by Peter May
‘So your dad would have had no reason to doubt the identity of the people he was marrying.’
Donald’s eyes creased in bewilderment. ‘What’s this about, Fin?’
But Fin just shook his head. ‘It’s about nothing, Donald. A silly idea. Forget I ever asked.’
Donald slipped the marriage schedule back into the drawer and locked it. He turned to face to Fin again. ‘Are you and Marsaili back together, then?’
Fin smiled. ‘Jealous?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘No, we’re not. I’m back to restore my parents’ crofthouse. Pitched a tent on the croft, and roughing it till I get a roof on and some basic plumbing installed.’
‘So this silly idea that you had is all you called about?’
Fin gave him a long look, trying to subdue the flames of anger his own emotions were fanning somewhere deep inside him. He had not meant to embark on this. But it was an unequal struggle. ‘You know, Donald, I think you’re a damned hypocrite.’
Donald reacted as if he had been slapped in the face. He almost recoiled in shock. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You think I don’t know that Catriona was pregnant when you got married?’
His face coloured. ‘Who told you that?’
‘It’s true, isn’t it? The great Donald Murray, free spirit and lover of women, fucked up and got a girl pregnant.’
‘I’ll not listen to language like that in the Lord’s house.’
‘Why not? It’s just words. I bet Jesus knew a few choice ones. You were pretty colourful yourself at one time.’
Donald folded his arms. ‘What’s your point, Fin?’
‘My point is, it’s all right for you to make a mistake. But God help that wee girl of yours, or Fionnlagh, if they do the same. You gave yourself a second chance because there was no one around to judge you back then. But you’re not prepared to cut the same slack for your own daughter. What is it? Fionnlagh not good enough for her? I wonder what Catriona’s parents thought about you.’
Donald was almost white with anger. His mouth was pinched and drawn in tight. ‘You never get tired of judging others, do you?’
‘No, that’s your job.’ Fin jabbed a finger at the ceiling. ‘You and Him up there. I’m just an observer.’
He turned to leave the vestry, but Donald grabbed him. Strong fingers biting into his upper arm. ‘What the hell’s it to you anyway, Fin?’
Fin turned back and pulled his arm free. ‘Language, Donald. We’re in the house of the Lord, remember? And you should know that hell is very real to some of us.’
FIFTEEN
It was cold in here. A place suitable for the dead. The white-coated assistant slid open the drawer of the chill cabinet, and Fin found himself looking down on the remarkably well-preserved peat-stained face of a young man with boyish features who could not have been much older than Fionnlagh.
Gunn nodded to the assistant, who discreetly slipped away. He said, ‘This is between you and me, Mr Macleod. Anyone finds out about this, I’m dead meat.’ And he flushed slightly. ‘If you’ll pardon the pun.’
Fin looked at him. ‘Don’t think I underestimate the size of the favour, George.’
‘I know you don’t. But it didn’t stop you asking.’
‘You could have said no.’
Gunn tilted his head in acknowledgement. ‘I could.’ Then, ‘Better be quick, Mr Macleod. I’m led to believe that decomposition will progress rapidly.’
Fin slipped a small digital camera from his pocket, and lined himself up to take a photograph of the young man’s face. The flash reflected back off all the tiles around them. He took three or four, from different angles, then slipped the camera back in his pocket. ‘Anything else that might be useful for me to know?’
‘He lay in a blanket of some sort, for several hours after death. It’s left its pattern on his back, buttocks, his calves and the backs of his thighs. I’m waiting for the photographs from the pathologist, and we’ll get an artist to make a sketch of it.’
‘But you’ve nothing to compare it with?’
‘No. There was nothing found with the body. No blanket, no clothes …’
Gunn knocked on the door, and the assistant returned to slide the drawer shut, consigning the unknown young man they had pulled from the bog to an eternity of darkness.
Outside, the wind tugged at their jackets and trousers, spitting rain, but without serious intent. The sun was still breaking through in transient moments of illumination, quickly extinguished by an ever-changing sky. At the top of the hill they were building an extension to the hospital, the sound of drills and jackhammers carried on the wind, fluorescent orange vests and white hard hats catching fleeting fragments of sunshine.
There is always a moment of internal silence after being in the presence of death. A reminder of your own fragile mortality. The two men got back into Gunn’s car without a word and sat for nearly a minute before finally Fin said, ‘Any chance you could slip me a copy of the post-mortem report, George?’
He heard Gunn’s explosion of breath. ‘Jesus, Mr Macleod!’
Fin turned his face towards him. ‘If you can’t, just say no.’
Gunn glared back at him, breathing through clenched teeth. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ He paused and then, in a voice laden with irony, ‘Anything else I can do for you?’
Fin smiled and held up his camera. ‘You can tell me where I can get prints made of these.’
Malcolm J. Macleod’s photography shop was in a whitewashed roughcast building in Point Street, or what they called The Narrows, where generations of island kids had gathered on Friday and Saturday nights to drink and fight, smoke dope and indulge teenage hormones. The smell of fat and fried fish carried on the breeze from the fish and chip shop two doors along.
When the photographs of the dead man had downloaded from Fin’s camera and appeared on the computer screen, the shop assistant cast curious looks in their direction. But George Gunn’s was a well-known face in the town, and so whatever questions there might have been remained unasked.
Fin looked carefully at the images. The flash of his camera had flattened the features a little, but the face was still perfectly recognisable to anyone who might have known him. He picked the best of them and tapped it with his finger. ‘That one, please.’
‘How many copies?’
‘Just the one.’ *
Fin was intercepted in the hallway as he entered the Dun Eisdean care home. An anxious young woman with dark hair drawn back in a ponytail. She ushered him into her office.
‘You were with Tormod Macdonald’s daughter when she brought him in yesterday, weren’t you, Mr er …’
‘Macleod. Yes. I’m a friend of the family.’
She nodded nervously. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of her all morning, without any luck. There’s been a bit of trouble.’
Fin frowned. ‘What kind of trouble?’
‘Mr Macdonald … how can I put it … tried to escape.’
Fin’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. ‘Escape? This isn’t a prison, is it?’
‘No, of course not. Residents are free to come and go as they please. But this happened in the middle of the night. And, naturally, the doors were locked for reasons of security. It seems that Mr Macdonald spent yesterday evening spreading discontent among some of the other residents, and there were four of them trying to get out.’
Fin couldn’t resist a smile. ‘A one-man escape committee?’
‘It’s no laughing matter, Mr Macleod. Mr Macdonald got up into the sink and smashed the kitchen window with his bare hands. He was quite badly cut.’
Fin’s amusement evaporated. ‘Is he all right?’
‘We had to take him up to the emergency room at the hospital. They put stitches in one of his hands. He’s back now, all bandaged up, and in his room. But he’s been really quite aggressive, shouting at the staff, refusing to take off his hat and coat. He says he’s waiting for his daughter to come and ta
ke him home.’ She sighed and moved away to her desk, opening up a beige folder. ‘We’d like to discuss medication with Miss Macdonald.’
‘What kind of medication?’
‘I’m afraid I can only discuss that with the family.’
‘You want to drug him.’
‘It’s not a question of drugging him, Mr Macleod. He is in a very agitated state. We need to calm him down in case he does any more damage to himself. Or anyone else for that matter.’
Fin ran the probable consequences of such medication through his mind. A memory already fragile and fragmented, dulled by tranquillisers. It could only inhibit their attempts to stimulate his recollection of past events and establish his relationship to the dead man. But they couldn’t risk him doing further injury to himself. He said, ‘You’d better try calling Marsaili again and talk to her about it. But let me see what I can do to calm him down. I was going to take him out for a run in the car anyway, if that’s all right?’
‘Oh, I think that would be a good idea, Mr Macleod. Anything to reinforce the idea in his mind that this is not a prison, and he is not a prisoner.’
SIXTEEN
Who is it now? I’m not budging. They can all go to hell.
The door opens and there is a young man standing there. I’ve seen him before somewhere. Does he work here?
‘Hello, Mr Macdonald,’ he says, and there is something comforting in his voice. Familiar.
‘Do I know you?’
‘It’s Fin.’
Fin. Fin. Strange name. Shark’s fin. Tail fin. French fin. ‘What kind of name’s that?’
‘Short for Finlay. I was Fionnlagh till I went to school, then they gave me my English name. Finlay. It was Marsaili who called me Fin.’ He sits down beside me on the bed.
I feel hope lifting me. ‘Marsaili? Is she here?’
‘No, but she asked me if I would take you out for a wee run in the car. She said you would like that.’
I am disappointed. But it would be nice to get out for a bit. I’ve been stuck in here for a while now. ‘I would.’
‘And I see you’re all dressed up and ready to go.’
‘Always.’ I can feel a smile creeping up on me. ‘You’re a good lad, Fin. You always were. But you shouldn’t have been coming round the farm when your folks had forbidden it.’
Fin is smiling, too, now. ‘You remember that, do you?’
‘I do. Your mother was furious. Mary was scared she’d think we’d been encouraging it. How are your folks, by the way?’
He doesn’t answer. He’s looking at my hands, and lifts my right forearm. ‘They tell me you cut yourself, Mr Macdonald.’
‘Did I?’ I look at my hands and see white bandages wrapped around them. Oh! What the hell happened? I feel a spike of fear. ‘God,’ I say, quite shaken. ‘You’d think it would hurt. But I don’t feel anything. Is it bad?’
‘They gave you some stitches, apparently. Up at the hospital. You were trying to escape.’
‘Escape?’ The very word lifts my spirits.
‘Yes. But, you know, Mr Macdonald, you’re not locked in here. You can come and go when you like. Just like a hotel. As long as you let people know.’
‘I want to go home,’ I say.
‘Well, you know what they say, Mr Macdonald. Home is where your hat is.’
‘Do they?’ Who the hell are they?
‘Yes, they do.’
‘Well, where’s my hat?’
Fin grins at me. ‘It’s on your head.’
I can feel my own surprise, and put my hand up to find my hat there right enough. I take it off and look at it. Good old hat. It’s been with me for many a long year. I laugh now. ‘So it is. I didn’t realize.’
He helps me gently to my feet.
‘Wait, I’ll have to get my bag.’
‘No, you’d best leave it here, Mr Macdonald. You’ll need your things when you get back.’
‘I’m coming back?’
‘Of course. You’ll need to come back to hang up your hat. Remember? Home is where your hat is.’
I look at the hat, still held in my bandaged hands, and laugh again. I put it firmly back on my head. ‘You’re right. I’d almost forgotten.’
I love to see the sun on the ocean, like this. You know that it’s deep out there, because it’s such a dark blue. It’s only in the sandy shallows that it’s green, or turquoise. None of that here, though. The sand shelves away almost immediately. It’s the undertow that does it. You always hear stories of folk drowning here. Incomers or visitors, mostly. The sand fools them, because it’s so soft, and fine, and yellow, and safe. The locals wouldn’t dream of going in the water, except in a boat. Most of them can’t swim, anyway. Dammit, what’s the name of this beach again?
‘Dalmore,’ Fin says.
I didn’t realize I’d said that out loud. But, aye. Dalmore beach, that’s right. I recognized it as soon as we turned down on the shore road, past the cottages and the wheelie bins to the cemetery. Poor souls laid to rest up there on the machair, the sea eating away at them.
These damn pebbles are big. Hard to walk on. But the sand’s easier. Fin helps me take off my shoes and socks, and I feel the sand now between my toes. Soft, and warmed by the sun. ‘Makes me think of Charlie’s beach,’ I say.
Fin stops and gives me an odd look. ‘Who’s Charlie?’
‘Oh, no one you’d know. He’s a long time dead.’ And I laugh and laugh.
On the sand below the reinforcements at the cemetery wall, he spreads the travelling rug he took from the boot of the car, and we sit down. He has some bottles of beer. Cold, but not chilled. All right, though. He opens a couple and passes me one, and I enjoy that stuff foaming in my mouth, just like the very first time on the roof of The Dean.
The sea’s a bit wild out there in the wind, breaking white all around those rock stacks. I can even feel a hint of spray on my face. Light, like the touch of a feather. Wind’s blown all the clouds away now. There were days out on the moor I’d have killed for a piece of blue sky like that.
Fin’s taking something out of his bag to show me. A photograph, he says. It’s quite big. I bury the base of my beer bottle in the sand to keep it upright, and take the photograph. It’s a bit awkward with my hands bandaged like this.
‘Oh.’ I turn to Fin. ‘Is this a coloured man?’
‘No, Mr Macdonald. I thought it might be someone you know.’
‘Is he sleeping?’
‘No, he’s dead.’ He seems to wait, while I look at it. Expecting me to say something. ‘Is that Charlie, Mr Macdonald?’
I look at him and laugh out loud. ‘No, it’s not Charlie. How would I know what Charlie looks like? You daft balach!’
He smiles, but he looks a bit uncertain. I can’t think why. ‘Take a good look at the face, Mr Macdonald.’
So I look at it, carefully, like he asks. And now that I see beyond the colour of the skin, there is something familiar about those features. Strange. That slight turn of the nose. Just like Peter’s. And the tiny scar on his upper lip, at the right-hand corner of the mouth. Peter had a little scar like that. Cut himself on a chipped water glass once when he was about four. And, oh … that scar on his left temple. Didn’t notice that before.
Suddenly it dawns on me who it is, and I lay the photo in my lap. I can’t bear to look at it any more. I promised! I turn to Fin. ‘He’s dead?’
Fin nods, looking at me so strangely. ‘Why are you crying, Mr Macdonald?’
Peter asked me that same thing, too, once.
Saturdays were the best. Free of school, free of God, free of Mr Anderson. If we had some money we could go up into the town to spend it. Not that we had money very often, but that wouldn’t stop us going. Just a fifteen-minute walk and you were in another world.
The castle dominated the town, sitting up there on that big black rock, casting its shadow on the gardens below. And people all along the whole length of the street, in and out of shops and cafes, motor cars and buses belching
great clouds of exhaust fumes into the air.
We had a wee scam going, me and Peter. We would sometimes go up into town on a Saturday morning, wearing our oldest clothes and our scruffiest shoes with the soles flapping away from the uppers, and we hung a little cardboard sign around Peter’s neck, with the word BLIND scrawled on it. It’s a good job we had a half-decent education and knew how to spell it. Of course, we had no idea then how hanging a cardboard notice around our necks would come back to haunt us.
Peter closed his eyes, and put his left hand on my right forearm, and we would move slowly among the weekend shoppers, Peter with his cap in his hand held out in front of him.
It was always the good ladies of the town who would take pity on us. ‘Awww, poor wee laddie,’ they would say, and if we were lucky drop a shilling in the cap. That’s how we got enough money together to pay for Peter’s tattoo. And it took all our ill-gotten weekend gains for a month or more to do it.
Peter was Elvis-daft. All the newspapers and magazines were full of him in those days. It was hard to miss the man, or the music. Everything back then, in the years after the war, had to be American, and before we started saving up for the tattoo, we used to go to the Manhattan Cafe next door to the Monseigneur News Theatre. It was long and narrow, with booths that you slid into, like an American diner. The walls were lined by mirrors etched with New York skylines. Considering how we spent the other six days of the week, it was like escape to paradise. A tantalising glimpse of how life might have been. A coffee or a Coke would use up all our cash, but we would make it last and sit listening to Elvis belting out on the jukebox.
Heartbreak Hotel. It conjured up such romantic images. New York city streets, flashing neon lights, steam rising from manhole covers. That slow walking bass, the jazz piano tinkling away in the background. And that moody, mouthy voice.
