To the northeast, the Firth of Forth glimmered dimly in the fading light; below them lay the sweeping rise of the Salisbury Crags. Beyond their rocky slopes, the spires of the city reached skyward into the dim twilight as the gaslights went on, one by one. Pockets of yellow light glimmered in the gathering darkness as Edinburgh’s “leeries,” or lamplighters, tended to their evening duty.
“Where d’you s’pose he were standin’ when he were pushed?” said Dickerson, coming to stand beside Ian on the windswept hillside.
“The body was found directly below here. Look around and see if you spot something. Look sharp, Sergeant—anything at all.”
“Right you are, sir,” Dickerson replied, and began dutifully scouring the area, bent over, nose close to the ground, like a ginger-haired bird dog on a scent.
Ian did the same, peering at the ground for anything unusual or out of place. A sense of stillness descended upon him, as it often did around dusk, a feeling at odds with the knowledge that a murder had taken place upon this spot. Just when he was beginning to think the entire expedition was foolish, Dickerson called out to him.
“Sir! Over here!”
Ian hurried over to where he stood, on the other side of the stony promontory. “What is it, Sergeant?”
“There.” He pointed to the ground.
Ian peered at the spot indicated. Something in the muddy ground caught his eye. Plucking it out of the dirt, he held it up so Dickerson could see it.
“The missing button, sir?”
It was indeed the matching leather button missing from Stephen Wycherly’s jacket.
“Well done! We’ve been rewarded more than I hoped for,” Ian said, tucking the button into his rucksack as a few drops of rain leaked from the sky. “We’d better be off—I have a feeling the heavens are going to open up again.”
His prediction was accurate. They had hardly gone a hundred yards when a clap of thunder shook the skies and a deluge of biblical proportions loosed itself upon the citizens of Edinburgh. By the time they reached the foot of Arthur’s Seat, both men were drenched to the skin. Ian sent Dickerson home in a hansom cab, though it was a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped.
When Hamilton reached his own flat on Victoria Terrace, the first thing he did was draw a deep, hot bath. He dragged himself out of it, too tired to eat, and threw himself into bed, where he dreamed of a dusky hillside populated by two faceless men locked in mortal combat at the edge of a precipice. The harder he tried to make out their faces, the more inscrutable they became. He tried to call to them, but no sound came from his throat.
He awoke to a great clap of thunder, jolting him into sudden alertness. Dragging himself from bed, he padded to the kitchen and brewed a cup of tea. He sat with it in front of the cold grate in the parlor, inhaling its warmth, while the storm raged outside his windows. As jagged streaks of lightning surged across the sky, his hands found paper and pencil. Still lost halfway between the world of dreaming and waking, he scribbled a few lines of poetry.
Crossing the Canongate
Ancient footsteps echo through corners of a town
accustomed to bloodshed
Suffering carved into paving stones
The cries of victims seep from its fortressed walls
falling like rain upon sleeping inhabitants
unwary and snug in their deep unknowing
His breathing relaxed as he wrote—committing his darkest thoughts to paper always seemed to ease his mind. Ian sat with his tea until the thunder and lightning subsided, slowly giving way to the steady thrumming of rain upon the rooftops. Returning to bed, he fell asleep to the rhythmic pounding of rain, sliding into a deep, dreamless slumber.
CHAPTER TEN
Bobby Tierney was ready for a fight. Stepping into the early winter twilight from his tiny flat on the London Road, he took a deep breath of fetid air and swaggered down the street, his head ringing with a thirst for violence. He was twenty-three, a member of Edinburgh’s vast underclass of the underpaid, underfed, and overworked, and his limited brain contained but one desire on this fetid Friday: to pound someone. Anyone would do—Bobby held no particular personal grudges, only overriding malice toward all. His body surged with the kinetic energy of a young man in his fighting prime, in the most dangerous of circumstances—he had nowhere to go, no money to spend, and no one to check his wilder impulses. He had only his fists for entertainment, and tonight was not the first on which he had sauntered forth looking for trouble. He usually found it—in Edinburgh, trouble was not hard to find.
Robert James Tierney was an Irishman, part of the vast, desperate diaspora that dumped citizens of the Emerald Isle on the shores of any country that would take them during the devastating potato blight of the 1840s. In Ireland, it was referred to as simply the Great Famine, and those too poor to afford transatlantic passage to America tumbled onto boats headed for neighboring Scotland—only to find that country suffering its own crisis from a similar disaster in the Highlands. Proud sons of farmers whose families had tended the same land for generations streamed into the cities, inspiring anti-Irish sentiments from resentful Scots who feared their livelihood would be snatched by invading hordes of Hibernians.
Bobby was just about fed up with the attitude of the citizens of Edinburgh, as well as the squalor of life in “Little Ireland,” the warren of crumbling and crowded tenements along the Cowgate. A good fight would clear the air, and clear his head, he thought as he strode into the center of the Old Town, headed for the Hound and Hare, where the ceilings were low, the conversation loud, and the beer flowed freely. He was sure to find some kindred souls there—angry young men spoiling for a brawl.
He threw open the door to the sound of alcohol-fueled conversation, laughter, and the clinking of glassware. The voices were loud and coarse, overwhelmingly male, the beer mugs thick and sturdy, made to survive long nights of heavy drinking. He looked around for his mate Mickey, a bullet-headed Irishman from Dublin with a foul mouth and a talent for head butting. Spotting him at the other side of the room, Bobby began shouldering his way through the press of bodies. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and beery breath, and Bobby’s eyes burned as he pushed his way toward his friend.
He felt his foot tread upon another person’s, and before he could see who owned the offended appendage, a hand clamped hard upon his shoulder. He turned and looked into the coldest pair of eyes he had ever seen. Anger Bobby could understand—rage smoldered in his own gut, an unquenchable flame born of injustice and social inequality. But these eyes did not burn with anger; they seemed to be of pure blue ice, immoveable as a frozen lake.