Peter May - The Chessmen

‘She came looking for you,’ Marsaili said.

‘They told me in town that you were restoring your parents’ crofthouse. I was amazed to hear that you’d come back. Last I heard you were being a cop in Edinburgh.’ And she chuckled. ‘I laughed out loud when I heard that. Fin Macleod. Policeman! Remember chasing the cops through the streets of that resort town in England?’

Fin grinned. ‘I guess we were lucky not to end up in a police cell.’

‘Who’s this we you talk about, Kemo Sabe?’

Marsaili glanced, perplexed, from one to the other as they shared their laughter. ‘Someone want to let me in on the joke?’

Fin waved his hand dismissively. ‘It’s a long story, Marsaili.’ Then paused, as a thought occurred to him. ‘I guess you two know one another from school?’

‘We shared some of the same classes,’ Mairead said. ‘But had different friends.’ She smiled at Marsaili. ‘I would never have recognized you. Except I’d been told that you two were an item these days.’

‘Of course, I knew you straight away.’ Marsaili was smiling, but there was an edge to her voice. ‘Who wouldn’t?’ She turned towards Fin. ‘I saw her from the window. She was standing up there on the shoulder of the hill looking a bit like a lost soul.’

Fin quickly refocused the conversation. ‘I suppose you’re here for the funeral?’

Mairead’s face clouded. ‘Not just for it, Fin. To organize it. There are no relatives that we know of. So it’s up to Roddy’s friends to give him a proper send-off. You’ll both be coming?’

‘I won’t.’ Marsaili pushed herself away from the worktop to empty the last of her tea down the sink and rinse the mug. ‘I never really knew Roddy. And I’ve got the baby to look after.’

Mairead raised an eyebrow in surprise. ‘Baby?’

‘Our granddaughter,’ Fin said. And then felt compelled to explain. ‘We had a son I never knew about till recently.’

Mairead took Marsaili’s cue with the mug and stood up. ‘Never could keep it in the breeks, Fin, could you?’ Fin blushed and she smiled. ‘And still blushing, I see. Always wore your heart on your sleeve, you did.’ She held his gaze for a long moment. ‘They were interesting times we lived in.’

Fin nodded. ‘They were.’ And he took a pull on the neck of his bottle to disguise his discomfort. ‘You’ll let me know when the funeral’s to be?’

‘I will, now that I know where you are. I’m at the Cabarfeidh, in town.’ She paused, which made it sound almost like an invitation. And then she added, ‘Strings and Skins and Rambo are there, too.’

It seemed odd to Fin to hear those teenage nicknames again, as if somehow they should have grown out of them. And yet he still called Whistler, Whistler.

Mairead turned an ersatz smile towards Marsaili. ‘It was lovely to meet you again. Thanks for the tea.’ Fin opened the kitchen door for her and she paused momentarily as she passed him, a strange searching look in her eyes. But all she said was, ‘See you at the funeral,’ and was gone.

There was a long silence in the kitchen after she had left. It was almost as if Marsaili was waiting to hear the sound of her car starting, to be certain that she was away, before she spoke. ‘You two had a relationship, then?’

There was no point in denying it. ‘That obvious?’

‘Oh, yes.’ A long pause. ‘How come you never told me?’

Fin shrugged. ‘Nothing to tell. It was another me, in another place and time.’

‘Seems to me there are a lot of Fin Macleods I don’t know anything about.’ She lifted Mairead’s mug from the table to rinse it in the sink, and caught her reflection in the kitchen window. Fin saw her raise a hand, almost involuntarily, to sweep the hair back from her face. ‘She’s still very beautiful,’ she said, as if the contrast with her own reflection had prompted the thought.

‘She is.’ Fin drank some more of his beer. ‘We had a relationship, yes, Marsaili. But I never liked her very much.’

Marsaili was surprised. ‘No?’

Fin shook his head.

‘Why not?’

‘I knew her too well. She never cared much about anyone or anything, except herself. It was all me, me, me.’

Marsaili dried her hands on the dishtowel and there was a sadness in her smile. ‘A bit like someone else, I know.’ And she walked past him to the living room.

Mairead’s voice rang around the rafters of the church, clear and pure and unaccompanied. The doors were open so that those outside could hear her, and in the still of this sad grey morning, her voice drifted out across Loch Rog, a plaintive lament for a lost friend and lover.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I fear no evil,

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me.

Somehow, in the Gaelic, both the words and the melody were more powerful, more tribal, of the land and the place and the people. And Fin found the hairs rising up on the back of his neck. He had missed the original funeral, but the others were all here to bury Roddy again, just as they had done seventeen years before. Only then, the coffin they had carried was empty, save for some rocks and a few personal items from childhood. His parents had wanted it that way. To give a sense of closure. A chance to say goodbye.

Now the coffin with his body in it awaited them outside his old home overlooking Uig sands from the north shore. His parents had been returned to the earth now themselves, but the new owners of the house his father had built had given permission for the funeral procession to start from there.

As the mourners streamed out of the little church at Miabhaig, Fin reflected that it was more like a circus than a funeral. The Scottish media had descended en masse, along with stringers for most of the English press. Cameras flashed and pencils scribbled in notebooks, and digital video recorded all for posterity — and the six o’clock news. The discovery of Roddy’s body had been occupying pride of place on the news schedules for days. Archive footage from seventeen years earlier had been unearthed and hastily cut together with the latest video to feed the public’s voracious appetite for celebrity news. Celebrity death appealed even more to popular prurience. Throw in a little murder and mystery, and ratings were guaranteed. Sales of Amran’s CD backlist had soared.

Fin had expected Whistler to show up. He had disappeared again following their encounter outside the Sheriff Court, but there was no sign of him at the church. And it wasn’t until Fin stepped outside that he set eyes on Strings and Skins and Rambo for the first time.

He was shocked by how both Skins and Rambo had aged. Rambo was almost completely bald, and looked twenty years older than the others. Skins’ hair was streaked steel-grey, and swept back from a face devoid of its once boyish charm. Strings, too, had slipped quietly into middle age, perhaps hoping that shoulder-length dyed hair tied in a ponytail would create the illusion of a younger man. But he was thinner, meaner somehow, the fingers that spidered over his fretboard longer and bonier now than Fin remembered. Only Mairead seemed to have the Peter Pan touch. She looked as radiant and beautiful as she had as a teenager. She had never lost that certain something which had bewitched so many boys, and no doubt so many men in later life. She was the sole identifiable image of Amran. It was always her face that featured on the covers of their CDs, on their website, on their concert posters. No one but the most ardent of fans would have recognized Skins or Rambo, or even Strings. They were background. Wallpaper. Just musicians. Mairead was Amran.