However, it too had now returned.
He walked away from the window into their bedroom where a locked, strong-ribbed chest had its place and opened it with a large key that was hidden high on the shelves.
These boys got in everywhere; they had arrived late, not six years before, and were making up for lost time.
He and Kirstie had almost given up hope but then they had been twice blessed.
The farmer had a lot to lose.
He reached into the chest and took out a dark piece of oilcloth, which he unwrapped to reveal a long revolver. It shone in the light for he had taken good care of it over the years but the gun contained only the one bullet.
As he replaced the cloth, he saw buried deep in the chest the white piece of linen that held his grandfather’s watch. A fine thick timepiece shattered all these years ago when a bullet smashed into its body at the Leith docks.
Saved his life. No denying that. The bullet still in place. Buried in broken time.
Below that was a hint of uniform grey.
He closed the chest, locked it, carefully replaced the key, for he was a careful man, and returned to the main room and kitchen where the family lived and ate. The revolver he placed inside a drawer in an old sideboard that butted up against the wall. It would be easy to reach under pretext.
Just as he did so, there was a knock at the door.
When he opened, a man stood there.
‘I am James McLevy, inspector of police,’ he said. ‘My parish is Leith in the city of Edinburgh. May we come in, if you please, sir?’
The farmer without a word let Mulholland and McLevy make entrance. He showed no curiosity but poured out two glasses of water from a large jug on the table.
‘Hospitality costs little,’ he said at last.
They saw a tall whipcord man, with fair hair that was thinning a touch, hazel-eyed and hook-nosed. His face was craggy and lined like the land he tilled and a beard trimmed neatly enough with a darker colour than the hair, flecks of grey here and there.
There was a resemblance of sorts to the soldier in the picture McLevy had seen on the wall, but time changes us all.
The man still said nothing so the inspector gulped the water thirstily then started in.
It had been a long road via Jean Brash who had reluctantly supplied the requested details, when reminded that if it were not for McLevy she would still be drinking Sergeant Murdoch’s vile brew and looking forward to a slow death in the Perth penitentiary.
Armed with a name and geographical location she gave out, they had travelled by coach towards the town of Kinross to check the local records, and there come up lucky.
Kirstie Donnachie, a native of these parts, had left for a while then come back with a new husband and taken over the family farm; her widowed father had died of a lingering illness some time after her return.
The farm was registered in her name; the husband’s coincidentally was the same appellation.
John Donnachie.
The policemen had then hired a pony and trap to take them to the farm but the driver had flatly refused to bring his precious cart up the heavily rutted road.
So, after agreeing a time for him to come back, they had walked the rest.
While Mulholland nursed his partially healed wound through all these different journeys, McLevy had brought him fully up to date with the twists and turns of the bizarre events. Bullets flying everywhere, bodies left and right.
‘Whit would your Aunt Katie say tae all that?’ he had asked, as they jolted in the coach to Kinross.
The farmer had not made a single unnecessary move since allowing them entry and his very stillness was a sign for caution. He did not sit nor ask them to do the same.
Mulholland eased aside his policeman’s cape to give better access to his hornbeam stick should the need arise, as his inspector began the tale.
‘You are here known as John Donnachie,’ McLevy said to the man. ‘But I believe you to be Jonathen Sinclair, an officer in the Confederate Army sent tae buy ships for to run the blockade. Eighteen years ago.
‘You were in fact betrayed to the Federal agents and shot at in the Leith Docks. The bullet hit and down ye went, yet by some miracle you survived, eh?’
John Donnachie was seemingly unsurprised by the details at McLevy’s fingertips. He thought once more of his grandfather’s watch that he always had worn high, over the heart, and finally spoke.
‘Miracles can happen, sir.’
In his words it might be possible to catch some cadence of the South but the man had assimilated the local accent well enough.
Protective colouration. A shape-changer. Proteus.
‘Right enough,’ said McLevy. ‘As the killer stooped over tae finish the job no doubt, you quite rightly shot him in your turn. Self-defence, no argument there, though the letter of the law might argue otherwise.’
The inspector poured out another glass of water and slugged it back. Thirsty work.
‘But it’s what ye did next that more catches at my concern. You were witnessed to change clothing with this man then blow his face tae buggery. I trust he was dead first.’
The farmer inclined his head slightly, but no more than that.
‘Now I have read all your letters, sir. And I believe I can fathom the cause behind your actions.’
‘My letters?’
‘To your wife. I’ll get tae that later.’
For the first time the man seemed taken aback and his eyes shifted to Mulholland.
‘Don’t look at me,’ said the constable. ‘I’m just along for the ride.’
For a moment a glance passed between him and the inspector; no matter how uncanny the circumstance it was good to be in tandem once more.
‘I believe your soul was sick of war. Death. All that made you what you were and held you fast. You saw this as an opportunity to find another life. To leave it all behind.’
John Donnachie closed his eyes.
This man who had come from out of the blue, with his white parchment face and slate grey eyes, would seem to know the depth of his very being.
It was the truth. He had indeed been sick in his soul to the point where he no longer cared, no longer felt that life had any meaning. Only death. In that fine state, he had strayed, fallen, gone to a bawdy-hoose, a low-class place to further abase himself and there met a girl new arrived from the country.
Kirstie Donnachie.
A small girl, bright-eyed, dark-haired, with a low centre of gravity.
In anger she had left a demanding father and come to the city for excitement. Instead she had found whoredom.
And then she had found him.
When he sighted down the pistol at William Mitchell, it was indeed himself he was destroying.
Even the hair colour was the same. Only the face was different. And then there was no face to worry over.
He left his papers on the body along with his wedding ring jammed upon the dead finger and returned to his lodging to collect some pitifully few belongings, one of which was his old Confederate uniform.
To honour John Findhorn if nothing more.
As for his wife, Melissa?
That was a dream. A dream he no longer believed in. She would manage. The South would lose but her family were rich – she’d make a pretty widow and would find someone else.
They had no children. Nothing to hold them together.
So he had grabbed Kirstie from the Happy Land and they had run like two children far, far away from the city,
