29

Mulholland took a deep, soul-satisfied breath. This was the life. A grand destination.

He’d worried in the coach all the way back from West Calder, cursing the weakness for sheep’s head which had let McLevy inveigle him out there in the first place, chewing a bitter lip that he’d be late – but no, just made it in time.

Slipped in at the back as the first note quavered in the air. This was the life.

The recital had unfolded with one sweet mystery after another. To begin. A succession of young ladies who held their violins like newborn lambs as they sawed their graceful way through compositions by various, by the sound of it, foreigners.

And then to follow some songs which delighted the ear, while the eye was being entertained as the daughters of the Muse swayed tastefully to the constrained passion of the melody. They never moved their legs though. Good breeding saw to that.

Madrigals and pastoral fancies, chansons and saluts d’amour, the notes ascended to the corniced ceiling like rose petals in a high wind.

One piece which particularly impressed the constable was andante sostenuto, slow and deliberate like a herd of cows coming home to be milked of an evening, steam rising from their flanks. The fellow must have had a decent farm somewhere in his background. What was the name now? He’d want to be wafting it in front of McLevy first thing in the morning, unless it was some false coiner from Naples.

Donizetti! Your very man. Italian by the sound but none the worse for all that.

Indeed had Mulholland known the fate of Gaetano Donizetti, the poor songsmith dying mad, eaten up by cerebrospinal syphilis, he may have reflected that fine music, like most things, comes at a cost.

But he did not know that. And his attention had been captured by one particular young lady who had played piano accompaniment for the various performers.

Emily Forbes was her name. Her father Robert sat at the front, stern but proud, a widower of three years.

The whole society seemed to be in mourning for someone or other, from the Queen downwards. A nation of glum faces, surrounded by black crape.

Mulholland had sat at the front beside Mrs Roach, the lieutenant holding to the outer reaches of the audience, and the constable could have sworn that Emily had cast some sidelong glances in his direction though she might have just been following the pages of the score.

There was the satisfied buzz of honey-laden bees as, recital over, the young ladies congratulated each other and were in turn complimented by the sons of upright citizens.

The constable found himself rather isolated, suddenly conscious of his low rank. These fellows were of a different breed, a confident assumption of their own self-worth wafting around them like horse-breath in November. Money does that.

One of them, a fellow Mulholland had disliked on sight, was making great play over Emily who seemed not to notice what a potato-head the man had on him and laughed, no doubt in pity, at some presumed witticism.

Roach, seeing his constable lurking like a night-thief at the back of the crowd, crossed over amid the tinkling of teacups and crunch of ginger biscuits.

The lieutenant’s wife revelled in these evenings but his own patience was sore tried by it all. Just when you thought the damned thing was finished, up popped another song about trees bending in the breeze, decent enough on the course when such a wind had to be taken into account, but not worth such interminable musical spasms.

‘Let us assume you have enjoyed the recital and not waste words, constable,’ he said tersely. ‘Where did you leave the inspector?’

‘He was … heading homewards, sir,’ was the careful reply.

‘McLevy doesn’t have a home, unless he carries it on his back like a tortoise,’ muttered Roach. ‘What is the progress of our investigation?’

‘We’re gathering in all the strands, lieutenant.’

A baleful glint of humour surfaced on Roach’s saurian features. ‘You sound like a seaweed collector. What about Frank Brennan?’

‘The inspector thinks it might be murder.’

‘Murder? By what cause?’

‘He may be better telling you himself, sir. In the morning. At the station. It’s to do with opium dens and thumbmarks, and a goddess from India,’ the constable offered with a straight face.

Roach held up his hand in reflex.

‘Stop where you are. You’re right. In the morning. After church. I’ll get it from the cannon’s mouth. I don’t have the strength for an account of McLevy’s meanderings. Not this particular night.’

If you knew what was going through his mind, the constable thought bleakly, ye’d die with your leg up.

‘Gentlemen,’ a voice broke into their exchange, ‘I trust you have not descended to police business!’

Mulholland was relieved to see Mrs Roach bearing down on them with the smile of a born hostess. She was a small woman with a pretty face, like a doll, dainty and pleasant enough, but unable, as Aunt Katie would have put it, to sit on her backside for five minutes. She loved social gatherings, committees, conversation, culture, never stopped talking and had a laugh which trilled like a bird in the bushes.

God help him for the cruel callous swine he had become and it was all to do with spending so much time with McLevy, but Mulholland could not rid himself of the thought that she must be a truly terrible person to live with; always smiling, always busy, always fixing the woes of the world, not a shadow to be seen on her unremittingly cheerful face, no wonder Roach headed for the fairways. Ye needed a bit of grimness in a woman, not too much but just enough to prove that she was seriously worth the effort.

However, she was welcome enough now because not only did Mrs Roach extricate him from his lieutenant, she pointed the constable in the direction of Emily Forbes.

‘That young lady,’ she pulled Mulholland down so that his large pink ear was in whispering range, ‘is possessed of a beautiful contralto voice. Together you may grace our recitals with the most exquisite renderings.’

‘But I don’t read music,’ said Mulholland plaintively. ‘I missed it growing up.’

Mrs Roach fixed him with a bright stare, like a bird with its beady eye on an emergent larva.

‘There is nothing that cannot be solved by hard work and perseverance. The good Lord took seven days to create the world, musical notation is nothing to that.’

With this pithy homily, she ushered Mulholland away, without so much as a by-your-leave to her husband.

Roach watched his constable bow stiffly over Emily’s hand, and even more stiffly greet the man with her, Oliver Garvie, who bore the unmistakable mark of his father’s profession. A butcher’s son. He had a certain beefy charm and a finger in many pies. An entrepreneur. Mulholland had his work cut out there.

Robert Forbes, Roach noted, was watching the foursome but nothing could be gleaned from his face, what else could you expect from an insurance adjuster?

The lieutenant watched his wife with a strange, puzzled affection. He had joined the force late, and married even later. Roach had been marked down to inherit the family undertaking business, but the customers were uncomforted by his brooding presence.

Roach’s nature and looks precluded an easy belief in the hereafter. His brother Archie, round faced, moist-eyed and sympathetically solemn, at least provided some hope.

Thus the worm of life tries to wriggle off the hook before death bites.

The day after he laid out his own father, Roach left the business to Archie and joined the police force.

He had at first been welcomed with open arms, education and breeding to the fore, but somehow had never quite attained his cherished desire. He blamed his mother’s soft nature. To be successful in the force, you needed a heart of stone. His had cracks somewhere.

They were childless. The act of procreation, despite Mrs Roach’s chirps of encouragement and his banging away grimly like a man with his ball caught in a gorse bush, had produced nothing. No justice.

The lieutenant came out of these musings with a start.

It was worrying how he sometimes saw events through McLevy’s eyes, the man was a pernicious influence.

All was well with the world. Keep it that way.

One of the young ladies of the soirée approached him, full of the joys of culture.

‘All this must make you very happy, Mr Roach,’ she informed him.

‘Happiness,’ said Roach. ‘What is that?’