His neck was throbbing and so was his chest. He touched it lightly and felt the blood stiff on his shirt. Clearly he had passed out, and Belle and Charles had put him in their cellar.
A wave of sheer terror washed over him, but he forced himself to banish it and check how badly he was hurt. He lifted his head, which hurt, but not much worse than it did with a bad hangover. He could also move his arms and legs. Now all he had to concern himself with was the chest wound, and he’d test that by sitting up because he couldn’t see it in the dark.
It hurt when he moved, and he thought he felt an increase in blood flow from it, but he was alive, so that proved the knife had missed his heart. He could still die from loss of blood of course, and he wondered how long that would take.
But after a few moments of sitting up, it didn’t appear to be flowing any faster, and although he knew his lungs were somewhere around there, he had to assume nothing vital had been punctured, so there was no need to be too alarmed.
Standing up came next, and that made him feel dizzy. He stretched out his arms and felt nothing, so he gingerly took a couple of steps sideways. His fingers encountered a rough brick wall. He shuffled up to it, put his back against it for support, and began moving along it until he felt something hard and loose beneath his feet.
It was coal. By groping with his hands in the darkness he ascertained there wasn’t a great deal of it, probably the remnants from the previous winter. Slowly he made his way past the coal to the opposite wall, and back along it. He came to a wooden staircase. About six feet behind that was another wall.
Groping his way back to the staircase, he sat down on the bottom step and tried to gather himself sufficiently to decide what to do. Obviously they wanted him to die or they would have called an ambulance. Maybe they even thought he was already close to death when he passed out?
If that was the case it wouldn’t do to climb the stairs and start thumping on the door, for that would alert them and he wasn’t quite ready to be transported to a grave.
He couldn’t see his watch face, but it felt as though it was the middle of the night. Yet he doubted it was, for it had only been six or so when Charles came in, and he couldn’t have been unconscious for hours. He guessed it was no more than seven at the latest, and he wondered what Belle and Charles were doing.
He crawled up the stairs to see if he could hear anything. The exertion made him feel dizzy again, it hurt as he breathed, and his neck throbbed. The door was locked as he had expected, but the key hadn’t been left on the other side, for through the keyhole he could see a tiny glimpse of the hall, and it was still daylight. He couldn’t hear anything – voices, television or sounds from out in the street.
He checked his pockets. His car keys were gone, as was his wallet. A lone 10-pence piece was all they had left on him. He had nothing to try to pick the door lock with.
All at once the seriousness of his plight hit him. This wasn’t some silly game, Belle and Charles weren’t suddenly going to let him out, dress his wound and say they were sorry. Belle had intended to kill him, and it was blatantly obvious to him now that it was she, not Charles, who had killed Jackie. To think that just a few hours ago he was feeling sorry for her!
He cursed himself for coming out here. It was probably the most stupid and arrogant thing he’d done in his whole life. He might have believed Charles was the killer, but only a complete fool would purposely go to the home of a suspected murderer with the intention of stirring up a reaction.
At least Charles had wanted to call an ambulance. He supposed Belle must have talked him out of that.
What were they intending to do with him? Dead or alive, he was going to cause them a huge problem, and there was also his car outside to deal with.
Charles was no idiot. He would realize that this was one of the first places the police would come to once his body or car was found.
Unfortunately Stuart knew it would be some time before anyone became aware he was missing, and even longer before they called the police. David would be enjoying himself with his family, and even if he rang the flat and got no reply, he’d simply assume that Stuart had gone off to see friends, or even taken a job. As for Goldsmith, Stuart had hounded him so much recently that he’d just be glad to be left in peace to get on with his case.
Stuart slumped down at the top of the stairs in despair, very aware of the blood seeping from his wound. He guessed it would take a long time for him to bleed to death, but he knew it would gradually weaken him to the point where he wouldn’t have the strength to escape if the opportunity arose.
After a few minutes he decided he must rouse himself and take stock of his situation, and he began by examining the door with his fingertips. He could feel big old-fashioned hinges on the inside of it, which if he’d had a screwdriver he could have got off in minutes. But without one that was impossible. Trying to batter the door down wasn’t a good idea either; firstly, he had no room on his side to tackle it; secondly, it would bring Charles running, and thirdly, the force required would open up his wound. So that would have to be a last resort. But he could scour the cellar for something he could use as a tool.
It was only as he crawled across the floor, groping with his hands for anything useful, and reached the coal again, that it came to him that it must have been dropped in there through a hole. He’d watched coalmen delivering it to big houses as a boy and just outside the house there was always a round plate like a manhole cover, which they lifted off.
He reached up above his head with both arms, and his fingers met the cellar ceiling. But it hurt so much, with sharp pains shooting through his chest and shoulder, that he felt faint again.
The logical place to start looking for the coalhole cover was where there was the most coal, and as he crawled over it, with it digging into his knees and the dust making him sneeze, his hands found a familiar object. A shovel.
He felt a moment of exhilaration, for apart from it being a tool to hit either Belle or Charles with if they came down, he could also hack at the door with it.
Using it like a walking stick to support himself, he made a fingertip search of the ceiling with his right hand. To his delight he found the round metal hole cover, but it wouldn’t budge when he tried pushing at it. Furthermore, he couldn’t see even the tiniest chink of light around it either.
He was fairly certain by the dimensions of the cellar, and the position of the door that led out into the hall, that the coalhole was on the side of the house where the dining room was. Was it covered in gravel? Could a heavy plant pot be on top of it? How much noise would it make if he thumped it with the shovel handle?
Taking the 10-pence piece from his pocket, he pushed it into the rim of the hole and began scraping.
All his adult life he’d done hard physical work, humping heavy doors, roof timbers and window frames. He was used to working under cramped conditions, in extreme cold and heat, yet he’d never known anything as hard as trying to free something with a coin, and only using one hand, while standing precariously on coal in total darkness.
His shoulder and neck hurt as he scraped, he had to keep his eyes shut to prevent the dirt getting into them, and all the time he could feel his shirt becoming more sodden with blood. More alarming was the way he was wheezing, and he wondered if the knife had punctured his lung after all. But he wasn’t going to start thinking about that, and carried on scraping and scraping with determination, for if he stopped to rest it would take valuable time to locate the cover again.
As he worked, he tried to think what Charles and Belle intended to do with him. If he were in their shoes, he would get a boat, take the body across the Forth and dump it close to Leith docks. There was a chance then that when it washed up somewhere, the police might think he had been stabbed in a mugging, then thrown into the sea. But to make that look plausible, his car would have to be driven back to Edinburgh and left parked close to the flat.
Maybe that was where they were now? Getting rid of his car would be t
he priority. Was Belle driving it and Charles following in his car to bring her back?
They might not think of a boat, because as far as Stuart was aware neither of them had ever sailed one. But perhaps Charles knew someone who would help him?
Fielding sprang into his mind. He was just the kind of maggot Charles used to surround himself with when he was playing the big shot in London. Jackie could have introduced the two men at some point, and if Fielding had Calder in his pocket, maybe he’d passed on the information about the deed of gift and the new will?
Finding out about the deed of gift would certainly have been enough to send Belle into a blind rage and driven her to attack Jackie. But the dates were all wrong. Ted said he witnessed the document before Christmas, and Jackie wasn’t killed until the following May.
And Stuart was absolutely certain Belle hadn’t known about the new will before he told her today. Her shock and dismay were too real.
Yet Charles was quite cool about it, so maybe he knew.
Stuart couldn’t put a finger on what Fielding’s role in all this was, but he was certain he did have one. Maybe he’d struck a deal with Charles that he would get Calder to suppress the new will for a percentage of what Belle would inherit in the old one?
But that still didn’t explain why Belle killed Jackie when she did, or even why Calder didn’t just destroy the new will.
A tiny sliver of light coming through the edge of the coalhole cover distracted Stuart from his ponderings, and in his excitement he redoubled his efforts to scrape more dirt away.
But excitement made him less cautious. He slipped on the coal and dropped his coin. He knew that he could never find it in the darkness. He slumped down dejectedly on to the coal. Sweat was pouring off him and he sensed it wasn’t just because of the exertion. The loss of blood was weakening him, he could feel it seeping right down into his trousers and across the back of his shirt, and it hurt to breathe.
He looked up at the tiny crack of light and knew that even if he did manage to get the cover off, he was too weak now to be able to haul himself up through it. He was going to die here.
He lay back on the coal and closed his eyes wearily, but instead of the blankness he wanted, Laura’s face jumped up. He could see her as she was when he first met her in Castle Douglas: shiny dark hair, long, suntanned legs, limpid dark eyes and a smile that rivalled the beauty of that morning. He compared that picture with the more recent one, and found that although there were a few lines around her eyes and her lips were not quite so plump, it wasn’t so different. Her hair was shorter now, and more red than dark, but little else had changed. She was still beautiful to him. And he still wanted her.
‘Then you must get out of here,’ a small voice spoke within his head. ‘Don’t think about yourself, just think of Laura. She shouldn’t be in prison, and you’ve got to get her freed. You can do that if you get out of here.’
It took a real effort to get to his feet and grab the shovel, he felt so dizzy, and pains were shooting though his chest. But he turned the shovel upside down, and grasping it firmly by the digging end, he thrust it upwards and hit the coalhole cover with the handle. The cover didn’t move, but a great deal more dirt came showering down over him, and once he’d wiped his eyes he saw the chink of light had spread half-way around the cover.
He repeated it again, then again. His chest hurt so much it felt as if someone was burning him with hot coals, and blood was pumping out of the wound at an alarming rate. But he could feel movement in the cover and that was enough to keep him hammering away at it.
He guessed that if he’d had something to stand on, it would now be loose enough to push off, but he hadn’t. He paused, weighing up the situation, and felt that if he could just hit it hard enough once, the cover would lift and tip back on to the ground outside.
He was in agony now, his shirt was soaked in blood, and he knew his pulse was growing weak. ‘For you, Laura,’ he muttered as he braced himself firmly on the coal. Grasping the shovel, he tried to shut out the pain and gather together his fast-depleting strength. ‘One, two,’ he counted. On three he thrust the shovel upwards with all the force he could muster.
A dull clang and the metal cover lifted. As daylight flooded in, he realized that yet another thrust was necessary to tip it completely off the hole. He braced himself yet again, every muscle in his body screaming for him to stop, but he ignored this and once again forced the shovel up. This time the cover was right off, but he fell backwards down on to the coal.
Even as he lay there panting and sweating, welcome fresh air wafting down on to his face, he knew he couldn’t rest. Belle and Charles could come back at any moment, and he sensed he was only minutes away from total collapse.
With daylight streaming in, he could see how much blood he’d lost now – his shirt and trousers were completely soaked. But the next part was going to be even harder because he’d got to pull himself up by his hands, with arms which were already weak from the wound.
Embedding the shovel in the coal, he reached up for the edge of the hole, then prepared to lift one leg, ready to use the shovel as a springboard to launch his upper body far enough out of the hole to get free.
He knew it was unstable, but he reckoned if he could do it fast enough, it would work. He could only have one shot at it, for he sensed that a single leap would all but finish him.
Bracing himself, his fingers gripping the rim of the hole, he put his right foot on the handle of the shovel. ‘One, two, three,’ he counted, then jumped upwards.
His left shoulder jarred on the metal rim of the hole, sending shock waves down to the wound so close to it, but somehow he managed to spread his arms outside and slowly and painfully haul his body through.
The bright sunshine hurt his dust-filled eyes, his head was swimming, his legs like rubber, and the pain in his chest was excruciating. As he took the first few steps down the short drive to the gate, he felt as if he was in the middle of one of those dreams where he was being chased and trying to run but his legs were too heavy to move.
He willed himself not to faint until he reached the house next door.
‘He banged on our door just as we were sitting down to dinner,’ Mrs Edith Cameron told the two policemen who had arrived just seconds after the ambulance. ‘I couldn’t believe it. He looked like something from a horror film, all black with coal dust and soaked in blood. He could barely manage to speak, but what he did say was clear enough for me. Belle Howell stabbed him, and locked him in the cellar to die.’
Edith and her husband Henry were sedate pensioners who had lived in Crail for most of their married life. They had little to do with the Howells, and the high wall between Kirkmay House and their home meant they rarely even saw them. Edith was deeply shocked that such a thing could happen anywhere, let alone right next door to her.
‘Is he going to be all right?’ Henry Cameron asked as he watched the ambulance men lifting the injured man from his hall floor on to a stretcher.
‘His pulse is very weak and he’s lost a great deal of blood. It doesn’t look good,’ the ambulance man replied. ‘Do you know his name?’
Henry shook his head. ‘He passed out before we could ask him anything.’
The stretcher was wheeled down the garden path and lifted into the ambulance. Another minute and it was roaring off with its siren wailing.
‘Now, Mr and Mrs Cameron, if you could just run through again what happened?’ the older of the two policeman asked.
‘You’d better come into the sitting room.’ Mrs Cameron could see a bunch of people gathering on the other side of Marketgate. ‘What a shock it gave us! Are you going in next door to arrest the Howells?’
16
‘Hi, Patrick! Have you any idea where Stuart is?’ David asked breezily when he phoned the lawyer’s office.
David had rung his friend at the flat a couple of times in the last week, because he and Julia thought the kids might enjoy some time in Edinburgh seeing the sights before they we
nt back to London, and he wanted to know if Stuart could put them up. When he got no reply, David assumed his friend had gone off somewhere for a job.
Today, with only a few more days left before they had to give up their holiday cottage in the Highlands, David thought he’d ring Goldsmith and ask if he had a contact number.
‘In the hospital in Kirkcaldy,’ Patrick replied.
‘Hospital!’ David exclaimed. ‘Why, what’s wrong with him?’
‘Surely you heard about it on the news or read about it in the newspapers?’ Patrick said, sounding puzzled. ‘It got blanket coverage.’
David felt his stomach churn over. ‘There’s no television in the cottage we’re staving at,’ he said hurriedly. ‘And I haven’t bought a newspaper since I got here. Tell me what’s happened.’
‘He was stabbed and imprisoned by the Howells out in Crail,’ Patrick began.
‘You what!’ David exclaimed. His stomach lurched again and he had to fumble for a chair to sit down on. Julia looked at him in alarm and mouthed, ‘What’s happened?’
She came and put her ear to the back of the phone as Patrick explained what he knew of the events of nine days earlier and how Stuart had eventually managed to escape to the house next door where they called an ambulance for him. ‘He was close to death,’ Patrick said, and unusually for him his voice shook with emotion. ‘Thankfully he’s out of danger now, but it’s been a very worrying time.’
It was a tremendous shock to David, and what he wanted was a detailed account of everything that had happened, what was said, done, the extent of Stuart’s injuries and how he escaped, but frustratingly, although Patrick was clearly deeply concerned about Stuart, he was still being his usual cagey self, and seemed inclined to give him only the barest of facts, namely, that Stuart’s lung had been punctured.
‘Come on, Patrick,’ David exclaimed in frustration. ‘Why did he go there? Why did they attack him, and have the Howells been arrested?’
‘I don’t know what he was doing there, or how it came about,’ Patrick admitted. ‘But Belle and Charles were arrested later the same evening, and charged with attempted murder. When they appeared in court briefly thirty-six hours later, they were refused bail and remanded in custody pending further investigations.’
Faith Page 45
