Nor Will He Sleep Read Free

was wearing a low brimmed bowler and brandishing a whip.
    Pettigrew at the desk bore a fixed smile on his face as if it were cemented; in fact the only time the doctor had frowned in any way was when McLevy had described his plethora of tavern
provender augmented by many mugs of coffee, each furnished with four to six large sugars, that he gulped during the day and especially at night.
    Having exhausted his carthorse simile, the physician moved in for the kill.
    ‘Mend your ways,’ he declared with a hint of the Old Testament, ’or the Grim Reaper will mend them for you.’
    His patient seemed unimpressed. Pettigrew clarified.
    ‘Death. Will strike you down.’
    ‘I deal wi’ death every day,’ muttered McLevy.
    ‘You are an undertaker by occupation?’
    ‘Of a kind.’
    McLevy had volunteered nothing in terms of his job.
    ‘It causes you a measure of strain?’
    ‘More like mortal trepidation – from time to time.’
    The healer shook his head in cheerful sorrow. ‘Then you must give up the profession!’
    The atmosphere in the consulting room changed suddenly as if an icy ghost had slid in, and the doctor found himself pinned back by the bleak menace in the opposite eyes.
    ‘My profession is my life.’
    The flat statement lay on the desk between them like a fallen angel, until Pettigrew leapt to his feet and pointed an accusing finger from his tall lanky frame.
    ‘Do you sleep?’ he demanded.
    ‘Whit?’
    ‘With such caffeine ingestion – do you
sleep
?’
    The inspector considered this.
    ‘But rarely,’ he replied.
    The doctor waved his arms in triumph as if he had diagnosed the disease.
    ‘Then worry no more about your aforesaid life. Either change your ways my dear sir, or you will attain the longest sleep known to man. An everlasting quiescence. Oblivion!’
    On that dramatic note, a sour-faced McLevy had paid the Messenger of Doom, quit the scene and travelled back to Edinburgh as fast as the train could take his newly maligned shell of
humanity.
    The present incumbent of this cracked and fissured carapace left a grumpy face plus Glasgow memories in the mirror and crossed to a recessed cupboard, there to unlock the door panel with the
gravity of a parish priest about to delve into the sacraments.
    Here he kept mementoes of past cases all related for the most part to homicidal intent; either accomplished or abandoned depending on which way the hangman’s rope had swung.
    In pride of place was a narrow red ledger, itself a product of the relatively innocuous crime of embezzlement though it did involve a respectable suicide; this he carefully removed to lay upon
the scratched surface of his battered old table-cum-writing desk.
    Above the table was a large window that looked down from a height over the gleaming, mysterious city – this was his family, his keeping and his fate. Auld Reekie.
    He sat, pursed his lips solemnly, slugged back some cold coffee from a mug, dipped his pen and began.
    Diary of James McLevy.
    7th May, 1887.
    It has been some years since I ceased to write in this book and my motives for stopping are as puzzling to me now as the reason why I recommence.
    The past wreaks vengeance on the present.
    These words have been running in my head all day. If I set them down on paper, perhaps they may let me be.
    They are accompanied by a dull feeling of dread, nothing you could pin with a finger but lurking as though perceived by someone else who has deposited the pending catastrophe with me for
safe keeping.
    Lurking.
    And another thing.
    Why is it that iniquity reveals nothing in the visage?
    Here’s me, a bastion of law and order looking like a demolished edifice compared wi’ Jean Brash who keeps the most notorious bawdy-hoose in Edinburgh, revels in all levels of
corruption and yet has the appearance of a milkmaid at dawn. Well, nearly.
    Is there some toothless old harpy in the Just Land to whom she transfers the marks of sin? Who sits sookin’, plook ridden, at some crumbly