The Blackhouse l-1

by Peter May

  ‘You once told me you were going to rip the fucking wings off Angel Macritchie.’

  Donald’s smile vanished. ‘We’re in the house of God, Fin.’

  ‘And that should bother me, why?’

  Donald looked at him for a moment, then turned away and crouched to start putting tools back in his box. ‘It was that atheist aunt of yours who turned you against the Lord, wasn’t it?’

  Fin shook his head. ‘No. She’d have been pleased to have me be a happy heathen like her. But she got me too late. The damage was done. I was already infected. Once you’ve believed, it’s very hard to stop believing. I just stopped believing God was good, that’s all. And the only one responsible for that was God Himself.’ Donald swivelled to look at Fin, incomprehension in his frown. ‘The night he took my parents on the Barvas moor.’ Fin forced a smile. ‘Of course, I was just a kid then. These days, in my more rational moments, I know it’s all just crap, and that such things happen in life.’ And he added bitterly, ‘More than once.’ One more reason for resentment. ‘It’s only when I can’t shake off the feeling that maybe there really is a God, that I start getting angry again.’

  Donald turned back to his tools. ‘You didn’t really come here to ask me if I killed Angel Macritchie, did you?’

  ‘You didn’t like him much.’

  ‘A lot of people didn’t like him much. That doesn’t mean they would kill him.’ He paused, balancing a hammer in his hand, feeling its weight. ‘But if you want to know how I feel about it, I don’t think he was any great loss to the world.’

  ‘That’s not very Christian of you,’ Fin said, and Donald dropped the hammer into the box. ‘Is it because of all the shit we took off him as kids, or because your daughter claimed that he raped her?’

  Donald stood up. ‘He raped her alright.’ He was defensive, challenging Fin to contradict him.

  ‘That wouldn’t surprise me at all. Which is why I’d like to know what happened.’

  Donald pushed past him and out into the hallway. ‘I imagine you’ll find everything you need to know in the police report.’

  Fin turned after him. ‘I’d rather hear it from the horse’s mouth.’

  Donald stopped in his tracks. He wheeled around and took a step back towards his old classmate. He was still a good three inches taller than Fin. Well over six feet, and well capable, Fin thought, of hoisting Macritchie’s eighteen stone on a length of rope to hang him by the neck from the rafters of the boatshed in Port of Ness. ‘I don’t want you, or anyone else, talking to her about it again. That man raped her, and the police treated her like she was a liar. As if rape isn’t humiliating enough.’

  ‘Donald, I’m not going to humiliate her, or accuse her of lying. I just want to hear her story.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Look, I don’t want to force the issue, but this is a murder inquiry, and if I want to talk to her, I’ll talk to her.’

  Fin saw a father’s anger in Donald’s eyes. It flared briefly, then some inner control dulled its flame. ‘She’s not here just now. She’s in town with her mother.’

  ‘I’ll come back, then. Maybe tomorrow.’

  ‘It might have been better, Fin, if you hadn’t come back at all.’

  Fin felt the chill of a threat in Donald’s words, and in his tone, and found it hard to remember that this was the same boy who had stood up for him against bullies, and risked his own hide to come back and rescue him the night that Angel Macritchie had felled him outside Crobost Stores. ‘Why’s that? Because I might find out the truth? What’s anyone got to fear from the truth, Donald?’ Donald just glared at him. ‘You know, if Macritchie had raped my daughter, I’d probably have been tempted to take matters into my own hands myself.’

  Donald shook his head. ‘I can’t believe you’d think me capable of something like that, Fin.’

  ‘All the same, I’d be interested to know where you were on Saturday night.’

  ‘Since your colleagues have already asked me that, I think you’ll probably find it’s a matter of record.’

  ‘I can’t tell when the record’s lying. With people, usually I can.’

  ‘I was where I always am on a Saturday night. At home writing my sermon for the Sabbath. My wife will vouch for me if you care to ask her.’ Donald walked to the door and held it open for Fin, signalling that their exchange was over. ‘In any case, it is not for me to deliver retribution to sinners. The Lord will deal with Angel Macritchie in his own way.’

  ‘Maybe he already has.’ Fin stepped out into the blustery afternoon as the rain began falling in earnest. Horizontally.

  By the time Fin reached Gunn’s car idling in the car park, he was soaked. He dropped into the passenger seat with the rain clinging to his curls and running down his face and neck, and slammed the door shut. Gunn turned on the blower and glanced over at Fin. ‘Well?’

  ‘Tell me what happened the night the girl claimed Macritchie raped her.’

  II

  The cloud was shredded all across the sky as they drove back to Stornoway, ragged strips of blue and black and purple-grey. The road stretched straight ahead of them, rising to the horizon and a strip of light beneath the bruising where you could see the rain falling in sheets.

  ‘It happened about two months ago,’ Gunn said. ‘Donna Murray and a bunch of her pals were drinking at the Crobost Social.’

  ‘I thought you said she was only sixteen.’

  Gunn sneaked him a look to see if he was joking. ‘You have been away a long time, Mr Macleod.’

  ‘It’s illegal, George.’

  ‘It was a Friday night, sir. The place would have been jumping. Some of the girls would have been over eighteen. And nobody’s paying that much attention anyway.’

  Sunlight unexpectedly split the gloom, wipers smearing light with rain across the windscreen, a rainbow springing up out of the moor away to their left.

  ‘There was all the usual stuff going on between boys and girls. You know how it is when you mix alcohol with teenage hormones. Anyway, Macritchie was at his habitual place at the bar, sitting up on a stool, leaning in his elbow groove and casting a lascivious eye over all the young girls. Hard to believe he still had any hormones after the amount of beer he’d flushed through his system over the years.’ Gunn chuckled. ‘You saw the state of his liver.’ Fin nodded. Angel had been a big drinker, even as a teenager. ‘Anyway, for some reason young Donna seems to have caught his eye that night. And inexplicably, he seems to have thought she might find him attractive. So he offered to buy her a drink. I guess when she turned him down that might have been the end of it. But, then, apparently someone told him that she was Donald Murray’s girl, and that seemed to encourage him.’

  Fin could imagine how putting his hands all over Donald Murray’s daughter might tickle Macritchie’s sick sense of irony, particularly if her father got to hear about it.

  ‘He spent the rest of the night badgering her, buying drinks that she wouldn’t touch, trying to put his arm around her, making lewd suggestions. Her friends all thought it was a great laugh. Nobody saw Macritchie as a real threat. Just some drunken old fart in the bar. But Donna got really pissed off. He was ruining her night out, so she decided she was going home. Flounced out in a right tid, according to her pals. Most people didn’t notice it, but about a minute later the barmaid saw Macritchie slipping off his stool and heading out after her. This is where different accounts start to conflict.’

  Their car passed a bunch of teenage girls huddled in a concrete bus shelter at South Dell. They were peculiar to Lewis, these constructions, flat-roofed, with four open compartments that would provide shelter regardless of the direction of the wind. Fin remembered that they used to call them giants’ picnic tables. The youngsters looked about Donna’s age, waiting for a bus to take them into Stornoway for a night out. Alcohol and teenage hormones. Fin felt certain that these girls had no idea just how dangerous a cocktail that could be. Smiles on pale faces that flew past rain-streaked windows. Lives
headed on a course that none of them could predict but which were, at the same time, utterly predictable.

  ‘It was about thirty-five minutes from the time Donna left the Social till the time she got home,’ Gunn said.

  Fin exhaled through pursed lips. ‘It would take about ten minutes at the most.’

  ‘Seven. We got a policewoman to time it.’

  ‘So what happened during the missing half-hour?’

  ‘Well, according to Donna, Macritchie sexually assaulted her. Her words. She was dishevelled when she got back to the house. Which was the word her father used. Red-faced, make-up all smeared, blubbing like a baby. He called the police, and she was taken to Stornoway for questioning and examination by the police surgeon. That was when she used the word rape for the first time. So between Ness and Stornoway it had changed from sexual assault to rape. Of course, as we always do, we had to establish the exact nature of the assault. When we started getting into detail, the girl got hysterical. But, yes, she confirmed, Macritchie forced her to the ground and put his penis inside her vagina. No, she had not consented. Yes, she was a virgin. Or had been.’ Gun glanced uneasily at Fin. ‘But I have to be honest with you, Mr Macleod, there was no blood on her, or her clothes, and there was no outward indication that she had been forced to the ground on a wet night. There was no bruising visible on her arms, her clothes did not appear to be wet or dirty.’

  Fin was puzzled. ‘What did the medical examination show?’

  ‘Well, that’s just it, Mr Macleod, she wouldn’t submit to a medical examination. Point-blank refused. Said it would be too humiliating. We told her that it was unlikely that charges could be brought against Macritchie unless we had physical, or witness, evidence. As it turned out, the only witness we could find outside the Social said that Macritchie had headed off in the opposite direction from Donna. And since she refused a medical examination …’

  ‘What did her father say?’

  ‘Oh, he backed her all the way. Said that if she didn’t want to be examined by a doctor then that was her right. We explained the position to him, but there was no way he was going to try to persuade her to do it if she didn’t want to.’

  ‘What was his demeanour through all this?’

  ‘I’d say he was angry, Mr Macleod. Kind of tight, balled-fist angry, you know, pent up inside. He seemed calm enough on the exterior. Too calm. Like water in a dam before they open the sluice gates.’ Gunn sighed. ‘In any event, the investigating officers questioned just about everybody who was at the Social Club that night, but there was no one who could corroborate Donna’s story. In theory, the case remains open, but in fact the investigation was shelved.’ He shook his head. ‘Of course, shit sticks. There was rumour, and gossip, and a lot of people were convinced that Macritchie raped the girl.’

  ‘Do you think he did?’

  Scraps of water, tiny lochan lying in fragmented pools across the moor, glinted a cold blue in the sunlight. The rain had blown over, clearing the sky to the south. Siadar lay behind them, and the white cottages of Barvas as they approached it caught the western sun slanting across the land, lighting the gentle slopes of the southern mountains in the far distance.

  ‘I’d like to say I did, Mr Macleod. From everything I know about the man he seems to have been a bad bastard. But, you know, there was no evidence.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you about the evidence, George. I asked you what you thought.’

  Gunn held the wheel firmly in both hands. ‘Well, I’ll tell you what I think, Mr Macleod, as long as you don’t quote me on it.’ He hesitated just for a moment. ‘I think that girl was lying through her teeth.’

  III

  The Park Guest House stood in a terrace of sandstone houses opposite what was now the Caladh Inn — dark, rain-streaked stone brooding behind black-painted wrought-iron fencing. It was home to one of the better restaurants in town, a conservatory built on to the dining room to make the most of the summer light. Around the solstice, it was possible to eat at midnight with the sun still streaking the sky pink.

  Reluctantly, Chris Adams led Fin up to his small single-bedded room on the first floor, after Fin told him that the guest sitting room on the ground floor was not an appropriate place for them to talk. The floorboards creaked like wet snow underfoot. Fin noticed that Adams held himself stiffly, and appeared to be in some discomfort as he climbed the stairs. He was English, which Fin had not expected, betrayed by a creamy Home Counties accent. He was around thirty years old, tall and thin, with very blond hair. And for someone who apparently spent much of his time outdoors in the pursuit of animal welfare, he had an unhealthily pale complexion. The ivory skin was marred, however, by yellowing bruising around the left eye and cheekbone. He wore baggy corduroy trousers and a sweatshirt with a slogan about not being able to eat money. His fingers were unusually long, almost feminine.

  He held the door open for Fin to enter his room, and then cleared a fold-up chair of clothes and paperwork to allow him to sit. The bedroom appeared to have been at the centre of a paper explosion in which a thousand bits of paper and Blu-Tack had stuck to the walls. Maps, memos, newspaper cuttings, Postits. Fin was not certain how pleased the proprietor would be. The bed was strewn with books and ring-binder folders and notebooks. A laptop computer on the chest of drawers in the window shared its space with more paperwork, empty plastic cups, and the remains of a Chinese carry-out. Adams’s outlook was across James Street to the grim glass and concrete edifice that used to be the Seaforth.

  ‘I’ve already given you people more time than you deserve,’ he complained. ‘You do nothing to apprehend the man who beat me up, then accuse me of murdering him when he turns up dead.’ His mobile phone rang. ‘Excuse me.’ He answered it and told his caller that he was busy right now and would call back. Then he looked expectantly at Fin. ‘Well? What do you want to know now?’

  ‘I want to know where you were on Friday, May the twenty-fifth this year.’

  Which caught Adams completely off-balance. ‘Why?’

  ‘Just tell me where you were, Mr Adams, please.’

  ‘Well, I have no idea. I’d need to check my diary.’

  ‘Then do it.’

  Adams looked at Fin with a clear mixture of consternation and irritation. He tutted audibly, and sat on the end of his bed, making his long fingers dance flamboyantly across the keyboard of his laptop. The screen flickered to life and flashed up a diary page. It jumped from a daily to a monthly layout, and Adams scrolled back from August to May. ‘May twenty-fifth I was in Edinburgh. We had a meeting at the office that afternoon with the local representative of the RSPCA.’

  ‘Where were you that night?’

  ‘I don’t know. At home probably. I don’t keep a social diary.’

  ‘I’ll need you to confirm that for me. Is there anyone who can corroborate?’

  A deep sigh. ‘I suppose Roger might know. He’s my flatmate.’

  ‘Then I suggest you ask him and get back to me.’

  ‘What on earth is all this about, Mr Macleod?’

  Fin ignored the question. ‘Does the name John Sievewright mean anything to you?’

  Adams did not even stop to think about it. ‘No, it does not. Are you going to tell me what this is about?’

  ‘In the early hours of May twenty-sixth this year, a thirty-three-year-old Edinburgh conveyancing lawyer called John Sievewright was found hanging from a tree in a street near the foot of Leith Walk. He had been strangled, stripped and disembowelled. As you know, just three days ago, one Angus John Macritchie suffered almost exactly the same fate right here on the Isle of Lewis.’

  A tiny explosion of air escaped from the back of Adams’s throat. ‘And you want to know if I’m going around Scotland disembowelling people? Me? That’s laughable, Mr Macleod. Laughable.’

  ‘Do you see me laughing, Mr Adams?’

  Adams gazed at Fin in studied disbelief. ‘I’ll ask Roger what we were doing that night. He’ll know. He’s better organized than I am. Is
there anything else?’

  ‘Yes, I want you to tell me why Angel Macritchie beat you up.’

  ‘Angel? Is that what you call him? I imagine he’ll have flown off to Hell by now rather than Heaven.’ He frowned. ‘I’ve already made an official statement.’

  ‘Not to me you haven’t.’

  ‘Well, there’s not much point in investigating the assault now, since the perpetrator is beyond even your reach.’

  ‘Just tell me what happened.’ Fin controlled his impatience, but something in his tone clearly communicated itself to Adams, who sighed again, this time even more theatrically.

  ‘One of your local newspapers, The Hebridean, carried a story about how I was on the island to organize a demonstration to try to prevent the annual guga cull on An Sgeir. They kill two thousand birds a year, you know. Just slaughter them. Clambering about the cliffs strangling the poor little things while the adults are flying frantically overhead crying for their dead chicks. It’s brutal. Inhumane. It may be a tradition, but it just isn’t right in a civilized country in the twenty-first century.’

  ‘If we could skip the lecture and just stick to the facts …’

  ‘I suppose, like everyone else in this Godforsaken place, you’re in favour of it. You know, that’s one thing I hadn’t expected. Not a single person on the island has offered me one word of support. And I had hoped to rally local opposition to swell our numbers.’

  ‘People enjoy their taste of the guga. And it may seem barbaric to you, but the method they use to kill the birds is almost instantaneous.’

  ‘Sticks with nooses on the end, and clubs?’ Adams curled his lips in distaste.

  ‘They’re very effective.’

  ‘And you would know.’

  ‘Actually, I would. I’ve done it.’

  Adams looked at him as if there were a foul taste in his mouth. ‘Then there’s no point even discussing it with you.’

  ‘Good. So could we get back to the assault, please?’