Coffin Road

by Peter May

  ‘Who is he?’ Jon asked.

  ‘We don’t know yet, sir. But Mr Maclean was seen near where the body was found a couple of days ago, and we’d just like to ask him about anything he might have seen. Did he give you any idea when he might be back?’

  The couple exchanged glances and she shrugged. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He didn’t. We’re not that close, really. Just neighbours who share the odd drink.’

  Gunn glanced down at Bran and ruffled the dog’s neck. ‘Close enough for him to leave his dog in your care, though.’

  Jon said, ‘He knows how fond we are of Bran. And it’s no trouble at all, really.’

  Gunn avoided direct eye contact with Sally. ‘So what do you know about Mr Maclean?’

  ‘Very little, really,’ Jon said. ‘We’ve only been here for a year. Neal arrived about six months before us.’ He smiled awkwardly. ‘We incomers tend to stick together.’

  ‘He’s on a sabbatical of some kind,’ Sally said. ‘To write his book.’

  ‘Sabbatical from what?’

  They both shrugged, and it was Jon who responded. ‘He didn’t say. He’s a pretty private sort of bloke, and you kind of know instinctively when not to ask.’

  ‘But you know he was going back and forth to the Flannan Isles?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘In his own boat?’

  ‘Well, whether he owns it, or he’s just chartered it, I really couldn’t say. But, yes, he has one.’ Jon glanced again at Sally.

  ‘And he kept it where?’ Gunn asked.

  ‘Rodel,’ Sally said.

  Gunn hesitated, and knew that this would be embarrassing. ‘Would you mind, Mr Harrison, if I had a word in private with your wife?’

  Jon and Sally looked at each other in surprise. He said, ‘What on earth for?’

  Gunn smiled awkwardly. ‘Well, if I were to say, then I wouldn’t need to speak to her in private, would I?’

  Jon became defensive. ‘There’s nothing you can’t say to my wife in front of me.’

  Gunn glanced at Sally, a wordless appeal for help, but there was none forthcoming. She said, ‘I’m perfectly happy to answer anything you might ask in the presence of my husband.’

  Gunn’s mouth was dry as he turned towards Sally. ‘I’ve been led to believe, Mrs Harrison, that you and Mr Maclean have some kind of . . . relationship.’

  Jon frowned, pre-empting any response from his wife. ‘Bollocks! Who told you that?’

  ‘You’ve been speaking to that nosy old cow down the road, haven’t you?’ Sally said, her face flushed, and Gunn couldn’t tell whether it was from anger or embarrassment. ‘Curtains twitching every time we’re in and out the house.’

  Gunn said, ‘I thought you weren’t regular visitors.’

  ‘We’re not,’ Jon said. ‘But I’m back and forward to the mainland on business, and I know that Sally sometimes pops in for a drink with Neal. Only natural. But folk round here like to put their own twisted construction on things.’

  Gunn wondered if that were true, or whether he might have got a different response had he been able to speak to Sally on her own. But there seemed no point in pursuing it any further now. ‘Well, I’m sorry to have troubled you,’ he said. And he fumbled through his pockets, the nylon of his anorak swishing loudly as he searched for another business card. When he finally found one, he handed it to Sally. ‘I’d be obliged if you’d let me know if you hear from him, or ask him to give me a call himself when he gets back.’

  She took it, avoiding his eye. ‘Of course.’

  At the door, he turned and said, ‘By the way, what is it, exactly, that you are doing here?’

  ‘We’re on a sabbatical of sorts ourselves,’ Jon said. ‘A year out.’

  ‘And what business are you in, back on the mainland?’

  ‘Concrete.’ Jon forced a smile. ‘Up to my neck in it. Have to go back to Manchester every so often to make sure the mixer’s still turning.’

  Gunn nodded. ‘Well, thanks for your help.’

  Outside, he thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his anorak and hunched against the wind as he walked back down the road. That they were both lying about her relationship with Neal seemed entirely possible, although whether they were simply in denial about a fracture in their own relationship or there was some more sinister motive, he couldn’t judge. Whatever the truth, he didn’t much care for either of them.

  He checked his watch. There was still plenty of time to get to the Post Office at Tarbert, but first he wanted a quick chat with the traveller who had installed himself on the far machair and liked to watch folk through binoculars.

  *

  Beyond the metalled road, the path that led down on to the horned peninsula at the far side of the bay was little more than two sand-filled tyre tracks. Gunn bumped his car over the humps and dips and wondered if he would ever manage to get back again.

  It was hopelessly exposed here to all the incoming weather. Not a place, he thought, that you would choose to site a caravan. Certainly not on a permanent basis. And when he arrived, he saw immediately how Buford had secured it by roping it all around to metal stakes driven deep into the sandy soil. There was a radio mast on the lee side of the mobile home, also pegged down with guys, and a small generator. A large satellite dish was securely bolted to the south-east corner. Gunn wondered what kind of ‘traveller’ it was who watched satellite TV and required high-tech radio comms.

  An old, battered Land Rover with a canvas roof sat parked a few yards away. Gunn opened his car door and stepped out into the wind that drove in off the Sound of Taransay, and wondered how much more exposed it might be here if the island itself weren’t there. He crossed first to the Land Rover and rested his hand briefly on the engine cowling. It was stone cold. Then he turned to look at the caravan. It had seen better days, scarred and dented by who knew how many miles. The nearside tyre looked almost flat. A washing line extended from the caravan to a securely fixed pole, and several items of grey-looking underwear strained in the wind at the clips that held them. A salt-bleached wooden box, pegged to the ground, stood below the door, acting as a step. Gunn leaned beyond it and knocked firmly on the door itself. He waited nearly half a minute before knocking again. Still there was no response. He tried lifting the handle, but the door was locked. Unusual for these parts. Still, the man was an incomer and wasn’t to know that no one around here ever locked their doors. There was no reason to. All Gunn’s instincts, however, were telling him that the man called Buford hadn’t gone off somewhere and locked up behind him. With his Land Rover sitting there, and no sign of the man on the road, Gunn had the strongest suspicion that Buford was, in fact, at home, had locked the door from the inside and was simply ignoring Gunn’s knock.

  He pursed his lips and raised his voice above the wind. ‘Mr Buford. This is the police; open up, please.’ But it was only the wind that responded, incessant in its eternally mournful cry. Gunn stood for some moments, nursing his frustration, before returning to his car, turning it in a wide circle, then bumping back along the path towards the road.

  *

  The Harris Post Office in Tarbert was housed in a harled bungalow with a grey-tiled roof that stood below the anonymously roughcast Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Almost opposite, a house with rusted yellow gates displayed incongruously ornamental lambs atop each gatepost. The Post Office was set halfway up the hill above the town, and, beyond the shambles of parked cars and red Post Office vans, Gunn could see the bright yellow railings of the car ferry terminal below.

  He passed a row of black bins lined up along the outside wall and ducked into a dark interior, lit in patches by burned-out sunlight that fell through the windows of the cluttered little office.

  Mary Macleod was younger than her friend from Luskentyre, but only by a few years. ‘I’m just part-time now,’ she told Gunn quite happily when he showed her his warrant card. ‘But I’ve not much else to do with my time, so I spend most of it here. I’ve worked for the P
ost Office close on thirty years, since my husband died and the children went off to make their own lives.’ But her face clouded when Gunn asked her about Neal Maclean. ‘Oh, I don’t know that I’m at liberty to divulge confidential details about customers, Mr Gunn,’ she said.

  Gunn cocked one eyebrow. ‘That doesn’t seem to have stopped you from relaying them to Flora Macdonald at Luskentyre, Mrs Macleod.’

  She flushed to the roots of her silver hair. ‘I’m sure I didn’t tell her anything I shouldn’t have.’

  ‘Then you won’t mind telling me, too.’

  She glanced about self-consciously, aware of the eyes of customers and staff upon them. ‘You’d better come through.’ And she led him into a small private office, its wall pinned with posters and leaflets. ‘What exactly is it you want to know?’

  ‘Mrs Macdonald tells me that Mr Maclean is in the habit of sending regular packages from here.’

  The old lady nodded. ‘Yes. At least once a week. Sometimes twice.’

  ‘But only during the summer?’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t say exactly when he starts and stops. He’s only been here two seasons. But I can tell you that we hardly saw him all last winter.’

  ‘And when was he last in?’

  She thought about it. ‘About two weeks ago, I’d say.’

  ‘And how does he send these packages? Registered post, or . . . ?’

  ‘Special Delivery.’

  ‘So you’ll have a record of the address he sends them to?’

  ‘Well, I suppose it’ll be in the computer. But I wouldn’t be at liberty to divulge that information to you, unless you had some kind of official authorisation.’

  ‘Well, I can get that if I think it’s necessary, Mrs Macleod. But perhaps you might just remember. Off the top of your head, that is. Since he’s been in so often.’

  She glanced nervously towards the door. ‘We handle so much mail here, Mr Gunn, I really couldn’t say.’

  But he let it hang, and she became uncomfortable.

  ‘It was somewhere in Edinburgh, I remember that. Some kind of laboratory. But where, exactly, I really don’t remember.’

  Gunn nodded. ‘Mrs Macdonald told me he had a PO box here.’

  ‘Oh, did she?’ And something in Mrs Macleod’s tone told him that she would be having words with her old friend from Luskentyre.

  ‘So he has all his mail delivered here?’

  ‘No, no. Most of it goes to Dune Cottage with the postie. The mail that comes to his PO box is usually Special Delivery, too. From the laboratory he sends his packages to. Though he doesn’t always pick it up straight away.’

  ‘Is there anything waiting for him to pick up right now?’

  She gave him a look. ‘No, there is not, Mr Gunn. And even if there were, I’d need permission to let you see it.’ Then she relented a little. ‘He’s not had anything for about ten days or so.’

  Gunn reached into the inside pocket of his anorak and produced the photograph of the man whose body they had found on Eilean Mòr. ‘Have you ever seen this gentleman in here?’

  She lifted the reading glasses that hung on a chain around her neck and put them on to squint at it closely. But she shook her head. ‘No, Mr Gunn, he doesn’t look at all familiar to me.’

  *

  The bright early sunshine which had accompanied Gunn on his drive down from Stornoway was intermittent now as cumulus bubbled up from the south-west, blown in on a strengthening wind and casting more shadow than sunlight across the southern half of the island.

  Occasional rain spots spattered on his windscreen as he headed down through Northton and past the Seallam genealogy centre, to Leverburgh. But it didn’t come to anything, and was brighter when he reached the southern coastline and headed through the hills on the long straight road to Rodel.

  It was a long time since Gunn had been here. He had once brought his wife on a weekend drive from Stornoway, and they had eaten the most marvellous seafood in the Rodel Hotel. But he imagined it would only be a matter of weeks now before the hotel would shut down for the season, and the little harbour below it was quite deserted. Despite the absence of people, there were plenty of boats. Fishing boats and motor launches, a couple of sailing boats and a handful of rowing boats which had seen better days, all lined up side by side, nudging each other playfully on the incoming swell, pulling on ropes and creaking in the wind. Many more boats than Gunn remembered from his previous visit.

  He was about to walk up to the hotel when a voice called from the far side of the harbour. ‘Can I help you?’ Gunn turned to see a man walking round the quay towards him, and could only assume he had come from one of the boats, because there had been nobody there a moment ago. He wore heavy boots and yellow oilskin overtrousers, and an intricately patterned Eriskay jumper. His weathered face was young, but thinning hair aged him.

  Gunn showed him his warrant card. ‘That all depends,’ he said. ‘You are . . . ?’

  ‘Coinneach Macrae.’ He held out a hand to shake Gunn’s and very nearly crushed it. ‘I run a boat-charter business out of the harbour here.’

  ‘Ahhh,’ Gunn said. ‘Didn’t think there were this many boats last time I visited.’

  ‘It’s my first year at Rodel,’ Macrae said. ‘Used to be based at Leverburgh, but Rodel’s a bigger attraction for the tourists.’ He turned and ran his eye around the harbour. ‘Doesn’t come much prettier than this.’

  Gunn nodded. ‘Gone well, then, has it? Your first season.’

  Macrae’s shoulders rose and fell noncommittally. ‘Could have been worse. So what can I help you with, Detective Sergeant?’

  ‘I’m wondering if you know a fella called Neal Maclean.’

  ‘I do indeed.’

  ‘He keeps his boat here, I believe.’

  ‘He does that.’

  Gunn turned towards the boats tethered in the harbour. ‘And which is his?’

  ‘It’s not here.’

  Gunn frowned. ‘So where is it?’

  Macrae ran a hand back through what was left of sandy hair. ‘No idea. It’s all very odd, really.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Well . . . five, maybe six days ago, he went off to the Flannans, like he quite often does. But he never came back. His car sat parked over there in front of the hotel for a day or so. Then he shows up with a woman I’ve seen him with a few times. A Mrs Harrison.’ He crinkled blue eyes and turned them skywards, thinking hard. ‘Sally,’ he said suddenly. ‘That’s what he calls her. Anyway, they arrive in her car to get his, and he seems surprised that his boat’s not here.’ Macrae took in Gunn’s expression and laughed. ‘I know, I know. Sounds crazy. How would he not know his boat wasn’t here? Anyway, she jumps in with this cock and bull story about them having berthed it up at Uig, and he shuts up. I didn’t believe a word of it.’

  ‘So where do you think his boat is, then?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea, Mr Gunn. But he shows up here again the next day wanting to hire one of mine.’

  ‘And you hired him one?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I? He’s an experienced sailor, and he paid me in cash right there and then.’

  ‘So that would have been when? Two days ago?’

  ‘No . . .’ Macrae scratched his chin. ‘Must have been the day before that. I’ll have a record of it in the books.’

  ‘And did he say where he was going?’

  ‘Aye, the Flannans. I was a wee bit worried, because the weather was on the turn.’

  ‘But he brought it back?’

  ‘Oh, aye, he did. A few hours later. Looking like he’d seen a ghost, too. Face so white it was green. You know, like folk get when they’re seasick.’

  Gunn knew only too well.

  ‘Only, a man like him doesn’t get seasick, Mr Gunn. So I’ve no idea what his problem was. But he was in no mood for chit-chat, and he was off like a bat out of hell.’

  Gunn dug out his photograph of the dead man. ‘Ever seen this fella at all?’
<
br />   Macrae took it and examined it closely before handing it back. ‘Afraid not.’ He paused. ‘Is that the dead man, then?’

  Gunn scowled. ‘How do you know about that?’

  And Macrae grinned. ‘It’s a small island, Mr Gunn. You should know that better than anyone. It bothered me, you know, Mr Maclean’s story about taking his boat up to Uig. So I called Murray at Seatrek last night, just out of curiosity. Turns out Maclean’s boat’s not at Miavaig at all. And, of course, that’s when he told me all about taking you folk out to Eilean Mòr yesterday, and what it is you found there.’

  Gunn slipped the photo back into his inside pocket and breathed his annoyance. ‘Tell me, Mr Macrae, how would you get out to the Flannan Isles if you didn’t have a boat yourself?’

  Macrae pushed his hands deep into his pockets and sucked air in through his teeth. ‘There’s a few excursion operators that run trips out to St Kilda and the Flannans, Mr Gunn. One at Leverburgh, another at Tarbert, and then of course there’s Seatrek itself.’

  ‘Scotland The Brave’ began playing in Gunn’s pocket, and he fumbled to pull out his mobile. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, and turned to walk, swishing, away along the quay to take the call. It was the desk sergeant at Stornoway to say he had just dispatched a constable to Luskentyre with the search warrant from the Sheriff.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It is after three thirty when I drive off the ferry from Uig on to the ramp at Tarbert. Brightly coloured yellow railings guide the disembarking traffic on to the road that leads out of the town, past the Harris tweed shop. It is spitting rain, and my windscreen wipers smear it across the fly-spattered glass.

  It is hard to say that I am glad to be back, but this feels more like home to me than anywhere I went to in Edinburgh. Wherever I might truly belong, I have spent the last eighteen months of my life on this island, and so there is a sense, however illusory, of returning to the womb. Here, for better or worse, there are people who know me, or at least know me in the part I have been playing this last year and a half.

  But, during all the long hours of the drive back from Edinburgh, I have been wrestling with the concept that I have no name I can answer to. The only name I am known by is that of a dead man. Since I have no past, I am without a present. And without a present I have no future. It is a thought that has driven a wedge of depression deep into my consciousness, and I am falling into a trough of sheer despondency.