I'll Keep You Safe

by Peter May

  As it happened, I was able to get everything done during that first day. It was perfect drying weather, and I had all the laundry washed, dried and folded away in cupboards and drawers by teatime. The rest of the time I spent cooking. Meals that could be reheated and served at any hour that suited them. I had intended to stay overnight, but as it turned out there was no need. Uilleam drove me back to the lodge and I arrived shortly after ten.

  It wasn’t the warmest of nights. I sensed a change in the weather. Those seemingly endless summer days of warm sunshine and gentle breezes were already beginning to feel like a distant memory. The summer never seems to last, and the older you get the shorter it becomes, like the days themselves. While the winter stretches endlessly ahead towards some far-off and uncertain spring. The change comes in a moment and you detect it immediately. Like the first faint stab of pain in the sinus that presages the onset of a cold.

  I dumped my stuff in my room. There was no one at the lodge, except for the guests, and I headed off along the path to the beach. I met the cook and several of the others on their way back. My roommate was among them. She said, “I wouldn’t bother, Niamh. Everyone’s packing it in for the night. Too cold.”

  “Is Ruairidh still down there?” I was anxious to see him. We had so little time left together before heading off again on our very separate ways, and I was desperate to try to put things right between us.

  She seemed evasive. “I’m not sure.” Then, “Listen, we’ve got some beer and vodka. We’re planning a wee ceilidh in the boys’ hut.”

  But I wasn’t interested. “Thanks. I’ll catch you later.” I was so intent on finding Ruairidh that I missed her warning.

  I hurried on down to the beach, and as I rounded the dunes I saw them sitting side by side in the light of the dying fire. Ruairidh and Seonag, huddled together as if for warmth. The wind was sending smoke and sparks off into the night, and fanning the embers to cast their light on the pair. There was no one else there. They didn’t see me coming as I walked with heavy legs through the sand towards them, stopping then in my tracks as Seonag turned her head towards him and they kissed.

  My gasp was involuntary. Forced from me, as with a fist in the gut, and they broke apart, startled. I saw regret in Ruairidh’s eyes immediately. Something verging on panic. Seonag just looked at me with her penetrating green eyes, glazed slightly from too much alcohol, but shining with something that looked very much like triumph.

  There were no words to express my sense of betrayal. I turned and ran back up the path, the way I had come. And almost immediately felt, more than heard, the pounding of Ruairidh’s footsteps in my wake. He caught up with me shortly before the lodge. His hand on my arm pulling me to a halt, half-turning me towards him.

  “Don’t!” I shouted at him. “Don’t dare tell me it’s not what it seemed.”

  “It’s not.”

  I turned my head away in disgust.

  “I missed you.”

  My head snapped back around, eyes blazing with anger and hurt. “Is that right? Well, you’ve got a really interesting way of showing it.”

  “I was drunk. Depressed, and . . .”

  “And Seonag was just there.”

  I could see the shame in his eyes. He shrugged. “Yes.” And even he realized how lame that sounded. “It was stupid, I know. I don’t even care about Seonag. I never have.”

  “And you clearly don’t give a damn about me. You’ve been avoiding me for weeks. And now this.” I paused, uncertain if I had ever felt this much pain before. Then remembered. Only once. “We’re through, Ruairidh Macfarlane. Finished. It’s over.”

  And I turned and fled in tears back to the lodge. In my room I lay on my bed and wept until my tears ran dry, leaving me with nothing but a sore throat and red and swollen eyes. Eventually, I sat up, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed and burying my face in my hands. My summer idyll had turned into a nightmare, and all I wanted was to get away.

  The door opened and light from the hallway fell in a slab across the floor. Seonag stepped into the light, a silhouette in the doorway. I couldn’t see her face as she said, “Don’t go reading too much into what you saw down there, Niamh.”

  I found my voice with difficulty. “And what should I read into it?”

  “I don’t care about Ruairidh.”

  “Funny, he said the same thing about you.” Which seemed to take the wind out of her sails. But not for long.

  “Just goes to show, then, doesn’t it? You can’t trust him.”

  During the few days that remained I avoided contact with them both. The whole atmosphere in the lodge had changed. I’m sure even the guests must have sensed the difference. It felt as if every one of us had overstayed our welcome. The summer was finished and all we wanted now was to get back to our real lives. And when I returned to the mainland to start the autumn term of my second year at Galashiels, I was hugely depressed and determined to put Ruairidh and Seonag as far behind me as possible.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Darkness had fallen by the time Niamh and Seonag got back to the house. The sky to the north was alive and flickering with colour. The aurora borealis had begun its spectacular celestial light show. Red, pink and purple grew out of the arc of green light that spanned the horizon, swirling and rising into the black of the sky, reflecting below on the darkness of the ocean. It all seemed to derive from tiny explosions of light moving back and forth just beyond the horizon. Niamh had seen it many times, but it was never the same twice and she never tired of it.

  She and Seonag stretched out on the settee, and watched the show, framed as it was by the giant windows that looked out on the Minch.

  For a while neither of them spoke. Niamh and Ruairidh had lain here watching their own personal display of the northern lights together on so many occasions, that somehow it didn’t seem right for them to carry on without him. Just one more reminder that he was gone.

  Finally, Seonag said, “This is something I should have said years ago . . .”

  Niamh turned her head towards her in the dark, seeing all the colours of the aurora borealis reflected on the pale ivory of her face.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” Niamh said, although she knew.

  “For being such a shit all those years ago.” She looked at Niamh and shrugged. “I can’t even explain it to you now, any more than I could have at the time. Hormones, I suppose. That’s my only excuse.” She took a sip of wine. “Anyway, you should know that it’s something I’ve always regretted. You do and say things at that age, and when you look back you just cringe with embarrassment.” A pause. “I’m sorry, Niamh. I’m only glad it all turned out for the best, in spite of me.” And during a lull in the lights a shadow crossed her face. “Until this.” She paused. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  Niamh nodded. What could she say? She had put it behind her a long time ago. And if she couldn’t exactly forgive her friend, she no longer blamed her.

  Seonag said, “What are you going to do about Ranish Tweed?”

  Present reality came flooding back, like water filling an empty pool. “I’ve no idea. To be honest, I’ve not even thought about it. And I’m not sure I care.” She paused for reflection. “Ranish was all about me and Ruairidh. A kind of physical manifestation of what it was we had between us. Of what was special about us. I don’t know that I have any desire to carry it on without him.”

  Seonag stared into her glass. “It would be a shame to let it go, then. Like letting go of Ruairidh, too.”

  And Niamh saw the truth in that. Ranish was the biggest piece of him that she had left. And yet part of her wondered if it wouldn’t simply be a constant and painful reminder of what she had lost.

  “I’ve enjoyed working for Ranish,” Seonag said. “With both of you. And watching it grow. We’re still getting more orders than we can fulfil. It has a long-term future ahead of it.”

  Niamh wondered if Seonag saw herself as being a part of that future. She remembered h
ow reluctant she had been to take Seonag on in the first place, and how she had been overruled by Ruairidh’s mother. But in the end Seonag had proved to be the rock on which the company had built its expansion. She had a sound business head, persuading them of the need to computerize to manage growth. Now, perhaps, she wasn’t just a part of the company’s future. She was its future.

  Niamh said, “I’ll think about it all after the funeral.”

  It was late now, and Niamh could hardly keep her eyes open. The aurora borealis was still doing its thing all along the horizon to the north, but by now they had both stopped seeing it. The extraordinary had become animated wallpaper, and they stood to head along the hall to the bedrooms.

  Seonag gave her friend a long, lingering hug, before kissing her softly on the forehead. “See you in the morning,” she whispered, and slipped into her room, closing the door gently behind her.

  Niamh stood for several long moments in the dark, tinnitus ringing in her ears like a distant echo of the bomb that had taken Ruairidh. The blast, and the screams, and the flash of light which had very nearly blinded her, replayed itself in her memory, and she wondered why she was so reluctant to go into the bedroom she had shared with him. After all, hadn’t she taken comfort from sleeping in her grandfather’s bed after he had died?

  She forced herself into the room, standing with her back to the door after she closed it, staring at the unmade bed in the darkness. She switched on a light and pushed her suitcase off the end of it and on to the floor, before heading for the bathroom, discarding her clothes as she went.

  In the shower she stood naked beneath the flow of hot water, hoping that somehow it might wash away the pain. Of course, it didn’t. When finally she emerged, skin pink and stinging, and dried herself on a big soft white towel, she padded through to the bedroom and collapsed into the bed. The impression of his head was still pressed into his pillow, and she rolled over to lie on it, trying to recapture the sense of him, his scent, his body shape in the bed. But all she found was emptiness.

  She reached over to turn out the light and was asleep almost before she had extinguished it.

  She had no idea what time it was when she awoke. The bedside clock was flashing from some power blip that must have happened while she and Ruairidh were away. But she knew that something had wakened her. A sound, perhaps. Or a vibration. Something she had felt more than heard.

  She sat bolt upright, sleep banished in a moment. And listened. Intently. There it was again. A sound, or a sensation, like a door closing, as if someone out there were moving around the house. But softly, secretly.

  Niamh slipped from the bed, pulling on a black silk dressing gown embroidered with dragons and tying it tightly around herself. She eased open the bedroom door and saw moonlight falling in through the Velux windows in the roof, casting its silver light into the living room. She glanced at Seonag’s door. It was firmly shut. She listened for a moment outside it, but could hear nothing from within. She drifted quickly down the hall, then, and into the living space illuminated by those vast windows that gave on to the Minch. Out on the water she saw burnished moonlight reflected on its surface, like silver poured from the moon.

  She went into her office. By the light of the screensaver that animated her computer screen, she cast eyes over the litter of papers strewn across her desktop. Had something been moved? Or was that just her imagination. She couldn’t remember exactly how she had left things.

  Then the faintest dull thud came again from somewhere towards the front of the house. She ran back through the living room and into the hall. Nothing. Seonag’s door was still shut.

  Niamh returned cautiously to her bedroom, turning on all the lights to be certain that there was no one there. The bathroom, too, was empty. She hurried back to the bedroom and lowered the blinds she normally left raised, and turned the snib on the bedroom door to lock herself in.

  When the lights were out she slipped back into bed. But it felt cold now, and sleep a long way away. She lay for the longest time, staring at the ceiling, listening intently. But she heard no other sound than the faintest howl of the wind as it rose from the west, and sometime not long before dawn she slipped away into a troubled unconsciousness.

  It was the smell of food cooking that awoke her next. Still she had no idea of the time, but it was daylight now and she padded out in her dressing gown to the kitchen where she found Seonag frying up the bacon and eggs she had brought with her the night before.

  She was fully dressed and made up, and glanced towards Niamh as she came in. “Thought you might like some breakfast before I head off.”

  Niamh’s head was still thick with sleep, and she was confused. “Where are you going? What time is it?”

  “It’s after nine, Niamh, and I’m already late. Monday morning. I’ve got to go and open up the office.”

  Niamh slumped into one of the breakfast stools and dropped her head into her hands, wiping her eyes and trying to clear her thoughts. She looked up. “Were you up and about during the night?”

  Seonag shook her head. “No, I was out like a light. Wouldn’t have wakened up either if I hadn’t set my alarm.” She paused. “Why?”

  But Niamh just shrugged. “Nothing. Thought I heard someone, that’s all.”

  Seonag slipped a plate on to the breakfast bar in front of her. Two eggs, yolks winking at her and turning her stomach. Several rashers of overcooked bacon. She would wait until Seonag had gone before sliding them into the bin. “There’s coffee made,” Seonag said, and she lifted her overnight bag off the counter top. “Is there anything you’d like me to tell Ruairidh’s folks?”

  Niamh shook her head. “No. As soon as I feel fit to face the world I’ll drive down and see them myself. Donald will have told them to expect me this morning.”

  Seonag nodded, stooped to give Niamh a quick kiss on the cheek. “Maybe see you later, then.” But she didn’t leave, and Niamh looked up to find her standing there watching her, eyebrows drawn together in concern. “Are you going to be alright?”

  Niamh said, “I’ll be fine.”

  “Well, if you need me. Any time, day or night. Call.” She implored Niamh with her eyes. “Please.”

  Niamh nodded acknowledgment.

  After Seonag had gone she let her head drop and pictured the scene that lay ahead when she went to see Ruairidh’s parents. And she wondered how she would ever muster the courage to face them.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was one of those sticky sultry Paris days that seemed always to announce the imminent arrival of autumn. Low cloud bubbled across the sky and everyone carried an umbrella. If it felt like it was going to rain, then it probably would.

  Braque was slick already with perspiration. She wore a T-shirt out over her jeans, black so that the dark patches under her arms would not show. Her hair was sticking to her forehead, and she brushed it back and out of her eyes as she hurried up the stairs to the offices of the brigade criminelle, known more popularly as La Crim’.

  Capitaine Georges Faubert was in a foul mood. He was always in a foul mood. Ever since he had been banned from smoking in his own office. He resented the three or four cigarette breaks he allowed himself daily, standing outside in the rear courtyard in all weathers with other ranks. The camaraderie of the smoker had passed him by. It would have reduced him in importance somehow, and so he always stood aloof and alone.

  Braque smelled fresh smoke on his breath when she entered his office, so perhaps, she hoped, he might not be too ill-disposed towards her tardy arrival. She was wrong.

  He had some kind of psoriasis on his scalp and forehead, and when he scratched it to relieve the itching, which he did often and vigorously, he shed a snowstorm of skin on to his desk. It seemed that he was particularly troubled by it this morning, and so on a scale of one to ten his bad temper ranked around eight.

  “You’re late, Braque!”

  “Yes, boss.” She really didn’t want to go into explanations, but mere acknowledgment seemed
insufficient. “My friend who normally takes the girls to school called off at the last minute, and I had to take them myself. The thing is . . .”

  He cut her off. “No one’s interested in the details of your domestic dramas, Lieutenant. The only thing that matters here is whether or not you’re up to the job. And there are several voices of concern being raised on that count.”

  Braque felt her face redden.

  “If you’d got here when you were supposed to, then you wouldn’t have put yourself under pressure to get out to the airport on time.” He rubbed his face with the flats of his hands, and more skin flaked off to join the drifts of it on his desk. His eyes were red-rimmed and crusted with conjunctivitis when he turned them back on her.

  Braque was at a loss. “Where am I going?”

  “A flight to London, with onward connections to Glasgow and then Stornoway. You know where that is?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Well, you’d better get yourself some clarity. Stornoway is the main town on the Isle of Lewis, where the Macfarlane woman comes from. In fact, the only town.”

  “Yes, I knew that, sir. Just not where it is, exactly.”

  Faubert shook the skin off a map lying on his desk, unfolding it to turn towards her. He stabbed a nicotine-stained finger at a long archipelago off the north-west coast of the British Isles. “Some God-forsaken place on the edge of the bloody world.”

  “And I would be going there why?”

  He looked at her with irritation. “Why there, or why you?”

  “Well . . . both.”

  “It’s your case, Braque. And you’ve made bugger-all progress on it. It’s reasonable to expect that Macfarlane will bury her husband’s remains within the next day or two. There will, no doubt, be a very public funeral. Always are on occasions like these. It’s also reasonable to assume that whoever killed the man knew him. So there’s every chance he’ll be at the funeral.”