Peter May: Coffin Road

The Harrisons hear and see it too, and I watch them turn and run in panic back up the steps. But they are too late. The luminous white that has been brimming on the brink of the wave finally spills over as it crashes into the island, completely engulfing the figures below us. I feel the force of the spray lash my face.

I blink to expel the water from my eyes, and when I can see again, the wave is receding with an enormous sigh, retreating into the bay in a whirlpool of green and black and white. And Jon and Sally, and both of the inflatables, are gone. Like the three lighthouse keepers on the west landing more than a hundred years before them.

Almost immediately I hear the sound of a motor rising above the storm and see a searching beam of light that sweeps across the island. Karen and I roll on to our backs and look up to see the coastguard helicopter as it swings dangerously in the wind, dropping on to the helipad just below the lighthouse and touching down with a bump on the concrete.

They say that after a storm the sun always shines. Not necessarily true in the Hebrides, but it is this morning.

I have spent most of the night here in this interview room in Stornoway, giving my statement. They took Karen to hospital for a medical examination. She has a nasty head-wound where that bastard hit her, and they were concerned that she might be concussed, or have a fracture to her skull, so I have barely seen her since everything that passed on the island.

Neither have I slept, and as the morning sun floods this room with its light and warmth, I can feel my eyes grow heavy and begin to close. Only to be startled wide again by the door opening. Detective Sergeant Gunn comes in carrying a fat folder that he places on the table before sitting down to cast curious eyes over me. He sighs.

‘Hard as it is for me to believe, Professor, everything you have told me seems to check out.’ He pauses, and there is something like a smile playing about his lips. ‘To be honest with you, sir, I’ve never heard anything quite like it in all my years in the police.’

I am too tired even to think about it. Everything in my life these last two years has been hard to believe. He opens up his folder and scans the first few pages.

‘The Harrisons were brother and sister. They ran a private detective agency in Manchester. Whoever was employing them—’

‘Ergo,’ I tell him.

He demurs. ‘That may be, sir, but I doubt we’ll ever prove it. Whoever it was paid more than a million pounds into their business account in several instalments over the past year. Obviously, they felt it was more than enough to justify putting the rest of their business on hold for twelve months to come up here and keep an eye on you.’

I shake my head, still a sense of mourning in me for the woman I may even have thought once that I loved. ‘Hardly worth dying for, though.’

‘No, sir. No amount of money would be worth that.’ He turns his attention back to his folder. ‘Billy Carr is still in the ICU at the Western Isles Hospital, but the doctors seem confident that he’ll recover alright.’ He looks at me. ‘I apologise, Professor, for giving you such a hard time over the murder of Mr Waltman. But you must appreciate how it looked to us.’

‘I do, Mr Gunn. For a time, I even believed myself that I had killed him.’

‘Well, we finally got a report back from the lab. They have recovered DNA from the scrapings taken from beneath Mr Waltman’s fingernails.’

And all I can see is the two men locked together, falling to the ground, rolling over and over, punching and grabbing each other like schoolboys fighting in the playground. Until they broke apart and Billy laid his hand on that rock and struck poor Sam on the head, dropping him to his knees. Then hitting him again. Three, four times, in a bloody, fatal frenzy.

‘We’ve taken a swab from Mr Carr. I imagine there will be a match.’ He looks to me for confirmation, and I nod, grim still from the memory. Then he sits back in his chair, folds his arms across his ample stomach and shakes his head. ‘I think, sir, you might also find yourself in a bit of hot water for faking your own death.’

From somewhere, I find enough amusement in his words almost to laugh. ‘The least of my problems, Mr Gunn. Though I didn’t actually fake anything. You can read what you want into my suicide note.’ And I make inverted commas in the air with my fingers around ‘suicide’. ‘But it doesn’t say anywhere that I was going to kill myself. People drew their own conclusions when they found my empty boat out in the firth.’

I run a hand back through the salty tangle of my black curls. ‘What’s the word on Karen?’

Gunn closes his folder. ‘She’s fine, sir. No fracture. No sign of concussion. A very lucky girl. One of the constables has just gone to fetch her from the hospital. He’ll give you both a lift back down to Harris.’

My sense of relief is enormous, and I feel now that an end to this nightmare that my life has been since my sacking from the Geddes is just in sight. ‘My car must still be at Rodel.’

‘Sergeant Morrison went to get it this morning. It’s waiting for you at the cottage.’

‘I’m allowed to drive it now, then, am I?’

‘Provided you have a valid licence, sir.’

I smile. ‘I can assure you, Mr Gunn, I do.’

I see her in the street outside, for the first time in daylight. She is so pale it is almost painful. In the photographs I saw of her, she had rings and studs in her face. Not now, though. Just the holes they have left, and I wonder if they will ever close up.

She seems so tiny. Frail. And yet, a million miles from the little girl in the blue dress and straw hat. The photograph that sat on my desk for all those years. The features are the same, though the hair is different, and I realise what has changed. She has grown from child to adult. And in the process lost her innocence. Not lost it, perhaps. Had it taken from her. By me. What damage have I done to my own wee girl by trying to save the world?

We stand there on the pavement in Church Street, with the sun slanting down between tall buildings and the sound of gulls rising with the breeze from the harbour at the foot of the road. People pass us without a second glance. A father and daughter. Nothing remarkable about that. Not even when we hug, and hold each other with silent tears on our cheeks. Because I was dead, and am alive again. We were lost, and now we are found.

When, finally, we part, and I blink away my tears to see her more clearly, my eyes light on the tattoos that deface her arms and neck. Blue and black outlines, blocks of colour. Weird and wonderful designs. I say, ‘When did you get these?’

She closes her eyes and sighs. Then opens them again and says, ‘Dad...’

‘What?’

‘Don’t start!’

The light at Luskentyre is stunning. The wind is brisk but soft. The land has soaked up everything thrown at it last night by the storm. It has, it seems, an endless capacity to do so. The sky presents itself in torn strips of blue interspersed by teased-out cotton wool, and the sun reflects in countless shades of turquoise across an outgoing tide that leaves silver sands shining.

Karen is seeing it for the first time. ‘Jees, Dad! Is this really where you spent the last two years?’

I nod, and see our driver smiling.

‘And you expect me to have sympathy for you?’

We are barely through the door of Dune Cottage when a frozen-faced Mrs Macdonald arrives with Bran. ‘Overnight is hardly a few hours,’ she says coldly and marches back across the road without another word.

Karen raises an eyebrow in query. ‘Long story,’ I say, then turn to ruffle Bran’s ears as he leaps about my legs. ‘Karen, meet Bran. Bran, meet Karen. I have a feeling you two are going to get on like a house on fire.’