Nor Will He Sleep (9 page)

A knock at the door and at Roach’s behest it opened and Ballantyne poked in his head.

‘Lieutenant? Ye told me tae report any more bicker wi’ the students?’

Roach inclined his head to indicate agreement.

‘Well,’ Ballantyne announced earnestly. ‘A woman jist came tae the desk to put in a complaint that they’ve stolen her parrot.’

‘Why would they do that?’ the lieutenant asked wearily.

‘It had red feathers.’

For a moment McLevy had a vision of the students plucking the parrot naked to augment their deluge for the gates of the Just Land, but then shook his head.

Madness is catching.

‘She left the cage on the window sill,’ Ballantyne added to help the investigation, ‘and the wire door was broken into!’

‘’More likely she forgot to close it and the parrot flew away,’ Roach dismissed. ‘She can tell all to Sergeant Murdoch, I’m sure he can manage that much
criminality.’

The constable nodded jerkily and was about to leave when McLevy stopped him with a sudden question.

‘Ballantyne – do you know anything about a white favour on the corpse?’

‘Aye. I saw it!’ came the proud response.

‘Tell me a wee thing, eh?’ the inspector queried, fearing the worst while Roach’s face set like stone.

‘Yesterday. After you left. I went into the Cold Room tae view the deid body. It’s important to look at cadavers, tae get used the sight in case you come upon them on
patrol.’

Mulholland had been lost in a bitter past, but the thought of Ballantyne on the saunter through a slew of corpses brought him back to the present.

‘So,’ continued Ballantyne. ‘I saw the favour, I saw the deid body and I put two and two thegither!’

‘And who did you tell about this?’ asked Mulholland.

‘Only the boys in the station,’ replied the young man, beginning to grow somewhat uneasy under the questions.

‘Not Mister Carnegie by any chance?’ inquired Roach, whose face was like thunder now.

‘I jist saw him come and go,’ replied Ballantyne simply. ‘He’s not in the police, is he?’

‘So only the boys,’ McLevy pursued. ‘Why tell them?’

The red birthmark pulsed on Ballantyne’s neck as he began to realise that he might not be the hero of the hour.

‘They’re aye making fun o’ me, because I don’t know anything. So I wanted tae let them see. That I knew.’

Roach waved an exasperated hand at McLevy as if to say,
you deal with it,
and walked off to contemplate his Queen as the inspector took a deep breath.

‘Constable, if you ever have knowledge of something as regards an ongoing investigation, you must inform no-one but Mulholland or myself.’

‘Whit about the lieutenant?’

‘He has enough on his plate,’ replied McLevy while Roach kept his back to proceedings.

Ballantyne was a picture of misery.

‘Did I do wrong, sir?’

McLevy shook his head.

‘Silence is golden, jist keep that in mind. Now – away back to the desk and deal wi’ the missing parrot.’

The young man nodded gratefully and shut the door.

The inspector and Mulholland looked at each other and both bowed their heads slightly, perhaps to conceal a smile of sorts, but Roach was not amused.

‘How did that boy get into the force?’

‘His mother’s a nurse,’ said McLevy.

‘So, all knew and someone spilled over,’ the lieutenant mused, face still averted.

‘We’ll find the guilty party.’

Mulholland’s intended emollient remark unleashed a torrent, because Roach had not enjoyed Carnegie’s jibes and knew that his Chief Constable Sandy Robb was an avid reader of the
Leith Herald
.

‘We have anarchy on the streets, dead women littering the gutter, the press on our backs and you two wandering about like lost souls!’

Roach swung round, his jaw jerking from side to side like an irritated alligator.

‘You have accomplished nothing!’

‘The murder only happened last night,’ McLevy pointed out reasonably enough.

‘That is not good enough. Call yourself a Thieftaker!’

Roach cut an immaculate figure, uniform pressed to a knife edge, shirt white, shoes gleaming – those he insisted on polishing himself, being of the opinion that you can always judge a man
by his shoes.

His subordinates made a sorry contrast. McLevy looked as if his clothes had been thrown at him by a sloven, and Mulholland seemed always, despite his best efforts, to be growing out of whatever
official attire he possessed.

From a high moral and apparelled ground, Roach spoke with principled vehemence.

‘By God, I am tempted to come out on the street, roast these students and show you how to pursue an investigation!’

To the lieutenant’s eyes, his inspector looked embarrassed or even alarmed at this possibility.

Of course being shown up is never a pleasant prospect.

McLevy scratched behind his ear for a moment.

‘Funny ye should mention this, sir. Mulholland and I were not long ago discussing that very notion.’

The constable managed to keep his face straight at this assertion; they had discussed nothing of the sort.

‘We have interviewed the leaders of the White Devils, and it is our belief that they conceal something.’

Mulholland nodded. This at least was true; both he and McLevy had sensed something awry in the depiction of last night’s events from Drummond and Grant. Of course it might be relatively
harmless, but both policemen felt it could have a darker tinge.

The problem was how to shake it out of them.

That much was agreed upon, but what else was fermenting in McLevy’s mind?

‘We need tae catch them in the act,’ the inspector continued smoothly. ‘Breaking the law. Stick them in the cells, hammer at the pair. Find the truth of what transpired last
night.’

Roach nodded wisely. This made sense and it still rankled, the woman shrieking in Constitution Street that he was a lecherous pincher of her posterior.

His thumb and forefinger twitched.

‘A night in the cells will do them no harm,’ he concurred. ‘And if it aids the investigation – ’

‘Exactly!’ said McLevy, eyes gleaming.

There was a long silence before Roach asked what seemed an obvious question.

‘How do we go about it?’

Mulholland sensed his inspector moving in for the kill as sincere assurance throbbed in the air.

‘With your valuable assistance, sir. This very evening. All things are possible.’

His hands were cleansed, perfumed with rose water, and in the darkness of the small windowless room like a monk’s cell, the single candle lit was suffice
illumination.

The Golden Book lay on the bare table; he had wrought the cover himself with such skill as he could bring to bear.

It bore three initials and he traced them with a loving touch.

This was his Tanakh, Talmud, Kabala, Koran, his holy scripture of inner thoughts and dreams.

His charted destiny.

Those who insulted, those who laid on impure hands, would suffer retribution.

He had given the dull stupid one the slip and the idiot would wait with bovine patience until summoned once more.

He pulled back a curtain and hidden in the corner hung his pale suit, no trace of blood bearing testimony to the accuracy of his blows.

The cane at a certain louche swagger of angle, lay elegantly against the wall. It brought a smile to his lips.

Glittering.

Eager for more adventures.

But first.

Open the book.

He did so and the grainy image that stared out at him brought tears to his eyes.

As they flowed in a never-ending stream down his face, he had a strange practical thought of how to explain a wet shirt to curious eyes.

This made him laugh and the tears stopped.

No water had fallen on the page, it never did, and so he turned the pages again till the formal photograph of a child stared out at him, well attired, hand in pocket, with a sidelong
disinterested gaze.

This was his favourite. Stolen from under the eyes.

He leant forward and planted a tender kiss upon the innocent lips.

Not long now and he would be known, accepted, held within a warm embrace.

But first there was work to be done. The unworthy, the dirty stink of the past must be expunged.

Another not worthy to live must die and be left on a doorstep as a cat would leave a mouse.

As an offering to its owner.

He closed the book and his eye was caught by a tattered book thrown into the corner.

Somewhere he would find in its pages the very word, the apposite reference.

Had to be good for something.

But after that, he would burn it – so that no trace remained.

Oh, tonight would be such fun.

But not yet though. He would allow the dullard some pleasure of his company, then leave him in the lurch and the fun would begin.

The white face, the suit so elegant, the donning of which would cause his very molecules to writhe and twist into an unrecognisably splendid being.

Who ruled the world.

The rising tide in his blood brought him to a sinuous caper ending when he slid the cane up between his legs in phallic salute.

The laughter bubbled inside him.

Every day he was more powerful, running rings round them all, especially the dullard.

And soon he would meet his Destiny.

But not yet.

First there was work to be done.

He would put down a sign. He had planned this for a long time. Nothing must go wrong.

But how could it?

When you ruled the pendant globe.

Lieutenant Robert Roach shivered a little in the cold, damp air and wondered to himself how such had come to be.

‘Are you certain this will work, McLevy?’ he enquired somewhat plaintively.

‘Rest assured, sir,’ was the bracing reply. ‘Ye wanted to be out on the streets, and here is the place!’

From past the rim of a rather large top hat the lieutenant looked up at the grim sky and blinked as the heavy rain spattered onto his skin.

He could have been at home, in the warm, by the fire, listening to his wife describe the latest gory opera she had witnessed full to the brim with dying abandoned women and bellowed catastrophe,
but no – somehow his inspector had persuaded that the lieutenant’s vital presence would anchor and buttress a stratagem for bringing these damned students to heel.

And perhaps move on apace the murder investigation, because McLevy and Mulholland had reported a distinct lack of success from their visit to Agnes Carnegie’s lodgings.

A bare, wee room full of religious artefacts, no sign of a personal life of any kind. No letters, no books of any dimension save assorted mildewed holy tracts, no pictures except Moses and the
Ten Commandments, and a gloomy looking Son of God who had to stare at his father on the opposite wall, sitting on a throne and casting sinners into hell.

In the drawers, her clothes threadbare though neatly folded, intimidating underwear, three pairs of shoes, heels worn but lined up like soldiers.

Nothing out of place, yet both policemen had a strange impression that the room may have been recently searched.

Nothing you could put your finger on, though they had rifled enough chambers in their time to sense when something may be amiss. But then who could have entered the place?

They had unearthed the door key in Agnes’s handbag and the respectable landlady confirmed that she had the spare and there was no other.

So – it remained just an impression.

One small, wooden chest had its fastening pulled askew and the scrape seemed reasonably fresh, but it may have just been wear and tear; the contents were more church papers.

The woman would seem to have had no life save the church and now she had no life at all.

Roach had sniffed – impressions did not interest him – proof did and there was nothing to indicate a murder motive.

That left a haphazard kill.

The worst kind.

The three men were now standing in the shadows of the harbour with some constables in support loitering unseen in one of the nearby wynds.

As a sudden gust of wind blew squalls of rain over the watchers, a random thought popped into the lieutenant’s mind.

‘Did you find out if Sim Carnegie’s alibi held?’ he asked hopefully. It would be a great relief to one and all if it turned out that the fellow had killed his own mother; a
touch Greek but a great relief nonetheless.

‘It held, sir,’ McLevy dashed such hope. ‘He spent all night wi’ the whores as provided. Underpaid them though. Big Susan says the man’s as mean as hell.’

‘Good for Big Susan,’ said Roach disconsolately.

He peered into the darkness and could see nothing on the streets. It was the inspector’s contention that the White Devils would return this night, but not a sign so far.

And even if they showed, would the plan work?

Mulholland detected the unease; he had been silent this while because he was concerned about his bees. The hives were not relishing this constant precipitation and their citizens seemed as
dismal as the lieutenant.

Yet here they were all gathered and it was time to rally the troops.

‘The inspector is a dab hand at setting up ensnarement, sir,’ he encouraged quietly. ‘You’re the second this day.’

‘And what was the other mark?’ muttered Roach, beginning to think that he was catching a cold.

‘Ornamental birds.’

‘That gives me great comfort,’ was the grumpy response, but a sound at the far end of the harbour put paid to this unsatisfactory exchange.

In the mirk could be distinguished fleeting daubs of white, as shapes moved in the night. This was accompanied by a babble of distant excitement as a group of young men came into view, their
faces almost glowing in the dark.