Deathly Wind

Title Page
Dedication
prologue
chapter one
chapter two
chapter three
chapter four
chapter five
chapter six
chapter seven
chapter eight
chapter nine
chapter ten
chapter eleven
chapter twelve
chapter thirteen
chapter fourteen
chapter fifteen
chapter sixteen
chapter seventeen
chapter eighteen
chapter nineteen
By the same author
Copyright

The assassin edged closer, sliding forward on his belly through the sand of the machair, gradually steering a course between the thick tufts of coarse grass and clumps of
yellow-blossomed
gorse. It was slow going, but he was prepared to take as long as it needed to get in position in order to carry out the execution crisply and cleanly.

It was an unexpectedly hot day with hardly a cloud in the cobalt blue sky. A day to just soak up the sun, or so his targets might have imagined when they found the isolated strip of beach. The parents were snoozing while the two youngsters frolicked in the shallows.

Quite the little family group, he thought, with a sneer of contempt. He adjusted the silencer on the barrel of his Steyr-Manlicher rifle and slid it through a clump of tall coarse grass, resting it on the bipod and squinting through the Leupold ‘scope to take a bead on the father.

The youngsters were making a lot of contented noise, yet despite that, perhaps due to some sixth sense their mother suddenly shot up, her beautiful eyes wide with alarm. She opened her mouth as if to cry out, but the assassin shifted his aim with unerring speed and squeezed the trigger. There was a dull popping noise, at variance with the effect of the bullet as it smashed into her throat, hurling her back against the sand to thrash wildly as her life began to ebb swiftly away.

The youngsters looked up, suddenly fearful and panicking. The father, awakened by the spray of blood across his face shot upright, his eyes sweeping round to fix the assassin. For one so big he moved surprisingly fast, instinctively trying to protect his family. But he was not fast enough. The assassin coolly aimed and fired, another popping noise belying the power of the bullet that bored its way between the eyes, exiting almost instantly from the occiput in a spray of blood and brain pulp.

Then the assassin was on his feet, the blood lust taking over. The youngsters were cowering, edging backwards from the bodies of their parents and the expanding pools of blood soaking into the sand. He had no compassion, no pity. He dispatched them both with a shot to the head.

He smiled contentedly as he looked up at the bright blue sky. It was the sort of day that made one feel good to be alive, he reflected. Especially when a commission like this one had been so easy and so pleasurable.

Five minutes later he had dragged the parents’ bodies up onto the machair and was just returning for the youngsters when he heard the motor of a boat approaching from the other side of one of the small islands. He hesitated for a moment then ducked down and made his way back to his sniper’s position in the tall grass of the machair.

PC Ewan McPhee had set off on his round of the West Uist waters early that day and he was hungry. He came round the small island in the West Uist Police
Seaspray
catamaran
and slowed down to coast towards the beach. He intended to snatch a break and have a cup of tea from his flask.

But then he saw the bodies and the blood soaking into the sand.

He cruised into the shallows, cut the engine and jumped over the side, running towards them. And, as he squatted beside them, he felt an overwhelming wave of nausea come over him. He doubled up and began retching.

He never heard the soft footfalls coming towards him from the machair, and he never felt the blow that sent him flying face down beside the dead bodies.

The Reverend Lachlan McKinnon, known throughout West Uist as the Padre, was in a subdued mood, just as he had been for the last three days. For twenty-four hours following the discovery of the West Uist Police
Seaspray
catamaran, drifting empty like a latter-day
Mary Celeste,
he had hoped that they would find Ewan McPhee alive. On the second day, as hope started to peter out he had prayed fervently that the big police constable, the hammer-throwing champion of the Western Isles, would have somehow kept himself afloat on the sea until he was rescued. First thing that morning he had simply prayed that they would find the constable’s body before too long, so that Jessie McPhee, his elderly mother, would be able to get on with her grief.

And then there was poor old Gordon MacDonald. His had been a sad and lonely way to die, but at least he could be put to rest. He ran over the notes that he had made in readiness for the funeral then tossed them on the desk and sat
drumming
his fingers on the surface for a moment. Finally, with a sigh, he got up and put on his West Uist Tweed jacket that was hanging on the back of his study door. He glanced in the mirror, adjusted his clerical collar a mite and ran his hand through the mane of white hair that permanently defied both brush and comb. He pushed his horn-rimmed spectacles higher up on his nose and reached for his golf bag that leaned in readiness beside the bookcase.

Life had to go on, as he told everyone. And golf was one of his ways of coping; apart from giving his bagpipes a good airing. Yet with his nephew, the local police inspector, Torquil McKinnon still away on a protracted leave of absence after his own recent personal tragedy
1
, the pipes held little attraction for him.

A few moments later, with his golf bag slung over his shoulder and his first pipe of the morning newly lit and clenched between his teeth, he let himself out of the front door of the house and scrunched his way down the gravel path to the wrought-iron gate, then crossed the road and mounted the stile that led directly onto the ten-acre plot of undulating dunes and machair that he and several local worthies had converted and transformed into the St Ninian’s Golf Course. There was a fine early morning mist, and under its cover a few terns were dive-bombing some of the sheep that grazed freely over the coarse grass fairways of the links. He stopped on top of the stile and removed the horn-rimmed spectacles that had already misted up. When he replaced them and dismounted he saw that three men were standing by the first tee.

‘
Latha math
! Good morning!’ Lachlan greeted them. ‘If you are already playing don’t let me hold you up.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Not many start this early at St Ninian’s.’

‘It is the Reverend McKinnon, isn’t it?’ replied the older of the trio, in an unmistakable Glaswegian accent. ‘See, I heard that you usually have an early round and I wanted to try out this famous golf links of yours. Maybe we could have a game?’

He was an olive-skinned, well-built man in his mid-forties, of medium height, with cropped black hair and a small, slightly upturned nose. Neat though it was, however, it seemed a tad smaller than one would have expected from his overall bone structure. That and a certain taughtness of the skin on his face suggested to the Padre that at some time he had submitted himself to the skill of the cosmetic surgeon.

A bit of a peacock; a preening peacock, the Padre silently concluded.

‘I’m Jock McArdle,’ the man went on, assuming that the Padre had accepted his invitation. He extended a muscular hand bedecked with expensive thick gold rings. ‘I’ve just moved into—’

‘You’ve just moved into Dunshiffin Castle,’ Lachlan
interjected
with the affable welcoming smile of the clergyman. ‘Which makes you the new laird of Dunshiffin. I heard that you bought the estate a fortnight ago, Mr McArdle, and intended paying you a visit as soon as you took up residence, but I am afraid that we have had a few upsets on West Uist lately.’ He shook hands and suppressed a wince at the power of the other’s grip. He assumed that it was the habitual grasp of a hard-bitten entrepreneur, designed to indicate
dominance
. He duly ignored it, having long since refused to feel intimidated by anyone.

‘No worries, Reverend, I only arrived four days ago. I’ve had to tie up a lot of business before I could move in. But I’ll be living at the castle most of the time. I have big plans for the place.’

The Padre smiled unenthusiastically. ‘Are you all three playing this morning?’ he asked, his eye hovering over the single professional-spec leather bag and the two men standing a pace behind Jock McArdle.

‘Naw, Reverend, it’s just me,’ Jock McArdle returned with a grin. ‘These are two of my employees that I’ve brought from Glasgow. I thought that a bit of good clean sea air would be good for their health. Is that not right, boys?’

‘It’s a bit deathly if ye ask me,’ returned the one holding the golf bag. ‘There’s no night life. Just a handful of pubs.’

Jock McArdle guffawed. ‘This is Liam Sartori, Reverend. As ye can see, he’s a wee bit lippy, but he’s a good lad.’

The Padre shook hands, his practised pastoral smile belying the shrewd appraisal that he had made of the two young men. Liam Sartori was a tall, well built and excessively
tanned fellow, probably the result of a sunbed rather than the sun’s rays, the Padre reflected. Possibly a third or fourth generation Glasgow Italian. His clothes were casual and brashly expensive. A gold medallion hung from a heavy gold chain on the front of a red, white and blue sports shirt. He was unsure whether Jock McArdle’s criterion of goodness matched his own.

‘And this is Danny Reid,’ Jock McArdle said, introducing the other young man who was in the process of opening a cigarette packet and offering it to Liam Sartori. ‘See, he’s the quiet one.’

‘I’m the thinking one, Reverend,’ said Danny Reid, clipping the cigarette in his lips and shaking Lachlan’s hand.

He was a shade shorter than his associate, possibly a touch under six foot, well muscled, with a tattoo of a claymore on his right forearm and at least six body piercings that the Padre could count on lips, ears, eyebrows and nose. Like his
associate
he had a medallion on a thick gold chain. His blond hair was spiky and most probably the result of peroxide. Lachlan watched as he lit their cigarettes with a gaudy Zippo lighter.

‘I can only manage nine holes, I’m afraid,’ Lachlan said. ‘I have a funeral to conduct in a couple of hours.’

‘Nine holes would be excellent,’ returned Jock McArdle, enthusiastically. ‘But see, would I be insulting your cloth if I suggested a wager?’

The Padre struck a light to his pipe, then replaced his box of Swan Vestas in his jacket pocket. ‘A small wager always adds a frisson to a game, so I don’t see why not. Match play or Stableford?’

‘I prefer simple match play, Reverend. Winner takes all.’

The Padre blew a thin stream of smoke from the side of his mouth and nodded. It fitted with his assessment of the Glaswegian. The new laird was clearly a man confident in his own abilities. ‘Shall we say five pounds for the winner? What’s your handicap, Mr McArdle?’

‘Fourteen.’

‘And mine’s a rather shaky eight. Exactly one eighth of my age. So, that means I give you three shots over the nine holes. That will be at the second, the fifth and the ninth.’

Jock McArdle nodded to Liam Sartori who unzipped a side pocket of the golf bag and extracted a box of Dunlop 65 balls, and a tee, then pulled out a Callaway driver. ‘You’ll be needing the big one, boss,’ he said with a confident grin.

The Padre puffed thoughtfully on his pipe and pulled out his two iron, the club he favoured for the tricky first drive, especially when the wind was gusting as it tended to do on the first three holes.

‘I am thinking that you will enjoy the course, Mr McArdle. It isn’t exactly the Old Course at St Andrews, but it’s a good test of golf. Nature designed it with the Corlins on one side and the North Atlantic Ocean on the other, and we just added a few refinements. It has six holes dotted about the sand dunes of the machair, with three tees for each one, so you can either play a straight eighteen, or, when it is quiet, string any number of combinations together. The fairways are mowed once a week, the sheep nibble the green to billiard-table smoothness and the bunkers have been excavated by
generations
of rabbits. Watch out for the gorse and the thistles; think your way round and you’ll be all right.’

He puffed his pipe again and nodded at the honesty box hanging from the fence. ‘And, of course, the green fee is pretty reasonable.’

Jock McArdle grinned and nodded to Danny Reid, who drew out a roll of money and peeled off a five pound note. Is this safe here, Minister?’ Danny Reid asked incredulously as he deposited it in the box.

The Padre pointed to the nearby roof of the church. ‘This is West Uist, Mr Reid. St Ninian’s Golf Course is beside church land. Who would steal from the church?’

Liam Sartori sneered, ‘I’m willing to bet that you’ve never been to my part of Glasgow, Minister.’

Jock McArdle eyed the yardage marker by the side of the
first tee, then the two iron in the Padre’s hand. He handed his driver back to Liam Sartori and pulled out his own two iron. ‘Aye, golf is a thinking game, Reverend. A careful game.’ He grinned, a curious half smile with no humour in it. ‘You’ll find that I am always careful. It’s a good policy in my book.’

Jock McArdle was a bandit off a handicap of fourteen, Lachlan decided, after they had played three holes and he found himself three holes down. Or rather, he was a ‘bandit chief’, on account of the fact that his two boys seemed to take it in turns to caddy and to find their boss’s ball, a task that they seemed to achieve with miraculous skill. Indeed, knowing the extent of the gorse and thistle patches on the undulating dunes as well as he did, the Padre was almost certain that twice his ball had been discovered at least twenty yards further on than it should have, and on both occasions had seemed to fortuitously find a nice flat piece of fairway.

‘You play well for a fourteen handicapper, Mr McArdle,’ the Padre said, as they walked onto the fifth tee. ‘And your two
finders
have done sterling work this morning.’

‘I like to win at everything I do, Reverend. That’s why I’ve been successful in business. That’s how I came to buy the Dunshiffin estate.’

The Padre pulled a dilapidated pouch out of a side pocket of his jacket and began stuffing tobacco into his battered old briar pipe. ‘Am I right in sensing that you have something more than golf on your mind this morning, Mr McArdle?’

‘You’re a shrewd man, Lachlan,’ returned Jock McArdle with an ingratiating grin. ‘Do you mind if I call you, Lachlan?’

The priest shrugged. ‘Most people on West Uist just call me Padre.’

‘OK then, Padre. I’m not the sort of guy who beats about the bush.’ He nodded to his two boys and raised his voice:

‘You two go and have a smoke over by that pot bunker. But keep your eyes open. I’ll be driving over your heads in a minute, so mind and duck.’

When they were out of earshot he went on, ‘Do you know how I came to buy the Dunshiffin estate, Padre?’

Lachlan had won the last hole and gained back the honour to drive first. He shoved a tee into the ground and perched his ball on top. ‘I was aware of the liquidation of Angus MacLeod Enterprises after the death of the last laird of Dunshiffin, Angus MacLeod.’

‘I picked the estate up for a song. Two and a half million, if you want to know.’ His mouth twisted in a curiously self-satisfied way. ‘That’s not bad, is it, for a lad who started selling cones and wafers from a fourth-hand ice-cream van. I built up the biggest confectionary business in Midlothian over the last twenty years. And I have plans, Padre. Big plans.’ He bent and picked up a few blades of grass and threw them into the air where they were caught in the breeze and wafted sidewards. ‘The wind is not too bad here, is it?’

‘No, the Corlins give us a bit of shelter.’

‘But it is really windy on the west of the island, isn’t it? Especially over by the Wee Kingdom.’ He seemed to puff up his chest. ‘You know that as the owner of the Dunshiffin estate,’ he beamed and corrected himself, ‘— or as you rightly said, as the new
laird
, I own all the land on the Wee kingdom.’

The Padre stiffened a tad. ‘Aye, you own it all right, but there are crofters there. They lease the land from the estate.’

‘Exactly. See Padre, I’m their new landlord.’

‘And you are thinking of erecting windmills on some of your land?’

Jock McArdle tossed his head back and laughed. ‘So you know all about the wind farm idea?’

‘Mr McArdle, I’ve been the minister on West Uist for thirty-five years. People have been talking about introducing wind farms in the Hebrides for a decade. They are almost a reality on Lewis already. It’s only our remoteness on West Uist that has prevented talk of them coming here. That and the cost.’

‘I am an entrepreneur, Padre. I have no ties to the energy department, or the electricity boards. I see an opportunity to
generate a lot of electricity on this windy island, enough to supply every family and every business at a fraction of the cost. And where better than to start up a wee wind farm than on the Wee Kingdom? The most westerly point of the most westerly island. The wind is roaring in from the sea; it’s a power source just waiting to be tapped.’

‘I doubt if you’ll have much support. They’re unsightly things and we are proud of our wildlife on the island.’

Jock McArdle shrugged. ‘There is little evidence about it affecting wildlife, Padre,’ he said dismissively. ‘In any case, I’m used to resistance. It doesn’t worry me.’

The Padre glanced at his watch. ‘I have to give you a shot at this hole, so I’d best nail this drive down the middle.’ And taking his trusty three-wood from the bag he did just that.

For the next four holes the Padre watched his opponent’s ball like a hawk and himself played with grim determination. Despite the strokes he had to give away, by the time they had reached the ninth green they were all square on aggregate.