The Chessmen l-3

by Peter May

  Fin said, ‘Let me make it clear from the outset, Detective Inspector, that I did not kill John Angus Macaskill.’ Even as he spoke the words he felt again the pain of Whistler’s death. Each and every time he gave it voice made it all the more real.

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘John Angus has been a good and close friend since we were at the Nicolson Institute together here in Stornoway more than twenty years ago.’

  ‘Not so friendly according to witnesses we’ve spoken to.’ Mackay regarded him thoughtfully. ‘Apparently the two of you were involved in a brawl in the bar at Suaineabhal Lodge just over a week ago, when the deceased struck you, and threats were issued.’ He opened his beige folder. ‘And again, just the other day. Outside the Sheriff Court. You were seen to be arguing, and the deceased knocked you off your feet.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Fin said, ‘if you stopped looking at motive for five minutes and just examined the facts. .’ Fin saw Mackay’s Adam’s apple slide up and down his neck as he swallowed his anger.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I went to visit John Angus at his croft in Uig yesterday morning, and found him lying unconscious on the floor. It seemed clear to me that there had been some kind of a disturbance. Furniture was overturned, there was broken glass and crockery all over the floor. I knelt beside him to feel for a pulse in his neck, and at that point he was still alive. I was aware, then, of someone approaching me from behind, and can remember nothing further until I regained consciousness and found the postman crouching beside me on the floor.’

  He paused, keeping the detective inspector steadily in his gaze.

  ‘Whistler was bleeding from the back of his skull. There was a pool of blood on the floor beside him. His face was bruised. His lip was split and bleeding. The knuckles of his right hand were swollen and grazed. I am quite sure that these, and other injuries, will have been described in the postmortem report by the pathologist. I am equally sure he will have concluded that the man had been in one hell of a fight.’

  Mackay conceded, ‘The evidence would certainly support that.’

  Fin stood up. And the uniformed sergeant was suddenly alert, pushing himself away from his leaning position against the door.

  ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’ Mackay demanded.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere, Detective Inspector.’ Fin unbuttoned his shirt and slipped it off, draping it over the back of his chair, while the two detectives looked on in amazement. ‘You can get a doctor in to examine me if you like.’ He held out his arms in front of him and spread his hands to display his knuckles. ‘But I don’t think you’ll find a single bruise, cut or graze on my upper body, arms or hands that could possibly have been the result of being involved in such a fight. Whistler Macaskill was a big man. He will have inflicted a great deal of damage on whoever it was that killed him. And whoever that might have been, it clearly wasn’t me.’

  He watched as the interrogating officer ran his eyes over Fin’s torso and hands, and he saw doubt creeping into them. He lifted his shirt from the chair to drag it back on.

  ‘Now, I’m happy to help you in any way that I can. But I don’t think you have any grounds for detaining me, even for the hours that the law allows. So I would suggest that you either charge me or let me go. And unless you want to make complete fools of yourselves I would strongly advise you to do the latter.’

  Mackay glared at him. He reached across the table to turn off the recording device. ‘You fucking ex-cops think you know it all.’ He stood up and jabbed one of his bony fingers in Fin’s direction. ‘But I’m willing to bet, Macleod, that you know a damned sight more than you’re telling us. And when I find out what that is, trust me, I’ll have you back in here so fucking fast. .’

  ‘My feet won’t touch the ground? Is that what you were going to say, Mr Mackay?’ Fin paused. ‘Very original.’

  For the first time Fin’s eyes wandered momentarily towards the detective sergeant, and he thought he saw just the hint of a smile playing around the junior officer’s lips.

  II

  The duty sergeant directed him to the parking area at the side of the police station, informing him that his jeep had been parked there after being brought back from Uig by a uniformed officer.

  Fin stepped from the police station out into Church Street and the fitful sunshine of a blustery October day. What amazed him was that life went on as if nothing had happened. A young mother, her hair spiralling around her head, wheeled a toddler by in a pushchair. Two old men stood talking outside the Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Cars cruised down towards the harbour where clouds of seagulls wheeled in endless circles around incoming trawlers, their eternally plaintive cries carried on the wind along with the rumble of traffic from Bayhead.

  Whistler was gone, but the world kept turning. It had felt like that, too, when Robbie died. Toys scattered on the bedroom floor where he had left them. A crayon drawing he had made of Fin, still lying on the kitchen table beside the open pack of crayons. My Dadby, he had scrawled underneath it. Even at eight years old he was still managing to confuse his d’s with his b’s. And every time Fin had walked along the upstairs hall, it had pained him to realize that Robbie would never again come running from his bedroom to jump up into his daddy’s arms.

  He had the clearest recollection of sitting on the edge of his bed the Sunday morning after the accident and hearing a neighbour mowing his lawn. So banal. Life just didn’t stop, even although Robbie was no longer a part of it. It was that sense of a world that hadn’t even noticed which affected him the most. Then as now.

  His legs were leaden as he walked around into the semienclosed parking area next to the station. His key was barely in the door of the Suzuki when he heard the scrape of a shoe on gravel behind him. He turned, startled, to stagger back against the jeep under a hail of blows, fists hammering into his chest and his face, screams in his ears, hot breath on his skin. He had the fleeting impression of being under attack by a flock of demented birds, his vision filled with flailing arms, his ears with shrill shrieks of anger. Now feet kicked at his legs, well-aimed painful blows to his shins. It almost came as a surprise to realize it was all the fury of one small girl.

  He fought to stop fists like pistons punching him in rapid succession. He saw her father in her eyes, in her anger, in the temper he had never been able to control himself. And after what felt like an eternity, he managed to grab and hold both her wrists, turning her around, pinning her arms across her chest and pulling her back hard against him to stop the assault.

  ‘Stop it! Stop!’ he shouted at her.

  But she continued to struggle and he almost lost her again. ‘You killed my dad! You killed him!’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Anna, I didn’t kill your dad. Would the police have let me go if I’d killed him?’ He felt the effect of his words almost immediately, as the struggling began to subside. ‘I loved that man.’

  Her body went limp, and the uncontrollable sobbing that racked it shook him to the core, bringing tears to his own eyes. He had never before given voice to his feelings for Whistler. Had no reason to provide them with shape or form. Whistler was just his friend, the boy and man who had twice saved his life. Connected by history, and all the hours they had shared as teenagers, the hopes and the dreams, the fights and the friendship. Whistler had been unpredictable, bad-tempered, sometimes cruel. But he had always been there when Fin needed him, a commitment he had made that day so many years before at the Iolaire monument. And now he was gone, and all that remained of him was in Fin’s arms.

  He let go of her wrists and turned her to face him. Her black cropped hair with its slash of pink, the rings and studs that punctuated her face, seemed like a grotesque caricature in grief. Black eye make-up ran down her cheeks. Her purple-painted lips trembled like a child’s. Her nose ran and she could barely breathe for sobbing.

  ‘I. . I never told him,’ she said.

  Fin frowned. ‘Told him what?’

 
‘That I loved him.’

  He closed his eyes and felt the tears hot on his skin, and put his arms around her, enveloping her, drawing her close.

  ‘And now it’s too late.’ Her voice came muffled from his chest. ‘For everything.’

  Fin took her by the shoulders then and made her take a step back, forcing her to look at him. ‘Anna, listen to me.’

  ‘What?’ she glared at him defiantly, as if he were trying to force her to listen to something she wouldn’t want to hear.

  ‘Men don’t often talk to one another about love.’ He drew a deep, trembling breath. ‘But we did, your dad and me. The other day, outside the Sheriff Court. And I told him what you told me at the house.’ In spite of everything, he smiled through his tears. ‘Of course, I left out the profanity. Though he wouldn’t have minded that. Just don’t think he died not knowing that his wee girl loved him.’ It took him a moment or two to control his voice again. ‘And I know the only regret he’d have right now, is that he never had the chance to tell you the same.’

  She stood staring back at him with her father’s eyes, her face a mess, her breathing still irregular, and he could feel her pain and confusion.

  ‘Let me take you home.’

  She raised an arm in sudden anger and broke his grip on her. ‘No,’ she shouted. ‘Just stay away from me. You, Kenny, everyone. I hate you. I hate you all.’ And she turned and ran away down Church Street, giving free vent to her tears as she ran. She was gone from view and hearing in seconds.

  Fin stood for a long time, leaning back against the jeep before turning wearily and climbing up into the driver’s seat. There he sat for even longer until finally he succumbed to his own grief. For Whistler and his little lost girl.

  III

  The drive down to Uig passed in a painful blur. Great fat raindrops spat on his windscreen like tears spilled for the dead. They fell from a sky so dark and so low, bumping and scraping across each rise of the land, that Fin felt he could almost reach up and touch it. The mountains of the southwest were lost in the mist of its all-enveloping cloud.

  Fin’s thoughts were focused and fixated on just one man. The only man capable of inflicting enough damage on Whistler to kill him.

  Minto’s Land Rover sat on the compacted hard core outside his cottage. The rain blew horizontally across the acres of sand that stretched across the bay towards Baile na Cille, flattening the tall grasses that grew like reeds around the house.

  If Fin had stopped for one moment to consider his actions, he might have paused to rethink, but he was blinded by the pall of red mist which had descended on him. He pushed open the cottage door with such force that it smashed against the wall of the interior hallway, its handle gouging a deep hole in the plaster. ‘Minto!’ He heard his own voice roar back at him from the house. He barged into the sitting room and felt the faintest residue of heat from the embers of an almost dead peat fire. There was no one there. The door to the kitchen was half open. He blundered into it, but it was empty. Then he spun around at the sound of a creaking floorboard behind him.

  Minto stood in a singlet and boxer shorts, a shotgun raised and supported by his left arm, and held fast against his left shoulder by his left hand. It was shaking slightly, but pointed directly at Fin. His right arm was strapped across his chest.

  ‘What the fuck do you want?’

  He glared at Fin with a mixture of anger and confusion. But Fin couldn’t tear his gaze away from the sling that held Minto’s arm tight to his chest. He raised his eyes to meet Minto’s. He had forgotten that Whistler had dislocated the man’s shoulder during their encounter at Tathabhal. ‘Someone murdered Whistler Macaskill.’

  ‘I know. The bastard beat me to it.’ Minto kept the barrel of his shotgun trained on Fin. He managed a half-smile and a snort of contempt. ‘You thought it was me?’

  Fin shook his head. Not even Minto could take on Whistler with one arm. But if it wasn’t Minto, then the only other possibility led him into the realms of the unthinkable.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I

  There were only a handful of cars in the parking area at the Cabarfeidh. As he turned his jeep nose-first into a slot in front of the main entrance, Fin cast a glance over the other vehicles. There was no sign of Mairead’s rental car. He hurried into the lobby and crossed to reception. The girl behind the desk gave him a practised smile, but in spite of the Americanized greeting, there was no disguising her Stornoway accent. ‘Good morning. How may I help you?’ He saw her eyes flicker towards his bandaged head.

  ‘Is Mairead Morrison in or out?’

  The girl looked surprised. ‘Miss Morrison checked out this morning, sir. Lewis Car Rental just picked up her car. She took a taxi to the airport.’

  Fin glanced at his watch. ‘What time’s her flight?’

  ‘The Glasgow flight leaves at 12.20.’

  It was 11.45.

  Fin reached the airport in just over ten minutes. As he drove up the road from Oliver’s Brae towards the roundabout, he could see the small, prop-engined aircraft sitting out on the tarmac, the luggage trailer being towed out to the hold.

  Rain still spat on his windscreen, smeared across the glass by well-worn wipers. There was no time to find a parking place, and he bypassed the car park to pull up in front of the sliding doors that opened into the tiny terminal building. He abandoned his Suzuki, engine idling, and ran inside. There was just a handful of people sitting around in the waiting area, silhouettes against panoramic windows looking out on to the airfield. The final stragglers in the queue to pass through security and into the departure lounge were patiently awaiting their turn.

  He saw Mairead in her distinctive long black coat. She was showing her ticket to the security officer.

  ‘Mairead!’ His voice reverberated around the little airport, and heads turned from every direction. Mairead’s was one of them. He was almost shocked by the whiteness of her face. So marked in contrast to her favourite black, and the dark auburn of her cropped hair.

  The security officer stood holding her ticket, waiting to return it. But she was like a rabbit caught in the headlights, staring at Fin with saucer eyes. He started across the concourse towards her, his voice still raised. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  Finally she found hers. ‘There’s no time. My flight’s just about to leave.’ She turned to retrieve her ticket.

  ‘Get the next one.’

  The remaining faces in the queue glanced from Mairead to Fin and back again, fascinated by the unfolding drama. Not only was the singer Mairead Morrison on their flight, but she was engaged in some kind of row with a wild-eyed man whose head was bandaged and bloody.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘If you get on that plane I’m going straight back to the police station in Stornoway to tell the cops what I know.’ He could see the anxiety and uncertainty in her eyes, not knowing what it was he knew.

  ‘Have to hurry you, madam,’ the security officer said.

  Fin stopped and held her gaze for a long moment before he saw her resistance crumbling, surrendering to the inevitable. She took a deep breath and pushed back through the remaining passengers to walk boldly up to Fin, clutching her ticket, her demeanour unmistakably hostile. She lowered her voice to little more than a hiss, her face just six inches from his. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I know it wasn’t Roddy in that plane.’

  Her blue eyes grew cold, and there was a moment when he could almost see the calculation behind them. She made a decision, took his arm and steered him quickly away towards the seating area in front of the windows. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about the operation Roddy had to repair his shattered femur after the accident on the Road to Nowhere. They put in plates and screws to hold it together. Strangely missing from the body we found in the cockpit.’ She couldn’t hold his eye, and looked away through the glass towards the plane, silent and thoughtful. Wishing perhaps that she was already on it. ‘Who did we bury the other day,
Mairead?’

  Her eyes darted towards him and then quickly away again.

  ‘Whistler knew that wasn’t Roddy. I don’t know how, but he did. He was never the same from the moment we found that plane. What did he know, Mairead?’ And when she said nothing, he gripped her arm above the elbow, fingers sinking into soft flesh, and saw her wince from the pain of it. ‘Come on! Someone killed Whistler to shut him up, didn’t they?’

  Her head whipped round, eyes filled with a strange mix of anger and hurt. ‘No!’ She was breathing hard. ‘I have no idea who killed Whistler. Or why.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’ He glared at her. ‘There was something going on between you two. You both knew that wasn’t Roddy.’ He was almost shocked to see her eyes fill up.

  ‘Poor Whistler.’ And tears spilled down the porcelain white of her cheeks.

  Fin was unmoved. ‘If I didn’t know you, Mairead, I might almost believe they were real.’ And he saw genuine hurt in the look she turned on him. ‘Tell me about Roddy. Is he alive, is he dead? The truth, Mairead.’ Hesitation was evident in her eyes, in her face, in her whole body language. ‘I’m not letting this go. You can either tell me or you can tell the police. It’s up to you.’

  She turned away, gazing through the window again as if looking for help, or maybe divine intervention. And Fin saw passengers, heads bowed against the wind and rain, making their way hurriedly across the tarmac to the steps of the plane. Among them, staring into the light that shone out from the terminal building, the pale faces of Strings, Skins and Rambo. It was clear that they had seen Fin with Mairead. There was an exchange of words among them. But it was too late to turn back.

  Mairead said suddenly, ‘I need to make a phone call.’ She pulled her arm free of Fin’s grasp and walked off across the concourse, fishing her mobile phone from her coat pocket. She selected a number from its memory then put it to her ear.