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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: Inspector Faro
- Sprache: Englisch
The year is 1864 and Detective Inspector Faro's idyllic life has been shattered by the escape of convicted murderer John McLaw. With countless dead end sightings of the killer and further criminal activity Faro realises that this case is far more complicated than he had first assumed. When the disappearance of a maid comes to light, Faro begins to think there could be a link between her disappearance and the murder of Annie McLaw. His determination to unearth the truth becomes personal and in a race against time to solve the anonymities of the case, he takes matters into his own hands.
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Seitenzahl: 369
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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Akin to Murder
An Inspector Faro Mystery
ALANNA KNIGHT
For Niamh, with love
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
1864
Before the full horror of a situation in which his family became involved in a murder, Detective Sergeant Jeremy Faro had not envied policemen who were unmarried. He knew nothing of his wife’s early life and a sense of delicacy forbade him to raise the subject, knowing only her story that rape by a guest in a great Highland house had resulted in Vince, and parents who speedily disowned her.
Serious crimes had been at a low ebb that year, only one homicide. A young railway worker in East Lothian who had murdered his faithless wife. According to the Edinburgh City Police a domestic open-and-shut case. At the trial the jury agreed and ignored his not-guilty plea. The judge donned the black cap, and pronounced a sentence of death.
Faro had missed most of the trial, away on a complex Edinburgh fraud investigation with tentacles reaching out to Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen; a case Inspector Gosse considered beneath him. When Faro returned it was all over and in the railway station the newsboys were shouting: ‘Guilty local man to hang.’
Ignoring that misinformation, since Musselburgh could hardly be described as local, he sighed. The newspapers would have their day and return their efforts to arouse interest in international affairs, like the American Civil War where brother fought brother and sons fought fathers, or in Denmark where the enemy was Prussia. Not since Culloden and the bloody history of the Stuarts had such emotions stirred Scotland and now readers’ only concern was with local issues regarding the expansion of the city boundaries southward, a situation involving heated letters to the editor.
As Faro walked up the High Street past St Giles’ Cathedral, his future seemed to stretch out offering little excitement beyond the normal daily routine, waiting for something to happen beyond the trivialities of lost or stolen animals, drunken assaults and enlivened by the occasional burglary. Duties which seemed rather boring after the sensational murder involving the legendary ‘curse of Scotland’ two years ago, not that he longed for homicide or violent crime, especially as he was now a happily married man expecting his first child.
Strolling into the Central Office, however, he was met by pandemonium and an almost apoplectic Inspector Gosse shouting that he couldn’t believe what had happened.
John McLaw, the man whose trial had just ended, was on the way back to Calton Jail where he was to be confined awaiting the death sentence to be carried out. And he had escaped.
The prison van had been struck by lightning in a thunderstorm that Faro had witnessed from the railway train. The horse unhurt but terrified had run amok, the carriage overturned and in the resulting confusion McLaw had got his handcuffs unlocked and vanished.
A search party of constables was already out. A sighting of the escaped prisoner heading towards Leith, where departing ships were being alerted, while other police forces up and down the country were telegraphed to be vigilant. There had already been incidents, an assault and an attempted burglary in the New Town, the victim giving a description of the man he had wrestled with. It fitted McLaw.
The general conclusion was that he would be heading north and west to his homeland in the wilds of Argyll, among familiar hills that, once covered in an early snowfall, would be impossible for searchers and provide a natural sanctuary, with the glens closed until the spring thaw. Skimming the details of McLaw’s trial as Gosse ranted on about his spectacular escape, Faro handed him back the papers.
‘I’m surprised at the verdict.’ He shook his head. ‘There are too many loose ends in this case.’
Gosse seemed surprised at this observation. ‘Indeed. Pretty obvious to me, as well as most intelligent folk.’ He shrugged. ‘Just one of our usual sordid domestics.’ He paused and added sarcastically, ‘And what makes the clever sergeant think he knows more than the judge and jury?’
‘Right at the beginning, I would have liked to interview the victim, get a few explanations from him. I gather he was appealed to, to come forward. Pity he didn’t do so.’
‘What do you mean, pity he didn’t come forward?’
‘Might have helped McLaw, even if he was guilty.’ Faro said weakly.
‘No, no.’ Gosse stared at him in astonishment. ‘Come on, Faro, you’re hopeless. For God’s sake, use whatever wits you have about it. No wonder he wanted his identity concealed. Discretion, Faro, that’s why. Can’t you see it at all? It’s all there in front of you, a jealous husband and a cheating wife. Happens all the time. I will give it to McLaw, he made a good try, but imagine expecting any one in their right minds swallowing that yarn. An unseen lover who, instead of scarpering, knocked him out and when he came to, there was his wife lying beside him, with a knife stuck in her chest. He just invented the whole situation. As for the other man who preferred to remain anonymous …’
Pausing, he grinned. ‘If it was true, then I should think he had some very good reasons for remaining silent. Come on, Faro, you’re a married man yourself, surely you understand this sort of thing.’
Faro shuddered, hoping he would never have that particular crisis to cope with, glad that it was very unlikely with his dear devoted Lizzie, whose whole world went round and stopped with him. He sighed thankfully. The most unlikely woman in the world to deceive him or ever be unfaithful.
‘Anyway, too late for that now. And McLaw was just a bloody savage. John McLaw – we had to call him that with a first name nobody could pronounce,’ growled Gosse, raising his head from the latest report. ‘We lowlanders aren’t like that. Not like those damned highlanders, thank God. We know our place.’
Faro’s eyebrows raised at that somewhat sweeping statement, typical of the man, as he continued:
‘Can’t trust them. Damned villains, the lot of them.’
‘Not all of them; my wife is from the Highlands,’ Faro said quietly.
Gosse ignored that. ‘A sleekit lot. Wait till you’ve had as many dealings as I’ve had with them.’ He paused to shudder expressively. ‘Aye, you never knew what was going on in their heads, what they were thinking when you walked into a public house, like as not weighing up the possibilities of sticking a knife in your back. Aye, sleekit, that’s what. Man, they don’t even speak the same language. Foreigners, the lot of them.’
And that included Lizzie. This was true since their first meeting here in Edinburgh five years ago; he had never heard her speak Gaelic.
As is often the way with those who become dear to us, he thought later, it was as if she had come into his life complete and ready-made, waiting for him, and with that, her world before they met had ceased to exist.
Yet he could not pretend that Lizzie was the love of his life; there had been Inga St Ola in Orkney. Inga, whose memory was bitter – a knife in the heart, for she would not have him. So accepting the bitterness of truth, he had compromised, taking Lizzie, content to know nothing about her except that he was exceedingly fortunate having found someone to love him so much that he owed her marriage, especially in regard to her tragic early life. How he respected and admired her courage in keeping and bringing up Vince.
Listening to Gosse ranting on, he realised he was learning almost more about the criminal McLaw than he knew about his own wife. He had never questioned her. After that first kiss, a whispered account with eyes closed like a confession, to shut out the terrible vision. No, she was not really a war widow with a son, and then the full awful story, quickly told with little detail, anxious to get it over with. Some tears, too, but Faro had not wanted to pry, his heart wrenched, deeply touched by her tragedy, he decided never to mention the incident again.
There was a further flurry, a nasty moment later when Vince, resenting Faro’s intrusion into their lives, proudly told him his father had been a brave soldier, killed in India, and he seemed determined that his mother remain faithful to his memory. It had taken their lives threatened in a murder to convince him good things occasionally come of bad, and he had transferred his devotion from his heroic non-existent father to the detective-sergeant who had saved their lives, thereby removing himself as the one just cause and impediment to their marriage.
Faro sighed. Was Vince to be the only son he would have? Lizzie had miscarried twice and now, pregnant again, past the dangerous early stages, they had both sighed with relief and begun to hope anew. Perhaps it was as well to pretend the past was a ghost that had been laid for ever.
‘And what do you think of that, Faro?’ barked Gosse.
Faro realised that he hadn’t been listening, the tirade going over his head. He was tired of Gosse’s endless moaning, how he had arrested McLaw and, making it his business to see him to the gallows, he had been humiliated by his escape. The prison van accident had robbed Gosse of his final triumph. No one did that to Gosse and got away with it and Faro was well aware once again that Gosse was quite capable of bending the evidence to suit the crime, and here there was something even stronger, the personal element. Gosse was a man devoid of pity: he would kick a lost dog in the gutter, laugh at the misfortune of beggars, asserting that men’s misfortunes were their own doing and that being harsh and strong, without pity, was what made a true policeman, a great detective.
‘You’ll never make it, Faro, you have too much heart, a great big softie, that’s what you are. You’ll never get beyond the mentality of the policeman’s beat.’
Gosse had been wrong, of course, when he was promoted to inspector to find that his hated detective constable had also been elevated to sergeant. He told himself that was doubtless due to the good word put in by retired Chief Superintendent Brandon Macfie, who looked kindly upon Faro, another bone of contention.
Nothing was ever going to rid him of Faro it seemed. He was especially bitter that Faro’s fancy woman, his juicy widow, had not fallen into his arms when she had the chance, captivated by what he fondly believed was his charm, his irresistible allure to women.
She had married Faro. He would have been surprised to know that Lizzie had been completely unaware of his intentions, of his pursuit of her. He was Faro’s boss, his wife meanwhile away from Edinburgh caring for some sick relative (Lizzie believing the story he gave out, she had in fact left him for ever). But Lizzie was without vanity and never saw her reflected image in the mirror as an attractive woman. Life did not owe her anything. All she asked was a safe future for her adored Vince, and, grateful for a marriage happy beyond her imagination, she was content to love and serve Jeremy Faro for the rest of her life, provide him with a comfortable home and bear his children.
Her idea of a comfortable home, Faro discovered, also included offering it to others not so fortunate. Lizzie could not resist waifs and strays – fortunately only a stray cat and dog.
As yet.
CHAPTER TWO
Faro bought a newspaper on his way home. A paragraph stated that the searchers were out for McLaw and reminded readers that this was a dangerous man, a murderer on the run. For the rest, the world might be in turmoil across the Atlantic and in Europe, but the only emotions stirring Edinburgh were less to do with an escaped prisoner and more about a frenzy involving builders demolishing old dwellings and developing the open countryside, involving outraged discussion and constant appeals to the council.
The city was stretching its sides. First northwards, with the New Town in the last century, now it was the turn of the south side beyond Arthur’s Seat. From ancient times, on this land once owned by the abbots at Newbattle, early farmers had left the marks of their runrig fields still visible. At its base, medieval families with crops and animals had made a drove road heading south through East Lothian, carrying their sheep and cattle beyond the massive boulder-strewn heights with its bracken-lined gullies and hidden caves, haunted by legends of King Arthur with his knights, their hounds at their sides, awaiting the trumpet call that would awaken them to ride out and fight for Scotland.
‘Is it true, sir?’ asked Vince.
Brandon Macfie was telling him the story on one of their Sunday afternoon walks with Faro, explaining that Arthur’s Seat was a corruption of the Gaelic name Alt na Said, Height of the Arrows.
‘King Arthur missed his chance, I fear. And Prince Charlie would have welcomed his knights’ assistance. He needed all the help he could get.’
‘Still lost the throne and changed the course of Scotland’s history,’ Faro added grimly.
Edinburgh was growing rapidly since the Industrial Revolution. The greedy eyes of developers had been turned to the countryside surrounding that long road, leading stagecoaches as well as drovers to the Borders and eventually to England.
For centuries past, the old drove road far below them, still the main road south, had seen its share of history, watched over by the heights of Samson’s Ribs on the lower reaches of the extinct volcano. King James had ridden at the head of his army of clans raised and lairds with their banners, riding out confidently with their tenants to fight and die on the bloody field of Flodden. And in another disaster, the army of Prince Charles Edward had ridden victorious, before that last desperate attempt to reinstate the Stuarts had ended with Culloden.
Macfie loved history and the open country beyond the southside of Edinburgh. He sighed deeply as each day a little more vanished into bricks and mortar, and great terraces, rows of houses, some of them very ugly indeed, rose on those once peaceful meadows to accommodate Edinburgh’s rapidly increasing population.
No trumpets, no hunting horns, but hammers. King Arthur and his knights still slept undisturbed apart from the builders’ hammers (respectfully silent on Sundays) echoing across the hill as the suburb of Newington extended its boundaries. The developers had moved in and the area on either side of the old drove road was transformed by monstrous scaffolding as vast terraces four storeys high, a more modern version of the tenements of the Old Town’s closes, arose to house Edinburgh’s artisans who could not afford the grand Georgian New Town but wished for a speedy exit from association with the notorious slums of the High Street, between the Palace of Holyroodhouse and the lofty castle.
Soon there would be nothing left but St Anthony’s ruined chapel where once a light had glowed to keep sailors safe at night as they negotiated the waters of the Firth. And at the base of Arthur’s Seat, Solomon’s Tower, an ancient pele tower, almost a crumbling ruin and owned by some noble family who, they were informed, refused to give permission for its destruction.
Pausing to light a pipe, Macfie looked up at the lazy cloudless Sunday sky. It was an idyllic scene with only the distant sound of church bells calling in the worshippers.
He smiled down at Vince. ‘On a day a like this, lad, you could imagine anything, if you were that way inclined.’
Faro walked at their side and he looked at the tall Orcadian policeman. There were still unmistakable traces of his origins in high cheekbones, the wide mouth and slightly hooded, dark-blue eyes. As for that thick, fair hair, all he needed to complete the image of a warrior was the horned helmet.
He chuckled. ‘Your stepfather might have been one of King Arthur’s knights.’
‘Not really, sir,’ Vince said firmly. ‘He’s a Viking.’
Faro laughed. ‘Yes, Vince, but the knights came from everywhere.’
Macfie regarded the boy fondly. His devotion to Jeremy had extended towards his stepson, seeing both as the family he had been destined never to possess, the son he had lost in a tragic accident – Sandy – who would have been Jeremy’s age.
A very popular man as chief superintendent of the Edinburgh Police Force, although his affection for Faro had been sneered at, especially by Gosse, since nothing but a coldness had ever existed between Macfie and the now inspector. The reason for this was that Macfie was an honest policeman. He did things by the book but he would never put a foot wrong by inventing or planting evidence on a criminal and he suspected and distrusted any officer, like Gosse, who did so.
‘It is just a legend, I’m afraid, that has come down the ages, lad,’ he said firmly. This was a clever youngster, and he was always keen to hear how he had done in exams, and as he knew some of the teachers at the school, he had excellent reports of Vince’s progress from the Royal High School where he had long been a governor. He decided to ensure that the boy went on to university. Aware that Jeremy could not afford such fees on his salary he had made sure, if he didn’t live long enough, that Vince was included in his will, for as a widower for many years before Sandy died, this was the family he had chosen.
‘So the legend isn’t really true, sir?’ Vince, disappointed, turned to Macfie who shook his head.
‘Very unlikely, lad. And one should always tell the truth, remember.’
Vince regarded him proudly. ‘I always do, sir. My mother insists on it.’
Faro felt a prickle of unease, a shadow on that cloudless day, like a premonition of disaster.
What would happen when Vince was told the truth and learnt that his very existence was based on a lie?
CHAPTER THREE
The slopes of the hill were throwing dark shadows into the fading autumn afternoon as they walked back down to Faro’s cottage. Even in the diminishing landscape it was heartening to know that the cottage would survive, for a time anyway. This once remote area had seen small pockets of land owned by the wealthy, and part of the rapidly disappearing Lumbleigh estate, the former gamekeeper’s cottage, had been gifted to Lizzie by her grateful employer Mrs Lumbleigh before her disgraced husband Archie sold out to the developers. They departed Edinburgh for ever, into what they hoped was a warmer and impersonal southern England where Archie’s wealth might make a stir in Bath and Brighton, which had never heard of the Lumbleigh scandal. The large, ugly house had nothing to commend it and was being speedily demolished to the delight of schoolboys like Vince playing amongst its ruins.
The sound of church bells was long silent. The sunlight fading into a mellow autumn dusk had advanced down the hill, enfolding them within the daily drama of the twilight gloaming. Below them the road out of Edinburgh to Dalkeith, now languishing under mud and builders’ debris, was once bordered by a few windblown trees, a lot of boulders and occasional stray sheep. Now its magnificent view of the lofty pinnacles of Arthur’s Seat would be hidden for ever behind a long line of grey-faced tenements four storeys high, Faro thought sadly.
Macfie came back with them, to a cheery fire with the crackle of logs, candles already lit and a snow-white cloth on the table, an appetising smell of cooking with tea and scones prepared by a welcoming Lizzie Faro. Macfie regarded her fondly and a trifle anxiously, for although she looked well, he hoped this time she would carry her baby full term, the dangerous early months over.
Thanking them both for their hospitality, he said he must be going home soon. He smiled, for home was no longer at Nicolson Square, the police-owned house he had lived in most of his career. He was moving to Sheridan Place, a handsome, newly built villa, an extension of the original Georgian-built Blacket Place, private and exclusive behind handsome pillared gates locked each night by the lodge keeper as an extra protection against roving gangs from the High Street closes, who eyed the outer reaches with their wealthy citizens as fair targets for thieving.
Macfie said almost apologetically that he had inherited the house. Faro knew he had rich relatives over Glasgow way but he had never talked of them beyond specifying that with the new house had come an abundance of rooms and an excellent housekeeper.
The previous Sunday, instead of their afternoon ritual, Faro with Lizzie and Vince had been invited over to view the premises and were suitably impressed by a modern house on two floors with attics for the servants and handsome bow windows overlooking front and back gardens. Lizzie was also very impressed by Mrs Brook who had already moved in and taken up her duties by producing tea and scones – quite excellent – for them.
Looking out of the window, Macfie said: ‘I know nothing about growing vegetables or anything like that. I’m no green fingers either, but have always fancied sitting outside my own place in the sunshine. None at Nicolson Square, but now this has me wondering whether I’ve taken on more than I can manage and help will be needed to keep it all in order and stop that fine lawn turning into a jungle.’
Faro laughed. ‘Lizzie has green fingers, if that’s what you’re looking for.’
‘I’ll come and help you dig in the summer holidays, sir,’ Vince said eagerly. ‘Me too,’ said Lizzie. ‘I love my flowers and vegetables.’
Macfie smiled. ‘You’ll need to bring the wee one with you, Lizzie.’
‘I’ll do that, sir. I can push the pram across.’
As he was leaving, he reminded them that he would not be with them for Sunday walks for the next two or three weeks. He was guest speaker at a London conference and then planned to visit two of his retired professors from university days, one in Paris, and the other in Vienna.
Vince was very impressed and sighed deeply. It must be wonderful to be grown-up and so famous. He had been working at weekends, earning a shilling in an antiquarian bookshop on the High Street that also specialised in medical textbooks, a popular place for browsing medical students. Vince, already an avid reader, was intrigued by the stock, especially the illustrations, and when Mr Molesby was out seeking business, negotiating the sale of his most valuable books or buying new ones, with no customers in the shop needing his attention, he took every opportunity of reading medical history.
Approaching fourteen, he had already decided on his future. His goal in life was to go to university and become a doctor like his first grown-up friend Dr Paul Lumbleigh, whom he greatly missed since after his parents’ departure, he had also moved from Edinburgh. Vince had no idea where the money would come from, certainly not his stepfather’s salary, but he had infinite hopes.
‘I’m working at the weekends now, in Mr Molesby’s bookshop,’ he told Macfie proudly.
Macfie nodded eagerly. ‘The old antiquarian shop. I know it well.’ He added with an approving glance, ‘Lots of splendid reading for you, lots to learn about many things in your spare time.’
‘Plenty of that, sir.’
‘Used to go in myself for bargains in law books when the shop was owned by old Molesby’s uncle. He died childless, a bachelor, and left it to his nephew.’
‘I’ll be working this Sunday as well. The stock is in a bit of a muddle, I can tell you, and Mr Molesby said he would pay me extra if I could go in, and with the shop closed, we could catalogue some of the books.’
As he was to state later and tried to prove to Inspector Gosse, when he went that Sunday morning, Molesby had just poked his head round the door and said there was a change of plans. He was going to church and then out to lunch.
Could Vince come on Monday instead, as he remembered that it was a school holiday for Founders’ Day at the Royal High, his old school. Vince was delighted.
‘Of course, sir. I’ll be along in the morning,’ he said.
‘Very well, but don’t be late.’ Molesby smiled, but there was no Monday morning ever again for the old man. He was to die sometime that day.
CHAPTER FOUR
Faro walked back to Sheridan Place with Macfie, thinking how large it seemed after their tiny cottage. Dining room and housekeeper’s apartments, kitchen, parlour, bedroom and a wash house outside, with a rather grand staircase that wound its way upstairs to a handsome drawing room and four bedrooms, all empty and echoing at present.
‘The furniture arrives next week, but I’ll only be needing the one room and perhaps another for a friend or an occasional guest.’
They had been talking about Orkney recently and how rarely Faro managed to see his mother Mary.
‘We would love to have her, of course,’ he told Macfie, a slight exaggeration but no matter. ‘But the cottage is too small. A day or two, but weeks …’
And that gave Macfie an idea.
He turned to Faro and smiled. ‘I have it. Your cottage is close by, so your mother can stay here with me. Mrs Brook will put her in the guest room and take good care of her.’
That Mary Faro would regard being taken care of as a pleasure, her son doubted exceedingly, while feeling guilty with Kirkwall too distant for more than a yearly visit and his mother’s deep-rooted dislike and fear of Edinurgh, never forgetting that her beloved Magnus, a constable on beat duty, had been killed by a runaway cab on the Mound. This she regarded as deliberate murder, for reasons unknown, leaving her a widow with four-year-old Jeremy, who she had promptly taken back to Kirkwall.
Mary Faro had never forgiven him for leaving at seventeen to join the police force in Edinburgh, following in the footsteps of his father, destroying her dream that he would be content to stay in Orkney for the rest of his life. None of this policeman nonsense but a crofter married to a local lass with grandchildren she could see every day. After despairing if he would ever find a wife, she had been reconciled and even glad that he had found Lizzie Laurie. She approved of this widowed Highland girl who had all the qualities she admired in a young woman, and they had much in common, both good, conscientious, competent housewives, with no ambitions more than to look after a good husband.
Now Mary Faro was looking forward to grandchildren and had been dismayed that so far, after two years’ marriage, there had been no hint of any baby. They had kept the early miscarriages from her but her delight that Lizzie was pregnant at last had overcome her reluctance to visit Edinburgh and she had immediately suggested that she come and look after Lizzie in the later months. A fact that made both Faro and Lizzie (secretly) groan.
And so it was to be arranged. Mary Faro was to travel by ship from Kirkwall to Leith where Faro would meet her off the boat. Lizzie was anxious that their cottage should meet with her mother-in-law’s approval. It had two large rooms, one a bedroom, the other a living room, which at one end housed the traditional Scottish box bed, comfortable, warm and private from the rest of the family, suitable for an elderly relative or a couple of small children. Vince had been delighted at the prospect of this warm nest that he would have to relinquish once the new baby outgrew the bedside cradle in his parents’ bedroom.
An extension to the length of the cottage was a barn that had in former days housed cattle. The gamekeeper’s family had turned it into a wash house, an enviable addition with its ceiling of drying rails, a boiler which could be heated from beneath by a log fire and a tin bath, for this wash house-cum-laundry was also a boon, where newly built houses for working-class Edinburgh could not boast of such a luxury. There was also a loft above the kitchen, used for storage. It was quite large, with a skylight window and access by a wooden ladder.
Faro and Lizzie loved their cottage nestling at the foot of Arthur’s Seat, hating the thought of moving into the town or living in one of the four-storeyed houses in the terraces now under construction. But with the children she hoped for, a growing family, there was only one solution. Lizzie decided that the loft could become a bedroom and Jeremy agreed. It was a good idea – anything that turned their little cottage into a family home for years to come, as they visualised the garden echoing to the shrill delight of children at play. Children still to be born.
Faro had already mentioned the loft to Dave, foreman of the builders who greeted him warmly each morning and thought it could be carried out at the same time with little difficulty and not too great an expense, slotted in with their weightier project of the terrace houses.
As Dave was almost certain that the cottage was safe from the developers’ plans, Faro and Lizzie realised that with extensions and adaptations, hopefully this might remain their home for the rest of their lives. But in the meantime, the loft was out of the question for his mother’s visit. They could hardly expect an elderly woman to leap up and down stepladders.
And that raised another problem. Mary had never met Vince. Macfie had decided that when Jeremy and Lizzie got married, they should have their honeymoon in Orkney unattended by twelve-year-old Vince. Lizzie was anxious about leaving her son but Macfie had insisted he would take good care of him. There was always a room in the police house at Nicolson Place for an occasional guest.
Vince had enjoyed staying with Macfie and a bond was established between the two. Jeremy wondered if his mother had ever forgiven him for leaving Orkney and as the years passed without any signs of him taking a wife, Mary had been relieved when he married a foreigner, a war widow with a young son. She had got over her disappointment about a dream daughter-in-law – but not that Inga St Ola, God forbid – and she made a particular point of asking about the boy, Vince, in her letters.
Now Faro had a new fear. There was no doubt in his mind that she would like Vince. She would certainly be most sympathetic and question him about his father, who he could not remember, having been a soldier killed on duty in India. She had a natural empathy for young widows left with a small son. She had been through that herself so painfully.
And Mary always wanted to know everything about everybody: ‘leave no stone unturned’ might have been invented by her – every small detail was of interest, a curious turn of mind that she had passed on to Jeremy. It had evolved as observation and deduction. That she would employ these powers on Lizzie and Vince, Faro had not the least doubt. Somewhere a thread of suspicion, a misplaced word and the lie they lived would be revealed.
And it was the consequences for Vince that Faro feared most: the fact that not only the father that he boasted about to his schoolmates so proudly, but indeed his whole life, was based on a lie.
As he retraced his path to the cottage, walking past the disembowelled Lumbleigh House, he saw their happy existence tumbling like a house of cards, as steadily as the ruined estate before him, and he thought of all he had to lose.
It was heart-warming to push open the door and see two smiling faces welcoming him, as Lizzie and Vince sat at the kitchen table, the lamplight making haloes of their bright, fair hair, curls so attractive in Lizzie but, alas, such a blight on Vince’s early schooldays until those who teased him found he also had a strong pair of fists.
Faro sighed deeply. It was always so good to come home and their cottage was an enviable luxury to his colleagues, with windows gazing across the extinct volcano that was now Arthur’s Seat, magnificent and unchanging. To their left, Salisbury Crags, two remnants bequeathed by one of the many ice ages that had shaped Edinburgh’s seven hills. Their beauty never failed to move him, with the changing light of the seasons, and they were a favourite walk with his stepson, accompanied by a new member of the household.
Coll was a stray mongrel that had wandered in, starving, shivering, one cold night and had been promptly adopted by Lizzie. With a weakness for waifs and strays, she already had a feral cat, inadequately named Puskin, a very large, striped creature and quite ferocious enough to keep her natural enemy, the dog, at a safe distance.
Wrapped serenely in the comfort of a family, Jeremy Faro had forgotten his early misgivings, how he had once considered taking the step into matrimony out of a sense of duty having slept with Lizzie after a party where they both drank too much, then realising that she loved him with a passion which scared him, for it was far beyond his capabilities of returning. He did not know what that kind of being in love meant, always having his emotions under tight control; he knew only that this was far from the love one would die for, like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, or to a lesser extent, his boyhood passion for Inga St Ola.
During their brief two years of marriage, he had learnt how readily Lizzie’s emotions could stir – tears over a broken cup, a ruined stew (more often than not, since Jeremy’s hours were unpredictable and liable to delays and changes at short notice). She was still to learn that nerves of steel were a requirement for a policeman’s wife, nerves that had been shattered if he was a few minutes late home, and as the clock moved on another half-hour and became an hour, she still trembled at an unexpected rap on the door, expecting a grim-helmeted policeman bearing ‘bad news, Mrs Faro’. Usually it was the milkman wanting his pay or one of the many gypsies camped on the far side of Arthur’s Seat roaming the residential areas, their men mending pots and pans, their women selling clothes pegs and telling fortunes.
Faro, too, had learnt patience and daily gratitude for a comfortable existence and an excellent housewife after years of non-tolerant landladies. With Vince as a shining example, she was also a devoted mother, although motherhood of Faro’s babies had not been so easy to achieve.
Pregnant within months of their wedding day, she had miscarried, more of a bitter grief to her than to Faro who decided that he would have been content with an almost grown-up Vince rather than a crying babe and sleepless nights interfering with his police duties.
At the supper table in the midst of his family, violence seemed to belong to another age, a far-distant planet as the sunset of violet and rose made its dramatic exit and the moon crept up over the hill, not moonlike white and shining but in the likeness of a huge orange. Strolling into the kitchen that evening, he cast out the tormenting demons of his fears and told himself that he was suffering from an overdose of imagination.
They could never happen. He was a happy man.
CHAPTER FIVE
In the days that followed no progress was made in recapturing McLaw, and Faro, besides the usual daily routine, was faced with an increasingly angry and frustrated Gosse. The searchers had more or less given up after racing triumphantly to one or two sightings in Edinburgh and East Lothian with negligible results.
They were always too late or had been misinformed and the general assumption so infuriating Gosse was that McLaw had taken a ship from Leith after his daring escape, and although ships were searched, he had doubtless stowed away. Gosse wasn’t satisfied and never would be until he had his man safely in handcuffs and saw him hanged. That there had been no reports from police alerted up and down the country also put him in a rage, although Faro guessed that as the McLaw case wasn’t in their territory, other forces had more things to do other than to take an obligatory but cursory look around.
Meanwhile the demolition of Lumbleigh House continued, the developers daily creeping closer to the cottage, the noise increasing, axes as trees were felled, along with the louder thud of hammers on scaffolding as the new long line of terraces took skeletal shape.
Vince was one of the many sufferers from the effects of this constant disruption. It was still daylight and the builders working long hours were at work when he came home from school. The noise outside made it difficult to concentrate on his homework. Lizzie appealed to Jeremy, but what could he do? He was sympathetic but suggested Vince plug his ears and get on with it.
A school week had flown by for Vince, who was doing well and not hating every lesson at the Royal High or the daily walk up to Calton Hill.
‘I have exams coming up soon, and I won’t be able to work this weekend,’ he reminded his mother. ‘I’ll be at the bookshop both days,’ he added proudly. However he arrived on the Sunday morning to be told by Mr Molesby that there was a change of plans and agreed that he should come on Monday instead.
It was with some disquiet that when he arrived he found the shop door ajar, but Mr M (as he called him privately) was not in evidence. A quick look round confirmed that although most of the books remained on their shelves, there was an untidy scattering of papers on the floor, evidence that drawers had been opened, their contents searched.
His heart pounded in sudden fear. These were unmistakable signs that there had been a burglary. The real treasures, the rare and valuable books, however, were kept with the cash box containing the day’s takings, locked away by Mr M each evening. The cupboard door hung open.
But where was Mr M?
He lived upstairs above the shop. Vince called his name but there was no answer.
Still calling: ‘Mr Molesby. Are you all right, sir?’ he made his way up the steep ladder, leading to the attic above. The premises and the bookshop itself had once been a family home, often as many as twelve to a room. Two doors, a kitchen sink and some shelves with a few provisions occupied one corner of the one-time sitting room, crammed to overflowing with books from the shop. and through a half-open door with shutters, the outline of a bed.
Vince peered in, tapped politely on the door.
‘Are you there, Mr Molesby?’
Had he perhaps overslept, had a poorly turn as old folks sometimes did and that was why he had forgotten to lock and bolt the shop door?
Vince cleared his throat, called ‘Mr Molesby!’ loudly this time.
All was silence but in the streak of light from the shuttered window, a pile of bedding lay on the floor. With a scalp-tingling feeling of apprehension of what he was to find, Vince pulled open the shutters, let in the light and cried out at the appalling revelation.
The bedding was in fact Mr Molesby. Kneeling down, Vince whispered his name. There were bloodstains on his head.
Vince touched him gently but there was no movement, no breathing.
Mr Molesby was dead. And had been for sometime, Vince guessed, his face cold, grey and waxlike.
Vince sat back on his heels. What to do now? He had read and heard plenty about corpses from his stepfather and the medical books downstairs, but this was the first time he had ever seen a dead person.
He looked around. Had Mr M hit his head? After a bad turn, had he fallen and this had been an unfortunate accident?
Or was it … murder?
He stifled a gasp of terror, put his hand to his mouth and looked around helplessly. Stepfather would have to be told. He hoped he would be at the Central Office.
After covering the dead man’s face respectfully, he slid down the ladder. In the shop he paused. Was there anything he should do, anything to remember from what Stepfather had told him about police procedure at the scene of a murder crime?
Still feeling as if this was all a nightmare and he would soon wake up, he rushed uphill towards the police station at the Central Office. On the other side of the road was Inspector Gosse hurrying along hoping for any news from the latest sighting at Liberton of a suspicious character who answered the description of McLaw.
‘Looking for the sergeant, are you? He isn’t here.’
And without waiting for a reply, the inspector headed towards the office door, Vince out of breath at his heels. Turning, Gosse demanded, ‘What are you doing here? Did your ma send you? Tell her that’s not allowed, during working hours. She should know better, sending you—’
‘A minute, sir, if you please,’ said Vince trying to think of the right words to describe the scene he had just left. ‘This isn’t anything personal … I’m here to report an accident.’
Gosse paused, his hand on the door and pointed. ‘Then go to the desk over there and give the constable the details, then. I’m a busy man, if you didn’t know that already—’
‘Actually, sir,’ Vince interrupted, ‘it might not be an accident. Might be, well,’ he gulped, ‘foul play.’
Gosse stared at him and repeated, ‘Foul play, eh?’ That had got his attention. ‘And how do you know that?’ he demanded suspiciously.
‘Well, I … I found him. I think he was dead.’
‘Where? Where was this?’ barked Gosse.
‘At the bookshop. Where I work, Mr Molesby’s … down the street—’
‘Yes, yes, I know where it is.’
‘When I came this morning the door was open—’
‘Why weren’t you at school?’
‘It’s Founders’ Day, sir.’ Vince sounded surprised. He thought everyone knew that. As he spoke, Gosse was signalling a constable and said to Vince, ‘You come with us. We’ll need you.’
As Vince needed all his breath to keep up with the two men, he gasped: ‘Mr Molesby wasn’t in the shop, and looking round, a few things … had been disturbed … and I immediately thought there had been a break-in.’
‘Why?’ shouted Gosse.
‘Because he always makes sure the door is firmly locked, last thing every night.’
They had almost reached the shop. ‘I found him in the bedroom, upstairs.’
