Shadow of the Serpent (16 page)

Father Callan. Coat up to his neck. Also, like the inspector, not putting his hands together. The little priest was unaware of McLevy’s scrutiny and his gaze was intent upon the platform where Gladstone was gravely acknowledging the adulation of the masses.

What was going on here? A secret admirer? A Papish plot? Perhaps he was going to unveil himself and declare to the world that William, admittedly an unpromising name for such, had knelt and kissed the hem of the Pontiff? Or was it something quite other?

As if McLevy had shouted out his name through the noise, the priest started, turned and looked straight at the inspector, listening to God on a full-time basis must bring its own acuity. His moonlike face registered a brief smile as McLevy’s eyes bored into him, but, in the manner of his calling, the countenance gave nothing away.

In McLevy’s experience few of the Romanish icons did. Except Jesus. You could trust that agony.

His priestly collar still hidden, Father Callan melted back into the crowd like a holy wafer on the collective tongue as they roared approval.

Mulholland was standing by, with the dazed, slightly foolish look of someone who’d been running with the herd.

‘I didnae know ye to be such a radical,’ said McLevy.

‘I got carried away, sir. Glorious sentiments.’

The constable still retained a rapt look in the eyes and McLevy had an obscure craving to puncture the dream.

A malicious desire which did not speak well of him, but perhaps he was jealous of the young man’s expression of unstinted admiration for another. Few of us are free from jealousy; it follows us home like a black dog.

‘Sentiments is exactly what ye got. A hogwash of
figmentation
,’ the inspector remarked somewhat harshly.

Mulholland’s face darkened but just before he opened his mouth to deliver one of Aunt Katie’s homilies of remonstrance, to wit,
a man without belief is a dung fly in the midden of his own mind,
the inspector noticed that the entire platform entourage, minus the Earl of Rosebery who had shot off in another direction, was moving through a crowd of well-wishers towards the side door.

‘Come on. Now’s your chance!’

McLevy hustled the bewildered constable on a course of
interception
and practically shoved him into Gladstone’s face as the great man was about to exit.

‘My colleague here has been riven tae the core, Mr
Gladstone
!’ he bawled like a fishwife. ‘He cannot resist the impetus tae tell you so in person, and commend your message to the nation. Go ahead, Mulholland!’

A couple of the secretaries stepped forward protectively to shield their leader from this bellowing lunatic and his
gormless
beanpole companion, but Gladstone was apparently unperturbed. McLevy was struck by how much like a death mask his face now seemed. On the platform, his eyes had radiated energy and blazed with moral indignation, but now they were sunken back in his head.

He seemed spent, a sheen of perspiration over his face, and looked all of his seventy years. Mind you it was the end of a long campaign and one and a half hours in West Calder might well be equivalent to ten in any other venue.

Then, were a switch pulled, the man sparked into life as if a current had been shot through his body.

He gazed keenly up at the tongue-tied, befuddled Mulholland.

‘I am gratified that you approve my humble offering, sir,’ he boomed. ‘Let us hope that your sentiments are shared by many, and we carry the day.’

‘It was fine, fine,’ mumbled Mulholland, wondering how in God’s name he found himself in such a pass. ‘You brought it home. My Aunt Katie always says, you can do no more than bring it home. That’s what God does.’

Gladstone was not to be outdone in the nuts and bolts of deific referral.

‘And the same Almighty, in his wisdom, has wonderfully borne me through,’ he pronounced.

He clasped his hand to Mulholland’s shoulder in order to indicate an end to the exchange, it was half past the hour of six and he had many more hands to shake.

As Gladstone turned to go, however, McLevy had other ideas.

‘We are policemen,’ he said, out of the blue.

This caused a momentary hesitation in the acolytes who had turned as one man and woman to leave with their leader.

Who amongst us has such unspotted conscience that the word ‘policeman’ will not cause just the merest tremor in the soul? The shadow of a passing sin?

McLevy put on his idiot face and slid forward to confront Gladstone. He was near enough to sniff but all that came to him was a slight sour odour of sweat from the great man.

‘We are from Leith. We keep the streets safe. Do ye know Leith, Mr Gladstone?’

‘My father was raised there,’ was the somewhat formal response. ‘Before he left for pastures new, he had the honour to be a merchant of that parish.’

‘I never knew that. Did you know that, Mulholland?’

McLevy turned away, addressing the remark to his
subordinate
who wished the ground to swallow him up such was the buffoon his inspector was presenting.

‘And what did he trade in, sir?’

Gladstone’s face had set in rather stony lines, the cause
unknown
, the effect plain for all to see. He replied with the one word.

‘Corn.’

McLevy took a deep breath and stepped off the edge of the precipice.

‘And d’ye ever come back, sir? Tae the auld place? Walk the ancient streets as it were?’

Gladstone made no response. A flash of anger in his eyes. The silver-haired secretary stepped into the breach.

‘Mr Gladstone has many demands on his time,’ he said ambiguously. ‘Now, if you will excuse us?’

‘Oh, aye, aye, definitely.’ McLevy now appeared to be crushed and rather obsequious. ‘It’s just that we came all the way. From Leith. Tae see you, Mr Gladstone.’

‘And now you have, sir. Now, you have.’

There was a moment when the two men’s eyes locked, bulls in a field, then Gladstone made his exit.

Most of the entourage followed, leaving only the tall secretary and a few stragglers. The official looked down with barely concealed disdain at this dolt of a policeman now standing alone, Mulholland having retreated as far back as he could without actually fleeing the scene.

‘What is your name?’ the secretary asked abruptly.

‘McLevy. Inspector McLevy. At your service, sir!’ The inspector straightened up in what was perilously close to a parody of military readiness. ‘And whom do I have the honour of addressing, sir?’

‘My name is Horace Prescott,’ was the clipped response.

‘Horace? What a splendid appellation. Very close tae Horatius. The Captain o’ the Gate!’

There was a cough from behind Prescott, it may even have been a smothered laugh, coming from a wee, fat, rather dissolute-looking cove who certainly was no great advert for the party of morality. The secretary’s cheeks pinked up but he decided to treat McLevy like the idiot the man undoubtedly seemed to be. Though when he attempted to introduce a silky menace to his tones it was inappropriately tinged with a growing petulance.

‘I assume you have a superior officer?’ McLevy nodded his head vigorously. ‘What is his name?’

‘That would be Lieutenant Roach, but it’s not worth your while talking to him. sir.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m afraid he votes Conservative,’ said McLevy. ‘Always has, always will. Ye’d be wasting your time.’

From Prescott’s view, the implication that he would be trying to curry election favour with some nonentity of a police officer left the man almost gasping for breath.

There was another sound behind him, this time verging on a definite snigger. His lips tightened and without another word he prepared to make a dignified and dismissive exit. But McLevy wasn’t finished yet.

‘I could swear I’ve remarked ye some time in Leith, sir. Have you ever visited, down by the docks maybe?’ Mulholland winced as the inspector ploughed gaily onwards. ‘There’s some pretty sights. When the ships come in.’

Prescott had never met such a profoundly irritating person in his life.

‘I know little of the place,’ he snapped. ‘And I am happy to keep it so.’

He strode off, the wee fat fellow after him with a broad grin on his face. The rest of the stragglers followed in an untidy scramble on the outside edge of which McLevy briefly glimpsed the woman with the thick glasses, body still hunched over her papers. Then she and the rest were gone. As if they had never been.

While the inspector whistled softly to himself, an outraged Mulholland returned to his side.

‘You made a terrible bloody fool out of me!’ he accused bitterly.

‘With God’s help and your own efforts, the situation may yet be remedied,’ came the opaque reply.

McLevy looked past his indignant constable into the body of the hall. It had not yet emptied, people stood around in clumps still chewing over the words of William Gladstone, but he did not see a likeness he recognised.

‘Don’t think I didn’t fathom what you were up to,’
Mulholland
said through gritted teeth. ‘You wanted to look in his eyes. Well. What did you see?’

‘Power,’ replied McLevy. ‘But for good or ill, that I do not yet know.’

The constable threw his arms to the heavens that McLevy could entertain the slightest doubt over a man so widely regarded as the sentinel of truth and probity, but the inspector’s mind had shifted back to the small, windowless dining room of the tavern where they’d filled their bellies.

The dried skulls of the sheep had been arranged all round the walls, lighted candles placed between the horns.

It was meant to be decorative but had struck him as just so many intimations of death.

The Serpent held out a hand before him and noticed the fingers to tremble a little. That was good. Nerves. A man without nerves was a fool who deceived himself.

He moved over to the window and looked out over the lights of the city glittering fitfully in the darkness. He had already been out earlier in that darkness, to set the scene as it were. But now he had returned to wait for the appointed hour.

Some solid banks of fog were beginning to build up. That was good, good for business. What was it the old fellow, regimental batman, ancient mariner, whose gnarled hands were supposed to attend to his every need, had said this morning as he scraped out the ashes?

‘We’ll hae a sea haar the nicht. I feel it in my bones. Cauld as the grave, sir.’

He mimicked the near-incomprehensible accent perfectly, speaking aloud in the silent room, then moved restlessly away from the window to regard himself once more in the stained, cracked, full-length mirror.

Now, there was no going back. Now, it had to be done.

Had the word from the South been cheerier, the early election forecast more promising, he may have considered a halt to the mission. But no, let’s be honest old chap, even with the advent of good tidings, the matter must run its course. He had the taste for blood now.

And it was such splendid sport, to be out in the field once more, not sending others out to risk for him.

It was all a matter of timing. When to play the cards.

On an impulse, he tried to mould his features to those of Benjamin Disraeli, the drooping eyes he could manage but not that splendid nose, that would need some construction. The mouth was possible, hinted at a certain lubriciousness, a delving into dark corners. The reflected mouth smiled at the thought.

For had Disraeli not written, possibly on his knees at the time, to the comely Lord Henry Lennox, ‘I am henceforth your own property, to do what you like with …’?

He dropped the pretence and sneered at himself. But was he not the same? A creature to be used? An instrument, not of pleasure though, but of ruin? His potency dependent on those above? In this case, not even the dignity of direct command, a suggestion here, an implication there, an elegant oblique silence after a subject raised.

A creature. That was all.

The Serpent was suddenly filled with the venom of self-hatred. He spat, quite deliberately, into his own face and watched as the saliva slid down his mirror image.

Then he cheered up immensely. Good to get that off one’s chest. Think of the rewards from on high. Favours bestowed. The power granted. Beyond his peers. No one would deny him. He would be
indispensable
. Above all others.

Nerves, that was it. Before going into action. Not long now, this was the tricky one, trick o’ the light, all depended on the timing, repeating himself, not a good idea.

He moved away from the mirror and took stock. He knew the time and place, the mark was set, part of the money paid, the route reconnoitred; all he had to do … the Serpent took a deep breath. Relax. Not the first time, old chap. Think of yourself … as the Hand of God. Royal appointment. Relax. That’s the stuff to give the troops.

He summoned up a picture that always turned his bones to water. The first time she had come to him, the little fleshly beast.

The Serpent had been asleep and awoke, heart pounding, to find her at the foot of his bed, golden hair loose to her shoulders. She wore a nightdress he himself had approved and bought. Appeared chasteness itself in the shop, a thick cotton swathe behind which youthful modesty might rest, but now it seemed the very emblem of temptation.

And then it fell, by some strange motion, as if a snake had sloughed its skin, to the carpet.

A naked female is the most terrifying mystery.

She was part in shadow, he could make out the shape of her long young body glowing in the dark. But all that was immediately visible, a shaft of moonlight through a high window playing the pander, was one bare foot.