by Peter May
The path leads through gateposts where some kind of gates must once have hung but are long gone. A weathered, cream-painted grille is closed over a green door. Both are locked. To either side of the path, within the walls, the ground is covered with thin, peaty soil and rubble. I have no idea what memory prompts me, but without hesitation I stoop to lift a large flat stone set in the peat, revealing two keys on a ring inside a clear plastic bag. I stare at them for several long seconds, wondering how I knew they were there, or even if it was me who had placed them beneath the stone. Carefully, I remove the keys and drop the stone back in place, then compare the keys in my hand with the locks on the grille and door. I get it right first time, unlocking both, and with an odd sense of excitement push the door open into darkness.
I am following now in the footsteps of Joseph Moore, who was the first man off the Hesperus to find the lighthouse empty and the keepers gone. I must have done it before, perhaps many times, but this time feels like the first, and I am burdened, somehow, by a sense of history.
I turn on the light switch on the wall to my right. The door to the kitchen lies open, just as it did when Moore came in. What were once bedrooms are mostly empty now, daylight flooding in through unshuttered windows. At the end of the hall, there is still a table and chairs in the room where a succession of keepers must once have shared their time, and where Gibson had conjured the image of an unfinished meal and an overturned seat. It is not limewash and tar that I smell in here, just cold and damp, and something faintly unpleasant, like the distant reek of death.
Back in the hall, I see the row of coat hooks where oilskins and waterproofs must once have hung, including those of the unfortunate Donald McArthur who, for some inexplicable reason, had left the shelter of the lighthouse without them. And I can recall, almost word for word, the superintendent’s account of conditions inside the lighthouse when the relief crew arrived, nearly eleven days after the light had been reported out by the captain of the Archtor on 15 December 1900.
The lamp was crimmed, the oil fountains and canteens were filled up and the lens and machinery cleaned, which proved that the work of the 15th had been completed. The pots and pans had been cleaned and the kitchen tidied up, which showed that the man who had been acting as cook had completed his work, which goes to prove that the men disappeared on the afternoon that Captain Holman had passed the Flannan Islands in the steamer ARCHTOR at midnight on the 15th, and could not observe the light.
There were echoes of the Marie Celeste about it all. What, really, had happened to those men? Could they truly have been carried off by some freak wave during a storm? A wave that must have crashed nearly 150 feet high against the cliffs, reaching almost to where the crane emplacement itself was set into the rock.
I climb the stairs that spiral up the inside of the tower, leading to a circular wood-panelled room. Above my head is the grille into which the lamp is set, providing a floor for maintenance and cleaning. I negotiate the last few rungs of an iron ladder that takes me up to the light room itself. And what an extraordinary space it is. Glass prisms acting as lenses, providing an unrestricted view of the Flannan Isles and the ocean beyond, through 360 degrees. The glass is misted, caked by salt carried on the wind and sparkling like frost. I hear the roar of the elements outside, and see white tops breaking all the way to the horizon. I can see, through the grille beneath my feet, down into the room below. The lamp itself is twice my height, spherical, comprising glass fins on its exterior to reflect the light, and set to revolve on a complex electrical mechanism set into the floor. To stand here, in the dark, with the lamp turning, would be blinding.
I stay there for some time gazing out at the world, feeling unsettled, insecure. Why had I come out here all those times? Where did I get the keys? And I realise that not only do I have no memories that pre-date the day before yesterday, I still have no idea what kind of man I was. Sally had said she loved me, but she also said that I had changed. Had I really? I had hidden so much from her, that the me she thought she knew had not been the real me at all, just a figment of my own invention. A liar. A deceiver.
It is with a great sense of dissatisfaction that I leave the lighthouse, finally, locking it up behind me and replacing the keys below the stone. I have learned nothing, least of all about myself. The first spots of rain whip into my face on the edge of a sudden squall, and as I hurry from the gate I see rain sweeping in from the south-west, a long trailing arm of it, darker even than the cloud from which it falls. I start down the steep concrete path, but realise I will never reach the boat before the rain hits. And it is too late to go back. Instead, I make a dash for the ruined chapel, which is just a short sprint away across the grass. Its roof of stone and turf has collapsed in places, but still affords a degree of shelter. I stoop beneath the lintel of the open doorway, and turn to look out and see the island vanish in the rain that sweeps across it like mist.
I move back, then, into the chapel and stumble on something beneath my feet, having to steady myself with outstretched hand on the cold, damp wall. There is very little light, and it takes some moments for my eyes to adjust.
At first I find it hard to believe what I am seeing. A man is lying spreadeagled on the floor, legs outstretched and twisted at an impossible angle. His head is half turned, and I can see where it has been split open, pale grey brain matter congealed in the dried blood that has pooled around it.
I feel acid rising in my throat, from shock and revulsion. I swallow it back, and find myself gasping for breath. My legs have turned to jelly beneath me and will hardly support my weight. After several long seconds, I crouch down, fingertips on the floor to steady me, and force myself to look at his face. He is an older man, grey hair thinning. Mid, perhaps late, fifties. Corpulent. He wears an anorak and jeans, and what look like relatively new hiking boots. If he is known to me, I have no memory of him. But it is clear that he has not been freshly killed. Certainly not today, and probably not yesterday. And since there is no decay that I can see, or smell, he cannot surely have been dead for more than a few days.
A crack in my mind’s defences opens up to allow in the unthinkable. Three days ago I was here. On this island. The next day I was washed ashore on the beach at Luskentyre, all memory lost in a cloud of black dread, knowing that something terrible had occurred.
I look at this man lying on the floor in front of me, his head smashed in, and I ask myself the question that has been clotting in my stream of consciousness. Was it me who killed him?
I close my eyes, fists clenching, sick to my stomach at the thought of it. But it is a thought that won’t go away, growing inside me like a cancer. Is this why I have blocked all memory of the past? I stand up too quickly, blood rushing to my head, and stagger to the door, supporting myself on the stone as I lean out into the wind and rain to throw up acid and coffee.
I am shaking, tears springing to my eyes with the burning of the acid. It feels as if the earth has opened up beneath my feet and I am falling helplessly into eternity, or hell, or both. A short way off, to the east, I hear the growl of the sea as it rushes into a deep cleft in the cliffs nearly 200 feet below. And I am startled to see a group of people in brightly coloured waterproofs, fighting their way up the concrete path towards the lighthouse, leaning into the wind and the rain. Tourists, I realise. A group almost certainly brought out on Seatrek’s inflatable RIB from Uig, and landed below just before the squall struck.
Now shock at the thought that I might have killed this man combines with fear of being caught. Blinded by panic, and robbed of all reason, I dash out on to the slope just as the rain passes and a momentary break in the cloud sprinkles sunshine across the island like fairy dust. The tourists have almost reached the lighthouse above me, and I don’t look back to register if I have been seen. Locked instead in my cocoon of denial, I slither down the wet concrete and run down the steps with an almost reckless disregard for my own safety.
Below me, Seatrek’s red and black Delta Super X RIB rises and fall
s on the swell, anchored a few feet away from the jetty. I see a man waiting aboard her for the tourists to return. He calls to me as I reach the foot of the steps as if he knows me, voice raised above the wind and the sea. But I ignore him, dragging my tender back down the steps and leaping recklessly into her, almost capsizing her in the process. I don’t even look in his direction as he calls again, pulling instead on the starter cord, almost frantic in my desire to be gone from this place. It coughs into life on the third pull, and I gun the throttle, banking away against the incoming waves to race out across the bay to where Coinneach’s Sundancer awaits me.
I nearly fall overboard as I transfer from one to the other, but scramble safely on to the stern, before hauling the inflatable aboard and tethering her. I fire up the motor and accelerate hard away to the south-east. I look back only once as I round the eastern tip of Eilean Tighe, and see the distant figure of the man who called to me still standing in his boat, watching me go.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I am seized now by a sense of urgency. I desperately need to know who I am and what it is I have done. And since I got back to the cottage I have been tearing it apart, without a thought for what the owner might say. I am beyond caring.
I have tipped the mattresses off all the beds. Stripped them of sheets and blankets. I have emptied every cupboard. Pots and pans are strewn across the floor, the kitchen table piled with crockery.
I have already been through the car, checking under seats, searching for hidden pockets. I have torn up the carpet and removed the spare wheel from its well in the boot. And I am alarmed to realise that I have no logbook for this vehicle, nor apparently a licence to drive it.
The cushions from the settee are piled in the middle of the sitting-room floor. I have unzipped their leather covers in search of anything I might have hidden inside them.
And I am slumped now at the kitchen table, almost in tears. To describe my mood as despairing would be the antithesis of hyperbole. I feel hopeless and helpless and scared, frustration welling up inside me, ready to explode in anger or violence, or both. I find myself wishing now that I had drowned in the aftermath of whatever happened out on Eilean Mòr the night I lost my boat. I grip my hair in both hands, tipping my head back and shouting at the ceiling.
Bran, who has been following me around, excited and bewildered, barks now. He must wonder why this lunatic who has been rampaging about the house has the same scent as his master. And the tears of vexation that have been gathering in my eyes finally spill over to burn my cheeks as they run down my face.
I wipe them away with my palms and force myself to stop hyperventilating, and try to think clearly. It is not easy. There is simply nothing in the house to tell me who I am, beyond a name. When the money in my wallet runs out, I have no idea how I will buy food, or petrol for the car. If I am stopped by the police while driving, I will be unable to show them a licence or papers of ownership, and will then have only five days in which to confess my loss of memory, or run.
I daren’t even contemplate the man in the ruined chapel on Eilean Mòr. Because, the more I think about him, the more convinced I become that it was me who killed him. The urge simply to run is almost irresistible. But where would I run to, and how would I finance it?
I don’t know how long it is I have been sitting at the table before I get up and wander through to the hall, thinking vaguely that perhaps I should start to clear up. The day has passed in a blur, and the light is fading outside. Bad weather has set in again, and rain is battering against the windows, running like tears down the glass.
Bran pushes my hand with his head and I realise I have just been standing here in the hall, inert, my brain and all my thinking processes on hold, unable to recall exactly why it was I had come through. Which is when I notice for the first time the hatch in the ceiling outside the spare room. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before, because it now feels as if I always knew it was there.
I wonder how I will reach it, for I can’t recall seeing stepladders anywhere in the house. Then I remember the garden shed, which would be an obvious place to keep them. I hurry out into horizontal rain that catches the last light of the day and streaks the coming darkness. I am soaked within seconds. But the shed is securely padlocked, and I know that there was no key for it among the ones I recovered from the car.
Back in the house, I check the kitchen cupboard again, in case somehow I had missed a pair of stepladders. But, of course, there are none. Only brooms and shovels, and cleaning fluids on a shelf above them. I have almost shut the door when I see it. A pole about two metres long, with a shallow S-shaped hook on the end of it, hanging on the back of the door, and I realise immediately what it is for.
Outside the spare room, I look up and see the cream-painted metal loop set into the hatch. I raise the pole, slot the hook into it and pull it down. Initially it resists the pull of the spring that holds it, until finally it locks in place and reveals the bottom rungs of a folding ladder. I hook the pole now into the ladder and extend it down to the floor.
Bran leaps out of the way of the pole as I let it fall, and I climb rapidly up into the roof space. It is dark, and I reach into it, fumbling about until I find a switch that fills the attic with light from a solitary naked bulb. Apart from the layers of insulation between the rafters, it is quite empty. With the exception of a single black briefcase that stands up, just within reach.
My fingers are trembling as they close around the handle, and I pull it towards me before climbing quickly back down to the hall. I want to throw the briefcase on the floor and open it right there and then. But I force myself to stay calm and carry it through to the kitchen, where I sit down and set it on the table in front of me. And now I am almost afraid to open it. Perhaps it is better to live in ignorance than be confronted with an unpalatable truth.
Finally I lay it flat, release the clasps and lift the lid. I am not sure what I might have been expecting, but I could hardly have been more startled. The briefcase is filled with bundles of £50 notes. Twelve bundles altogether, with space left by others that have clearly been taken. Spent, no doubt. With the silence of the house ringing in my ears, and a sensation of blood pulsing in my head, I lift one of the bundles and count twenty notes. £1,000 per bundle. £12,000 in total, and there might easily have been another eight bundles in the case to begin with.
At least I know now how I financed my life here. With cash. But whose cash, and why? Is it stolen money, or payment of some kind? One answer simply raises more questions. I sit staring at the notes in disbelief for a very long time, at the end of which I hear my own voice. ‘Jesus!’ It is a whispered oath, as if I am almost scared to speak out loud.
Then I notice the fold-out compartment in the lid. If it were empty, it would be sitting flush. But it isn’t. I pull it open and draw out a blue folder. I push the briefcase aside and lay the folder in front of me to open it. My mouth is very dry, my tongue almost sticking to the roof of my mouth, but it doesn’t even occur to me to get a drink.
Inside the folder, held together by a paperclip, is a bundle of badly photocopied sheets of A4 paper. I say badly photocopied because these are duplicates of newspaper cuttings that are almost unreadable. Too much ink has made the letters and words of the text thick and furry, and the accompanying photographs so dark as to be very nearly black.
I remove the paperclip and start to sift through them, aware that my breathing is so rapid and shallow that I am starting to become light-headed. I stop and take a deep breath and examine the sheets that I hold in my hands. They are all clippings of articles taken from newspapers and magazines dating back to 2009. And they are all about me.
‘Thirty-five-year-old champion yachtsman, Neal Maclean.’ ‘Thirty-six-year-old team trainer, Neal Maclean.’ ‘Neal Maclean (37), successful Scottish youth coach . . .’
A champion in my own right as a young man, it seems I am now training youth groups and individuals participating in single-handed racing events organised by the Roya
l Yachting Association of Scotland. One on the Clyde coast. Another in the Firth of Forth. A weekend of racing on Loch Lomond. Coach of the winning team at the 2012 West Highland Yachting Week. Head coach of the Scotland team sent to Weymouth to compete in the Youth Nationals in 2013. Heading up the RYA Scotland Junior Class Academy summer programme that same year.
The photographs are mostly of young men and women who have won competitions, but there is one taken of the entire Scotland youth team. Black-smudged smiling faces with me at their centre. My features, along with everyone else’s, are virtually indistinguishable, but my curly black hair, longer then, is unmistakable.
I scan each article, hungry for personal details. But there are none. Just my age. And I read about myself getting older with almost every piece. By my reckoning, I must now be either thirty-eight or thirty-nine. No mention of family, or occupation, or home city. None of these posts is professional. Sailing is my hobby. While I know more, now, about how I spend my spare time, I know nothing further about myself.
I turn over the final sheet and stop dead. This is no newspaper article. It is an extract of birth that bears the embossed seal of the General Register Office, Scotland, issued almost exactly two years ago. Neal David Maclean, son of Mary and Leslie, born 1978 at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Not just any birth certificate. My birth certificate. I sit looking at it, held in shaking hands. A strange affirmation, somehow, that I actually exist. And there, written on the other side, in a hand I recognise as mine, is the address of a house in Hainburn Park, Edinburgh.