solemn if battered mien, laid its contents on the table before them.

It was a top hat. With a severe dent not unlike some on the inspector’s own physiognomy.

‘This belongs tae Lieutenant Roach. It was damaged the night of the rammy by the harbour. Your brother caused such and he can pay for it.’

Her lips twitched in amusement and he wished she wouldn’t do that. For some reason it brought back the moment when he had watched the curls come tumbling down in such sweet disarray.

And looked into those dark eyes.

Drowned at sea.

‘I will arrange for the hat to be . . . reconstituted, cleaned spotless, buffed up and then – delivered to the station.’

‘Make sure ye pay the bill first.’

‘That will be done.’

She shook her head sadly.

‘You still have that awful moustache.’

‘Ye noticed?’

‘Who could not? Like a hedge.’

The memory of their close-quarter encounter had come into her mind also and Miss Jessica Drummond found McLevy’s presence oddly disturbing.