Akin to Murder Page 12

  As he opened the office door to be assailed by its familiar daily smells, indefinable apart from tobacco smoke, aware that he had left behind a dangerous situation smouldering at the cottage, he braced himself against the inevitable: that every minute Charlie remained under the cottage roof put them all in danger.

  In the office Gosse sprang from his desk, scattering papers in all directions.

  ‘So you’re here at last,’ was his greeting, although the church clocks had just struck eight. Gosse’s colour was higher than ever, denoting a state of great excitement.

  ‘I’m going to catch him, if it’s the last thing I do.’ He pointed to the desk, a rough poster of a bearded man and a description: ‘John McLaw, wanted for two murders, who has escaped from the gallows. A reward of £50 for information leading to his recapture,’ he read. ‘Well, what do you think of that?’ Gosse asked proudly.

  Faro’s eyes widened. ‘Fifty pounds is a lot of money. Will the authorities provide?’

  ‘Damn the authorities,’ snapped Gosse. ‘A fine mess they’ve made of it, so far.’ Thumping the desk, he stared across at Faro, his eyes gleaming. ‘This is my money, from my life’s savings, and I’m willing to see it go. Aye, just for the joy of watching that bugger swinging at the end of a rope.’

  And at that moment, Faro felt pity for Gosse, a man so obsessed that he could make such a sacrifice just to watch a man die. He thought with sudden compassion that maybe Gosse had little else to lose. His wife, supposedly looking after some sick relative for a short visit, hadn’t been seen for more than a year. Gosse had shaken his head, hinted that, yes, she had been home briefly, but had to go back again to look after this sick relative who had no one else. But no one believed him; the truth was that Gosse’s marriage had long been in ruins, there were not even children to cobble it together again. Now, for all intents and purposes, Gosse behaved as a single man, insinuating himself into the company of unmarried policemen, sharing their evenings of wine, women and song, believing that he charmed all the ladies of the town, despite his unattractive appearance, allied with an even more unattractive leering, which made younger constables wince.

  He was flourishing the poster. ‘I have given orders that this is to be distributed immediately everywhere, on every post in Edinburgh, with copies sent to every village in the Lothians. And the search is to begin again, right now.’ He added, thumping the table again, ‘Every constable to be out there, combing the district.’

  Faro looked at him. He did not dare to speak his thoughts, that this was a waste of police time and in Gosse’s case a waste of money. The constables would rebel, murmuring among themselves. As for the poster, a bearded man with a lot of unruly hair was hardly a distinguished or memorable appearance and soon every village would be able to produce a McLaw, know of someone answering to the description, or make a hopeful guess. With the lure of all that money, a fortune for the many, Faro guessed there would be queues of eager informants from far and near at the Central Office every morning.

  He groaned inwardly at the hopeless waste of it all. At least as a senior officer, a detective sergeant, he would not be expected to join the constables combing the heath of Arthur’s Seat – so dangerously near the cottage – searching for a long-vanished man. With a suppressed shudder, he drew himself up and asked the routine morning question.

  ‘What are my duties for the day, sir?’

  ‘I want you here,’ he said, thumping the desk, ‘here helping with enquiries, taking details as they come in, and then you are to follow them through, go out to every person in the neighbourhood or in the Lothians who has made a sighting, take constables with you and search every house, every barn, comb every blade of grass; as they say, leave no stone unturned.’

  It was a humiliating task for his rank and both he and Gosse knew that, but Faro realised that it also opened a tiny door, a blessing in disguise, for it freed his movements from under Gosse’s eye. He might invent a few sightings down the coast, of folks claiming the reward, inform Gosse that he was away to inspect them and make his own arrangements. A day or two was all he needed. And he was getting very good at lying.

  The day seemed endless and he returned home with a heavy heart, which did not get any lighter when he opened the door. One look at Lizzie’s face, her hand on her stomach, told of imminent disaster. His immediate thought was about the baby.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he said anxiously.

  She smiled bitterly, shook her head. ‘Of course, Jeremy. I’m fine – but it was awful. Mrs Brook called – there was someone following her, a man.’

  ‘Who was he?’ Surely it was too early for the wantedman poster.

  Lizzie shook her head. ‘No one, just one of the builders needing water. Their supply had been cut off temporarily.’

  Mrs Faro had become popular with the labourers, not only as a pretty woman, but a generous one, too. Often, if they called on her with some excuse, she would give them a batch of scones or some bread and cheese or, as in this case, also water from the rain barrel outside the cottage while their own supply was being repaired. The lads had soon realised they were on to a good thing and took it in turns to call at the cottage.

  Lizzie was saying: ‘Mrs Brook had a message for you. As soon as he saw the man, Teàrlach grabbed the ladder and climbed up into the attic, as you told him to.’

  ‘The message?’ he interrupted, hanging his coat behind the door, precipitated once again into the mystery of Agatha Simms’s empty coffin and her sister’s accident with a runaway carriage on the Mound, which sounded uncommonly like murder. Sighing, he was reminded of the promise he had made, an obligation he could well do without at the present moment.

  Lizzie went on: ‘Someone called Tibbie is coming to visit Mrs Brook and she wishes you to call at Sheridan Place and meet this lady the day after tomorrow between 10 and 11 in the morning.’

  Faro breathed a sigh of relief. At least Tibbie was alive and might provide some useful information.

  There was a groan from the fireside, the man in the armchair stirred and Faro realised that Charlie was resting his foot on a stool.

  ‘I see you are taking your ease,’ Faro said bitterly. ‘Well, get all the rest you can. I hope to have you on your way tomorrow.’

  Lizzie stared at him wide-eyed. ‘He can’t go anywhere tomorrow, Jeremy.’ She pointed to his bandaged leg.

  ‘I fell,’ Charlie supplied.

  ‘When Mrs Brook left, I was holding the ladder for him to come down,’ Lizzie added with a look of anguish. ‘But he missed his footing—’

  ‘With my bad ankle – now the other one is damaged,’ Charlie groaned.

  Lizzie shook her head. ‘I’ve done the best I can but he won’t be able to walk for a day or two.’

  Faro looked angrily at this criminal who was also his most unwanted brother-in-law. As if there were not complications enough even for a man fit on both legs; but there was no way he could possibly transport Charlie out of Edinburgh, a wanted man with posters everywhere, now hobbling painfully on two sticks and who, despite Lizzie’s nursing, needed attention from a doctor, if not the infirmary.

  Vince came in, home from school, and the tale of woe was related to him, his anxious glances in his stepfather’s direction said that he knew what was at stake. He regarded Charlie scornfully, without a scrap of sympathy for this new relative fate had thrust upon him. The pretend gypsy, a criminal on the run, who had told him a pack of lies and extracted a promise to hide him for a day or two and not tell his parents.

  If only he had told them, he thought with infinite regret, if only he could turn the clock back, aware that by sheltering a wanted man he had put his mother’s future in jeopardy. She might go to prison. He closed his eyes, trying to shut out that terrible vision, almost as terrible to contemplate was his stepfather’s disgrace and the end of his life as a detective.

  ‘There are posters everywhere on Calton Hill, outside the school and on lamp posts in Princes Street, all the way home,’ he said. �
��It’s as well you shaved off his beard and his hair.’

  Lizzie had done her best, but Faro and Vince tackled supper with less enthusiasm than it merited. Lizzie gazed fondly and anxiously at her brother, sighing and patting his arm, gentle actions that Faro resented bitterly, since he was the cause of their present calamity. She took away his unfinished plate and said anxiously:

  ‘You’re quite well, are you, Jeremy?’

  He tried a consoling smile. ‘Just not hungry, that’s all.’ He pointed to Vince. ‘Someone else seems to have lost his appetite, no longer eating for two,’ he said bitterly. ‘That will be less of a strain on Lizzie’s cooking our daily meals, to say nothing of the extra marketing and the expense involved,’ he added with a scowl at Charlie, who seemed unperturbed by the shaky state of his future as well as the disaster he had brought on his sister and her family, showing a hearty appetite to make up for those meagre snacks during his sojourn in the stables.

  In a desperate effort to get back on the rails of normality, trying not to think about the delays caused by Charlie’s further accident, Faro helped Vince with his homework, while Lizzie resumed her knitting and paid all her attention to her brother as they caught up on events in their missing years. The pair, now so obviously brother and sister, were almost like twins in appearance, carrying on an animated conversation in Gaelic, making Faro realise even more forcibly than ever that this woman, sitting there smiling, carrying his child, was a stranger to him.

  Occasionally they glanced in his direction without bothering to translate, lost in the past and presumably happier days of growing up together, with the reminiscences Faro could not hope and did not even wish to share.

  Once Charlie, as if aware of his discomfiture and anxious to make amends, looked across at Faro and Vince. ‘When I first met the lad there, I knew he reminded me of someone, the curly hair, something about his features.’ And to Lizzie, ‘I never saw you, only in the distance with a head shawl, but now I see he’s your image.’

  As Charlie could not climb the ladder, Vince would sleep in the attic and Charlie would occupy the box bed in the kitchen, a safe refuge as its shutters, with a heart carved out in each (not merely a sentimental touch but also a means of ventilation) could be closed.

  On his way along the Pleasance next morning, the postman, who always had a friendly greeting, met Faro. He flourished a letter. ‘Glad to meet you. Here, take this. Save me a walk up to the cottage.’

  Thanking him, Faro glanced at the writing. It was from his mother. He opened it and with feelings of foreboding, read her cheerful news. She would be arriving on Friday off the Orkney boat and expected him to meet her at Leith.

  Four days’ time. In the recent catastrophic events he had forgotten or merely pushed her imminent visit to the back of his mind – and his calendar. This was terrible, nothing short of another disaster.

  How on earth could he deal with her insatiable curiosity, questions he and Lizzie had dreaded about Vince’s supposedly dead hero father that now seemed a fraction less vital in the face of the present catastrophe? How were they to conceal Charlie’s presence from her daily visits, or the fact that they were sheltering a murderer wanted by the police? He could see her smiling face, just dropping in on Lizzie to get to know her nice daughter-in-law better and to give her a hand in her delicate condition.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Returning to the cottage, he handed Lizzie the letter. How would she take the news of her mother-in-law’s arrival in four days’ time? Expecting her to be horrified and upset, she merely smiled and said that she would be delighted to see her again, adding apologetically:

  ‘Sorry we can’t have her to stay with us, Jeremy, but she will be happy and well cared for at Sheridan Place. And I expect she will want to spend a lot of time here, as much as she can, I am sure.’

  Faro looked at her. Had she not realised the complications of Charlie’s presence, the situations that might arise, the explanations that would need to be made? How was Lizzie going to explain all that as merely a normal family visit from her brother?

  That would never do for Mary Faro. She would ferry all manner of questions. When had they last met, had it been a long time between visits? Were there other siblings? And then she would want all the details of their childhood home before Lizzie had left to get married.

  He groaned. Marriage would extend the inquisition further, details about the soldier hero, Vince’s father. How was Lizzie going to get over that hurdle with Vince listening to every word?

  But worst of all was Charlie’s identity. Mary was more interested in the details of her son Jeremy’s career than his wife. Proud of him, by the time she had seen all those posters on the way from the port at Leith, she would be ready to bombard him with questions about this terrible criminal who had escaped and what were the police doing to catch such a man whose existence was putting all of Edinburgh in peril of their lives. She had sharp eyes. Would she see beyond the poster and recognise the man who was living under her son’s roof?

  With another interminable day on the horizon, Detective Sergeant Faro expecting a trail of informers at the police station, there were in fact only three. A man who pestered them regularly on all kinds of issues regarding matters he believed they were neglecting, now claimed to have seen McLaw lurking in his backyard, searching through his dustbin. So could he have the fifty pounds please?

  Two frightened women followed him. One, from Fountainbridge, identified McLaw as this beggar who came to the door, asking her for money. She said he had threatened her and, terrified, she had slammed the door and had rushed to tell the police as fast as her legs could carry her. The other woman, from Granton, claimed that she had been staying with her daughter and last night they had seen McLaw sleeping huddled in one of the closes off the High Street. Yes, yes, these were definite McLaw sightings and all three ended with the same demand. Could they now have the reward money?

  Faro sighed. It could have been worse. However, he did not doubt that there would be more tomorrow, followed by a tide of claimants. The news of that fifty pounds just hadn’t had time to sink into the wilder reaches of the Lothians where there might be one to suit his purpose of an excuse to get McLaw on a train. He was grimly determined that, sprained ankles or no, Charlie had to go using a stick, and he was indifferent to the train’s destination as long as it carried him as far away as possible from Edinburgh.

  Sleepless nights were becoming commonplace and as he looked down at Lizzie, nestling close to his side, smiling gently as she slept, perhaps with happy dreams about that baby, he wondered if he would ever sleep without nightmares again.

  At breakfast next morning, he told Lizzie he would be calling at Sheridan Place.

  ‘Oh, in that case, you might take back this bowl she left with me.’ Obviously curious about this Tibbie he was to meet through Superintendent Macfie’s housekeeper, she added: ‘Remember to tell her that your mother will be here on Friday. I hope that will give her enough time for her to prepare.’

  Faro was reassuring. ‘I’ll give her your message, Lizzie. My visit is in connection with a missing person’s case,’ he said, and no more than that.

  Mrs Brook had struck him as being the sort of person who could cope with any situation and her role in his mother’s visit seemed negligible. At least he did not have to be ever vigilant each moment she was in the cottage that terrible revelations about the past – and present – might be revealed.

  And then there was Charlie. They hadn’t had time to give that due consideration, that keeping him out of sight and sound of his mother’s informal daily visits would be impossible. No, somehow his presence had to be explained or his continual absence might arouse suspicions.

  He walked past the scaffolding and the houses that were steadily arising to transform the old drove road and across through the pillars of Blacket Place. At least that area retained a quiet serenity reminiscent of an earlier world, when Edinburgh, as part of the Age of Enlightenment, took the cultured world
by storm and Sir Walter Scott helped to move on the pace of history by engineering a visit from the monarch himself, King George IV. Faro always regretted that he had missed that event, still spoken of by his elders either in admiration or whispered derision, depending on their political outlook.

  As he approached the gate of Sheridan Place, his footsteps rustled along pavements scattered with the first splashes of scarlet and yellow. Some of the abundant trees had already begun the yearly shedding of their heavy loads.

  Ringing the bell, he took a deep breath. In a few moments he would be meeting Tibbie, Celia’s maid, one of the missing pieces in the giant puzzle, like some maze in which he found himself searching for the right path.

  Mrs Brook opened the door. Before she spoke a word in answer to his greeting, he knew by her expression that all was not well as he had hoped.

  ‘Oh, come in, Mr Faro. I must apologise for taking you into the kitchen.’ As he followed her down the hall, there were stacks of boxes waiting to be opened and he remembered in sudden panic that the furniture had been scheduled to arrive while Macfie was still abroad. What if there was no guest bedroom available as yet, nor even a bed? That induced visions of going into the city and booking his mother into a hotel – and her rebellion at that. He could almost hear her voice: ‘Why on earth can’t I stay with you, Jeremy? Surely you can make room for me and save all this extra expense.’

  Following her into the kitchen, well appointed and spacious, it was larger than their living room in the cottage. Mrs Brook went over to the window and stood clenching and unclenching her hands nervously.

  ‘As you can see, sir, Tibbie hasn’t arrived. She should have been here last night. I just don’t understand it.’

  Neither did he, if the information Mrs Brook had received was correct. The right day, for instance. But Tibbie’s absence struck an ominous note of certainty that the woman had not willingly let Mrs Brook down and that something unexpected and probably quite dire had prevented her arrival.