Nor Will He Sleep (8 page)

‘So – protector, what do you intend?’

‘Intend?’

‘You heard me.’

McLevy pondered, stroking a moustache that Jean considered would have looked better on a dromedary.

‘I could send Constable Mulholland back tae the station for tweezers.’

‘
Tweezers?
’

‘Evidence gathering. We could pick the feathers, one by one. Take time, though.’

McLevy’s face gave nothing away. Jean nodded as if her worst fears had been confirmed.

‘Hannah – d’you hear this lunacy?’

‘I do, Mistress. Typical.’

Mulholland once more adopted the role of peacemaker.

‘The trouble is, Mistress Brash,’ he said earnestly, ‘the feathers are stuck on the tar. And the tar is stuck to the gates. We’re all sort of . . . coagulated.’

As a statement, thought McLevy to himself, it was worthy of Ballantyne at his most cryptically ingenuous.

Jean shot Mulholland an evil glance.

‘I just had these gates painted. With gold leaf.’

‘Ye can still see some wee bits,’ said McLevy.

Jean’s eyes narrowed; it was still difficult to tell from the inspector’s countenance whether he actually knew how obtuse he appeared.

She tried once more.

‘Why, may I ask, are these little swine picking on me?’

‘Possibly because their fathers spend more time at your bawdy-hoose than they do at home.’

‘That surely would be a blessing.’

‘It is certainly to your profit.’

The two had provoked each other beyond their normal bounds, but underneath there was a mutual bafflement, as if they were two ships that had been cut loose and kept bumping into each other in
the dark.

As if something deep had lost touch.

‘What – are you going to do about it?’ Jean asked coldly.

‘I shall file report,’ was the stolid answer. ‘Gates painted, bawdy-hoose in uproar. Scarlet woman.’

Jean leant forward till their faces were almost touching.

‘You go tae hell, McLevy,’ she said intensely. ‘You go straight tae hell.’

With that she swung round, signalling Lily, who had been lip-reading the exchange with mounting disquiet, and Maisie, who would most cheerfully have seen the inspector in Satan’s Palace,
since he had once arrested her sister for the minor crime of shoplifting a bridal dress and the poor girl about to get married, to pick up the spare empty washing pan.

Jean Brash marched off without a backward glance, spine stiff as a poker, followed by the pan-bearers.

A baleful look from Hannah set the magpies back to scrubbing, while Mulholland carefully disentangled his arm and addressed his inspector.

‘I don’t think she’s very pleased, sir.’

‘Ye could be right.’

Hannah shook her head.

‘That’s you buggered for ony coffee in the Just Land,’ she observed. ‘If the mistress offers I’d check for poison.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ replied McLevy.

He felt oddly out of sorts at the culmination to the exchange, as if he was somehow in the wrong.

But surely not?

Why was Jean so upset?

After all, what had he said?

Mulholland had that funny look on his face again as he gazed over, not unlike the Glasgow doctor.

An unearthly wailing sound startled McLevy, but it was not a troubled conscience, merely the ornamental peacocks in Jean’s garden.

‘These bliddy birds,’ muttered Hannah. ‘Whit for did they no’ steal them awa’ the other night, instead o’ leaving them French sodgers?’

The inspector had heard of the happening but chose not to delve into the details.

Besides he had been struck by an idea that might make amends.

We all like to make amends after the event, rather than own up at the time.

An easier contemplation.

He beckoned the other two over and huddled them together like conspirators.

‘Hannah – have you heard the notion that things happen in threes?’

‘Ye mean the buggers will be back?’

‘Uhuh. And what could be their next target?’

‘Damned if I know.’

The peacocks wailed morosely as they pecked around in the damp grass and Mulholland began to get the drift.

‘Where
were
the birds last night?’ he asked.

‘In their cages in this weather, right under the bedroom windows.’

Both policemen nodded. That would explain why no attempt was made – the noise would waken the dead.

‘Whit’s on your mind, McLevy?’ questioned Hannah warily.

There might have been a smile on the inspector’s face, thought Mulholland, but it was difficult to discern under that glaikit thing on his upper lip.

‘From the tail of your Orientals,’ McLevy murmured. ‘A feather in their caps.’

‘
That’s the target?
’

‘Could be. If you set a trap.’

‘
How?
’

‘Tether the peacocks in the middle of the garden. Trip wires all around.’

‘Tie something in that makes a sound,’ added Mulholland, bringing country lore into play. ‘Little bells or the like.’

‘We hae such left over frae Christmas.’

McLevy lowered his voice another notch.

‘But don’t tell Jean it’s my idea, otherwise she’ll reject it out of hand.’

‘True enough,’ said Mulholland. ‘Especially after that terrible joke.’

‘Eh?’

‘Wait now,’ interrupted Hannah. ‘Once the bells go tinkle, tinkle. Whit do we do then?’

‘Let fly. Small shot is best. Hurts like the pox.’

‘I wouldnae know,’ was her stolid response.

‘Bang, bang,’ Mulholland said. ‘Bang, bang. But you never heard it here.’

He straightened up and the three moved apart in a casual fashion to deceive any watchers.

‘Better be on our way, sir,’ he announced loudly. We have a murder to investigate.’

‘Aye, right enough,’ McLevy responded. ‘On our way.’

They moved off, leaving a thoughtful Hannah gazing at the peacocks.

As they picked up speed downhill, the inspector’s short legs working twice the rate of the loping constable, McLevy frowned at his companion.

‘I considered it quite a good joke,’ he said. ‘
Scarlet Woman.
’

‘Hilarious,’ replied Mulholland.

Jean Brash stood meanwhile in the kitchen of the Just Land while Lily and Maisie heated then poured water into the washing pan. The smaller of the two flicked cold water at her companion’s
neck and darted out of retaliatory range.

Maisie shook her fist and Lily grinned.

They were in love and all is forgiven in that exalted state.

Their mistress felt an unaccustomed emptiness inside.

The boy Cupid was now unsheathed to disseminate his arrows in any direction.

Too bad they kept missing the target.

Lieutenant Roach looked across the desk at a man he detested but who had the privilege to be obnoxious for the moment.

If a son lose his matriarchal lodestar, may he not be entitled to howl at the heavens?

Or at least bullyrag an officer of the law.

Roach’s own parents had lived a respectable distance from his heart, died within months of each other, and concealed their disappointment in him as best they could.

He had no children of his own, his wife being more interested in tragic opera and cultural gatherings.

His own secret passion was the game of golf, at which he was not untalented save for the matter of putting.

But with putting there is no illusion. The ball must go in the hole. And for Roach it would be easier to contemplate shoving a camel through the eye of a needle.

Therefore when he sifted for compassion, not much was to be found, even had he been sincere.

Which he was not.

Because he just did not like the man.

‘You have my total sympathy, Mister Carnegie – ’

‘I don’t want your sympathy,’ Sim Carnegie interrupted. ‘My mother is dead. I
saw
her poor body.’

‘At your own insistence, sir.’

‘I wanted to make sure!’

A possibly ambiguous statement, but the man had seemed shaken enough when he stood there in the Cold Room and gazed down at the emaciated corpse, wrapped up in the blanket which covered her like
a larval skin.

Sim Carnegie was a lean, whippet-like creature with a face that seemed to have a permanent sneck of doubt settled upon its features. A bony body, tall, with a long neck and a prominent
Adam’s apple, his clothes not exactly grubby but worn from sneaking through so many doors sideways.

In other words, a member of the press.

His voice was high-pitched and his mirthless laugh not unlike a dog’s bark; there were hard little eyes, a clean-shaven face with a long protruding upper lip and sparse brown hair slicked
close to the pink scalp.

But he was sharp; and his attention was fixed upon Roach, who could see Queen Victoria behind the complainant high upon the wall and regretted that Her Majesty was unable to come to the aid of
an obedient servant.

Victoria’s face gave nothing away. She had an empire to rule and little spare time.

‘My mother is dead,’ Carnegie repeated. ‘A savage, brutal murder. Why? And who? Who is the killer?’

‘The investigation has scarce begun,’ said Roach in what he hoped was a comforting but firm tone.

‘I am a journalist, sir, and I know the pace of investigation in Leith. Like a snail!’

‘The race is not always to the swift,’ Roach replied, concealing his indignation at this downright calumny.

But denial would not help. Better to bow the head and wait for the storm to pass.

‘Not always to the swift,’ he muttered.

‘That is by the by!’

Carnegie now began to talk in banner headlines.

‘I intend to write a scathing indictment of your force, sir. And the
Leith Herald
will ask the question why you have not acted upon the evidence!’

‘Evidence?’

‘A white favour, found upon the body!’

The lieutenant almost jack-knifed in surprise.

‘How do you know this?’

‘I have my sources.’

As Carnegie treated Roach to a sly and secret smile, the door opened and James McLevy poked his head inside.

He and Mulholland had sneaked in before they went to Salamander Street to snaffle a cup of Sergeant Murdoch’s execrable coffee and share a piece of honeycomb the constable had planked at
the station.

When told the contents of Roach’s office they had decided to come to the rescue or, in the inspector’s case, to indulge his nosiness.

For one thing would always be true about James McLevy, high or low, dead or alive – he was nosy.

In fact it was his recorded wish to have this inscribed upon his tombstone.

Here lies a nosy man
.

With the constable behind, he stood impassive as Roach brought them up to date.

Since he and Mulholland had had their ears casually pressed to the door and eavesdropped the end of the conversation, McLevy was unimpressed by the repetition of Carnegie’s little
bombshell.

‘The streets were littered wi’ these favours,’ he averred. ‘Your mother could have picked it up anywhere by pure coincidence.’

He did not, of course, mention hooking it out of the corpse’s mouth; only the three of them knew that, though there was another question to address.

Who the hell had informed Carnegie about the favour?

‘Aye, but try this for size,’ Carnegie shot back with a twisted grin. ‘These students are spoiled rotten, no moral compass worth a damn. Strive tae outdo each other. A murder.
That would be the ultimate, eh? Win at all costs.’

‘A good headline,’ McLevy allowed. ‘But there is the small matter of proof.’

Sim Carnegie stood and pointed an accusing finger.

‘Proof? Proof is whit you believe to be true.’

With that corrupt aphorism he made for the door, only to find it filled by the form of Mulholland.

The constable showed no sign of moving and the dislike in his eyes was palpable.

A girl’s shrunken body lay face down the cobblestones, her face white, neck broken by one single deadly blow.

Like a rag doll.

A young constable, not long begun his shift, knelt down beside the pitiful wreckage and gently turned her to the light.

He knew that face and his insides lurched.

Rose Dundas.

A pretty name for a pretty wee girl.

Pretty no longer.

Carnegie did not budge either, hard bright eyes full of self-justification.

‘Still bear a grudge, eh, Mulholland?’

‘Only till my dying day,’ was the reply.

‘I was just doing my job. Pure and simple.’

‘Like Judas Iscariot.’

‘Ye blame me for your own faults.’

Both McLevy and Roach knew the history of this exchange, but that was not the issue at moment as the constable stood slightly aside, forcing Sim to squeeze past.

While the man’s hand reached for the door handle, McLevy slid out an apparently idle question.

‘Where were you last night, when midnight chimed? At prayer, I suppose.’

Sim turned, his smile a slit in the face.

‘I waited for you to get round tae that. Big Susan and Mae Dunlop. In their loving arms. I spent the night.’

‘Whores can be bought.’

‘Like policemen?’

‘Get out,’ said Mulholland tightly.

‘Yours tae command,’ Carnegie answered ironically. ‘Oh by the way – wait till you read the paper. It’ll make your toes curl.’

But McLevy found the last word.

‘Sim?’ he called softly.

The man turned, half in, half out of the room.

‘Your grief for your mother,’ the inspector tilted his head in acknowledgement. ‘It’s gey overwhelming.’

For a moment Sim blinked as the shaft went home, then he slammed shut the door.

There was a heavy silence.

‘We have an informer in the station,’ said Roach grimly. ‘Either careless or in Carnegie’s pocket.’

McLevy nodded.

‘We’ll smoke him out.’