Peter May - The Blackhouse

Artair answered for him. ‘He’s investigating Angel Macritchie’s murder.’

Marsaili nodded a perfunctory acknowledgement, but showed no interest. ‘Are you here for long?’

‘Probably not. A day or two, maybe.’

‘Figure you’ll catch the killer that fast, eh?’ Artair said.

Fin shook his head. ‘As soon as they rule out a connection to the Edinburgh murder, they’ll probably send me back.’

‘And you don’t think there is one?’

‘Doesn’t look like it.’

Marsaili appeared to be listening, but still without curiosity. She kept her eyes on Fin. ‘You haven’t changed.’

‘Neither have you.’

She laughed then, genuine mirth in her eyes. ‘Same old bad liar.’ She paused. Fin was still standing in the open doorway and did not look as if he intended to stay. ‘Have you eaten?’

‘I’ll get a fish supper in Stornoway.’

‘Will you fuck,’ Artair grunted. ‘The chippys’ll all be shut by the time you get back.’

‘I’ve got quiche in the oven,’ Marsaili said. ‘It’ll only take fifteen minutes to heat up. I never know when Artair’ll be home.’

‘Aye, that’s right.’ Artair shut the door behind Fin. ‘Good old unreliable Artair. Will he be early, will he be late? Will he be drunk, will he be sober? Keeps life interesting, that right, Marsaili?’

‘It would be irredeemably dull otherwise.’ Marsaili’s tone was flat. Fin searched for some hint of irony but found none. ‘I’ll put the potatoes on.’ She turned away to the cooker.

‘Come and have a drink,’ Artair said, and he led Fin through to a small living room made smaller by a huge three-piece suite and a thirty-two-inch TV set. It was switched on, with the sound turned down. Some awful game show. Poor reception, and the colour up too high, made it almost unwatchable. The curtains were drawn, and a peat fire in the hearth made the room cosy and warm. ‘Sit down.’ Artair opened up a cupboard in the sideboard to reveal a collection of bottles. ‘What’ll you have?’

‘I won’t, thanks.’ Fin sat down and tried to see through to the kitchen.

‘Come on, you need something to whet the appetite.’

Fin sighed. There was going to be no escaping this. ‘A very small one, then.’

Artair poured two large whiskies and handed him one. ‘ Slainte .’ He raised his glass in a Gaelic toast.

‘ Slainte mhath .’ Fin took a sip. Artair gulped down half his glass, and looked up as the door opened behind Fin. Fin turned to see a teenage boy of sixteen or seventeen standing in the hall doorway. He wasn’t particularly tall, five ten or eleven, and slight-built. He had straw-fair hair, shaved short at the sides but longer on top, gelled into spikes. A single loop of earring hung from his right ear and he wore a hooded sweatshirt over baggy blue jeans that gathered around chunky white trainers. He had his mother’s cornflower-blue eyes. A good-looking boy.

‘Say hello to your uncle Fin,’ Artair said. And Fin stood up to shake the boy’s hand. A good firm handshake, and direct contact from eyes that were too much like his mother’s for comfort.

‘Hey,’ he said.

‘We called him Fionnlagh.’ It was Marsaili’s voice, and Fin looked round to see her standing in the kitchen doorway watching, an odd expression on her face, colour in her cheeks where there had been none before.

It was a shock for Fin to hear his own name. He looked at the boy again and wondered if they had named him after him. But why would they? It was a common enough name on the island. ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Fionnlagh,’ Fin said.

‘Are you going to eat with us?’ Artair asked him.

‘He’s already eaten,’ Marsaili said.

‘Well, he can have a drink with us, then.’

‘I’m still trying to sort out the problem with the computer,’ Fionnlagh said.

‘I think maybe the motherboard’s blown.’

‘Motherboard, you’ll note,’ Artair said to Fin. ‘Never the father board. It’s always the mothers that cause the trouble.’ He turned to his son. ‘So what does that mean?’

‘Means it’s buggered.’

‘Well, can you not fix it?’

Fionnlagh shook his head. ‘I’d need to replace it. And that would probably cost as much a buying a new computer.’

‘Well, we haven’t got the money to go buying another fucking computer,’ Artair snapped. ‘When you get a job you can save up for one yourself.’

Fin said to him, ‘What kind of computer is it?’

‘It’s an iMac. G3. One of the old jellybeans.’

‘And what makes you think it’s the motherboard?’

Fionnlagh exhaled in frustration. ‘The screen’s gone blue and dark so you can hardly read it, and the image is all sort of squeezed up, like it’s been compressed.’

‘What system are you on?’

‘Oh, I’m miles behind. I just upgraded from nine to Jaguar. Need a better computer to run Snow Leopard.’

Artair snorted. ‘Jesus Christ, boy! Can you not speak a fucking language we can understand?’

‘There’s no need to talk like that, Artair,’ Marsaili said quietly. Fin stole a glance at her across the room and saw her discomfort.

‘You any idea what he’s talking about?’ Artair said to Fin. ‘It’s all double Dutch to me.’

‘It’s a degree in computer studies I’m doing at the Open University,’ Fin said.

‘Well, la-di-fucking-da. The boy who couldn’t speak English can speak Computer now.’

Fin said to Fionnlagh. ‘Is that when the problem started, when you installed the new system?’

The boy nodded. ‘Yeh, the day after I did the upgrade. Cost a fortune for the memory card, too.’

‘I should know, I bloody paid for it,’ Artair growled and emptied his glass. He stooped to refill it.

‘Where is the computer? In your room?’ Fin said.

‘Yeh.’

‘Can I have a look at it?’

‘Sure.’

Fin laid his glass on a coffee table and followed Fionnlagh out into the hall. A staircase led up to an attic room. ‘Place has changed since your day,’ Artair said, coming out after them. ‘I put in a bedroom for the kid up in the attic. Me and Marsaili are in my parents’ old room, and my mother’s in mine. We keep my dad’s study as a guest room.’

‘Not that we ever have any guests,’ Fionnlagh muttered as he reached the top of the stairs.

‘What was that?’ his father called after him.

‘Just telling Fin to watch that loose carpet on the top stair.’ Fionnlagh briefly caught Fin’s eye, and in that moment it was as if they had become complicit in a subterfuge that only they would ever know about. Fin winked and got a tiny smile in return.

Fionnlagh’s room ran from one side of the attic to the other at the north end of the house. There was a dormer window at each side cut into the slope of the ceiling. The east dormer had an unrestricted view out across the Minch. The computer was on a table set against the north gable. It sat in a pool of light from an Anglepoise lamp that seemed to intensify the darkness in the rest of the room. Fin was only vaguely aware of posters stuck to the walls. Football players and pop stars. Eminem was whining at them from a stereo system Fin couldn’t see.

‘Turn that shit off.’ Artair had come in behind them and was leaning on the door jamb, his drink still in his hand. ‘Can’t stand that rap. That’s rap with a silent C.’ He snorted at his own joke. ‘Know what I mean?’

‘I like Eminem,’ Fin said. ‘It’s all in the lyrics. He’s kind of like the Bob Dylan of his generation.’

‘Jesus,’ Artair exploded. ‘I can see you two are going to get on just great.’

‘I store most of my tracks in the computer,’ Fionnlagh said. ‘But since the screen went …’ He shrugged hopelessly.