Peter May - Coffin Road

He said, ‘Detective Sergeant Gunn has asked me to invite you to help him with his inquiries.’

‘Has he? And if I decline?’

‘I’ll have to arrest you.’

I tried a smile, but it probably didn’t seem like one. ‘Then that’s an offer I can’t really refuse, is it?’

There was not a flicker in his face. ‘I’ll be driving you to Stornoway, sir. It might be advisable to bring a toothbrush and pack some underwear. In case we don’t get back tonight.’

I thought, So this is what volunteering to help the police with their inquiries is like.

At least he didn’t make me sit in the back of the car, like a prisoner. I sat up front in the passenger seat beside him, with my overnight bag on my knees, and saw Mrs Macdonald watching from her window as we turned out on to the single-track road.

Towards the end of the road, where it meets the A859, we passed a man out walking. He moved on to the verge as he heard us coming, and turned as the car drove by. It was the man from the caravan across the bay. I recognised his distinctive stoop and long, tangled hair. He wore a shabby green parka, with a pair of binoculars on a strap dangling around his neck, and carried a walking stick. A worn and torn cloth cap was pulled down on his brow, but for the first time I saw his face quite clearly. It was a long, guarded face with a cultivation of several days’ growth on it. His eyes were dark and, in the moment that they met mine, seemed almost black.

But it was a moment that passed in the blink of an eye, and then he was gone. I glanced in the wing mirror and saw him move out on to the road again, to resume his walk. We rounded a bend in the road and he vanished from view.

I am not sure how long my interview with Gunn lasted. When we arrived in Stornoway I was taken into the police station through a back entrance. We passed a charge bar from behind which a uniformed sergeant glowered at me, and in a corridor off to my right I saw doors opening into cells on either side of it. The interview room where I am sitting now is somewhere upstairs. There is a table, the chair I am sitting in and two chairs opposite. A window looks down into a courtyard, and I can see a yellow-painted roughcast wall.

I know that Mr Gunn found my answers to his questions irritating. I am sure that he thought I was just being difficult, or obstructive, covering up my role in the murder of the man they found on Eilean Mòr. My difficulty was that I could not say with any degree of certainty whether I had killed him or not.

He came into the room with another officer, whom he named when identifying those present for the benefit of a digital recording machine. But I don’t remember the name. Just that he was tall and thin and never once opened his mouth. But his eyes, any time I looked at him, spoke volumes. I was guilty as sin.

We got off to a bad start, and Gunn’s veneer of patience quickly wore thin. ‘You are Neal David Maclean, is that correct?’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Gunn, I really can’t say.’

He gave me a look. ‘Can’t or won’t?’

‘Can’t.’

He frowned, and I could see the wheels turning behind his eyes as he decided how to proceed. ‘Neal David Maclean is the name under which you have been living at Dune Cottage, Luskentyre, for the last eighteen months, is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘And yet there was nothing in the cottage or carried about your person to confirm your identity. No credit cards, no chequebooks, not even a driver’s licence.’

I nodded. ‘That’s right.’

‘So how do you explain that?’

‘I can’t.’

By now, I am sure, his irritation was morphing into anger, but he hid it well. ‘And the newspaper cuttings on Neal Maclean, and the bundles of cash in the briefcase?’

I shrugged. ‘I found them in the attic, just as you did.’

‘Are you saying you didn’t put them there?’

The more I tried to answer his questions honestly, without telling the truth, the more blind alleys I stumbled into. ‘I think it’s very probable that I did.’

He sat back and drew a long, slow breath before deciding on another tack. ‘You are writing a book about the disappearance of the lighthouse men on the Flannan Isles in the year nineteen hundred, yes?’

‘Apparently.’

‘Well, are you or aren’t you?’ An edge to his voice now.

‘Since neither you nor I can find any trace of a manuscript in the cottage, Mr Gunn, I think we’d probably have to assume that I’m not.’

‘But you’ve been making trips back and forth to the Flannans ostensibly to research it.’

‘From all accounts, yes.’

‘I take it you’re not denying that you went out to the Flannan Isles five days ago in a boat hired from Coinneach Macrae at Rodel?’

‘I’m not, no. And I did, yes.’

‘But you do deny finding a body in the old ruined chapel below the lighthouse?’

I had lied about this yesterday, though every fibre of my being was now screaming, Tell him, tell him, tell him! But I still wasn’t ready to let go. ‘I’d rather not say.’

Which clearly threw him. I could see his eyes narrow, not just with anger or frustration, but from consternation. ‘Yesterday, when we opened up the hut at Dune Cottage, we found all kinds of scientific equipment in it, including what would appear to be the accoutrements of a beekeeper. Do you keep bees, Mr Maclean?’

I nodded. ‘It seems that I do.’

‘Where?’

‘Hidden. Off the coffin road.’

He seemed taken aback by this, and took some moments to frame his next question. ‘When you showed me your hands yesterday, you had what appeared to be several bee stings on them.’

‘Yes.’

‘During the post-mortem on the man found murdered in the old chapel on Eilean Mòr, the pathologist discovered very similar stings on the back of his hands.’

This came as a devastating blow to me. Until now, there had been no link between myself and the dead man. There had been nothing about him that I recognised. But bee stings on our hands? That was an irrefutable connection, beyond the possibility of coincidence, that I couldn’t explain. And it made me even more inclined to believe that perhaps it was me who had killed him. I felt my face redden.

‘Can you explain that?’ Gunn asked.

‘No, officer, I can’t.’

I became aware for the first time, when he flipped it open, of the beige folder that he had brought in with him and laid on the table. He began shuffling through sheets of typed notes. He seemed to find what he was looking for and read for several moments before looking up.

‘Do you know a lady called Sally Harrison?’

‘I do.’

‘And do you deny having a relationship with her?’

‘I don’t.’

He seemed surprised. ‘She claims not to be having one with you.’

I felt my brows creasing. ‘You asked her?’

‘How else would I know she’d denied it?’

I thought about that. ‘In the presence of her husband?’

I saw his mouth tighten. ‘Yes.’

‘Well, then, that would explain it.’

Now he pursed his lips. ‘So how long have you had this... alleged relationship with Mrs Harrison?’

I shrugged. ‘I’m not really sure.’

Then, out of the blue, ‘You have a boat, I believe. The one you’ve been using to go back and forth to the Flannans.’

‘Yes, I believe I do.’

‘Where is it?’

I realised that I had no satisfactory answer to this. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Yet you told the boatman at Rodel that you had taken it up to Uig. I know, because I have checked, that you did no such thing.’

‘Sally told him that. Rather than have me try to explain that I’d lost my boat.’

‘And why would she do that?’