The Blackhouse (39 page)

Smith bit back a response. ‘If you’re so fucking clever, Macleod, then obviously you’ll know who it was who killed Macritchie.’ He paused. ‘Do you?’

‘No, sir. But I think you were right from the beginning. There is no Edinburgh connection. Just someone trying to lead us up a blind alley.’

‘I’m honoured to have your endorsement, Detective Inspector. And when exactly did you come to this conclusion?’

‘At the post-mortem, sir.’

‘Why?’

Fin shook his head. ‘It just didn’t feel right. Too many things that didn’t correspond. Small things. But enough to make me think we were probably looking at two different killers.’

Smith wandered to the window, short arms folded across his chest. He turned to face Fin. ‘And you were going to share this with me, when?’

‘It wasn’t a conclusion, sir. Just a feeling. But if I’d shared it with you, you’d have put me on the first plane back to Edinburgh. And I felt that my local knowledge gave me something to offer the investigation.’

‘And you thought that was a decision you had the power to make?’ Smith shook his head in disbelief. He leaned his weight on the desk, knuckles glowing white, and sniffed the air. ‘I don’t smell any alcohol. Did you rinse your mouth out before coming in this morning?’

Fin frowned. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.’

‘I’m talking about an officer under my command getting involved in a drunken brawl in the Narrows last night. I’m talking about an officer who is only going to remain under my command for as long as it takes him to board the first available flight out of here. I want you off the island, Macleod. If you can’t get a plane, get a ferry.’ He drew himself up to his full height, which wasn’t great. ‘I’ve already spoken to your division head in Edinburgh. So I imagine you can expect a warm reception when you get home.’

His abortive return to the island was over. All those painful encounters with the ghosts of his past. It was almost a relief. And Fionnlagh was right. They had been none of his business for eighteen years, he had no right coming back and involving himself in their lives now. A man had been murdered, and his killer was still free. But that was no longer his responsibility. He was going home, if that’s what it still was. If Mona was still there. He could simply draw the curtain again, and forget. Look forward instead of back. So why did the prospect fill him with such dread?

Fin brushed past the relief map of Lewis and Harris in the hallway and pushed open the firedoors into reception. The duty officer behind the glass glanced up, CCTV pictures flickering on a bank of screens behind him. There were two solitary figures sitting waiting patiently on plastic chairs pushed back against the wall opposite the window, but Fin didn’t notice them. He was almost out of the front door before one them called his name and got to her feet.

Catriona Macfarlane, or Murray, as Fin supposed she now was, stood clasping her hands in front of her. She looked pale and defeated. And sitting like some little rag doll propped up on the empty row of seats behind her was a young girl who looked barely more than twelve years old, hair drawn back from a bloodless face without a trace of make-up. With a shock, Fin realized that this must be Donna. She seemed so young. It was hard to believe that she could be three months pregnant. Perhaps with make-up the girl looked older. She was not unattractive, in a plain sort of way. She had her father’s colouring, the same delicate ivory skin and sandy hair. She was wearing jeans, and a pink blouse beneath a quilted anorak that drowned her.

‘Bastard!’ Catriona said.

‘I had nothing to do with it, Catriona.’

‘When are you going to let him go?’

‘As far as I’m aware, he can leave any time he likes. I’m being sent back to Edinburgh. So you’ll get your wish. I won’t be bothering you again.’ Their lives were no longer his concern.

He pushed open the swing door and hastened down the stairs out into the blustery wind. He had already crossed Kenneth Street, and was passing the fish and chip shop, before he heard footsteps on the pavement behind him. He looked round to see Donna chasing down Church Street after him. Her mother was standing on the steps of the police station. She called her daughter’s name. But Donna ignored her. The girl reached Fin and pulled up, breathless. ‘I need to talk to you, Mr Macleod.’

A waitress chewing gum brought two coffees to them at their table in the window. A constant stream of traffic rumbled along Cromwell Street on the other side of the glass. It was still gloomy out there, sea the colour of pewter blowing in white-crested arcs across the harbour.

The girl toyed with her spoon. ‘I don’t know why I ordered coffee. I don’t even like it.’

‘I’ll get you something else.’ He raised a hand to call the waitress.

‘No, it’s alright.’ Donna continued to play with her spoon, and turned her cup around in the coffee which had slopped into the saucer. Fin sugared his, and stirred it patiently. If she had something to tell him, he would let her do it in her own time. He took a sip. It was barely tepid. Eventually she looked up at him. ‘I know my mother told you the truth about what happened with Mr Macritchie.’ For a girl who had falsely accused a man of rape, there was an extraordinary candour in her eyes. ‘And I’m pretty sure my dad knows it was all a lie, too.’

‘He does.’

She seemed surprised. ‘So you must know that my dad didn’t kill him.’

‘I never thought for a minute that your dad killed anyone, Donna.’

‘So why are you holding him?’

‘He’s not being held. He’s helping with inquiries. It’s just procedural.’

‘I never meant to cause all this trouble.’ She bit her lip, and Fin saw that she was trying hard not to cry.

‘What did you tell Fionnlagh?’

And suddenly the tears were put on hold. She looked at him warily. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Does he know you’re pregnant?’

She lowered her head and shook it, and returned to playing with her spoon. ‘I … I haven’t been able to tell him. Not yet.’

‘So there was no reason for him not to believe your story about Macritchie. Unless you told him otherwise.’ She said nothing. ‘Did you?’ She shook her head. ‘So he believed you’d been raped by him.’

She looked up, her eyes full of indignation. ‘You can’t believe that Fionnlagh killed him! I’ve never known a gentler person in my whole life.’

‘Well, you’ve got to admit, you gave him a pretty strong motive. And he’s got a lot of bruises on him that he’s very reluctant to explain.’

She looked perplexed now rather than indignant. ‘How could you even think that about your own son?’

For a moment, all Fin’s cool deserted him. He replayed what she had said, hardly able to believe he had heard it. His voice was hoarse. ‘How do you know that?’

She knew that she had turned the tables on him. ‘Because Fionnlagh told me.’

It simply wasn’t possible. ‘Fionnlagh
knows
?’

‘All his life. Or, at least, as far back as he can remember. Mr Macinnes told him years ago that he wasn’t his son. I mean, Fionnlagh doesn’t even remember when. He’s just always known.’ She had that look in her eyes again. ‘He was in tears when he told me. And it made me feel like I must be really special to him. ’Cos he’s never told anyone else. Ever. And I’m like, wow, he’s only ever shared this with me.’ The brightness in her face at the memory of the moment, faded. ‘We’re both pretty sure that’s why his dad beat him up all these years.’

Fin was stunned. His throat was dry. He felt sick. ‘What do you mean?’

‘He’s a big man, his dad. And Fionnlagh, well, even now he’s not exactly Mr Universe, is he? So it’s still going on.’

‘I don’t understand.’ He must have misunderstood.

‘What don’t you understand, Mr Macleod? Fionnlagh’s dad beats him up. He’s been doing it for years. Never so you can see it. But poor Fionnlagh’s had cracked ribs, a broken arm once. Bruises all over his chest and his back and his legs. Like his dad was taking out the sins of the father on the son.’

Fin closed his eyes and wished that he would wake up from the nightmare. But she wasn’t finished yet.

‘Fionnlagh always covered it up. Never told a soul. Until the night he and I, you know, did it. And I saw for myself. That’s when he told me. His dad – well, he’s not really his dad at all, is he? – he’s a monster, Mr Macleod. A complete monster.’

EIGHTEEN

It ruined the rest of the summer, the accident on the rock. I’m not sure it didn’t ruin the rest of my life. I was in the hospital for almost a week. They said I was suffering from severe concussion, and I had headaches for months afterwards. They suspected a fractured skull, although nothing showed up on the X-ray. My left arm was broken in two places and they put it in plaster for more than a month. My whole body was black and blue, and I could hardly move when I first regained consciousness.

Marsaili came to see me every day, but I didn’t really want her there. I don’t know why, but I found her presence disturbing. I think she was hurt by how cold I was, and all her warmth was lost on me. My aunt came a couple of times, but she wasn’t very sympathetic. She must have known by then that she was dying. I’d had a close encounter with death, but they said I would make a full recovery. Why should she waste her sympathy on me?

Gigs came, too. Just the one time. I vaguely remember him sitting at my bedside gazing at me with concern in those deep, blue eyes of his. He asked me how much I remembered of what happened. But it was still very hazy then. My memory of events was fragmented. Dislocated images. Artair’s dad climbing on to the ledge beside me. His fear. His body lying on the rocks beneath the cliff, the sea reaching out foaming fingers to drag him off. The whole fortnight was a blur, as if I were peering back at it through gauze. That was the concussion, they said. Only with the passage of time did the gauze dissolve and the focus sharpen.

The thing that I remember most clearly about my spell in hospital was that Artair never came to see me once. It was not something I was aware of during the first few days, but as my recovery continued and they began to talk about sending me home, I realized he had not been to visit. I asked Marsaili about it, and she said his mother had been in a terrible state. There had been a funeral. Without a body. An empty coffin carried all the way to Crobost cemetery, containing only a handful of treasured belongings. They say that closure is hard without a body. Since it was certain that the sea would never give him up, I could not see how closure would ever be possible on the death of Mr Macinnes, and I began to think that perhaps Artair blamed me. Marsaili said she didn’t think it was a question of blame. Just the pain of coming to terms with the death of a parent. I, of all people, should know about that. And, of course, I did.

The hardest time was between going home from the hospital and leaving for university. It was a dead time, full of long, empty days. We were into September now, and the summer was all but gone. I was hugely depressed, by what had happened to me on the rock, by the death of Artair’s dad. My enthusiasm for going to Glasgow had diminished, but I held on to the hope that leaving for the mainland would mark a change in the way I felt, that I would somehow be able to put everything behind me and start again with a clean slate.

I found myself avoiding Marsaili, regretting that we had ever arranged to share a room in Glasgow. Somehow she seemed like a part of that everything I needed to leave behind. And I simply avoided the issue of Artair. If he couldn’t bring himself to visit me in hospital, then I certainly wasn’t going to see him.

On the days when it wasn’t raining, I would go for long walks along the cliffs, heading south down the east coast, past the ruins of the ancient village and church at Bilascleiter, to the long, silver beach at Tolastadh where I would sit among the doons and watch the sea for hours. The only souls you ever saw were walkers on holiday from the mainland, the only company the thousands of seabirds that swooped and dived about the cliffs spotting for fish in the Minch.

It was when I got back one day from one of my walks that my aunt told me that Artair’s mother had suffered a stroke. She was in a bad way, my aunt thought. And I knew then that I couldn’t avoid him any longer. My arm was still in plaster, and I couldn’t ride my bike, so I walked. A journey that you would rather never end, always passes quickly. It took no time at all to walk down the hill to Artair’s bungalow. Which made it all the more absurd that I had not done it before now.

His dad’s car was sitting in the drive where he had left it before setting off for An Sgeir. A potent reminder that he had not come back. I knocked at the back door and stood on the step with my heart in my mouth. It seemed like an age before it opened. Artair stood there looking down at me. He was terribly pale, dark shadows smudged beneath his eyes. He had lost weight. He looked at me impassively.

‘I heard about your mum.’

‘You’d better come in.’ He held the door wide and I stepped up into the kitchen. The smell of his dad’s pipe tobacco still lingered in the house. Another reminder of his absence. There was, too, an unpleasant smell of stale cooking. Dirty dishes were piled up at the sink.

‘How is she?’

‘It would probably have been better for her if she’d died. She’s paralysed down one side. Lost a lot of her motor functions. Her speech is affected. Although the doctors think that might improve. If she survives. When she gets home from the hospital I’m told I’ll have to feed her with a spoon. She almost certainly won’t walk again.’

‘Jesus, Artair. I’m so sorry.’

‘They say it was the shock of my father’s death.’ Which made me feel even worse, if such a thing were possible. But he just shrugged and glanced at my plaster. ‘So how are you?’

‘Still getting headaches. The plaster’s coming off next week.’

‘Just in time for shooting off to Glasgow, then.’ There was an acid edge to his voice.

‘You didn’t come to see me in the hospital.’ I didn’t frame it as a question, but we both knew I was asking why.

‘I’ve been busy.’ He was tetchy. ‘I had a funeral to arrange. A thousand administrative things to take care of. Do you have any idea how much bureaucracy there is in death?’ But he wasn’t expecting an answer. ‘No, of course you don’t. You were only a kid when your parents died. Someone else took care of all that shit.’