Peter May - The Lewis Man

From the door of his old crofthouse you could see right along the length of Coileag a’ Phrionnsa and down to the new breakwater almost immediately below, with a fine view out across the Sound of Barra.

Fin had arrived mid-morning and stood on the doorstep taking in the view while he waited for the old man to answer his knock, sunshine cascading in waves across the crystal turquoise of the bay, the wind yanking at his trousers and his jacket.

‘I can’t imagine a better place on earth to pass your final years.’ The priest’s voice had startled Fin, and he turned to find the old man gazing out over the Sound. ‘I watch the roll-on roll-off come and go from Barra every day, and I keep promising myself that one time I’ll get on it and make a weetrip across the water. Visit old friends before they die. It’s a beautiful island, Barra. Do you know it?’

Fin shook his head.

‘Then you should pay a visit yourself, and not be a procrastinator like me. Come away in.’

He bent now over the dining table in the living room, where sketches and photographs lay strewn among open albums filled with cuttings and photocopies and handwritten lists. He had laid everything out immediately after the phone call from Fin. It was not often he got the chance to show off his collection. Beneath a buttoned-up green cardigan he wore a white shirt with a fine brown check, open at the neck. His grey flannel trousers gathered in folds over his brown slippers. Fin noticed that there was dirt beneath his fingernails, and that he had not shaved for perhaps two days, a fine silver stubble clinging to the loose flesh of his face.

‘The Eriskay jersey is one of the rarest pieces of craftwork you’ll find in Scotland today,’ he said.

Fin was surprised. ‘They are still made?’

‘Aye. For the co-operative, the Co-Chomunn Eirisgeidh. There’s only a few women still producing them. In the old days they were single-coloured. Navy blue. But they make them in cream now, too. It’s a shame, but the single colour doesn’t really show off the intricacy of the patterns.’

He reached down into a carrier bag on the floor and drew out an example of the jersey to show to Fin. He flattened it out across the table, and Fin could see what the old priest meant. The pattern was incredibly fine, with row upon row of vertical, horizontal and angled ribs, some in diamond shapes, others in a zigzag motif. The old man ran his finger lightly over the ribbed blue wool.

‘They use very fine needles and a tight stitch. As you can see, the jersey is seamless. Very warm and dry. It takes about two weeks to knit one.’

‘And every family had its own distinct pattern?’

‘Aye, they did. Passed down through the generations. Used to be practised all over the Hebrides at one time, but only in Eriskay now. And no doubt it’ll die out here, too, in the end. The young ones don’t show much interest in taking it on. Takes too long, you see. The girls now want everything today. Or even yesterday.’ He smiled sadly and shook his head at Fin. ‘Which is why I thought it would be a shame for such a fine craft to pass into history unrecorded.’

‘And you have examples of every family pattern on the island?’

‘Pretty much so. For about the last seventy years anyway. Can I get you something to drink? A wee dram, maybe.’

Fin declined politely. ‘It’s a bit early for me.’

‘Och, it’s never too early for a sip of whisky, Mr Macleod. I didn’t get to be this age by waiting for a nip, or drinking milk.’ He grinned and crossed to an old bureau with a dropdown door that opened to reveal a collection of bottles. He selected one and poured himself a small measure. ‘Sure I can’t tempt you?’

Fin smiled. ‘No thanks.’

The old priest returned to the table and took a tiny sip. ‘Do you have an example of what it is you’re looking for?’

‘I do.’ Fin took Gunn’s fax from his bag and smoothed it over the jersey on the table.

The old man peered at it. ‘Oh, aye. Definitely an Eriskay pattern,’ he said. ‘Where did you get this?’

Fin hesitated. ‘It was drawn from an impression left by a blanket, or a rug. Something knitted anyway.’

The priest nodded. ‘Well, it’ll take me some time to compare it with all my samples. If I can’t tempt you to a wee dram, make yourself a cup of tea.’ He nodded towards the stove. ‘And sit in by the fire. I’d offer you a bible to read.’ He smiled mischievously. ‘But it’s maybe a bit early in the day for stuff that strong.’

Fin sat by the fire, nursing a mug of dark, sweet tea, and gazed from the small, recessed window out across the beach below. All his instincts told him that he was looking down on the scene of the crime. That this was where the young man whose body had been taken from the peat bog in Lewis had actually been murdered. He still had no idea yet who that young man was, although if he held his breath and listened to the wind he could almost hear it whisper that he was within touching distance now.

‘Mr Macleod?’

Fin turned his head towards the table.

The old priest smiled. ‘I think I might have found who knitted this.’

Fin stood up and crossed the room to join the priest at the table, and found himself looking down at an old black-and-white photograph of an Eriskay jersey. It was pin-sharp, and placed next to Gunn’s fax of the artist’s sketch it was possible — eyes flickering back and forth from one to the other — to make a direct comparison between the patterns.

The old man indicated all the points of correlation. There were too many to be in any doubt that they had been knitted by the same hand. They were, to all intents and purposes, identical.

Fin stabbed the fax with his finger. ‘But this wasn’t a jersey.’

‘No.’ The priest shook his head thoughtfully. ‘I think it was a bed cover of some kind. Knitted squares sewn together. It would have been wonderfully warm.’ He traced the faint outline of the right-angled corner of one of the squares, and Fin thought that a dead man would have had no need of warmth. ‘You still haven’t told me where you got this.’

‘I’m afraid,’ Fin said, ‘that I’m not really at liberty to say just yet.’

The old man nodded with the fatalistic acceptance of someone whose life had been built on faith.

But Fin couldn’t contain his curiosity any longer. ‘Whose knitting pattern is it?’

The priest turned over the photograph, and written on the other side in a neat hand and faded ink was the name MaryAnn Gillies. And the date 1949.

The ruin stood in an elevated position on the hillside, almost lost in long grass that bowed in the wind. The top half of the crofthouse had fallen down years before, the front door an opening between two crumbling walls. Small, deep-set windows on either side of it remained intact, although all wood and glass were long gone. Chimneys survived at each gable. One even had a tall, yellow ceramic pot still perched precariously on top of it. The foundations of other buildings around the house remained visible among the grasses: a shed where they no doubt kept the beasts; a barn for storing the hay for winter feed. The strip of land where it would have been grown extended down the hill to the road below. At the far side of the road, sunlight glistered all across the small bay and the Sound beyond it. Cloud fragments raced across the bluest of skies, chasing their own shadows across the hillside. In the tiny, wind-blasted garden of a white cottage at the roadside, tall spring flowers with vividly coloured red and yellow heads ducked and dived among the turbulent currents of air.

Clearly visible from here, on the hilltop opposite, stood the granite church built from the proceeds of a single night’s catch. It had dominated the life of the island for more than a century, and physically loomed over it still.