Fall From Grace (28 page)

‘You remember now, Herkie,’ the inspector shouted above the distorted clamour of enraged nature, ‘the last time we got to grips, you suffered the worst of the exchange. I believe my fist and your belly made strong acquaintance.’

‘I have it in my mind,’ Dunbar called back. ‘But things can change, I am a changed man now.’

‘Aye, you have more hair and are better dressed but I doubt the beast remains the same under your skin.’

The inspector was now almost within touching distance and for a brief moment the wind abated, so that he spoke quietly to the desperate figure crouched before him.

‘I would advise you to slip the restrainers on and come to the fold of justice like a wee lamb. Is that possible for you to entertain?’

Dunbar nodded his head in the weird stillness.

‘That is possible,’ he replied, then as the wind broke into another furious tantrum, he used the force of it at the back of him plus the propelled impetus from a foot which he had placed behind him on the trunk of the tree, to shoot forward like a bullet and take McLevy by surprise, bringing them both crashing to the ground.

Close quarters had always been an advantage to Hercules Dunbar for his bones were hard as cold chisel.

He wedged a steely forearm under McLevy’s throat and began to press up into the soft flesh. The aim was simple, to crush the windpipe until a lack of breath separated the victim from a conscious state and left him with a neck like a wrung chicken.

The taller man was on top, his full weight pressing down, one arm busy at its chosen employment, the other pinning McLevy’s right hand so that only the weaker left was free to flap uselessly at the side.

The policeman’s eyes were bulging with effort as he tried to break loose but as the pressure intensified on his windpipe, he began to gasp for air though God knows there was enough of it flying around.

The inspector’s skin took on a bluish tinge and Hercules bared his teeth in a savage grin.

‘Things change, eh?’

Another jolt with the forearm brought a shuddering retch from McLevy as he fought to get some air into his lungs; the inspector could feel his senses slipping, a darkness behind the eyes.

‘Your Auntie Jean will no’ help you now,’ Dunbar taunted. ‘Another mad auld bitch.’

It is possible that had Hercules reflected on such a remark he may have considered that to insult the only woman McLevy had ever truly loved might not have been the best way to induce subjugation but he had blood in his eyes and, at these moments, the primitive emerges club in hand.

However, one caveman deserves another.

McLevy’s left hand scrabbled desperately in the loose earth with renewed force and came upon a by-product of his favourite element in the shape of a flat heavy stone which he raised up to smash into the side of the other’s face.

The terrible crushing pressure relaxed for a moment as Dunbar’s head absorbed the force of the blow. He blinked his eyes in an almost comical fashion as McLevy smashed at him again and then, while the man reeled back, the inspector dropped the stone and rolled away from underneath to land on all fours drawing great gulps of air into his tortured lungs and throat.

The two men slowly then lumbered to their feet and while the storm howled above them in the night sky, lurched and grappled at each other like two prehistoric beasts in the primeval sludge.

But despite Dunbar’s animal nature he lacked McLevy’s recourse to applied madness under severe stress, a ferocious lupine glare indicating the demonic possession within.

Hercules was driven back towards the tree and one final scything blow to an area somewhere between the belly button and groin laid him writhing to the ground.

‘As you say, Herkie,’ McLevy gasped, wiping a smear of blood from his nose with one hand while he brought out the restrainers with the other. ‘Things change.’

But Fate was not finished with them yet; there would be other acts of 
violence to play out before these two enemies from birth could truly say the game was over.

The growth that had aided Hercules to launch his attack had creaked and groaned in sympathy while its champion had engaged in combat. It was an old walnut tree and the roots had been weakened by incessant downpour then stretched beyond their strength by the westerly gale. They snapped, and downwards it fell with a writhing motion as if in a death throe.

Like a bolt from the blue.

The trunk and heavy branches missed Dunbar by very little but crashed down upon the vengeful McLevy, pinning him underneath as if crucified to earth.

He could not move, breath driven from his body and a sharp stabbing pain indicating that a few ribs were either cracked or broken and the back of his head aching mightily where the tree had first struck.

One of the wizened fruits of the branches fell off and pinged on to his exposed forehead.

He’d never liked walnuts; they always stuck in the gaps of his teeth.

Again there was a curious still interlude as if the storm was gathering its strength for a final burst of destruction and in the silence, broken only by the heavy rain, came the sound of laughter.

Hercules Dunbar staggered to his feet and looked down at his enemy.

‘Ye have tae admit, inspector,’ he said with delighted malevolence, ‘either God or the devil is on my side.’

‘I would venture, the devil,’ grunted McLevy, the pain in his crushed ribs jolting him as he tried to move.

But he could not. He was helpless.

He watched as Dunbar put his hand up to the side of his bruised face, swollen and blotched from the stone that McLevy had clattered against the side of his head.

The inspector’s body and limbs were entangled and pinioned by the heavy branches that pressed him ever deeper into the earth but his head, by a quirk of chance, was clear, framed by the poor broken boughs like a portrait.

Therefore he could observe as Hercules Dunbar searched out the flat stone, hefted it judiciously and then came back to kneel by the side of the spread-eagled form.

Dunbar lifted up the stone.

‘Like for like,’ he muttered. ‘The storm will take the blame.’

Some of the dark clouds above began to fragment and a ray from the revealed full moon glinted on the stone, as it poised in the air.

McLevy’s eyes were steady upon the other’s face.

‘Can you kill in cold blood, Herkie?’ he asked; then it was his turn to laugh ignoring the shafts of agony in his ribcage as he gazed up at Dunbar’s puzzled face.

‘I am prepared to die. Are you prepared to end my life? Do you have the gumption for such deliverance?’

This was his only hope, the inspector had calculated; he in fact had no desire whatsoever to shuffle off this mortal coil without at least one more pot of coffee and a plate of sugar biscuits with Jean Brash, but his chances of avoiding the grim reaper were somewhat limited.

Pity from Dunbar was out of the question. If he begged for mercy or showed the least fear, it would inflame the man to a primitive lust for the killing blow. The balance must be altered and risk was the key.

McLevy began to sing softly. A song that Dunbar had heard before in the interrogation room when the inspector was King of the Castle.

‘Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling.

Charlie is my darling, the young Chevalier.’

Chanted like an incantation, it caused Hercules to jerk back, nostrils flaring.

‘That’s Jacobite!’ he accused. ‘Ye dirty wee Papish porker!’

‘Then bash in my brains, because I’m going to sing it any fashion.’

McLevy began again but stopped abruptly and roared with laughter at the look on the face of his mortal foe.

Hercules Dunbar’s head was in a spin as the gale suddenly lashed in on them again and he was taken backwards.

His thoughts were whirling like the wind. If he killed this demon he would be safe, no man would follow him; but while McLevy lived, Dunbar would always be looking over his shoulder, always in fear of discovery; he could persuade Jenny to sell the house, move North to her relatives he would be more secure there but even then, even then?

Kill the bastard and be done with it.

But how can you kill a man who laughs in your face?

Hot laughter.

In cold blood.

The song began again and it drove him near mad to the point when he lifted up the stone with a snarl and hurled it downwards.

But if with murderous intent his aim was sadly awry, for the missile crashed beside McLevy’s head and bounced harmlessly aside.

The Jacobite air halted its jaunty progress. The wind howled and the rain beat down on McLevy’s unprotected face as the two men gazed at each other.

‘With any luck ye’ll drown tae buggery,’ Dunbar remarked soberly. ‘Nature will do the job.’

‘True enough,’ replied McLevy. ‘Water will one day be the death of me.’

Hercules suddenly smiled and he moved forward to stand, legs astride, over the recumbent form.

He fished in his trouser flap, produced his not inconsiderable member and a stream of urine joined the rain gushing down on the inspector’s countenance.

McLevy froze in disbelief but he should have remembered that there were many facets to the story of the boots.

The pupils of his eyes narrowed to a grey slit flecked with yellow, and for a second he strained up against the weight of wood that held him fast.

Had he succeeded in wrenching free it is doubtful whether Hercules would have survived to refasten his trouser flap and kneel down once more to grin savagely as he looked into the cold lethal eyes of the deeply insulted wolf.

‘You and me are the same, McLevy. Under the skin. Jist the same animal. Now we are equal. Like for like.’

Dunbar levered himself to his feet and was about to leave when a command from the depths of the tree stopped him in his tracks.

‘Hold it there!’

Covered in pish or not, survive the night in doubt; in spite of ribs cracked, the inspector glimpsed a chance here.

Questions must be asked. If the man thought McLevy to die in this place, he might reveal the truth.

‘The auld butler. Did you cause his death?’

Dunbar shook his head in disbelief at the effrontery of the man but answered anyway.

‘I did not. I left him where I said.’

‘Then who killed the man?’

‘I wouldnae know.’

From his disadvantaged position, McLevy probed further.

‘When you came to the house that Sunday, you threatened blackmail to Alan Telfer did you not?’

This was not such a wild stab as it seemed; the inspector had been long mulling over Dunbar’s veiled allusions from the interrogation.

The man made no response but with an insolent smile invited further deduction.

‘The blind eye, you turned. The Beaumont Egg. They would be connected?’ continued the policeman.

For a moment Dunbar considered not responding but then a gust of wind blew some muddy leaves over McLevy’s face and the effort he had to make to blow them off, jerking the breath from one side of his mouth to the other, brought home how helpless and puny was the questioner.

And Hercules was a boaster. The appreciation he possessed as regards his own clever ploys was boundless. He could not resist this moment.

Dunbar adopted a mysterious air.

‘The bridge must open on time,’ he opined. ‘The cost must not be exceeded. The ore was poor quality, the iron produced shot through wi’ holes.’

‘So you filled them up?’

‘We were ordered so and thus provided.’

‘By whom?’

‘Alan Telfer.’

‘He brought you the Beaumont Egg?’

‘Whenever necessary. Had it made up special.’

‘Yet you had no written proof. Nothing. So when you went to see him he laughed in your face.’

‘But I got my own back.’

‘A candlestick only. He’s still laughing.’

This blunt assessment brought a scowl to Dunbar but then a sly dirty smile spread across his countenance.

‘I had the last laugh. I saw them.’

‘Saw what?’

‘I’ll throw it in their face one day. In front of everybody. In their face!’

This must have been the strangest interrogation in the annals of crime; urine-soaked police inspector, poleaxed by a walnut tree, asks questions of a suspect who might yet change his mind and kill him at any moment.

Yet it did not impinge on McLevy’s state for one moment. He had a sixth sense when a fact that might help unlock a mystery was about to be revealed, no matter the circumstances or whether the discloser realised the importance of same.

He also realised the source of the guilt he had sensed in Dunbar as regards the death of his only friend, the riveter, Tommy Loughran, but this was not the time to bring it home; guilt causes anger and that emotion could wait until another day.