Faith - Lesley Pearse [200]
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 the 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