Peter May: The Lewis Man

She turned towards Fin and Marsaili.

‘That’s why he was going to do what they said. They’d told him to get rid of the body himself and never breathe a word of it to another living soul. Or they would kill me.’ She opened her palms in front of her in pure frustration. ‘Right then I couldn’t have cared less. I just wanted him to go to the police. But he point-blank refused. He said he would bury Peter himself where no one would ever find him, and then there was something he had to do. He wouldn’t say what. Just that he owed it to his mother for letting her down.’

Fin looked across the ruin to where old Tormod had gone and sat on the remains of the front wall, staring vacantly out across Charlie’s beach as the sun slipped, finally, from view, and the first stars began to emerge in a dusk-blue sky. He wondered if Ceit’s words, so vividly recreating the events of that night, had penetrated his consciousness in any way. Or whether simply being here, all these years later, would in itself stir some distant memory. But he realized it was something they would almost certainly never know.

It is so hard to remember things. I know they are there. And sometimes I can feel them, but I can’t see them or reach them. I’m so tired. Tired of all this travelling, and all this talk that I can’t follow. I thought they were taking me home.

This is a nice beach, though. Not like those beaches on Harris. But nice. A gentle crescent of silver.

Oh. Is that the moon now? See how the sand almost glows by its light, as if lit from beneath. I think I was here once. I’m sure I was, wherever the hell we are. It seems familiar somehow. With Ceit. And Peter. Poor Peter. I can see him still. That look in his eyes when he knew he was dying. Like the sheep in the shed that time, when Donald Seamus slit its throat.

I still dream, sometimes, about anger. Anger turned cold. Anger born of grief and guilt. I remember that anger. How it ate me up inside, devoured every shred of the human being I had once been. And I watch myself in my dream. Like watching some flickering old movie, black-and-white or sepia-brown. Waiting. Waiting.

The air was warm on my skin that night, though I couldn’t stop shivering. The sounds of the city are so different. I had got used to the islands. It was almost a shock to be back among tall buildings and motor cars and people. So many people. But not there, not that night. It was quiet, and the sound of traffic was far away.

I had waited maybe an hour by that time. Concealed in the bushes, crouched down on stiffening legs. But anger gives you patience, like lust delaying the moment of orgasm to make it all the sweeter. It makes you blind, too. To possibilities, and consequences. It dulls the imagination, reduces your focus to one single point, and obliterates all else.

A light came on, then, in the porch, and all my senses were on heightened awareness. I heard the latch scrape in the lock, and the squeal of the hinges before I saw them stepping out into the light. Both of them. One behind the other. Danny stopped to light a cigarette, and Tam was about to lean back to close the door.

And that’s when I moved out on to the path. Into the light. I wanted to be sure they saw me. To know who I was, and what I was going to do. I didn’t care who else might see me, as long as they knew.

The match flared at the end of Danny’s cigarette, and I saw in the light it cast in his eyes that he knew I was going to kill him. Tam turned at that moment and saw me, too.

I waited.

I wanted him to realize.

And he did.

I raised my shotgun and fired the first barrel. It hit Danny full in the chest, and the force of it threw him back against the door. I’ll never forget the look of sheer terror and certainty in Tam’s eyes as I pulled again. A little off balance, but accurate enough to take half his head off.

And I turned and walked away. No need to run. Peter was dead, and I had done what I had to do. Hang the consequences! I was no longer shivering.

I don’t know how many times I have dreamt that dream. Often enough that I am no longer sure if that’s all it ever was. But no matter how many times I dream it, nothing changes. Peter is still dead. And nothing can bring him back. I had promised my mother, and I had let her down.

‘Come on, Dad. It’s getting cold.’

I turn to see Marsaili leaning down to slip her arm through mine and help me to my feet. I stand up and look at her in the moonlight as she straightens my cap. I smile and touch her face. ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ I tell her. ‘You know I love you, don’t you? I really, really love you.’

As they drove up the path to her house Ceit frowned and said, ‘There are no lights. The timer should have switched them on ages ago.’ But it wasn’t until they clattered across the cattle grid that they saw the white Range Rover parked next to Fin’s car.

Fin glanced at Ceit. ‘Looks like you’ve got visitors. Do you know the car?’ Ceit shook her head.

They all got out of the Mercedes and Dino went running, barking, to the front door. As they climbed on to the deck in the dark, Fin felt glass crunching beneath his feet. Someone had smashed the light bulb above the door.

He said to Ceit, ‘Pick up the dog!’ And something in his tone brought an immediate and unquestioning response. He was on full alert now. Tense and apprehensive. He moved cautiously towards the door, hand outstretched to grab the handle.

Ceit whispered, ‘It’s not locked. It never is.’

He turned it and pushed the door into darkness. He held his hand behind him to warn the others against following, and stepped carefully into the hall. More glass ground itself into the tartan carpet beneath his feet. The bulb in the hall had been smashed, too.

He stood listening, holding his breath. But he could hear nothing above the barking of Dino in the arms of Ceit on the deck outside. The door to the living room stood ajar. He could see the shadow of the silver panther cast by moonlight streaming in through the French windows. He stepped into the room and immediately sensed a presence, before a baby’s muffled cry sounded in the dark.

A match flared, and by the light of its flame he saw the illuminated face of Paul Kelly. He was sitting in a chair by the window on the east side of the room. He puffed several times on his cigar until the end of it glowed red, then he reached across to turn on a glass standard lamp. Fin saw the sawn-off shotgun lying across his lap.

Directly opposite him, perched on the edge of the settee, Donna sat clutching her baby. The black-haired young man from the villa in Edinburgh stood beside her with another sawn-off shotgun extended towards her head. He looked nervous. Donna was like a ghost. Shrunken and shadoweyed. Visibly shaking.

Fin heard the crunch of broken glass behind him, and Morag’s gasp. The dog had gone silent, but Marsaili’s whispered ‘Oh my God!’ seemed almost deafening.

No one moved, and in the seconds of silence that followed, Fin’s assessment of the situation was bleak. Kelly had not come all this way just to frighten them.

Kelly’s voice was obversely calm. ‘I always figured it was John McBride who murdered my brothers,’ he said. ‘But by the time we got people up here he’d vanished without trace. Just like he never existed.’ He paused to draw on his cigar. ‘Until now.’ He lifted the shotgun from his lap and stood up. ‘So now he can watch his daughter and his granddaughter die, just the way I watched my brothers die in my arms.’ His mouth curled into a barely controlled grimace, ugly and threatening. ‘I was in the hallway behind them that night when they were gunned down and left bleeding to death on the steps. You’ve got to know what that feels like to know how I feel right now. I’ve waited a lifetime for this day.’