The Blackhouse l-1

by Peter May

  ‘So whereabouts in Crobost do you live?’ I said to Marjorie.

  ‘I don’t. I live on Mealanais Farm. It’s about two miles from Crobost.’ And she lowered her voice so that I could hardly hear it above the wind. ‘My mother’s English.’ It was like a secret she was telling me. ‘That’s why I can speak English without a Gaelic accent.’

  I shrugged, wondering why she was telling me this. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  She laughed. ‘Of course not.’

  It was cold and starting to rain, and I pulled up my hood, stealing a glance at the girl with the pigtails. They were blowing out behind her in the wind, and she seemed to be enjoying the sting of it in her face. Her cheeks had turned bright red. ‘Marjorie.’ I raised my voice above the wind. ‘That’s a nice name.’

  ‘I hate it.’ She glowered at me. ‘It’s my English name. But nobody calls me that. My real name’s Marsaili.’ Like Marjorie, she put the emphasis on the first syllable, with the s becoming a soft sh, as it always does in the Gaelic after an r, a Nordic inheritance from the two hundred years that the islands were ruled by the Vikings.

  ‘Marsaili.’ I tried it out to see if it fitted my mouth, and I liked the sound of it fine. ‘That’s even nicer.’

  She flicked me a coy look, soft blue eyes meeting mine for a moment then dancing away again. ‘So how do you like your English name?’

  ‘Finlay?’ She nodded. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘I’ll call you Fin, then. How’s that?’

  ‘Fin.’ Again, I tried it out for size. It was short, and to the point. ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Good.’ Marsaili smiled. ‘Then that’s what you’ll be.’

  And that’s how it happened that Marsaili Morrison gave me the name that stuck with me for the rest of my life.

  In those days, for the first week, the new intake at the school only stayed until lunchtime. We had our lunch and then left. And although Artair and I had been given a lift to school that first morning, we were expected to walk home. It was only about a mile. Artair was waiting for me at the gate. I had been held up because Mrs Mackay had called me back to give me a note for my parents. I could see Marsaili up ahead on the road, walking on her own. We had got soaked on the walk back from the stores and had spent the rest of the morning sitting on a radiator together drying off. The rain had stopped for the moment.

  ‘Hurry up, I’ve been waiting for you.’ Artair was impatient to get home. He wanted us to go searching for crabs in the rock pools below his house.

  ‘I’m going back by Mealanais Farm,’ I told him. ‘It’s a shortcut.’

  ‘What?’ He looked at me as if I were mad. ‘That’ll take hours!’

  ‘No, it won’t. I can cut back by the Cross-Skigersta road.’ I had no idea where that was, but Marsaili had told me that was the quick way from Mealanais to Crobost.

  I didn’t even wait for him to object, but took off at a sprint up the road after Marsaili. By the time I caught up with her I was out of puff. She gave me a knowing smile. ‘I thought you would be walking home with Artair.’

  ‘I thought I’d walk with you up by Mealanais.’ I was dead casual. ‘It’s a shortcut.’

  She looked less than convinced. ‘It’s a long way for a shortcut.’ And she gave a little shrug. ‘But I can’t stop you walking with me, if that’s what you want.’

  I smiled to myself, and restrained an urge to punch the air. I looked back and saw Artair glaring after us.

  The road to the farm branched off the other side of the main road before the turnoff to Crobost. Punctuated by the occasional passing place, it wound its way south-east across acres of peatbog that stretched off to the far horizon. But the land was more elevated here, and if you looked back you could see the line of the road as far as Swainbost and Cross. Beyond that, the sea broke white along the west coast below a forest of gravestones standing bleak against the sky at Crobost cemetery. The northern part of Lewis was flat and unbroken by hills or mountains and the weather swept across it from the Atlantic to the Minch, always in a hurry. And so it was always changing. Light and dark in ever-shifting patterns, one set against the other, rain, sunshine, black sky, blue sky. And rainbows. My childhood seemed filled by them. Usually doublers. We watched one that day, forming fast over the peatbog, vivid against the blackest of blue-black skies. It took away the need for words.

  The road tipped down a gentle slope then, to a cluster of farm buildings in a slight hollow. The fences were in better repair here, and there were cattle and sheep grazing in pasture. There was a tall, red-roofed barn, and a big white farmhouse surrounded by a clutch of stone outbuildings. We stopped at a white-painted gate at the opening to a dirt track that ran down to the house.

  ‘Do you want to come in for some lemonade?’ Marsaili asked.

  But I was sick with worry by this time. I had no real idea where I was or how to get home. And I knew I was going to be very late. I could feel my mother’s anger already. ‘Better not.’ I looked at my watch trying not to seem concerned. ‘I’m going to be a bit late.’

  Marsaili nodded. ‘That’s what happens with shortcuts. They always make you late.’ She smiled brightly. ‘You can come and play on Saturday morning if you want.’

  I pushed at a clump of turf with the toe of my welly and shrugged, playing it cool. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Please yourself, then.’ And she turned and skipped off down the track towards the big white farmhouse.

  I’ve never really been sure how I managed to find my way home that first day, because after Mealanais the road petered out to a stony track. I had been walking along it for some time with a growing sense of despair when I saw the top of a car flashing past along the near horizon. I ran up the slope and found myself on what must have been the Cross-Skigersta road that Marsaili had talked about. Looking both ways along it, the road seemed to disappear into the peatbog. I didn’t know which way to turn. I was scared and close to tears. Some guiding hand must have prompted me to go left, because if I had turned right I would never have got home.

  Even so, it was more than twenty minutes before I came to a turnoff where a crooked black and white signpost pointed uncertainly towards Crobost. I was running now, the tears burning my cheeks, the rims of my wellies rubbing my calves raw. I smelled the sea, and heard it before I saw it. And then as I came over the rise, there was the familiar silhouette of the Crobost Free Church looming over the disparate collection of houses and crofts that huddled around it on the cliff road.

  As I reached our house my mother was pulling up outside it in the Ford Anglia. Artair was in the back seat. She jumped out of the car and grabbed me as if I might blow away in the wind. But her relief turned quickly to anger.

  ‘For God’s sake, Fionnlagh, where have you been? I’ve been up and down that road to the school twice looking for you. I’m just about demented.’ She brushed away tears from my face as I tried to stop more of them leaking from my eyes. Artair had got out of the car and was standing watching with interest. My mother glanced at him. ‘Artair came looking for you after school and didn’t know where you were.’

  I gave him a look, and made a mental note that where girls were concerned he was not to be trusted.

  I said, ‘I walked the girl from Mealanais Farm home. I didn’t know it would take so long.’

  My mother was aghast. ‘Mealanais? Fionnlagh, what were you thinking? Don’t you ever do that again!’

  ‘But Marsaili wants me to go and play there on Saturday morning.’

  ‘Well, I forbid it!’ My mother had turned steely. ‘It’s far too far, and neither your father or me have the time to run you there and back. Do you understand?’

  I nodded, trying not to cry, and she suddenly took pity on me, giving me the warmest of hugs, soft lips brushing my burning cheeks. That was when I remembered the note that Mrs Mackay had given me. I fumbled for it in my pocket and held it out.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘A note from the teacher.’

  My m
other frowned and took it and ripped it open. I watched her face flush, and she folded it quickly and stuffed it in the pocket of her overalls. I never knew what the note said, but from that day on we only ever spoke English in the house.

  Artair and I walked to school the next morning. Artair’s dad had to go to Stornoway for some education meeting, and my mother was having a problem with one of her ewes. We walked most of the way in silence, battered by the wind, and in turn warmed by brief scraps of sunshine. The sea was throwing white-tops over the sand on the beach below. We were nearly at the bottom of the hill when I said, ‘Why did you pretend to my mother you didn’t know I’d gone to Mealanais?’

  Artair puffed his indignation. ‘I’m older than you. I’d have got the blame for letting you go.’

  ‘Older? Four weeks!’

  Artair cocked his head and shook it with great solemnity, like the old men who stood around the Crobost Stores on a Saturday morning. ‘That’s a lot.’

  I was less than convinced. ‘Well, I told my mother I was going to your house to play after school. So you’d better back me up.’

  He looked at me, surprised. ‘You mean, you’re not?’ I shook my head. ‘Where are you going, then?’

  ‘I’m going to walk Marsaili home.’ And I gave him a look that defied him to object.

  We walked in more silence until we reached the main road. ‘I don’t know what you want to go walking girls home for.’ Artair was not pleased. ‘It’s sissy.’ I said nothing, and we crossed the main road and on to the single track that ran down to the school. There were other kids now, converging from all directions, and walking in groups of two and three towards the little clutch of school buildings in the distance. And suddenly Artair said, ‘Okay, then.’

  ‘Okay what?’

  ‘If she asks, I’ll tell your mum you were playing at ours.’

  I stole a glance at him, but he was avoiding my eye. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘On one condition.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That I get to walk Marsaili home with you.’

  I frowned my consternation, and gave him a long, hard look. But he was still avoiding my eye. Why, I wondered, would he want to walk Marsaili home if it was so sissy?

  Of course, all these years later I know why. But I had no idea then that our conversation that morning marked the beginning of a competition between us for Marsaili’s affections that would last through all our schooldays, and beyond.

  THREE

  I

  Fin had barely lifted his bag from the luggage carousel when a large hand grabbed the handle and took it from him. He turned, surprised, to find a big friendly face grinning at him. It was a round face, unlined, beneath thickly oiled black hair that grew into a widow’s peak. It belonged to a man in his early forties, broad built, but a little shorter than Fin’s six feet. He wore a dark suit with a white shirt and blue tie, beneath a heavy, quilted, black anorak. He thrust another large hand into Fin’s. ‘DS George Gunn.’ He had an unmistakable Lewis accent. ‘Welcome to Stornoway, Mr Macleod.’

  ‘It’s Fin, George. How the hell did you know who I was?’

  ‘I can spot a cop at a hundred paces, Mr Macleod.’ He grinned, and as they stepped out to the car park said, ‘You’ll probably see a few changes.’ He leaned into the strong westerly and grinned again. ‘One thing that never changes, though. The wind. Never gets tired of blowing.’

  But today it was a benign wind with a soft edge to it, warmed by an August sun that burst periodically through broken cloud. Gunn turned his Volkswagen on to the roundabout at the gate to the airfield, and they drove up over the hill that took them down again to Oliver’s Brae. They took a right towards the town, and the conversation turned towards the murder.

  ‘First of the new millennium,’ Gunn said. ‘And we only had one in the whole of the twentieth century.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope this is the last of the twenty-first. Where are post-mortems usually held?’

  ‘Aberdeen. We have three police surgeons here on the island. All doctors from the group practice in town. Two of them are locum pathologists. They’ll examine the bodies of any sudden death, even carry out a post-mortem. But anything contentious goes straight off to Aberdeen. Forrester Hills.’

  ‘Wouldn’t Inverness be nearer?’

  ‘Aye, but the pathologist there doesn’t approve of our locums. He won’t do any post-mortems unless he does them all.’ Gunn flicked Fin a mischievous look. ‘But you didn’t hear that from me.’

  ‘Hear what?’

  Gunn’s face split into a smile that told Fin they had connected.

  As they headed down the long straight road towards Stornoway, Fin saw the town laid out before them, built around the shelter of the harbour and the tree-covered hill behind it. The glass and steel ferry terminal at the head of the new breakwater which had been built in the nineties looked to Fin like a flying saucer. Beyond it, the old pier seemed neglected. It gave him an odd jolt seeing the place again. From a distance it appeared almost exactly as he remembered it. Only the flying saucer was new. And no doubt it had brought a few aliens with it.

  They passed the yellow-painted former mills of Kenneth Mackenzie Limited, where millions of metres of homespun Harris tweed had once been stored on thousands of shelves awaiting export. An unfamiliar terrace of new houses led down to a big metal shed where government money financed the production of television programmes in Gaelic. Although it had been unfashionable in Fin’s day, the Gaelic language was now a multi-million-pound business. The schools even taught maths and history and other subjects through the medium of Gaelic. And these days it was hip to speak it.

  ‘They rebuilt Engebret’s a year or two ago,’ Gunn said as they passed a filling station and minimarket at a roundabout that Fin did not remember. ‘It’s even open on a Sunday. And you can get a drink or a meal most anywhere in town now on the Sabbath.’

  Fin shook his head in amazement.

  ‘And two flights from Edinburgh every Sunday. You can even get the ferry from Ullapool.’

  In Fin’s day the whole island shut down on a Sunday. It was impossible to eat out, or go for a drink, or buy cigarettes or petrol. He could remember tourists wandering the streets on the Sabbath, thirsty and hungry and unable to leave until the first ferry on Monday. Of course, it was well known that after the churches of Stornoway had emptied, the pubs and hotels filled up with secret Sunday revellers who slipped in by the back door. It was not illegal, after all, to drink on the Sabbath, just unthinkable. At least, to be seen doing it.

  ‘Do they still chain up the swings?’ Fin remembered the sad sight of children’s swings chained and padlocked on the Sabbath.

  ‘No, they stopped that a few years ago.’ Gunn chuckled ‘The Sabbatarians said it was the thin end of the wedge. And maybe they were right.’

  Fundamentalist Protestant churches had dominated island life for centuries. It was said that a publican or a restaurateur who defied the Church would be quietly put out of business. Bank loans called in, licences withdrawn. The power of the Church had seemed medieval to those looking on from the mainland. But it was real enough on the island, where some sects condemned any kind of entertainment as sinful, and any attempt to undermine their authority as the work of the devil.

  Gunn said, ‘Mind you, even though they don’t chain the swings up any more, you’ll never see a kid using one on a Sunday. Just like you’ll still not see anyone hanging out their washing. Not outside of the town, anyway.’

  A new sports centre hid Fin’s old school from view. They passed the Comhairle nan Eilean island council offices, and the former Seaforth Hotel opposite a terrace of traditional step-gabled sandstone houses. A mix of new ugly and old ugly. Stornoway had never been the prettiest of towns, and it hadn’t improved. Gunn turned right into Lewis Street, traditional harbour homes cheek by jowl with pubs and dark little shops, then left into Church Street and the police station halfway down. Fin noticed that all the street names were in Gaelic. />
  ‘Who’s running the investigation?’

  ‘A crew from Inverness,’ Gunn said. ‘They were helicoptered in in the early hours of Sunday morning. A DCI, a DS and seven DCs. Plus a forensics team. They didn’t hang around once the balloon went up.’

  The police station was a collection of pink, harled buildings on the corner of Church Street and Kenneth Street, next door to the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Peking Cuisine Chinese Takeaway. Gunn drove through a gate and parked beside a large white police van.

  ‘How long have you been based at Stornoway, George?’

  ‘Three years. I was born and brought up in Stornoway. But I’ve spent most of my time in the force at other stations around the islands. And then at Inverness.’ Gunn slipped out of the car with a quilted nylon swish.

  Fin got out of the passenger side. ‘So how do you feel about all these incomers taking over the investigation?’

  Gunn’s smile was rueful. ‘It’s no more than I’d expect. We don’t have the experience here.’

  ‘What’s the CIO like?’

  ‘Oh, you’ll like him.’ A smile crinkled Gunn’s eyes. ‘He’s a real bastard.’

  The real bastard was a short, stocky man with thick, sandy hair Brylcreemed back from a low brow. He had an old-fashioned face and an old-fashioned smell (was it Brut?), and Fin could have guessed he was a Glaswegian even before he opened his mouth. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Tom Smith.’ The chief investigating officer rose from behind his desk and held out a hand. ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Macleod.’ Fin wondered if they all knew, and thought that they had probably been warned. Smith’s handshake was firm and brief. He sat down again, the sleeves of his pressed white shirt neatly folded up to the elbows, his fawn suit jacket carefully arranged over the back of the seat behind him. His desk was covered in paperwork, but there was a sense of order about it. Fin noticed that his thick-fingered hands were scrubbed clean, and that his nails were immaculately manicured.