Trick of the Light (10 page)

This time the touch on her elbow was more like a sharp punch.

‘Ye must be desperate, ‘Jessie asserted. ‘The woman’s nothing but skin and bones.’

The image of Francine as a skeleton in leather caught Lily’s fancy and her eyes lit up in sudden humour. She punched Jessie back in the muscle of the arm and stuck up her small fists in the parody of a prize-fighter.

‘C’mon,’ said the Paisley girl. ‘We’ll buy you a scarlet ribbon.’

The market was still crowded, though some of the barrows were being wheeled away. While Big Annie Drummond, who was supposed to be keeping an eye on the assorted magpies as senior heaviest member, was distracted by a cream cake stall and two of the barrows had crashed wheels with vituperative results, a small portly man stepped out from one of the crooked wynds that fed into the square.

Simone had found a pretty embroidered handkerchief and was holding it up to the light admiringly while Francine impaled the hawker with a glare as he tried to charge her an extortionate price for a miniature wooden figurine.

God knows how it had ended up in Leith but it was of African origin with a rounded belly and tapered breasts, the shape of which reminded her of Lily’s.

Her recollection jolted, Francine looked up to see her lover staring at her from across the square while Jessie rummaged amongst a tangle of cheap ribbon.

The Frenchwoman smiled but Lily’s face did not move a muscle and while all were thus engaged, Alfred Binnie, the portly man, uncorked a small phial of liquid and, as he passed behind Simone, poured it delicately high on her back.

For a moment it was as if time suspended, everyone frozen in the scene except Binnie who passed through like something in a sleight of hand; then came the acrid smell of burnt clothing as the powerful acid found its way through the thin outdoor coat, inwards into the crinoline folds of the dress, burrowing further like an incendiary worm to the epidermal layers. And there it found a place to feast.

A piercing scream from Simone rent the air and all except Lily stopped in their tracks to look around for the source of such howled disturbance.

From the deaf mute’s point of view she watched her rival’s mouth open and close in silent agony as her body shuddered in pain; then Francine ripped off the back of the coat with her powerful hands and further ripped the layers of respectable apparel off the body like an impatient lover until white skin was revealed.

A livid mark ran down parallel with the backbone and the revealed naked flesh in a crowded market place might have put Francine in mind of some morality depiction from the middle ages, had she not been otherwise occupied.

One of the market folk, an old man who sold posies and blooms, cut, lifted and stolen from reputable Leith flower-beds by his own grandchildren, grabbed a cheap linen tablecloth from an indignant fellow hawker, dunked it into a bucket of water and threw the dripping material to Francine who caught it like a matador and pressed it up against the smouldering skin.

Simone’s body arched and she fell limply backwards so that her head rested upon Francine’s shoulder.

The rest of the magpies, with Big Annie in the vanguard and showing a remarkable turn of pace for one of her tonnage, hurtled towards the pair, feet churning up the mud, their faces contorted with concern.

Again from Lily’s vantage, it was like a shadow play for children where the grotesque shapes collide and spin around each other but no harm is done.

The only other person who had not moved in all of this was Jessie Nairn, who stood beside Lily with a thin piece of scarlet ribbon dangling from her fingers.

She was calculating her chances of survival. One way or the other.

10

Many a carcase they left to be carrion,

Many a livid one, many a sallow-skin –

Left for the white-tail’d eagle to tear it, and

Left for the horny-nibbed raven to rend it.

A
LFRED,
L
ORD
T
ENNYSON
,
Battle of Brunanburh

Jean Brash in a fury was a fearsome proposition. Her green eyes were ablaze with wrathful animosity as she leaned over the balustrade and looked down at the policeman below who, from her vantage, was an unwelcome foreshortened intruder.

‘What the hell do you want, McLevy?’ she almost spat, having emerged from an upstairs bedroom.

Big Annie Drummond, who had puffed her way up the stairs to deliver the news of the inspector’s arrival, now made better weather of the descent while the man himself gazed up at her mistress with a bland expression of general goodwill.

‘I hear one of your girls had a wee contretemps,’ he remarked, standing in the ornate hall festooned with décor arabesque and fancy mirrors designed to flatter the clients into thinking they might be Pashas rampant and incarnate should they glance at themselves before ducking into the doorways of sin.

McLevy furnished an odd reflection in his low-brimmed bowler and it is to the mirrors’ credit that they withstood the burden of this adverse radiation without cracking into lines of distressed complaint.

‘What’s it to do with you?’ came her terse response.

Big Annie before she disappeared into the main salon shot the inspector a look as if to warn,
hold onto your hat
.

‘It would appear as if,’ he offered mildly, ‘there may have been some criminal intent involved.’

‘
Intent
?’

‘Criminal. I investigate such. That is my profession.’

There was a silence as they measured each other up.

To be truthful McLevy when he heard about some stramash in the market had jumped at the chance to abandon Mulholland in bootless pursuit round the pawnbroking fraternity for trace of stolen jewellery. The inspector’s opinion being that whoever had committed the theft was too long in the tooth to pledge the articles in such an obvious slot.

They would be fenced after the heat had died down and reappear in Aberdeen or some other far-flung outpost.

So he had left his umbrageous constable in the lurch and headed for the Just Land in the hope of a cup of Jean’s excellent coffee while ‘deducting’, as young Arthur would have it. Plus the fact that he was nosy by inclination.

‘Ye better come up,’ said Jean finally. ‘For sure I’ll never get rid of you if I leave it to natural causes.’

So, he did. Come up.

Simone lay face down in the bed, inert and silent. Her bandaged back, high up near the shoulder blade, provided a stark contrast to the lacy confines of a room more usually reserved for clients who had a yen to re-experience the warm glow of infancy.

Everywhere McLevy glanced he saw babyish frills; the coloured friezes on the wall depicted various nursery rhyme characters, one in particular, Little Bo Peep, eminently prominent, shepherd’s crook clasped firmly in one hand while she scanned the horizon for absent mutton.

For some reason, the inspector found this disconcerting so he concentrated hard upon the body in the bed.

‘She appears peaceful enough,’ he volunteered.

‘Laudanum.’

‘That would explain it.’

‘The doctor put a salve on her but he is of the opinion that the scar trace may remain.’

‘Scar?’

‘Acid. Poured down her back.’

‘Dearie me. Who would do such a thing?’

Jean did not answer. McLevy tried again.

‘Did anyone witness the culprit?’

‘
Culprit
?’

This seemed a feeble word to describe someone capable of such a vicious attack but Jean was also aware that McLevy was a subtle swine, especially when on a case, and might well have used the word to provoke an unwise reaction. So she held to silence.

‘Wrongdoer, then. Assailant. Nasty piece of work.’

‘Not a thing. Nobody saw a damned thing.’

‘Man or woman?’

‘Not even that.’

‘Dearie me.’

It looked as if his chances of scrounging a cup of coffee were somewhat slim, but McLevy was wondering whether to believe Jean’s assertion of this mysteriously invisible spectre who poured acid onto folks’ hinterlands because, if she did know who had done this, the person concerned would suffer a swift reprisal that had nothing to do with the law unless in the Old Testament connotation.

An eye for an eye.

Bugger the coffee, he went for blood.

‘This is your own fault, Jean,’ he said bluntly.

‘How so?’

‘The streets are hoachin’ with two things. One is the advent of mesmerism in our fair city and the other is that yourself and a certain
arriviste
have been spoiling for a rammy since she opened her doors.’

‘
Arriviste
?’

‘Don’t keep repeating whit I say. The Countess. The word is a certain French lassie broke ranks. This on the bed wouldnae be the girl by any chance?’

Jean’s face betrayed nothing but she cursed the fact that there was not a dark happening in Leith that did not reach McLevy’s ears. He had a nest of informants second only to her own, but where she garnered intelligence by understated influence of favours granted, dispensed over and under the counter like drugs in an apothecary shop, the inspector ruled by fear.

No mercy.

If he asked, you answered and many were the craven souls who sought to gain what they mistakenly hoped to be protective cover should they ever stray from the path of righteousness.

It is a human trait to lick the leather boots of power and it never gets you anything but a sore tongue.

‘What if it is the girl?’ she replied coolly.

‘You tell me,’ McLevy retorted; he had suddenly spotted the whereabouts of the sheep. They were hunched together in another frieze at a corner of the room and unless he was visually deluded, one of them, a ram no doubt, was tupping an anxious looking ewe.

‘Why should I do your job?’

But having said such, Jean proceeded to perform this very function.

‘The hand that poured the acid might not be witnessed but I believe you know the one responsible.’

‘Do I?’

The inspector’s eyes widened. Now they had changed places. She the prosecutor, he the defendant.

‘A vicious creature. Long nails. Cowardly.’

‘Tae strike from ahent, ye mean?’

‘Exactly. A dirty stinking coward.’

‘These foreign types, eh?’

‘The lowest scum. Worse than policemen.’

‘That bad?’

‘And you know the person. You know the name.’

‘And so do you,’ said James McLevy, the game over. ‘It is your contrivance this happened.’

Jean’s lips thinned but he continued apace, having spotted three ships a-sailing over the recumbent form of Simone on the far wall, so making use of nautical metaphor.

‘Ye have received a shot across your bows. A warning. The message is – give the girl back.’

‘Not a hope in hell.’

‘Then it will be war between you.’

 ‘I didnae start it.’

‘As always, you are the innocent party.’

‘The history of my life.’

Simone whimpered in the bed and her feet scrabbled under the covers as an animal might do when dreaming.

McLevy stared at Jean’s beautiful but impenitent face and wondered how sin left no mark on the human countenance.

‘Now, here is another warning. Ye have no proof that the Countess was behind this event and if I catch you either in the act itself or instigating attempted vengeance upon the woman, I shall have no option but throw you into the cells and thence to the Perth penitentiary.’

This provoked severe indignation and Little Bo Peep frowned as Jean muttered an expletive under her breath while the inspector walked towards the door.

‘And whit about
her
? How come she escapes your vile clutches?’

‘Proof,’ came the stern response. ‘If I find proof then justice will prevail.’

‘
Justice
?’

‘Don’t keep repeating what I say!’

As they glared at each other the door flung open and Hannah Semple burst in like an avenging angel.

She had a page of paper grasped in her mottled fingers and did not remark McLevy who had nearly been knocked over backwards by the outflung portal.

‘Mistress!’ Hannah cried. ‘See whit I’ve got. Lily Baxter pressed it in my hand, a decent wee soul for a’ she doesnae speak a word and witness the way Francine and that Simone on the bed there have been slaverin’ round one tae the other – but see what Lily gave me!’

These were a lot of words for Hannah who tended to deal them out with care lest she find herself short on occasion, but the keeper of the keys was unaccustomed to excitement of this sort and she brandished the paper.

‘She’s a good wee drawer. Acted it all out for me. A creepy bugger at the back o’ Simone, pouring out, passing by, and here’s his likeness!’

Hannah stopped suddenly. Jean had made no move to take the paper. Her eyes seemed focused beyond as if a malignant presence was lurking.

Then a hand reached out from behind and magicked the image out of her hand.

‘If I may be so bold,’ said a voice.

McLevy held the paper to his eyes and wondered for the umpteenth time if he should risk a visit to an ocular shop.

In focus finally, he saw a figure of a fat podgy body with a huge head out of proportion, which he assumed Lily had created to augment the possibilities of identification.

The face was round, pouch-eyed, a small pouting mouth like a mole, no nose to speak of, the chin weak and the hat above this unattractive assembly a full-blown bowler unlike his low-brimmed affair.

Francine may have been the artist but Lily Baxter had a gift for caricature, no doubt about such.

‘Not a pretty sight,’ he said. ‘How high does he ascend towards heaven?’