Shadow of the Serpent (6 page)

McLevy marched off abruptly down the street with
Mulholland
lengthening his stride to keep pace.

The inspector sounded like he was chanting something under his breath; the constable caught a few notes and recognised the old Jacobite air,
‘Charlie is my darling, the young chevalier’,
usually heard when McLevy was in the extremities of good or bad humour. Which held sway was difficult to fathom from that exchange.

By now they had reached the bottom of Constitution Street. Mulholland swung left automatically heading for the Old Docks, but McLevy halted to point the other way.

‘That new building which stands so proudly in Salamander Street there, what is its function, constable?’

‘It’s the slaughterhouse, sir.’

‘So it is,’ said McLevy. ‘So it is.’

In Vinegar Close, one of the ragged children, egged on by his companions, their feral white faces alive with unaccustomed glee, pissed copiously upon a red patch on the cobbles. He sent a proud jet of urine high up into the air to spatter down while the girls shrieked encouragement.

The boy, Billy Johnstone, shook his wee tassel in their direction to provoke more shrieks, then tucked it away inside his torn, dirty trousers. They gathered all together and looked down at the rust-red patch. It had not altered one jot. Soaked in deep.

Footsteps. A man ran into the close. His brow was sweaty, a big beefy man, purple-faced and pursy. He had a wild look, knuckle-handed, a clout from one of these big fists might break your jaw. But worth a try.

‘Hey, mister,’ called Billy. ‘D’ye want tae see where she was split? The auld whoory woman?’

The man stopped dead, his face looked like someone had just kicked him in the testicles.

‘It’ll cost ye,’ said the bold Billy. ‘She bled like a pig.’

Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Not true. He’d only heard where it happened, not come to see. Only heard. But there was the name, high on the narrow wall. Frank could read, he was a good reader, his mammy had taught him, it put him a class above. He read it now. Vinegar Close.

‘She died where you look, Frank,’ said a voice. ‘Did your guilty conscience bring you down here?’

A shadow had appeared like a bird of ill omen in the entrance of the close. McLevy. The light streamed in behind his shrouded figure.

As Brennan desperately tried to wrench himself away, it was as if his feet were stuck in mud, like a dream where the odds are stacked against you; a feeling not helped when Mulholland stepped past his inspector and clipped Frank a judicious blow with his truncheon, just at the back-hinge of the knee.

The constable had varnished and decorated this instrument himself. It was made of hornbeam and delivered a blow like a hammer. The big man collapsed, howling in pain, to the ground. He sat there, blubbering like a baby, till they hauled him up and pinned him against the wall.

The various crumpled, poverty-stricken inhabitants of the close who had been sitting on the steps, stupefied in the pale sunshine, vanished in an instant. Only Billy and a couple of girls were left. The boy recognised Mulholland.

‘Are ye goin’ tae buy us any more buns, sir?’

The constable tossed over a small coin before the
God-forsaken
wee devil let the cat out the bag.

‘Now, get to hell out of it,’ he said sharply.

They did. So it was just the two policemen and Frank Brennan in the empty court.

‘You broke my poor leg,’ the big man whined.

McLevy smiled but the wolf’s eyes were without pity.

‘That’s only the beginning, Frank.’

The inspector puffed out his cheeks. He had not enjoyed the pursuit, anything above a brisk walking pace was, in his opinion, indecorous.

As Mulholland put the restrainers on and hauled the man off, McLevy added more salt to the wound.

‘Wait till we get you to the station. Wait till the door closes. Wait till we send out for the bucket and the mop.’

The three men disappeared through the opening of the close and then it was empty. Only the red patch remained, a last little patch of urine steaming faintly beside it in the wan sunlight.

The mist spiralled up then disappeared like a departing spirit.

McLevy’s method of interrogation was simple. He tailored it to type. With Frank Brennan it was fear. The looser his bowels, the greater chance of truth.

Although the man seemed an abject coward and easy mark, he possessed, nevertheless, bovine strength and an animal cunning which had to be taken into consideration.

Fear was a science. McLevy was a great student of scientific invention. See what it had given humanity in recent years, barbed wire and dynamite for a start.

They brought Brennan into the interrogation room, a bare functional space with mysterious stains of varying colours on the walls. In one corner might be seen a large gouge in the bare plaster as if a bear had swiped its claws along the surface.

There was a small table with two rickety chairs, one on each side, in the centre of the room. They sat him down and then both the inspector and Mulholland fell into what seemed like a trance.

The silence stretched. Brennan licked his dry lips. He looked down at the table surface. It, too, had stains, some faded yellow, some pale red which had soaked into the naked grain. There was also a deep scratch which had been scored the length of the wood in a diagonal slash. That appeared more recent. Perhaps yesterday. Ten minutes ago, even.

Sweat poured down his face. Still the policemen said nothing.

A young constable came in with a bucket and a mop. Brennan’s eyes bulged as the items were left in a prominent position. The constable departed. McLevy turned a large key in order to lock the door, put the key in his trouser pocket, then leaned back against the panels of the wood.

Mulholland was standing quietly behind the man so that Brennan’s head was near jerked off his shoulders trying to keep an eye on both these evil bastards at the same time.

Finally, McLevy moved to sit opposite the big man at the table. The inspector laid his hands upon it like a minister about to deliver a sermon. Brennan flinched slightly as if too near the hot flame.

A big flashy-dressed fellow, certain women might find him attractive; he possessed a false gallantry which fooled them time and time again.

McLevy adjudged it the moment to begin. There was a rancid odour from the man’s mouth, either he had some gum disease or he lived on carrion flesh.

‘So ye killed her, Frank,’ he said. ‘Was there any particular reason?’

Delivered in such tones as would suggest a pleasant choice between two fine whiskies set upon the bar, it inveigled Brennan into a nodding agreement before self-preservation set in and he howled denial.

‘I did no such thing! Why would I do that, now?’

‘She wasnae bringing in the coin. Ye like your drink. Ye saw her on the corner, not a penny had she earned.’

Mulholland chimed in. ‘Justifiable anger, Frank. Ye’ve a terrible temper, everyone knows that. It just swept over you. A righteous wrath, then the sword was lifted.’

‘I don’t possess such weapon as a sword.’

‘But you have the anger, no denyin’ that,’ said the constable, closing one of his blue eyes in a wink of complicity. ‘The wrath.’

‘Righteous,’ agreed McLevy. ‘A man needs his money.’

‘I’d
plenty
of money for drink that night. I bought for the whole place.’ Brennan affected a haughty air to cover his
desperation
. ‘I had people at my beck and call, they kissed my hand. Late into the night, we drank.’

‘How late?’ Mulholland took over, he had noticed the inspector go very still all of a sudden.

‘It was past three in the morning when I spent the last penny. I bought for all, a roaring boy. The landlord was of the company, he’ll tell you.’

‘The changeful wing of an alibi.’ Mulholland quoted a dictum of his yet silent inspector.

Brennan had got some of his nerve back. ‘John Docherty is an honest man. An upstanding host!’

‘How so?’ McLevy sprang into life.

‘What?’

‘You said plenty of money. Bought for all. How so?’

Brennan’s eyes shifted sideways. ‘I won it in a game of chance.’

‘Ye’re a liar.’

Mulholland backed off; this was the inspector’s show.

McLevy’s eyes bored into Brennan, the big Irishman tried for bravado. A mistake.

‘No one names Frank Brennan a liar, no one living on this earth – ’

The inspector’s hands moved so fast, Mulholland missed it entirely. Brennan did not because he found himself grabbed by the shirt front, pulled bodily out of his chair and spun round like a child’s top till he slammed up against the wall with an impact that near jolted the malodorous teeth from out his head.

Then he was off again, another circle, and then another, round and round, a bizarre dance of controlled violence, till the big man was deposited back into the very chair from which he had been plucked.

Slack-jawed, eyes glazed, he watched as McLevy deliberately unbuttoned the hooks and eyes of his tunic, slid it off and laid it neatly on his own chair. His shirt followed to reveal a
long-sleeved
red semmit, over which he hitched his braces again in two straight lines to contain his little mound of a belly. A comical sight if you discounted the coal-black fury in his eyes.

‘Is there any water in that bucket?’ he asked.

Mulholland craned his long neck. ‘Full to the brim, sir.’

‘I will ask you once more, Frank Brennan.’ The inspector might have been carved out of stone. ‘How so?’

The big man’s mouth opened and closed. No words emerged. McLevy, now standing over him, reached forward slowly and took hold of the front of Brennan’s throat. He cocked the other hand and sighted down it as if about to release an arrow.

Brennan was paralysed. The fingers of the hand on his thrapple were digging into the soft tissue. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the man would rip out the whole works; where is the mercy of God here?

‘How so?’ There was no mercy. Not in these eyes.

An awful smell arose as Brennan lost touch with his bowel movements and emitted a long fearful fart. Mulholland wrinkled his nose but the inspector didn’t seem to notice.