Peter May - The Blackhouse

Marsaili sat heavily on the edge of the bed and put her hands to her face. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘You said you thought he beat Fionnlagh to get at you. It wasn’t you he was getting at. It was me. All those years, beating that poor kid, and all the time it was me he was punching, me he was kicking. And it was important to him that I knew that before …’ And he broke off, frightened even to give voice to the thought.

‘Before what?’

Fin turned slowly to look at her. ‘He wasn’t bothered about giving a DNA sample to the police. He knew he’d be on the rock by the time we figured out it was him. Too late to stop him.’

Marsaili stood up abruptly, as suddenly it occurred to her where all this was leading. ‘Stop it, Fin! Stop it!’

He shook his head. ‘That’s why he didn’t bother taking his pills with him. After all, why would he need them if he wasn’t coming back?’

He checked his watch and stood up, scooping the newspaper articles back into their folder. Outside the wind was picking up. He could see all the way down to the shore, waves smashing across the rocks, retreating in foam. He turned towards the door, and Marsaili caught his arm.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to try and stop him killing our son.’

She bit down hard on her lip and tried to stop the sobs that threatened to choke her. Tears coursed down her cheeks. ‘Why, Fin? Why would he do that?’

‘Because for some reason he wants to hurt me, Marsaili. To inflict more pain on me than I can bear. He must know I’ve already lost one son.’ And he saw a look in her eyes that told him she had not known. ‘What better way to turn the screw than to kill the other?’ He pulled himself free of her grasp, but she followed him to the door and grabbed him again.

‘Fin, look at me.’ There was something compelling in her voice. He turned to meet her intensity. ‘Before you go … there’s something you need to know.’

Rain battered against the window of the incident room, obliterating the view over harbour rooftops to the semi-derelict Lews Castle across the bay. There were nearly two dozen officers at desks around the room. All of them were turned towards Fin. Except for George Gunn and a couple of others who were still speaking on the phone. DCI Smith was flushed and exasperated. He had showered, and changed. His hair was smoothly Brylcreemed back from his face, and he smelled of Brut again. He might hold centre stage in the incident room, but he had been upstaged in his investigation by Fin. He was not a happy man, but he was being squeezed into a corner.

He said, ‘Okay, so I accept that this Artair Macinnes probably is our killer.’

‘His DNA’ll confirm it,’ Fin said.

Smith glanced irritably at the newspaper articles spread across the nearest desk. ‘And you think he copied the Leith Walk murder to lure you back to the island.’

‘Yes.’

‘To tell you that his son is really your son.’

‘Yes.’

‘And then kill him.’ Fin nodded. Smith let the moment hang. Then, ‘Why?’

‘I told you what happened on An Sgeir.’

‘His father died rescuing you on the cliffs eighteen years ago. Do you really think that’s sufficient motivation for him to commit two murders all these years later?’

‘I can’t explain it.’ Fin’s frustration bubbled into anger. ‘I just know he’s beaten that boy black and blue all his life, and now that he’s told me I’m his father he’s going to kill him. He’s killed once to get me here. On the evidence, I don’t think anyone can deny that.’

Smith sighed and shook his head. ‘I’m not going to risk the lives of my officers by sending them off to a rock fifty miles out in the Atlantic in the middle of a storm.’

Gunn hung up and swivelled around in his chair. ‘Latest weather report from the coastguard, sir. Storm-force winds in the vicinity of An Sgeir, and getting worse.’ He glanced almost apologetically at Fin. ‘They say there’s no way they can land the chopper on the rock in these conditions.’

‘There you are, then.’ Smith sounded relieved. ‘We’ll have to wait until the storm passes.’

Gunn said, ‘The harbourmaster’s confirmed that the Purple Isle is back from An Sgeir. She docked about an hour ago.’

‘I’m not asking a boat to go out in these conditions either!’

A uniformed sergeant came into the room. ‘Sir.’ His face was chiselled from grim, flinted rock. ‘We can’t raise the guga people on the CB.’

Fin said, ‘Then there’s something far wrong. Gigs always keeps a channel of communication open. Always.’

Smith looked to the sergeant for confirmation, and he nodded. The CIO sighed and shrugged. ‘There’s still nothing we can do about it before tomorrow.’

‘The boy could be dead by tomorrow!’ Fin raised his voice and felt an immediate hush fall across the room.

Smith raised a finger and touched it to the end of his nose. A strange, threatening gesture. His voice was a low growl. ‘You’re in serious danger of crossing a line here, Macleod. You are no longer involved in this case, remember?’

‘Of course I’m involved. I’m at the very fucking centre of it.’ And he turned and pushed through the swing doors out into the corridor.

By the time he reached the foot of Church Street and turned left into Cromwell Street, Fin was soaked. His parka and hood had protected his upper body, but his trousers were plastered to his legs, and his face had stiffened and set under the assault of the freezing rain that drove in off the moor. He turned into the doorway of a green-painted gift shop for some respite, and found foot-high replicas of the Lewis Chessmen staring at him with curious expressions from beyond the glass, almost as if they empathized. He fumbled for his mobile phone and dialled the number of the incident room two hundred yards up the road. One of the uniforms answered.

‘I want to speak to George Gunn.’

‘Can I tell him who’s calling?’

‘No.’

A brief pause. ‘One moment, sir.’

And then Gunn’s voice. ‘DS Gunn.’

‘George, it’s me. Can you talk?’

A moment’s silence. ‘Not really.’

‘Okay, just listen. George, I need you to do me a favour. A big favour.’

The trawler rose and fell with the swell in the inner harbour, creaking and straining at its ropes. A red plastic bucket rolled back and forth across the forward deck. Heavy chains swung and rattled and chafed, and every piece of rigging on the boat’s superstructure vibrated and whined in the wind. Rain hammered the windows of the wheelhouse, and Padraig MacBean sat up on a pilot’s seat that had been worn and torn by years of use, duct tape fighting to contain thick wads of stuffing that seemed determined to escape it. He had one foot up on the wheel, and was puffing thoughtfully on the stump of a hand-rolled cigarette. He was young for a skipper, not much more than thirty. The Purple Isle had been his father’s boat, and it was his father who had taken Fin out to the rock eighteen years ago, when Padraig could only have been twelve. Old MacBean had carried the guga hunters on their annual pilgrimage to An Sgeir for thirty years. After his death his sons had taken up the tradition. Padraig’s younger brother, Duncan, was the first mate. There was only one other member of crew, a young lad called Archie. He had been unemployed, and joined them on a six-month work experience attachment two years ago. He was still attached.

‘That’s a helluva story you’re telling me, Mr Macleod,’ Padraig was saying, in the long slow Niseach drawl of a native of Ness. ‘I have to tell you, I never much liked that Artair Macinnes. And his lad’s a quiet boy.’ He took another pull at the remains of his cigarette. ‘But I can’t say I noticed anything untoward on the trip out.’