Bareback

by John Burke

  On the far bank of the river the racecourse was marked out ready for those who qualified for the Innkeepers’ and Tradesmen’s Races. Beyond it was the beginning of the Hound Trail.

  Nick realised that if he was to join this sort of thing regularly, he would be expected to buy a nag of his own. There were lots of things he would rather spend money on than a horse.

  After the flag had been raised, waved vigorously, and slotted back into its scabbard, the formal escort left the competitors on the racecourse and turned back to splash through the shallows. Within two hundred yards they were confronted by a posse from the opposite direction. Hannah Ferguson, defying any notion of keeping a low profile under her present cloud, sat bravely at the head of a Pictish Guild contingent. It had all the trappings of the old days which they were here to commemorate: days when reiving families clashed on their looting expeditions, fighting for supremacy in the exercise of despoiling farms and dwellings, and galloping with their lances at hated rivals.

  Two policemen appeared at the end of the bridge, undecided whether an arrest was going to be necessary or not.

  Hannah rode out in front of her companions to face Nick.

  His right-hand man said: ‘Please turn back, Mrs Ferguson.’

  ‘We have the moral right to take part in every section of the Ridings. We hereby affirm that right. Starting with the races.’ She beckoned the six girls behind Nick. ‘Come and join us. Take your rightful place as equals, not riding only on sufferance.’

  The girls fidgeted, but none came forward.

  Nick asserted himself. ‘No doubt there are plenty of things to discuss after this Riding, Mrs Ferguson. Shall we postpone them till the customary programme is brought to a happy conclusion?’

  ‘There’s nothing to discuss, Sir Nicholas.’

  ‘Plenty of things,’ he repeated meaningly. If she took that as a threat, it would do no harm. If she chose to brazen it out, he might find that he had to fall in with police wishes and proceed with that charge of theft. It wasn’t the way he wanted to handle it. ‘Things to discuss. At a more suitable time.’

  Hannah Ferguson stared at him. He stared back.

  There were historic records of Days of Truce like this, when March Wardens from either side of the Border had confronted each other and warily spoken peace – until tempers were lost, some hothead screamed abuse or fired an arrow, and the mayhem began.

  The silent stand-off seemed to last an eternity. Then Hannah, with an imperious toss of her head, wheeled her horse round and addressed her followers. ‘We’ll waste no more time here.’

  You had to admire her, thought Nick: she made retreat look like a dignified withdrawal to regroup and still achieve victory.

  Behind him there was a respectful spattering of applause. ‘Finely done, sir.’ The laird had asserted his authority, and they approved.

  Then there was a puzzled murmur. A plume of smoke was rising above the town. If this was part of the programme, nobody had thought to tell Nick about it. Before he could consult his right-hand man, they heard the distant clang of a fire engine.

  Nobody wasted time on consulting him now, whether as laird or Callant. The riders swung into formation and galloped back towards the town, the flag streaming and flapping above the leaders. They slowed only to let a second fire tender race across the junction by the bridge, then trotted towards the square.

  A tape barrier had been hastily strung in a diagonal across the far corner and the narrow wynd climbing from it. Firemen were wrenching their hoses into position and aiming fierce jets of water through a broken window – the window of the late Sebastian Cameron’s bookshop. Flames licked greedily out, then swayed aside as the water hit them. Smoke began seeping from the upper floor: Jamie Brown’s office, Nick realised.

  He saw Lesley Gunn come round the side of the Tolbooth from the police incident room. She spoke to a uniformed constable checking the end of the tape, and then edged her way along as closely as possible, staring up at Brown’s office as if contemplating a wild dash up the steps to retrieve whatever might be inside.

  She would never be that crazy. Nevertheless Nick urged his horse a few feet closer in spite of its nervousness at the flame, noise and reek of smoke.

  There was a succession of heavy thuds and a long groan from inside the building. One of the firemen who had been framed in the doorway drew back a few feet. ‘Floor’s going on far side.’

  Suddenly a louder thud than before shook the street, followed by an explosion. What was left of the large front window shattered into a thousand slivers, red in the flames, silver as they flew clear in a rising fountain and then curved down in a savage parabola. Lesley Gunn was right beneath them. Nick yelled and forced his horse forward. He bent over as its hooves scrabbled on the road, got his arm under Lesley’s, and kept his shoulders and head bent over her as he dragged her bodily along the middle of the square. Glass stabbed down at his hat. One dagger went far enough through to scratch his left ear, and another slashed at his leg. The horse squealed. They blundered on to the clear centre of the square, until Lesley’s weight pulled him down, and he freed himself from the stirrups just in time. Two bystanders caught the mare’s head expertly and brought her to a halt.

  Lesley’s waist slid reluctantly out of Nick’s grasp. ‘Thank you. I don’t know how to . . .’ She kissed his cheek. Her hand clung to his until they were both steady on their feet.

  There was a faint scratch along her left cheek. Nick touched it gently with his fingertips. ‘You’d better go and clean that up. You don’t know how dirty the books in there might have been.’

  ‘I didn’t know it was that kind of bookshop.’

  Behind them there was a shout from one of the firemen.

  ‘Somebody in there.’

  ‘Upstairs?’

  ‘No. In the shop.’

  ‘Ritchie, Aitken – BA’s on. Sub, get that door down and a hose through.’

  Wreathed in smoke, it took them less than a minute to drag out a huddled, twitching shape whose clothes were still smouldering in spite of the water sprayed over them.

  Jamie Brown might be still just alive, but his face was even less attractive than usual.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Rutherford was in the incident room when Lesley Gunn arrived in the morning.

  ‘What the hell’s been going on while my back was turned?’

  ‘I’m afraid the arsonist didn’t have the consideration to save his set piece until you got back.’

  ‘It’s confirmed that it was arson?’

  ‘Pretty well. How did your day in court go?’

  ‘The cunning bugger got off again.’ Rutherford was ferociously eager to get his teeth into something else and this time worry it until it gave in. ‘All right, let’s have the lot. Where do we stand – or is it still Fire Brigade responsibility?’

  ‘The FIU have already been on to our Super. Want to liaise with SOCO and tidy up some awkward points.’

  Enough remained of the shop interior for the Fire Investigation Unit, called urgently to the scene by the Station Officer – ‘Before everything went cold, as it were,’ Lesley commented – to be able to identify some suspicious hot spots. They were all trained to be suspicious of more than one source of a fire; and alert for smells of paraffin or petrol. Here there seemed to have been three accelerants, and one scorched track across the floor suggesting a petrol can being trailed to create a swift fuse. ‘Ignite it near the door, and get out quick.’

  ‘But he didn’t manage to get out, did he?’

  ‘I wonder why?’

  ‘I’m going to go and see him.’

  ‘We could get the hospital to –’

  ‘I’ll go and sit there myself.’ Rutherford’s fierce resolve was distracted for a moment. He sniffed. ‘This place stinks. You’d have thought we’d had a fire in here as well.’

  Lesley nodded towards two bundles of charred papers on her table. ‘Amazing how long it takes paper to catch fire, when it’s tightly comp
ressed. Half the books in that shop are still only half burnt, even though the shelves collapsed.’

  ‘Is there some significance in this lecture?’ asked the DCI tartly. ‘Something which might just help us solve a crime or two?’

  ‘I’ve only had time to pick out a few bits from this pile, but you ought to see them. Maybe wave them in front of Brown’s nose.’

  ‘Stinking like that? Probably give him a relapse.’

  ‘I think these are what he wanted to burn. Only something went wrong. From what I’ve patched together, there seem to have been some shady goings-on between Brown and the late bookseller. To do with the lease of the flat, an expensive insurance policy, some regular payments – maybe repayments of a loan, or maybe not, and . . . well, it’s a real mess of a jigsaw, which’ll have to be sorted out with the bank and Brown’s insurance company. The bank may be tricky. They still make a big show of confidentiality. But putting the frighteners on the insurance company shouldn’t be too difficult. And,’ she added grimly, ‘we’ll have to grill Brown about what Archie Ferguson had discovered about him. Or if they were in some scam together.’

  ‘And that other pile?’ Rutherford looked at the discoloured bundles without enthusiasm. Paperwork was not his forte.

  Lesley wasn’t too displeased by this. She didn’t want to tell him too much about that other batch yet, sending him pugnaciously into fields where he might trample truth into the mud.

  ‘It depends on what Sir Nicholas has to say about those documents. And maybe what Dr Hamilton has to offer.’

  It was half true; but her real motive was to get Nick Torrance to see these shreds of history – or false history – for his own benefit, before letting anyone else come up with wild theories.

  Rutherford was not stupid. He would not have been promoted to his present status if he hadn’t possessed that awkward, forever suspicious intuition that could catch people unawares.

  ‘Look here, Les, what’s going on? This isn’t some highbrow crossword puzzle, and I’ve no mad interest in ancient manuscripts.’

  ‘I simply want Sir Nicholas to identify some of these papers.’

  ‘What the hell’s in them? If they throw any light on this case, then someone’ll have to go through them right now.’

  ‘It’s a matter of expert textual analysis.’ She made it sound as lofty as possible. ‘And identification. It might be a false lead.’

  ‘Or a sizzling one? Les, what’s going on?’ he demanded again. ‘If you’ve got your eye on becoming lady of the manor –’

  ‘Sir!’ She let the word do its own bit of sizzling, and then lowered the temperature. ‘By the time you’ve seen Brown, I might be able to add quite a few useful things.’

  He was glad of an excuse to back off his personal affront. ‘All right. Follow it up, then. But you’d better not be wasting time. They’re getting very cost conscious upstairs, nowadays.’

  She waited for him to set off for the hospital, then made her way to Black Knowe.

  Throughout the day, races were going on across the haugh. Nick Torrance, standing in the window embrasure of the hall, might have been watching them. He turned with a welcoming but diffident smile, and as he moved to greet her she saw that he was limping.

  ‘Nick, are you all right?’

  ‘That’s better.’ She realised he meant her use of his name. ‘I’m fine.’ He rubbed his hip, and winced. ‘Gave myself a bit of a wrench when I . . . well, anyway, how are you?’

  ‘I don’t know how to thank you.’

  Like Rutherford, he sniffed. ‘Have you overbaked me some biscuits as a treat?’

  She laid the package beside the quaich in its case, carefully lifting the top sheet so that it would not flake apart round the edges. She had added the envelope containing The Song before she realised there was somebody else present. Professor Makepeace had been sitting in a high-backed oak chair below the painting of the Lass, but now rose to his feet and gave her a stiff bow.

  ‘Inspector.’

  ‘The Professor’s helping me with plans for opening the tower on certain days,’ Nick explained. ‘He’s generously prepared to guide visitors round and lecture them on the history of the tower and the town legends. Provided he doesn’t shatter too many illusions.’ He made a mock stern face at Makepeace. ‘Tourists prefer romance to fact.’

  ‘Like tomorrow’s proceedings,’ said Lesley. ‘It is the great day, isn’t it?’

  ‘Miss Robson is out at this moment,’ said Makepeace, ‘riding with my son. Making sure that he follows the route he’s expected to take, and all the niceties of the finale.’

  ‘Including the discovery of another dead body?’

  ‘One hopes not.’

  Both he and Nick were staring curiously at the papers she was holding in her hand. Nick raised a questioning eyebrow.

  ‘Perhaps I’d better be on my way,’ said Makepeace with obvious reluctance. ‘We can devote more time to the matter next week.’

  ‘I think you’d better stay.’ Nick did not wait for Lesley to protest. ‘We may need a dispassionate view on romance or fact.’

  ‘Facts,’ said Lesley, ‘that’ll spoil a lot of romance.’ She drew the manuscript of The Song carefully out of its envelope.

  ‘A fake?’ said Nick.

  ‘Nineteenth century.’

  Makepeace’s eyes gleamed with delight. ‘The precious Song? I’ve never even been allowed to look at it. Always wondered . . .’

  They would all have to know soon enough. Even before tomorrow, to stop the farce of the Riding?

  She looked straight at Nick. ‘You were right about the bar lines and notation, of course. But the clincher is that the paper’s all wrong. It’s actually eighteenth-century paper. God knows where they found it, but it’s been skilfully treated to make it look much older. The ink, though, is nineteenth century.’

  ‘I think we’d better sit down.’

  Makepeace scraped his chair across the floor towards the table which Nick was pushing into position close to the window seats. ‘Now,’ said Nick, ‘just why should anyone go to all this trouble?’

  Professor Makepeace was happy to oblige. ‘I’ve always had my suspicions. Kilstane must have been envious of the traditions of the other Border towns: the ambush of the English in 1337 outside Galashiels, which led to the Braw Lads’ Gathering, and their traditional song, Soor Plums; Selkirk’s banner from Flodden Field, and their song The Souters o’ Selkirk from the 17th century; and the Callants of Hawick who stole a flag from the English at Hornshole. They’d all got genuine traditions. Langholm’s Common Riding began in 1816, with one man riding the bounds. But in fact, most of the Common Ridings’ – he was warming to his task – ‘were not established in their present form until the middle and end of the 19th century, and then revived after the Second World War. They were built on scraps of tradition. But poor little Kilstane had no really historic traditions.’ He glanced apologetically at their host. ‘Sorry, Sir Nicholas, but it has always been my theory that the Kilstane legends were just that – fairy tales. Kilstane wanted to be up there with the other Border towns, and was only too ready to accept gallant stories and a few pieces of apparently authentic writing. The Song is in itself traditional, and some version of it would have been passed down through the years. But somebody had to do a fussy authentication of it. Only it wasn’t authentic. And I imagine there must have been other forgeries.’

  ‘The Provost’s scrolls?’ Nick hazarded.

  ‘It would indeed be interesting to cast a critical eye over them.’

  ‘The quaich?’

  ‘Real enough in itself, but never verifiably connected with the original legend.’

  ‘But who’s been doing the faking?’

  Makepeace’s stony features assumed the nearest thing he would ever manage to smugness. ‘You will undoubtedly have heard of the munificence of the late Sebastian Cameron.’

  ‘From whose shop these papers were salvaged,’ Lesley contributed.

  ‘Very
significant. Such a dedicated man. Seeking out documents which would add to the richness of Kilstane traditions. Not for mere personal gain, but to become one of the town’s best loved benefactors. Such strokes of luck! Coming across fragments of documents which built up into a pattern everyone was so anxious to accept. And for him, a comfortable place in society.’

  ‘Comfortable?’ said Lesley. ‘With Jamie Brown upstairs? Just what part did Brown play in all this?’

  ‘That’s up to you guardians of the law to unravel.’

  ‘But if he was such a retiring type,’ said Nick, ‘and there was no great financial return, why on earth . . .?’

  ‘As I see it, the late lamented Mr Cameron was no flamboyant entrepreneur. He kept himself to himself, and his pleasures to himself. A bachelor, in love only with books, incunabula – and seductive secrets. He was appointed to various committees. In spite of his reticence he was persuaded to give winter lectures on literature and the antiquarian book trade; and I can tell you that he enjoyed them. Bashful, but a braggart, if you can grasp that.’

  ‘And are you saying,’ Lesley pumped him, ‘that at no stage it ever occurred to any of you on the Committee that some of his finds – if that’s what they were – could have been bogus?’

  ‘A lot of things have struck me as being bogus in this religion of the Ridings, officer. Made me rather unpopular. And, let’s be honest, I wouldn’t have suspected Cameron. On the other hand, remembering Thomas J. Wise . . .’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A brilliant forger, earlier this century. Faking literary pamphlets and making quite a profit. But it wasn’t just for the money. He did well enough in honest trading to do without anything shady. But it was the secret pleasure of knowing you’ve fooled the experts. Contriving things, faking them. Piltdown Man . . . a Bronte poem . . . a van Meegeren painting. An inordinate amount of painstaking work to produce a good forgery. Trouble is, in the end there’s no one you can boast to about your cleverness. And Cameron, small-time . . . yes, just that sort of man. A shy, secretive type. Gloating in secret over his achievements.’