Peter May - The Blackhouse

‘What did her father say?’

‘Oh, he backed her all the way. Said that if she didn’t want to be examined by a doctor then that was her right. We explained the position to him, but there was no way he was going to try to persuade her to do it if she didn’t want to.’

‘What was his demeanour through all this?’

‘I’d say he was angry, Mr Macleod. Kind of tight, balled-fist angry, you know, pent up inside. He seemed calm enough on the exterior. Too calm. Like water in a dam before they open the sluice gates.’ Gunn sighed. ‘In any event, the investigating officers questioned just about everybody who was at the Social Club that night, but there was no one who could corroborate Donna’s story. In theory, the case remains open, but in fact the investigation was shelved.’ He shook his head. ‘Of course, shit sticks. There was rumour, and gossip, and a lot of people were convinced that Macritchie raped the girl.’

‘Do you think he did?’

Scraps of water, tiny lochan lying in fragmented pools across the moor, glinted a cold blue in the sunlight. The rain had blown over, clearing the sky to the south. Siadar lay behind them, and the white cottages of Barvas as they approached it caught the western sun slanting across the land, lighting the gentle slopes of the southern mountains in the far distance.

‘I’d like to say I did, Mr Macleod. From everything I know about the man he seems to have been a bad bastard. But, you know, there was no evidence.’

‘I didn’t ask you about the evidence, George. I asked you what you thought.’

Gunn held the wheel firmly in both hands. ‘Well, I’ll tell you what I think, Mr Macleod, as long as you don’t quote me on it.’ He hesitated just for a moment. ‘I think that girl was lying through her teeth.’

The Park Guest House stood in a terrace of sandstone houses opposite what was now the Caladh Inn — dark, rain-streaked stone brooding behind black-painted wrought-iron fencing. It was home to one of the better restaurants in town, a conservatory built on to the dining room to make the most of the summer light. Around the solstice, it was possible to eat at midnight with the sun still streaking the sky pink.

Reluctantly, Chris Adams led Fin up to his small single-bedded room on the first floor, after Fin told him that the guest sitting room on the ground floor was not an appropriate place for them to talk. The floorboards creaked like wet snow underfoot. Fin noticed that Adams held himself stiffly, and appeared to be in some discomfort as he climbed the stairs. He was English, which Fin had not expected, betrayed by a creamy Home Counties accent. He was around thirty years old, tall and thin, with very blond hair. And for someone who apparently spent much of his time outdoors in the pursuit of animal welfare, he had an unhealthily pale complexion. The ivory skin was marred, however, by yellowing bruising around the left eye and cheekbone. He wore baggy corduroy trousers and a sweatshirt with a slogan about not being able to eat money. His fingers were unusually long, almost feminine.

He held the door open for Fin to enter his room, and then cleared a fold-up chair of clothes and paperwork to allow him to sit. The bedroom appeared to have been at the centre of a paper explosion in which a thousand bits of paper and Blu-Tack had stuck to the walls. Maps, memos, newspaper cuttings, Postits. Fin was not certain how pleased the proprietor would be. The bed was strewn with books and ring-binder folders and notebooks. A laptop computer on the chest of drawers in the window shared its space with more paperwork, empty plastic cups, and the remains of a Chinese carry-out. Adams’s outlook was across James Street to the grim glass and concrete edifice that used to be the Seaforth.

‘I’ve already given you people more time than you deserve,’ he complained. ‘You do nothing to apprehend the man who beat me up, then accuse me of murdering him when he turns up dead.’ His mobile phone rang. ‘Excuse me.’ He answered it and told his caller that he was busy right now and would call back. Then he looked expectantly at Fin. ‘Well? What do you want to know now?’

‘I want to know where you were on Friday, May the twenty-fifth this year.’

Which caught Adams completely off-balance. ‘Why?’

‘Just tell me where you were, Mr Adams, please.’

‘Well, I have no idea. I’d need to check my diary.’

‘Then do it.’

Adams looked at Fin with a clear mixture of consternation and irritation. He tutted audibly, and sat on the end of his bed, making his long fingers dance flamboyantly across the keyboard of his laptop. The screen flickered to life and flashed up a diary page. It jumped from a daily to a monthly layout, and Adams scrolled back from August to May. ‘May twenty-fifth I was in Edinburgh. We had a meeting at the office that afternoon with the local representative of the RSPCA.’

‘Where were you that night?’

‘I don’t know. At home probably. I don’t keep a social diary.’

‘I’ll need you to confirm that for me. Is there anyone who can corroborate?’

A deep sigh. ‘I suppose Roger might know. He’s my flatmate.’

‘Then I suggest you ask him and get back to me.’

‘What on earth is all this about, Mr Macleod?’

Fin ignored the question. ‘Does the name John Sievewright mean anything to you?’

Adams did not even stop to think about it. ‘No, it does not. Are you going to tell me what this is about?’

‘In the early hours of May twenty-sixth this year, a thirty-three-year-old Edinburgh conveyancing lawyer called John Sievewright was found hanging from a tree in a street near the foot of Leith Walk. He had been strangled, stripped and disembowelled. As you know, just three days ago, one Angus John Macritchie suffered almost exactly the same fate right here on the Isle of Lewis.’

A tiny explosion of air escaped from the back of Adams’s throat. ‘And you want to know if I’m going around Scotland disembowelling people? Me? That’s laughable, Mr Macleod. Laughable.’

‘Do you see me laughing, Mr Adams?’

Adams gazed at Fin in studied disbelief. ‘I’ll ask Roger what we were doing that night. He’ll know. He’s better organized than I am. Is there anything else?’

‘Yes, I want you to tell me why Angel Macritchie beat you up.’

‘Angel? Is that what you call him? I imagine he’ll have flown off to Hell by now rather than Heaven.’ He frowned. ‘I’ve already made an official statement.’

‘Not to me you haven’t.’

‘Well, there’s not much point in investigating the assault now, since the perpetrator is beyond even your reach.’

‘Just tell me what happened.’ Fin controlled his impatience, but something in his tone clearly communicated itself to Adams, who sighed again, this time even more theatrically.

‘One of your local newspapers, The Hebridean , carried a story about how I was on the island to organize a demonstration to try to prevent the annual guga cull on An Sgeir. They kill two thousand birds a year, you know. Just slaughter them. Clambering about the cliffs strangling the poor little things while the adults are flying frantically overhead crying for their dead chicks. It’s brutal. Inhumane. It may be a tradition, but it just isn’t right in a civilized country in the twenty-first century.’

‘If we could skip the lecture and just stick to the facts …’

‘I suppose, like everyone else in this Godforsaken place, you’re in favour of it. You know, that’s one thing I hadn’t expected. Not a single person on the island has offered me one word of support. And I had hoped to rally local opposition to swell our numbers.’

‘People enjoy their taste of the guga. And it may seem barbaric to you, but the method they use to kill the birds is almost instantaneous.’