Peter May - The Chessmen

At the head of the loch, where the river left it, a wooden bridge straddled its banks, raised on drystone columns, a single shoogly handrail on the loch side. Here, an area of ground had been levelled to allow fishermen to park their vehicles. Minto’s Land Rover was drawn in close to the water’s edge, and when Fin parked up and stepped out of his Suzuki he heard the engine of Minto’s vehicle ticking in the dark as it cooled down. So he had not been here long. But there was no sign of him. And no sign, either, of John Angus Whistler Macaskill. Fin was aware immediately of the clouds of midges that clustered around him in the dark, and hoped that the repellent he had smeared liberally on his face and neck would afford him some protection.

Looking west from his elevated position, Fin had a view straight through the valley between the peaks of Mealaisbhal and Cracabhal, and although he couldn’t see it, he knew that the sea lay somewhere in the distance beyond them. What he could see were the clouds gathering there, black and ominous on the horizon. And the far-off crackle of lightning still too distant to be heard. He felt the first chill draught of the coming storm, the break in the weather so long anticipated, and turned to see Whistler’s full moon rising in a clear sky to the east. He hoped that this would not take long, and that he would be back home in his bed before the storm broke.

A sound, like a pebble landing in the water, drew his attention, and he could see silvered rings emanating from a point not far from the opposite bank. A fish, perhaps, jumping to catch insects. There was no sign of life. No further sound.

Fin stepped up on to the wooden bridge and scanned the loch. He felt the wind rising now, clouds that had been so distant starting to gather overhead, the advance guard of the coming storm. Even as he stood on the bridge, looking back down the length of the stream which had so nearly taken his life all those years before, he felt the temperature falling. The midges were gone already, and Whistler’s moon appeared and disappeared with increasing frequency, a bizarre, flitting, colourless light show.

As Fin turned back towards the loch he saw a movement on the far shore. A shadow drifting against the rise of the scree slope behind it.

‘Minto!’ he called out into the dark, feeling his voice whipped away from his mouth on the edge of the wind.

All that came back to him was a laugh that he knew only too well. And in a sudden blink of moonlight he saw Whistler standing there looking at him across the water. He raised his right arm, and Fin saw a huge wild salmon dangling from his hand, strong thick fingers hooked through the gills. ‘We could just go back to the croft, Fin. Roast her in tinfoil over the peat. Share a glass and a memory or two. What do you say?’

Fin was very nearly tempted. ‘Oh, come on, Whistler, cut it out. We need to chat, you and me.’

‘Is that what you brought your muscle man for? A chat? I’m disappointed in you, Fin. Thought better of you than that.’ And Fin realized then the mistake he had made by involving Minto.

Almost in the same moment, the moon vanished behind a cloud and Whistler was swallowed again by the dark. Fin heard a loud banging coming from the direction of Minto’s Land Rover. He jumped down off the bridge and ran across the parking area to throw open the back door.

Minto was lying curled up on the floor, securely bound by his own tow rope, trussed up like a chicken, an oily rag shoved into his mouth. He had manoeuvred himself on to his back so that he could kick the side of the vehicle with the flat of his feet.

‘Jesus, Minto!’ Fin climbed in the back and untied him, pulling the rag from his mouth. Minto gasped for several seconds until he had caught his breath, saliva foaming around his lips.

‘I’ll kill him. I’ll fucking kill him!’

Fin gazed at him in disbelief. ‘What the hell happened?’

‘He jumped me, that’s what fucking happened.’

Fin almost found himself laughing. ‘ He jumped you ?’

‘Strong as a bloody ox that geezer is, Macleod.’

‘I thought you were going to take him down, Minto?’

Minto glowered at him, his pride seriously dented. No one man should have been capable of doing something like this to him. ‘I would’ve. Given half a chance.’ He sat up and winced, his left hand crossing to his right shoulder. ‘I think he’s dislocated my bloody shoulder.’

Fin sat cross-legged on the floor and looked at him. ‘Well, you’re not going to be much damn use to me now, are you?’

Minto cast him a surly look. ‘You’ll never take him on your own, mate. A skinny little runt like you.’

Fin got to his knees, and crouching made his way to the back. He jumped down. ‘Go home, Minto.’

He stood and watched as Minto struggled into the driver’s seat and started the motor. His headlights were devoured by the dark, making almost no impression on it as the vehicle turned and bumped back down the track to the loch below. Fin felt the first drops of rain in his face.

Now it was just him and Whistler.

He turned and scanned Loch Tathabhal, the surface of it dimpled and ridged by the rising wind, floods of fleeting moonlight caught in brief spangled moments of illumination. And there was the shadow of his friend moving along the far shore, his laughter lifting itself above the wind. ‘Come on, Fin, catch me if you can.’ The voice distant, somehow, and carried off into the night.

To Whistler it was all a game. Not to be taken seriously. And yet to cross Jamie the way he had was to court disaster. If he lost his home it was likely he would lose the court case for custody of his daughter. And if he lost both, God only knew what might become of him.

For several long moments Fin contemplated getting back into his Suzuki and going home. What good would it do to play Whistler’s game? And yet to walk away would be like turning his back on the man who had saved his life. Whistler would never have done that to Fin. At the very least he needed to make him understand the trouble he was in.

‘Whistler, wait!’ But his voice was consumed by the night, and he saw Whistler outlined against the sky in the moment before he began slithering down the scree to the lower valley.

Fin sighed and hesitated briefly before opening up the back of his four-by-four and taking out his waterproof jacket and a small rucksack. He slipped into the jacket, slung the rucksack across his shoulders and grasped the non-slip grip of his telescopic walker’s stick firmly in his right hand.

Coming, ready or not.

At first it was easy to keep Whistler in his sights. Amazingly there was still some daylight in the sky, and plenty of moonlight washing across the slopes between clouds. He saw Whistler’s shadow moving nimbly among the rocks as he scrambled down the incline. The wind was increasing in strength, temperature falling further as the black storm clouds began to roll in. But the rain, as yet, was still only a spit in his face.

Loch Raonasgail was no more than a big black hole scoured out between Tathabhal and Mealaisbhal by shifting glaciers in some long-ago ice age, filled now with the millions of gallons of rainwater which the mountains that heaved up around it shed from their slopes. Fin saw Whistler circumvent its south-west shoreline, crossing the track, and heading off through the boulder-strewn valley in the shadow of Cracabhal.

The lightning came before the rain. Great jagged flashes of it that lit up the mountains and plunged their valleys into deeper darkness. His glimpses of Whistler now were few and far between as blackness settled over them like dust.

The heather and bracken beneath his feet were dry, and crackled in the dark. Normally sodden peat was hard and unyielding underfoot. Fin gritted his teeth and forced himself on. For forty minutes or more he followed the phantom that was Whistler. He found his leg muscles aching, joints hammered by the hardness of the ground, breath sucked with increasing rapidity into lungs that heaved and strained to pump sufficient oxygen to already tiring muscles.