Shadow of the Serpent (28 page)

‘You don’t deserve them, but you have them anyway.’

‘In that case I may ask a favour of ye, sir?’

‘Ask away.’

‘I know Constable Mulholland desires a small leave of absence to attend the betrothal of a close relative. I wonder, might we spare him for a few days?’

‘I shall try to notice his absence,’ muttered Roach, which was his way of responding in the positive.

As McLevy and a dazed Mulholland were about to pass through the door, Roach could not resist a last dig.

‘And Mulholland? Mrs Roach still has her eye on you for a tenor voice. Let us hope you survive the scrutiny. She the blackbird, you the worm!’

They closed the door on the snort of his laughter and McLevy hummed contentedly under his breath as the two surveyed the station.

The morning shift had just left, Sergeant Murdoch was contemplating a tin mug of sweet tea and Ballantyne, as befitted the youngest and most recently recruited, was at a table laboriously copying out reports.

He looked up, smiled shyly, and bowed his head in grave acknowledgement of a shared triumph.

McLevy smiled back but there was an element of worry in his eyes. The boy had a gentle and trusting nature, a bad
combination
for a policeman.

Whereas Mulholland now … a different kettle.

The inspector turned to regard the wary face of his constable.

Beat him to the punch. Just for mischief.

‘What was all that about diagrams?’

Mulholland moved them away from Roach’s door just in case the lieutenant had his ear against the panelling.

‘The man is all theory,’ he muttered. ‘Good enough behind the desk and a fine superior officer, don’t mistake me now – ’

‘I wouldn’t dream of such a thing.’

‘But – he thinks everything can be solved with a pen! Names here, times there, arrows pointing, lines running like a chicken with its head chopped off. It got us nowhere. I mean …’

Mulholland looked down at McLevy from a great height.

‘… at least you think you know what you’re doing, sir.’

‘Thank you, Mulholland.’ McLevy rubbed at his eyes as if to hold back a well of appreciation. ‘I shall treasure that remark till the end of my days.’

He made to turn away but the constable had more to say.

Here it comes, thought the inspector.

‘How did you know I needed time away, and the reason for it, if I may so ask?’

‘You may.’

McLevy assumed an air of gravity, as if examining a witness in court.

‘Your Aunt Katie sent you a card, did she not?’

‘She did indeed.’

‘On that card were the precise details of the wedding and your requested presence, were they not?’

‘They were so.’

‘That card was sticking out of your coat pocket as it lay on the hook, was it not?’

‘It might have been.’

‘Some careless person, Sergeant Murdoch possibly, must have brushed against the coat and dislodged the card. I found it on the floor, and, returning same, could not fail to notice what was writ thereupon.’

‘Thereupon?’

‘In a nutshell.’

McLevy looked innocently into the hard suspicious eyes of his constable, then decided to take the offensive.

‘Therefore when you were sookin’ up tae the lieutenant I knew exactly your motive. Why did ye not confide in me?’

Mulholland stepped back a little.

‘I … I … didn’t think you’d have an interest.’

‘Ye mean ye thought you’d find a sleekit way to avoid me altogether. Never mind, let that be and answer me the following question, but come up honest this time!’

How is it, when dealing with McLevy, you always ended up, no matter where you started from, at the back of the position you had formerly occupied?

‘Go ahead,’ Mulholland said glumly.

‘Ye had a chance to redeem yourself, like me. Ye could have kissed his backside over these diagrams, why did ye not so?’

‘Because it was a murder investigation,’ came the reply. ‘And some things cannot be passed.’

Not for a moment did McLevy indicate the pleasure he derived from that rejoinder. But he was glad he had pressed the favour out of Roach. Very glad.

‘I’ll make a policeman out of you yet, Mulholland.’

‘I look forward to that, sir.’

For a moment they shared an ironic appreciation of each other’s faults and virtues, then McLevy moved abruptly away towards the station door.

‘Ye can thank me for my intercession by the purchase of a hooker o’ whisky at the Old Ship the morrow night, but for the moment I have an appointment to keep.’

‘Not another secret mission?’

The question brought McLevy round. His face sombre.

‘Not exactly. But it is something I must do. In common with the man whose life I took, I do not enjoy loose ends.’

Then he was gone.

Mulholland had come out of it smelling of roses. He had got his leave and the lieutenant would soon forget his chagrin. One decent putt would see to that.

He was due some time off the following day and though the morrow night was now taken up with McLevy at the Old Ship, the constable still maintained an afternoon assignation with a certain young lady.

There was a touch of spring in the air. He would lift his voice in song.

‘How did you know?’

The golden hair had been pinned back from her face and she wore a drab grey dress whose coarse material fell to the floor like a dead weight.

Joanna Lightfoot had the brand of an institution already laid upon her, but her face was clear, the eyes calm. She had nothing left to lose now except her liberty and, from her demeanour, it would seem she placed little value upon that.

McLevy spoke quietly. A female warder of sorts sat in the corner, apparently paying no heed, but the inspector was not naïve enough to think that because the authorities, in their gratitude, had granted him this one favour, they were to be trusted in any other business.

They were going to sweep the whole thing under the carpet and needed his silence.

But that was all they needed.

‘Ye walk like a soldier,’ he said. ‘A person can disguise many things but the walk often gives them away.’

In his mind’s eye, he replayed the moment when he watched her, as Jane Salter, stride up the path with Gladstone and
registered
a thin slice of intuition.

She smiled at the irony. Throughout the years, the Serpent had often taken her to task for her gait.

‘As if I had just dismounted a horse?’

‘Ye might say that.’ He scratched his ear, oddly discomfited. ‘I wasn’t exactly sure. It was just a moment.’

‘And you follow such moments?’

‘Most of the time.’

She fell silent. McLevy was at a loss. There was an ending to be made between them, but he was damned if he knew what form it might take.

‘But other than that, ye made a fine stab at deception. Led me a merry dance. Twisted me like a fool.’

‘Not at the end,’ she said. ‘At the final reckoning, you had your revenge.’

He remembered in the tomb looking down at his tunic to discover that most of the blood came from another source. As they had fallen to earth the axe blade must have turned so that the Serpent had impaled himself.

McLevy had been underneath. A man on the ground is not necessarily a man defeated.

He was gouged some, but not mortally wounded, so he untied his legs, retrieved his revolver and followed the fellow out to watch him die.

‘Did you have no qualms of conscience?’ he asked. ‘You would ruin a man’s life?’

Though Gladstone was a politician, he was still a human being. Somewhere.

‘No regrets?’

She looked at him in surprise.

‘Not at all. It was a job of work.’

‘A job?’

‘Yes. I joined Sweet William’s staff and made myself
indispensable
. It was easy to become his little pet because we had researched his … predilections.’

It all seemed logical to Joanna.

‘Then I waited for my instructions.’

‘Which you followed to the letter?’

‘Of course.’

McLevy shook his head. This was worse than being in the fog. She witnessed his confusion and smiled.

‘There is no hatred, or love. Only instruction. It is like a game. The long game, we used to call it.’

She tugged at the neckline of her prison dress. The rough material obviously chafed.

‘Gladstone was just part of the game. It never ends.’

‘But what about the deaths? These poor women?’

‘I did not perform them. He …’ for the first time her voice faltered, not for the committed act but for the lost lover … ‘He provided.’

‘But was not that evil?’

‘I am the operative. As I have said. Good or bad means nothing to me.’

‘That is where we differ.’

It was like being in a fairy tale, lost in a deep forest which made perfect sense unto itself yet for the traveller led nowhere and folded into darkness.

‘Have ye ever killed?’ he asked.

‘That is not my function. I seduce. I entice. I … create illusion.’

‘How long have ye been so?’

‘As long as I can remember.’

She laughed suddenly and, as before, he sensed the bitter pain behind that sound.

‘I have always been in the field. The only difference this time was that … He was with me. A pity. A great loss.’

Another silence. Her gaze had fallen inwards.

‘Was everything you told me about yourself a lie?’

She was jolted out of her introspection by this question and her lips, still that bit on the thin side, screwed into a bitter smile.

‘Not at all. My mother was indeed a whore, a game and brazen one. She had no shame, she loved life and dressed to kill.’

McLevy was put in mind of Sadie Gorman.

Again Joanna spoke in those formal tones which were so much part of her character.

‘She became the mistress of a young man with some measure of nobility, and had a child by him. He provided in some way for her. When she died, he removed the daughter. He lifted her from the slums she and the mother had inhabited, and took on the role of the child’s guardian.’

She stopped.

McLevy now knew why he was here. A twist to the blood he sensed from the moment they had first met.

‘The girl grew up. She had everything money could buy. A good education, pretty clothes. And then one night, at the age of eighteen, she came to him.

‘That night, they broke the law. And thereafter.’

The inspector licked his dry lips. She smiled and passed her hand almost playfully over her face.

For a moment he was looking at the Serpent and then, another pass, and the features had rearranged to Joanna Lightfoot.

‘A trait we both shared. Father and daughter.’

One of McLevy’s legs set off in an uncontrollable shaking as he gazed into the dark blue eyes.

‘I am a damned soul,’ she said. ‘If there is perdition, a future punishment as Mr Gladstone would term it, if there is a hell, I shall meet my lover there.

‘We will burn together.’

She reached deliberately forward, took up McLevy’s hand and kissed it. The imprint of her lips stayed on his skin.

A long silence. Most terrible to bear.

Then he leant forward and blurted out a mundane thought, but anything to break that silence. ‘Why did ye dress up for me?’

‘In case I was described, there would be nothing to connect the woman with Jane Salter. In any case, you were a hard nut to crack, inspector. I needed every weapon at my disposal.’

She smiled. He did not respond.

‘And I bear you no grudge for his death.’

‘He deserved it.’

McLevy’s eyes were hard and without pity.

She was glad of that. She whispered close, her own eyes mocking.

‘But does not one thing puzzle you, inspector?’

‘What is that?’

‘The scrap of material found on Mae Donnachie’s body. I thought it a great stroke of luck that I could weave it into the story. But what if the story of long ago was true?

‘What if the man we led you towards was in fact the man you sought? What if we were God’s agents instead of Satan’s helpers?’

McLevy felt the barbs going into his flesh.

‘Just a scrap. The rest was conjecture and lies.’

‘But what if some of it were true? Now, you will never know. You’ve cut your own throat.’

She laughed softly.

‘You have lost as well, inspector.’

‘I have lost many times in life,’ said McLevy. ‘The feeling is not unknown.’

He stood abruptly and walked to the door where he turned to look back at her. The quality of his gaze was measured and dispassionate. It took Joanna by surprise but she managed a crooked smile lest he sense the emptiness and pain that twisted in her heart.

‘You will never hear of me again. I shall disappear. As if I had never been.
Burnt at the stake, old boy.’

The tones of the Serpent.

McLevy left without goodbye.

Though, outside the door, he gazed back through the judas hole.

The woman in the corner stood. She walked over and laid her hand on Joanna’s shoulder. The seated woman shivered a little at the contact.

He closed the grille. Joanna Lightfoot was gone.

McLevy sat by his window and watched as dusk fell on his beloved city.