Peter May - The Chessmen

He turned, looking for Fin’s approval. But Fin was barely listening. He said, ‘George, is there any chance I might be able to attend the post-mortem?’

‘Not a hope in hell, sir. No offence. You were a good cop, Mr Macleod. And I’ve no doubt you would bring some useful experience to the PM. But you’re not a police officer any more, just a material witness to the discovery of the plane. You and John Angus Macaskill.’ He shuffled awkwardly. ‘I had a call before we left. There’s an inquiry team on its way. And if I let you anywhere near that autopsy room, the chances are I’d be the next one on the table being cut open to establish cause of death.’ His smile was touched by embarrassment before fading. ‘How come Whistler Macaskill didn’t come with you to report the find?’

Fin hesitated. He remembered how strangely Whistler had reacted to the discovery of the plane. By the time Fin had climbed back up to the beehives Whistler and all his stuff had gone. And on the long walk back to retrieve his Suzuki, Fin had caught not a single sight of him. He glanced awkwardly at Gunn and shrugged. ‘I guess he thought it wouldn’t be necessary.’

Gunn gave him a long, hard look. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me, Mr Macleod?’

‘Nothing, George.’

Gunn sighed. ‘Well, I don’t have time to go looking for him myself right now. But when you see him, you can tell him to present himself at the police station in Stornoway first chance he gets. I’ll need a statement.’

It was less than an hour later that Fin turned off the road and drove up the pebble track to park at the door of Whistler’s blackhouse, even though all his instincts told him that Whistler would not be here. Tall grasses growing all around it bowed in the wind. He stepped down from the Suzuki and looked out over the sands. From this elevated position he could see across the bay beyond the vast expanse of beach to the islands of Tolm and Triassamol, which were almost lost in the oblique evening light.

The door to the house stood ajar, a door of unpainted weathered wood, grey and grainy. The latch and lock were rust-red, brown-staining the wood in streaks below them. Fin was certain that even if a key existed for the lock it would not turn in it. No one locked their doors on the island, and anyway, who would steal from a man with nothing?

Fin placed the flat of his hand on the door and pushed it into the gloom. It creaked loudly in the silence within, and as he stepped inside, the thickness of the walls immediately diminished the howling of the wind on the hill outside.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ The voice came from beyond the veiled sunlight that slanted in from the west through one of the tiny windows at the back of the house. It was shrill and demanding, but with a hint of alarm in it. Fin stepped to one side so that he had a view deeper into the house, and saw Anna Bheag, perched on the edge of an armchair by the ashes of a dead fire. Her hands were pressed flat on each arm, and she was tensed, ready to move in an instant, like a cat. But an ill-fed cat, skinny and mean, with eyes blazing resentment. The pink side of her head caught the light from the window and glowed in the gloom like neon.

‘Fin Macleod. I’m a friend of your father’s.’

‘My father doesn’t have friends.’ She spat the words back at him.

‘He used to.’

She was still on her guard and tipped her head to one side, squinting at him through the dust that hung in motes in the still light from the windows. ‘You’re that creepy guy that was watching us from the window at Suaineabhal day before yesterday.’

Fin smiled. ‘I’m that guy, yes. But it’s the first time anyone’s called me creepy.’

‘What were you looking at, then?’

‘You.’

She seemed surprised by his directness. ‘Why?’

‘I wanted to see what the daughter of my old friend looked like.’

‘I told you, the fucker doesn’t have any friends.’

Fin took a couple of cautious steps further into the house and saw her tense. ‘I was at school with him.’

‘I never heard him talk about you.’

‘I’ve been away from the island for a long time.’

‘Why would you come back to a shit-hole like this?’

Fin shrugged and wondered why himself. ‘Because it’s home. And because I have a son here I didn’t know I had for nearly eighteen years.’

For the first time he saw curiosity in her eyes. ‘Here in Uig?’

‘No, in Ness. He’s just left for university.’

‘He must have been at the Nicolson, then. Maybe I know him.’

‘Maybe you do. Fionnlagh Macinnes.’

And now she relaxed a little. ‘You’re Fionnlagh’s dad?’

Fin nodded.

‘All the girls had a crush on Fionnlagh.’

And Fin remembered Marsaili saying the same thing about him. ‘You, too?’

The appearance of something like a smile brought a little light to her face and she offered a noncommittal, ‘Maybe.’ Then it clouded again. ‘You said your name was Macleod.’

‘It’s a long story, Anna. He and I thought he was someone else’s boy for most of his life.’

‘So where were you all these years?’

‘On the mainland. Glasgow, then Edinburgh.’

‘Married?’

He nodded.

‘So what did your wife think when she found out you’d had a kid by someone else?’

‘She didn’t come with me.’

‘Why not?’

He had dealt patiently with her relentless questions, but now she was delving into a dark corner of his life where his soul was still exposed and raw. He hesitated.

‘You left her?’

Fin pulled up a chair at the table. The sound of its legs scraping across the wooden boards felt inordinately loud. He sat down. ‘Not that simple.’

‘Well either you left her or she left you.’

Fin gazed at his hands in front of him. Is that how it had been? He didn’t think so. A loveless marriage of sixteen years had simply dissolved when the only thing which had held it together was taken away. He shook his head slowly. ‘We had a son. Robbie. He was barely eight years old.’ He couldn’t bring himself to raise his eyes to meet hers, but detected the change in her voice immediately. There was a kind of hush in it. Intelligent anticipation.

‘What happened?’

For a moment he couldn’t trust himself to speak. Why was it so difficult for him to tell this girl that he didn’t even know? ‘He was killed in a hit-and-run accident in Edinburgh.’ And if he closed his eyes he could see the police photographs of the street, kept still in a folder he couldn’t bring himself to throw away.

There was a long silence, then, in the old blackhouse, before finally he raised his head and met her eye. There was a mix of emotions in her face. Sympathy, confusion, fear. But not of him. She took evasive action. ‘So you were at school with my dad?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was he as big an arsehole back then as he is now?’

And Fin couldn’t stop his lips from parting in a smile, or the laugh that came in a breath. ‘Yes, he was.’

And she laughed, too, and was transformed in a moment from an ugly teenage Goth into a pretty young girl with lights in her eyes. The change was almost shocking. But while the image might have changed, the mouth was just as foul. ‘So how the fuck did you become his friend?’

‘You’ve heard of the Iolaire ?’

She shook her head, and Fin wondered at how quickly history got lost. But he shouldn’t have been surprised. He had known nothing about it himself until that day out at Holm Point.

I first met Whistler Macaskill when I left Crobost school in Ness to go into third year at the Nicolson Institute in Stornoway. We had a certain swagger, us Ness boys. Thought we were a bit special. Until we arrived at the Nicolson and found that everyone else had a swagger, too. The Uig crowd, the boys from Lochs, the wild westers from Carloway. But the big city soon knocked it out of us.