Fall From Grace (9 page)

‘Are ye going out tonight, mistress?’ she asked.

Jean’s mind had a picture from the previous night of her lover, waving goodbye then turning to stride off down the street. She had craned her neck out of the carriage to see if he looked back.

Not even once. But nothing in the rules said you had to look back.

‘I don’t yet know,’ she answered Hannah.

‘The girls would appreciate your presence.’

‘Surely you can keep them in line?’

‘It’s not the same,’ answered Hannah.

And so they left it there.

11

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot

That it do singe yourself.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
Henry VIII

Leith, 1836

The big boy had plenty of time. His opponent was doubled up in pain, nose bloody, crouched over, unable to move any further. The other boys behind yelped and howled like a pack of wild dogs that could sense the kill.

‘Say it.’ The big boy licked his lips. This was the best bit, the moment before he put his hard Protestant fist into the wee porker’s belly, the silence that invited the blow, the pure release of a long hatred. ‘Say it. I kiss the Pope’s arse, on my knees, his big fat arse. Say it!’

No response came from the crumpled form. The big boy had been hammering with his fist and boots for near the length of the narrow passage that led to the wee porker’s wynd. If he’d got through there he’d 
be safe but they’d bottled up both ends and let the big boy loose. The porker had made no attempt to fight just taken the blows one after the other, hunched over like a dumb animal

‘I’ll give ye one more chance. Say it. I piss in Holy Water and drink it every day. Say it!’

Nothing. Ah well. Work to be done.

‘Scour him good, Herkie. Break his bones!’

This shout from the pack brought his head round to glare them all to silence. It was his show.

He swaggered forward and savoured the moment. Not a sound except for the laboured breathing of his blood-anointed target.

Where to begin? The other had covered up, crouched, body bent, arms over his head, turned to the wall, protecting all the vital parts.

Of course he could start with the kidneys. Always a safe bet, some hard punches there would bring the quarry round but his hands were sore, plus he wasn’t in a kidney mood. And he had a secret weapon.

He flexed his feet inside the heavy boots. Each leather toe was capped with a lead plate. His father worked in a foundry and had fitted them himself.

Taking aim carefully, he launched a kick at the other’s leg, just above the ankle, crunching into the bone. A cry of pain. Another kick, then one more for luck.

In agony, the small boy turned round to clutch at his legs and Herkie grabbed his hair, pulling him upright so that he could look into the white face, contorted in pain but the eyes curiously blank, slate-grey, staring into his.

He put four punches into the belly. That was what he liked best. Other folk preferred the face but he was a belly man. One, two, three, four. The grey eyes did not change but suddenly a jet of bile shot out of the boy’s mouth all over his assailant.

Herkie reeled back.

‘That’s no’ fair. Aw, look at this, my Mammy’ll kill me!’

His clothes were spattered with the yellow discharge and the sight provoked some hastily suppressed giggles from the watching pack.

He turned back and aimed a wild kick at the other who had by this time fallen on his hands and knees. The kick missed by a mile
.

‘Ye dirty wee Pape. Dirty wee swine. Yer mother cut her own throat and bled all over her knickers. A’body knows that. Catholic bitch. C’mon boys!’

In righteous indignation, he led the pack way towards the other exit of the passage but as they reached it, a voice stopped them.

‘I’m no’ done yet.’

They turned to see the fallen boy had somehow pulled himself upright and was standing with his small hands held in front of him in the parody of a pugilist’s stance.

‘No’ done,’ he said.

For a moment there was a flash of primitive fear on Herkie’s face, then, realising that the eyes of the pack were upon him, his anger rose and he prepared to move back towards the swaying figure.

‘Jamie? Jamie, is that you?’ called a voice and they all took to their heels as a female figure approached from the wynd.

Jean Scott took the scene in at a glance, scooped the boy protectively into her ample stomach and shouted after the disappearing pack.

‘If I catch ye, I’ll leather your backsides ye spawn o’ Satan!’

She held the boy tight and sighed. This had happened before and would happen again. He was an outcast.

Jean pulled him away from her and tutted to herself.

‘Look at the mess of your face,’ she scolded as if it was all his fault, whipped out a hankie, spat in it, and began to wipe the blood from his skin. His slate-grey eyes gazed at her and it broke her heart, but she had to be practical, tears got you nowhere.

‘I never win a fight,’ he said.

‘That’s because you’re the smallest, they’re all older than you and there’s a whole gang!’

‘I never win.’

‘That Dunbar boy is an evil swine, he’ll come tae a bad end you mark my words!’

She finished cleaning him up, grasped him firmly by the hand and he limped beside her as they walked back through the wynd towards the entrance to their close.

One of the windows above opened and a woman leaned out.

‘Is he a’ right, Jean?’

‘He’s fine.’

‘I heard the rammy but I wasnae certain. These rascals are aye up tae something, eh?’

‘Uhuh.’

The window closed again and Jean became aware that the boy was looking up at her. Solemn-faced.

‘What is it?’

‘They said my mammy cut her throat. A’body knows.’

Jean sighed again. Would it never end?

‘Your mammy was a good soul, son.’

‘But it’s true. I saw her.’

Indeed he had. Jean had lived across the hall from them and found him keeping vigil at the kitchen table while his mother lay in the bed recess like a rag doll.

God knows why the woman had done that but Maria McLevy was a Catholic and the workings of such a mind would always be a mystery from Jean’s staunch Protestant viewpoint.

However, she had taken the boy in and now he was her life and she his family, their bond was stronger than blood.

‘Your mother was a good soul,’ she said quietly.

‘I’ve been saving my pocket money,’ he replied as if in answer. Jean smiled; his shifts of thought were commonplace to her by this time.

‘Have ye now?’

‘But I don’t know if it’s enough.’

‘I’ll make it up. What is it ye want to buy, the Edinburgh Castle maybe?’

He shook his head gravely.

‘No. A pair o’ tackety boots.’

‘Big heavy boots? And why is that?’

He made no response but a look passed over his face, which many a criminal in years to come would recognise and then worry over.

‘Will we get a size up, so’s ye can grow into them?’

‘The bigger the better,’ said the boy.

‘McLevy, if it’s not too much of a burden, could you bring yourself back to earth?’

The inspector wrenched himself from memory; God knows why such a recollection should have come into his mind and perhaps it was an offshoot of the personnel connected to the morning funeral, but then again McLevy’s thoughts did tend to drift when his superior was summing up the salient facts of a case.

He looked at Lieutenant Roach and wondered if, like the crocodile, he ate his meat alive and kicking.

‘Your servant aye, sir.’

‘That provides great comfort,’ muttered Roach.

The two of them plus Mulholland were ensconced in the lieutenant’s office with various chief constables, a Masonic lodge or two, a man with his foot on a dead stag, and Queen Victoria, looking down from the walls.

There was also a picture of Roach in plus fours leaning upon his driver in front of the clubhouse of the Royal Musselburgh golf course. He had yet to hit the ball and perhaps never would.

‘So,’ resumed the lieutenant, ‘it would seem that we have a break-in, an accident of fire, the sinner unrecognisable and burnt to hell which is where he was bound for in any case, an unfortunate loss of good cigars which will leave Sandy Grant nothing to stuff in his face for a while, but, other than that, all neat and tidy.’

‘All neat and tidy,’ said McLevy.

Something in his tone caused Roach’s eyes to narrow in historical reflex but then he dismissed it from his mind; there was a lodge meeting later and he needed time to ponder how to disseminate the details of his own chief constable’s perfidy on the putting green amongst his Masonic brothers without sounding like a bad loser.

He waved his hand and shuffled some papers.

‘Go therefore and do something useful,’ he commanded.

McLevy was out like a shot and that should have sent a warning signal flying Roach’s way but the good lieutenant had his attention taken by the tall figure of Mulholland, looming over him like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

‘I shall speak to Robert Forbes when the time is appropriate, constable,’ he said without looking up from his papers. ‘Go away.’

Mulholland resisted the temptation to rattle the engagement ring in its box in his pocket, nodded somewhat jerkily and moved off with only one backward beseeching glance from the door, which was resolutely ignored.

And yet he did not leave. Completely.

‘There’s one thing I would like to venture, sir.’

The lieutenant froze at his desk. He had a horrible feeling that this would concern his wife.

‘Mrs Roach has assured me that you will be my champion.’

‘Champion?’ repeated Roach in a somewhat strangled voice.

‘But I told her not to worry. We are all pushing in the same direction. Shoulders to the wheel.’

There was just the slightest tinge of bumptiousness in the remark, love indeed recognises little but its own importance.

The lieutenant waved his hand in a circular motion, not trusting himself to speak, and, finally, the door closed

Roach sighed. Five feet. Somewhere close to the height of Napoleon. And he’d missed the damned putt.

He looked up at the wall to his sovereign and wondered if Victoria had ever considered a game of golf.

She would
never
jingle.

When Mulholland emerged, he found the inspector watching Constable Ballantyne trying to catch a winter bluebottle against the window glass with a tumbler, so that he could slide some paper underneath then release the insect into the November air.

‘That boy is too kind to be a policeman,’ McLevy muttered. ‘You, however, will do fine.’

‘Where are we going then?’ asked Mulholland.

‘What?’

‘I know you by now and you’ve had something on your mind since you poked at that corpse. Not only that, the only time you’re polite to Doctor Jarvis is when he has observed and ratified what you have already noticed.’

The inspector grunted acknowledgement of the remark.

‘Our esteemed police surgeon confirmed what I had remarked about the burnt offering while you were using big words and being scientific. The corpse’s left foot was twisted but not from an accident of fire. A birth defect.’

‘I heard him say so.’

‘And it rang no bells?’

‘Not yet.’

Disappointment clouded McLevy’s eyes, there were times when he was abruptly reminded that the young constable did not possess his encyclopaedic knowledge of the criminal flotsam and jetsam that flowed in the streets of Leith.

‘One of our charges has such a twisted foot, the hammer is his preferred advantage, and in stature he would also fit the bill. Giant of a man. A nice big corpse.’

‘Daniel Rough!’

The name had now clicked into Mulholland’s mind and he screwed up his eyes in annoyance at having to be spoon-fed by the inspector. He’d never hear the end of it.

‘Love might sharpen some o’ the senses but it does bugger all for the brain,’ remarked McLevy acidly. ‘Bugger all.’

‘Got it!’ Ballantyne turned in triumph from the window with the large, fat fly, buzzing morosely inside the tumbler and confined by a sheet of paper to prevent escape.

‘I hope that’s no’ a crime report you’re using, that insect might defecate at any moment,’ said McLevy.

‘No, sir. Blank sheet. Wouldnae dream.’

With these words, Ballantyne hurried towards the station door to release his captive.

‘Too kind by half,’ muttered the inspector, noting that the young man’s right shoulder was still hunched from an injury suffered from a jailbreak almost a year ago.

McLevy took some responsibility for the incident. The thought reminded him that even the greatest man might lapse on occasion, so he fixed Mulholland with a marginally more benign eye and inclined his head for contribution.

‘Daniel Rough. I have him now,’ said the constable. ‘A wild man.’

‘In drink, especial. He’s sampled our hospitality, twice for violent affray and theft, but low-class stuff. And something else that may or may not have relevance.’