End of the Line (6 page)

‘
Why can't you go?
' came the answering hiss.

‘
Only room for one. And I am inviolate.
'

The constable shook his head at the obtuseness of his inspector, grasped his hornbeam stick and stepped off into the darkness.

Indeed the whole episode was beginning to take the form of some awful nightmare where no matter what move was made an insidious feeling of failure loomed. The station itself seemed to have mutated into a malevolent entity, towering overhead like some hostile beast as jagged shafts of light played against the clawed iron girders.

McLevy shook off these weird imaginings just as a sharp crack followed by a high-pitched shriek cut through the sepulchral silence.

After a moment, Mulholland emerged looking a little shaken.

‘It was a big black rat. Went straight for my ankles,' he reported.

‘It would be trying to escape,' the inspector muttered.

‘I couldn't take the chance—'

The constable stopped. His eyes fixed upon something he had seen high up beyond McLevy's abiding presence.

‘
Turn round sir
,' he said softly. ‘
Slow does it. Lift your eyes heavenwards.
'

The inspector did so, and on a high gantry by the girders, with the trains set out far below, he discerned a glimpse of white in the gloom. The pristine collar of Thomas Pettigrew in contrast to the dark of his uniform and the surrounding shadows.

How he had got there God alone knows, but the man knew every nook and cranny of his station, so there he remained and it was a long way down.

‘Mister Pettigrew,' McLevy called quietly. ‘You'll do yourself a mischief.'

‘I intend to,' came the firm response. ‘With my death you prove nothing.'

‘Whit about your daughter?' the inspector probed.

‘As I said. Provided for.'

Pettigrew looked over the expanse of his beloved station and the serried ranks of trains, their metal sides reflecting a dull gleam in the shafts of light.

A smile of pride came upon his face.

‘I shall count to five,' he called. ‘Five is a godly number, Calvinists have aye thought it so.'

He began the enumeration. One, two, three.

‘You'll mess up the timetable, sir!' Mulholland shouted desperately.

‘A black mark upon your worksheet!' bawled McLevy. ‘And whit about God – he'll take it amiss, surely?'

‘I am a good and faithful servant,' came the unconcerned response. ‘I shall be forgiven. Four . . . five!'

Pettigrew put the whistle to his lips and blew.

* * *

‘We found him on the roof of the engine,' McLevy said, gulping down the fragrant brew. ‘Arms round the smoke-stack, neck broken.'

Jean shivered at the singular end to a strange tale.

‘A sad business,' she remarked.

She had noted that he was better dressed than his usual state, shaved and by the smell of it, pomaded under the low-brimmed bowler. For a moment she wondered if it was for her benefit.

‘I've just been tae the funeral,' the inspector announced. ‘I thought I'd take my chance.'

‘On what?'

‘That ye wouldnae let fire at me with small-shot.'

‘Oh, that?' Jean sipped her coffee delicately, in contrast to the awful sleuchin' noise he made. ‘Business is thriving. I'm in a good mood.'

For a moment their eyes met, and the curious feeling of deep intimacy that sometimes crept upon them unawares washed gently at the shore of their separate islands.

McLevy slurped his coffee. She winced.

‘The daughter was there. Hefty lump of a lassie.'

‘That would be her predicament,' Jean observed.

‘Big boned. Make a good mother.'

‘That's your criterion, is it?'

He ignored the waspish comment.

‘Seemed well enough. Two aunties with her.'

A comfortable silence fell between them while the peacocks strutted around the lawn being fed by Hannah Semple who, despite her best intentions, had become quite fond of the glaikit creatures.

‘I admire the way they shiver their feathers to attract the females,' said Jean thoughtfully. ‘It's about all they're good for. Men.'

‘Shivering accessories?'

She made no answer, an impudent smile upon her face, and McLevy calculated that now was as good a time as any to break the news.

Mulholland after the funeral had headed off to take tea with the lusty widow, more in pity than love, and this despite his inspector's injunction that
it never worked to try to save people from their own foolishness, never in a month of Sundays
.

In fact Jean Brash had said these words some time past, staring right into McLevy's face. Funny that.

Roach was on the golf course at Leith Links, and if he saw a horde of semi-naked bloodthirsty females heading in his direction, the man would at least know better than to shin up a tree.

The inspector was on his own. As per usual.

‘I have to thank you, I suppose,' Jean declared, reaching at the coffee pot. ‘For proving my coachman innocent and not pressing charge for your bloody nose.'

McLevy nodded. Aye, well. Time now. Try not to take too much pleasure in it.

‘Jedburgh,' he remarked idly. ‘Ye know a woman there – Minnie Moncrieff?'

Jean sniffed. ‘A sordid type. Keeps a low bawdy-hoose.'

‘She's trying to raise standards, my police colleagues tell me' he replied dryly. ‘Bought a new carriage, been driving round the town like the Queen of Sheba. Seen by one and all.'

‘Scruff. No changing that.'

To this magisterial rebuke from the mistress of the Just Land, the inspector nodded meekly, and then added a mild rejoinder.

‘With a fine big coachman. A giant of a man in fine livery, whipping up the cuddies in grand style.'

There was a moment of frozen silence.

‘
Angus?
'

‘None other than.'

Jean nearly spat out the coffee as her mind struggled to deal with this betrayal.

‘So that's where he got the money?'

‘The wages of sin,' was the urbane response.

‘Everybody knows he's
my
coachman. What a showing up. I'll wring his bloody neck!'

So saying she leapt to her feet and headed off to the stables whence, not long after, there came the sound of raised voices, or rather, to be more accurate, one loudly raised female voice and a cowed masculine rumble.

As Hannah gazed suspiciously at him, James McLevy smiled guilelessly and poured himself another cupful.

For a sophisticated woman, Jean could at times bear more than a passing resemblance to a fishwife.

The inspector sighed, leant back in his chair and let the images of this recent case flicker in his mind.

One by one they registered as if projected on a screen: the contorted body in the carriage; the lined faces of the two old ladies; the lusty widow who had just left black behind; Angus at bay like a dumb animal; Hannah with her cut-throat razor at the ready; Jean's face as she promised a shotgun reprisal and French aroma; Mulholland trying not to shudder as McLevy scoffed his eighth sugar biscuit; Roach reading the daughter's letter in a moment that oddly moved the three of them in that office; then the sight of Pettigrew staring glumly through the gate of a bawdy-hoose and the savage picture of the proud smile upon his face as he fell like Icarus to a certain doom.

That brought a sombre cast to McLevy's features, but then his lips twisted in humour at the last picture from the recent funeral.

The minister had done his bit, the daughter, with an aunt on each side, bowed her veiled head, and the mourners were about to reach for the ropes to lower the coffin down when – from long distance – the sound of a train whistle came blowing down the wind.

To a person, the railway men took out their watches, looked upon them, and nodded their approval.

The train was punctual in passing.

The timetable safe for another day.