Death of a Valentine - M. C. Beaton [31]
Then it dawned on him that such knowledge was money and money meant escape.
When he finished work, he went out into the yard at the back of the bakery and lit a cigarette, a new vice. He took out his mobile phone and, looking around to make sure no one was about, dialled a number he had looked up in the phone book in the bakery.
When the phone was answered, he asked to be put through to the person he wanted to speak to. “I know you killed Annie. She said you threatened her. Pay me two thousand pounds or I’ll go to the police. You know the war memorial on the hill above Braikie? Well, be there at midnight with the money or I’ll go straight to the police.”
The voice answered in the affirmative and rang off. Mark stood there, his heart beating hard. He would go to London! Maybe he would be in a bar and this film star would chat him up and take him back with her to Hollywood. He would get away from his home where the new baby cried all night. What was his mother thinking about to go and have another child? And who was the father? She wouldn’t say. Mark’s own father had left his mother shortly after he was born. The church had been a comfort for a while on the long Scottish Sabbath days, but it had let him down in the presence of Annie and her father.
He went back into the bakery and collected four mutton pies which had got a bit bashed and so he was allowed to take them home. There will be no mutton pies in London, he thought.
Mark felt very nervous but he did not drink that evening. He was frightened of falling asleep. Before midnight, he crept quietly out of the house and made his way through all the sleeping silent streets under the light of a cold, pockmarked moon. The streetlights were switched off to save energy. The great stars of Sutherland blazed overhead.
He walked through the town and up the grassy hillock where the war memorial stood, black against the starry sky. He glanced at the luminous dial of his watch. Five minutes to go. He looked up at the sky and saw that the northern lights had started to blaze in all their swirling glory. He had only seen them once before. What was it they called them in school? The aurora borealis, that was it. He felt the very heavens were celebrating the soon-to-happen escape of one Mark Lussie. Then he heard the town clock strike midnight and tore his gaze from the magnificence of the heavens and looked down the hill to watch for anyone approaching.
He never heard the step behind him. A knife was thrust savagely into the back of his neck. Rough hands searched his pockets after he had slumped to the ground and took his mobile phone. Then his assailant crept away.
Mark lay dying as the lifeblood pumped out from the wound in his neck. As the lights of the aurora borealis moved and swirled across the sky, Mark Lussie finally went on his last great journey.
Roger Burton, Barry Fitzcameron’s hit man, crouched behind the sheep shed up on Hamish’s croft. He had instructions to make it look like an accident. But he planned to wait until Hamish Macbeth was asleep, get into the station, and simply shoot him. It would be easy to get into the police station. He had noticed one of the fishermen knocking at the door, carrying two fish. When he didn’t get a reply, he had felt in the guttering above the kitchen door, taken down a key, and unlocked the door. Then he had come out a few moments later, relocked the door, and put the key back up in the gutter. Because Barry had thought Roger meant to stage an accident and because the person to be killed was a police sergeant, he had paid him generously up front. Roger meant to do the deed and clear off to Glasgow.
He waited until Hamish came back and then waited until finally the lights in the police station went off.
He was just about to make his move when the northern lights began to blaze across the sky. He suddenly felt he should leave it—just take Barry’s money and run. But he was a professional and he had a reputation to keep.