Peter May - The Blackhouse

Fin frowned. ‘Who?’

‘Maid Anna. Killed in a motorbike accident years ago. And here’s me, a big lump of lard stuck in a wheelchair, still going strong. Doesn’t seem right, does it?’ He dragged his eyes away from Fin and finished rethreading the shuttle before slipping it back into the empty slot in its drum. ‘Why are you here, Fin?’

‘I’m a cop now, Calum.’

‘I’d heard.’

‘I’m investigating Angel Macritchie’s death.’

‘Ah, so you didn’t just call for the pleasure of my company.’

‘I’m on the island because of the murder. I’m here because I should have come a long time ago.’

‘Putting old ghosts to rest, eh? Rubbing salve on a troubled conscience.’

‘Maybe.’

Calum sat back and looked at Fin very directly. ‘You know, the biggest irony of all is that the only real friend I’ve had in all the years since it happened was Angel Macritchie. Now there’s a fucking turn-up for you.’

‘Your mother told me he’d built the shed for the loom.’

‘Oh, he did more than that. He refitted the whole house, made every room accessible for the chair. He made that garden out there, and laid the path so I could sit out if I wanted.’ He shrugged. ‘Not that I ever wanted.’ He grabbed the handles on either side of him. ‘He adapted the loom so that I could work it by hand, a clever extension to the foot pedals.’ He started working the levers backwards and forwards, and the shuttles flew across the weave of the cloth, wheels and cogs interlocking to drive the whole complex process. ‘Smart man.’ He raised his voice above the clatter of the machine. ‘Much smarter than we ever gave him credit for.’ He released the levers and the loom came to a halt. ‘Not that I make much from the weaving. Of course, there’s my mother’s pension, and the little money that’s left from the compensation we got. But it’s hard, Fin, making ends meet. Angel made sure we never went short. He never came empty-handed. Salmon, rabbit, deer. And, of course, he always had half a dozen gugas for us each year. Cooked them himself, too.’ Calum lifted another shuttle from a wooden bin hooked over the arm of his chair and played with it distractedly. ‘At first, when he started coming, I suppose it was guilt that made him do it. And I think he expected I would blame him.’

‘Didn’t you?’

Calum shook his head. ‘Why should I? He didn’t force me to go up on the roof. Sure, he was trying to make a fool of me, but I was the one who made the fool of myself. He might have taken the ladder away, but he didn’t push me off the roof. I panicked. I was stupid. I’m the only one to blame.’ Fin saw his knuckles turning white as his fingers tightened around the shuttle before he released it into its box. ‘Then when he realized I didn’t bear him any ill-will, I suppose he might just have stopped coming. Conscience clear. But he didn’t. If you’d told me all those years ago that I’d end up being friends with Angel Macritchie I’d have told you you were off your head.’ He shook his head as if he still found it hard to believe himself. ‘But that’s what we became. He’d come up every week to work in the garden, and he’d sit in here for hours, just talking. About all sorts.’

He broke off, and sat lost in a silence that Fin did not dare to break. Then tears welled up suddenly in his eyes, blurring green, and Fin was shocked. Calum glanced up at his old school friend. ‘He wasn’t a bad man, Fin. Not really.’ He tried to wipe the tears away. ‘He liked folk to think he was some kind of hard case, but all he did was treat people the way life treated him. A kind of sharing out of the misery. I saw another side to him, a side I don’t think anyone else ever saw, not even his own brother. A side he wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to see. A side to him that showed how he might have been in other circumstances, in another life.’ And more tears trembled on the rims of his eyes before spilling over to roll down his cheeks. Big, silent, slow tears. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.’ He made a determined effort to blink them away and took out a handkerchief to dry his face. He tried to force a smile, but it looked more like a grimace. ‘Anyway …’ A bitter edge crept back into his voice. ‘It was good of you to drop by. If you’re ever passing, call again.’

‘Calum …’

‘Go, Fin. Just go. Please.’

Fin turned reluctantly towards the door and pulled it gently shut behind him. He heard the loom start up inside. Clacketyclack, clackety-clack. The sun was shining across the moor beyond the peat stack, a mocking sun that only heightened Fin’s depression. He found it hard to imagine what Angel and Calum had talked about together all those years. But one thing was certain. Whoever had murdered Angel Macritchie, it wasn’t Calum. The poor, crippled weaver was probably the only person on earth to spill a tear over Angel’s passing.

As he drove back down the hill, there was more and more blue in the sky, torn in ragged patches from the swathes of cloud blowing in off the Atlantic. The land, falling away below him, was an ever-changing patchwork of sunlight and shadow, one chasing the other across a machair peppered with crofts and cottages, fences and sheep. The ocean, away to his right, was a hard, bright, steely reflection of the sky.

He passed his parents’ croft and felt a gut-wrenching sadness at the sight of the collapsed roof. Only a few moss-covered tiles clung to the remains of it. The once white walls were streaked with mould and algae. The windows were gone. The front door lay ajar, opening into a dark, abandoned shell of a house. Even the floorboards had been stripped out. Just a trace of peeling purple paint remained, clinging stubbornly to the door jamb.

He dragged his eyes away from it, back to the road, and pushed his foot down on the accelerator. It was no good looking backwards, even if you had no notion of where it was you were going.

There was someone in the garden beyond Artair’s bungalow, bent over beneath the raised bonnet of an old Mini. Fin slipped his foot across to the brake and drew in at the top of the drive. The figure straightened up, turning at the sound of car tyres sliding on gravel. Fin had thought for a moment that the person in the boiler suit might have been Marsaili, but he was not disappointed when he saw that it was Fionnlagh. He turned off the ignition and stepped out on to the path. In the dark, the night before, he had not seen the car wrecks piled up in the garden, and not noticed them when he had left in a rush that morning. Five of them, rusted and stripped down for their parts, bits and pieces of them strewn across the grass like the old bones of long-dead animals. Fionnlagh had a toolkit open on the ground beside him. He was holding a spanner in oil-blackened hands, and there were oily smears on his face. ‘Hi,’ he said, as Fin approached.

Fin nodded towards the Mini. ‘Got her going yet?’

Fionnlagh laughed. ‘Naw. I think maybe she’s been dead for too long. I’m just trying to get her on life support.’

‘It’ll be a while before she’s back on the road, then?’

‘It’ll be a miracle.’

‘They’re all the rage again these days, Minis.’ Fin peered at it more closely. ‘Is she a Mini Cooper?’

‘An original. I got her for a fiver from a car graveyard in Stornoway. It cost more to get her here than it did to buy her. My mum said if I could get her going she would pay for my driving lessons.’

As he spoke Fin had the opportunity to look at him more closely. He was a slight-built boy, like his mother, the same intensity in his eyes. But there was the same mischief there, too.

‘Caught your killer yet?’