The Blackhouse l-1

by Peter May

  Adams’s mobile rang again. He answered. ‘Adams … Oh, it’s you.’ He lowered his voice to something like intimacy. ‘You’re in Ullapool? Good. What time does the ferry get in …? Okay I’ll meet you at the ferry terminal.’ He glanced self-consciously at Fin. ‘Look, I’ll call you back a little later. I’ve got the police here … Yes, again.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Alright. Ciao.’ He dropped the phone on the bed. ‘Sorry about that.’ But he wasn’t.

  ‘Is that your protesters arriving?’

  ‘Yes, if you must know. It’s not a secret.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘There’ll be twelve of us. One for each member of the killing crew.’

  ‘What are you going to do? Lie down in front of the trawler?’

  ‘That’s very amusing, Mr Macleod.’ He curled his lips in mock amusement. ‘I know we can’t stop them. Not this year, anyway. But we can influence public opinion. There’ll be press and television on hand. We’ll get nationwide coverage. And if we can persuade the Scottish Executive to withdraw their licence, then it’ll become illegal. And people like you simply won’t be allowed to go out there and kill those poor birds.’

  ‘And you said all this in the piece in The Hebridean?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘That’ll have made you popular.’

  ‘My mistake was in allowing them to carry a photograph of me. It meant I lost my anonymity.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I went out to Ness on a recce. Apparently the trawler leaves from Stornoway, but the Crobost men go out to meet her in a small boat from the Port of Ness. I wanted to get some photographs of the area, for reference as much as anything else. I suppose I might have been a little indiscreet. I had lunch at the Cross Inn and someone recognized me from the piece in the paper. I’m not used to language like that, Mr Macleod.’

  Fin restrained the urge to smile. ‘Did you talk to anyone up there?’

  ‘Well, I got lost a couple of times and had to ask the way. The last person I spoke to before I was attacked was at a small pottery just outside Crobost. A strange, hairy sort of man. I’m not sure he was entirely sober. I asked him where I could find the road to the harbour. And he told me. I went back out to my car, which was only about twenty yards away down the road. That’s when it happened.’

  ‘What, exactly?’

  Adams shifted slightly on the bed and winced. Whether from the memory or from the pain, Fin could not tell. ‘A white van overtook me. A Transit van. Something like that. Funnily enough, I’d noticed it a couple of times earlier in the day. I suppose he must have been following me, awaiting his moment. Anyway, the van pulled over in front of me, and a large man whom I later identified as Angus Macritchie jumped out from the driver’s side. The odd thing was, I had the impression there were others in the van. But I never saw anybody else.’

  ‘Did he say anything?’

  ‘Not a word. Not then, anyway. He just started punching me. I was so surprised I didn’t even have time to try to get out of the way. I think it was after the second punch that my knees just sort of gave way under me, and I went down like a house of cards. And then he started kicking me in the ribs and the stomach. I curled up to try to protect myself, and he got me a couple of times on my forearms.’ He pulled up his sleeves to show the bruising. ‘Nice people your bird killers.’

  Fin knew how it felt to be on the receiving end of a beating from Angel Macritchie. It wasn’t something he would wish on anyone, even someone as naive as Chris Adams. ‘Macritchie wasn’t typical of the men of Crobost. And it might surprise you to know that he didn’t go out to the rock to kill birds. He was the cook.’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s a comfort to me, I’m sure.’ Adams’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

  Fin ignored it. ‘What happened then?’

  ‘He bent down and whispered in my ear that if I didn’t pack up my bags and go he was going to stuff a whole guga down my throat. Then he got back into his van and drove off.’

  ‘And you got the number?’

  ‘Amazingly, I did. I don’t know how I had the presence of mind, but yes, I made certain I committed that number to memory.’

  ‘What about witnesses?’

  ‘Well, there were several houses around. How people can claim they didn’t see anything, I don’t know. I saw curtains twitching in the windows. And then there was the chap from the pottery. He came down and got me to my feet and took me into his house to give me a drink of water. He said he didn’t see a thing, but I don’t believe him. I insisted he call the police, and he did. But very reluctantly, I have to tell you.’

  ‘So if Macritchie threatened to stuff a guga down your throat, Mr Adams, why were you still here on Saturday night?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t get a booking on the ferry till Monday. Then, of course, someone with exquisitely good taste went and killed him, and now your people won’t let me leave.’

  ‘About which, I’m assuming, you have no complaints. Since you’re able to go ahead with your protest after all.’

  ‘With two broken ribs, Mr Macleod, I think I have plenty to complain about. And if the police had done their job a little better, your Mr Macritchie would probably have been alive today. Languishing in a police cell, rather than murdered in a boatshed.’

  Which, Fin thought, was probably true. ‘Where were you on Saturday night, Mr Adams?’

  ‘Right here in my room, with a fish supper. And, no, unfortunately there isn’t anyone who can confirm that, as your people have gleefully reminded me more than once.’

  Fin nodded thoughtfully. Perhaps Adams might, physically, have been capable of doing the deed. In normal circumstances. Just. But with two broken ribs? Fin thought not. ‘You like fish, Mr Adams?’

  Adams seemed surprised by the question. ‘I don’t eat meat.’

  Fin got to his feet. ‘Have you any idea how long it takes a fish to die, starved of oxygen, literally suffocating, when a trawler hauls its nets on board?’ But he wasn’t waiting for an answer. ‘A damned sight longer than a guga in a noose.’

  IV

  The incident room had been established in a large conference room at the far end of the first-floor corridor of Stornoway police station. Two windows looked out over Kenneth Street and the roofs of houses stepping steeply down to the inner harbour below. Beyond the masts of trawlers tied up for the night, the towers of Lews Castle were just visible above the trees on the far side of the water. Desks and tables were pushed up against walls, carefully trunked cabling feeding telephones and computer terminals and chattering printers. Graphic crime-scene photographs were pinned to one wall, copious notes scribbled on a whiteboard with blue felt pen. A projector sat humming quietly on a small table.

  There had been nearly a dozen officers at work, taking phone calls, tapping computer keyboards, when Fin sat down at one of the four HOLMES terminals to bring himself up to date. Not only on the Macritchie murder, but also on the rape and assault claims made against him. In addition he had been able to access all the files on the murder of John Sievewright, refreshing his memory on the dozens of statements which had been taken, and on the forensic and pathology reports. But he was tired now, uncertain how clearly he was thinking. The number of officers in the incident room had dwindled to three. It had been a long day, following a sleepless night. He thought for the first time about Mona. Her threat. Just don’t expect me to be here when you get back. And his response. Maybe that would be best. In those two brief exchanges, they had effectively brought their relationship to an end. Neither of them had planned it. And doubtless there would be regrets, most of them for the fourteen wasted years of their marriage. But there had also been an enormous sense of relief. A weight of silent unhappiness lifted from Fin’s shoulders, even though it had been replaced almost immediately by the uncertainty of an unpredictable future. A future he did not want to contemplate right now.

  ‘How’s it going, sir?’ Gunn wheeled up alongside him on a typist’s chair.

  Fin
leaned back in his seat and rubbed his eyes. ‘Downhill at a rapid rate of knots, George. I think I’m going to call it a day.’

  ‘I’ll walk you over to your hotel, then. Your bag’s still in the boot of my car.’

  They walked together past the armoury and the area admin office, pale yellow walls, pastel purple carpet. On the stairs they bumped into DCI Smith. ‘Good of you to report back after the autopsy,’ he said.

  ‘Nothing to report.’ Fin paused, and then added, ‘Sir.’ He had long ago discovered that dumb insolence was the only way to deal with sarcasm from senior officers.

  ‘I had a verbal from the pathologist. Seems there are quite a few parallels with Edinburgh.’ He had moved past them on the stairs so that he could make up for his lack of height by being on the step above.

  ‘Inconclusive,’ Fin said.

  Smith looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. ‘Well, you’d better have some conclusions for me by close of play tomorrow, Macleod. Because I don’t want you here any longer than necessary. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Fin turned away. But Smith wasn’t finished. ‘HOLMES has come up with another possible connection. I want you to go with DS Gunn first thing tomorrow to check it out. Gunn’ll fill you in.’ And he turned and took the stairs two at a time to the top landing without looking back. Fin and Gunn carried on down to the ground floor.

  Fin said, ‘So if he’s sending us two, I guess that means he doesn’t attach too much importance to it.’

  Gunn smiled wryly. ‘Your words, Mr Macleod, not mine.’

  ‘Is there an Edinburgh link?’

  ‘Not that I can see.’

  ‘So what’s the story?’

  Gunn held the door open for Fin, and they headed up steps past the charge bar to the rear entrance. Early evening sunlight cast long shadows across the car park. ‘Macritchie got done for poaching about six months ago. On a big estate down in the south-west of the island. Owned by an Englishman. They charge a bloody fortune down there for the salmon fishing, so the owner’s keen to protect the river from poachers. Just over a year ago he brought in some heavyweight from London. Ex-army. You know the type. A thug, really. Knows bugger all about the fishing, but if he catches you at it, boy you’ll know all about it.’

  They retrieved Fin’s bag from the boot. ‘And he caught Macritchie at it?’

  Gunn slammed the boot shut, and they headed down the road towards the harbour. ‘He did that, Mr Macleod. And a few things besides. Macritchie was a bit the worse for wear by the time he ended up in our hands. But he wasn’t going to complain about it. Loss of face, you know, to admit that somebody gave him a doing. Macritchie might have been a big lad, but this London boy was a pro. And it doesn’t matter how big you are, you don’t stand much chance against those fellas.’

  ‘So what’s the connection here?’ Fin liked the idea of someone giving Macritchie a doing, but he couldn’t see where Gunn’s story was leading.

  ‘About three weeks ago, the boy from London got jumped one night on the estate. There was a bunch of them, masks, the lot. He took a hell of a beating.’

  They passed the charity shop on the corner of Kenneth Street and Church Street. A notice in the window read, World Fair Trade — Trade not Aid. ‘So the computer, in its wisdom, thinks Macritchie might have been getting in a wee bit of revenge. And, what? That this ex-army boy finds out and goes and murders him?’

  ‘I guess that’s about the size of it, Mr Macleod.’

  ‘So Smith saw that as a good excuse for getting you and me out of his hair for a while.’

  ‘It’s a nice run down to the south-west. Do you know Uig, Mr Macleod?’

  ‘I know it well, George. We picnicked down there often in the summer. My father and I used to fly a kite on Uig beach.’ He remembered the miles of dead flat sand that stretched away between tendrils of rock to the distant breakers. And the wind that took their home-made box kite soaring into the blue, whipping the hair back from their faces, tugging at their clothes. And the smile that creased his father’s face, blue eyes shining in startling contrast to his deep summer tan. And he remembered, too, his disappointment if the tide was in, so that all those acres of sand lay under two feet of turquoise sea and they had to sit among the doons eating sandwiches.

  High tide had pushed into the inner harbour, and the boats tied up along Cromwell Street Quay towered over them as Fin and Gunn headed south towards North Beach Quay, past a forest of masts and radar grilles and satellite pods. Stornoway extended along a spit of land that separated the inner harbour from the deep-water piers of the outer harbour where the ferry and the oil tankers docked. The Crown Hotel, where Fin had been booked a room, occupied a prime site on the spit, between Point Street and North Beach, overlooking the inner harbour and Lews Castle. Not much, to Fin’s eye, appeared to have changed. A few commercial premises under new ownership, some freshly painted shop fronts. The hat shop was still there, its window full of bizarre creations that women pinned to their heads on the Sabbath. Hats, like the burka, were obligatory headwear on Lewis for churchgoing women. The clock tower on the town hall could be seen above the steeply pitched slate roofs and dormer windows. The two men skirted piles of lobster creels, and great heaps of tangled green fishing net. Skippers and crew were offloading supplies from vans and four-by-fours on to trawlers and small fishing boats, today not yet over before preparations were being made for tomorrow. And overhead the gulls wheeled endlessly, scraps of white against a clear blue sky, catching the last flashes of sunlight and calling plaintively to the gods.

  On Point Street they stopped outside the entrance to the Crown. Fin looked along the length of this pedestrianized street with its ornamental flowerbeds and wrought-iron benches. Known to the locals as The Narrows, Point Street on a Friday and Saturday night would be thick with teenagers gathering in groups and cliques, drinking beer from cans, smoking dope, feasting on fish suppers and burgers from the fish and chip shop. In the absence of any other form of entertainment, this was where the kids made their own. Fin had spent many a night here, squeezed in shop doorways with his schoolfriends sheltering from the rain, waiting for some of the older boys to show up with a carryout. It had seemed exciting then, full of possibilities. Girls, drink, perhaps a puff on someone’s joint. If you were still there at closing time, there was a good chance of seeing a fight. Or two. If you were lucky, you had heard about a party somewhere and were long gone. Each generation followed in the footsteps of the last, like the ghosts of their fathers. And mothers. Right now The Narrows were all but deserted.

  Gunn handed Fin his bag. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, Mr Macleod.’

  ‘Come on, I’ll buy you a drink, George.’

  Gunn looked at his watch. ‘Just the one, then.’

  Fin signed in and dropped his bag in his room. Gunn had two pints waiting for them on the bar when he came back down. The lounge bar was almost deserted at this hour, but they could hear the thump of music from the public bar below and the loud thrum of voices as thirsty fishermen and construction workers from the reopened yard at Arnish took their reward for a hard day’s work. There was a plaque here commemorating the scandal of an underage Prince of Wales ordering a cherry brandy on a stopover during a sailing tour of the Western Isles with his school. The fourteen-year-old Charles had subsequently been smuggled away by car, back to his school at Gordonstoun on the mainland. How times had changed.

  ‘Did you manage to get through all the files?’ Gunn said.

  ‘Most of them.’ The beer was cold and refreshing, and Fin took a long pull at his pint.

  ‘Find anything interesting?’

  ‘Actually, yes. The witness who said he’d seen Angel Macritchie heading off in the opposite direction from Donna Murray the night she claimed he raped her …’

  Gunn frowned. ‘Eachan Stewart. What about him?’

  ‘You weren’t directly involved in the Adams assault case, then?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t. That was DS Fraser.�
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  ‘Well, I guess we can’t expect HOLMES to make all the connections. Do you know Eachan Stewart?’

  ‘Aye, he’s an eccentric old dopehead. Got a pottery just outside of Crobost. Been there for years. Selling his pots to the summer tourists ever since I can remember.’

  ‘Since I was a kid,’ Fin said. ‘It was outside Eachan Stewart’s pottery that Chris Adams got beaten up by Macritchie. Stewart was talking to him a minute before the attack, and picked him off the road a minute after it. Yet he claims to have seen nothing. Very convenient for Macritchie to have the same cast-iron witness in his favour at both events. Was there some connection between these two?’

  Gunn thought about it. ‘It’s possible, I suppose, that Macritchie was supplying Stewart with dope. We’d suspected him of dealing for some time, but never caught him at it.’

  ‘I think maybe I’ll have a word with our Mr Stewart tomorrow.’ Fin took another long draught of his beer. ‘George, you said this afternoon that there were other people who bore Macritchie a grudge, other than those he’d bullied as a kid.’

  ‘Aye, according to his brother. But it’s just hearsay.’

  ‘Murdo Ruadh?’ Gunn nodded. ‘What’s he been hearsaying?’

  ‘I don’t know how much credence to give it, Mr Macleod, but Murdo seems to think there was some kind of feud between his brother and a boy he was at school with. A fella called Calum Macdonald. Apparently he was crippled in an accident years ago and works a loom in a shed behind his house. I’ve no idea what it was that happened between them.’

  Fin laid his pint carefully on the bar. He felt sick just remembering. ‘I do.’ And Gunn waited for an explanation which never came. Eventually Fin seemed to snap out of his trance. ‘Even if he wasn’t crippled …’ Fin remembered the look on the boy’s face as he fell, ‘… I doubt if Calum Macdonald would have been capable of inflicting that kind of damage on anyone.’

  ‘Murdo thinks this Calum Macdonald could have put someone else up to it.’

  Fin flashed him a look, wondering if that was possible, if Calum would have been capable even of the thought. But why, after all this time? ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, finally.