Nor Will He Sleep (38 page)

Bare handed.

He and Gash Mitchell stood not far apart, a watchful McLevy to the side and Mitchell’s men a respectful distance behind their man.

What was it the inspector said?

At that moment the apelike figure of Gash Mitchell made his move.

Under cover of the huddle, he had bent down and scraped up a mixture of gravel and dirt, saturated with dirty water.

For a moment his eyes narrowed and then from a massive paw he threw the mixture directly into Mulholland’s face, to sting and blind.

Gash now aimed a kick straight at the groin, that just missed to land on the fleshy inside of the upper thigh, and then went to work.

He butted his head in under Mulholland’s chin and hammered blows into the guts and belly, revelling the while that his opponent could hardly see.

Mitchell had also managed to crunch his heel on top of Mulholland’s boot, which not only anchored and agonised as Gash cruelly twisted but gave him purchase for the brutal thrash of his
fists.

At the moment Mulholland’s arms were absorbing some of the force, but soon he would become weakened and all his attention would be caught in that area – and then Gash would draw back
his head and smash the granite top of it into the unprotected face, breaking the nose, blooding the already damaged eyes. After that, it would just be the boot.

The constable gasped in pain and Mitchell judged it time to make the cranial strike.

Draw back – in like a battering ram!

Then a terrifying crack close by split the heavens and pinned all of them to the spot.

McLevy stood with the revolver pointing at the sky where he had aimed the shot.

The noise, near to hand, was deafening and both combatants staggered back for a brief moment – but the inspector seemed unperturbed.

‘The round is over,’ he announced.

Mitchell was outraged, while Mulholland simply gasped for agonised breath.

‘It’s no’ a bastard boxing match!’ howled Gash.

McLevy negligently waved the revolver to indicate a further parting, the barrel pointing at Mitchell and his men, who shuffled back while the inspector pulled his constable to the side.

As Mulholland bent over trying to coax some air into his bruised and crippled body, he became aware that McLevy was talking quietly into his ear.

‘
You are fighting a monster, a brute, a barbarian. Unless you find the same within, there will be nothing left tae pick up. No holds barred, ye gave him that. I cannot stop it again
mid-stream. This time it’s to the end.
’

‘I’m not the same as him!’

‘
We all are. It is merely a matter of how deep you wish to delve. In order to survive.
’

McLevy’s one good eye had its cold lupine stare; there was no pity to be found.

Anywhere.

And no hiding place.

Martin Mulholland said goodbye to the civilised man and finally nodded assent.

‘
Good. Now – a wee word before ye go.
’

The inspector whispered for a moment, then left him to it, turning away abruptly.

‘I can do no more for you!’ he announced loudly. ‘On your own. No mercy, remember!’

Gash Mitchell grinned, taking this as condemnation rather than salutary advice.

He shifted with a swagger as Mulholland shuffled painfully towards him – easy meat.

The strike was fast and ruthless.

The constable’s body was in sore distress but his legs, honed on the saunter and wild hurling matches of his youth in Ireland, were not.

McLevy’s guidance had also given him an edge.

Act worse than ye are. Then hammer in. No mercy.

One foot was pained, but that was the left, thank God, and it was the other that swept forward.

The instep of his boot hit Gash Mitchell flush in the groin; the squat massive frame shuddered in shock and then the man doubled over as the agony shot through his body like a lightning bolt.
But there was more to come.

God is bountiful.

Mulholland held him by the back of the neck while unleashing a series of uppercuts with his right fist.

Into the face and he never missed once.

Then he hauled the groaning monster up by his straw coloured hair and smashed his knuckles into the exposed throat before standing back to watch the man collapse to his knees.

Another kick sent Mitchell sprawling onto his back, then the constable leapt onto the recumbent body to batter in with a further series of blows.

No holds barred.

Rose Dundas. Her corpse lies still. The face white, the eyes closed, the neck snapped.

Her corpse lies still.

How long Mulholland lambasted like a madman he lost track, but another thunderclap shot rang out to bring him out of his frenzy.

‘End of the bout,’ announced McLevy.

One of the constable’s hands was still clamped around Mitchell’s inflamed throat and the inspector carefully prised it loose.

Mulholland’s eyes were dazed, almost bewildered, as if he had been in a far country.

‘I’ve jist been chased stupid wi’ two murders so far,’ said McLevy stolidly. ‘I don’t need witnessed manslaughter tae boot.’

He pulled the assailant up and away, led him aside to recover his wits, then returned to stand over the unmoving body of Gash Mitchell and address his confederates.

McLevy, with his half closed eye and fell expression, resembled something dragged from the depths of hell.

‘He is naething now. My constable cut him tae bits.’

He prodded the body with the toe of his boot.

‘Ye can pick him up and take him home or ye can leave him lay. Tae lie there in the muck. Where he belongs.’

The three men turned without a word and quit the scene.

McLevy leant down and whispered a malediction into Mitchell’s ear, and only by the merest flicker of the eyelids might it be discerned that the man was conscious at all.

But the inspector knew better.

His words would penetrate like a gutty knife.

‘
As previously stated, Gash Mitchell, you are nothing now. The word will fly round. A’body will know. The young keelies will laugh in your face. No-one will fear you – you
have lost it all. Teeth will fasten round your throat and the herd will tear you to pieces. You are nothing. A dead man walking. Welcome tae the prospect.
’

McLevy straightened up and walked over to where Mulholland wavered uncertainly on his feet.

‘I lost myself,’ he muttered.

‘Easy found again,’ was the breezy response. ‘Time tae get ye home.’

The constable did not move, his eyes deflecting back to the prone figure of Mitchell.

McLevy frowned. ‘I warned ye not tae wear that white shirt; it shows the blood something terrible.’

‘I have a last word to say – ’

‘It’s already been said. Come on!’

And none too gently he shoved Mulholland into his policeman’s cloak from where it had been neatly laid aside and stuck on the helmet.

‘A sight for sore eyes,’ was McLevy’s verdict.

For a moment Mulholland’s gaze met with his inspector’s.

‘I am not that beast,’ he said quietly.

‘So long as ye know where to find him,’ replied James McLevy. ‘That’s the main thing.’

‘I have done my best by Rose Dundas.’

‘That ye have. Now let us take our leave.’

As the two made their way out of the wynd into the harbour streets, seagulls screeching overhead, the inspector burst into song.

In truth he could scarce carry a tune, but had never let this hinder him in any way.

However, instead of one of his usual Jacobite refrains, McLevy let rip with a favourite of the tarry-breeks, the sailors flooding off the ships into the Leith taverns, who could be wild as a
brattling gale or innocent as children.

As his voice faded into the night, one arm hooked firmly into his constable’s to guarantee safe passage, a rat came creeping out of a nearby drain and cautiously approached the unmoving
body.

A hank of Mitchell’s dirty blond hair lay in one of the puddles, and the rodent had a wary nibble before scuttling off a little, as a groan emitted from the lumpen carcass.

The rat would return later.

Everything comes to he who waits.

Diary of James McLevy.

15th May, 1887.

Having headed the page, James McLevy paused for thought. The cat Bathsheba had already come and gone, turning up her nose at the mixture of cold coffee and milk he had so
diligently prepared.

Fair’s fair. He couldnae blame the beast. When he looked in the tin mug, there were unidentifiable flakes that seemed – or was it his imagination? – to be growing larger by
each making in his iron pot.

He slurped, caught a flake in his teeth, sniffed at it, then flicked it away towards the fireplace.

The inspector was sitting at his rickety table, facing the large window that looked over the city.

He could make out the outline of a few scabby Edinburgh pigeons sliding on the oily slates. One in particular had a crabbed foot that tilted it comically from side to side and put McLevy in mind
of Mulholland’s enduring torment of the sharp cobblestones upon his injured foot.

The constable was not used to being amongst the halt and the lame, and another thing that seemed to perturb him was his inspector’s high spirits.

After a rousing if tuneless version of ‘The Drunken Sailor’ McLevy had then sought the safety of dry land with ‘The Piper o’ Dundee’ and much to Mulholland’s
relief, this ditty lasted sufficient to bring them to his lodgings.

The constable’s ribs were on fire and his guts and belly a maelstrom of conflicting distress – it did little to quell the suffering to hear his superior say that he could have the
day off tomorrow and Lieutenant Roach be told that one of Mulholland’s bees had stung him in parts private.

While McLevy roared with laughter at such a fancy the constable’s face was sombrous as a church door.

And yet?

And yet.

A different outcome without this hooligan.

Having managed to open the portal, Mulholland turned back to the grinning eyesore.

‘I’ll lie one day in bed but – day after tomorrow. On the saunter?’

‘On the saunter.’

For a moment they held each other’s gaze.

It would seem they had spent a lifetime together blowing smoke in the devil’s face.

McLevy grinned and tapped the crown of his bowler.

‘Here’s tae murder and mayhem!’

‘And more to come.’

Mulholland’s sober response was a signal for the two to part company without another word, the door closing while James McLevy walked off into the night.

And now?

What of this present moment in his wee attic room?

Jessica Drummond’s locket had been placed in the cupboard to lodge beside strangler’s gloves, a cricket ball with darker red smears than natural, a sliver from a piece of driftwood
that had saved McLevy’s life in an empty ocean, a small but murderously sharp axe, a pulley rope that had ended a decent but weak man’s existence, and various other artefacts pervaded
with past criminality.

McLevy hoped the keepsake wouldn’t be too upset by its surroundings, but as the bard put it,

Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.

Though the remarkable happenstance was that he himself, James McLevy, felt anything but miserable.

With that in mind, he picked up his pen and began to write in the red ledger.