Peter May - The Chessmen

‘I hear you’re back with Marsaili. Living with her, I’m told.’

Fin nodded. ‘At least until I finish restoring my parents’ crofthouse.’

‘And her boy’s yours they say, not Artair’s.’

‘Do they?’

‘It’s what I hear.’

‘You hear a lot, it seems.’

Kenny grinned. ‘I keep my ear to the ground.’

Fin returned the smile. ‘Be careful, Kenny. You might get mud in it. Then maybe you wouldn’t hear so good.’

Kenny snorted. ‘You always were a smart bugger, Macleod.’ He hesitated for a moment as his smile washed away, like sunshine passing behind a cloud. ‘I hear you lost a son, too.’

The colour rose very slightly around Fin’s eyes, darkening them. ‘You heard right.’ Followed by a long pause in which it was clear he was not about to elucidate.

The end of this personal nature of their exchange was signalled by the replacement of Kenny’s cap, which he pulled down low over his brow. Even his tone of voice changed. ‘I’ll need to brief you on your duties. I imagine Jamie will have covered the bullet points. But like most landowners, he doesn’t know much about the land.’

Fin didn’t miss the point. Jamie might be his boss, but Kenny considered himself his superior. And now he was Fin’s boss, and their brief exchange as equals was over.

‘I’m not sure I would have taken you on as head of security myself. No offence, Fin. I’m sure you were a good cop, but not so sure that it qualifies you to catch poachers. Still. . ours not to reason why, eh?’

Fin said, ‘Maybe you could do a better job of it yourself.’

‘No “could” about it, Fin. But managing an estate of more than fifty thousand acres, with extensive salmon, brown trout and sea trout fishing, as well as stalking and shooting, takes up all my time as it is.’ He sounded like a brochure for the estate. ‘And it’s no small problem we have.’

Kenny’s Range Rover bounced and rattled over the potholed track, following the course of the river, the ground rising up ever more steeply around them. Bare, rugged hills peppered with rock and slashed by gullies rose up into mountainous peaks lost in cloud. Boulders clung to the hillsides, great chunks of gneiss four billion years old. Kenny glanced at Fin and followed his eyes. ‘Oldest rock in the world,’ he said. ‘Those slabs of it have been lying around these hills since the last ice age.’ He pointed up into the shadow of the mountain on their left. ‘You see those watercourses running through the rock? Originally cracks in the face of it, they were. And when the water in them froze the ice expanded till the rock exploded, and threw these massive big fucking lumps of it all over the valley. Must have been quite a show. But I’m glad I wasn’t around for it.’

Ahead of them a small loch reflected the cut-glass blue of the sky overhead, its surface ridged by the wind, and Kenny drew in beside a green-painted corrugated-iron shed that he called a lunch hut. A place where fishermen and their ghillies could shelter from the weather to eat their sandwiches. The vehicle track ended here. A footpath led down to the water while another wound its way up over the hill, climbing steeply through clusters of rock and fording clear-watered streams that would normally be in spate at this time of year. After weeks of drought most had been reduced to a mere trickle.

Kenny was fit for such a big man, and Fin fought to keep up with him as he strode quickly along the rising path. The track snaked between the cleft of the hills, hugging the south side of a sheer rock face to their right, before Kenny stepped off it and over the bed of an almost dry creek. Then he struck off through long grass and heather, heading for a hilltop to their left. Long strides that took him upwards to the peak a good few minutes ahead of Fin.

It wasn’t until he reached him that Fin realized how high they had climbed, first in the Range Rover, and then on foot. He felt the wind fill his jacket and then his mouth, stealing his breath as the ground fell away beneath them to reveal a startling panorama of sun-washed land and water. Browns, pale blues, greens and purples faded into a shimmering distance at their feet.

‘Loch Suaineabhal,’ Kenny said. He turned, grinning, towards Fin. ‘You feel like a god up here.’ Something caught his eye high out over the loch. ‘Or an eagle.’ Fin followed his gaze. ‘We have twenty-two nesting pairs of them between here and the North Harris estate. Highest density of golden eagles anywhere in Europe.’

They watched the bird riding the thermals, almost on a level with them, a wingspan of more than seven feet, feathers spread at their tips, and fanned out at the tail, like fingers, manipulating every movement of the air. Suddenly it dropped, like an arrow fired from the sky, vanishing briefly among the patchwork colours of the land below, before rising unexpectedly into view again, a small animal hanging from its undercarriage, gripped by lethal talons and dead already.

‘Look down there towards the head of the loch. You’ll see a collection of stone buildings with tin roofs. A shieling and a couple of barns. Two of our watchers live there. No way to get to them by vehicle. Only by boat or on foot. And it’s a full day if you’re walking it. You’ll need to make yourself known to them.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Students. Making a bit of money during the holidays. It’s a hard bloody life, let me tell you. No running water, no electricity. I should know, I did it myself when I was at the AC.’ He turned to the west, then, and pointed towards the four peaks that delineated the far side of the valley, Mealaisbhal standing head and shoulders above the others, the highest peak on Lewis. ‘We had watchers over the other side in an old shieling at Loch Sanndabhan. You’ll find it on the Landranger map. But they’re gone. Beaten up three nights ago when they came across poachers laying nets at the mouth of Abhainn Bhreanais. And I can’t get anyone to replace them.’

‘I suppose you reported it to the police?’

Kenny laughed, his chest puffed out with genuine amusement. ‘Of course. But as you very well know, a fat lot of good that does!’ His bonhomie vanished in an instant, as if a switch had been thrown. ‘These bastards mean business. Big money in it, you see. The price of wild salmon on the mainland, or in Europe or the Far East for that matter, is astronomical, Fin. I’ve heard that some of it’s being smoked before being shipped out. Fetches even more. They’re netting the mouths of the rivers and taking hundreds of bloody fish. Stocks are down and it’s ruining our business. There’s consortiums of businessmen who’ll pay thousands for a beat on one of our rivers. But not if there’s no fucking fish in them!’

He strode south to the edge of the slope, and in the far distance, beyond the shoulder of Cracabhal, they could see the big lodge on the shores of Loch Tamnabhaigh. He spoke over his shoulder. ‘We manage the rivers and the lochs, making sure the fish get upstream to lay their eggs, conserving numbers. These bastards are taking indiscriminately. In ten years there’ll be nothing left.’ He turned towards Fin, a dark determination in his eyes. ‘They have to be stopped.’

‘Have you any idea who’s behind it?’

Kenny shook his head grimly. ‘If I did, there’d be a few broken fucking legs around the island. We need to catch them at it. Jamie took over the running of the estate after his father’s stroke in the spring, and he’s prepared to go to pretty much any lengths to put a stop to it. Which is the reason you’re here.’ The disapproval in the glance he flicked towards Fin was clear. ‘But you might want to ease yourself in gently. Start with a soft target.’