‘We’re stuck here now, Harry old cock. For better or worse. So, do we get wrecked in the bar – or ask Marky if he wants to head straight for Vatersay?’
A walk along the corridor to Howlett’s room supplied the answer. They found him prostrate on his bed, curtains firmly closed against the persistent evening light.
‘There’s no way I’m moving from here tonight, guys. Just driving up from the pier has made the migraine worse. I’ll have to sleep it off. Don’t worry. Sleep always cures it. I’ll be fine in the morning.’
The bar it was, then, though only after a diversion to the hotel’s restaurant, Chipchase’s sudden hunger testifying to his recovery. It was dark by the time they stepped out into the cold, clear silence of Barra by night and strolled round to the cosily lit Castlebay Bar, their stomachs well filled with fresh island fish.
There were only a dozen or so locals inside, two of them engaged in a largely wordless game of pool. The atmosphere was far from uproarious. The amiable barman told them Sunday evenings were always quiet. ‘You should have been in last night. We had a grand ceilidh. The Vatersay Boys played.’ He nodded at a dais in the corner, adorned with a drum-set, and explained that the folksily Gaelic music rumbling in the background was from the Boys’ latest album – The Road to Vatersay.
‘We’ll be taking that tomorrow,’ said Chipchase as he lit a cigar.
‘Buying their CD?’
‘No, no. Taking the road to Vatersay. Visiting the island.’
‘Are you over on holiday, then?’
‘We certainly are.’ Chipchase took a deep and evidently inspiring swallow of whisky. ‘Birdwatching. Hill-climbing. Deep-sea diving. We can’t get enough of that sort of thing, can we, Harry? We’re a pair of genuine wilderness lovers. The Outer Hebrides is our idea of paradise.’
‘We’re just looking round,’ said Harry. ‘There are quite a few uninhabited islands south of here, aren’t there?’
‘That there are.’
‘Wasn’t one of them in the news a few years back? Haltersay? Haskurlay? Some … mystery or other.’
‘Haskurlay,’ replied the barman, frowning as if doubting whether Harry’s uncertainty about the name was genuine. ‘You’ll be thinking of when they found the bodies there.’ He sighed. ‘Aye, that was a dismal business.’
‘What was it all about?’ enquired Chipchase.
‘Och, nobody rightly knows. Though you’ll meet a few who claim to. Take Dougie over there.’
The barman had pointed to a wizened old man seated near the door, nursing a glass of whisky and a noxious-looking pipe. He was grim-faced, lantern-jawed and sharp-nosed, dressed in a frayed grey suit and black polo-neck sweater, with a still blacker beret perched at an incongruously rakish angle on his apparently pebble-bald head. He was watching the languid manoeuvrings of the pool players with the unfocused gaze of someone waiting for something more interesting to enter his field of vision. As Harry and Barry were about to.
‘Looks a testy old bugger,’ murmured Chipchase.
‘That he is,’ agreed the barman. ‘But talkative as well if you give him the right encouragement.’
‘And what might that be?’ asked Harry.
‘Well, he’s awful fond of the Talisker. A dram or two of that … and you’ll have your work cut out to shut him up.’
Talisker malt whisky proved to be as effective a tongue-loosener with the initially taciturn Dougie McLeish as the barman had promised. The old boy was eighty-seven, a fact he mentioned more than once, proud as he was of the distant reach of his supposedly flawless memory. The construction of a bridge linking Barra to Vatersay was a recent and to his mind lamentable development. ‘What God has set asunder let no man join together.’ When Chipchase greeted this observation with a muttered ‘Bloody hell,’ he was rebuked for profanation. He seemed tempted to retaliate by snatching the tumbler of barely diluted Talisker from McLeish’s thin, faintly smiling lips, until reminded by a kick under the table from Harry that the only reward they needed for their generosity was solid information.
‘Why would the pair of you be interested in the Haskurlay mystery, then?’ McLeish asked when Harry none too subtly raised the subject.
‘No reason,’ said Harry, unconvincingly. ‘Just … idle curiosity.’
‘Aye, well, curiosity killed the cat, don’t they say?’
Chipchase stifled another curse and grinned stiffly. ‘You could give us the real story before we get our heads filled with all kinds of nonsense, Dougie. I’ll bet no one would tell it as accurately as you.’
‘You have that right.’
‘So …’ Harry prompted.
‘Where were you two in the spring of 1955, I wonder.’
‘Us?’
‘Aye. I’m not talking to the bench-backs behind you.’
‘Well, we … were doing our National Service together, as a matter of fact. In the RAF.’
‘Were you, though? Where were you based?’
‘Dyce. Near Aberdeen.’
‘Aberdeen, was it?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘I wouldn’a know. But you were in the Forces, weren’t you? That’s my point.’
‘Point … taken, then,’ said Chipchase, still grinning fixedly.
‘You’re sure it was Aberdeen where you were based?’
‘We’re sure,’ said Harry.
McLeish sighed. ‘That’s a shame.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, for a moment there I thought you might know more than you were letting on. There’s a military strand to this tale, you see.’ He had pronounced military as four distinct and elongated syllables. ‘So they say.’
‘But what do you say, Dougie?’ asked Chipchase.
‘I say the word was put round among the crofters here and on Vatersay in May 1955 that they shouldn’a consider landing on Haskurlay for a couple of weeks. No reason given. Advice, they called it. From the Crofters’ Commission in Inverness, would you believe. Whose tune they were dancing to you must judge for yourself. But some of the fishermen claimed a Royal Navy frigate was out by night to the south of here, off Haskurlay. The rumour was the island was used for some kind of military exercise. All very hush-hush. Well, who was to complain about that? The Cold War was on, after all. Whatever was done, it caused no harm. So we thought, anyway. Even when Hamish Munro and his son went missing. The weather was bad enough for it to be no difficult thing to believe they’d been drowned while fishing. Their boat was washed up on the coast of Skye. No sign of them, though. They were lost. Taken by the sea, it was to be supposed.’
‘Not true, though,’ said Harry. ‘As it turned out.’
‘No. Not true at all. You have to understand that Hamish Munro was a hard man to warn off. He was born on Haskurlay, a couple of years before the last crofters moved from there to plots on Vatersay. So, he had stronger links with the island than most. Knowing the man, I’m no so very surprised he decided to break the ban and take a peek at what was going on there. If that’s what he did. We canna be sure, can we?’
‘What can we be sure of?’
‘That he died there. Him and his son Andrew. Thanks to those archaeologists and their diggings and delvings four years since, we know now the pair of them … were murdered … and buried in the ancient mound north of the deserted village on Haskurlay.’
‘Did you meet any of the archaeologists?’
‘Och, they were in and out of here. I spoke to several of them. Told them what I knew. Which was a sight more than they did.’
‘Have any of them been back since?’
‘Off and on. But no lately. They’ve put it all behind them, I dare say. Like a good few people would prefer to.’ Oddly, then, it seemed Karen Snow had failed to bend McLeish’s ear during her visit the previous autumn. ‘The polis set a fine example on that score. They didn’a exactly strain every sinew to crack the case.’
‘At least they identified the bodies.’
‘Hard not to, with plenty of us old’
uns on hand to remind them of the Munros’ disappearance and relatives still living to settle the matter whether the powers that be wanted to or no.’
‘Relatives … here on Barra?’
‘On Vatersay. Murdo Munro is Hamish’s second son. He lives where he was born, as men are wise to. If you look out of yon window, you’ll see a few lights in the distance, beyond the bay.’
McLeish paused, apparently expecting them to look as directed. Harry obediently rose, steered an evasive course round the backside and jutting cue-end of a stooping pool player and peered through the window. There were indeed a few twinkling lights visible on the far side of the bay. ‘Highly bloody illuminating,’ muttered Chipchase, who had tagged along. They turned and retreated to their table.
‘That’s the coast of Vatersay, isn’t it, Dougie?’ Harry asked.
‘Aye. One of those lights’ll likely be the Munro house. Not the same house Hamish left for the last time one morning fifty year ago, mind. Murdo’s built himself a smart new bungalow with the money from Brussels they throw around here to no good purpose. He’s turned the old place into his garage, would you believe. Still keeps the name, though. The house is called Haskurlay. After the old times.’
‘Were there other children of Hamish’s? You mentioned relatives plural.’
‘There’s a daughter. Ailsa. But she moved to Glasgow years back. Married some … financier.’ The word was given similar treatment to military and came out closer to feenancieer. ‘Moved to London since, I hear. Money, money, money. You have to chase it to keep it. And then where’s the time for contemplation, I should like to know.’
‘Bags of time for that round here, I expect,’ said Chipchase glumly.
‘Aye. So there is. You could do worse than try to get the knack for it yourself.’ McLeish squinted at Chipchase. ‘Though you don’t look a naturally contemplative man to me.’
‘Is Murdo carrying on the family line?’ Harry asked, eager to keep McLeish to his subject.
‘Murdo’s a bachelor. Like too many men of his generation.’
‘Are you a bachelor, Dougie?’ Chipchase enquired, seemingly heedless of Harry’s agenda.
‘Widower. With sons and grandsons to my name.’
‘Does Ailsa ever visit the island?’ Harry asked, glancing reprovingly at Chipchase.
‘Now and then. As it happens, I—’ McLeish broke off. His mouth tightened. Caution had suddenly overtaken him. He sipped his Talisker and treated Harry to a long, narrow look of scrutiny. ‘Now and then,’ he repeated, in a lower, gravelly tone. ‘But no very often.’
Chapter Forty-eight
‘EXACTLY HOW MUCH dosh did Jackie give you?’ Chipchase asked when Harry returned from the bar with another around of drinks.
‘Never you mind,’ Harry replied, taking a slurp of beer.
‘I only ask because pouring Talisker down Dougie’s throat could be regarded as flagrantly wasteful given how little we learned from the crabby old bugger.’
McLeish had just left, claiming it was way past his bedtime, though looking alert enough to suggest that may not have been the literal truth. He had relapsed into taciturnity once Harry’s interest in Ailsa Redpath’s whereabouts had become apparent and had shown no inclination to expound further on the Haskurlay mystery.
‘I wouldn’t mind a drop of Talisker myself. While we’re up here, we may as well sample the—’
‘You’ll have Bell’s and be grateful. You won’t be able to taste the difference through that cigar anyway.’ Harry was beginning to regret buying Chipchase a replacement pack of Villiger’s during their stop in Oban. ‘And we learned more from Dougie than you seem to think.’
‘Did we?’ Chipchase blew a defiant ring of cigar smoke towards the ceiling. ‘You’d better remind me what exactly.’
‘Ailsa’s here. On Vatersay. With her brother. The man’s a bachelor. Dougie said so. There’s no Mrs Munro. So, the woman Mark spoke to must have been Ailsa.’
‘Bachelors have been known to entertain women other than their sisters. I’m glad to say.’
‘Ailsa’s here. Dougie knows that. She’s been seen. He only went coy on us when his loyalty to a fellow islander kicked in.’
‘OK. Have it your way. She’s here. We’re here. Though God knows why. We never have been before. You know that as well as I do, Harry. Whatever went on on some unin-bloody-habited lump of rock out there fifty years ago’ – Chipchase gestured towards the night-blanked window – ‘has sod all to do with us.’
‘It shouldn’t have, I agree. But it does, Barry. You know that as well as I do. You just don’t want to admit it.’
Chipchase puffed out his cheeks. ‘Bloody hell,’ he growled.
‘We’re linked to the Haskurlay mystery in some way or other. Everyone in Operation Clean Sheet is. Tomorrow … we’ll find out how.’
‘Is that a promise?’
‘I suppose it is.’
‘Funny. It sounded more like a threat to me.’
There were no more rounds. With midnight fast approaching, they decided to head back to the hotel. Close by though it was, Chipchase opted to visit the bar’s loo before leaving. Harry said he would wait for him outside. As a reformed smoker, he had no wish to linger in the fug created by Chipchase’s cigars and the locals’ cigarettes.
The air that enveloped him as he left was certainly fresh. It was also on the wintry side of cool. But the wind had dropped. A pallid serpent-tail of moonlight stretched out across the bay towards Vatersay. Harry stared towards the distant peninsula where Murdo Munro lived – and where, he strongly suspected, Ailsa Redpath had taken refuge.
Then someone whistled to him, softly but distinctly, from the bottom of the path leading up from the road. Harry looked down and saw a figure standing there, gazing up at him. An aromatic drift of pipe smoke clinched his identity.
‘I thought you said it was past your bedtime,’ Harry remarked, strolling down to join McLeish at the roadside.
‘Decided on a walk before turning in. Pure chance I should be coming back this way as you stepped out of the bar.’
‘That a fact?’
‘Where’s your uncontemplative friend?’
‘Getting rid of some of the beer he’s drunk.’
‘Is he the only one of the men you served with you’re still in touch with?’
‘Not the only one, no.’
‘Have regular reunions, do you?’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘And you were definitely based in Aberdeen?’
‘Definitely.’
‘Not Benbecula, say, or somewhere … closer to hand?’
‘No. Not Benbecula. What are you driving at, Dougie?’
‘Was there a black fellow in your unit?’
‘What?’
‘Name of Nixon.’
‘What?’
‘I’d judge from your reaction there was.’
‘OK. Yes. There was. Leroy Nixon. Dead and gone now, I’m afraid.’
‘Aye. As you say. Dead and gone.’
‘What do you know about Leroy?’
‘Take a turn down to the quay with me and I’ll tell you. You can leave your friend to make his own way back to the hotel. I wouldn’a want to be … interrupted.’
They descended a short hill and turned onto the quayside road, where Castlebay’s few shops formed an orderly row facing the bay. McLeish crossed the street and gazed out at the stark black outline of the offshore castle.
‘Kisimul was nought but a ruin when I was a boy,’ he said, pitching his voice so low Harry had to strain to catch his words. ‘The Forty-Fifth MacNeil came back from America just before the war and set about restoring it to its former glory. You can take a tour. Most of the holidaymakers do. The boat leaves from the jetty in front of the post office. Well worth it, I’m sure. If you have the time and the inclination. But you have neither, do you? Because you’re not here for a holiday, are you?’
‘What makes you think that?’
�
�The use of my faculties. The polis never connected the murders on Haskurlay with the Nixon drowning back in 1983, but I did. You can be sure of that.’
‘Leroy died here?’
‘Lost overboard from a ferry on the way to Oban. The body was washed up on the coast of Skye. Like the Munros’ boat all those years before. ’Twas only the CalMac ticket they found on the poor fellow that accounted for what had happened to him. He was remembered at the guesthouse he’d stayed in here, of course. And he was remembered by me.’
‘Why particularly by you?’
‘I kept a seagoing boat in those days. Took visitors out on trips round the islands. To see the seals and puffins and such. Landed them on Mingulay if the weather was fair, which it was the day your friend Nixon was one of the party. But he never got as far as Mingulay. When we passed close to Haskurlay, he seemed to … recognize it. I don’t know how else to put it. He’d never been there before, he said. And yet … He asked me to land him on the island. Paid me well enough too. So, I put him ashore – which was no easy matter – and took the others on to Mingulay. We picked him up on the way back. That was no easy matter either. He’d had four or five hours alone there by then.’
‘How did he seem?’
‘Stunned, I should say. Aye, stunned is the word. And a word is more than I had from him all the way back here. He walked off up the pier like a man in a trance. I never saw him again. He took the ferry next morning. In more ways than one.’
‘He had … mental problems, I’m told.’
‘I wouldn’a disagree with that. The question is: what caused them?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you not? Do you really not?’
‘No, Dougie, I really don’t.’
‘Why are you here, then?’
‘It’s … too complicated to explain.’
‘Oh, I don’t doubt it’s complicated. Facts are facts, though, however few they may be where the Munro murders are concerned. You and your friend are awful interested in the Haskurlay mystery. It goes a lot deeper than curiosity. Does it not?’
‘Yes. It does.’
‘Have either of you ever been to Haskurlay?’
Never Go Back Page 23
