Peter May - The Lewis Man

Tormod let him do everything without resistance, like a well-trained child. Except that he insisted on expressing excessive amounts of gratitude. ‘You’re a good lad, Fin. I always liked you son. You’re just like your old man.’ And stroking Fin’s hair. Then he said, ‘I need to pee now.’

‘On you go, Mr Macdonald, I’ll wait for you.’ Fin turned to run the water in the sink until it was warm for the old man to wash his hands.

‘Ahh, shit!’

He turned at the sound of Tormod’s cursing as the old boy’s glasses slipped off the end of his nose and fell into the urinal. The mishap did nothing, however, to lessen or divert the stream of yellow urine issuing from Tormod’s bladder into the trough. If anything he seemed to be aiming for his glasses. Fin sighed. It was clear to him who was going to have to retrieve them. And when finally Tormod finished peeing, Fin leaned past him to reach down delicately and pick the urine-drenched glasses out of the runnel.

Tormod watched in silence as the younger man rinsed them thoroughly under running water from the tap before lathering his hands with soap and rinsing them, too. ‘Wash your hands now, Mr Macdonald,’ he said, and he leaned into the cubicle to retrieve some soft toilet paper to dry off the glasses. When Tormod had finished drying his hands Fin replaced his glasses, planting them firmly above the bridge of his nose and behind his ears. ‘You’d better not let that happen again, Mr Macdonald. We don’t want you peeing down your legs now, do we?’

For some reason Tormod found the notion of peeing down his legs quite hilarious. And he laughed heartily as Fin led him back out into the bar.

Marsaili looked up expectantly, a half-smile rising on her face at the sight of her father laughing. ‘What happened?’

Fin sat the old man down. ‘Nothing,’ he said, and handed her the spare pair of trousers neatly folded. ‘You’re dad’s still got a great sense of humour, that’s all.’

As he sat down he saw the grateful look in Tormod’s eyes, as if the old man knew that for Fin to have recounted the truth would have been a humiliation. There was no knowing what he thought, or felt, or how aware he was of anything around him. He was lost in a fog somewhere in his own mind. Perhaps there were times when the fog cleared a little, but there would also be times, Fin knew, when it would come down like a summer haar and obscure all light and reason.

The Solas daycare centre was to be found on the northeastern outskirts of Stornoway in Westview Terrace, a modern, single-storey building angled around car parks front and back. It stood next door to the council-run Dun Eisdean residential care home for the elderly, surrounded by trees and neatly manicured lawns. Beyond, lay white-speckled peat bog shimmering briefly in the last sun of the afternoon before the rains would come. In the slanting yellow light they looked like fields of gold, stretching away to Aird and Broadbay. From the south-west, dark clouds rolled in on the edge of a stiffening wind, bruised and ominous and pregnant with rain.

Marsaili parked around the back, opposite a row of residential caravans brought in to augment already overstretched facilities, and the first fat drops of rain began falling as she and Fin hurried towards the entrance with Tormod between them. As they reached it, the door swung out and a dark-haired man in a black quilted anorak held it open for them. It wasn’t until they were in out of the rain that Fin realized who it was.

‘George Gunn!’

Gunn seemed just as surprised to see Fin. He took a moment to collect himself, then nodded politely. ‘Mr Macleod.’ They shook hands. ‘I didn’t realize you were on the island, sir.’ He glanced acknowledgement in Marsaili’s direction. ‘Mrs Macinnes.’

‘It’s Macdonald now. I took back my maiden name.’

‘And it’s not “sir” any more either, George. Just plain Fin. I handed in my jotters.’

Gunn raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh. I’m sorry to hear that, Mr Macleod.’

An elderly lady with a faded blue rinse through silvered hair came to take Tormod by the arm and lead him gently away. ‘Hello Tormod. Didn’t expect you today. Come away in and we’ll make you a cup of tea.’

Gunn watched them go then turned back to Marsaili. ‘Actually, Miss Macdonald, it was your father I wanted to talk to.’

Marsaili’s eyes opened in surprise. ‘What on earth would you want to talk to my dad for? Not that you’ll get any sense out of him.’

Gunn nodded solemnly. ‘So I understand. I’ve been up at Eoropaidh to see your mother. But since you’re here it would help if you could confirm a few things for me, too.’

Fin put a hand on Gunn’s forearm. ‘George, what’s all this about?’

Gunn carefully moved his arm away from Fin’s hand. ‘If I could just ask for your patience, sir …’ And Fin knew that this was no routine inquiry.

‘What kind of things?’ Marsaili said.

‘Family things.’

‘Such as?’

‘Do you have any uncles, Miss Macdonald? Or cousins? Any relatives, close or otherwise, outside of your immediate family?’

Marsaili frowned. ‘I think my mother has some distant relatives somewhere in the south of England.’

‘On your father’s side.’

‘Oh.’ Marsaili’s confusion deepened. ‘Not that I know of. My dad was an only child. No brothers or sisters.’

‘Cousins?’

‘I don’t think so. He came from the village of Seilebost, on Harris. But as far as I know he’s the only surviving member of his family. He took us once to see the croft he was brought up on. Derelict now, of course. And Seilebost School where he went as a child. A wonderful little school sitting right out there on the machair with the most incredible views over the sands of Luskentyre. But there was never any talk of relatives.’

‘Come on, George, what’s going on?’ Fin was having trouble complying with Gunn’s request for patience.

Gunn flicked him a glance and seemed oddly embarrassed, running his hand back through the dark hair that formed the widow’s peak on his forehead. He hesitated a moment before reaching a decision. ‘A few days ago, Mr Macleod, we recovered a body from the peat bog out at Siader on the west coast. It was the perfectly preserved corpse of a young man in his late teens. He’d died violently.’ He paused. ‘At first it was assumed that the body could be hundreds of years old, perhaps from the time of the Norse occupation. Or even older, as far back as the Stone Age. But an Elvis Presley tattoo on his right forearm kind of blew a hole in that theory.’

Fin nodded. ‘It would.’

‘Well, anyway, sir, the pathologist has established that this young man was probably murdered in the late 1950s. Which means that his killer might just still be alive.’

Marsaili was shaking her head in consternation. ‘But what’s any of this got to do with my dad?’

Gunn sucked in a long breath through clenched teeth. ‘Well, the thing is, Miss Macdonald, there was no clothing or anything else that might help us identify the dead man. When we first found the body the police surgeon drew off some fluid and took tissue samples to send for analysis.’

‘And they checked the DNA against the database?’ Fin said.

Gunn flushed slightly and nodded. ‘You’ll remember,’ he said, ‘last year, when most of the men in Crobost gave samples to rule them out as suspects in the Angel Macritchie murder …’

‘Those should have been destroyed by now,’ Fin said.

‘The donor has to request that, Mr Macleod. A form signed. It seems Mr Macdonald didn’t do that. It should have been explained to him, but apparently it wasn’t, or he didn’t understand.’ He looked at Marsaili. ‘Anyway, the database came up with a familial match. Whoever that young man in the bog is, he was related to your father.’