I'll Keep You Safe

by Peter May

  Niamh shook her head in confusion and disappointment. “What are you doing here, then?”

  Gunn held out his hand. “Mrs. Macfarlane, my name is George Gunn. I’m a detective sergeant with the Stornoway police. Lieutenant Braque has been sent to monitor Ruairidh’s funeral, just in case whoever planted that bomb decides to show up there.”

  Niamh frowned. “I thought Irina Vetrov’s husband, Georgy, was your prime suspect.”

  Braque shrugged non-committally. “That is one line of enquiry. Unfortunately we have been unable to trace him, to rule him in or out. And if it was not him, then it may be that the killer is known to you.”

  Gunn shuffled awkwardly and cleared his throat. “May we come in, Mrs. Macfarlane?”

  Braque and Gunn settled themselves on stools at the breakfast bar while Niamh popped pods into the coffee maker.

  “Is coffee alright?”

  Braque glanced at Gunn. “I think Detective Sergeant Gunn may prefer tea.” He looked as if he might protest, before meeting her eye and then nodding reluctant acquiescence.

  “No problem,” Niamh said. She put the kettle on and noticed that it was stone cold. Seonag had made herself neither tea nor coffee. Nor had she eaten, and Niamh wondered how much, if at all, she had slept. Perhaps, like Niamh, she had been unable to sleep until late, then drifted off and slept longer than she meant to. She had certainly left in a hurry.

  Braque said, “Don’t you feel very isolated away out here?”

  “Not at all,” Niamh said. “We’re barely twenty minutes from Ness.” She glanced at Braque. “I’ve heard people say you can feel lonely in a crowd.”

  Braque avoided her gaze, almost as if the widow might see the loneliness of the spurned woman in her eyes. Mother of two children with whom she hardly ever spent time. Lonely and alone in a city of ten million people.

  “We built this place to be on our own. It’s where we felt most at home. Most ourselves. I never thought I would want to be anywhere else in the world. Until now.”

  Gunn said, “You wouldn’t think of selling up, surely?”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do, Mr. . . . Gunn, is it?”

  “Aye.”

  “I hadn’t planned on being here on my own.” She poured two coffees and a tea, and they sipped in silence for a few moments as Gunn and Braque took in the view from the windows. The sunlight playing on broken water was dazzling, and they could see the silhouettes of seabirds circling and diving, only to emerge moments later with writhing fish in their beaks.

  Braque turned towards Niamh. “So . . . have you had any further thoughts about what happened in Paris?”

  “I’ve thought about almost nothing else,” Niamh said, her voice flat, her face without expression, anxious to hide the emotion that too often had reduced her to unexpected tears.

  “Nothing fresh has occurred to you?”

  Niamh shook her head. “No, nothing.” Before the memory returned of her first moments back at the house. “Except . . .”

  “Except what?” Gunn said.

  And Niamh wondered how she could have forgotten. But Seonag had arrived just moments later, and life, or was it death, had taken over everything since.

  “The email,” she said.

  Ruairidh’s weaving shed was filled with reflected light from the Minch. Niamh had not been here again since her return on Sunday evening, and she found it just as painful now as it had been then. The essence of him lived on here. In the half-finished weave, the bolts of cloth, the skeins of wool, his guitar, his computer, all his handwritten scribbled notes on the workbench and the wall. His accumulated dreams and hopes. All of which had outlived him.

  “I’m amazed you get internet this far out,” Braque said.

  “We get it by satellite.” Niamh crossed towards Ruairidh’s computer.

  “Lots of folk in the islands opt for internet by satellite,” Gunn said. “It’s faster and more reliable. But it’s expensive. And if the weather’s bad . . .” He chuckled. “Which it usually is, then you lose the satellite signal.”

  “So you didn’t know about the email when you were in Paris?” Braque said.

  “No.” Niamh dismissed the screensaver and opened Ruairidh’s mailer. “Ruairidh didn’t tell me about it. It wasn’t until I looked at his computer when I got home on Sunday that I saw it.” She pulled it up on screen and both Braque and Gunn shaded their eyes against the light from the window to read it.

  “From well wisher,” Braque said.

  Gunn read out loud, “See you in hell.”

  “And you say he received this while you were on the RER coming into Paris? About two hours before the car bomb went off?”

  “From the time on the email, and the time I remember him receiving one on the train, I would say yes.”

  “Why didn’t he tell you about it?”

  Niamh shook her head. “You’re really asking me that?”

  Braque shrugged and took out her mobile phone. “Can you forward it to me?”

  “Sure. Give me an address.”

  Braque wrote it down and Niamh forwarded the email. Braque said, “I’ll also need the access code for your wifi. I have no phone signal here. I would like to pass this on to our computer expert in Paris.”

  As Braque was tapping in the code, the telephone rang on Ruairidh’s work desk. Niamh answered it quickly. “Hello?”

  It was her mother. “Oh. So you are there?” Her voice laden with sarcasm. “Nice of you to come and see us. I hear you visited the Macfarlanes yesterday.”

  Niamh glanced self-consciously at the two police officers and turned away towards the window, where she could see the reflection of someone who looked only vaguely like herself. “Ruairidh is their son, Mum. We had to make the funeral arrangements.”

  “And it never occurred to you to drop in?”

  “We went straight to the funeral director in Stornoway.” She tried to lower her tone, but it still came out full of anger. “For God’s sake, do you have to be so selfish?”

  There was a long silence at the other end when she could hear her mother draw a slow breath. “Your brother is on the ferry.”

  “Uilleam?”

  “Do you have another?”

  Niamh closed her eyes, fighting to keep control.

  Then her mother said, “Can you pick him up at Stornoway and bring him down to Balanish?”

  Niamh clenched her jaw. “Yes. What time?”

  “The ferry gets in at one.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  There was another long silence before her mother said, “He’s coming for you, you know. Not for Ruairidh.”

  “I never imagined for a minute he was.” Niamh hung up and took a moment to collect herself before turning back to her guests. “Sorry,” she said, barely in control. “I need to get showered and dressed. I have to go and pick my brother up off the ferry.”

  “Of course,” Gunn said, and he took Braque’s elbow to steer her towards the door. “Don’t you worry, Mrs. Macfarlane, we’ll see ourselves out, no bother.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Gunn pulled in on a hardcore passing place on the edge of the old Bilascleiter settlement and he and Braque got out to feel the wind filling their mouths and tugging at their clothes and hair. They had a good view from here back towards the Macfarlane house, and the ruins beyond it. A green corrugated tin hut stood resolute against the gales that swept across the moor in all seasons. A blackened wooden door was bolted, but peering through net curtains, Gunn could see into a gloomy interior where an old settee was pushed up against the back wall.

  A stainless-steel sink lay in what remained of an old blackhouse in front of it, abandoned to its fate, bog moss and grasses slowly claiming it. The footings of perhaps a dozen more old stone dwellings were still visible here, climbing the slope to the top of the hill.

  “What was this place?” Braque asked.

  Gunn shrugged. “A settlement of some sort. More than just shielings, I think.” It
didn’t occur to him to explain what a shieling was, and she didn’t ask.

  She was just baffled that anyone would ever have chosen to settle here. “Looks like they didn’t stay long.”

  “Oh, they might have been here a century or more, I have no idea,” Gunn said. “They’re hardy souls that hail from these parts.”

  Braque didn’t doubt it.

  Gunn removed a walking stick from the back seat of the 4×4 and used it for support as he walked up to the top of the hill. Braque picked her way carefully after him. While he was wearing a pair of stout wellies, she had only leather boots with Cuban block heels. And by the time she reached him she could feel peaty bog water seeping through to her feet. It was with dismay she accepted that the boots were probably ruined.

  As she scrambled up the last few feet to stand beside him, she saw the coastline zigzagging off to the south, each successive headland reaching further out, it seemed, into the Minch. Gunn said, “I put out a few feelers when they told me you were coming. I got some feedback first thing this morning.” He turned to look at her, and she saw his oiled black hair whipped up by the wind to stand on end. “You’ve heard of Lee Blunt?”

  “The fashion designer?”

  “The very one. A few years back he was using Ranish Tweed in his collections, and making a name for it all over the world. Then he had a very public fallout with Ruairidh. Fisticuffs, I believe, in a pub in London, though there were no charges ever brought.” He paused. “Turns out he was here on the island just a few weeks back. Flew in on a private chartered jet.” He took out a black notebook and flicked through it. “Tuesday the fifth of September to be exact. Stayed a couple of days, and hired a car to take him to the mill at Shawbost.” He turned to look at her. “What do you know about Harris Tweed?”

  She shrugged and admitted, “Not much.”

  “It has to be hand-woven by weavers in their own homes. The big mills spin the wool and supply the weavers with both the orders and the wool. When the weaving’s done, the cloth goes back to the mill to be finished. They repair any flaws then wash and dry it. They even shave it to make it nice and smooth. With very few exceptions the weavers work to order for the mills.”

  “So if you were going to place an order you would go to one of the mills?”

  “Indeed.”

  “But Ranish isn’t Harris Tweed.”

  “No. Because they use different types of fibres that don’t conform to the requirements that are defined for Harris Tweed by Act of Parliament. They have their own designs and patterns, take their own orders, and only use the mills for the finishing process.”

  “So what was Blunt doing at the mill?”

  “I’ve no idea. But here’s the interesting thing. Air traffic at the airport tell me that he’s due in again this afternoon. Another private charter. Him and a few others coming for the funeral, apparently.”

  “Why would he be coming for the funeral if he had fallen out with Ruairidh?”

  “A very good question, Ma’am. And that’s something you might want to ask him.”

  The sound of a vehicle starting up carried to them on the wind and they looked down to see Niamh backing her Jeep away from the house, turning and then heading along the track towards them. As it passed their 4×4 at the foot of the hill, they saw Niamh glancing up towards them. A pale face behind reflections on the driver’s window. She must have wondered what they were doing there, standing among the ruins.

  When the Jeep had gone, Gunn said, “In the meantime, maybe we should make a wee visit to the mill to find out just what Mr. Blunt was doing there.”

  The mill at Shawbost stood on the far side of a small stretch of slate-grey water just north of the village, a collection of blue and white sheds and a tall white chimney that reached up to prick the pewter of the sky. Beyond it, the brown and purple shimmer of autumn moorland undulated away into a changeable morning, off towards an ocean that broke along a shoreline somewhere unseen.

  It was in the dyeing shed that they found the brand director of Harris Tweed Hebrides.

  Two young men in dark blue overalls were hoisting steaming batches of freshly dyed wool from vast stainless-steel vats. Virgin Scottish Cheviot wool sat around in half-ton bales waiting to be transformed from peat-stained white to primary red or blue or yellow. From adjoining sheds came the deafening clatter of the machinery that dried, blended and spun the dyed wool into the yarn that would eventually go out to weavers in their sheds all over the island.

  Margaret Ann Macleod was an attractive woman in her late thirties or early forties. She was tall and slim, and wore a long Harris Tweed jacket over jeans and boots. Straight red hair, cut in a fringe that fell into green eyes, tumbled over square shoulders. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be at liberty to tell you,” she said, when Gunn asked her about Lee Blunt’s visit earlier in the month.

  They followed her through to the drying room, where the noise level grew louder and Gunn had to raise his voice. “This is a murder inquiry, Ms. Macleod. You can either tell us here or at the police station.”

  Which stopped her in her tracks. She turned her gaze in his direction and he felt momentarily discomfited. “We take customer confidentiality very seriously,” she said.

  “I’m sure you do.”

  Margaret Ann glanced at Braque and then back again. “He was choosing patterns to place an order. In fact, he was back again last week to finalize it.”

  “An order with Ranish?”

  “No, Detective Sergeant, with Harris Tweed Hebrides.”

  Braque said, “But it was with Ranish that he had a relationship in the past.”

  “Yes it was.”

  Gunn scratched his smoothly shaven chin thoughtfully. “So he’s switching from Ranish Tweed to Harris Tweed.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “That’s going to be a bit of a public slap in the face for Ranish, isn’t it?”

  The merest smile played around Margaret Ann’s lips. “You might say that, Detective Sergeant, I couldn’t possibly comment.”

  Outside, the wind had stiffened further, shredding the sky, allowing sunlight to sprinkle itself in fast-moving patches across the land. While further out at sea, bruised black rain clouds gathered ominously along the horizon. Braque and Gunn stood by their 4×4 and she said, “Interesting timing. Choosing Harris Tweed over Ranish just weeks before Ruairidh’s death. And then coming to the funeral. Sounds like he is celebrating the death rather than mourning it.”

  Gunn nodded. “Come to gloat rather than grieve.”

  She looked thoughtful. “So where to now?”

  “Dalmore,” Gunn said. “The beach and the cemetery. That’s where they will bury Ruairidh tomorrow.”

  The single-track road that led down to the beach descended gently between the hills. Off to their left, sheep that thought Gunn and Braque might be bringing them feed came running down a rough track towards the road. They stopped abruptly in disappointment as the 4×4 carried on by.

  The blades of a couple of small wind turbines turned in the wind up on the hillside, and they passed a croft house and outbuildings on their right before descending steeply to the metalled area of car park. Straight ahead the cemetery rose in a gradual slope across the machair to where wooden piles had been driven deep into the sand, delineating the line between cemetery and beach. The erosive nature of the weather, and the sea, had been in danger of eating into the soft sandy soil of the cemetery to spill bones and headstones on to the giant pebbles below.

  A sandy track beside a waterway led along the side of the cemetery to the beach itself, and on the far side, set proud on an elevation, stood a newer patch of burial ground where residents commanded an even better view of the beach.

  Braque’s heart sank when Gunn retrieved his walking stick from the back seat. Her feet had only just dried out. But the ground he led them on to, beyond the tarmac, was firm and dry and took them on a relatively easy climb towards the top of the cliffs at the north end of the beach.

&nb
sp; “Is it not dangerous for you to be exerting yourself like this?” she called after him, hoping that he might go slower.

  “Not at all,” he called over his shoulder, oblivious to the unsuitability of her footwear. “The doctor says the more exercise the better.”

  When finally they reached the end of their climb, the most spectacular vista opened up below them. A crescent of pale gold arcing away to the south, tide receding in white foam across smooth shiny sand to the sparkling turquoise of water that turned a deep marine as the sand shelved steeply away beneath it.

  Accumulated all along the foot of the wooden piles at the innermost curve of the beach were marvellously marbled pebbles the size of dinosaur eggs, rock squeezed into layers during the first days of creation, then worn smooth and rounded by aeons. To be washed up here on this far-flung European outpost, well beyond the reach of what had once been the Roman Empire.

  Immediately below them, the ocean foamed fiercely around jagged black rock stacks that rose sheer out of the water and stood stubborn against the relentless power of the Atlantic. The sun flitted intermittently across the sands, and there was not another soul in sight. The rain clouds they had seen in Shawbost were, thus far, biding their time out at sea.

  Gunn pointed to the far headland. “Just a year or so ago, an oil rig being towed around the Hebrides broke free and washed up at the other end of the beach there. Because of the bad weather it stayed put for quite a while before they managed to tow it away. Brought as many tourists to see it as the beach itself. A huge bloody thing it was.” And then self-consciously, “Begging your pardon Ma’am.”

  But Braque had not noticed his lapse of language, and wouldn’t have cared if she had. She was gazing in wonder at the view that filled her eyes. “I cannot imagine,” she said, “a more beautiful place to spend eternity.”

  “Personally, Ma’am, I’d rather see it from the perspective of the living than the dead.”

  She turned a smile on him. “But we are all going to die sometime, Detective Sergeant.”

  “That we are, Ma’am. But some are taken before their time.”