The Bull Slayers: Inspector Faro No 9 (24 page)

To their right lay the battlefield of Flodden. Its closeness made
Faro uneasy, as if the carnage of that September day lingered still,
never to be obliterated by even the rains of three hundred years.
Nor could the blood spilt and the weeping be healed by a million larks and their rapturous song of hope and joy.

He looked down and thought that the screaming ghosts of
dead and dying must forever haunt the rafters where the first
swallows swooped, filling the air with their gentle excited cries.
And that the pale wild flowers opening in the hedgerows must
be forever crimson, blood-tainted.

As they approached the house, there were voices in the
garden. Miss Gilchrist, the twins and Vince were seated under a
shady tree. There was the rattle of teacups, sounds of laughter.

Imogen Crowe looked at Faro, frowning. She understood.
Neither were ready to exchange this sombre past for the jollity
and the light-hearted banter of the present occupants of that
sunny garden.

'Come with me.' Faro led the way down the hill towards the
site of the battle. 'Here ten thousand men - fathers, sons,
brothers - entire families - the flower of Scottish nobility - fell,
wiped out in a few hours.'

At his side she said: 'Can you take it so calmly, you a Scot?'

Faro smiled. 'I'm no more Scottish that you are. I've told you
that. I'm Orcadian by birth.'

She looked at him sharply. 'Of course, that's why you're so
different from the rest.'

'Am I? In what way?'

She jabbed a finger at him. 'You are Viking - pure Viking. I
thought that the very first day I saw you. Put a horned helmet
on him, I said, and every woman within miles would run
screaming -'

'I didn't realise I was such a monster as all that,' Faro
interrupted in wounded tones.

'You didn't let me finish - I hadn't said in which direction they
were running,' she ended impishly with a mocking coquettish
glance that left him feeling not only contrite but highly
vulnerable.

Their arrival in the garden was greeted warmly and their long
absence commented on, but as the maid brought out
refreshments the weather was changing, grey skies, like an army
of vengeful ghosts, creeping over the battlefield.

Miss Gilchrist shivered and said they had better go indoors.

The house was welcoming, alive with flowers, the smells of
ancient wood well waxed and polished. Everything gleamed
with a lifetime's devotion to crystal, pictures and furniture.

But as Faro sat in that cosy atmosphere, his eyes strayed
constantly to the window overlooking the battlefield, astonished
that such peace and tranquillity could exist alongside such
memories of bloody carnage. A few hours that with the death of
King James and his nobles altered the course of Scotland's history
for ever.

After luncheon, they played at cards and, losing as he
invariably did, Faro retired somewhat aggrieved to examine the
well-filled bookshelves. Laughter and teasing comments echoed
from the card table and he looked at the old lady so sensitive
and charming, marvelling that she had lived here alone all her
life. That for her each day and night would pass untroubled by
the scenes the very stones on her doorstep had witnessed and
remembered.

'Lucky at cards, my dear,' she said consolingly, as she also
retired from the fray. 'You know what they say.'

'I don't seem to be lucky in either,' said Faro.

But Miss Gilchrist didn't hear, her eyes on Imogen Crowe
who frowned intently over her hand and then, with a whoop of
triumph, threw them down, fanned wide and called: 'Game - to
me!'

'Imagine Miss Crowe being an authoress,' said Miss Gilchrist admiringly.

'Depends on what - or who - she writes about,' Faro said
drily. Writers made him nervous. He did not want to find himself
pilloried in her next romance. A Viking indeed.

'I am sure she will be very kind to her friends. And discreet
too. Perhaps she'll marry Hector.'

'You think so?'

'Yes, of course. Everyone notices that he is quite captivated
by her. And she seems to encourage him. He is a fine young man
and he deserves a good wife. Mark and Poppy would be pleased too. Sir Archie treated him badly.' Pausing, she studied Imogen
critically. 'And she seems such a lady - for an Irishwoman.'

That made Faro laugh out loud. It was so totally out of
character with his hostess. 'Are there no Irish ladies then?'

Miss Gilchrist frowned. 'There must be, I'm sure - a few. But
most of the ones I've met have been gypsies or vagrants. Not
very clean. And there were occasional Irish servants at the
Castle in my time. Not very clean or very honest either. Twice I
had coins stolen and a brooch I was fond of.'

'Perhaps poor immigrants faced with the necessity of
survival cannot afford high principles,' Faro said gently.
'Famine recognises only the fight for survival.'

When he first came to Edinburgh as a policeman in 1849,
the potato famine was it its height and every boat to Glasgow
and Leith was packed with Irishmen and women and their vast families, ragged, desperate, starving. A terrible sight, his mother
used to weep for them and although the Faros had little, she
gave them money and food - and clothes too when they came
to her door.

'God bless you - and yours,' they'd say.

That was enough for Mrs Faro. For her, money and goods
had nothing to do with it. There were only good people and bad
people and the good ones were welcome to her last crust.

Other than Sergeant Danny McQuinn, the only Irishmen
Faro had encountered as a policeman had bombs in their
pockets and were a constant threat to Her Majesty and a
menace to Edinburgh's law and order. But he felt obliged, as one
who also belonged to a vanquished race, to say a word or two
in defence of another nation similarly and more cruelly affected.

'There have been noble Irish ladies,' he said, 'Like Deirdre of
the Sorrows.'

'Yes, indeed. Such a sad story. And so depressing, like all
their legends. Never a happy ending anywhere. Indeed, when
they are honest they are so mournful.'

Faro was not to be defeated. He pressed on. 'There were saints
among them too. Patrick and Columba who brought Christianity
from Ireland when the rest of Britain were all heathens.'

Miss Gilchrist stiffened. She was not convinced. 'But our St George was a knight,' she said proudly. 'And he slew dragons.'

They went down to the little church at Evensong. For his own
reasons Faro would have preferred to remain where he was but
politeness demanded that he accompany them.

The vicar, recognising Miss Gilchrist had brought strangers
who swelled out his tiny congregation, was eager to give a good
report of his church. Proudly he welcomed the visitors from the pulpit: 'These walls sheltered the dead of both warring nations
after Flodden. There are no enemies once death has ruled the
line. Then men are all equal, all differences forgiven in the
blood of Christ.'

When they trooped out afterwards, Faro, always a practical man, considered that frenzied burial, with a nightmare vision of
what ten thousand corpses heaped together looked like to the
men whose task it was to bury them.

Half hoping there might be some forgotten memorial among
the scattered tombstones, he wandered around reading
inscriptions, deciphering weathered stones with their skulls and
crossbones, their intimations of mortality.

There were names famous on both sides of the border:
Elliott, Armstrong, Scott - so many young people. Thirty to
forty was the average age. And there were sad reminders. A
'relict' aged nineteen, 'beloved wife aged twenty-three' with an
infant one week old.

Like his Lizzie, many had died in childbirth. Children too.
Died in infancy. 'Died in an accident - Elrigg - aged eleven.'

He was still staring at the stone, aware suddenly of Vince
looking over his shoulder. He whistled softly and pointed to the
stone. 'I think you have found your murderer, Stepfather.'

But Faro was still unconvinced.

Miss Gilchrist's party having been invited to dinner with the
local doctor, the twins were returning to Edinburgh next day
and they had persuaded their great-aunt, much against her will,
to allow Vince to sleep that night on the very comfortable sofa
in the parlour.

The arrangement pleased him. 'I like to be informal and I
love this house.'

Imogen Crowe declined his somewhat reluctant invitation to
share the governess cart back to Elrigg. Her excuse that Hector
was coming for her later was a relief for Faro, who pleaded a necessary return to the inn before setting out on holiday with
Vince.

As Faro paid his bill at the Elrigg Arms, Bowden said: 'By the
way, a lad came a while ago with a message from Mr Hector
Elrigg. You're to meet him at the hillfort. He said it was urgent.'

The fickle weather had changed once again and it would be
dark soon. A dull evening, heavy with mist, and Faro was
suddenly reluctant to leave the warm fire.

Vince would say: 'Let well alone, leave it. The case is closed.'

But Faro was tempted. This might be the last link in the
evidence. He told himself of course it wasn't necessary, but to ferret out the truth was the habit of a lifetime. He had to know
the murderer's identity for his own satisfaction, otherwise he
would always be plagued by a case unfinished, a question
forever posed.

He realised that the mist was thicker than ever on the road.
The ground underfoot was wet with visibility limited to a few
yards, a few ghostly hedgerows. He shivered as the atmosphere
gripped him like a clammy shroud. Peering into the gloom, he
realised that the standing stones had also vanished, hidden
behind that dense grey curtain.

At the boundary fence he hesitated, caring little for the idea
of crossing the open pastureland to the hillfort. The mist now
clung heavily to his eyelashes, blinding him. He blinked, feeling
sick with apprehension, searching the mist for shadows and
finding them. He remembered being told that the cattle come
down from the hill in bad weather, nearer the road, seeking
shelter. Now he fancied he could hear them, the grass rustling.
And smell them too.

Something rose in front of him, large and white...

He stood still, heart-thumping, prepared for flight as a
solitary sheep rushed off bleating at his approach.

He breathed again. Then the sound of hoofs, heavy this time.

A stray horse, riderless, swerved from his path, whinnied and
disappeared.

Another shadow.

A man. The outline of head and shoulders, a soft-moving,
gliding shadow.

'Hector! Hector?' he called. 'Over here.'

The air behind him was cut by a whirring sound.
Instinctively, swiftly, he ducked and the arrow that was to have
killed him struck his shoulder. He felt the searing agony as he
staggered and tried to reach the shaft of the arrow, to drag it out, aware that he was the target for an excellent archer, one
who could take his time killing him.

Through his own folly, he was going to die.

He should have listened to Vince, heeded more carefully the
clues that had come his way, that pointed undeniably to the
killer...