Trick of the Light (42 page)

It was the first act of unselfish love Samuel had ever witnessed on his behalf, and he was fierce proud of his wee Moumou.

His woman. When he came out of the cell, she looked at him and said, ‘From this moment on, Samuel Grant, you will walk a straight line and I will walk it with you.’

He could have kissed her right there and then but didn’t want to get her a bad name in a police station.

But then when they emerged and she went to get the papers, Samuel saw McLevy on the prowl and decided to display his new credentials of respectability.

So, he continued his declaration.

‘Jonathen Sinclair. The murder. I saw it.’

‘
Whit
?’

McLevy’s jaw dropped for real this time.

‘I was sleeping rough. By the water. I saw it happen.’

The Leith Docks, 1864

Young Samuel Grant, having had a coin pushed between his teeth, looked into the cold eyes of the American and ran for his life.

But not far.

The boy was curious. Why would the man pay him to go away? Was there more money to be found?

So he crept back to the head of the wynd in time to see the blond hair shining in the dim radiance from the jostling ships as the man headed for the cluster of boatyard offices in the distance.

One window was illuminated, shining like a lighthouse in the dark.

Samuel watched.

The man he now knew as Jonathen Sinclair walked on, whistling a jaunty air, a tune the boy had never heard before. American probably.

Then another man stepped out from the shadows ahead, lifted a pistol and fired.

Samuel saw the impact of the bullet striking the body before Sinclair went down like a felled tree.

He did not move.

The other man, who wore a long oilskin coat and wide brimmed black hat, moved towards the fallen man, confident in his aim.

The boy could not breathe, such was his terror. This was a deadly business.

Then it got deadlier.

As the man bent over the still body another shot sounded and the killer was jolted back from short range.

His hat flew off to reveal a similar shock of fair hair while he staggered back then fell in his turn.

For a moment both bodies were still, then Jonathen Sinclair slowly rose to his feet, a long pistol gun held in his hand, the barrel still smoking.

For a long instance he looked down at the corpse, then he came to a decision.

He removed the man’s oilskin coat and fitted his own coat in its place. Then he emptied all the pockets of the dead man, working swiftly while glancing around. He took a sheaf of papers from his pocket and put them in place to be in the other’s possession.

Then he took a ring from his finger and put it on the stiff hand lying there.

That done, he sighted down the long pistol, put the nozzle in close and then blew the dead man’s head clean off his shoulders.

The boy took to his heels this time and did not stop.

McLevy absorbed all this as Samuel brought his rendition to a close.

‘Ye didnae think to tell the police?’

‘I was a wee boy. Who would believe me?’

‘Ye could have tried.’

‘I’m no’ that enamoured of the police.’

But Samuel hastily qualified the remark with a glance back to Muriel who was waiting with some impatience at the station door.

The bouncy mattress was calling. If she was going to lose her reputation, it might as well be worth her while.

Her mind flipped back to the time yesterday when, miserably going through her dead husband’s desk for the want of anything better to do, she had opened the secret drawer again and stuck her hand to the back. There she found a small embossed knob which when she pulled, produced another aperture.

Undertakers have many boxes.

Inside this one was a letter addressed to her husband at his business address from a woman who signed herself
your loving creature and playmate
,
Beth Ryder
. The hand was not uneducated and the words to the point.

They promised further amatory adventures and were fairly graphic as to how this would be achieved.

They also thanked him for his generous offerings both in love and cash.

Which is when Muriel realised that a scamp who would go to jail for you was worth a hundred respectable men who keep a mistress to give them pleasure and a sour face to give their wife.

She had told the maid of her decision and Ellen’s only comment was that she’d have the tea ready for them when they got back. And turn the bed down.

Muriel winked at Sam. Most unladylike.

‘I’m better disposed now,’ said the bold Samuel to the inspector.

And to prove the truth of that, he volunteered further endorsement of his new qualities.

‘I’d seen him before. Sinclair.’

‘Whereabouts?’ asked McLevy, quickly.

‘The Happy Land. He had a wee magpie there. My cousin Mamie worked the place, God rest her soul. She’d pass me a bite to eat and I’d watch them a’ arrive frae the upstairs window. I saw him twice.’

The Happy Land had been a notorious bawdy-hoose, run and owned by one Henry Preger. A villainous type who had died in mysterious circumstances and was mourned by no-one.

‘Sinclair was mad keen on that wee lassie. And she on him. Lovey-dovey. She was aye playing wi’ his hair.’

‘What was her name?’

‘I don’t know, and Mamie’s dead now, but I can tell you one that does.’

McLevy did not need to be told. The woman who had plied her trade there was suspected of helping Henry shuffle off this mortal coil and who then opened her own place, the Holy Land, followed after a fire and insurance money by that quintessence of bordellos, the Just Land, was none other than Jean Brash.

And she owed him her sweet existence.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said to Samuel.

‘You know where tae find me,’ replied Samuel, proudly, then turned and walked to the door where Muriel put her arm through his and off they walked to another life.

Silver Sam and Moumou.

No hidden drawers.

As they did so Constable Mulholland walked in, favouring his side slightly but telling himself he was fit for duty and ready for action.

Possibly after his landlady fussing around him – Roach’s guess was right, she was Irish but not buxom, in fact thin as a rake – Mulholland was hoping for a hero’s welcome at the station. No bunting, no pipe bands but the odd handshake or a clenched-fist salute.

What he received instead was his inspector coming up with a possessed look in his eye.

‘How fit are ye, constable?’ he demanded.

‘I’ll live till I die,’ said Mulholland.

‘Good,’ came the response, ‘for we have work to do.’

With that McLevy, who was luckily still in his outdoor clothes, hustled Mulholland out before he even managed to get a foot inside.

Ballantyne watched them go and sighed.

For the moment his days of glory were over. Back to the insects and a quiet life.

But what a time it had been.

42

Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, lead thou me on;

The night is dark, and I am far from home.

J
OHN
H
ENRY
N
EWMAN
, ‘Lead, Kindly Light’

He watched the two figures approach in the gloom of the afternoon, walking slowly up the crooked road that wound its way through the bare fields.

They were city folk, or at least dressed so, the tall one leaning slightly to the side, the other a burly figure with a low-brimmed bowler, battling against the wind that always blew at this time of year.

Down towards Loch Leven lay the more fertile land but up here in the Braes of Orwell was a harsher proposition; a few cattle and sheep, with a tough grind to grow crops of any great matter save what the poor soil would allow.

The farm fed and housed them; it was a hard taskmaster and took its toll but he was content enough.

More than that, sometimes.

He had watched his wife and twin boys, their fair hair flopping to the ungainly sway of the ramshackle cart, leave some time earlier after a bite to eat.

Kirstie calling encouragement to Auld Bob, their stubborn and slow horse, who knew the road down was easy compared to the one back up when they would be loaded with provisions from the market town.

So the horse was saving his strength.

Age teaches you such wisdom.

Usually the farmer would have gone with them but this day had decided to remain at home.

There was always something to do: a fence to mend, a dyke to restore, the henhouse to repair, but that was not the reason he had stayed.

A dream last night.

Cannon fire, bodies piled on wagons, no clean straw, no springs to cushion against the jolts on a road the savage rains had washed back to sharp stone. Whips cracking, profanities shouted at the broken horses, the storm beating down, almost drowning the cries of agony.

Will no-one have mercy upon me?

My God – why cannot you let me die?

My poor wife, my dear children – what will become of you?

Some moaned, some prayed, some cursed their fate and some, like John Findhorn, held their peace.

His last words,

I wish I was home.

The farmer had awoken drenched in sweat, his wife sleeping peacefully beside him.

These dreams used to haunt him but then had faded with the years.

Now this one had returned, and so he stayed at home. Stayed to see the men approach. This had been his dread for a long, long time but like the dreams the fear had faded.

However, it too had now returned.

He walked away from the window into their bedroom where a locked, strong-ribbed chest had its place and opened it with a large key that was hidden high on the shelves.

These boys got in everywhere; they had arrived late, not six years before, and were making up for lost time.

He and Kirstie had almost given up hope but then they had been twice blessed.

The farmer had a lot to lose.

He reached into the chest and took out a dark piece of oilcloth, which he unwrapped to reveal a long revolver. It shone in the light for he had taken good care of it over the years but the gun contained only the one bullet.

As he replaced the cloth, he saw buried deep in the chest the white piece of linen that held his grandfather’s watch. A fine thick timepiece shattered all these years ago when a bullet smashed into its body at the Leith docks.

Saved his life. No denying that. The bullet still in place. Buried in broken time.

Below that was a hint of uniform grey.

He closed the chest, locked it, carefully replaced the key, for he was a careful man, and returned to the main room and kitchen where the family lived and ate. The revolver he placed inside a drawer in an old sideboard that butted up against the wall. It would be easy to reach under pretext.

Just as he did so, there was a knock at the door.

When he opened, a man stood there.

‘I am James McLevy, inspector of police,’ he said. ‘My parish is Leith in the city of Edinburgh. May we come in, if you please, sir?’

The farmer without a word let Mulholland and McLevy make entrance. He showed no curiosity but poured out two glasses of water from a large jug on the table.

‘Hospitality costs little,’ he said at last.

They saw a tall whipcord man, with fair hair that was thinning a touch, hazel-eyed and hook-nosed. His face was craggy and lined like the land he tilled and a beard trimmed neatly enough with a darker colour than the hair, flecks of grey here and there.

There was a resemblance of sorts to the soldier in the picture McLevy had seen on the wall, but time changes us all.

The man still said nothing so the inspector gulped the water thirstily then started in.

It had been a long road via Jean Brash who had reluctantly supplied the requested details, when reminded that if it were not for McLevy she would still be drinking Sergeant Murdoch’s vile brew and looking forward to a slow death in the Perth penitentiary.

Armed with a name and geographical location she gave out, they had travelled by coach towards the town of Kinross to check the local records, and there come up lucky.

Kirstie Donnachie, a native of these parts, had left for a while then come back with a new husband and taken over the family farm; her widowed father had died of a lingering illness some time after her return.

The farm was registered in her name; the husband’s coincidentally was the same appellation.

John Donnachie.

The policemen had then hired a pony and trap to take them to the farm but the driver had flatly refused to bring his precious cart up the heavily rutted road.

So, after agreeing a time for him to come back, they had walked the rest.

While Mulholland nursed his partially healed wound through all these different journeys, McLevy had brought him fully up to date with the twists and turns of the bizarre events. Bullets flying everywhere, bodies left and right.

‘Whit would your Aunt Katie say tae all that?’ he had asked, as they jolted in the coach to Kinross.

A dead dog breeds many a maggot
was the obscure rejoinder.

The farmer had not made a single unnecessary move since allowing them entry and his very stillness was a sign for caution. He did not sit nor ask them to do the same.

Mulholland eased aside his policeman’s cape to give better access to his hornbeam stick should the need arise, as his inspector began the tale.

‘You are here known as John Donnachie,’ McLevy said to the man. ‘But I believe you to be Jonathen Sinclair, an officer in the Confederate Army sent tae buy ships for to run the blockade. Eighteen years ago.