Louise Welsh - Death is a Welcome Guest

‘A fool’s errand,’ he whispered into the rush of wind and water, his face streaming with raindrops. ‘A fool’s bloody errand.’

The house was bigger than Magnus had thought from the glances the lightning flashes had granted him. It was more modern too. A barn expanded and converted into someone’s grand design. There were houses like it on Orkney, some of them barely used holiday homes, walls of glass juxtaposed with stones cut by the ancients and plundered from their sacred sites by Christian farmers. His father had made fun of them, but Magnus would have been happy to live in one; daylight streaming through an expanse of double glazing, a view of the Atlantic Ocean stretched out before him. There would be stylish homes for the taking now. The thought was no comfort.

The building was in darkness, his drowned face a miserable reflection in its glass wall. Magnus put his face to the glass, shielding his eyes. He could make out a long dining table, edged by chairs. Something moved within, or perhaps it was just a reflection of the driving rain.

‘Raisha?’ He tried to slide one of the doors open, but it was locked tight. ‘Fuck.’ Another lightning flash illuminated the night and Magnus saw his reflection again: slick-haired and wild-eyed; a seal-man. He stumbled to the front door and tried its handle. The door was made of heavy oak and Magnus thought it was not going to shift, but then it swung open and he lurched into the hallway. The floor was tiled in marble more suited to a metropolitan hotel. His feet slipped, but Magnus righted himself against a table, almost upsetting the withered remnants of an extravagant orchid display. The house smelled musty, but there was none of the foulness Magnus had feared. He shut the door gently behind him, feeling a sense of trespass. Water pooled from his clothes on to the expensive floor tiles. He was shivering and his jeans were waterlogged, but he resisted the urge to strip them off.

‘Raisha?’ Somewhere deep in the house he heard a sound. It was dark in the hallway and Magnus wished he had had the foresight to bring a torch with him. ‘It’s Magnus.’

There was a series of doors on either side of him, but the sound had come from up ahead. He walked slowly down the corridor, past framed photographs of the people who had once lived there, until he reached the family room. The noise was louder, a clicking sound too random to be code. A breeze touched his face and he noticed a small window that had been left ajar. The cord of its venetian blind was moving with the wind, tapping against the glass.

‘Shit.’

Magnus felt a lowering of the soul. He closed the window and the house became still. A dishtowel hung on a hook beside the sink. He mopped his face and neck with it and gave his hair a brisk rub. The room had been kitchen, dining room, sitting room and playroom. It was big enough to shelter a small herd of cattle. Magnus tried to picture his family sharing such a space when he was a boy, but the image eluded him. They had been close, but they had needed dividing walls to keep them together. Perhaps the family enshrined in the photographs had coexisted here, each with their own laptop, phone or tablet, in a small galaxy of virtual worlds.

Two large couches faced each other across a coffee table. One of the couches had a view of a garden equipped with a swing and a climbing frame. The other faced the kitchen area. The space was meant to be full of light and people, not this tomb-like silence. He wondered how Raisha could go on these expeditions and be reminded of all that was lost. Magnus had no appetite for searching the other rooms. He would dry off, wait for the storm to die down and then make his way back to the big house and see what was to be done about Jeb. Magnus kicked off his boots and peeled himself free of his sodden jeans, T-shirt and underwear. He hung his clothes over a couple of dining chairs to dry, shivering. A woollen blanket was draped over the arm of one of the settees. His skin was wet and his bare feet left a trail of damp footsteps as he crossed the room towards it. Something moved in the shadows and a curse escaped him.

Raisha was hidden, curled in the nook of the couch that faced the garden. She cringed as if she feared he might hit her. Magnus grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around his body like a plaid. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you.’

Raisha sat up and drew her knees up until they almost touched her chin. ‘Did you follow me?’

Magnus pulled the blanket closer and sat on the couch that faced Raisha’s. It felt dangerous, sitting with his back to the countryside, but he could tell the woman wanted him nowhere near her.

‘It was an impulse. I saw you crossing the lawn.’

‘I didn’t know you’d come after me until I saw your face at the window.’

Magnus forced a smile. ‘That must have given you a shock.’

Raisha nodded. ‘You looked different. Then I saw it was you.’

‘You didn’t answer when I called your name.’ He tried to keep the hurt out of his voice.

‘I told you, I was scared.’

‘Of me?’ Magnus had been wedded to fear since Pentonville, but he had not expected Raisha to be afraid of him.

She shrugged. ‘Of everyone. We all saw things in the city. I thought it would be safer in the countryside but there’s killing here too.’

Magnus adjusted the blanket. The wool was rough and comforting against his bare skin. ‘Will said you voted to have Jeb locked up.’

‘I voted for law.’ Raisha looked at her knees. ‘Belle told me what he had done to that poor woman and her child, so I thought it must have been Jeb who shot Jacob, but later…’ Her voice tailed away.

Magnus said, ‘What did you think later?’

‘Later I thought it could have been anyone. We picked on Jeb because we wanted to find Jacob’s killer and make ourselves safe, but what if it wasn’t him?’

Magnus leaned forward. He realised that their conversations had always been conducted in half-whispers. ‘Jacob told me that he thought Melody and Henry might have been deliberately killed.’ He outlined the priest’s theory: the chair that had been kicked too far from the corpse, the wounds that were too sure to be self-inflicted.

Raisha buried her face in her knees; he thought that she was crying, but when she looked up her eyes were dry.

‘I’d already decided to leave. Now I know I made the right choice.’

‘You think Jacob was right?’

‘I don’t know.’ Raisha looked beyond him, out through the rain-spattered wall of glass and into the garden where children used to play. ‘Melody was sad, we all are, but I was surprised when she hanged herself; hurt too that she hadn’t come to me. Still, I wasn’t shocked the way that I would have been before the sweats. As for Henry…’

‘What about Henry?’

‘Henry was like us, a survivor. I knew he liked Melody, we all did. Her death upset him, but I never for a moment thought he would kill himself. He was too selfish for suicide.’

Magnus wondered if Raisha had slept with Henry and felt an unexpected stab of jealousy.

He said, ‘Where will you go?’

‘I don’t know.’ Raisha had taken off her boots. She wiggled her toes and looked at her feet, avoiding Magnus’s eyes. ‘I’ll travel on my own for a while, but I’ll probably join some other community eventually. There are others out there, you know. I’ve seen messages painted on walls and heard the sound of car engines in the distance. They can’t all be mad.’

‘You could come north with me.’

‘To Scotland?’ Raisha’s eyes met his. She smiled. ‘No.’

He wanted to ask why not but said, ‘Too cold?’

‘I need to be alone for a while. You should go soon though, before anything else happens.’