Peter May - The Lewis Man

It was almost dark by the time they stepped back out into the street, earlier than it would have been up on the islands, and everything a little unreal, leached of colour by the pools of cold light that fell from the overhead streetlamps.

‘So my dad and his brother really were John and Peter,’ Marsaili said, as if knowing their names in some way made them more real. ‘But how will we get to find out their family name?’

Fin looked thoughtful. ‘By talking to someone who knew them.’

‘Like who?’

‘Like the Kellys.’

She frowned. ‘How would we ever find them ?’

‘Well, if I were still a policeman I would have said, because they’re known to us.’

‘I don’t understand.’

A young couple emerged from the blue frontage of the wine shop, bottles clunking in a paper bag. She slipped her arm through his, and their voices came like chattering birds in the twilight.

Fin said, ‘The Kellys are a well-known crime family in Edinburgh, Marsaili. Have been for years. Started out in what was then the slum village of Dean. Drugs, prostitution. They’ve even been implicated in a number of gangland killings, though nothing was ever proved.’

‘You know them?’ Marsaili couldn’t keep the incredulity out of her voice.

‘I never had any dealings with them, no. But I do know that my old DCI did. He was my boss when I was first in the force. Jack Walker. Retired now.’ He took out his mobile. ‘He’d probably be happy to meet us for a drink.’

Someone seemed to be going around Edinburgh painting shopfronts, bars and restaurants in primary colours. Vandals with a misplaced sense of civic pride. The Windsor Buffet at the top of Leith Walk was a virulent green, the former Scottish Television studios next door to it a shocking blue. Yellows and reds featured up and down the street, along with more greens and blues. All topped by drab sandstone tenements, some of which had been stone-cleaned, while others remained blackened by the years, like bad teeth in a brave smile.

The Windsor was nearly full, but Jack Walker had reserved them an alcove at the back. He looked curiously at Marsaili when they were introduced, but didn’t ask. He ordered beers for Fin and himself, and a glass of white wine for Marsaili. He was a big man with wide shoulders, and an untidy shock of white brillo-pad hair. For all that he must have been in his mid-seventies, he was not a man you would choose to pick a fight with. He had a sunbed-tanned face and emerald eyes that never quite achieved the same apparent warmth as the sardonic smile that played constantly about his lips.

He shook his head gravely. ‘You don’t want to mess with the Kellys, Fin. They’re bad bastards.’

‘I don’t doubt that they are, sir. And I have no intention of messing with them.’ Even as he said it, he was aware of addressing his former boss as ‘sir’. Old habits died hard. ‘I just want to talk to any one of them who might have been around in the fifties when the family lived in the Dean Village.’

Walker cocked an eyebrow. His interest had been engaged, but all his years in the force had taught him that sometimes there were questions better left unasked. ‘The only one left from that time would be Paul Kelly. He would just have been a kid, then. There were two older brothers, but they were gunned down outside their home well over fifty years ago. Tit-for-tat killings, we figured. There were some pretty violent turf wars going on at that time. I was just a young cop starting out. We never probed these gangland murders too deeply, so no one ever got done for it. And then over the years I watched as the young Paul Kelly took the reins. Built himself a bloody empire on the back of other people’s misery.’ He made a face that masked a lot of pent-up anger and frustration. ‘We never were able to lay a finger on him.’

‘So he’s still the head honcho?’

‘Getting on a bit now, Fin, but aye. No doubt likes to think of himself as the Godfather. Came from the gutter, but lives in a big fucking mansion in Morningside.’ He glanced at Marsaili, but there was no apology for his language. ‘He has kids and grandkids now. Sends them all to private school, while honest Joes like you and me struggle to pay the heating. He’s scum, Fin. Just scum. I wouldn’t give him the time of day.’

They lay in silence for what seemed like an eternity in the darkness of their hotel room. The only accompaniment to their breathing was the sound of running water coming from the river below. The same water that flowed under the Dean Bridge. Fin had taken them there after they left the Windsor, and they had crossed to the middle of it, looking down on the Dean Village, and the Water of Leith a hundred feet beneath it. Marsaili’s father and his brother had been here once. Something had happened on this bridge and a boy had died.

Marsaili’s voice seemed resoundingly loud coming out of the dark, crashing into his thoughts. ‘It was strange watching you tonight,’ she said. ‘With that policeman.’

Fin turned his head towards her, even although he couldn’t see her. ‘Why strange?’

‘Because it was like looking at someone I didn’t know. Not the Fin Macleod I went to school with, or the Fin Macleod who made love to me on the beach. Not even the Fin Macleod who treated me like shit in Glasgow.’

He closed his eyes and remembered how it had been, that brief sojourn together at university in Glasgow. Sharing a flat. How badly he had treated her, incapable of dealing with his own pain, and taking it out on Marsaili. How often is it, he thought, that it’s the people closest to us that we hurt the most?

‘It was like looking at a stranger. The Fin Macleod you must have been all these years when I didn’t know you. Married to someone else, raising a kid, being a policeman.’

He was almost startled by the sudden touch of her hand on his face.

‘I’m not sure I know you at all. Not any more.’

And those few moments of passion they had shared that afternoon, pencil-thin lines of sunlight zigzagging across their frantic lovemaking, already seemed like a lifetime ago.

Paul Kelly lived in a detached yellow sandstone house built on three levels, with gables and dormers, an elaborate entrance porch, and a conservatory at the rear that extended right out into a mature, well-maintained garden.

A semicircular drive led up to the front door from Tipperlinn Road, with wrought-iron electronic gates at each end of it. Sunlight tipped down over azaleas in bloom, green-dappled by young beech leaves.

Their taxi dropped Fin and Marsaili at the south gate, and Fin asked the driver to wait. But he shook his head. ‘Naw. You’ll pay me now. I’m no hanging around.’ It seemed that he knew the address and was anxious not to linger. They stood and watched as he drove off and swung into Morningside Place.

Fin turned to the intercom set in the stone gatepost and pressed the buzzer. After a moment a voice said, ‘What d’ye want?’

‘My name’s Fin Macleod. I used to be a cop. I’d like to speak to Paul Kelly.’

‘Mr Kelly disnae speak tae anyone without an appointment.’

‘Tell him it’s about something that happened on the Dean Bridge fifty-odd years ago.’

‘He’ll no see you.’

‘Just tell him.’ There was an imperative quality to Fin’s voice. A tone that brooked no argument.

The speaker went dead and Fin glanced self-consciously at Marsaili. He was again being that Fin Macleod she didn’t know. And he had no idea how to bridge the gap between the two.

They seemed to wait an inordinately long time before the speaker crackled again and the voice returned. ‘Okay,’ was all it said, and the gates immediately began to swing open.