Peter May: The Lewis Man

He drew up beside the Range Rover, and as he got out of his car saw a copy of the Edinburgh Evening News lying on the back seat. He grabbed his bags of provisions from the back of the Mini and made a dash through the rain to the kitchen door. He managed to stoop down and turn the handle without dropping the paper bag he was supporting in his right hand, and as the door swung in he saw Donna standing in the doorway to the hall. There was an alien smell of smoke in the house, and Donna was holding Eilidh to her as if she might fly away if she dared to let her go. Her face was the colour of the Range Rover parked at the top of the path, her pupils so dilated her eyes looked black. He knew at once that something was very wrong.

‘What is it, Donna?’

Her frightened rabbit’s eyes darted across the kitchen, and Fionnlagh turned to see a man sitting at the kitchen table. He was a big man with cropped silver-grey hair. He wore a white shirt open at the neck beneath a Barbour jacket, jeans and black Cesare Paciotti designer boots. He was smoking a very large cigar which had already burned halfway down to his nicotine-stained knuckles.

At the same moment, Donna was propelled forward into the kitchen from behind. She took two or three forced steps before steadying herself, and a man appeared behind her. He was much younger than the man sitting at the table. Thick black hair gelled to a shine was scraped back across his head. He was dressed casually in a blue shirt and charcoal trousers beneath a long, brown, waxed raincoat. Incongruously, Fionnlagh noticed that his fine black Italian shoes were caked with mud. But it was with a sense of shock and disbelief that he saw what looked very much like a sawn-off shotgun half-raised in his right hand.

‘What?’ The word was out of his mouth before he realized how foolish it sounded. His first thought was that this had to be some kind of a joke, but there didn’t seem anything remotely funny about it. And it was real fear he saw in Donna’s face. He stood, his arms full of shopping, wind and rain blowing about his legs in the open doorway, and had no idea what to do.

The man sitting at the table was leaning back in his chair watching him speculatively. He pulled gently at the wet end of his cigar. ‘Where’s your grandfather?’

Fionnlagh turned consternation in his direction. ‘I have no idea.’

‘I think you do. Your mother and her friend took him out of the care home first thing this morning. Where did they go?’

Fionnlagh felt his hackles rising now. ‘I don’t know.’ He hoped to sound defiant.

‘Don’t get cute with me, sonny.’ The cigar smoker’s tone remained even, unruffled. His eyes slid towards Donna and the baby. ‘That your kid, is it? Old Tormod’s great granddaughter?’

Fear spiked through Fionnlagh. ‘You lay a fucking finger on them …!’

‘And you’ll what? What’ll you do, sonny? Tell me.’

Fionnlagh glanced towards the man with the gun. His face was completely impassive. But something in his eyes counselled against foolishness.

‘Just tell me where they took your grandfather. That’s all you have to do.’

‘And if I don’t?’

There was an imperceptible shaking of the cigar smoker’s head before he drew another mouthful of smoke to let it escape with his smile. ‘You don’t even want to know what I’ll do to your girlfriend and your daughter.’

At first Fionnlagh couldn’t breathe, and he panicked. Before realising it was a dream. It had to be. He was at the bottom of the ocean. It was very dark and cold here, and he was aware that if he drew a breath his lungs would fill with water. So he kicked off for the surface. Somewhere very far above him he could see light filtering down. Slowly, too slowly, it grew brighter around him, but still the surface seemed a long way away. His lungs were bursting now. He kicked harder, all his focus on the light. Until suddenly he broke the surface in a blinding flash, and pain splintered all conscious thought.

His head was filled with it, and he could hear his own voice gasping from its sheer intensity. He rolled over, wondering why he couldn’t move his arms and legs, eyes screwed up against the light until gradually the kitchen took shape around him. But his thoughts were still unfocused, confused. Clarity and recollection returned only slowly.

He lay still, controlling his breathing, trying to ignore the pain in his head, and forced himself to recall his return from the store: the white Range Rover, the man with the gun, the man with the cigar threatening harm to Donna and Eilidh if he didn’t tell them where his mother and Fin had taken Tormod. But no matter how hard he tried, he had no memory of anything beyond that. Which is when he realized why he couldn’t move.

He was lying on the floor, ankles bound, hands tied behind his back. There was blood on the tiles, and he panicked, shouting, ‘Donna!’ as loudly as he could. His voice resounded in the empty kitchen and was met by a deep, troubling silence. Fear and panic nearly paralysed him. It was pure adrenalin that fuelled his frantic attempts to get himself up into a sitting position.

When finally he managed it, he saw that his feet were bound by a dishtowel, twisted and tied in a clumsy knot. With a huge effort, he succeeded in getting himself on to his knees, and then sat back on his feet, allowing his fingers access to the knotted dishtowel behind his back. It took a matter of minutes to untie it and struggle to his feet. He called out Donna’s name again and followed his voice through the house. It resounded around empty rooms. There was no sign of either Donna or the baby. In the bedroom he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, blood trickling down his face from a head wound. The only comfort he took from it was the thought that the blood on the kitchen floor was his own and not Donna’s or Eilidh’s.

But where were they? Where in God’s name had these people taken them?

He ran back to the kitchen and looked around in a frenzy. There were knives in a block on the worktop, but he didn’t see how he could access them to cut the wrist bindings behind his back. He had to get help.

With difficulty, he managed to open the kitchen door, his back to it, fingers fumbling for the latch. And then he was out. Into the rain. Running through the long grass up the slope towards the road. As he reached the tarmac he stumbled and fell, landing heavily, and grazing his cheek on the metalled surface. The rain slapped his face as he staggered back to his feet and ran through it, into the teeth of the wind, down the road to where the turn-off led up to the church and the manse.

There was not a soul around anywhere. No one in their right mind would venture out in this unless they absolutely had to.

He felt his strength ebbing as he ran up the hill to the car park, picking his precarious way across the cattle grid rather than trying to negotiate the gate, then sprinting towards the steps leading to the manse. He took them two at a time. When he reached the front door he realized he could neither ring the bell nor knock on it. So he started kicking at it and shouting, tears and blood almost blinding him.

Until the door flew open, and Donald Murray stood there, staring at him in utter consternation. It took only a moment for that consternation to turn to fear, and Fionnlagh saw the colour drain from his face.

They had left the bad weather far behind, wind and rain driving down with them from the north-west, foundering finally on the mountains of North Uist. The further south they had come then, the more it had softened, rain retreating, the wind sinking into the ocean, the yellow sunlight of the late afternoon sending long shadows across the land.

Only when they stopped at a tea-room in Benbecula did Fin realize that his mobile phone was dead. Nights spent in hotel rooms and his tent had meant that it was several days since he had last charged it. When they got back to the car, he plugged it into the cigarette lighter and dropped it in the cup holder between the seats. An hour later, as they rounded the headland at East Kilbride, they saw the little jetty at Ludagh, and the island of Eriskay drenched in sunlight across the water.