Nor Will He Sleep (11 page)

‘I doubt it,’ muttered McLevy in response and, part to change subject, part because he felt a sudden aggressive urge to put this mannie in his place, went on the attack.

‘I remember you. Climbing up a drainpipe in the Lothian Road. I was a constable then and you a daft student.’

Stevenson blinked for a moment, then his face cleared as a memory surfaced.

‘I was making for a widow’s window. To offer comfort and solace.’

‘You were dressed like a pirate,’ McLevy said firmly.

‘I had been performing in a play. The Daemon must have seized me.’

Stevenson suddenly assumed the manner and delivery of an actor as he quoted his own doggerel poetry with relish.

‘So, which are you, inspector?’ he asked, flipping the bright tip of the cigarette in an arc to expire hissing in an oily puddle. ‘Silent pirate, or robustious
ranger?’

‘Neither. Though I arrest both.’

This deadpan response set the writer of into a burst of laughter, which deteriorated into a hacking cough.

He wiped his mouth with a large white handkerchief.

‘I never did arrive near that widow’s window.’

‘That’s because I pulled ye down.’

‘You thought I was a burglar.’

‘It was the eye patch.’

By now they had come near to the harbour taverns. From one, the Rustie Nail, a commotion of sound arose, angry voices slurred by ramstam ale and inferior whisky.

‘Some things change, but rarely,’ murmured Stevenson.

‘A dirty dive. Helter skelter.’

Robert Louis swung to a stop to light up another cigarette, huddling at the wall to preserve the flame.

‘And yet,’ he puffed out a thin entrail of smoke, ‘I remember you in there. On the floor. A fight. With a certain Henry Preger.’

McLevy nodded. Early days. A young man then.

‘He was a vicious brute,’ he replied. ‘A pimp.’

In truth he could not now remember why the fight had started, only that Preger had heavy boots and used them well. Kicked his fill.

‘I was . . . observing,’ said Stevenson. ‘At the back. Keeping clear of the blood, you know?’

‘Enough of it,’ McLevy responded. ‘Maistly mine.’

For a moment the inspector seemed lost in memory as the rain fell and the writer inhaled, fingers poised.

‘Preger’s woman. A certain Jean Brash. Stepped out.’

‘She didnae step out. She was always there.’

As he had looked up at the blur of hostile faces, one stared back, red hair like a flame, a cool, dispassionate look like a gravedigger.

The writer leant forward to peer curiously into McLevy’s eyes.

‘What did she do to get you off that floor?’

‘She winked.’

Another roar of laughter, another fit of coughing.

‘Well, it did the trick, my friend. You wiped him from one end of the bar to the other.’

‘I’ve never been back down there,’ said McLevy solemnly. ‘Tae the floor. It’s a bad place.’

‘They say Preger was never the same man.’

‘That’s because he died. In my view poisoned.’

‘By whom?’

‘Madame Arsenic.’

The men appraised each other and a measure of wary approbation rose between them.

McLevy came to the conclusion that for a gabby man, Stevenson was a canny bugger and whatever he saw in that wynd might well stay with him; Robert Louis thought it had been a long time since
he’d met a psychology that chimed in such a strange way with his own.

‘There was an old woman murdered here last night,’ said McLevy suddenly. ‘Battered tae death.’

‘Life is cheap,’ replied Stevenson sombrely.

‘Aye. And it willnae gang on forever.’

The inspector watched as Robert Louis took another deep drag of smoke down into his lungs.

‘Ye’re about tae bury your father?’

‘That would seem to be the situation.’

‘I read about his death in the papers. Mind you they often lie.’

‘Not this time.’

A burst of fiddle music from a well-lit tavern signalled that there might be more to existence than a father’s demise or lying on the dirty planking with someone about to kick hell out of
you.

‘The Old Ship,’ Stevenson announced. ‘A fine establishment – tell me, does it still have private booths?’

‘If you’ve onything to hide.’

‘I am an open book, sir. But I was wondering, given that I am chilled to the bone by Auld Reekie’s dismal inclemency – if you might join me in a hooker of whisky?’

Of course the correct and proper procedure would be a stern shake of the head and a course set for Leith Station, but McLevy had a deal of wild thoughts careering through his mind and no wish to
catalogue a mob of boisterous, drunken students in the cells.

Plus he’d have to explain how his quarry had slipped out from under the long arm of the law.

So he nodded assent and de’il tak’ the hindmost, though he put in a caveat.

‘I cannot linger long, though.’

‘Excellent!’ cried the writer. ‘We can lift a toast to the female of the species no matter how much trouble they may bring to a quiet life.’

Rumour had it that Stevenson’s own wife Fanny was a handful and McLevy had his personal besom riders whirling in the air.

So he nodded again. Robert Louis took his arm once more, and the two men walked through the swinging doors of The Old Ship to disappear into the generous light and leave the darkness behind.

Indeed. Let the devil take the hindmost.

The birds were miserable as they endured the cold dripping night, the sheen of the males dulled and tawdry, the smaller females making a slightly better fist of it, pecking
around inquisitively, while their erstwhile lusty overseers shivered feathers and wailed like a tribe of lost souls.

Of course this shivering with wings outstretched at other times was intended to hypnotise the female, until a precarious mounting and mating had been accomplished, but for now the wings were
clamped close to keep the cold at bay.

Not intelligent at the best of times, the peacocks lamented being so unexpectedly tethered together in the garden of the Just Land in the middle of the night.

Who might save them from this fate?

Where was the hero?

In the shadows, Hannah Semple, Jean Brash, and her taciturn Aberdonian coachman Angus Dalrymple waited by the back of the gazebo, hidden from sight, each perched on a wooden kitchen chair.

Angus was a giant and the small shot firearm looked like a toy in his beefy hands.

Jean held a smaller version, but both guns were capable of scattering a stinging fusillade of pellets that could give a painful wound even from a distance.

The victim would then, if lucky enough to find a physician, spend an excruciating passage getting the flinty missiles extracted from beneath his skin.

They may not be cannon fire but could cut and gash with the best of them.

Behind the watchers the Just Land itself was suspiciously placid, while at the back of every curtain the magpies rested, ready to play their part.

Lechery had been given the night off.

A sacrifice must aye be made.

Jean was fretting at the inaction.

She imagined what if it was McLevy out there, come to pay one of his late night visits to scrounge a cup of the best Lebanese?

How justified would it be if, in the course of defending her property, as is the right of every law-abiding citizen, she put a load of buckshot into his fat backside?

Hannah mistook Jean’s silence for disquiet, and whispered encouragement regarding the motionless Angus.

‘
He used tae be a poacher, mistress. He will not gang agley.
’

‘Good,’ muttered Jean grimly. ‘I don’t want my birds in jeopardy.’

‘
Whit about your own aim?
’

‘I’ll manage.’

‘Black as the devil’s hint-end out there,’ Angus suddenly grunted.

‘Wait!’

Jean’s delicate ears, admired by many a suitor, had other functions such as acute perception.

They all listened as a faint tinkling registered through the mournful ululation of the tethered targets.

‘Might be a fox,’ Hannah offered.

Then there was a louder jangle, followed by a mumbled curse.

‘That’s no’ a predator,’ Jean concluded with a wicked smile. ‘That’s an idiot.’

She called back softly to the house.

‘Girls – at my command.’

Excited giggles came in response as more bells rang and more muffled profanity followed in the darkness.

‘One, two, three!’

As Jean’s voice rang out, every curtain in the Just Land was jerked back to reveal an artillery of oil lamps, which shot illumination into the garden like a lightning flash.

It revealed a bunch of young men, feet trammelled by the trip wires, panicked at the sudden exposure and terrified by the wild screams coming from the magpies, who sounded like avenging
Valkyries girding up to choose the slain.

In a blind funk, the Scarlet Runners kicked off the encircling ropes and ran to scale the walls – thus presenting a tempting target.

‘Like heidless chickens.’

While Hannah delivered this verdict, Jean and Angus were sighting with great care.

‘Careful of the peacocks,’ warned Jean. ‘Backsides if you please.’

‘They’re well enough presented,’ answered the coachman.

‘Then fire and be damned!’

A roar of small shot from him, followed a moment later by Jean letting fly, screams of pain, cat-calls from the girls, another discharge, frantic scrabbling at the garden wall, then the last of
the Scarlet Runners yelped over the top and all was quiet except for distant sounds of limping agony.

‘A cauld day in hell afore they come back.’

Jean nodded agreement to Hannah’s words.

‘They’ll be picking pellets out their rear-ends for weeks. Well done, Angus!’

The giant rose, flexed his limbs in satisfaction, then walked off to join Lily and Maisie, who had run out of the house and were freeing the peacocks, both being fond of the glaikit birds.

Jean and Hannah also stood. The garden was now peaceful and by some miracle the rain had ceased.

The Mistress of the Just Land sighed at a job well done and cast an appreciative gaze at the woman beside her.

‘I must confess, Hannah Semple,’ she said fondly. ‘You are aye my good right hand, but you have excelled yourself this time.’

‘And I must confess,’ replied Hannah, who never mind all the depredations life had visited upon her, still maintained a firm sense of right and wrong, despite the odd manipulation of
a razor, ‘that it wasnae my notion.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ Jean said warily as the peacocks filed past heading for their cages, with Lily in the lead and Maisie bringing up the rear.

Angus was picking up the bells from the grass with surprising daintiness.

‘The notion. It was McLevy’s,’ continued Hannah.

‘If I’d known that!’

‘Exactly. That’s whit he said.’

Jean felt a sudden rush of hot anger.

‘Oh that bugger of a man!’

Hannah sniffed. She had been about to suggest peaceful overtures but now was obviously not the time.

Twa wasps fighting over a dead worm.

Such was love in Hannah’s opinion.

‘A wee cup o’ coffee wouldnae go amiss, eh?’

On the nod from Jean, Hannah stumped off towards the Just Land, calling back over her shoulder as she disappeared, ‘Aye, some sore erses picked over the night. hell mend them. May they
fester like the Canongate ripples!’

This pithy reference to a species of venereal disease, associated with a certain area of Edinburgh, that affected the back and loins, passed Jean by – her attention had been drawn to the
massive Angus, who had found something at the foot of the garden wall and, like some well trained retriever, brought it back to his mistress.

‘It’s a photie,’ he announced. ‘Fell out the pocket mebbye. Nae blood though, nae holes shot through.’

Handing it over, Angus then headed for the stable to feed his beloved carriage horses. Each to his own.

A family photograph. The proud father in military garb and, with a young boy dwarfed by this giant, the mother in between them.

The boy looked angelic.

Jean was tempted to tear it up but stayed her hand.

Now all the action was over, she felt a curious emptiness.

What a pity it hadn’t been McLevy amongst the bells.

She looked out into the garden and then back to the Just Land where the peacocks rooted contentedly in their cages.

All this she had.

What more could there be?

The cells in Leith Station are not clean and neat like a honeycomb matrix. Some trace of every bedevilled felon that has fed the fleas and protested his innocence lingers in
the lumpy bedding, in the very pores of the blank walls where initials are scratched, in the very dank and airless atmosphere that lies there inert – a prisoner behind the bars as much as any
criminal.

One cell in particular was small like a square coffin, separated from its fellows at the end of a long, bare, winding corridor.

Those of a dismal disposition might think that here, hidden from sight, the police could wreak vengeance or wield violence in order to gain confession.

No-one would hear the cries of pain.

As is commonly perceived, all are innocent until proven guilty, and let us hope the forces of law and order are never too tempted to hurry the process along.

Such subtle discriminations were by no means running through the mind of Daniel Drummond.

The inhabitants of this cramped space were four in number. Two could leave, two could not.