Fall From Grace (30 page)

After struggling into the teeth of the gale for a fair while and finally realising the pointlessness of his effort, McLevy found refuge where a sturdy brick shelter had been erected so that promenaders might, in better climes, view the River Tay in all its glory.

The inspector sank gratefully down upon the hard stone bench.

In the confines of the shelter, the sour odour of the undesired inflicted micturation rose to greet his nostrils. And now that he had no longer the distraction of battling the elements, the throbbing ache from the back of his head was like a hammer beating on his brain.

To distract himself from this predicament he looked out over the violent river, which was hurling waves against the shore like cannonballs, the clouds scudding across the sky above as if fleeing for their lives.

For a moment the moon was uncovered and by its pale light he could see dimly in the far distance the outline of the Tay Bridge.

The light of a train showed equally dimly as it entered the bridge and crawled across the rails like a child’s toy and McLevy was put in mind of when his Aunt Jean had taken him to a fair on the Leith Links.

In a darkened room he had watched a model engine climb a steep gradient towing carriages behind, find its way along an overpass with a tunnel underneath, shoot down the other side, then wind its way back by snakelike curves of track, through the tunnel and doubling back until it found its course returned to the gradient.

He was fascinated how the wheels of the train clung to the narrow ribbon of track, especially as it inched along the overpass and then hurtled down the gradient.

Each time the descent seemed faster and the audience gasps louder.

Then the young boy realised that the root of their fascination was in the anticipation of disaster; the desire to see the tightrope walker fall, the artist on trapeze miss his grip and plummet to the ground, the lion tamer gripped in the beast’s bloody mouth, all these in some dark way desired by the watcher.

Jamie McLevy observed the little engine make one more steep and safe plunge then let out a wail and dragged his Aunt Jean to safety before calamity struck.

And now the grown man strained his eyes to discern the distant glimmering lights from a train over two hundred feet in length, the willing squat little tank engine pulling five passenger carriages and a brake van.

Had he been near at hand, he would have seen the tank engine to be olive green in colour, number 224, weighing close to thirty-five tons.

A fine proud beast of burden with each passenger coach lit by brass and iron lanterns where men, women and children were to be disclosed, perhaps lost in thought, lost in love, perhaps asleep on a father’s shoulder or looking out with excitement at the violence of the storm.

Safely cradled by the North British line.

But at distance, still a toy train on a toy bridge.

The full moon played hide and seek with the clouds, and the scene flickered before McLevy’s eyes while the engine approached the High Girders.

As it entered the iron fretwork, a heavy cloud caught the moon and abruptly obscured all vision like an ominous dark curtain.

The inspector felt a panic build up inside him as if the darkness would swallow him, as if he were in another universe, a separate reality where shadows ruled and his own black thoughts tormented him.

He had uncovered the secret of the bridge, found its weakness, undermined its integrity. Now he carried that knowledge like a diseased person who contaminated all that he touched.

The Masque of the Red Death …

McLevy shook his head like an animal trying to rid itself from a plague of flies, but still the thoughts came.

What was his desire? In this empty darkness did he not truly wish for extinction? His own and all known things?

As if in answer, in the pitch black, came three separate and terrible flashes of light from the direction of the bridge, and then as the moon began to struggle free once more, McLevy saw by the emerging pallid light a column of steam and spray rise from the distant river as if some giant had picked up a mountain and hurled it into the waters.

He further strained his eyes; his long vision was excellent but the picture it brought to him provoked a craving for the most profound blindness.

The lunar light had grown stronger to reveal that where the High Girders had once stood so proudly, were now stumps like rotting teeth.

The bridge was down.

The unlooked-for wish had been granted.

Had the train also fallen?

James McLevy fell from the stone bench to his knees and bowed his head in prayer for the lost souls.

Because if the train had plunged deep like a diver, no one could survive that fall.

No one did.

These were not toys.
   

30

For secrets are edged tools,

And must be kept from children and from fools.

JOHN DRYDEN,
St Martin Mar-All

Lieutenant Roach looked at the calendar on his desk and sighed: 9 November 1880. He had the whole of the winter yet to endure, his blood sluggish already at seasonable ebb, and on such mornings considered his office to be little more than a railway station.

No sooner had Constable Mulholland requested an audience with his superior and the young man hardly sat down, twisting his fingers together but mercifully making no mention of impending suits of love, the potential failure of which Roach was not looking forward to divulging from his Masonic converse with Robert Forbes, than the door was rapped upon in peremptory fashion and McLevy came bounding in like a dog after a bone.

To regard the inspector, overcoat damp with the morning mist, wiry hair on end indeed giving him the appearance of a vibrant canine, it could never have been suspected that he had spent the night in broken sleep to awaken with a severe stitch in his side plus a head full of bad memories.

Thus the past afflicts the present like an uninvited guest, a spectre at the masked ball.

Job had his plague of boils and McLevy had the Bouch case. That treacherous pissful slippery bastard Hercules Dunbar was still at large and it was doubtful if he would ever be recovered; everyone else was dead except Margaret Bouch who was far too actively alive and kicking.

The dreadful picture of the spray rising from the wild river to mark the death plunge of that train almost a year past, had seared its way into his brain and would be with him always.

But, out of the void, comes action.

The empty feeling in the pit of his stomach had been filled with two strong cups of coffee; he had then made early rendezvous with his omniscient provider of financial lore and his inquiries had borne lustrous fruit.

Ripe enough to sink his teeth into, and if juice dribbles down the chin, so much the better.

As he walked by Great Junction Street towards the Leith station, the morning sun made an unexpected appearance thus dispelling the mist and, to the alarm of some passers-by, the inspector raised his arms towards it, closed his eyes and bathed delightedly in the weak November rays.

‘Hallelujah!’ he announced to the sky above.

It was often thus with McLevy. A state of inertia as if the very blood had been sucked from his veins was followed by a frenetic burst of activity and high spirits, tending towards the manic and hard to resist.

He stood in the doorway as if an electric charge had been shot through him and winked at Mulholland who, now that the inspector had arrived on the scene, was searching for an altered formulation on how to break his own news.

Roach merely dug his backside deeper into the padding of the chair like a man would ground his feet before a shot out of a deep trap.

He could recognise the signs. Time to anchor down.

Queen Victoria from her position on the wall clasped her plump hands together a trifle anxiously as McLevy almost hopped in the air with satisfaction.

‘Our friend Mister Oliver Garvie is facing financial ruin.’

This statement produced a muted response. Mulholland, who would previously have cheered this to the echo, had his own possible ruin to face and Roach had learned that when McLevy was running wild, to be sanguine was to be sagacious.

‘How so?’ he asked, jerking his jaw to the side.

The inspector hopped again, undismayed by such dull audience.

‘He has been hammered at the gaming tables. Gambled the stock exchange and lost. Plunged heavily to recoup. Lost once again with a vengeance. And now?’

McLevy raised a heavy eyebrow like an actor in a melodrama.

‘He has nothing left to gamble.’

The inspector looked to Mulholland but received pallid response which annoyed him: the man should be full of beans at the prospect of a rival unravelled, but looked like John the Baptist just after Salome cut loose.

‘So says my banking confidant,’ he ended tersely.

‘Is he reliable?’ Roach questioned.

‘He runs the bank.’

That was that, then.

Mulholland took a deep breath but McLevy severed, like Salome, the intended contribution.

‘I think I may be able –’ began the constable.

‘Hold yet, Mulholland,’ was the grandiose response. ‘The lieutenant and I are in communication.’

‘So, what is your thinking, McLevy?’

The inspector smacked his lips like a man dining out on crime and strode around the office, almost skipping at times.

‘Twenty thousand pounds insurance money!’ he exclaimed. ‘My banker friend assures me that no amount approaching that sum has gone abroad from Garvie’s account to pay out for this supposed cargo.’

‘He may have had the money in other forms,’ Roach threw in. ‘Securities, bonds, liquid cash, who knows what businessmen get up to?’

‘Who knows indeed?’ the inspector answered back, a wicked gleam in his eye. ‘Who knows what swindles they may perpetrate?’

Mulholland winced and opened his mouth again but this time it was the lieutenant beat him to the punch.

‘All very circumstantial, inspector. To move against a man of Garvie’s standing, I need hard evidence.’

Mulholland thought of the cigar box nestling in his coat pocket where it hung on a hook in the station cubby-hole, and blurted out, ‘I may have some of that.’

There was a silence then both of his superiors turned round as if seeing him for the first time.

This was not quite how Mulholland had imagined it; he had hoped for a quiet word with his lieutenant, a gentle rap on the knuckles plus unspoken appreciation of his investigative talents, then McLevy apprised of the facts in a manner to let the inspector know that although a breach of etiquette might have occurred, talented youth must be given its head.

‘Some of what?’ the inspector asked finally.

‘Hard evidence.’

The McLevy jaw dropped a considerable distance.

‘Eh?’

A smile spread across the saurian features of Roach; this was a rare moment.

‘Has the constable been to the well before you, McLevy?’ he asked benignly.

‘He said nothing to me!’ was the indignant retort.

‘I couldn’t get a word in,’ muttered Mulholland.

‘Well you have now! What evidence? What are you talking about, man?’

The unhappy constable stood to his feet like a schoolboy in class and related the events of the night before, Stinky D’Oros et al.; at times as regards frilly
peignoirs
, swelling and dilation the detail was somewhat truncated but other than that Mulholland stuck to the facts and the facts stuck to him.

At the end of his recitation there was silence. The inspector’s face was like thunder and Roach placed a prudent hand over his long snout of a chin as if deep in thought.

Mulholland had a brief devious moment of hope; was that a forgiving glint in the lieutenant’s’s eye? Had Roach come down on the side of young love?

Inspector McLevy came down differently.

‘You withheld evidence!’ was his accusation.

‘More like delayed, sir.’

‘Withheld!! From your superior officer.’

‘Most improper,’ agreed Roach urbanely. ‘I only know of one other man who would do that.’

This snide observation brought McLevy’s head whipping round.

‘In my case it is strategic,’ he allowed. ‘Constable Mulholland has permitted his personal affairs to hinder the investigation of a case. We have lost valuable time, and time is always of the essence.’

‘It was the previous night only,’ ventured Mulholland.

‘Of the essence!’

This roar brought the exchange to an end and though McLevy was often guilty of such behaviour as regards his lieutenant, one of the prime reasons was Roach inevitably dragged his feet, scratched around for the rule book, pored over evidence as if it were a tricky putt on a treacherous green, and took forever in granting permission to accomplish what could be effected in one hour of unsupervised action.

Every investigation had its own rhythm, like a symphony, and there was room for only one conductor.

Second fiddles must remain so.

It was too late now to say whether the inspector would have handled events differently; Mulholland had denied him the choice.

So though there was an egoic element to the outrage experienced as regards his subordinate’s sleekit, behind the back, round the corner, slimy, ungrateful, underhand, despicable, belly-crawling activities, McLevy also had a sense of genuine betrayal.

He fixed his constable with a cold eye and Mulholland hung his head in apparent shame.