Akin to Murder Read online

  Akin to Murder

  An Inspector Faro Mystery

  ALANNA KNIGHT

  For Niamh, with love

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  About the Author

  By Alanna Knight

  Copyright

  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.