The Coffin Lane Murders (21 page)

And looking at his face, serene, unruffled, Faro realised they were trying to reason with a madman who had convinced himself that his fantastic plan to escape was logical. These were the reasonings of an unhinged mind which could end in tragedy, for Conan himself but more important for Vince's son.

As Conan walked to the door, still covering Jamie with his pistol, the child looked across at Vince and Faro and as if aware of some danger, he began to cry, 'Papa - Jamie want Papa.'

'Quiet,' said Conan fiercely, and holding him fast he backed out of the door and clanged it shut behind him.

As Faro and Vince rushed forward, a key turned.

They heard him clattering downstairs, Jamie's wailing cries echoing back to them.

Chapter 23

As Jamie's cries died away in the distance both men were already hurling their combined weight against the door, the only exit from the stone chamber. They shouted for help but with scant hope that anyone would hear. Kate was dead. Conan had told them. But where was Sir Hedley?

At last their renewed efforts succeeded and the ancient lock, rusted with damp and disuse in the crumbling stone wall, gave way. They fled downstairs, every moment precious. Sir Hedley did not answer their call and they dared not delay searching for him.

On the road, Vince cursed. The carriage had gone. 'I should have guessed. Brent has orders to let Conan use it at any time.'

'Which way?' gasped Faro.

'He has to head towards the loch where the road widens before he can turn round.'

Thankful that the unmelted banks of snow had made the narrow road impassable, they ran swiftly in the direction the carriage had taken.

'We'll stop him on the way back,' shouted Vince breathlessly. 'Come on.'

Using every last ounce of energy they possessed they ran. Around them the fast-growing dusk had brought a fine drizzle which turned swiftly to sleet, driving horizontally into their faces, but they hardly noticed it.

At last a carriage came towards them. But not Vince's. A man leaned out, alerted by their agitation.

'Going to the accident, are you?'

'What accident?' choked Vince.

'Back at the loch there. Coachman trying to turn on the road. Overturned, I think-'

Chilled with new terror, they waited no longer.

'Jamie, oh my God, Jamie,' Vince cried, and they ran, stumbling, sobbing for breath towards the loch.

The carriage was there, lurched dangerously to one side while a dazed-looking Brent sat at the roadside, holding the horse's reins.

There was no sign of Conan or Jamie.

'Are you hurt?' said Vince.

'No damage done, sir. Just a bit bruised.' Scrambling to his feet he patted the horse soothingly. 'Jock's fine, too. But the wheel's off. I was just getting my breath back-'

'Where is Dr Pursley?' demanded Faro.

Brent looked around. 'I don't know, sir. I think I must have blacked out for a second. When I came to the doctor and the wee boy weren't inside any longer. Thank God they weren't hurt.'

Darkness was descending rapidly, the heavy clouds already turning from icy sleet to snow. Before them lay the deserted loch with its warning notice: 'Danger. Keep Off. Ice thawing.'

'Over there,' Faro pointed. 'Look, Vince. See them?

A solitary figure was running across the ice, heading towards the railway line on the far side of the loch.

Ignoring danger they set off in pursuit, slithering and sliding, Faro clutching Vince's arm to stop himself falling.

'Wait,' he said and looked at his watch. 'The train from Musselburgh - listen!'

They could hear the distant vibrations of its wheels echoing across the stillness.

The ice too began to vibrate. With snow in their faces, hampering visibility, they ran.

Ran ...

Conan was still forty feet away and they were gaining on him when the ice cracked under him.

An explosion.

They heard him scream as the grey-white waters closed over him.

'Jamie, Jamie,' called Vince, the tears flowing down his face, mingling with the snow. 'My little Jamie.'

'Hold on, lad. We must go carefully,' warned Faro as Vince plunged ahead. 'Easy now.'

They crawled on hands and knees to the edge where Conan had disappeared. There were bubbles on the surface. A movement.

Conan's face and an arm appeared briefly six feet away. He gave gurgling cry for help, and then the waters reclaimed him.

And then Faro saw it, the sight he had most dreaded.

'Look,' said Vince, his voice a hoarse scream.

A few feet away something bobbed up and down in the icy water.

Jamie's bonnet.

Faro seized Vince's arm. 'We'll get him. We can save him, lad, he'll be fine.'

Vince shook his head, and sobbed, 'He can't be fine. Stepfather. You know that. My Jamie's dead. He murdered him.'

'No.
No
. Come on.'

Face down, they edged their way along the ice floe as close as they could get to the drifting bonnet.

But there was little hope in either heart, nothing bur the bitterness of bereavement, the grief of unbearable loss.

At that moment they heard a sound.

At first Faro thought it was one of the geese, a wild bird coming in to land on the ice.

'Listen. Listen-'

There it was again.

Not a bird call, but a voice. For them the most beloved small voice in the whole world.

'Papa - Papa-'

Jamie was alive.

'Pa-pa
.'

'Jamie!'

They looked around, mystified. The voice did not come from the icy water. It came from some twenty feet away, over to their left, clear of the broken ice.

And there was Jamie, unharmed, sitting on an old tree-trunk which the thawed ice had thrown up.

They rushed to him, sobbing with joy.

Vince clutched the child to his heart, held him as if he'd never let go again. And Faro hugged them both, tears coursing down his cheeks.

'Best get back to dry land,' said Faro. 'Come on.'

At the carriage, Brent with a couple of local lads had fixed the wheel, and they bundled Jamie inside.

'Ready to go, sir. All mended. Do we wait for Dr Pursley?'

'No.'

Inside the carriage Jamie protested as Vince ran gentle hands over his arms and legs, while Faro watched anxiously.

Relieved, Vince shook his head. 'He's quite unhurt, thank God.'

'We must get his wet clothes off,' said Faro.

'Wait a moment,' Vince replied in amazement. 'His clothes are quite dry.'

Dry clothes meant that he had never been in the water.

Did this indicate that Conan had had a last-minute change of heart, released him when he knew capture was inevitable?

'Soon have you home,' said Vince consolingly as Jamie began to whimper.

'Naughty C'nan,' he sobbed. 'Not let Jamie go. I scared.'

Faro and Vince exchanged glances.

'Bad C'nan go into water. I scared,' Jamie repeated.

'What happened, precious?' said his father gently.

The child smiled. 'Nice lady lift Jamie' - he pointed -'up into sky.'

'What lady, darling?'

'Nice lady. In air. All blue-' He regarded his small clenched fist, held it to his cheek.

'Show Papa, Jamie.'

Smiling brilliantly at them, he opened his hand. In it was a small piece of wood. His toy of the moment, the wood Sir Hedley had given him, all that the niche in the old Templars' Chapel contained.

The secret of the owl moons clasper.

Faro and Vince stared at all the treasure the chapel had ever contained. A fragment of a tree the Templars had brought with them so reverently from Jerusalem, believing it to be from the Sacred Cross where the Son of God hung crucified.

Chapter 24

It was the worst Christmas any of them could remember, one they were never to forget.

Kate dead, Conan pulled drowned from the loch, Sir Hedley seriously ill. Obstinately he refused to go to a hospital, grumbled that he was an old man and all he wanted was to die in his own bed surrounded by his beloved cats.

Arrangements were made by Vince, who was looking after him, for a nurse to live in.

There were other grimmer arrangements, but before the funerals of Kate and Conan, came the anguish of breaking such terrible news to the Pursleys.

No police duty in Faro's entire career had ever equalled this. He would spare them the truth, give out the story that authority had accepted. How Conan, distraught over his wife's death, had wandered on to the loch and fallen through the ice.

He would delegate to the Glasgow City Police the distressing task of telling Dora Milthorpe that her bigamous husband had died, leaving her child fatherless. Whatever tact they used, a heartbroken young woman was left to face the world with Conan's son.

After that, silence. There had been enough suffering and Faro was once again unrepentant about concealing the whole truth. But Conan had been right. He had no absolute proof apart from the confession overheard by Vince.

White-faced with shock, William Pursley listened horrified to the terrible news Inspector Faro brought him that Christmas Eve.

He was alone. He would tell Maggie himself when she returned from the Carol Service.

'It is better coming from me,' he said forlornly.

Watching Faro keenly, he said hesitantly, 'There is a story to tell, Inspector. One I never dreamed of telling anyone. I think in all fairness you are the one who should hear it from me. Especially with the poor lad being deranged like that, drowning himself - not able to face life without poor Kate.'

William pulled himself together and spoke with difficulty as he tried to suppress his overwhelming sadness. 'Such a terrible death is also a nightmare coincidence. You see, Conan isn't our child. We fostered him, saved him from drowning. In remarkably similar circumstances which we've tried to put behind us through the years, to forget.'

He smiled sadly. 'We've persuaded ourselves that he was our own bairn, the one we lost so long ago, before we came to Glasgow. His real mother was unmarried, the laird's only sister. They were left orphans and her brother inherited the title when he was fourteen and she was twelve. They were a strange pair, close as twins and he was violently possessive about her.

'I remember her as a pretty, quiet sort of lass, and there were plenty of suitors by the time she was into her teens. There was her fortune too. We must never forget that lure in high society marriages. But although they were short of money, the estate and house neglected, her brother was determined that she should never marry. Any male visitor who looked at her twice was quickly turned away.'

He sighed. 'It reached the stage that they became recluses instead of having the sort of social life young people in their position should have enjoyed. Eventually there were rumours, a maid dismissed, hints that she had seen - well, goings-on between them.

'Rumours ran rife and spread quickly, especially as the young mistress was seen to be pregnant. And who was the father, since no visitors came any more and the poor young lass was virtually her brother's prisoner? Suspicion grew, naturally, that he was responsible for her condition, especially when she walked into the lake and tried to drown herself and the newborn baby.

'You'll remember that I was factor there before I took up the landscape gardening and by the merest chance I was out fishing on the lake. It was dusk and I heard the shouting and the commotion, saw her being pulled out screaming but alive. And alone.

'The laird told me angrily to go about my business when I rowed over to help. I did as I was bid but I can tell you I watched those waters carefully for a sign of the poor drowned bairn. Then as I was mooring the boat near our croft, I heard crying, no louder than the mewing of a kitten. And there was this tiny babe, wrapped in a shawl, lying in the reeds.

'I didn't know what to do, but some instinct told me not to take him back to the castle, but to let Maggie see him first. We'd just lost our second bairn with convulsions - our wee Conan.'

He paused and, remembering, smiled. 'Maggie just took him in her arms. She still had plenty milk and she said it was a miracle he'd survived. I didn't know what to do but Maggie insisted that we couldn't take the wee soul back, that if his mother didn't succeed in killing him with neglect, then his uncle, who was also his father, would certainly find some means of putting an end to him.'

Pausing, he shook his head. 'Our young laird was no credit to any of us. A scoundrel and a tyrant who had seduced his sister, still a child, and driven her to attempting suicide.

'So we said nothing and passed the bairn off as our Conan. There was no need to worry, the laird never showed the slightest interest in his tenants' lives or their welfare. And he had never been known to visit any of the estate cottages. They hated him for his meanness and neglect so we knew that we could trust them.