Peter May - The Chessmen

Whistler was right. He was a bloody idiot.

He woke to a sound like the end of the world, and felt the earth moving beneath him, as if the whole mountain was shaking. The fire was blazing, and he could see the fear and confusion in Whistler’s face on the far side of it. Fin sat up and almost cracked his skull on the roof of the beehive. ‘What the hell’s that?’

The noise roared, even above the blast of the storm, filling the air, the ground fibrillating all around them. Whistler placed a hand flat on the roof above his head as if afraid that it might fall in on them. ‘I’ve no idea.’ His voice sounded very small, and Fin could barely hear it.

‘Feels like an earthquake,’ Fin shouted above the noise.

‘Aye, it does. But it can’t be. Not on this scale, anyway.’ If anything the shaking was getting more violent. Whistler put both hands on the roof now, like Samson in reverse trying to hold the temple up. ‘Jesus Christ!’

Fin had no idea how long it lasted. It felt like a lifetime. A lifetime in which the end seemed just a breath away. Though neither of them voiced it, each feared that they were going to die, without any clear idea of why. And then almost as suddenly as it had wakened them the shaking stopped and the noise subsided, and the sound of the storm took precedence once more.

They sat in breathless silence for several minutes hardly daring to believe that it was over, whatever it was, and fearing that it would start again at any moment.

Then Whistler tipped forward on to his knees and crawled towards the entrance. ‘I’m going to take a look.’ He pulled aside the big flat stone that sealed them in, and Fin felt a rush of cold air that threw sparks from the fire and fanned the peats to fill the dwelling with their strange, incandescent light. Whistler wriggled out into the night, and Fin sat wrapped in his blankets full of uncertainty and apprehension.

Whistler was back in less than a minute, soaked even in that short space of time. His hair was wild and smeared across a face that was unusually pale.

‘Well?’ Fin searched it for enlightenment.

But Whistler just settled himself again on the far side of the fire and shrugged. ‘Can’t see a thing. It’s pitch out there. We’ll need to wait till dawn.’

‘What time is it now?’

‘Just after two. Another four hours or so.’

Fin lay down and rolled on to his back, still tense, waiting for the noise and the shaking to start again. But only the storm disturbed the night, rain and wind assaulting their tiny shelter with the fury of thwarted attackers. The long summer of drought was well and truly over.

The next time he awoke it was daybreak, which is when he had found Whistler out on the ridge in that strange, pink dawn light, looking down into the vanished loch where Roddy’s plane lay canted among the rocks.

Jamie pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his Barbour jacket and shoved out his jaw. ‘Well?’

‘Nothing happened,’ Fin said. He glanced beyond Jamie and saw Kenny’s scepticism.

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing much. Whistler was waiting for me up at the loch. He apologized for the other night. We talked about old times, and took shelter from the storm.’

Jamie’s disbelief was patent now. ‘The plane was found a long way from Tathabhal.’

Fin just shrugged. ‘Why are you looking for him?’

‘If it’s any of your business, Macleod, I’m serving Macaskill with notice of eviction. Thought I would do it myself, rather than send in the bailiffs.’

Fin felt his hackles rise and he glanced at Kenny. ‘And brought backup in case he kicked your arse again?’

‘I’m not sure I like your tone.’

‘And I’m not sure I want to work for someone who would throw a man out of his own home.’

Jamie bristled. ‘It’s not his. Neither the land nor the building. His father sold the feu of the blackhouse to my father years ago for ready drinking money. I’ve checked back through the books. There’s not been a penny paid in rent on the house or the croft since last century.’

Fin blew air through pursed lips. ‘A peppercorn rent. I’d be willing to bet we’re not looking at anything more than a few hundred quid. Not a fraction of the value of those chessmen in there.’ He jerked his thumb back towards the house. ‘Whistler was right. You’re not half the man your father is. He and Whistler had an understanding. You’re just a vindictive bastard.’

Anger simmered dangerously in Jamie’s unblinking gaze. ‘And you’re fired!’ His voice was tight and soft, barely audible above the wind.

‘Too late,’ Fin said. ‘I already quit.’

Jamie stood for a moment in seething silence, but whatever thoughts flashed through his mind wouldn’t form words on his lips. He turned and strode back down the hill to his Range Rover.

Kenny remained, staring at the ground in embarrassment. As the car door slammed shut below he looked up at Fin. ‘None of this is my doing, Fin.’

Fin stared at him for a long, hard moment, then nodded. ‘I know.’ He paused. ‘Where is he Kenny? He just seems to have vanished.’

Kenny shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who knows?’ He glanced up beyond the blackhouse towards the mountains. ‘He could be anywhere.’ His eyes flickered back towards Fin. ‘But I know where he’ll be tomorrow morning.’

Fin frowned. ‘How?’

‘There’s a hearing at the Sheriff Court. The custody case for wee Anna. If he doesn’t show up for it, the case’ll fall. So I expect him to be there.’

Fin looked at him, eyes filled with consternation. ‘How’s it possible, Kenny, that you can take a man’s wife, and his daughter, and still remain his friend?’

‘You’ve been away from the island too long, Fin. You can’t afford for things to get personal in a place like this. I wouldn’t call Whistler my friend these days, but there’s more in our history that binds us than any argument over the love of a woman, or the care of a child.’

Fin watched as Kenny strode back down the hill to where a fuming Jamie awaited him in the Range Rover. In keeping with his mood, the sky had become closed, the light gone, and the land lay brooding in semi-obscurity.

It was a grey, miserable morning, low cloud moving at speed over the town, dropping a fine wetting rain that made everything shiny and stole colour from streets that looked like old black-and-white prints. The Sheriff Court, in Lewis Street, was a blonde sandstone Victorian edifice with rain-streaked gables and tall stone chimneys. It sat two doors away from the Church of Scotland. One dispensing earthly justice, the other promising judgement in the afterlife.

There was a crowd of people hanging about on the pavement at the railings, huddled in shelter from the rain and the wind under a cluster of shining black umbrellas. Guilty and innocent, witnesses and relatives, all equal under the dismal sky and sharing their addiction for tobacco. Most wore sombre suits with white shirts and dark ties. Sunday best trotted out to impress the Sheriff. There was an old joke which had been circulating in the town for many years about what it was you called a Stornoway man wearing a suit. The response, appropriately enough, was the accused .

Fin had arrived late, held up on the road from Ness by a lorry which had shed its load. So he had no idea if Whistler had turned up for the private hearing or not. He had debated long and hard about whether or not he should tell George Gunn, but decided in the end that he would rather speak to Whistler himself first.

He stood alone on the other side of the street, his back to the closed gates of a builder’s yard with its cluster of concrete buildings and red tin roofs. He wore boots and jeans, a baseball cap and a waterproof jacket, and stood with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, hunched against the cold. He had been waiting for half an hour before he recognized the social worker he had met at Whistler’s black-house. She emerged from the arched doorway of the courthouse to raise a pink umbrella towards the sky and hurry away through the waiting crowd. A couple of solicitors in black gowns came out to stand on the steps and light cigarettes, before Whistler pushed his way between them and strode down the path to the gates. It was the first time Fin had set eyes on him since the discovery of the plane, and his immediate reaction was one of relief.