Trick of the Light (5 page)

Strangely enough, nothing much came to mind.

Out of the ether, however, a voice sounded forth.

‘Away ye go, constable,’ said James McLevy. ‘And tidy up your desk, it looks like a midden.’

As the grateful Ballantyne quit the scene, the lieutenant reflected, not for the first time, how his obstreperous, noisy subordinate had the ability to ghost up out of nowhere.

At the most inopportune moments.

McLevy shot the shamefaced Mulholland a look to blister tarmacadam, and then turned to gaze enquiringly at Roach.

The lieutenant found he had an obscure need to defend his actions, but why should he? He was the superior and he had no need to vindicate his conduct.

‘I caught Ballantyne in the act of gazing wilfully into his own personal likeness,’ he vindicated, nevertheless.

‘I gathered that,’ was the terse response.

‘Mesmerism has no place in my station!’

‘It’s all the rage,’ said McLevy, annoyingly. ‘I’m sure Mrs Roach is intrigued, is she not?’

‘It is superstitious drivel,’ Roach retorted, but was aware of the ground underneath his feet shifting as ’twere in a sandy bunker at the mention of his wife who was, in truth, intent upon dragging him shortly to some society cabal on the subject. For some reason arguing with his inspector often had this effect; the man instinctively perceived a weak point and then poked it with a sharp stick.

McLevy adopted a mild, even more irritating tone.

‘There is a measure of scientific doubt, sir. And while science doubts, we must all hold our breath.’

‘I shall hold my breath for no-one. The pernicious influence of spiritism is creeping round this city like a pestilence. Like some sort of…Catholic plot.’

‘Oh, you blame the Pope, do you?’

‘I would not be surprised,’ expostulated Roach, who suspected his inspector of ultramontanist leanings; no-one knew where McLevy worshipped, if he did so at all, and the man was known to whistle seditious Jacobite airs to boot.

‘I had no idea.’

‘Had not of what?’ asked Roach, who was beginning to lose the thread.

‘That the Spider of Rome was weaving this web.’

Roach took a deep breath.

‘Our country is founded upon the decent God-fearing bedrock of Protestant Christianity, McLevy. Undermine that, and anything can happen.’

‘So, in the defence of your realm,’ said McLevy, his tone changing of a sudden to reflect the angry contempt he felt within, ‘you would hammer in upon a glaikit wee boy who seeks to rid himself of the brand our deeply compassionate Lord has seen fit to burn upon his face?’

For the second time that day Mulholland felt the ground swallow him up but, strangely enough, though a muted hiss escaped from Roach’s lips, he did not respond in a fashion the constable would have anticipated.

‘It is not our task to question the ways of the Deity, inspector,’ he replied firmly. ‘And, I would remind you,
thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.’

‘That’s between him and me,’ was the equally obdurate response.

Roach, in his lieutenant’s garb, was an immaculate assembly of straight lines and knife-edge creases. He had a long snout of a nose, dry skin and irregular snaggled teeth that were the bane of his life.

A crocodile in uniform.

He was half a head taller than his inspector who, despite the mild late-October weather, was muffled up in his heavy coat looking like some bad-tempered winter animal newly emerged from its lair.

Just leave it
, Mulholland begged silently of McLevy.
While you’re still at the races.

But no. Too much to hope.

‘If Ballantyne chooses to delude himself that some mysterious magnetism can change the workings of his body cells and leave him with a skin to match the purity of his innocent intentions, then good luck tae him.’

For a moment McLevy’s voice thickened and Mulholland guessed the cause to be either bile or sentiment. He hoped sincerely it was bile; the idea of his inspector having finer feelings was an alarming one.

‘It’s
his
delusion,’ went on McLevy, his eyes shifting to where Ballantyne sat disconsolately at his desk, trying to impose order onto what indeed was an irredeemable mess. ‘His delusion, and he is welcome to it.’

Roach narrowed his slightly bloodshot eyes.

‘What the Lord lays upon us, we may not avoid. His mercy is infinite. His burden is heavy.’

McLevy sniffed, and then, with a mercurial change of mood, grinned savagely as a random thought struck home.

‘Anyway, ye should have let him finish the job.’

‘And why, pray?’

‘Because had he done so to no effect, it would have proved that the forces of the occult could hold no sway with the malediction of a Presbyterian Almighty.’

The inspector let out a wild whoop of laughter.

‘Now Ballantyne will be in doubt for the rest of his life. You have created the opposite of your intent. Jist like God.’

What Mulholland found bewildering was the way these two went from one level to another.

‘That is close to sacrilege, James,’ said Roach quietly. ‘The pagan in you rises.’

‘It’s near Halloween,’ came the reply. ‘I’ll be dancing at the bonfire.’

Before Roach could muster a response to this profane assertion, there was an altercation of sorts at the station desk and, having had little satisfaction from Sergeant Murdoch who had his inert domain there, a young man strode towards them.

He was almost as tall as Mulholland but broader of frame, wearing what looked like an old sailor’s coat with brass buttons; he wore a naval cap of sorts, set at a rakish angle tipped to the back of his head. The fellow was fresh complexioned, open faced, with a thick walrus moustache, obviously an attempt to add gravitas to the twenty-two-year-old countenance chosen for its domicile. His eyes protruded slightly, almost fish-like, pale blue, but they had a fierce directness of purpose.

He committed himself to Roach, totally ignoring McLevy who stood aside in mock deference, a gleam of amusement in his eyes. Indeed there was something childlike and disarming about the whole presentation before them, a brash young boy caught inside a giant’s body.

‘Are you in charge here, sir?’ he asked, the voice a little higher-pitched than the frame would warrant.

‘There may be some who would dispute such,’ replied Roach, dryly, ‘but that would seem to be my function.’

The young man blinked a little at this, and looked round all three policemen as if they were in disguise.

‘I am here to report a crime,’ he announced finally.

‘You’ve come to the right place then,’ said McLevy.

‘No denyin’ that,’ added Mulholland.

Roach, of course, at this point, should have handed the case to McLevy and walked off to gaze at the portrait of Queen Victoria that hung in his office, comforting himself with the thought that both his sovereign and the Supreme Chief Constable in heaven would find no fault with their loyal servant, but some imp of perversity seized him and so he stood there as a member of the silent trinity.

It is the habit of policemen when they are in any way uneasy – as Mulholland was with the roasting he was expecting from his inspector, Roach with the realisation that the persecution of Ballantyne had unearthed a streak of cruel intolerance in his nature that he had himself suffered from greatly under the rigid edicts of his long dead father, and McLevy with inappropriate ribald images still surfacing from his dream – that they will displace the emotion in accusative form upon the first member of the general public unfortunate enough to swim within the murky depths of their oceanic authority.

And so they stood. Not one regarding the other, all focused on a stranger in their midst.

 ‘Whit’s that in your poche?’ said McLevy out of the blue. He had noticed a suspicious bulge to the right side of the stranger’s reefer jacket. ‘No’ a revolver I hope?’

The young man looked down at the pocket and frowned; this encounter was not turning out the way he had seen it in his heroic imagination. He plunged his hand into the deep recess of the garment and brought out the suspicious shape.

‘A cricket ball,’ he declared.

‘Ye indulge at the cricket?’ asked McLevy, as if it was a sign of anarchist leanings.

‘I play cricket, football, hockey, swimming and rugby,’ was the proud response.

‘What about golf?’ queried Roach.

‘A splendid pastime.’

Roach nodded approvingly but McLevy was not yet finished with his line of enquiry.

‘I’ll wager ye also try your skill at boxing?’

A look of surprise flashed into the stranger’s eyes.

‘I do.’

‘Last night I’ll be bound.’

‘Indeed.’

The young man hesitated but curiosity got the better of him as the inspector knew it would.

‘What draws you to that conclusion?’

‘The skin on the knuckles of your right hand is somewhat abraded,’ McLevy remarked. ‘Of course ye could have received such chasing a ball, but there is also a bruised discolouration indicating impact and I also note the marking of a mouse under your left eye.’

The inspector pursed his lips and assumed the manner of a discriminating deductor.

‘It is therefore my premise that your opponent had a hard head and got lucky wi’ a swipe or two.’

Mulholland and Roach exchanged perplexed glances; this was not McLevy’s usual mode of speech or behaviour. The young man, however, let out a burst of spirited laughter.

 ‘By God you are right, sir. He did indeed have a frontal skull bone fit for a granite quarry. And I made the error of aiming down.’

‘Ye should aye punch up,’ said McLevy. ‘More leverage.’

He was enjoying the looks of bafflement on the faces of his lieutenant and constable so decided to put another dent in their brainpans.

‘I also surmise,’ he pontificated, ‘that such a wealth of sporting activity and the leisure time available to pursue such, can only point to one vocation – that of a university student.’

This time when the young man laughed the face expressed merriment and humour but no sound emerged, as if the laughter was choked at source.

‘Almost exactly so, sir, except,’ and here he stepped up before McLevy with some purpose, almost as if he was about to engage him in a bout of fisticuffs, ‘that I have not long before attained my degree.’

‘In medicine, no doubt,’ the inspector punched up as his opponent towered over him. ‘Ye have the natural arrogance necessary to the medical profession but not enough brains tae disport yourself in the legal.

‘Besides,’ he continued, as the young man let out a puff of air as if slightly winded, ‘you would seem tae me to lack the requisite treachery to succeed in law.’

‘You represent the law,’ came the shrewd response.

‘And I am
steeped
in perfidy,’ the inspector replied urbanely. ‘You, on the other hand, are jist beginning.’

A blink of the eye showed the blow to have gone home and McLevy decided that was enough deductive intuition for the moment.

‘Ye came to report a crime, I believe?’

‘Yes. A friend of my mother’s. Her home.’

‘Up in flames?’

‘Broken into and robbed.’

‘In Leith?’

 ‘No other place.’

‘Indeed there is not,’ said McLevy with a fierce smile, as if mortally offended. ‘It is a well known fact that we are the centre of the universe, here.’

The young man looked at Roach and Mulholland to see if this statement contained a trace element of irony but the lieutenant’s long upper lip gave no hint of such, and the constable’s blue eyes and fresh complexion told of nothing but unperceived insignificance.

Which brought his attention back to the inspector, who regarded him with what seemed dark suspicion.

‘Ye can put the cricket ball away,’ he said.

The young man did so.

‘Whit is the precise address in Leith?’

‘42 Bonnington Road.’

‘And the victim of this criminal depredation?’

‘Mistress Muriel Grierson.’

A small bell rang in Roach’s head but he decided to hold his counsel. Best to keep his own wife out of it, she had a habit of creeping into just about everything.

‘And
your
name?’ McLevy asked in official tones.

‘Doyle,’ said the young man who felt that he had just lost a round and been punching air. ‘Arthur Conan Doyle.’

‘Well, Mister Doyle,’ said his elusive combatant. ‘I am James McLevy, inspector of police. Let us go and investigate criminality thegither.’

5

I tell you what I dreamed last night

It was not dark, it was not light,

Cold dews had drenched my plenteous hair

Through clay; you came to seek me there

And ‘Do you dream of me?’ you said.

C
HRISTINA
R
OSSETTI
,
The Convent Threshold

Magnus Bannerman whistled cheerfully to himself as he laid out the cards.

Two pack solitaire, shuffle and deal. Forty Thieves. Otherwise known as
Napoleon at St Helena
, it being the pastime with which the defeated Emperor beguiled himself on his last and lonely exile.

Magnus enjoyed the idea of himself and the little Corsican reading the
tableau
and making their plans.

The Frenchman dreaming of a lost empire and he on rich pickings in a foreign land.

As in many other solitaires, kings were a drawback. Took space, were hard to move. You had to build up foundation from the aces. Royalty gummed up the works.

Careful planning. You saw a space; the first impulse would be to fill it up, but then a vital link might be lost for it was necessary at some point to dig into the covered
talon
of cards; the past must be resurrected.