Peter May - The Chessmen

Fin glanced from the window across the acres of beach exposed by the outgoing tide, Baile na Cille on the far shore, the church, the burial ground, the wild, untamed beauty of this place. Did Minto have any real sense of it, or was this just somewhere to hide away from a life in civvies he had found hard to cope with? A misfit living on the fringes.

Unlike his last visit, Fin was served his tea in a mug, but the tray it came on contained a little china dish of sugar lumps and milk in a porcelain jug. Minto lifted the mug carefully on to one of half a dozen neatly placed coasters on the coffee table. He chose to drink his own tea standing in front of the fireplace, as if warming himself from the glow of non-existent peats. ‘You’ll be after these poachers, I suppose.’

Fin nodded and sipped at his mug. ‘Do you know Whistler Macaskill?’

‘Who doesn’t?’ Minto nodded towards a two-foot carving of a Lewis chessman on a small wooden table in the far corner of the room. Fin turned to look at it. ‘That’s one of his. Beautiful piece of work it is, too.’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘Bought it off him. In fact, it was seeing that what gave old Sir John the idea for the gala day.’

Fin cocked his head and looked at him closely. ‘What idea was that?’

‘To have a full set of them made and placed on a giant chessboard on the beach. You know, for when they bring the originals here in October. They’ll be up in the old church over there in glass cases.’ He nodded towards the window. ‘Interesting, it is. The geezer what found them way back didn’t know what to do with them. So he took them to the minister of the church at Baile na Cille. One Reverend Macleod. So it’s a nice touch, the chessmen going back to that church. It’s in private hands now, right enough, but seems the new owners are happy to let them use it for the day.’ He took a thoughtful gulp of his tea. ‘Apparently they’re going to have a couple of real chess masters playing a game with the originals. And each move’s going to be relayed to a guy with a walkie-talkie down there on the beach. Then they’ll move the men on the big board to mirror the game in the church. That was Sir John’s idea anyway.’

‘How do you know all this?’

Minto seemed surprised. ‘Well, the old boy told me, didn’t he? It’s no big secret.’

‘His son doesn’t seem to know.’

‘Prat!’ Minto muttered it almost under his breath, as if uncertain how Fin might react to his disrespect.

‘It might be an idea if you mentioned it to him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Sir John is still in recovery from his stroke somewhere in England, and Jamie’s claiming no knowledge of it. So Whistler hasn’t been paid.’

Minto grunted. ‘Typical!’

‘You know he’s been poaching?’

Minto frowned. ‘Who? Whistler?’ Fin nodded. ‘Course I do. But it’s one for the pot every once in a while. Don’t do no one no harm. So I leave him alone.’

‘Jamie wants me to put a stop to it.’

Minto’s mug paused halfway to his mouth. He regarded Fin speculatively. ‘Why?’

‘They don’t see eye to eye.’

‘Well, that’s hardly a surprise.’ He paused. ‘So what are you planning to do about it?’

Fin sighed. ‘I think there’s bigger fish to fry than Whistler, Minto. But there’s real enmity between those two, and if we can’t persuade Whistler to back off, Wooldridge junior might just bring in some heavies. And that would be bad news for Whistler, and maybe do you out of a job.’

Minto was thoughtful for a moment. Then, ‘We?’ he asked.

‘I can’t do it on my own. He’s a big guy. Well, you know that. He’d probably be a handful even for you.’

‘Oh, I could bring him down, Mr Macleod. No problem. But I’d have to hurt him.’

Fin shook his head. ‘I don’t want that. I don’t want to hurt him. Just stop him. Just so he gets the message.’

Minto looked doubtful. ‘How?’

‘He’s going to be up at Loch Tathabhal tonight.’

‘How d’you know that?’

Almost subconsciously Fin ran a hand over his jaw. It still hurt. ‘Because he wanted me to know. A stupid challenge.’

Minto shook his head. ‘Don’t like the sound of it, Mr Macleod.’

Fin set his mug down on its coaster and stood up. ‘I’m going to go up to his place now, to try and talk some sense into him. But if I can’t, I’ll meet you up there tonight, at the old bridge, where the river runs out of the loch.’

‘Okay, mate.’ Minto shrugged. ‘But I’ll still have to hurt him to bring him down.’

The summer sun had been turning slowly, irrevocably towards the equator, drawing a veil of darkness over the Hebrides a little earlier each night. Those long daylight nights, when it was possible on occasion to see the sun both rise and set at the same time, were gone. Official sunset was now 20.45, but although it was after 21.30 there was still light in the sky. An unusually clear sky, even over the mountains that loomed darkly to the south. And the wind of earlier in the day had dropped to an almost eerie stillness. Fin had been unable to find Whistler, and so he was going to keep the rendezvous which had been issued as a challenge the night before.

He saw pale swathes cut into the dark hills ahead as he came over the hilltop at Ardroil, scars left on the landscape by excavations at the gravel pits below, and early moonlight shimmered silver on the road that wound up above the Abhainn Dearg distillery towards Mangurstadh.

A couple of giant red chessmen carved in wood stood guard at the entrance to the island’s first and only distillery in nearly one hundred and seventy years. Abhainn Dearg was Gaelic for Red River, the same name as the estate, and the distillery was so called because it was sited close to where the Red River itself debouched into the Atlantic. The river, according to legend, had got its name following a bloody clan battle which had turned its waters red.

The last distillery on the Isle of Lewis had been closed down in 1844, when the abstainer and prohibitionist Sir James Matheson purchased the island. The irony, perhaps not apparent to the islanders at the time, was that Matheson had made the fortune that allowed him to buy the island by selling opium to the Chinese. But it was an irony not lost on Fin, and it brought the briefest flicker of a smile to his face as the shallow-pitched red and green roofs of the disparate collection of tin and breeze-block buildings that made up Abhainn Dearg passed below him on the road.

But the smile faded as he remembered why he was here. If Whistler had been trying to avoid him all day, then he had succeeded. And Fin was heading up to Loch Tathabhal for a rendezvous he’d rather not have kept.

Half a mile further on he left the road, and his progress up into the mountains slowed to little more than walking speed on a rough, potholed track that twisted its way laboriously up through wide, boulder-strewn valleys. Moonlight lay in silver ribbons on tiny streams, and reflected light from every scrap of water that lay in the dips and hollows of this primeval landscape.

But the moon was still low in the sky, and as the mountains rose up on either side, the track fell into shadow and all light was concentrated in the sky overhead. It skirted the black waters of Loch Raonasgail, the dark peaks of Mealaisbhal and Tathabhal looming ominously over opposite banks. By the time he got to the head of the loch and climbed several hundred feet more, he could see straight down the line of the valley ahead of him to the distant glittering waters of Loch Tamnabhaigh, and the twinkling lights of Cracabhal Lodge on its northern shore.

Here he turned east, tyres kicking up peat and stone in his wake as he left the track and followed the faintest outline of an ancient pathway. It rose steeply, taking him up to the still waters of Loch Tathabhal, tucked away in the shadows of sharply rising slopes of scree. Tongues of water in the river that ran out of it flickered and licked over an almost dry stone bed, tumbling in a succession of tiny falls to Loch Raonasgail below.