Read Trick of the Light for Free Online

his lieutenant’s garb, was an immaculate assembly of straight lines and knife-edge creases. He had a long snout of a nose, dry skin and irregular snaggled teeth that were the bane of his life.
    A crocodile in uniform.
    He was half a head taller than his inspector who, despite the mild late-October weather, was muffled up in his heavy coat looking like some bad-tempered winter animal newly emerged from its lair.
    Just leave it , Mulholland begged silently of McLevy. While you’re still at the races.
    But no. Too much to hope.
    ‘If Ballantyne chooses to delude himself that some mysterious magnetism can change the workings of his body cells and leave him with a skin to match the purity of his innocent intentions, then good luck tae him.’
    For a moment McLevy’s voice thickened and Mulholland guessed the cause to be either bile or sentiment. He hoped sincerely it was bile; the idea of his inspector having finer feelings was an alarming one.
    ‘It’s his delusion,’ went on McLevy, his eyes shifting to where Ballantyne sat disconsolately at his desk, trying to impose order onto what indeed was an irredeemable mess. ‘His delusion, and he is welcome to it.’
    Roach narrowed his slightly bloodshot eyes.
    ‘What the Lord lays upon us, we may not avoid. His mercy is infinite. His burden is heavy.’
    McLevy sniffed, and then, with a mercurial change of mood, grinned savagely as a random thought struck home.
    ‘Anyway, ye should have let him finish the job.’
    ‘And why, pray?’
    ‘Because had he done so to no effect, it would have proved that the forces of the occult could hold no sway with the malediction of a Presbyterian Almighty.’
    The inspector let out a wild whoop of laughter.
    ‘Now Ballantyne will be in doubt for the rest of his life. You have created the opposite of your intent. Jist like God.’
    What Mulholland found bewildering was the way these two went from one level to another.
    ‘That is close to sacrilege, James,’ said Roach quietly. ‘The pagan in you rises.’
    ‘It’s near Halloween,’ came the reply. ‘I’ll be dancing at the bonfire.’
    Before Roach could muster a response to this profane assertion, there was an altercation of sorts at the station desk and, having had little satisfaction from Sergeant Murdoch who had his inert domain there, a young man strode towards them.
    He was almost as tall as Mulholland but broader of frame, wearing what looked like an old sailor’s coat with brass buttons; he wore a naval cap of sorts, set at a rakish angle tipped to the back of his head. The fellow was fresh complexioned, open faced, with a thick walrus moustache, obviously an attempt to add gravitas to the twenty-two-year-old countenance chosen for its domicile. His eyes protruded slightly, almost fish-like, pale blue, but they had a fierce directness of purpose.
    He committed himself to Roach, totally ignoring McLevy who stood aside in mock deference, a gleam of amusement in his eyes. Indeed there was something childlike and disarming about the whole presentation before them, a brash young boy caught inside a giant’s body.
    ‘Are you in charge here, sir?’ he asked, the voice a little higher-pitched than the frame would warrant.
    ‘There may be some who would dispute such,’ replied Roach, dryly, ‘but that would seem to be my function.’
    The young man blinked a little at this, and looked round all three policemen as if they were in disguise.
    ‘I am here to report a crime,’ he announced finally.
    ‘You’ve come to the right place then,’ said McLevy.
    ‘No denyin’ that,’ added Mulholland.
    Roach, of course, at this point, should have handed the case to McLevy and walked off to gaze at the portrait of Queen Victoria that hung in his office, comforting himself with the thought that both his sovereign and the Supreme Chief Constable in heaven would find no fault with their loyal servant, but some imp of perversity seized him and so he stood there as a member of the