24

And looking down at the dead body of Frank Brennan, this one hour later, he had to acknowledge the accuracy of the constable’s observation.

It was common knowledge, even the lieutenant would have heard, that McLevy had fingered the big Irishman as being morally if not physically responsible for Sadie Gorman’s death. Roach must have enjoyed the thought of the inspector suffering, he would most earnestly hope, terrible qualms of guilt over the result of his machinations.

McLevy did indeed feel a certain queasiness in the pit of his stomach but rather than pangs of conscience he would more put the attribution down to the stench in this grimy box of a room.

There was the memory, however, of the appeal in the big man’s eyes, when he had tried to make amends by revealing that someone, so Sadie told him, had been watching at her and Brennan had paid no mind.

As McLevy, in turn, had paid no mind to that pathetic effort of atonement.

Frank Brennan had died unshriven. The inspector would have to live with it.

He brought his mind round to the present. One question only. Was the death natural?

He gazed down at the pasty white face of the corpse, still dressed in shirt and trousers and lying where the man had, no doubt drunkenly, fallen on to the mattress. At least he’d managed to kick off his shoes; the Irishman’s big toe stuck comically out of the frayed and holed sock.

Was the death natural, accidental as it were? Was it suicide? Was it murder? From his examination, he thought he knew the answer. Brennan’s eyes stared open. He reached forward with his fingers and gently closed them.

The door opened and Mulholland entered, his head near touching the ceiling of the narrow room.

‘I’ve seen more space in a prison cell,’ he announced.

The constable then fell silent. He was still in the huff. McLevy took note and sighed.

‘I realise I have caused offence with my accusation of yourself being a clipe. I now take it back. You may be many things, constable, and undoubtedly are, but a clipe is not one of them.’

This, from the inspector, was the equivalent of the legendary Ashes of Contrition, and Mulholland, realising such, bowed his head in dignified acceptance then delivered.

‘I spoke to everyone in the house, never met such a disreputable assembly in my whole life, ye could not believe one single word spoken. And Biddy wants the room back.’

‘She told me that earlier.’

To Mulholland’s previous annoyance he had been dispatched to question the rag-bag collection of labourers, sailors and one-eyed trollops that made up the lodging-house inhabitants.

McLevy had meanwhile closeted himself to interview Biddy before chasing her out to annoy the constable. She had followed Mulholland from room to room, complaining loudly of the inspector’s lack of esteem for a decent respectable woman, the like of which she fondly imagined herself to be.

‘Still on about that, eh? Is she going tae fumigate the place?’

‘I wouldn’t know, sir.’

‘Well, she’ll have to wait,’ grunted McLevy. ‘This may be the scene of a murder.’

‘Murder? There’s not a mark on the man, he died natural, unless you think poison?’

‘No. I do not think poison. See the lock on the door over there?’

Mulholland shook his head. ‘But the door was ajar late this morning, the reason Biddy stuck her head in to discover the dead body. And let out a fearful scream she told me.’

‘Aye, so she did. That must have been something tae hear.’

Mulholland still didn’t move to the door, so McLevy indicated to the only other piece of furniture in the place, a spindly three-legged chair drawn up near to the dirty mattress, which lay on the floor, acting this moment as bed and bier. On the seat of the chair lay a large key.

‘What does that tell you?’

‘Brennan came in drunk, fell to bed and forgot to secure the lock,’ said the constable.

‘Yet Biddy said he was fierce particular about that, she was surprised tae find the door pushing open.’

‘That’s true enough,’ said Mulholland rather snidely. ‘He’d be in fear of his life what with you telling the criminal fraternity of how he betrayed one of their own.’

McLevy ignored the barb. ‘He kept the key by his bed, close to hand. Drunk or not, I don’t see him forgetting.’

He pointed silently at the door and Mulholland crossed without further comment to crouch down and examine the lock.

‘Well?’ demanded the inspector.

The mechanism was black-encrusted, a wonder the thing worked at all, but there were two fine scratches, just newly made by the looks of it, of a type the constable had seen before in his travels. He looked over at the other.

‘Lockpicks, d’ye think?’ said McLevy.

‘Could be,’ replied the constable slowly. ‘Hard to tell, but … could be.’

He thought further. ‘However, if crack open and enter why not secure when leaving, unless …?’

Something one of the lodgers had told him, Archie Galbraith, a retired cooper who still held on to some vestige of dignity while drinking himself to death on what he used to watch being put inside the barrel.

‘I got up in the middle of the night, tae answer the call of nature, ye ken? Dark. But my aim was good, right in the middle of the bucket. I heard a door creak, shouted out my name, “Archie Galbraith here!”in case it was somebody with drink looking for good company. Went and looked, near knocked the damn bucket arse-over. The hall was empty, naebody on hand, but I could have sworn the door tae the outside close had just shut. A draught of cauld air. Gives ye a terrible thirst, man. Cauld air.’

‘It was in my mind to tell you, sir,’ he said as McLevy gave him a basilisk stare after this was related. ‘But the old fellow’s so far gone, you couldn’t put credence on his words.’

‘Yet his call would interrupt, ye’d have to get out the door quick. Intae the close. That would explain why there was not the time to use the skeleton keys to lock it up again, after the deed was done.’

‘What deed?’ asked the constable in some exasperation. McLevy had his I know a secret face on, a most irritating sight to behold. ‘There’s not a mark on the fellow!’

‘Oh yes there is,’ said McLevy.

He signalled the constable over and they both knelt down by the body as if in prayer.

McLevy tilted the man’s head back with some difficulty, to reveal the neck. On each side, just under the jawbone, was a small bruise.

‘I near missed it myself,’ he muttered, ‘though I expect the eagle eye of Dr Jarvis would have brought it to our notice.’

Mulholland peered closer, in truth he wasn’t sure why the inspector was putting such weight upon what looked, to his eyes, innocuous enough.

‘It’s hardly a death wound, sir. Could be the result of a fall or anything really. Louse bites even, and the man scratching.’

McLevy looked at him as if perplexed by such monumental ignorance, then remembering that the two had but presently repaired the rent in their professional rapport, heaved a magnanimous sigh and, in the manner of Moses on the Mount, revealed what he considered to be the imprint of God’s incontrovertible evidence.

‘Thumb marks,’ he said. ‘Pressing each side on the carotid artery. Unconsciousness is instant. An eastern practice, attributed to the Thuggee system. Assassins. Indian, by nature. Followers of Kali, the Goddess of Destruction.’

‘How would you know all that, inspector?’

The constable seemed unaware of the implied insult in his question, so McLevy, not for the first time, decided to give him benefit of doubt.

‘The aforesaid practice was almost inflicted upon me by an opium runner who had a den by the dockside and specialised in getting his customers doped to the eyeballs, practising his black art to knock them out, then killing them, robbing the bodies and dumping the cadavers weighted down with rocks through a trap-door at the back into the sea where they nourished the denizens of the deep. Coal-fish and crabs mostly. Bottom feeders.’

McLevy had a sudden vivid memory of the man leaning over him, face contorted in a hideous delight, sliding his thumbs up each side of the neck.

‘I had been sent in under guise of an opium user, by dint of my complexion. I think Lieutenant Moxey, my superior officer at the time, was trying to get rid of me.’

‘Did you have to puff the pipe?’ Mulholland asked eagerly, fascinated by this racy anecdote.

‘I did not inhale,’ was the stern response.

Although, mind you, there was a certain heightened aspect to his recollection. McLevy could have sworn the man had a tattooed serpent on his face, but at the trial it had mysteriously vanished.

‘And did he kill you, sir?’

‘Obviously not.’

‘No. I mean. Sir. How did you effect escape?’

Again the memory, the thumbs tightened, the yellow teeth bared in a murderous smile, then the man shot up over McLevy’s head like a cork out of a bottle and landed with a crash on two far-gone addicts who lay peacefully behind them in the smoke-filled, opium-scented den of iniquity.

Case concluded. Of course Moxey took the credit.

‘I used a technique,’ said the inspector gravely, ‘called Kissing the Clouds.’

‘Is that Chinese?’

‘No. It comes from Leith. It is adapted from the leg movement of a hanged felon. I’ll show it you sometime.’

Back tae business. He looked down at the body.

‘Once Brennan was safely insensible, the killer finished off the job.’

McLevy anticipated Mulholland’s next question by picking up the dirty, ripped pillow from the mattress and displaying a reddish stain which lay in the centre of the cloth.

‘This mark is recent, even still a wee touch damp. If you examine Brennan’s mouth … well go ahead, examine the damned thing!’

This sudden flash of temper indicated to Mulholland that all was back to normal. He peeled the lips of the corpse apart, peered inside and winced at the rotting stench.

‘Worse than a dead badger,’ he muttered.

The inspector smiled happily. ‘The by-product of gingivitis; observe the gums and you will see another result of the inflammation.’

The whole mouth was in a terrible state but the gums were especially caked with smears of dried blood where the irritation had wreaked havoc.

Mulholland nodded. It made a sense of sorts. He let the mouth fall shut with a hollow clack.

‘The man was potentially smothered,’ he said.

‘Exactly! And the blood in his mouth left marks where the pad was pressed.’ McLevy’s eyes gleamed.

‘And I’ll tell you one more on top of that. It was not a member of the fraternity, they’d just cut his throat and to hell with it. This is professional. High class.’

‘There’s not much in the way of actual proof, sir. A wee bit scratch, a couple of bruises and a stain.’

‘Uhuh. So, you say,’ replied the inspector.

The unspoken question in McLevy’s mind was, of course, why kill the man anyway? Was it some sort of … clean sweep?

The door abruptly flew open and the squat form of Biddy Lapsley stood framed, arms folded. She opened a mouth like the gates of hell.

‘I want my room back,’ she bellowed. ‘This man’s been dead long enough.’

Then. Astonishingly. Tears started to flow down the veined and mottled face.

‘I had hopes for him,’ she muttered brokenly. ‘He was such a fine big specimen. Meat on the bone. He put his lips upon my hand in the hall. A real gentleman. I could have raised him high.’

The policemen looked back at the corpse. It showed no sign of resurrection.