The Blackhouse l-1

by Peter May

  By the time I got to Ripley Place, I could hear the distant siren of the ambulance on its return journey from the castle to the hospital. If I had believed in miracles, I would have asked God for one right there and then. Maybe it’s my fault that I didn’t. Maybe if I had, Calum would have been okay.

  That was the last time I saw him, and I have lived with the memory of that final moment ever since. The spattering of freckles in a chalk-white face. The tight, carrot curls. The blood like treacle on the metal beneath him. The impossible twist of his body as it lay in the moonlight.

  He was airlifted to a specialist unit in Glasgow. We heard through the grapevine that he had broken his back and wouldn’t walk again. He never returned to school, staying on the mainland during those first months for intensive therapy. It’s amazing how quickly time grows new skin over open wounds. As it became clear that the true circumstances surrounding what really took place that night were not going to surface after all, new memories replaced old, raw ones, like healing skin, and poor Calum gradually receded from the forefront of all our minds. An old wound that only hurt if you thought about it, and so you didn’t. At least, not consciously. Not if you could help it.

  FOURTEEN

  I

  He knocked on the door, but the clackety-clack of the loom continued uninterrupted. Fin drew a deep breath and waited until there was a pause for a change of shuttle. Then he knocked again. There was a moment’s silence, then a voice told him to enter.

  The inside of the shed was a dumping ground for almost everything imaginable. An old bicycle, a lawnmower and strimmer, garden tools, fishing net, electric cable. The loom itself was set in the corner, the walls behind it lined with shelves of tools and stacks of different-coloured spun wool, all within easy reach of the weaver. There was a clear passage to it for the wheelchair, and Calum sat behind the loom, large metal handles jutting up at either hand from the mechanism below.

  Fin was shocked. Calum had put on a huge amount of weight. His once delicate frame was round-shouldered and gross. A great collar of flesh propped up his chin, and his ginger hair was all but gone. What was left of it had been cropped, although it still kept its colour. Pale skin that never saw the sun looked bleached, almost blue-white. Even the once vivid spattering of freckles seemed to have faded. Calum squinted at Fin standing in the light of the doorway, his green eyes wary and suspicious.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  Fin moved away from the door so that the light was no longer behind him. ‘Hello, Calum.’

  It was a moment or two before Fin saw recognition in Calum’s eyes. There was surprise there, too, for just a second before a dull glaze passed across them like cataracts. ‘Hello, Fin. I’ve been expecting you for twenty years. You took your time.’

  Fin knew there were no excuses he could make. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What for? It wasn’t your fault. My stupid idea. And as you see, I didn’t have wings after all.’

  Fin nodded. ‘How have you been?’ Even as he said it he knew it was a stupid thing to ask. And he only did because he had no idea what else to say.

  ‘How do you think?’

  ‘I can’t imagine.’

  ‘I bet you can’t. Unless it’s happened to you, how can you possibly imagine what it’s like to have no control of your bowels or your bladder? To have to be changed like a baby when you soil yourself? You wouldn’t believe the sores you get on your arse when you have to sit on it all day. And sex?’ A tiny bitter breath of laughter forced its way between his lips. ‘Well, of course, I’m still a virgin. Can’t even have a wank. Couldn’t find the damned thing even if I wanted to. And the irony of it is, that’s what it was all about in the first place. Sex.’ He paused, lost in some distant memory. ‘She’s dead, you know?’

  Fin frowned. ‘Who?’

  ‘Maid Anna. Killed in a motorbike accident years ago. And here’s me, a big lump of lard stuck in a wheelchair, still going strong. Doesn’t seem right, does it?’ He dragged his eyes away from Fin and finished rethreading the shuttle before slipping it back into the empty slot in its drum. ‘Why are you here, Fin?’

  ‘I’m a cop now, Calum.’

  ‘I’d heard.’

  ‘I’m investigating Angel Macritchie’s death.’

  ‘Ah, so you didn’t just call for the pleasure of my company.’

  ‘I’m on the island because of the murder. I’m here because I should have come a long time ago.’

  ‘Putting old ghosts to rest, eh? Rubbing salve on a troubled conscience.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Calum sat back and looked at Fin very directly. ‘You know, the biggest irony of all is that the only real friend I’ve had in all the years since it happened was Angel Macritchie. Now there’s a fucking turn-up for you.’

  ‘Your mother told me he’d built the shed for the loom.’

  ‘Oh, he did more than that. He refitted the whole house, made every room accessible for the chair. He made that garden out there, and laid the path so I could sit out if I wanted.’ He shrugged. ‘Not that I ever wanted.’ He grabbed the handles on either side of him. ‘He adapted the loom so that I could work it by hand, a clever extension to the foot pedals.’ He started working the levers backwards and forwards, and the shuttles flew across the weave of the cloth, wheels and cogs interlocking to drive the whole complex process. ‘Smart man.’ He raised his voice above the clatter of the machine. ‘Much smarter than we ever gave him credit for.’ He released the levers and the loom came to a halt. ‘Not that I make much from the weaving. Of course, there’s my mother’s pension, and the little money that’s left from the compensation we got. But it’s hard, Fin, making ends meet. Angel made sure we never went short. He never came empty-handed. Salmon, rabbit, deer. And, of course, he always had half a dozen gugas for us each year. Cooked them himself, too.’ Calum lifted another shuttle from a wooden bin hooked over the arm of his chair and played with it distractedly. ‘At first, when he started coming, I suppose it was guilt that made him do it. And I think he expected I would blame him.’

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  Calum shook his head. ‘Why should I? He didn’t force me to go up on the roof. Sure, he was trying to make a fool of me, but I was the one who made the fool of myself. He might have taken the ladder away, but he didn’t push me off the roof. I panicked. I was stupid. I’m the only one to blame.’ Fin saw his knuckles turning white as his fingers tightened around the shuttle before he released it into its box. ‘Then when he realized I didn’t bear him any ill-will, I suppose he might just have stopped coming. Conscience clear. But he didn’t. If you’d told me all those years ago that I’d end up being friends with Angel Macritchie I’d have told you you were off your head.’ He shook his head as if he still found it hard to believe himself. ‘But that’s what we became. He’d come up every week to work in the garden, and he’d sit in here for hours, just talking. About all sorts.’

  He broke off, and sat lost in a silence that Fin did not dare to break. Then tears welled up suddenly in his eyes, blurring green, and Fin was shocked. Calum glanced up at his old school friend. ‘He wasn’t a bad man, Fin. Not really.’ He tried to wipe the tears away. ‘He liked folk to think he was some kind of hard case, but all he did was treat people the way life treated him. A kind of sharing out of the misery. I saw another side to him, a side I don’t think anyone else ever saw, not even his own brother. A side he wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to see. A side to him that showed how he might have been in other circumstances, in another life.’ And more tears trembled on the rims of his eyes before spilling over to roll down his cheeks. Big, silent, slow tears. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.’ He made a determined effort to blink them away and took out a handkerchief to dry his face. He tried to force a smile, but it looked more like a grimace. ‘Anyway …’ A bitter edge crept back into his voice. ‘It was good of you to drop by. If you’re ever passing, call again.’

  ‘Calum …’

  ‘Go, Fin. Ju
st go. Please.’

  Fin turned reluctantly towards the door and pulled it gently shut behind him. He heard the loom start up inside. Clacketyclack, clackety-clack. The sun was shining across the moor beyond the peat stack, a mocking sun that only heightened Fin’s depression. He found it hard to imagine what Angel and Calum had talked about together all those years. But one thing was certain. Whoever had murdered Angel Macritchie, it wasn’t Calum. The poor, crippled weaver was probably the only person on earth to spill a tear over Angel’s passing.

  II

  As he drove back down the hill, there was more and more blue in the sky, torn in ragged patches from the swathes of cloud blowing in off the Atlantic. The land, falling away below him, was an ever-changing patchwork of sunlight and shadow, one chasing the other across a machair peppered with crofts and cottages, fences and sheep. The ocean, away to his right, was a hard, bright, steely reflection of the sky.

  He passed his parents’ croft and felt a gut-wrenching sadness at the sight of the collapsed roof. Only a few moss-covered tiles clung to the remains of it. The once white walls were streaked with mould and algae. The windows were gone. The front door lay ajar, opening into a dark, abandoned shell of a house. Even the floorboards had been stripped out. Just a trace of peeling purple paint remained, clinging stubbornly to the door jamb.

  He dragged his eyes away from it, back to the road, and pushed his foot down on the accelerator. It was no good looking backwards, even if you had no notion of where it was you were going.

  There was someone in the garden beyond Artair’s bungalow, bent over beneath the raised bonnet of an old Mini. Fin slipped his foot across to the brake and drew in at the top of the drive. The figure straightened up, turning at the sound of car tyres sliding on gravel. Fin had thought for a moment that the person in the boiler suit might have been Marsaili, but he was not disappointed when he saw that it was Fionnlagh. He turned off the ignition and stepped out on to the path. In the dark, the night before, he had not seen the car wrecks piled up in the garden, and not noticed them when he had left in a rush that morning. Five of them, rusted and stripped down for their parts, bits and pieces of them strewn across the grass like the old bones of long-dead animals. Fionnlagh had a toolkit open on the ground beside him. He was holding a spanner in oil-blackened hands, and there were oily smears on his face. ‘Hi,’ he said, as Fin approached.

  Fin nodded towards the Mini. ‘Got her going yet?’

  Fionnlagh laughed. ‘Naw. I think maybe she’s been dead for too long. I’m just trying to get her on life support.’

  ‘It’ll be a while before she’s back on the road, then?’

  ‘It’ll be a miracle.’

  ‘They’re all the rage again these days, Minis.’ Fin peered at it more closely. ‘Is she a Mini Cooper?’

  ‘An original. I got her for a fiver from a car graveyard in Stornoway. It cost more to get her here than it did to buy her. My mum said if I could get her going she would pay for my driving lessons.’

  As he spoke Fin had the opportunity to look at him more closely. He was a slight-built boy, like his mother, the same intensity in his eyes. But there was the same mischief there, too.

  ‘Caught your killer yet?’

  ‘Afraid not. Is your mum at home?’

  ‘She’s gone down to the store.’

  ‘Ah.’ Fin nodded, and there was a moment of awkwardness between them. ‘Have you been to the surgery yet, to give your DNA sample?’

  A surly expression fell across the boy’s face, like a shadow. ‘Yeh. Wasn’t any way I was going to get out of it.’

  ‘How’s the computer?’

  The shadow passed and his face lit up again. ‘Brilliant. Thanks, Fin. I’d never have figured that firmware thing out for myself. System Ten’s brilliant. I’ve spent half the day copying my CDs into iTunes.’

  ‘You’ll need an iPod to download them to.’

  The boy smiled ruefully. ‘You seen the price of them?’

  Fin laughed. ‘Yeh, I know. But the Shuffle’s pretty cheap.’ Fionnlagh nodded, and the two of them fell into another uneasy silence. Then Fin said, ‘How long d’you think your mum’ll be?’

  ‘Dunno. Half an hour maybe.’

  ‘I’ll hang on, then.’ He hesitated. ‘You fancy going down to the beach? I feel like I need a good blast of sea air to blow away the cobwebs.’

  ‘Sure. I’m getting nowhere fast with this anyway. Give me two minutes to clean up and get out of this boiler suit. And I’ll have to let my gran know where I’m going.’ Fionnlagh gathered his tools back into their box and took them into the house with him. Fin watched him go and wondered why he was torturing himself like this. Even if he was Fin’s biological son, Fionnlagh was still Artair’s boy. Artair had said to him that morning, It hasn’t mattered for seventeen years, why the fuck should it matter now? And he was right. If it had always been that way, why should knowing about it make any difference? Fin kicked at a spiny turf of grass with the toe of his shoe. But somehow it did.

  Fionnlagh appeared in jeans and trainers and a fresh white sweatshirt. ‘Better not be too long. My gran doesn’t like being left on her own.’

  Fin nodded and the two of them set off along the top of the cliffs to the gully that Artair and Fin used as boys to get down to the shore. Fionnlagh made easy work of it, not even taking his hands out of his pockets until he jumped the last four feet on to the flat, slightly angled slab of gneiss where the young Fin had once made love to Marsaili. Fin found climbing down to the rocky outcrop a little harder than when he had last done it eighteen years before, and fell behind as Fionnlagh skipped sure-footedly over the slippery black wedges of rock to the beach. He waited on the sand for Fin to catch him up.

  ‘My mum said you two used to go out together.’

  ‘That was a long time ago.’

  They headed down to the water’s edge and started walking towards the Port. ‘So why did you break up?’

  Fin found himself slightly embarrassed by the boy’s directness. ‘Oh, you know, people do.’ He laughed at a suddenly returning memory. ‘Actually, we broke up twice. First time, we were only eight.’

  ‘Eight?’ Fionnlagh was incredulous. ‘You were going out when you were eight?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t really call it going out. We had a kind of thing between us. Had done ever since we started school. I used to walk her home to the farm. Are her folks still there?’

  ‘Oh, sure. But we don’t see very much of them these days.’ Fin was surprised and waited for Fionnlagh to elucidate, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, ‘So why did you break up when you were eight?’

  ‘Oh, it was all my fault. Your mum turned up at school one day wearing glasses. Awful things. Blue, with wings, and lenses so thick they made her eyes look like golf balls.’

  Fionnlagh laughed at the image Fin had conjured up. ‘Jees, that must have made her attractive.’

  ‘Well, exactly. And, of course, everyone in the class made fun of her. Four eyes, and goggle eyes, all that kind of stuff. You know how merciless kids can be.’ His smile faded into sadness. ‘And I wasn’t any better. I was embarrassed to be seen with her. Avoided her in the playground, stopped walking her home from school. I think she was devastated, the wee soul. Because she was a pretty little girl, your mum. Very self-confident. And a lot of the boys in the class were dead jealous of me. But all that went when she got the glasses.’ And even as he remembered it, he felt a stab of guilt and melancholy. Poor Marsaili had gone through hell. And he had been so cruel. ‘Kids. They have no idea how hurtful they can be.’

  ‘And that was it? You just stopped being an item?’

  ‘More or less. Your mum pursued me for a while. But if I saw her coming towards me in the playground, I made sure I was suddenly involved in a conversation with someone or joining in a game of football. I was always out of the school gate ahead of her so I wouldn’t have to walk her up the road. Sometimes I would turn around in class and find her just looking at me with big doe
eyes, glasses discarded on the desk in front or her. But I always pretended I didn’t notice, And Jesus …’ Suddenly something came back to him that he hadn’t thought about in nearly thirty years. ‘There was that time in church.’ The memory returned in unexpectedly vivid detail.

  Fionnlagh was intrigued. ‘What? What happened in church?’

  ‘Oh, God …’ Fin shook his head, smiling remorsefully. ‘Except, I’m sure God didn’t have much to do with it.’ The incoming tide forced them to step smartly up the beach to avoid getting their feet wet. ‘In those days my parents were still alive, and I had to go to church every Sunday. Twice. I always used to take a tube of sweets with me. Polo Fruits or something. It was a kind of game to relieve the boredom. To see if I could get them out of the packet and into my mouth without being caught, and then suck them away to nothing without being seen. I suppose it was a kind of small, secret victory against the power of religious oppression if I could work my way through a whole packet without them ever knowing. Although I doubt if I thought about it quite like that at the time.’