When McLevy opened his eyes it was to discover himself tied up, as Aunt Katie would have put it, like a turkey on the Christmas table.

His hands had been pinioned behind and his feet, which stuck straight out in front due to the fact that he had been propped up against one of the stones, were also bound together with a thick strong cord.

‘I do apologise,’ said a voice. ‘I shall unloose you in due time but I am afraid you will gain little benefit from the action because of a certain insensibility. Namely, that of death. This, from your point of view, is undoubtedly unfortunate but needs must when the devil drives, eh?’

A dry chuckle and then his own revolver was levelled at the inspector’s head. It appeared to be aiming straight between the eyes, the muzzle steady as a rock.

A finger tightened on the trigger which drew back under the pressure. McLevy’s magnified focus was centred on this sight. He watched the hammer pull away from the striking pad, then farther back and farther to the limit when it would snap forward like a deadly snake.

For some reason, Jean Brash came into his mind, roses in bloom, high summer, red hair, green eyes, lips smiling as she reached towards him with the sacred pot.

‘I don’t suppose,’ he croaked, ‘you have such a thing as a cup of coffee on your person? I would like to satisfy my thirst before you shoot me with my own gun.’

A sardonic laugh came in response and the revolver was lowered to the side.

For the first time, McLevy was able to take stock of the man in front of him.

Dressed for the evening, a black silk scarf wrapped around his neck, part covering the bow tie and white shirt.

Both men were revealed by the glimmering candlelight though that was as far as equality went. The inspector was cramped like a rag doll on the flagstones, while the man sat on the top of the tomb opposite, one leg swinging in a carefree gentle arc.

A definite elegance, tall, slim, stage-door Johnnie silver hair, strands of which fell negligently over the one eyebrow and occasioned a flick of the head to keep all in place. Face smooth, features small, not for a moment memorable, like that of a baby, unformed almost, until you got to the eyes. Everything stopped when you got to the eyes. Ice-blue. Cold. A killer’s eyes.

The man had suffered McLevy’s scrutiny patiently enough then, on bringing out a pocket-watch to check the time and nodding acceptance of a reasonably tight schedule, spoke in a brisk fashion with traces of an upper-class drawl.

Though that might well be a disguise, like everything else about him.

‘I’m afraid, old chap, there is no coffee to hand and your demise will not involve anything so neat as a bullet hole.’

He relaxed his finger from the trigger, laid the revolver down on the surface beside him and delved into the recess of his jacket.

‘This is the fellow for the job. A bit messy. I do hope you don’t spout. One can never tell with people.’

He produced a small axe, the like of which McLevy had seen Gladstone use on the tree. The edge of the blade shone murderously keen in the light.

‘I sharpened the little beauty this very morning, with my own fair hands. You’ve a bit of heft to you but it should cut through the blubber.’

McLevy was perfectly still. It was his habit in extremity of danger. You may have only one move to make.

The man raised an eyebrow at the lack of response, perhaps even a little nettled by it.

‘I shall render you unconscious first, of course. It’s the decent thing.’

‘Like ye did Frank Brennan?’

A moment. Then, a charming smile. All of McLevy’s senses were fixed on that smiling face. Perhaps the man wanted to toy with him, as a cat will a mouse. That was fine by the inspector, he would encourage such a cruel pleasure.

Anything but the axe. Anything that might provide the smallest chance of surviving this hellish predicament.

‘Ye did a fine job: lockpicks, the pillow, in and out like a ghost, but what was the necessity, sir?’

McLevy let humble admiration creep into his voice and watched the man nod acceptance before replying.

‘Over-elaboration. Fault of mine. My reconnaissance had led me to believe that money would keep him in the tavern and removed from his pimping ground. But then, inevitably, he saw me in the doorway, and there was always the prospect that sometime, somewhere in the future, there might be another recognition. I don’t like loose ends.’

That took care of that and anyway Frank Brennan wasn’t worth the breath. The inspector had other things on his mind. Play for time. Act the innocent.

‘Ye said, render me unconscious? But, ye’ve already done that, sir. I was out like a light. Ye could have finished me off there and then. Why bring me back to life?’

‘I felt the least I could do, old boy, was thank you. Face to face, as it were. After all, you’ve done a tremendous amount of work on my behalf.’

He smiled again. McLevy’s face was like a mask. The fellow had to see himself in someone else’s eyes to behold his own genius. That might be a weakness.

‘Alas, I am forgetting my manners in this heathen country. Allow me to introduce myself.’

The man levered himself off the tomb and bowed as if meeting a stately dowager.

‘Graham. Sir Edward Graham. I have an official position. Security. But I also run and provide a service, most secret, to those in highest authority. Those who kiss the Queen’s hand. When split from my official guise, I become another person. And I call myself the Serpent. A silly name but it satiates a melodramatic streak.

He bowed once more.

‘At your service. The Serpent.’

‘An adder in the path that biteth the horse’s heels so that his rider shall fall backward,’ the inspector quoted, in apparent acquiescence of the man’s function.

‘Genesis. Exactly! But what says Matthew? Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves.’

‘Harmless? But, ye’ve murdered three people.’

‘Oh, more than that. In my time.’

McLevy closed his eyes as if the full extent of his dreadful plight was beginning to dawn.

Keep the bugger talking, words don’t kill.

‘All this … all that has happened … was your planning. Was it not?’

‘Indeed. Start to finish, old boy.’

‘But why? For God’s sake, why?’

McLevy blinked like a bewildered child and the Serpent almost laughed at the look on the face opposite.

He assumed the manner of someone delivering a lecture, a dissertation, an anatomy of events.

‘Let us suppose that the advent of William Gladstone was not welcome; indeed a foul, unacceptable prospect to someone in the highest reaches, exalted almost.’

‘Like a Majesty, maybe?’

A sharp look came into the Serpent’s eye and McLevy schooled his features back to bovine.

‘A messenger approached me, a most high messenger, and a remark was made. Implication more than command, but to be hard reckoned and in no way ignored.

‘The import of it being … who will rid me of this turbulent priest? … that sort of thing, eh?’

McLevy nodded as if his dull brain was managing to follow it all so far, and the Serpent carried on.

‘So it became my task to put these, as it were, unspoken words into practice. This is what I have done. To the best of my modest ability.’

‘And what is your reward?’ McLevy asked most humbly.

‘I shall sit on the right hand of power. Together we shall play the long game. Though to tell you the truth, old boy, a great reward also comes from the strategy and the act itself.’

He laughed lightly and flipped the axe up into the air so that it described a circle before the handle landed back in his hand. McLevy eyed the sharp blade and kept talking.

‘How will you effect this purpose? What is your strategy, Sir Edward?’

‘To the point. Good. It is as follows. William Gladstone will be found here, a little dazed in his wits, holding the bloody implement of murder, your body at his feet. Some torn pages from his most private diary, genuine enough, which detail his covert meetings with prostitutes and self-scourging, will be found in your pocket.’

He hoisted himself off the tomb and McLevy noticed the man’s shoes were highly polished. Good-quality leather.

‘Your part in all this is already a matter of record. Your colleagues and even Gladstone’s own men can attest to the fact that you pursued him for these murders. It will be assumed that you taxed him with the further proof in your pocket and that he gave in to the evil influences which had set you on his trail in the first place.

‘A witness will also swear that she saw him rise from the corpse, axe in hand, covered in your blood, etcetera, etcetera.

‘Bravo, inspector! The case is solved. Pity you had to die, but we shall all travel that road, sooner or later.

‘In your instance, however, sooner carries the day.’

The man skipped happily across the flagstones in a way that reminded McLevy of the night he trailed the supposed figure of Gladstone through the fog.

Unbeknownst to the inspector, what was causing an excess of spirits in the Serpent’s breast was the thought that soon he would be reunited with the little fleshly beast. Would lie in her arms once more, and feel the naked pulse of pleasure.

‘Of course, I, in my official capacity, can make sure that the whole thing is hushed up. But Gladstone will be finished. He will never assume office. In any capacity. A toothless and disgraced old man.’

‘What about his party? They can take office, can they not?’

‘Without his backbone they will collapse. A whiff of the scandal will encourage the rot. There will be another election, and no mistake on this occasion.’

A look of detached cruelty came in his eye. Almost time to render. And chop.

McLevy wasn’t quite ready for that.

‘How did you know about … thirty years ago?’

‘Records. We keep records on everything that might be useful. Including your good self. Thirty years ago, William Gladstone was in emotional crisis. He had lost his daughter. He was in Edinburgh, on the streets that night. The very night a brutal crime was committed that set the headlines all aflame. A Lamb to the Slaughter.’

The quote set the Serpent into a fit of laughter but McLevy could smell the blood lust underneath.

‘It caught the public imagination, old boy. I’m always keen on anything that catches the public imagination.’

McLevy creased his brow as if following all this had sorely strained his mental resources and the Serpent, with a certain contempt, spelled out his strategy.

‘It could all be woven in, you see. I knew if I could link that past crime with a present likeness, you would not be able to resist. I play the long game, but you? You are a predictable type, inspector. A servant of the Crown, who deeply resents authority. I knew if I laid a trail of tasty enough morsels, you would gobble them up. Gobble, gobble.’

‘So, everything … was a lie?’

‘Who knows? All these years ago, that murder, someone had to do it. Who knows?’

A look came over the Serpent’s face as if some strange thought had surfaced, but then he was back on course.

‘The nurse was genuine enough. And the deaths of the daughter and sister. I always like to mix fact with fiction. Oh, and by the way,’ out of his top pocket he took the piece of paper with the writing which McLevy had received earlier that day. ‘I went through your pockets, I hope you don’t mind. Thank you for bringing it. As I have said. I don’t enjoy loose ends.’

‘Joanna Lightfoot,’ McLevy heaved a regretful sigh. ‘What is her part in all this?’

The Serpent had been about to move in on the inspector and bring the curtain down, but this query brought a flush of pride to his smooth face.

‘She is my best operative! It is she who will lead Gladstone here, stun him, lay him down beside you, put the axe in his hand, and then let rip. She has a healthy pair of lungs, believe me.’

‘I am sorry I will not see her.’

‘You might be disappointed.’

The Serpent suddenly went into peals of laughter at a hidden notion. The fellow was undoubtedly insane, McLevy surmised. Too many secrets can do that to a person.

A gleeful look came into the man’s eyes.

‘There is a particular talent we both share. Like the Eucharist. Transubstantiation. Allow me to demonstrate.’

McLevy didn’t give a damn what he did so long as the axe steered clear of his breastbone.

The Serpent stood like a little boy about to do his party piece, fanned out the fingers of his hand and passed it slowly over his countenance like a sun over the horizon.

McLevy’s jaw dropped. The face left, when the hand passed, was that of William Gladstone.

The mouth especially, and eyes, more than individual features; it was an impression of another being. Even the Serpent’s physicality had changed.

He then reversed his hand and became, for what it was worth, himself. And laughed to see such fun.

‘A gift from childhood. Helped one no end at Harrow.’

He dropped the heavy blade into his jacket pocket so that the handle jutted out awkwardly, flexed his fingers, and moved towards McLevy.

‘So when you thought to follow Gladstone in the fog. You weren’t far wrong. It was me. Being him. Doppelgänger. The Germans have a word for it. They always do.’

‘But Gladstone went out that night. What if he came before you?’

‘I knew his routine old boy, a spy in the house and all that. I could beat him to it. The fog was a great help. I sneaked up the side, and made myself visible.’

‘How did you know I’d be there?’

‘You are predictable. Not unlike death.’

He reached out and took McLevy by the throat just under the jaw-line.

The inspector swallowed hard.

‘What about the carbolic?’ he suddenly demanded.

The Serpent giggled.

‘Part of the character. I’m very thorough, old chap. I became the man.’

‘And in his name, you killed that wee girl?’

Somehow it seemed as if the positions had changed. As if the Serpent was being interrogated. He didn’t appreciate it, and his fingers tightened.

McLevy’s mouth was dry but he persevered. All his thinking had led but to the one conclusion. His only hope was fear. The pretence of fear.

‘In the fog. The dollymop, was she by chance?’

‘Not at all. I had paid her earlier to be on hand at her appointed place, she was pathetically grateful.’

‘And poor auld Sadie, you broke her plume.’

‘I did indeed. An unfortunate adjunct to a necessary act. Came in useful on this very day. Improvisation. A card to play. To hook you in.’

‘Why did you choose Sadie?’

‘I admired her style. She reminded me of someone I once knew long ago.’

But a shadow of sorts crossed his face. The memory of long ago had its own sharp hooks.

‘And to gratify those high above, ye killed those who had done you no harm?’

‘Exitus acta probat,’ murmured the Serpent. ‘The outcome justifies the deeds.’

His fingers had now found perfect purchase and he began to squeeze.

‘Say your prayers, inspector. If you know them.’

McLevy let out a sudden roar of terror and hurled himself to the floor where he writhed helplessly like an insect on its back.

The Serpent shook his head in sorrow.

‘I had thought better of you, sir. Are not the Scots famed for enduring all things? A hardy breed? Think on the concept of predestination; you were born to die here.’

Another roar came in reply as McLevy wriggled, his legs sticking straight out from the reluctant trunk.

‘There is no point in making all this commotion, dear sir, we are underground, the living dead. No one at the house will hear. Now, take your medicine like a man.’

One more bellow like an animal protesting its slaughter brought a wince of distaste in response.

‘I had hoped for a little more dignity. Now, come along, old chap, act the brave soldier. I grant you a favour. I could chop you up with your eyes open. Think of the pain.’

Saying so, he straddled McLevy’s bound legs and leant down, fingers splayed, to administer the coup de grâce.

There is a violent movement from the hanged man as his legs thrash in the air just before death. The fraternity have named it Kicking the Clouds.

It had been adapted and utilised by many a street keelie. One of them, a wee lover of Sadie Gorman, had bruised McLevy sore by the knack of it.

Now, it was his turn. He kicked the clouds.

The bound feet, propelled by two powerful legs that had seen more than thirty years on the saunter even if they didn’t like to run, cracked up into the Serpent’s groin with the most terrible force.

The crunching impact produced a high-pitched squeal as the man reeled away and hunched over, paralysed by a most profound agony.

McLevy rolled over to one of the tombs and inched himself up until he regained his feet. It seemed to take for ever. He began to scrape the rope that tied his hands behind him against the edge of the stone, but then observed the Serpent beginning slowly to unfold upright.

There was only a matter of yards between them and, as the fellow said, needs must when the devil drives.

The inspector hopped forward and butted the man full in the chin as his head came up. The Serpent fell like a sack of potatoes and McLevy lurched back to get on with his sawing.

He felt some of the strands beginning to fray, and thanked God the Gladstone family had used granite and not some ignoble alternative, because the edge was still sharp.

McLevy had already noted the names on the tombstone, Jessy and Helen Gladstone, R.I.P.

Come on, girls, don’t just lie there … more strands parted but bugger me it was a thick rope … release me from my bondage and I will bless your name evermore.

They answered with a vengeance and he let out an exultant howl as the last twist parted and his hands were free.

As McLevy bent down to untie his feet, there was a scuffling noise. He glanced up to see the killer limping towards him, hand bringing the axe out of his pocket.

His revolver was on the other side, behind the Serpent. No time for niceties. The inspector jumped forward on his tethered feet and threw himself round the man to pinion his arms by his sides.

They were face to face like lovers. Save for the murderous glint in the Serpent’s eyes and his mouth parted in a snarl.

He spat full into McLevy’s countenance but the inspector did not flinch, jerked his head to the side and butted the man again, just to keep him honest.

The Serpent wriggled and kicked but McLevy hugged him all the tighter and wedged his forehead into the side of the man’s face.

They spun around in a grotesque dance, the only music their gasps for air.

‘I didnae realise,’ grunted McLevy, ‘ye had grown so fond. I would have washed my oxters.’

The response was a slither to the side which enabled the man to bring up the axe so that it was caught between them. He turned the handle so that the sharp edge cut into the inspector’s belly and McLevy cursed the fact of his excess flesh; this was no way to lose his avoirdupois.

A savage grin spread across the Serpent’s face and he twisted the blade cruelly so that it cut in again.

‘I’m going to have such fun with you, old chap,’ he breathed. He twisted his head round to try to bite into McLevy’s ear but the inspector spun out of the way and, repeating the move he had made with Frank Brennan, whirled them both round in frenzied spinning circles.

The Serpent yelped as the agony in his groin was brought once more to his attention, and he jerked the axe up so that the edge dug firmly into McLevy’s guts.

An insane gleam in the light-blue eyes. Death was coming, death was coming. Spin the wheel.

McLevy gasped in anguish. He lost control of his footing and like two gargoyles falling from a cathedral roof, they toppled over and crashed to earth.

For a long moment they were still and then the Serpent rolled away. McLevy looked down at his tunic. A dark red stain and spreading. Good red blood. The pain would soon follow. It was a deid strake. Death wound.

The inspector crawled into a dark corner like a wounded animal, levered himself up against the wall and looked over to where the man was resting on all fours, in front of Jessy and Helen’s tomb.

The Serpent rose to his feet. He smiled down at the inspector where he lay in the darkness, and walked slowly out of the crypt.

McLevy leant back and waited for death.