By the Light of a Lie (Thane & Calder Book 1)

by Marjorie Orr

  He stood up unsteadily, hitched up his trousers, promising to meet over dinner, then hesitated before he left, saying with an edge of sarcasm: ‘My ole daddy used to say a hard-boiled egg has a heart of gold as well. Ha ha! Not always easy to tell the difference.’ And he stumbled off.

  Now there goes a troubled man, she thought.

  ‘We’re outta here,’ Herk said urgently behind her. He put a hand on her shoulder to stop her reacting. ‘Stone Junior is back and he’s got two heavies with him who were the ones watching your flat. They don’t know me but they’ll know you. I collected your bag without being seen so we need to get to the car and leave. Here’s your sunhat. Ram it down over your face.’

  They left the sun room by the garden door and walked quickly round the front of the castle with Tire keeping her head low, past the giant pots and cypresses down into the car park. She fished in the glove compartment and found her spare, oversized sunglasses. Then turned up her collar.

  Dammit, Herk had been right all along, she thought, her stomach tight with tension as they bumped out of the car park into the wood and onto the muddy track with gouged-out ruts that even the Range Rover strained to plough across. The surfaced road outside was visible through a few scraggy bushes and a dilapidated wooden fence. He turned sharply left to crash through it.

  ‘Don’t think it’s worth the risk taking time to put that back,’ he said. ‘We’d best take that farm track across to the motorway. It’s just along here. And get off the main roads in case they come looking since they’ll have heard the noise.’

  Shit, shit, shit, she thought. We’ve blown it. Now they’ll know we’re after them. Only after ten minutes of being thrown around as the vehicle bounced through potholes, ruts and craters at speed on a muddy trail heading inland did the penny drop. There was now no doubt that it had been Harman Stone.

  CHAPTER 34

  Huddled in the back of Janet Birch’s car, Elly was looking miserable, not bothering to clear the mist from the inside of the window. Jimmy fidgeted restlessly in the front passenger seat, tense with anticipation and dread. Inner Glasgow merged into outer Glasgow as they sped down the M8, houses and industrial buildings giving way finally to dull, damp, green countryside as their route veered off onto the M74 heading south. He barely registered the surroundings as they pulled off the motorway, heading for the village of Carston. Half a mile beyond, the grilled gates of Dunlothian Hall, set in a high wall with broken glass cemented on top, came into view. Janet Birch kept driving, which made Jimmy look sharply at her.

  She indicated ahead. Within two minutes they were at the back entrance where the wall was broken down and one rusty gate, detached from its hinges, had been thrown to one side. The other was missing. Driving slowly along a potholed track, with overgrown, twisted rhododendrons encroaching on either side, it took fully five minutes of bumping and scraping to clear the dismal tunnel of shrubs.

  Elly had her eyes shut and Jimmy was staring fixedly at the dashboard as the car stopped. With an effort, his jaw clenched, he looked up and blinked. The massive crenellated central portion of the Hall, rising three floors above the weed-strewn ground, was crumbling, with broken windows and one turret leaning at a perilous angle. The lower wings were even more dilapidated, with sandstone cornices weathered to nothing in patches and glass littered among the debris below.

  ‘We’ll need to watch,’ Janet Birch remarked briskly, ‘and stand well back, since the structure isn’t safe anymore.’

  She took Elly’s arm, walked down a few steps and left her sitting on a low stone wall facing determinedly away from the Hall. Jimmy was standing rigid, with one hand leaning on the car bonnet and looking up at the cumbersome structure, a complicated jigsaw of blocks, his eyes running up the square columns and across the heavy Neo-Gothic detail. It should have been ornate, soaring upwards in grandeur. Instead it looked leaden, as if it pressed heavily on a ground struggling to bear its weight.

  Eventually he said: ‘It’s just so... I dunno, nothing really.’

  Janet leant towards him expectantly.

  ‘I’d expected to be scared and it was a scary place. An awful place. But it’s lost whatever it had. Can’t be its soul, since it didn’t have one, but there’s just nothing here...’ He petered out, sounding puzzled and almost disappointed.

  ‘Do you remember the first day you came here?’ Janet’s voice cut into his thoughts.

  He turned angrily. ‘Now, don’t you be pushing be your questions. I need time.’

  The easterly wind blew a gust of leaves across the long-derelict frontage and up onto their clothes. He brushed one off his face and started to walk towards the far wing with an arched entrance at the end. Then he turned right down the main drive, stepping round puddles of muddy water on the pitted surface and over piles of stones uprooted by weather and neglect. Almost as if he was counting the steps he marched on, then he turned suddenly round to face the towering asylum, distance allowing him to see it in its entirety. Janet Birch, who had been following, moved quickly behind him.

  ‘It’s odd,’ he remarked, ‘when you think about it, that me and Elly spent most of our lives in a castle. Not quite aristos, but still.’ He chuckled grimly, his eyes roving constantly and rhythmically back and forth from one end to the other.

  After a minute or two his head jerked involuntarily, as if the plates inside were grating. A fencepost gave him an anchor, as his lightheaded feeling of several days back in Largs returned. Sunlight and blue skies broke through the drabness, flooding the ground with warmth. The chill, hostile grey of the Hall, for a moment, shone ochre with the turrets rounding into a more amiable cluster. Lush vegetation grew on the steep slope below.

  Then the vision was gone just as suddenly, as if one side of his mind had shut down. The dank surroundings returned and the pervasive smell of stagnant water and rotting vegetation enveloped him in a cloud of shame. To his embarrassment, tears started to roll down his face.

  Janet Birch stood ten feet away, not moving to comfort him, waiting.

  He sniffed, wiping his nose on the back of his free hand and muttered: ‘I don’t know how any of us survived, honest to god I don’t. It was like living in a labour camp. Nothing to cheer you. No family, no enough food ever and freezing cold most of the time, since they didn’t give us decent clothes.’

  ‘No one to hug you,’ she said tentatively.

  His chest convulsed and his cheeks streamed with tears. His head hung down and he clung to the fencepost as it were a life raft.

  ‘Your mother hugged you before you came here, didn’t she?’ she said softly, fishing in her pocket for a handkerchief.

  Drawing a shuddering deep breath and then blowing his nose noisily, he looked across to where Elly was sitting patiently.

  ‘She did that,’ he said slowly, ‘often.’ A look of wonder gradually crossed his face. ‘Do you know, I haven’t been able to see her all these years. Yet here she is in my mind, clear as day. She was very beautiful with long dark hair. And she lived where there was sunshine, not dreary like here.’

  ‘Can you remember where that was, Lachie?’ Janet’s eager tone made him shudder. Her use of the name Lachie jangled his head and his mounting confusion threatened to push him into a full-blown panic. When she repeated the question, he clenched his fist and stamped his foot like a frustrated child.

  ‘But it is really important, Lachie,’ she said in a wheedling voice.

  ‘My name isn’t Lachie,’ he shouted. ‘Don’t call me that.’

  ‘What did your mother call you?’

  ‘Lookay,’ he said, forcing the words out.

  Her face was three feet away, a hazy image flickering in and out of focus. He wanted to back away, but without the post for support he was scared he would fall over.

  ‘She was Italian, like the gardens you paint?’ He nodded dumbly. ‘Do you mean Luce, like luce del sole – sunlight?’

  Tears were streaming down his cheeks and his breath was ragged, causing him to gasp for ai
r.

  ‘Was Luce your real name, or a nickname?’

  His head started to shake from side to side, the spasms outside his control. The rough wooden post was sending splinters into his hand.

  ‘Take a deep breath. You’re nearly there. How did she introduce you? Do you remember her name, or your father’s? Where you lived?’

  A spurt of anger began to force through his confusion. ‘Leave me alone.’ He drew himself up straight and glared at her. ‘I can’t be doing with all your prodding.’

  ‘This is important.’

  ‘Maybe to you, but it’s not going to help me. I’m not doing this anymore.’

  As he steadied himself against the post, ready to walk off, the sunshine came back. He was about five years old, dressed in a dark suit, with a white shirt and bow tie, standing beside a tall man he didn’t like, his mother close by in a long cream dress with a veil.

  The words that came to his mind he had no intention of speaking, but they came out before he could stop himself. ‘Signora Neroni. Alessia from Orvieto. And I’m Louis.’ His tone was flat, his expression detached. ‘And now I’m going. That’s enough.’

  An insistent tug at his arm nearly pulled him off balance.

  ‘You can’t stop here. This is hugely significant and exciting. You must see that.’

  ‘What I see is Elly over there getting cold. We need to take her home. That’s what’s important. Not your meddling.’

  He pulled himself angrily away from the fencepost, catching the edge of his palm on a rusty nail. The pain made him pause and he watched the blood flow down into the sleeve of his coat. Then he saw his mother again, blood running down her face, her head twisted to one side as she lay crumpled on a stone path. He sank to his knees, covering his head with both hands, his body shaking with racking sobs.

  Elly came rushing across and pushed Janet Birch, who was standing over him, to one side. She knelt beside him on the rough ground, put an arm round his shoulders and held him tightly. It took several minutes for his tears to subside and his rasping breaths to slow down. He remained bent double, his head hidden in his coat, his arms wrapped tightly round his chest.

  Eventually Elly, with some difficulty, persuaded him onto his feet. He sat speechless and miserable for the forty-minute drive back to Glasgow. Not even the nurse’s kindly questions in the hospital accident wing provoked any response as she cleaned and bandaged his hand, mopped the blood from his face and gave him a tetanus shot.

  One phrase ran insistently through his head that his mother had said to him on her wedding day, ‘Chia ama, crede’, and had made him translate it into English for his new life ahead. He who loves, trusts.

  CHAPTER 35

  The track twisted and turned round giant boulders and dipped through rain-gouged craters. In places it disappeared under soil washed down from above, then started to climb in serpentine bends uphill. Herk kept checking the mirror as he held onto the bucking wheel. The ground fell steeply away on Tire’s side the higher they went and the muddy surface narrowed, barely clinging to the mountain edge. She shut her eyes several times as disaster seemed inevitable. The vehicle felt wider than the track holding them up. At least twice she thought the outer wheels had gone off into space.

  Nearing the top they came round a bend, shielded by trees, to find a bulky jeep blocking their way. Herk swerved to the left onto rock-strewn terrain, muttering curses. They slid rather than drove down precipitous slopes, skidding across mud and rubble. The roar behind indicated the jeep was keeping pace with their descent.

  ‘Get the guns out from under the back seat,’ he said. Tire loosened her seat belt and wriggled round with difficulty, trying to jam one leg against the footrest to keep from being thrown around. Her fingers were just reaching for the canvas bags when there was a crash. It was the last thing she remembered as she was flung backwards towards the windscreen. Everything went black.

  A foul taste of muddy saltwater in her mouth confused her, as her senses gradually returned. Her nose seemed to be filled with sand. How much time had passed she had no idea, but everything hurt. Her left shoulder was searing pain down her arm. Her body was bent across a hard, uneven surface and her head, echoing like a drum, was hanging face down off the edge. Struggling to breathe and clear her vision, she heard a murmur of voices and heavy breathing. Old instincts kicked in and she lay still. Gradually she recalled the car and the crash. But she was clearly no longer there. The air smelt musty and acrid. The taste in her mouth, she worked out, was blood. Opening one eye she saw a rough wall two feet away, its plaster smeared with animal muck. Below her was a filthy stone floor with a few handfuls of greying straw and a broken farm plough, rusty and disintegrating.

  A harsh, roared curse from Herk behind her and a smell of burning made her tense, which sent waves of agony down her back.

  A guttural voice was speaking. ‘Why were you at the Castell?’

  A sharp thud of a hand hitting flesh and another curse.

  She needed to keep her head clear and think. Her eyes searched the floor for a loose brick, any kind of weapon. Footsteps behind her brought the warmth and smell of a body standing over her, so she shut her eyes again. A prod in her back was almost unbearable, but she didn’t react. The voice said: ‘She is still out of it. We wait till she wakens up. Then we have fun’. A laugh was followed by the footsteps moving away. Then she heard two men speaking in the distance in what sounded like Russian or one of the Slavic languages.

  Making a supreme effort, she levered herself up with her right hand, pulling on the decaying bags of hardened cement onto which she had been thrown. She swung her legs over the edge and turned round. Herk was lying shirtless, face up on a narrow table, his arms pulled back underneath, his hands tied with cable. His chest was smeared with blood and dirt, the flesh reddened in patches. Wondering whether she was capable of standing up she looked at him and, unbelievably, he smiled and whispered: ‘Just take it calmly now. Come over her and untie me. Now.’

  Gritting her teeth, she obeyed. Her legs trembled as she moved across and knelt down to tug at the cable with her one good hand. She pulled feverishly at the knot, but the wire cable would not budge. It was too tightly entwined. Sweat was pouring down her face and one broken fingernail, torn away at the root, was dripping blood. She needed a lever. Searching around, she saw a rusty nail sticking out of the wall, but it was firmly stuck.

  ‘Over there. That implement.’ Herk’s eyes swivelled across to the far wall. She limped across to the sacks of cement, sat down awkwardly and pulled hard at one narrow shard of metal on the plough which, after several yanks, came away with a loud grating sound. Wiping the blood and sweat from her hand on her jeans, she stood up and swayed, as dizziness threatened to topple her over. She sat back down, breathing in to clear her head. Crawling seemed easier, so she hauled herself across on her hands and knees. Ignoring his stifled grunts, she inserted the metal spike into the cable knot and with several desperate wrenches pulled it apart. He sat up quickly and untied his feet.

  He grabbed his T-shirt, which was lying on the floor, put it on and whispered calmly: ‘Now we’re halfway there.’ He picked up a short, metal fencepost from the floor and handed it to her, then walked to a corner where a rusty pickaxe was leaning against the wall. ‘Stay behind me at all times. Got it?’ He nodded to her, his eyes glinting. He gestured her to a position behind the door.

  The two men were laughing outside, then the sound of scraping on the ground and panting brought them closer to the outhouse. Herk stood with the pickaxe, blunt side up, ready to swing. The first man reversed in the door dragging a heavy battery. He was nearly inside when Herk brought the rusty iron down hard on the back of his neck with a terrible crack. Then he stepped into the doorway and threw it forcefully at the second man, the pointed end catching him mid-chest.

  Tire thought she was going to throw up as waves of nausea spiralled up into her head. She shut her eyes, clinging onto a metal hook on the wall. A gurgling, croaking sound fr
om outside seemed to fill the air.

  ‘C’mon now,’ Herk’s voice was kindly and controlled. ‘Why don’t you go and sit outside over there, while I sort out this mess.’

  He put a hand under her elbow and led her across the doorway. She kept her eyes firmly averted from the growing pool of blood outside and leant gratefully against him till they reached a flat stone with a grassy bank behind, facing away from the bodies. She sank down and leant back against the soft green.

  Herk returned with a can of Coke and a chocolate bar from the Range Rover and said with a wry chuckle: ‘Caffeine and sugar, that’s what you need. I won’t be long.’

  She sat weakly, hurting in so many places it all seemed to merge into one overpowering ache. Time drifted past. A loud crunch of metal made her wince, but the effort of turning round was too great. Then an engine started, stuttered and then powered up again.

  ‘Right, here’s what’s happening.’ Herk sat down beside her. ‘Can you drive the Range Rover with that arm? Not far, just up the hill a bit. If you can’t, I’ll do it and walk back.’

  ‘And leave me with them? I don’t think so,’ she exclaimed, coming back to life. ‘What’s the plan?’

  ‘Well, they’re both dead so they won’t harm you and I’ll take them with me,’ he said, putting a hand lightly on her good shoulder. ‘I thought best to make it look like an accident. I can push the jeep off that steep slope up there and with luck they won’t be found for days and the injuries could just be their vehicle somersaulting down the hill. The policía here don’t tend to be over fussy.’

  He walked her over to the Range Rover, giving her a hand up. She sat for a moment waiting for the throbs to subside. He leant in and said: ‘Just take it very slow and first gear all the way so you won’t have to change. Keep both hands on the wheel. But wait till I’m ready behind you with the jeep.’