by Peter May
She turned towards Fin and Marsaili.
“That’s why he was going to do what they said. They’d told him to get rid of the body himself and never breathe a word of it to another living soul. Or they would kill me.” She opened her palms in front of her in pure frustration. “Right then I couldn’t have cared less. I just wanted him to go to the police. But he point-blank refused. He said he would bury Peter himself where no one would ever find him, and then there was something he had to do. He wouldn’t say what. Just that he owed it to his mother for letting her down.”
Fin looked across the ruin to where old Tormod had gone and sat on the remains of the front wall, staring vacantly out across Charlie’s beach as the sun slipped, finally, from view, and the first stars began to emerge in a dusk-blue sky. He wondered if Ceit’s words, so vividly recreating the events of that night, had penetrated his consciousness in any way. Or whether simply being here, all these years later, would in itself stir some distant memory. But he realized it was something they would almost certainly never know.
Thirty-eight
It is so hard to remember things. I know they are there. And sometimes I can feel them, but I can’t see them or reach them. I’m so tired. Tired of all this travelling, and all this talk that I can’t follow. I thought they were taking me home.
This is a nice beach, though. Not like those beaches on Harris. But nice. A gentle crescent of silver.
Oh. Is that the moon now? See how the sand almost glows by its light, as if lit from beneath. I think I was here once. I’m sure I was, wherever the hell we are. It seems familiar somehow. With Ceit. And Peter. Poor Peter. I can see him still. That look in his eyes when he knew he was dying. Like the sheep in the shed that time, when Donald Seamus slit its throat.
I still dream, sometimes, about anger. Anger turned cold. Anger born of grief and guilt. I remember that anger. How it ate me up inside, devoured every shred of the human being I had once been. And I watch myself in my dream. Like watching some flickering old movie, black-and-white or sepia-brown. Waiting. Waiting.
The air was warm on my skin that night, though I couldn’t stop shivering. The sounds of the city are so different. I had got used to the islands. It was almost a shock to be back among tall buildings and motor cars and people. So many people. But not there, not that night. It was quiet, and the sound of traffic was far away.
I had waited maybe an hour by that time. Concealed in the bushes, crouched down on stiffening legs. But anger gives you patience, like lust delaying the moment of orgasm to make it all the sweeter. It makes you blind, too. To possibilities, and consequences. It dulls the imagination, reduces your focus to one single point, and obliterates all else.
A light came on, then, in the porch, and all my senses were on heightened awareness. I heard the latch scrape in the lock, and the squeal of the hinges before I saw them stepping out into the light. Both of them. One behind the other. Danny stopped to light a cigarette, and Tam was about to lean back to close the door.
And that’s when I moved out on to the path. Into the light. I wanted to be sure they saw me. To know who I was, and what I was going to do. I didn’t care who else might see me, as long as they knew.
The match flared at the end of Danny’s cigarette, and I saw in the light it cast in his eyes that he knew I was going to kill him. Tam turned at that moment and saw me, too.
I waited.
I wanted him to realize.
And he did.
I raised my shotgun and fired the first barrel. It hit Danny full in the chest, and the force of it threw him back against the door. I’ll never forget the look of sheer terror and certainty in Tam’s eyes as I pulled again. A little off balance, but accurate enough to take half his head off.
And I turned and walked away. No need to run. Peter was dead, and I had done what I had to do. Hang the consequences! I was no longer shivering.
I don’t know how many times I have dreamt that dream. Often enough that I am no longer sure if that’s all it ever was. But no matter how many times I dream it, nothing changes. Peter is still dead. And nothing can bring him back. I had promised my mother, and I had let her down.
“Come on, Dad. It’s getting cold.”
I turn to see Marsaili leaning down to slip her arm through mine and help me to my feet. I stand up and look at her in the moonlight as she straightens my cap. I smile and touch her face. “I’m so glad you’re here,” I tell her. “You know I love you, don’t you? I really, really love you.”
Thirty-nine
As they drove up the path to her house Ceit frowned and said, “There are no lights. The timer should have switched them on ages ago.” But it wasn’t until they clattered across the cattle grid that they saw the white Range Rover parked next to Fin’s car.
Fin glanced at Ceit. “Looks like you’ve got visitors. Do you know the car?” Ceit shook her head.
They all got out of the Mercedes and Dino went running, barking, to the front door. As they climbed on to the deck in the dark, Fin felt glass crunching beneath his feet. Someone had smashed the light bulb above the door.
He said to Ceit, “Pick up the dog!” And something in his tone brought an immediate and unquestioning response. He was on full alert now. Tense and apprehensive. He moved cautiously towards the door, hand outstretched to grab the handle.
Ceit whispered, “It’s not locked. It never is.”
He turned it and pushed the door into darkness. He held his hand behind him to warn the others against following, and stepped carefully into the hall. More glass ground itself into the tartan carpet beneath his feet. The bulb in the hall had been smashed, too.
He stood listening, holding his breath. But he could hear nothing above the barking of Dino in the arms of Ceit on the deck outside. The door to the living room stood ajar. He could see the shadow of the silver panther cast by moonlight streaming in through the French windows. He stepped into the room and immediately sensed a presence, before a baby’s muffled cry sounded in the dark.
A match flared, and by the light of its flame he saw the illuminated face of Paul Kelly. He was sitting in a chair by the window on the east side of the room. He puffed several times on his cigar until the end of it glowed red, then he reached across to turn on a glass standard lamp. Fin saw the sawn-off shotgun lying across his lap.
Directly opposite him, perched on the edge of the settee, Donna sat clutching her baby. The black-haired young man from the villa in Edinburgh stood beside her with another sawn-off shotgun extended towards her head. He looked nervous. Donna was like a ghost. Shrunken and shadow-eyed. Visibly shaking.
Fin heard the crunch of broken glass behind him, and Morag’s gasp. The dog had gone silent, but Marsaili’s whispered “Oh my God!” seemed almost deafening.
No one moved, and in the seconds of silence that followed, Fin’s assessment of the situation was bleak. Kelly had not come all this way just to frighten them.
Kelly’s voice was obversely calm. “I always figured it was John McBride who murdered my brothers,” he said. “But by the time we got people up here he’d vanished without trace. Just like he never existed.” He paused to draw on his cigar. “Until now.” He lifted the shotgun from his lap and stood up. “So now he can watch his daughter and his granddaughter die, just the way I watched my brothers die in my arms.” His mouth curled into a barely controlled grimace, ugly and threatening. “I was in the hallway behind them that night when they were gunned down and left bleeding to death on the steps. You’ve got to know what that feels like to know how I feel right now. I’ve waited a lifetime for this day.”
Fin said, “If you kill one, you’ll have to kill us all.”
Paul Kelly smiled. His eyes creased with genuine amusement. “You don’t say.”
“You can’t take us all at once. Shoot that girl and you’re going to have to deal with me.”
Kelly raised his shotgun and swung it towards Fin. “Not if I take you first.”
“This is crazy!” Marsaili
’s voice pierced the still of the room. “My dad is in an advanced state of dementia. Killing people won’t serve any purpose. It won’t mean a thing to him.”
Kelly’s eyes turned cold. “It will to me. In the end, an eye for an eye’ll suit me just fine.”
Ceit stepped forward, Dino still clutched to her chest. “Only it won’t be an eye for an eye, Mr. Kelly. It’ll just be plain bloody murder. You weren’t on the bridge that night. I was. And Peter McBride never pushed your brother. Patrick lost his balance in all the panic with the cops showing up. He was going to fall. Peter risked his life going up on the parapet to try and grab him. Your brothers killed an innocent man. A poor half-witted boy who would never have harmed a soul. And they got their just deserts. It’s over! Let it go.”
But Kelly just shook his head. “Three of my brothers are dead because of the McBrides. It’s payback time.” He half-turned towards Donna, shotgun levelled at the baby. And even as a desperate Fin started his lunge towards Kelly, he saw the younger man swing his shotgun to point straight at him.
The sound of the gun was ear-splitting in the confined space of the living room. The air seemed to fill with shattered glass. Fin felt it cut his face, and his hands as he raised them to protect himself. He felt warm blood splash across his face and neck, the smell of it filling his nostrils. He was only half aware of the bulk of Paul Kelly staggering backwards with the force of the blast, but was wholly confused by it. The big man crashed into the window at the far side of the room, turning it red, a gaping hole in the centre of his chest, a look of complete surprise frozen on his face as he slid to the floor. A woman was screaming, Dino was barking. Eilidh was sobbing. Fin felt the wind in his face and he saw Donald Murray standing on the far side of the window he had shattered with his shotgun. He held it still, levelled at Kelly’s young protégé. The man looked shocked and dropped his weapon, quickly raising his hands.
Fin darted forward to grab it and throw it away across the room, and Donald lowered his weapon. Beyond him, in the dark, Fin saw a pale, wide-eyed Fionnlagh.
“He wouldn’t let me call the police. He wouldn’t.” The boy was very nearly hysterical. “He said they would just make a mess of it. I called you, Fin, I called you. Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
There was not a scrap of colour in Donald’s face. Desperate eyes flickered towards Donna and the baby. His voice came in a whisper. “Are you all right?”
Donna couldn’t bring herself to speak, her sobbing baby clutched tightly to her chest. She nodded, and her father’s eyes briefly found Fin’s, lingering for just a moment. Somewhere behind them was a recollection of all those beliefs asserted on a drunken night when they had fought in the rain, and again on the windblown cliffs in the cold light of the next morning. Blown away in the pulling of a trigger. Then they returned to the man he had shot dead, where he lay among shattered glass and ornaments in a pool of his own blood. He screwed his eyes closed to shut out the sight of him.
“God forgive me,” he said.
Forty
I don’t know what’s going on any more. My ears are still ringing and I can hardly hear a thing. Something terrible happened, I know that. They’ve sat me down here in the kitchen, out of the way. There’s all sorts of people through there in the next room, and that damn dog just never stops barking.
There are blue lights and orange lights flashing out there in the dark. I heard a helicopter earlier. I’ve never seen so many policemen in my life. And that man who came to talk to me at Solas. I only remember him because of his widow’s peak. Made me think of a boy at The Dean.
I wonder what the minister’s doing here. I saw him earlier. He looked ill, not a well man. I feel sorry for him. Hasn’t the gumption of his father. A fine, God-fearing man he was. Damned if I can remember his name, though.
That woman’s coming into the kitchen now. I know I know her from somewhere. Just can’t think where. Something about her makes me think of Ceit. Can’t quite think what.
She pulls up a chair and sits down opposite me, leaning forward to take both of my hands in hers. I like her touch. She has fine, soft hands, and such lovely dark eyes looking into mine.
“Do you remember the Sacred Heart, Johnny?” she says. But I don’t know what she means. “They took you and Peter there after that night you both got trapped at the cliffs. You broke your arm, remember? And Peter had pneumonia.”
“There were nuns,” I say. Strange, but I can see them in that yellow half-light of the ward. Black skirts, white coifs.
She smiles at me and squeezes my hand. “That’s right. It’s a care home now, Johnny. I’m going to ask Marsaili if she’ll let you stay there. And I’ll come and see you every day, and bring you back here to the house for lunch. And we can go for walks on Charlie’s beach, and talk about The Dean, and the people we knew here on the island.” She has such beautiful eyes, smiling at me like that. “Would you like that, Johnny? Would you?”
I squeeze her hands right back, returning her smile, and remember that night I saw her crying on the roof of The Dean.
“I would,” I say.
Acknowledgments
I would like to offer my grateful thanks to those who gave so generously of their time and expertise during my researches for The Lewis Man. In particular, I’d like to express my gratitude to pathologist Steven C. Campman, M.D, Medical Examiner, San Diego, California; Donald Campbell Veale, former “inmate” of The Dean; Mary-Alex Kirkpatrick, actress (Alyxis Daly), for her wonderful hospitality while I was in South Uist researching locations; Derek (Pluto) Murray, for his advice on the Gaelic language; Marion Morrison, Registrar at the Tarbert Registry Office; Bill Lawson, Seallam! Visitor Centre, Northton, Isle of Harris, who has been specialising in the family and social history of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland for over forty years.
Note: The actual Dean Orphanage closed its doors in the late 1940s, its children dispersed to other homes. For the purposes of my story I have extended its life by eight to ten years. Conditions at the home related in the book were, however, exactly as described by the last “inmate” to pass through its doors.
PETER MAY was an award-winning journalist at the age of just twenty-one. He left newspapers for television and screenwriting, creating three prime-time British drama series and accruing more than 1,000 television credits. Peter now lives in France where he focuses on writing novels.