Peter May - The Lewis Man

Her car was not there, and he realized that she must already have left for Glasgow. But there was a light burning in the kitchen window, and he made a dash for the door through the rain. There was no one in the kitchen and he went through to the living room where the television was playing the evening news in the corner. But there was no one here either. He went out into the hall and called upstairs to Fionnlagh’s bedroom.

‘Anyone home?’

A line of light lay along the foot of the door and he started up the stairs. He was only halfway up when the door opened and Fionnlagh came out on to the top landing, shutting it quickly behind him. ‘Fin!’ He seemed startled, surprised, oddly hesitant, before hurrying down the stairs and squeezing past Fin on the way. ‘I thought you were in Harris.’

Fin turned and followed him down to the living room, where he could see in the light that Fionnlagh was slightly flushed, self-conscious, almost embarrassed. ‘Well, I’m back.’

‘So I see.’

‘Your mum said I could use the plumbing whenever I needed to. Until I get things fixed up at the croft.’

‘Sure. Feel free.’ He was clearly uncomfortable, and moved now through to the kitchen. Fin followed in time to see him opening the fridge. ‘Beer?’ Fionnlagh turned, holding out a bottle.

‘Thanks.’ Fin took it, twisting off the cap, and sat down at the table. Fionnlagh hesitated before taking one himself. He stood leaning back against the fridge and threw the cap across the kitchen into the sink before taking a long pull at the bottle.

‘So what did you find out about Grampa?’

‘Nothing,’ Fin said. ‘Except that he’s not Tormod Macdonald.’

Fionnlagh stared at him, a look of vacant incomprehension on his face. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Tormod Macdonald died at the age of eighteen in a boating accident. I’ve seen his death certificate and his grave.’

‘It must be some other Tormod Macdonald then.’

Fin shook his head. ‘It’s the Tormod Macdonald your grandfather claims to be.’

Fionnlagh took several swigs of beer, trying to digest this. ‘Well, if he’s not Tormod Macdonald, who is he?’

‘Good question. But not one he’s likely to give us an answer to any time soon.’

Fionnlagh was silent, then, for a long time, staring into his half-empty beer bottle. ‘Do you think he killed that man they found in the peat bog?’

‘I have no idea. But he was related to him, that’s for sure. And if we can establish the identity of one, then that’ll probably tell us who the other is, and maybe what happened.’

‘You sound like a cop.’

Fin smiled. ‘It’s what I was for most of my adult life. The mindset doesn’t change overnight just because you quit your job.’

‘Why did you?’

Fin sighed. ‘Most people spend their lives never knowing what lies beneath the stones they walk on. Cops spend theirs lifting those stones and having to deal with what they find.’ He drained his bottle. ‘I was sick of spending my life in the shadows, Fionnlagh. When all you know is the darkest side of human nature, you start to find the darkness in yourself. And that’s a scary thing.’

Fionnlagh tossed his empty bottle into a box of them by the door, and the dull clunk of glass on glass filled the silence in the kitchen. He still appeared ill at ease.

Fin said, ‘I hope I haven’t interrupted anything.’

Quick eyes flashed towards him, then away again. ‘You haven’t.’ Then, ‘Mum went to see Grampa this afternoon.’

‘Any joy?’

The boy shook his head. ‘No. He was sitting out in the rain, apparently, but seemed to think he was on a boat. Then he started wittering on about collecting seaweed to fertilize the crows.’

Fin scowled. ‘Crows?’

‘Aye. He used the Gaelic word, feannagan . Crows.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘No, it doesn’t.’

Fin hesitated. ‘Fionnlagh …’ The boy looked at him expectantly. ‘Better let me tell your mum about your grandfather.’ And Fionnlagh nodded, only too happy, it seemed, to be relieved of the responsibility.

The wind whipped and tugged at the outer shell of his tent, straining at the guys, while the inner tent inhaled and exhaled partially and erratically, like a failing lung. The rain driving against the thin plastic exterior skin was almost deafening. The glow of Fin’s battery-powered fluorescent filled it with a strange blue light, by which he sat wrapped in his sleeping bag reading Gunn’s illicit autopsy report on the body in the bog.

He was fascinated by the description of the Elvis tattoo on the left forearm, and the legend, Heartbreak Hotel , although it had been the headplate which had definitively established death as being some time in the late fifties. Here was a young man with a passion for the world’s first rock star, whose intellectual powers had been diminished by some accident that had left him brain-damaged. Related, in some way, to Marsaili’s father, whose own identity was now shrouded in mystery.

It had been a brutal murder. Tied up, stabbed, throat slit. Fin tried to imagine Marsaili’s dad as his killer, but simply couldn’t. Tormod, or whoever he was, had always been a gentle sort of man. A big man, yes. Powerful in his day. But a man with such an even temperament that Fin could not recall a single occasion when he had even heard him raise his voice.

He laid the report to one side, and picked up the open folder containing the details of Robbie’s hit and run. He had spent nearly an hour going through it once more when he got back to the tent from Marsaili’s. Futile, of course. He had lost count of the number of times he had read it. Every statement, the smallest measurement of every tyre track on the road. The description of the car, the driver. The police photographs he had photocopied in Edinburgh. He knew every detail by heart, and yet every time he read it hoped to stumble upon the one vital thing he had missed.

It was an obsession, he knew. An unreasonable, illogical, unviable obsession. And yet, like the addicted smoker, he was simply unable to put it aside. There couldn’t be closure until the driver of the car had been brought to book. Until that day there would be no steering his life out of the rut, no getting it back on to the open road.

He cursed under his breath and tossed the folder away across the tent, before switching off the fluorescent, and throwing himself back to lie on his groundsheet, head sunk in the pillow, so anxious for sleep to take him that he knew it wouldn’t.

He closed his eyes and listened to the wind and the rain, then opened them again. There was no difference. No light. Just absolute darkness. He doubted if he had ever felt quite so lonely in his life.

It was impossible for him to guess at how much time had passed. Half an hour, an hour? But at the end of it he was no closer to sleep than when he had first lain down. He sat up again and switched on the light, blinking in the harshness of its glare. There were some books in the car. He needed something to take him away from here, from who he was, who he had been, where he was going. Something to stop all the unresolved questions in his head endlessly repeating themselves.

He pulled his oilskin on over his vest and boxers and slipped bare feet into his boots, grabbing his sou’wester before unzipping the tent to face the rain and the wind. A twenty-second dash to the car, and he would be back in under a minute shedding dripping waterproofs in the outer tent, to slide back into the warmth of his sleeping bag. A book in his hand, escape in his heart.

Still, he hesitated to take the plunge. It was wild out there. It was why generations of his ancestors had built houses with walls two and three feet thick. How foolish was he to believe he could survive weeks, even months, in a flimsy little tent like this? He breathed out through clenched teeth, screwed up his eyes for a moment, then made the dash. Out into rain that stung his face, the force of the wind almost taking the legs away from him.