The Darkness Within
Page 23
Ten minutes passed, plenty of time for what they hoped would pass as normal conversation, for Faro to be on the Crags before Imogen and Rose excused themselves to resume their packing upstairs, leaving Emily alone with him.
The door had hardly closed when with a few preliminary questions about her travel arrangements, he asked if she had managed to get the jewel valued.
Playing for time, her heart beating wildly, Emily pretended not to hear. He came round the table, stood over her and said: ‘I hope you have kept it safe.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Where is it now? Locked away upstairs, still?’
‘Oh no, it’s with my father.’
‘Your father!’
‘Yes. I haven’t had a chance to do anything about it, too busy. So Pa said he would take it into some reputable jeweller to be valued before I go.’
‘And where is your father now?’ he demanded sharply.
‘Oh, he’s on his way into Edinburgh with it. Seeing the jewellers first thing. Left just before you arrived. You just missed him.’
There was no sentiment now, no pretence of affection. He looked at her coldly. ‘Which way did he go?’
‘By the Radical Road. He prefers taking that way, it’s a shortcut.’
He was no longer listening. The door was open and he had gone, swallowed by what was now the fog’s white shroud. Rose and Imogen ran downstairs. Emily was trembling, clutching the table. They regarded her anxiously: ‘Did he hurt you?’
‘No, no. This is just reaction. I was so scared that he would guess.’
Rose felt rather sick. ‘Now everything depends on Pa. Damn that fog – we never bargained for that. If I was a Catholic I’d say a prayer and get out my rosary.’
Imogen said: ‘I’m one, Rose. And I know all the words.’
Faro was shivering, in what was now a fine drizzle. Seated on a boulder, he had lit a pipe to calm his nerves while he waited, unable to see through the mist. At last, echoing footsteps as a tall figure stumbled forward.
Sven was out of breath, he had been running fast to catch up. Faro stood up, shouted a greeting and, preparing to keep up the pretence of a chance meeting as long as possible, he started walking briskly. But Sven was having none of that, and seized his arm.
‘I am not here for a pleasant stroll, Mr Faro.’ He held out his hand. ‘I am here for the jewel. Emily wants it back. I am to take it back to her. She has changed her mind.’
‘Is that so? Well, I have changed mine. And I haven’t got the jewel. I forgot to pick it up.’ Sven glared at him angrily, thwarted, fists clenched menacingly.
Faro smiled. ‘Tell me, where is Alice?’
‘Alice? I have no idea. Emily must have told you, she left me.’
‘I think it is the other way round, that you left her.’
Sven paused. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Oh, I think you do. You left her for dead, in that cave on Arthur’s Seat.’
Sven froze. Was Alice still alive? If so, then she had probably revealed all. He panicked and Faro saw it in his face. Now was the time to get him moving towards those steps and the waiting police.
But he didn’t. Not without the jewel, and as far as he knew, Faro had it and was lying. He leapt at him and in one strong movement threw him to the ground. Thane saw it happening. His menacing growl was the last thing Faro heard, as Sven’s fist thundered into him and he rolled to the edge of the cliff, face down, frantically clinging on to thin air.
He yelled and Sven hit him again. As the world turned black and slipped away, his last thought: so this is what it is to die.
Rose heard that last cry echoing faintly through the shroud of mist. As soon as Sven started off, she had said: ‘I’m going after them.’
They tried to hold her back, implored her not to go, said it was madness, but she wouldn’t listen: ‘We are both mad, Pa and me, it runs in the family.’
And without another word she dashed out. Sven could run fast, but she could cover the distance on the road, reach the Crags before him on her bicycle. With no idea what she might do, except be at Faro’s side with her derringer, she pedalled downhill fast through the mist and across to the Radical Road, and when it became too steep, too uneven, she threw it aside. There were noises ahead and she began to run, stumbling through the mist that enveloped her. Like a shroud of death, she thought grimly, for that was when she heard the faint cry.
On she ran, gun in hand. But there was no one ahead of her. Only silence. Until a faint corner of the mist lifted to let her see what she most dreaded. Twenty feet away, on the steep edge of the cliff, a figure lay, spreadeagled, still and unmoving.
She screamed: ‘Pa!’
Thane was sitting beside him and it touched a memory, one of those popular sentimental paintings of a sick – or dead – child, watched over by the faithful dog.
Reaching them, Thane gazed up at her as she dropped on her knees beside her father. He was so still, so white, touching his face she knew this was how dead people looked.
Rapid footsteps approaching. Sven – and she took the gun from her pocket, levelled it. He’d pay for this. She was a good shot and it wouldn’t be the first time she had put a bullet through the heart of an evil man.
‘Rose!’ Through the mist, Jack and a uniformed policeman.
‘He’s dead,’ she whispered, her eyes streaming.
Jack pushed her aside, knelt down, turned him over gently and took the pulse in his neck.
Looking up at her, he sighed. ‘Not dead, Rose, not yet. And for God’s sake put that gun away before you kill someone.’
A slight movement, a mere flicker as Faro’s eyes opened. Bewildered, he saw Rose and Jack. Why was he still alive? He remembered fighting with Sven and being knocked out. He should be lying on the road far below, dead, his neck broken.
He tried to sit up, Jack’s arm supporting him. ‘Take it easy. God, you look done in. Are you hurt?’ He shook his head. ‘Damned near the edge, another few inches – tried to push you over, did he? You were great, you know, I never believed this mad plan would work.’
‘Did you get him?’ Faro asked weakly.
Jack grinned. ‘Gave himself up, you might say. Came running down where we were waiting, yelling and looking over his shoulder as if the hounds of hell were at his heels.’ Pausing, he gazed along the deserted cliff path. The mist had risen. He shook his head. ‘Something had scared the wits out of him.’
They began slowly heading towards the Tower, Rose pushing her bicycle and Thane trotting along at her side, with Faro between Jack and the policeman, wondering if he would ever make it that far. Where Sven had hit him, his head was throbbing, bruised as if he’d done a few rounds in the boxing ring of his younger days. His legs felt like straw, and he was suddenly very, very tired. He covered the last hundred yards in a daze.
When the door opened he fell into the arms waiting for him, and insisting that he was unhurt, was settled down with a very large whisky – nobody had the temerity to offer tea.
Later they wanted to know what happened. And he found he couldn’t remember apart from Sven striking him. Falling, falling, thinking so this was what dying was about, then. It was all a blank, like the fog that had enshrouded him.
‘No damage done,’ he assured them.
‘Quite amazing, isn’t it?’ they exclaimed.
‘Except for that huge tear across the back of your jacket,’ Imogen said ruefully. ‘That’s done for. You’ll never wear that again. You were needing a new one, anyway.’
A pity, it was his favourite Harris tweed and he hated buying new clothes. Later, chiding Rose for having followed him that day, she said: ‘I wasn’t much help after all, was I? Didn’t he protect you?’ she added with a reproachful glance at Thane, who turned his head, looked at Faro with what seemed the nearest equivalent to a human wink.
And so it was over. The holiday ended as Rose and Jack waved them goodbye with promises to the two children that they would meet again soon. Emily had b
een pleased that John Randall would be waiting for them at Kirkwall and his message touched all their minds with a single unspoken thought: ‘Wouldn’t it be nice?’
Faro and Imogen needed little persuasion to stay until Imogen’s talk at York, and on one of their walks she said solemnly, ‘I said a prayer for you, Faro, and I gave a promise that if you survived, I would marry you. That’s if you still want me.’ His answer needed no words as he took her in his arms.
The past was something to push to the back of one’s mind, forget and get back to normal. He still wondered about that huge tear across the back of his tweed jacket. As if a mighty crane had hauled him bodily back on to the cliff.
Rose might have an answer, once he had worked it out logically for himself.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALANNA KNIGHT (MBE) has had more than sixty books published in an impressive writing career spanning over forty years. She is a founding member and Honorary Vice President of the Scottish Association of Writers, Honorary President of Edinburgh Writers' Club and member of the Scottish Chapter of the Crime Writers' Association. Born and educated in Tyneside, she now lives in Edinburgh. Alanna received an MBE for services to literature.
alannaknight.com
By Alanna Knight
THE INSPECTOR FARO SERIES
Murder in Paradise
The Seal King Murders
Murders Most Foul
Akin to Murder
THE ROSE MCQUINN SERIES
The Inspector’s Daughter
Dangerous Pursuits
An Orkney Murder
Ghost Walk
Destroying Angel
Quest for a Killer
Deadly Legacy
The Balmoral Incident
The Darkness Within
THE TAM EILDOR SERIES
The Gowrie Conspiracy
The Stuart Sapphire
COPYRIGHT
Allison & Busby Limited
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First published in 2017.
This ebook edition first published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2017.
Copyright © 2017 by ALANNA KNIGHT
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–2122–1