End of the Line Read online

  ‘McLevy is a sort of Victorian Morse with a heart’

  Financial Times

  ‘McLevy is one of the great psychological creations, and Ashton is the direct heir to Robert Louis Stevenson’ Brian Cox, star of the BBC Radio 4 McLevy plays

  ‘You can easily imagine the bustling life of a major port, and the stories are alive with a most amazing array of characters’

  BBC Radio 4

  ‘David Ashton, like Robert Louis Stevenson or Ian Rankin, is inspired by the beauty-and-beast nature of Edinburgh. His interpretation of James McLevy is worthy of the original man’

  Sherlock Holmes Society

  ‘Ashton’s McLevy . . . is a man obsessed with meting out justice, and with demons of his own’

  The Scotsman

  ‘An intriguing Victorian detective story . . . elegant and convincing’

  The Times on Shadow of the Serpent

  ’Dripping with melodrama and derring-do’ The Herald on Fall from Grace

  ALSO BY DAVID ASHTON

  The McLevy Mysteries:

  Shadow of the Serpent

  Fall from Grace

  A Trick of the Light

  David Ashton was born in Greenock in 1941. He studied at Central Drama School in London from 1964 to 1967, starring in The Voyage of Charles Darwin, Brass, Hamish Macbeth and Waking the Dead. His most recent performance was in The Last King of Scotland.

  David started writing for film, television, theatre and radio in 1984 and has seen many of his plays and TV adaptations broadcast; he wrote early episodes of EastEnders, Casualty, Dalziel and Pascoe, a film for Channel 4 starring Minnie Driver and Bill Paterson called God on the Rocks, six McLevy series starring Brian Cox for BBC Radio 4 plus a pilot for a new series, Doctor Johnson’s Dictionary of Crime.

  End of the Line

  An Inspector McLevy Mystery

  DAVID ASHTON

  First published in Great Britain in 2011 by

  Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

  West Newington House

  10 Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.polygonbooks.co.uk

  Copyright © David Ashton 2011

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  The right of David Ashton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN 978 1 84697 201 0

  ebook ISBN 978 0 85790 029 6

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

  Typeset in Great Britain by SJC Printed and bound by Clays Ltd in Bungay, Suffolk

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  The End of the Line

  TO

  MAXINE

  Waverley Station lay quiet, the locomotives heaving softly like a herd of animals, flanks steaming as midnight struck.

  Two figures emerged in the lamplight, clanking towards the recently arrived Newcastle train. Their clothes proclaimed them to be railway cleaners, stoical and stocky, metal buckets bumping together as the two old women, Margaret Reid and Jenny Dunlop, reflected upon life, as they knew it.

  ‘Ye wonder why folk come and go,’ Margaret announced in the stillness.

  ‘I’ve never left Edinburgh,’ was the response.

  ‘Some folk though,’ Margaret winced at a sudden ache; the dampness played merry hell with her bones at times. ‘All over the world, camels and ships and the Lord knows what.’

  ‘I wouldnae put trust in the sea,’ said Jenny, and then let out a shriek. ‘My God, look at the size of it!’

  A large black rat picked its way carefully up the platform, oblivious to the disquietude it was creating.

  Margaret shook her head in remonstrance. ‘The place is rampant with the beasts – all these years and you’re still kicking up a fuss. If it doesnae have a ticket Mister Pettigrew will see it far enough.’ She had spotted the trim figure of the guard down at the front engine of the train and frowned for a moment. ‘That’s funny.’

  ‘Whit is?’

  ‘Nothing. Come on – all aboard!’

  They clambered into the rear carriage and with an ease born of long practice picked their way in the semi-gloom, eyes flicking left and right to register the state of the compartment and the necessary cleansing thereof.

  ‘These late-night trains, dirty devils!’

  Margaret smiled grimly at the other’s remark.

  ‘Wisnae for the dirt, we’d have no living – oh, oh.’

  Her nose wrinkled at the whisky and tobacco fumes, plus she had also spotted a figure slumped in one of the corner seats. ‘There’s always the one, eh?’

  ‘A disgrace tae mankind,’ observed Jenny piously.

  ‘Just inebriated.’ Margaret shook the figure roughly by the shoulder. ‘End of the line, sir. Rouse yourself!’

  A moment and then the entity slowly fell to land with a thud on the floor where it lay ominously still, the face staring up, eyes wide open and sightless.

  ‘His neck is livid, see the mark!’ gasped Jenny.

  ‘I see well enough,’ replied Margaret bleakly. She wrenched down the carriage window, stuck her head out and bawled down the platform.

  ‘Mister Pettigrew – I think we have a dead body in Waverley Station!’

  ‘That’s against regulations,’ came the prim response. ‘Don’t move a muscle!’

  A piercing whistle blast signalled bureaucratic alarm and Margaret sighed as she looked back to where Jenny was staring disapprovingly down at the corpse.

  ‘It’s going tae be a long night, Jenny.’

  Her companion nodded, then a random thought struck. ‘D’ye think they’ll pay us extra?’ she asked.

  * * *

  Thomas Pettigrew was a worried official as he escorted the two police officers through the stale air of the railway carriage. A dry stick with small features and erect bearing, the very embodiment of a railway man.

  ‘We had it moved to a siding,’ he remarked, moustache twitching unhappily. ‘But it’s played havoc with the timetable.’

  ‘The timetable, eh?’ said Inspector James McLevy.

  ‘Havoc.’

  By now they had reached the corpse where it lay covered over by a white sheet.

  ‘Abracadabra!’

  McLevy whipped off the covering with a flourish and the two policemen bent over the cadaver.

  They made a strange contrast. The inspector grizzled, thickset, muffled up in his dark coat, low-brimmed bowler sitting on his head like a chimney pot, and Constable Mulholland a tall lanky figure, his cape billowing with the stooping motion.

  Two pairs of eyes stared down. Slate-grey and wolfish, clear Irish blue.

  ‘A handsome brute,’ said McLevy. ‘Save the wee blemish round his neck.’

  ‘A straight line,’ Mulholland noted. ‘Wire?’

  ‘Wire would cut deep.’

  ‘Not with cloth wrapped round. A garrotte!’

  ‘Or a length of cord. Strip of leather.’

  They seemed to find great relish in these homicidal musings. Pettigrew indicated some envelopes scattered on the table where the man had sat.

  ‘These would seem to be his . . . property. Business letters. Name and address. In Leith. Why we sent to your station.’

  ‘Aye, we’re always open for murder,’ said McLevy, delving into the
man’s pockets as Mulholland scrutinised the scattered papers.

  ‘All addressed to one Count Borromeo,’ the constable announced. ‘Italian, I’ll wager – that would explain the garrotte.’

  ‘Uhuh?’ McLevy grunted sceptically at this flight of fancy. ‘One thing for sure – there’s no wallet to hand.’

  ‘Theftuous murder?’

  ‘Possible. My surmise is that he was drunk as a lord when it happened, didnae feel a thing.’

  After a sardonic laugh at that idea the inspector abruptly straightened up, eyes boring into Pettigrew as if he were a sudden suspect.

  ‘Where did the corpse get on the train?’

  ‘I’m not rightly sure.’

  ‘You must be. You’re the guard. You have a whistle round your neck!’

  Pettigrew pursed his lips in thought.

  ‘Newcastle – I am almost certain.’

  The little man stiffened his back under their gaze.

  ‘I like to be certain,’ he said firmly.

  ‘Any luggage?’

  ‘I could not swear – but I think not.’

  McLevy sensed that Pettigrew was mulling over something – a timetable mentality grinds slow but sure.

  ‘Anything else come tae mind?’

  ‘When I inspected tickets it was obvious the man had drink taken though he was . . . civil enough. But one other presence in the compartment caught my attention. I’m not certain I should point the finger though.’

  Both policemen smiled. A movement of the lips that indicated the onset of appetite.

  * * *

  ‘A giant of a fellow. With ginger hair. In the same carriage!’ reported McLevy to Lieutenant Roach who sat under the portrait of his dearly beloved Queen Victoria in the commander’s neat and tidy office at Leith Station.

  The lieutenant had an expression of distrust upon his face though that was only natural.

  ‘And a man of such description shoved past the collector at the ticket barrier,’ added Mulholland.

  ‘Plus we found an empty wallet jettisoned upon the railway tracks – expensive leather, surely the corpse’s.’

  ‘Robbery with death thrown in, sir!’

  To the constable’s enthusiastic assertion, Roach said nothing but twitched his long and lantern jaw. He was aware that things had been quiet recently and these two were growing restless, like slavering hounds without a deer carcass to gnaw upon.

  ‘I’m not sure this is even our case,’ he demurred. ‘What about the Railway Police?’

  ‘Couldnae find a goods wagon if it ran over their big toe,’ McLevy dismissed. ‘Only too pleased for us to take over the mortal remains.’

  Mulholland chipped in support. ‘And he lived in MacDonald Street, our parish, sir.’

  ‘Who found the body?’ Roach asked while he pondered.

  ‘The cleaners. Two old biddies, Margaret Reid and Jenny Dunlop.’

  ‘Nothing to add though,’ said Mulholland.

  ‘But by God, could they talk.’

  ‘Not unusual for the species,’ muttered Roach.

  McLevy detected an unwonted brooding in his lieutenant’s bosom and signalled Mulholland to the door.

  ‘Away tae the desk, constable, and arrange cadaver collection from Waverley Station,’ he declared. ‘The police surgeon will want to justify his existence.’

  A complicit nod and Mulholland was out the door, leaving McLevy to work his rough magic.

  The inspector let the silence rest for a moment and then in remarkably gentle tones enquired if there was something on his superior’s mind.

  Roach hesitated and then, encouraged by the obliging look in McLevy’s eye, while realising of course that it was a ploy to get him to sanction the investigation, spoke man to man.

  ‘Mrs Roach has joined one of these newfangled . . . reading societies,’ he confided. ‘Books.’

  ‘Ye mean Edgar Allen Poe, Murders in the Rue Morgue and such like?’ was the eager and spurious response.

  ‘No. Female exponents. Such as the Bröntes.’

  ‘Aha!’ the inspector exclaimed. ‘And whit like are their literary emanations?’

  ‘Long,’ said Roach. ‘And to my mind somewhat morbid, but that is not the problem.’

  McLevy resisted temptation. All things come to he who waits. Silence is golden.

  The lieutenant took a quick shifty look up at Queen Victoria before confiding further.

  ‘Mrs Roach has asked me to join the group. I would be the only man.’

  McLevy chewed at his lip to indicate deep thought.

  ‘I am pit in mind o’ The Bacchae,’ he opined. ‘I would stick tae golf.’

  The door opened and Mulholland returned to announce that the cadaver was en route.

  ‘Well, lieutenant,’ boomed the inspector. ‘Shall we take up the case?’

  Roach nodded. His mind was clear, the words crisp.

  ‘Proceed on two fronts,’ he directed. ‘Find this ginger giant and also determine everything you can about the corpse. The more you discover about a dead body the more reasons emerge for it attaining that condition.’

  He had scarce finished the sentence when, with a cry of approbation and promised obedience, McLevy shot out of the door, closely followed by the constable, before their superior could change his mind.

  Roach sighed and attempted to recall the plot of The Bacchae. He had a vague memory of a man up a tree surrounded by a pack of howling females. Very Greek.

  * * *

  The police had struck lucky. A bang on the door of the lodging house – a timid maid about to go shopping, the housekeeper out, McLevy bluffness personified, Mulholland all Irish charm – and they had been shown to the man’s room where they might root around to heart’s content.

  This they had done. The general inspection having produced nothing, the inspector was now nosing in the wardrobe while Mulholland sifted through the tall chest of drawers.

  ‘Socks of finest silk,’ the constable announced.

  ‘Shoes of finest leather. Cashmere suits!’ said the awed McLevy. He sniffed at the label. ‘Exclusive. Saville Row. The man was a spender.’

  They had ascertained from the maid that the fellow had been there for a month and was the sole lodger in the house, but there was not a shred of document here to tell them one thing more as regards identity; the letters from the train – investment prospectuses from various companies replying to an obvious enquiry – were no help.

  ‘A man of mystery,’ the inspector concluded. ‘Whit was he doing here, Mulholland?’

  As if in answer, a female voice cooed in the ether.

  ‘Roberto?’ it fluted through the door. ‘Are you decently attired?’

  The portal opened and a woman of some certain years, hair newly coiffured, tightly corseted with bosom athrust to show generous inclination, tripped in.

  Her mouth was a little slack, and grew slacker at the sight before her.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Policemen. At your service,’ stated Mulholland.

  ‘Where is Count Borromeo?’

  ‘He is – I’m afraid – dead, ma’am,’ the constable assured her solemnly.

  The mouth sagged further, though the bosom stayed firm.

  ‘But we were to be engaged!’

  ‘That would be difficult now,’ McLevy said.

  ‘Oooh,’ she wailed. ‘And I’ve just left black behind!’

  ‘How is that?’ Mulholland enquired, while McLevy tried to guess the woman’s age. No spring chicken.

  ‘I was widowed not two years ago. How did he die?’

  ‘This is whit we’re trying to ascertain,’ the inspector muttered. ‘Are you the housekeeper then?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ came the outraged response. ‘I am Senga Murdison, owner of this establishment, and I would ask you to address me in a manner befitting!’

  Mulholland knew from hard experience that McLevy’s tolerance of glandular women was a touch on the low side, and so slid in smoothly bef
ore blood stained the carpet.

  ‘Perhaps ma’am, it might be best if you compose yourself from the terrible shock and then we may converse about . . . Roberto?’

  She nodded gratefully at this manly offer and then heaved a sigh, hand upon the jutting breastworks.

  ‘I feel a wee bit faint. If you might escort me to my rooms, they are close by.’

  ‘I bet they are,’ observed McLevy dryly. ‘Away ye go Constable Mulholland, I’ll steady the ship.’

  He was more or less ignored as the two left the room, Senga leaning upon the constable’s arm.

  ‘Is that your name then?’ she remarked as they disappeared. ‘Mulholland?’

  ‘All my life, ma’am,’ came the reassuring response.

  McLevy darted forward and closed the door behind them. A clever move of the constable’s to get her out and leave him time to delve unsupervised.

  And he had a wee surprise up his sleeve should the delving bear no fruit. It would not help with the dead man’s history but it might produce a murder suspect.

  * * *

  To see Thomas Pettigrew you would scarce believe it. A trusted employee of the North British Railway staring through the iron gates of a bawdy-hoose. Birds strutted on a large expanse of green lawn leading to an imposing façade that gleamed white in the cold Edinburgh sunshine, but a’body in the city knew of this place.

  The Just Land. Owned by the notorious Jean Brash, and there the man was, soiling his eyes with such scrutiny.

  A bawdy-hoose. Anathema to the pure at heart.

  While the guard was thus preoccupied, McLevy and Mulholland wrangled quietly in the background.

  ‘That widow woman has you in her sights,’ said the inspector with malicious intent.

  ‘I merely offered a steadying arm.’

  ‘Which caused her knees to knock thegither.’

  McLevy laughed heartily at his bon mot and Mulholland did not dignify it with rejoinder. They had broken the news that the man had been indeed murdered, and despite her palpable shock, the inspector had questioned vigorously, much to the woman’s displeasure.