Nor Will He Sleep (21 page)

Word had got round there was another corpse in the cold room but no more than that. When Ballantyne had blurted out what he claimed to have overheard and the three now facing him were supposedly
ensconced in Roach’s room in deep discussion, it took a matter of seconds to sneak in when no-one was looking, turn the body and find out the secret.

That would be something to sell!

Greed.

The four half crowns Carnegie had slipped into his hand with the promise of more to come.

‘I only did it the once,’ was his pathetic excuse.

The contempt was palpable in their eyes.

‘Get out of this station,’ said Lieutenant Roach, the words like coal-spit in his mouth. ‘Thank God you are now out of uniform – you can disgrace it no longer.’

‘Ye can keep the boots,’ added McLevy with a feral grin. ‘They played their part in your undoing.’

He and Roach stood aside so that Napier was forced to walk between them like a man on the way to the hangman’s noose, and as he went by Mulholland he received a final malediction.

‘Your name is mud in this city. Not one will respect you. Not the keelies, not the Fraternity, not your own kind. Not even scum like Carnegie. Ye’ve lost it all.’

Napier finally passed through, Mulholland closed the door behind and there was silence for a moment.

‘A clever ruse,’ Roach said without pleasure. ‘And why did the sign have to be Masonic?’

‘Gave it a particular . . . application,’ McLevy replied.

‘A clever ruse right enough,’ Mulholland remarked thoughtfully.

‘Greed is aye stupit.’

A sudden sound of a raised voice in the station tailed on to this dismissive remark of the inspector’s and the three made their way quickly out into the hall.

Napier, whose humiliation had been complete and who had cowered under the contempt heaped upon him, now looked for some way in which to redeem himself in his own eyes.

His gaze had fallen on Ballantyne, who was sitting quietly at his desk wondering what had transpired next door. Billy saw in the constable’s vulnerable form the source of all his
misfortunes.

It is aye a mark of humanity to blame others for their own sins and the weaker the target might seem, the louder the flood of vituperation.

‘Ye dirty traitor!’

This screamed, he hauled Ballantyne up and tried to land a vicious punch on the scarlet birthmark that spread down the side of the constable’s neck.

Ballantyne managed to block the blow, but the force of it sent him sprawling to the floor.

For a moment Napier felt a brief exultation. No-one dare meddle wi’ him – see whit ye get –

The whole station was staring and he gloried at the fear in their eyes before realising that its focus was something else.

James McLevy stood quietly; Mulholland and Roach eased off to the side.

‘Ye’re hammering at the wrong door,’ the inspector said. ‘It was my idea. I jist tellt Ballantyne tae keep an eye on the cold room portal and let us know if ye swalleyed
the bait. I’m the one you need tae batter.’

Billy Napier was a hefty specimen. He had been a bully at school and never beaten in a fight. Nor had he been bested since, for he made it his business to aye land the first smash, hard and
true. Fell them where they stand.

Then the boot can go in. No quarter given.

His blood was up now – he had been tricked and cheated and he saw before him a man of older years, tired and slow, and who knows but one stave of his big fist might shatter that reputation
and leave Billy a heroic figure?

If he could take McLevy in his own back yard?

It would be the making of him.

A giant among men.

The inspector had not moved, his hands hanging limp by the side; through his open overcoat Billy could glimpse a soft, round belly straining against the watch-fob.

If he could sink his fist there!

McLevy wheezed and sniffed in the silence like an old seal at the circus.

‘I’ll give ye first swing,’ he remarked – and still he had not budged.

Billy made his move sudden. Give no warning, yell at the same time to startle the side of beef, pull back and hammer in!

Indeed a fist did sink into an exposed gut but it was McLevy’s hand – as Billy shifted weight to deliver the blow, the inspector hit him so fast his fist was a blur.

Full in the breadbasket. Bent him over and then hit him again, full in the face, one, two, three times, straightened him up but broke the nose, bent him back over with one more savage sinking
punch; then grabbed him by the collar and the belt of his pants and ran the gasping wretch out of the station headfirst into a lamppost which, unluckily for Billy, was directly opposite the station
door.

There was a sickening distant crunch, then silence.

After a few seconds McLevy walked back into the station, and for a moment regarded the massed ranks of his young constables.

They would not be human if somewhere they hadn’t hoped to see the old bull brought down; now they knew better and all the stories they had heard were no doubt true.

The violence they had witnessed, however, was nothing compared to the violence they had never seen.

So not one was prepared to meet his eye, save for Ballantyne who, though rubbing at his neck, was not avoiding that stony stare.

‘Billy Napier sold out this station,’ the inspector proclaimed, his voice calm as if he had just gone outside to check the weather. ‘He received his just deserts as would any
person of a similar proclivity. A word tae the wise, eh?’

To their credit the assembled motley crew scratched their heads before nodding assent; it would seem the thought of betrayal had never occurred to them.

Besides Billy Napier was not a popular man. A tormenter of the weak whose farts would fell an elephant.

Good riddance tae bad rubbish.

‘Whit happens here, stays in here!’

Lieutenant Roach had his own silent caveat to this last declaration from his inspector. Word of the fight would get round Leith in about thirty seconds.

All grist to the mill.

Though it did not solve a double murder.

However, one way or the other, time for a superior officer to take command.

‘One of you constables search out a bucket and mop,’ he announced crisply. ‘There may be blood on the paving outside and we must discharge at all times our civic
duty.’

‘There’s some on the flagstones here as well,’ added Mul-holland, equally unperturbed. ‘Ye don’t want it to be soakin’ in. Blood is terrible for
that.’

One of the constables sped into the boot room to do as commanded and the rest began to break up and return to their normal duties, save for Murdoch at the desk who had scarcely stirred as he
watched Billy Napier leave the premises with such unprecedented velocity.

Stasis is a kind of duty, is it not?

The three wise men disappeared into Roach’s office on legitimate business this time and Ballantyne, who had received a brusque nod of approval from his inspector for his part in the
unfolding morality play, let out a long breath and calculated the time when he’d be able to loose the centipedes.

As he looked over, an old fellow entered the station, shuffled around uncertainly, then plonked himself on one of the wooden benches by the front door.

The constable with bucket and mop went past, heading for the bloody lamppost. Napier by now had no doubt dragged himself into the depths of Leith to lie upon his death bed.

Murdoch had vanished under the desk, with only one meaty hand remaining on top, having been, it would seem, grafted on to that piece of furniture. Ballantyne levered himself up and walked
across.

What a time so far: corpses, centipedes, information false- drappit into another man’s ear for the good of the cause and getting a sore neck for recompense.

Surely that would do for the day?

‘Can I help you, sir?’ he asked politely.

George Dunwoody looked up and smiled. At least the teeth did, whatever his inner inclination.

‘Ye can indeed,’ he answered. ‘And I can help you!’

‘That would be a nice change,’ responded Ballantyne a little warily, wondering if he had come across someone bereft of their wits – but the old boy had a sharp glint to his eye
and was well enough attired.

‘Ye had a murther – in the harbour – a nicht o’ last week.’

‘That we did. More’s the pity. An old and decent woman.’

‘I noted her picture in the paper.’

George brought a crumpled edition out of his pocket and unfurled it with care.

Sim Carnegie had topped his splenetic article with a family photo of his mother. Younger, but unmistakably Agnes.

The old man’s finger tapped upon the image.

‘I saw her.’

‘What?’

‘And him.’

‘Eh?’

Ballantyne’s exclamation was high-pitched enough that a few glances were thrown their way – whit the hell was daftie up to now?

‘They both passed me. On my way home. Later than my preference because of thae damned students.’

George shook his head in disapproval and Ballantyne resisted the temptation to seize the old gadgie and shake the truth out of him.

Think of the man as an insect. A nice shiny insect.

‘Him? You saw a him?’

‘Tracking her. Behind a distance. A real Jack o’ Dandy.’

George smiled again and the constable tried to compose his face into nothing that might alarm a murder witness.

‘If you might just wait here. I am certain Inspector McLevy would like a wee word.’

Ballantyne set off then changed his mind, returning almost to haul George off the bench.

‘No – better you come with me – things can disappear in this station.’

As they made for Roach’s office, the boy with the bucket came in.

He looked down at the flagstones and began to scrub at some reddish marks that might have been blood or remnants of a rusty nail.

All grist to the mill.

Under a covered gazebo, two elegant figures sipped at their coffee as peacocks strutted the immaculate lawns. In a nearby large pond, various heavy-bodied tropical fish dunted
up against each other, their bright yellow and orange providing a brilliant contrast to the dreich skies above.

A soft, insidious rain had begun to fall, which made no odds to the fish and enhanced the vivid blue of the male birds – it trembling on the edge of the mating season, the men o’
parts were spreading their wings a little gingerly for an exploratory shiver while the dowdier females pecked around like wifies at a greengrocer display.

The rose bushes now mercifully free of preventative sheathing were coming into bloom; along with other drenched but vibrant flower beds, Cupid was glistening; and the fecund whole might well
have been an ideal scene to augment the gardening column in
Ladies’ Companion Magazine.

Save for the fact that the equally elegant building that cradled the grounds like a loving mother might require the caption
Bawdy-Hoose. Proprietrix Jean Brash, all tastes indulged up to the
eyeballs.

Stevenson laughed aloud at that notion, but shook his head at Jean’s enquiring glance.

‘Not worthy of you, my dear,’ he murmured, inhaling the delicate caffeine aroma of the Lebanon, which combined aesthetically with his pungent tobacco to produce a Leith version of
Yin and Yang, opposite yet entwined.

Once more he had slid out of Heriot Row while the rest of the house pondered tomorrow’s funeral arrangements, heads bowed over lists; it was an odd twist in his temperament, but the more
unreliable he became in other’s eyes, the happier he felt inside.

To be somewhere other than in one’s appointed place lifts the spirit, and do we not all feel this?

A great deal is made of freedom, but perhaps it is no more than an absence from the ties that bind.

Or would we be lost without those ties?

On a whim he had disguised himself in a long, shabby coat and one of his father’s old outdoor sea hats, and fancied that he might flit unseen through the busy streets without
recognition.

Of course he had laid away the coat and wafted the hat aside in Jean’s presence.

A velvet jacket with white cotton shirt collar, cuffs that encased those thin wrists at the end of which dangled the surprisingly large hands, and a long pale face that hung in the shade like a
mocking portrait. The least he could offer a beautiful woman.

Jean had told him of the adventure with the Scarlet Runners and they had laughed over that.

All the while they appraised each other in not unfriendly fashion; two artists at the height of their profession.

He coughed in the damp air and flicked at some moisture that had gathered by the end of his long nose.

‘The rain never leaves for long,’ Stevenson murmured.

‘A constant companion.’

This wry observation made, Jean suddenly let out a very unladylike snort of laughter.

‘It might have been your backside I let fly at once upon a time, for you were a wild rogue, Robert Louis!’

‘According to many, I still am.’

Many impulses, overt and hidden, had lured him towards the Just Land, all to do with the past, but the present had sparked into life when he had seen the surprised smile on Jean’s
face.

A man aye likes to surprise the female.

It is a rare occurrence.

‘Whit a life we’ve led.’

‘And see where we’ve ended, with no discernible trace of sin.’

They both laughed at this sardonic comment, but then he surprised her again, not quite so pleasantly.

‘And we are both in thrall to James McLevy.’

‘How so?’

Jean’s countenance did not alter a jot and she slid a delicate china plate towards him.

‘Sugar biscuit?’

‘I don’t mind if I do.’

He pronounced this in a ridiculously affected English accent to take any sting out of his following words, as he carefully stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray that, for some reason, had the
shape of a squatting bulldog, and nibbled at the biscuit.