Seen too much.
McLevy turned away abruptly. Like the hawker he had no use for further vanity but had bought the damned reflector because of a recent incident at the Leith station.
He had entered full of autumnal relish but became aware of sniggering amongst the morning shift of half-witted young constables. His own right-hand man, Constable Mulholland, hiding the amusement in his blue eyes, stooped down from a great height and informed the inspector that the dishcloth stuffed round the neck that morning to avoid the spilling content of a yolky egg at breakfast upon his whitish shirt, had failed to be removed and was hanging down his front like a dog’s tongue.
McLevy had lost face. To know that folk had laughed behind his back. A childhood memory of similar humiliation had surfaced. It cut him to the bone.
A gang of boys following him through the wynds, howling names, spittle and stones showering his back.
His mother had cut her throat, mad auld bitch. Jamie McLevy would be next. Mad for certain sure.
Thank God that Lieutenant Roach, his superior in rank if not in merit, had failed to witness the incident of the overlooked dishcloth.
Ergo the purchase. Every morning, before setting forth, McLevy surveyed his façade in the glass, before twisting over a shoulder to make also sure the back of his thick coat held no trace of a careless repast, or the inadvertent detritus of a solitary life.
This weakness angered him. Why should he give a damn how people thought or what he looked like? It was a recent personal tremor, a self-conscious frailty.
Why should he give a damn? But, he did.
He set his cup down on the spindly-legged table in front of the window, where he read and penned such thoughts as struck him worth the trouble into his diary, pulled back the faded brown curtains and gazed out over his city.
Auld Reekie. The sky was dark as would befit the time of year, trails of street lamps on the main thoroughfares paid homage to the correlated straight lines of planned logic but off all of this mathematical probity ran crooked wynds, narrow deviating slits of passage, and sly conniving side streets – his hunting ground.
The night was silent. But McLevy fancied he could hear the ticking of a thousand clocks, the sighs of a thousand sleepers; men, women and children all sharing the peaceful slumber denied to him.
So be it.
The city was like a huge beast, flanks heaving as it slept in the darkness, and McLevy felt his breath shift in rhythm to that deep motion.
A movement on the roof to the side and he caught from the corner of his eye a slinking form padding with swift sure steps on the oily slates.
Bathsheba. A cat that often visited but not now. She had something in her jaws. He focused his eyes; was that a tail hanging from her mouth?
McLevy’s long sight was exemplary, though from short up the edges blurred with increasing incidence; he tapped upon the window pane and the cat halted and turned, her yellow eyes gleaming in the sooty blackness of an Edinburgh night.
Aye. Right enough. It was a long tail. Even had a vestige of life, looping round with the cat’s swivelling turn of the head. But the rest of the body told a different story. Dead as a doornail, the jaws clamped shut around.
From the feline point of view Bathsheba observed a disembodied bulbous white shape gawking through the window, so she slipped behind a chimney stack to enjoy the fruits of her labour in peace.
A nearby church clock tolled out its verdict on the state of Scotland.
Four o’clock. A distance from dawn. The Witching Hour.
It might have been a trick of the light from the flickering street lamps but it struck the inspector that the holy spires sticking piously up into the sky to remind God that they were aye on parsimonious and pious duty, were listing somewhat to the side; slanted, as if some insidious force were magnetising them from the straight and upright.
However. It was only a trick of the light.
October had almost gone, the dark half of the year approaching. Halloween. The old legends had it that evil spirits were abroad and it were best to be in disguise lest they steal your very soul; but all good Christians would be well protected, buttressed by faith, wrapped tight by rectitude, sin-proofed to Satan’s three-pronged attack.
Only those with a spotted conscience need be concerned. The likes of James McLevy. Marked by madness. Or worse.
The inspector’s thoughts returned to his dream.
And what of these naked females, cavorting round the flames? Try as he might he could not recall their precise features, just a general impression of libidinous ecstasy.
McLevy realised that his feet were freezing, even in the woolly socks. There was no point in going back to bed, however, not with a troupe of sleekit females lurking under the covers. He let out a grunt of amusement at that notion but could not rid himself of a feeling of foreboding.
Who was the figure in the red cloak and why did she put such fear into his heart?
Perhaps he might coax some flame from the ashes with judicious blowing plus a few tinder stalks, then a wee bit of coal, and rustle up another pot of coffee?
Yet he did not move from the window.
Perhaps they were all uncanny wraiths from the primitive depths of vanquished time, to be dismissed or at the very least taken into custody.
Naked as sin.
Just as well he’d had his hat and overcoat on.
Yet what was he doing dancing in tune?
3
I could not get the ring without the finger.
THOMAS MIDDLETON,
Master-Constable
To see the two women in the Princes Street tearoom, it would never have occurred to the ignorant or unwary that they might have in mind a desire to rend tooth and nail the flesh that held the opposite’s very skeleton in place.
One was unassuming in her dress, respectable and neat as a maiden aunt, frills forbidden, small-boned and dowdy almost, a heart-shaped face, tiny almost claw-like hands, the nails a little longer than custom might prefer. Her eyes – dark, beady, like a restless bird’s – darted here and there under the lowered lids.
Her nose was narrow, as if it had been sucked by some inner force to press up against the cartilage in order to accentuate the cheekbones on each side. The mouth in contrast was wide, small milky teeth lurking behind wet lips as she sipped the scented tea.
The other was dressed in the height of fashion; a gown of vivid aquamarine brought out the colour of her green eyes and the red hair, swept up save for some cunning tendrils that had escaped to call attention to the contours of her neck, contrasted with the porcelain skin of her face. A mocking twist to the lush, slightly parted lips below a delicate nose completed the picture.
A pretty female, perhaps a little empty-headed even, the observer might have concluded. Flighty. Not like the sober wee soul opposite.
Both women had taken great care in how they would present themselves one to the other.
The bird of paradise and the sparrow.
Neither, of course, might be what she seemed.
Deadly rivals they most certainly were.
The dowdy woman was known only as the Countess and the vision in aquamarine, Jean Brash.
They shared the same profession, that of a bawdy-hoose keeper.
While Edinburgh matrons discussed the relative merits of French cakes, mesmeric influence and petticoat tails, the Countess poured out more tea with a steady hand.
‘Darjeeling. I always find the fragrance so…soothing, don’t you?’ she remarked, in an accent that more than hinted at some passing acquaintance with the Balkans.