Akin to Murder

by Alanna Knight

  ‘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 Edi
nburgh, 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 rath
er 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.