Faith - Lesley Pearse [202]
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 went 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.’