Peter May - The Chessmen

‘Sure.’

And it felt strange for Whistler’s little girl to be sitting next to him where Whistler had once sat.

‘Why are you here?’ she said.

Fin avoided meeting her eyes and rested his forearms on his knees to look over them beyond the beach, to where the tide was still on its way out and shallow white breakers burst in long, uneven lines over wet golden sand. ‘I wanted to take a look for myself at where your dad was killed. I don’t remember much about it. Someone just about cracked my skull moments after I found him.’

‘Why? I mean, what did you think you were going to see?’

‘I was a cop for a lot of years, Anna. I thought maybe, I don’t know, that I might see something that the rest had missed.’

‘And did you?’

He paused for just a split second before shaking his head. ‘No.’ Then he turned to look at her, and was shocked again by how much of her father there was in her eyes. He was momentarily discomposed, and she stared back at him candidly, searching for something in his. ‘Who gave permission to use the chessmen?’ he said.

‘I did. Jamie Wooldridge said they were needed for the gala day.’

And Fin remembered how Jamie had denied knowing anything about them.

‘He said there had been some confusion about whether or not his father had commissioned them. But that had all been cleared up, and he apologized for not paying for them before now. Told me he would pay me after the gala.’ She turned away to look seaward, her jaw setting in the same stubborn way Fin had so often seen in her dad. ‘But I don’t want his money. I want the chessmen. I want to keep them.’ She fought to control her voice. ‘My dad made them. That makes them mine now, doesn’t it?’ She turned her father’s fiery eyes on him.

Fin nodded. ‘It does.’

‘Everything about them. Every curve and line and chiselled feature was made by my dad. They came from his heart and his hand, and if there’s anything of him left in this world it’s in those chessmen.’

Fin was startled by her unexpected eloquence, the depth of her feelings and her ability to express them. This after all was the girl who no more than a week ago had reluctantly confessed, I fucking love my dad , after describing him as an arsehole , and a fucking embarrassment . A girl who could barely compose a sentence without peppering it with profanities. All a carefully constructed image, he saw now. A protective shell. One that would win her respect from her peers, but at the same time keep her safe from her vulnerabilities. Shed now, along with all the piercings. He remembered Fionnlagh’s description of her. Smart kid. But brains are wasted on her . Her father’s daughter, in almost every way.

‘I want to keep them for ever,’ she said. ‘And that way I’ll always have a part of him with me.’

Fin reached out to touch her face. ‘You’re the biggest and best part of him there is, Anna. Make him proud of that.’

Her eyes filled up and she got quickly to her feet. ‘I’d better go. They’ll be needing me down there. With this weather there’s bound to be a big demand for the boat rides.’

Even as she spoke, a helicopter swooped up over the dunes and flew low overhead. ‘Helicopter rides, too,’ Fin shouted about the roar of its rotors. He stood up, and she hesitated a moment.

‘Can I talk to you sometimes, Mr Macleod? I don’t want to be a nuisance or anything. But it seems like you knew him better than anyone. I’d like to get to know him a little better myself.’

‘I’d like that,’ Fin said. And he had a sudden urge to hold her, as if in holding her he could be close to Whistler one last time. But he didn’t.

She smiled wanly. ‘Thanks.’ And she hurried off down the track towards the beach.

Detective Sergeant George Gunn parked his car at the foot of the track that led to Whistler’s blackhouse. He looked up and saw Fin sitting among the tall grasses, knees pulled up below his chin, a soft westerly blowing through his hair. The sound of distant bagpipes floated up from the beach on the wind. He began a weary trek up the hill.

Fin watched him all the way, and heard the swish, swish of his black nylon anorak before he heard his breath coming hard and fast from the effort of the climb. He had a green folder tucked under one arm, and he stopped and glowered down at Fin. Fin noticed the shine on his shoes, and the crease in his trousers. An extra-generous application of oil was helping keep his black hair in place despite the wind.

‘You’ve gone way above and beyond the call of friendship this time, Mr Macleod. I’ve had to go delving into an inquiry I’m not a part of to get the things you wanted. It has been noticed and questions are being asked.’

‘But you got everything?’

Gunn glared at him. ‘The social work report is redundant now as far as the courts are concerned. Mr Macaskill is dead, so the case disputing custody has fallen by default. It was, however, considered relevant to the murder inquiry, and so is still part of the evidence.’

‘And you got a look at it?’

‘I have a copy of it right here.’ He patted the green folder.

‘And?’

‘The social worker was recommending that the Sheriff grant custody of his daughter to John Angus Macaskill, on the basis of the girl’s own wishes.’

Fin let his head drop and closed his eyes. And he wondered if his own intervention had maybe led to all of this. He took a deep breath and raised himself to his feet. ‘And the crimescene pics?’

‘I have them, too.’

Fin took Gunn by the arm. ‘Come inside and show me.’

He cleared a space on Whistler’s table, and Gun spread out half a dozen eight-by-ten colour prints over a surface scarred and stained by decades of use. It was shocking to see Whistler lying there among the debris. His blood was lurid and unnaturally red in the glare of the police photographer’s lights, his face brutally pale by comparison, the blood around his mouth and nose almost black. Such a big man reduced to nothing. All that intelligence lost in the halt of a heartbeat. The mosaic of memories that comprised his life gone for ever, as if they had never existed. Fin found himself wishing that he had Donald’s faith. That there was some purpose to all this, and that it wouldn’t all be lost like so many tears in rain.

He examined all the photographs carefully before picking out the third of them. ‘Look George. You can see clearly in this one. The outstretched hand is almost touching the fallen chessman.’

Gunn frowned. ‘Why would he have been trying to reach a wooden chessman, Mr Macleod? He was dying for Christ’s sake!’

‘And probably knew it. He was trying to tell us who killed him, George.’

Gunn turned a look of consternation on the younger man. ‘By pointing to a chess piece?’

Fin felt sick. ‘No ordinary chess piece.’ He stabbed a finger at the fallen carving. ‘This one here is what they call a Berserker. The fiercest of all the Viking warriors. They whipped themselves up into a trancelike state, it seems, so they felt no fear or pain. Whistler faithfully replicated all the others, but he did his own version of the Berserker.’ He paused. ‘In the likeness of Kenny John Maclean. His own small revenge for Kenny stealing his wife and his daughter.’

Gunn’s mouth hung half open as he absorbed this. ‘Are you saying Kenny John killed Whistler Macaskill?’

Fin nodded. ‘I am, George.’

‘Why?’

Fin sucked in a long, slow breath and tried to make sense of it himself. ‘I’m guessing, but I figure Big Kenny must have found out what was in the social work report.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe Anna said something. Maybe she told him what she’d told the social worker.’