by Peter May
She lay back on the bed, trembling now from neither shock nor cold. But from fear. And she wondered if she would sleep a wink tonight.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Although the library did not open until 10 a.m., Gunn had been briefed that staff would be there half an hour before. He and Braque were standing outside in Cromwell Street and saw that there were lights on beyond the windows. But the door was locked, and the Closed sign turned out.
Brown marble tiles lined the frontage beneath the painted stonework, and Braque noticed that there appeared to be letters missing above the windows. EABHAR ANN read the Gaelic in gold letters fixed to the wall on the left. IBR RY read the English to the right. Gunn banged on the door with the flat of his hand until a young lady with long brown hair came to peer through the glass. He pressed his warrant card up against the window and then waited patiently until the library assistant let them in.
“Morning, Ma’am,” he said. “We need to speak to the librarian.”
The assistant led them through the empty library to the reception desk, which also welcomed visitors in Gaelic. Failte. And asked them to wait. There were three computers around the desk, and an array of printers and faxes behind it. They were in the heart of the children’s section, bedecked with triangular red and white flags hanging from the ceiling. A row of five computer terminals sat on desks pushed up against the back wall. Braque and Gunn exchanged glances.
Within a minute, the librarian swept through a door at the back. An attractive lady in her middle years, dressed in a grey suit and black blouse, her hair cut short, the colour of brushed steel shot through with black. She spoke with an accent Gunn found hard to identify. German, or Eastern European, perhaps.
“How can I help you?”
Braque let Gunn do the talking.
“Ma’am, we’re interested to identify a person or persons who may have used computers in this library to access the internet and send emails.”
The librarian smiled and raised her eyebrows. “Detective, we have hundreds of people using our computers.”
“But you keep some kind of record of who they are?”
“Well, yes.”
“So if we provided you with IP addresses for the computers, and the date and times they were being used, you would be able to tell me who was using them?”
“Only if they were a member.”
Gunn frowned. “Of?”
“The library of course.” It seemed perfectly obvious to the librarian. “A member provides us with their library card, which has a bar code, and a record of use is entered into our system. Name, address, which computer, and when it was being used.”
“And if they are not a member?” Braque asked.
“Then they are categorized as a PC guest, and there would be no record of their identity.”
“Then let’s hope they were a member,” Gunn said. He took a sheet of paper from an inside pocket and unfolded it on the desk in front of them. “Here are the IP addresses of the two computers we’re interested in. And the dates and times of use. Could you check that for us, please?”
“Of course.” She smiled and handed the sheet to her assistant, who was only too keen to sit down and tap at her keyboard to bring up the required information. It took her about thirty seconds.
She looked up and pulled a face of apology. “Sorry,” she said. “Guests on both occasions.”
Braque heard Gunn cursing under his breath. He turned towards the row of computers against the wall behind them. “I take it these are the computers?”
“Not unless your user was a child,” the librarian said.
“I think definitely not,” Braque told her.
“Then it would be these computers over here.”
They followed her to the back of the library where there were fourteen numbered computer terminals lined up along desks among the Reference shelves. Walls were pinned with maps of Europe and leaflets about VAT moving online, and notices warning against eating or drinking or using mobile phones in the library.
“They are all linked to the main server in the Council offices,” the librarian said. “And there are restrictions on use. Pages that cannot be accessed online. Pornography, for example.”
Braque said, “Restrictions that could no doubt be worked around by someone with a little expertise in computers?”
The librarian shrugged defensively. “I am no expert on that. You would need to talk to our IT people.”
Gunn said, “Can you show me the two computer terminals that we are interested in?” The emails to Niamh and Georgy Vetrov had been sent from the same computer at the same time nearly three weeks ago. The email to Ruairidh had been sent from a different terminal less than seven days ago.
After a consultation with her assistant, the librarian identified terminals three and twelve. Braque scanned the ceilings and seemed disappointed. “Are there no security cameras in the library?” she asked.
The librarian smiled. “I’m afraid not, Security is not really an issue here.”
Again Braque exchanged a look with Gunn. It seemed that they were having no luck at all. Gunn scratched his head thoughtfully, disturbing his carefully gelled hair, and he cocked an eyebrow. “A wee thought,” he said. Then turned to the librarian. “Many thanks, Ma’am.” And he steered Braque back through the library towards the door. “You realize,” he said, “that there were at least three folk of interest to us who were on the island when those first emails were sent.”
Braque stopped. “Who?”
“Lee Blunt. Niamh’s brother, Uilleam. And Iain Maciver, the boy Ruairidh caught poaching all those years ago. He’s still living here, at least.”
“And we know that Blunt was back on the island last week. What about William?”
Gunn shrugged. “That, Ma’am, remains to be seen.” He stopped at the door. “And it might just be possible for us to see exactly that.” He held the door open for her to step out into Cromwell Street and a breeze that was growing stiffer on this grey funeral morning. Lights burned in the Baltic Bookshop opposite. McNeill’s pub next door was still locked up securely. Too early yet for Stornoway’s drinkers to be out. “There.” He pointed, and Braque followed his finger. Fixed to the wall, high up on the corner with Francis Street, hung a black globe in a bell-shaped hood. A CCTV multi-camera security orb that would provide a perfect view of anyone entering or leaving the library.
Braque understood the significance of it immediately. “Where can we access the footage?”
“At the police station, Ma’am. It’s all held on a hard disk, as far back, certainly, as we’re going to need it.” He smiled. “We do keep up with the latest technology, you know, even if we are just a wee island.”
“We can check it now, then?”
Gunn pulled back the sleeve of his anorak to look at his watch. “Well, Ma’am, it’ll take a wee while to set it up. And we don’t want to be late for the funeral. And who knows who we’re going to see there, that we might not otherwise recognize on the CCTV footage. Best we go to the funeral first, and check out the footage this afternoon.” He grinned. “After all, it’s not going anywhere.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Just as she had driven up the west coast yesterday afternoon in the rain, so Niamh drove down it again this morning in the rain. A light rain, finer than drizzle. A smirr. Almost a mist, blowing in off the sea.
In the middle of the night, after lying in the dark for so many sleepless hours, she had finally got up to wander through to the kitchen and make herself a cup of tea. Anything to calm her growing sense of paranoia. For the first time since she and Ruairidh had built their house out there on the cliffs, she felt unsafe in it. That, in spite of having locked every door and secured every window.
The tiniest sound, or creak, or muted gust of wind, caused a flutter in her chest. It had occurred to her sometime in the small hours that whoever had tried to kill her might be the same person who had killed Ruairidh. Though the why of it escaped her. Just tryi
ng to make some kind of sense of it all had given her a headache that the tea did nothing to alleviate.
Eventually she had gone back to bed to lie tortured and afraid, stricken still with grief for the man she was going to lay in the ground in the morning.
Sometime, not long before the arrival of daylight, she drifted off into a shallow sleep that was interrupted immediately, it felt, by the alarm she had set the night before. Just that short period of sleep, while blessed in its fleeting relief, had left her feeling worse than if she had remained awake all night.
Now she found it hard to focus on the road. The smear of rain across her windscreen in poor light forced her to blink repeatedly to stay awake. Why, she wondered, could she not have felt this sleepy the night before?
Balanish was deserted as she drove through the empty main street. Away to her right, beyond the protective arm of the peninsula that sheltered the harbour, she saw the ocean rolling in, relentless white tops crashing all along the coast.
As she parked on the road above the house where she had grown up, and stepped out into the wind and rain, she felt like a ghost revisiting a past life. Wraithlike and insubstantial as she walked down the path, past the loom shed to the back door. She almost expected that her mother would not see her when she opened it.
“Since when does a daughter of mine have to knock on the door of her own house,” her mother reprimanded her. And Niamh was almost relieved that she was not invisible after all.
In spite of the oil-fired central heating, and the peat fire smouldering in the hearth, the atmosphere in the house was frigid. Uilleam sat by the window at the back of the sitting room and would not even meet her eye. Her father was installed in his habitual armchair by the fire, the morning paper folded across his thighs. He glanced at her over his reading glasses, and all that Niamh could see was his embarrassment.
“So . . .” her mother said. “To what do we owe the honour?”
“You know it’s Ruairidh’s funeral today.” It wasn’t a question.
“Of course.”
“Uilleam tells me you plan not to attend.”
Her mother glanced at her son, who turned his head to look out of the window. “Did he?”
“Is that true?” Niamh turned towards her father. “Dad?”
“Your father’s not been feeling so good.”
Niamh wheeled angrily on her mother. “Why don’t you let him speak for himself, just once in his life?” Her mother recoiled, as if from a slap. And Niamh turned back to her father. “Dad?”
He gave a feeble shrug of his shoulders. “I don’t see why we couldn’t.”
“We’re not going.” Her mother’s voice was hard as steel.
Niamh turned to look at her again. Stared directly into her eyes until her mother was forced to avert them. She said very quietly, “I’m not asking any of you to go for Ruairidh. I’m asking you to go for me.” She paused. “And if you can’t do that . . . If you can’t do that, then I have no family.” She turned and pushed her way from the room, out through the kitchen and the back door, almost hyperventilating. To stand for a moment on the back step, gazing out across the garden where she had played as a child. At the bothag which she and Seonag had imagined so colourfully as a house, filling it with dollies and miniature plates and cups and saucers. At the old blackhouse where her grandfather once wove Harris Tweed.
And still the rain wept from a sky that leached all happiness from once precious memories.
There was a large gathering of cars outside the Macfarlane croft house. Too many for the metalled parking area, and they extended well down the hill on the single-track road that led to the bridge. More were arriving all the time. Niamh parked by the bridge itself and walked up the hill through the rain. She wore a black dress and shawl, and a pillbox hat and net that she had bought for a previous funeral. Her hair was pinned up beneath it, severe and uncompromising. She wore no make-up and her skin was ghostly pale, penumbrous shadows beneath sad hazel eyes.
Mourners arriving at the house appeared almost embarrassed to see her, nodding solemnly before quickly averting their eyes. People parted to let her through, as if somehow death had contaminated her.
The hearse was parked on the road, and the coffin prepared by Alasdair Macrae sat across several chairs in the porch at the front. Ruairidh’s final view from the house in which he had grown up, blurred through windows distorted by rain.
Mrs. Macfarlane led her through to the porch from the sitting room. “We’ve had literally hundreds come to pay their respects,” she said. “A constant stream of family and friends, and well-wishers from around the island.”
Well-wishers. What irony. How could Ruairidh’s mother ever have known that this was the name adopted by her son’s killer. Well wisher. Whatever else he had wished Ruairidh, it wasn’t well.
“The minister’ll be here soon. I wanted to have the service in the house, like they used to do it. As you know, Ruairidh was never much one for the church himself. So it seemed, you know, more appropriate.”
Niamh nodded. For once, Mrs. Macfarlane had judged it right.
“I’ll leave you with him for a few moments.” And she withdrew discreetly to leave Niamh with the coffin and the knowledge of what lay inside. There was no comfort in it. Nothing could take away the horror of the moment in the Place de la République when the explosion had knocked her from her feet. Or when the undertaker in Paris had placed the coffin for still-borns on his desk, and Niamh had visualized for the first time exactly what that explosion had done to the man she loved. What little of him it had left her.
A slow tear, like molten sadness, trickled its way down her pale cheek, and she turned, startled by the sudden realization that there was someone standing beside her.
Donald looked awkward. Embarrassed like all the others, but there was something else in his eyes that went beyond mourning or sympathy. He could not hold her gaze for long. “What news?” he said.
Niamh frowned.
He clarified. “Of the investigation.”
“Oh. That.” She succumbed to indifference. What did it matter now? “None.”
He hesitated, then to her surprise wrapped protective fingers around her arm. “You know . . . if they haven’t caught anyone for it, it’s just possible that you could be at risk, too.”
She turned her head up to look at him, crinkling her brows in surprise. “Why do you say that?” It seemed an extraordinary coincidence, coming the morning after someone had tried to kill her.
He shrugged. “Just worried about you.” His freckles were even more striking than usual against the whiteness of his skin, and she saw that his eyes were watery and bloodshot. Perhaps he had not been sleeping. “What are your plans after the funeral?” he asked.
“I have no plans.”
He let go of her arm. “You shouldn’t be on your own, Niamh.” Then, as if he had spoken out of turn, added quickly, “It’s an emotional time.”
“Every minute since it happened has been an emotional time.”
He nodded, and she saw what seemed to her like a fleeting shadow of guilt cross his face. And, yet, what would Donald have to feel guilty about? Ruairidh was his wee brother, after all. Grief showed its face in many ways. She took and squeezed his hand, and succeeded only in increasing his discomfort.
It was impossible to say how many folk were crushed into the house for the brief service conducted by the minister. And there were many more outside, standing in the rain.
The minister himself was an elderly man. The wind had ruined the careful parting of what was left of wiry white hair, and then the rain had flattened it so that it stuck in fine wet curls to his forehead. He was tall and impossibly thin, and in spite of the strictness of the Free Church had always, to Niamh’s mind, presented the human face of his dour religion.
In the silence that filled the house, pervading every corner of it, Niamh listened to the intonation of his voice rather than his words. It was hard to find the vocabulary truly to express your
feelings. People and religions fell back on platitudes and favourite biblical readings. But the heart spoke through the voice, and Niamh just closed her eyes to listen. Here was the man who had thrown the first handful of sand over Anndra’s coffin, read the same blessings, offered the same sympathies. Drawing no distinction between one and the other. Apportioning no blame. For he, at least, carried the certainty in his soul that only God knew the truth of what happened all those years ago, and that it was His justice that would prevail.
But his final words rang out loud and clear, bringing tears to almost every eye in the house. Song of Solomon 4:6. So often read aloud at funerals, written in obituaries, carved on headstones. Gus am bris an latha agus an teich na sgàilean. Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away.
It was not until she got outside, drawing cold fresh air into her lungs, that it became apparent just how many people there were out here. Among the many she knew were others that she did not. Journalists, perhaps. A drone hovered high overhead and she realized that some TV news outlet, or freelancer, was filming the funeral for broadcast later in the day. She caught a glimpse of Lee Blunt, solemn and subdued, dressed all in black, and surrounded by so many of the famous faces of British fashion. Models and designers, photographers and fashion writers. Faces familiar around the world, turning up here for an island funeral, drawing stares of curiosity and wonder from awestruck locals. Such was the celebrity of Ranish Tweed, and Ruairidh’s renown, that people like these would travel the world to say their farewells.
Jacob Steiner tipped his hat towards Niamh as six men, Donald among them, carried the coffin out to the hearse. When the rear door closed on it, Ruairidh’s brother came to take her arm. “You come in the car with me,” he said. “We can pick yours up later.”
She saw that her parents and Uilleam were standing among the mourners watching her, maintaining a discreet distance. She wondered why they had come after all. Perhaps to stop the gossips from whispering among themselves how her own family had failed to turn out for Ruairidh’s funeral. But she cut short the thought, even as it formed. And preferred, instead, to believe that for once maybe it was her father who had prevailed.
