Akin to Murder Read online

  He detected a gleam of hope and said to Lizzie, ‘I must do what is right. If you killed a man, Lizzie, or Vince here, it would make no difference.’ But even as he said the words, he knew it would, his heart would be broken, his life over. All he would want was to die, to end it all.

  Vince gave him a bewildered look. He too was taken aback by this new, less likeable version of his gentle stepfather. He put his arm around his tearful, inconsolable mother as Faro left them, marching McLaw across to the stable still protesting his innocence, shouting, ‘Let me explain, I beg you, please listen.’

  Ignoring him, inside the stable there were still chains in the loose boxes. Undoing one of McLaw’s handcuffs, Faro clipped it on, tested its security and left without another word, ignoring his pleas to be heard.

  Hurrying back to the cottage, he felt defeated, crushed under the inescapable burden of this disaster that had overtaken his marriage, so happy until a few hours ago. Now everything in a few brief words had changed for ever. Arthur’s Seat looked threatening, its landscape changed, no longer benign, no longer a friendly place for his daily walks with Vince and Lizzie. Worst of all, his wife, too, had undergone a change of character, new and alien.

  Lizzie had come into his life fully formed, a gentle, pretty Highland lass with a cloud of yellow hair, when they first met. He knew now that he was living with a stranger, that he had married her knowing nothing of her life before the tragedy that had let heartless parents bar the door for ever on a disgraced daughter and the unwanted baby who had become such a blessing and was promising to be a fine, upright young man.

  Perhaps it was a sense of delicacy that had not allowed him to ever mention the past, knowing only that she had been fifteen years old, a servant in their laird’s great house, raped by an aristocratic guest at the shooting party, resulting in Vince. Who these parents were, who had so speedily abandoned her, he had no idea, and there had been no mention of any siblings. He knew only vaguely that her father was a lay preacher as well as working for the local laird.

  It wasn’t much to go on, but utterly convinced of her integrity and overwhelmed by compassion, he was happy to forget her tragic life before they met. He did not want to spoil that feeling of love, tarnish it with the memory of the cruelty that had however brought some good into her life and his. The unwanted child she had given the name Vincent Beaumarcher Laurie.

  Back in the cottage they were skating across normality. Lizzie had dried her tears, put on an apron and made tea. Asking if either of them were hungry, she received brusque negatives. How could anyone eat at such a moment? But sitting around the table, Vince and Lizzie looked across at him with imploring eyes. Eyes that were curiously echoed by Coll who, as if aware of some threat to his beloved young master, was sitting close to his side while Puskin, quite unmoved by these human trials, snored gently by the fire.

  Accepting a cup of tea, Faro sighed. They were waiting and he had to make a start somewhere, easier without McLaw’s presence.

  ‘I thought your name was Laurie,’ he said to Lizzie. She was near enough to touch but he avoided taking her hand. Laurie was the name she had married him under.

  ‘It is my mother’s name.’ And he remembered bitterly now, vague problems over birth and death certificates, glossed over and explained away, Lizzie saying that they did not abide by such nonsense in the Highlands and unfortunately (as it transpired, conveniently for her, if it was true) that all such papers had perished in a fire in their croft. No one had ever bothered about such things, anyway, she said, it was not until she came to live in a big city that they were considered of any consequence.

  Faro regarded her in silence and then asked: ‘Did you never connect our search for … McLaw –’ he could hardly bear to say the words ‘– with your brother?’

  ‘No more than if he had been called McDonald. It is the name of the clan to which we belong. And his name is Teàrlach – Charles in the Gaelic – not John.’ She sighed miserably. And Faro realised how little interest she ever showed in his daily activities, her roots in a simpler crofting society owing allegiance still to a feudal laird. After her own bitter experience, she wanted to hear no more about violence, wicked men and murderers about to be hung. She wasn’t interested in the newspapers he brought home and preferred the refuge of romantic novels with their happy endings to the harsh, grim cruelty of reality.

  Suddenly Vince and Lizzie were both speaking together, asking, pleading what was to be done.

  Faro could not answer their questions but one thing was abundantly clear. He could not deliver McLaw into the hands of Inspector Gosse without implicating his wife and stepson. And those implications were horrendous. He closed his eyes, he could see Gosse’s scarlet face, his delight that at last he had something that would bring down his hated sergeant – and for Faro’s family’s mistake, Gosse would enjoy every moment of his triumph.

  Sick at heart, Faro knew there was no way out, that the instant he handed McLaw over, his career with the Edinburgh City Police was at an end. In his thirties, he would be an outcast, a disgrace, all the hopes and dreams on which his life was founded from his earliest days would be at an end.

  That was bad, but there was worse to come. He looked across at Lizzie and knew that his marriage too had failed, ended the moment of this dreadful revelation, and however he tried in the future, if he turned McLaw in, Lizzie would never forgive him. The memory of her brother’s betrayal by her husband would for ever stand between them.

  Having loved Jeremy Faro with such a passion, Lizzie would try to cobble together their ruined marriage, but every day he would see that haunted look in her eyes, hear her sigh. And how would they both survive that other day when great crowds stood at the tolbooth to watch the man who was her brother hang by the neck until he was dead? By then, the news would have spread far beyond Edinburgh that while the police had been searching every inch of the countryside, wasting time and money, the wife of one of their own detectives, a highly respected officer, and his stepson had been hiding the wanted man.

  Faro groaned. At best they might not be prosecuted, just sent to jail to spend an unspecified time at Her Majesty’s pleasure, but he could envisage a long and tedious set of circumstances while they and he tried to accept and prove Lizzie Faro’s incredible story that she had no idea that the murderer McLaw and her brother were one and the same man. Heads would be shaken, scornful laughter: a detective’s wife! What incredible nonsense. Who would ever believe such a story? Did they never talk together? Did she never read the papers?

  He looked at Vince. What about his stepson, so young and so promising with all the world before him? What about his new dream, to go to the university and become a doctor? For his part in hiding a wanted man, he too would be disgraced, doubtless expelled from the Royal High School and, on the verge of manhood, already marked down with a police record, his future scarred by the scandal involving his parents.

  One thing had become perfectly clear. The only thread of hope lay in DS Jeremy Faro breaking the law.

  He must get McLaw away from Edinburgh before the truth became known, see him safely on the way to freedom and to hell with justice! In this case, not only himself but also his family had too much to lose.

  He rose from the table, took a deep breath. He would start immediately, find a way of smuggling McLaw out of the stable, across Arthur’s Seat and getting him on to a stagecoach. He would need some form of disguise. And how could he do that?

  There was an obvious answer. It could be accomplished easily in his role as a policeman, of course, by taking a handcuffed criminal down the borders into England. Then another little demon raised its head: You could get out of the carriage, kill him yourself and bury him out on the moors. Then you would all be free …

  Except of my conscience. I would live with that for the rest of my life, the inescapable fact that I had killed my wife’s brother.

  Faro sighed deeply as the terrible flaws in his plan became evident. But there was no time to lose. By t
omorrow, twenty-four hours’ time, by some means they would be rid of McLaw and be able to breathe again.

  ‘Stop your chatter,’ he said to Vince and Lizzie who were continuing to bombard him with questions. ‘I’m thinking. I have an idea, an idea that might save your wretched brother, Lizzie. And more importantly our own skins, for if ever this came to light we would all be ruined, there is not the slightest doubt about that. You might ever spend the rest of your life behind bars,’ he ended ruthlessly, looking at her.

  Lizzie ignored that. A wan smile and she reached across and touched his cold hand. ‘Thank you, Jeremy. Oh, thank you.’

  He turned sharply away from her. ‘I hope you realise this is not for McLaw – your brother,’ he added bitterly. ‘I would cheerfully see him hanged, as the law demands. This is for you and Vince.’ He moved quickly away from the table. At the door he turned and said: ‘I will be back in a moment. Lizzie, I need a razor and a pair of scissors, if you please. And search round my wardrobe for suitable clothes.’

  Lizzie stared at him in astonishment and he repeated: ‘He will need clothes, he can’t travel in an old man’s clothes several sizes too small for him.’

  Lizzie frowned. ‘But yours will be too big.’

  ‘Better that way. Get out your sewing box and shorten the trousers.’

  In the stables, McLaw had slumped down against the stall. He looked up despairingly at Faro’s approach.

  ‘Up! Come along!’ Faro yanked him to his feet.

  McLaw looked scared. ‘Where are you taking me?’

  ‘To the cottage – where else?’

  ‘Why won’t you believe me—’

  ‘Please – not all that again.’ Still holding him firmly, praying that they were not seen by anyone strolling about, such as the beat constable, Faro pushed him towards the cottage. Throwing open the door, he pointed to the table.

  ‘Sit down! We have work to do. Water and a basin, Lizzie.’ She brought it to the table and he picked up the scissors and nodded. ‘Cut off all his hair, close as you can.’

  They stared at him. ‘What are you waiting for? We have to transform McLaw, the man they are all out looking for. So for a start, cut off his hair and hand me my razor.’

  Later, by candlelight, beardless, the wild hair gone, he looked very different from Charlie’s gypsy. A new man was emerging, a good-looking young man in his twenties and, as Faro observed with a sinking heart, his strong likeness to Lizzie was very evident, his hair – that with a good wash would be yellow and curly – like Lizzie’s.

  He frowned. ‘Take more off that hair, Lizzie – here, give me the scissors.’ A few clips and Faro took up the razor. ‘We need to shave his head. This is more effective, let’s get rid of those curls.’

  Finally, without handing Charlie the mirror, the three of them regarded the result. He certainly didn’t look as if he was capable of killing anyone, just a frightened lad.

  ‘That’s the best we can do. At least he doesn’t look like the drawing of McLaw the artist did at the trial. That’s one mercy. I would have been happier if we could have dyed that hair, but with a close crop, he should get away with it. And a bath in the washhouse would not go wrong. Now the clothes. Follow me.’

  Charlie went with him into the bedroom and removed the late Mr M’s jacket and trousers. ‘Put on these.’ Faro handed him his second-best trousers, a good shirt and a reefer jacket. Lizzie knocked on the door.

  Frowning he said, ‘They’re a little on the large side.’ Charlie was less than six foot, but they would have to do.

  Lizzie said: ‘I’ll turn up the trousers, that will help.’

  The day was almost over. Lizzie and Vince, a silent observer of this transformation, sighed with relief that Faro knew was far too early. There was still a long way to go before they were out of this particular dark wood.

  ‘I have to go in tomorrow, make some excuses to Gosse, and then as soon as it is dark we will leave.’ And turning to Charlie, he said sternly, ‘Setting you on the road to freedom is against every vow I have ever made as a policeman. So make no mistake, this is for your … sister and the lad here. Even if you claim to be innocent of the murder of your wife, you are still guilty of Mr Molesby’s demise.’

  Charlie shook his head. ‘The bookshop man. Vince told me about it. It was raining. The door was open and I took shelter. I was soaked through and I’d torn off the sleeve of my coat climbing a fence. I saw this coat and trousers over a chair – and I put them on. It was like a godsend. I was never anywhere but in the shop.’ He shook his head. ‘I guessed that he was in bed and asleep. If he was dead, then it had nothing to do with me. I have never killed anyone.’

  Vince and Lizzie regarded Faro hopefully. He said coldly, ‘If what you are saying is the truth, you are still a guilty man, you will go to prison for burglary – and be lucky if you are only transported.’

  Charlie said, ‘Mr Faro, I cannot thank you enough for all you are doing for me. I can never pay you back.’

  ‘Indeed you can. By going away and never letting the police or us ever clap eyes on you again. That is all we ask of you,’ he added heavily, and to Lizzie, ‘Lie low, keep him out of sight and if you have any callers’ – he pointed ceiling-wise to the trapdoor to the attic – ‘put him up there and hide the ladder away.’

  A prey to new and terrible anxieties, Faro made his way out of the cottage he loved so well, no longer a happy and contented family man, no longer counting these blessings, which had turned overnight to curses, with a happy marriage doomed to disaster and a young stepson’s future in hazard. And for the first time he realised he had not even given a single thought to that other burden fast approaching: Lizzie’s long-awaited baby.

  Praying that all this would not cause another miscarriage, he thought of Charlie’s words as they went to their beds. As well as piling on words of gratitude, he had said: ‘There is another solution to all this, sir.’

  ‘Is there, indeed?’ had been Faro’s caustic response. ‘Then I would like to hear it.’ Charlie nodded slowly. ‘There is a solution that would free all of us.’

  ‘And what might that be?’

  ‘Prove my innocence. Find the man who killed my Annie. Bring him to justice.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  No one slept much that night, they felt as if a bombshell had burst on their cottage and blown the fabric of their lives apart.

  Faro got up at dawn and walked out on to the hill, so lovely in its awakening, as if the whole world around him sleepily opened its eyes and yawned its way into another day. These were private moments he had learnt to treasure, moments of healing as if the great pagan gods who had once ruled the land were also awakening. Sometimes these ancient gods were easier to believe in, he felt ashamed to admit, than the Christian God.

  Lizzie would have smilingly made excuses for him, saying that his old Viking ancestors as well as that selkie grandmother Sibella Scarth, with her strange legend, her webbed fingers and feet, had left their spell on him.

  Do pagan gods provide guardian angels or guides, he wondered, or was that his mix-up of theological matters? If so, he desperately needed one just now.

  God’s will, the ministers would cry. On his rare visits to church Faro listened, but because of the nature of his life – the violence, the cruelty even the law exercised and excused, seeing a man hung by the neck until he was dead, still according to the Biblical ruling of an eye for an eye, and a life for a life – such actions were hard to reconcile with the god of love that Jesus Christ had promised in his Orkney Sunday school.

  Dear God, help us.

  He stood very still, looking towards the east, waiting as the first gleam of sunrise crept over the hill. So had many thousands of men from the earliest times of human habitation stood here on Arthur’s Seat, watched and waited as he did, for the blessing of a new day, a new life. He remembered his joyous gratitude so many times for the blessing of Lizzie, and those other cruel mornings when, during the night, she had awoken in blood a
nd tears to the heartbreak of loss that a hoped-for son or daughter for her beloved Faro would now never be born.

  As the sun rose into its full glory he wondered, should he throw himself down on his knees and pray? He was going to need all the help he could get for what lay in store that day, for the task that went against his integrity, his fight for justice, smuggling a killer out of the hands of the law. But it had to be done, he told himself, he must put aside the rules that had governed his life, to save his marriage and to save Lizzie the heartbreak of seeing her brother hanged.

  As for Vince, still innocent Vince, Faro knew that, somewhere close by, the truth of his nativity lurked uneasily. He guessed that Lizzie had saved the situation by talking in Gaelic with her brother, but when it was spelt out in the language they all understood, what then? Listening in horror and hearing that there never had been a brave soldier father, would Vince ever forgive his beloved mother for building his frail existence on a lie? A lie that had saved him. Would he understand or care that if she had abandoned him he would be now living in the poorhouse, one of countless unwanted children, with no future into adult life after harsh child labour?

  Such was Faro’s miserable torment as he walked up the High Street that morning. He needed time, time most of all, some excuse to have a few days’ leave from the Central Office to smuggle Charlie out of Edinburgh, see him over the Border. Senior officers were privileged to have a week off each year given that they worked every day, and even the public holidays should an emergency arise – they had to be ready for action, day or night.

  Would Gosse agree without making excuses that he was needed at this time? If only Macfie had not been away, he could have confided in him. Yet that must remain a secret. Macfie must never know, never be told since he would never consent to Jeremy Faro breaking the law, becoming an accessory to plotting the escape of a wanted man.