by Josh Lanyon
A man in his early thirties waited for them at the open back door; medium height and muscle-bound, with mid-brown, close-cropped hair and a well-trimmed beard. He eyed Calum’s uniform with obvious surprise, but he identified himself, in a lowlands accent, as Kevin Reid, the old man’s care assistant. He had the over-cheerful demeanor Calum associated with people who worked with the elderly and children, and which Julia refused to adopt as a matter of principle.
Kevin led them up a narrow hallway and in through a door on the right of the passageway.
The room they entered was large, but gloomy and muggy. Two small windows let in what light there was, and the walls were lined with painted tongue-and-groove wood. The whole room was yellow-brown, once-white walls and ceiling plaster stained by decades of tobacco and peat smoke. A small fire glowed meanly in an open hearth, and against one wall, toward the far corner, the door of a shotgun cabinet sat just ajar, like a provocation.
“How is he?” Angus asked.
“Quiet,” Kevin said. “Not that he’s usually chatty, but…” He shrugged and threw another curious glance at Calum. He didn’t seem to know about the old man’s loss. “It’s good he has visitors.”
The man sitting by the fire showed no indication he heard himself being discussed. And Calum barely heard it either.
The image was like a punch to his memory. Déjà vu, though he knew it was a trick of the mind.
The man wore a flat tweed cap, and beside him, a pipe sat smoking in a big glass ashtray. His face was seamed with age, but he sat stiffly upright, just like the man Calum saw in his mind’s eye.
Calum had just been five when his great-grandfather died. His memory was of the old man sitting in the same chair in his grandparents’ kitchen in the Old House every single day, stern and straight like this, with a pipe always in his mouth or by his hand, and his flat cap on his head. He’d been in his nineties too, and Calum had been terrified of him. But one day, when his grandparents were looking after him, Calum had contracted a stomach bug. His granny had given him lime cordial, and he’d associated the smell of it with sickness ever since. But his great-grandfather had risen from his chair and sat beside him, and Calum still had the sense memory of a hand, gnarled with age, stroking his hair. And the sound of his deep voice: “Tha thu ceart gu leòr, a’ Chalum.” You’re all right…
When he snapped back to himself, Angus had seated himself on a smaller chair beside his father-in-law, talking to him in rapid Gaelic. Calum caught the word poileas. Police. And then, “Tha fios agam air a phàrantan.” I know his parents.
He clenched his jaw in annoyance. “In English, Angus. Please.”
Both old men stilled and looked up at him. He took off his police hat and tucked it under his arm.
“Mr. Macaulay, I’m Inspector Calum Macleod of Western Isles Police Force,” he said. “And this”—he gestured with his head at Adam, standing just behind his shoulder—“is Adam Patterson from the British Museum. He’s an expert on the chessmen.”
The bodach’s gaze shot to Adam and stayed there.
“You need to talk to them, Uilleam.” Angus sounded and looked exhausted. “They’re saying the chess piece belongs to…to the country. Or the Crown. Not to the person who found it.”
“How’s Chrissie?” Uilleam asked, as if Angus hadn’t spoken.
Angus hung his head. “The doctor says…she’s not responding when they talk to her.”
Uilleam patted his shoulder.
“Even if the piece was passed down,” Adam said as he moved farther into the room, “I’m afraid there isn’t a time limit on treasure trove in Scotland.”
“Is that so?” Uilleam said. His gaze rose from Angus’s bent grey head to fix again on Adam. His eyes looked almost white in the dim light, as if they had no irises, but Calum realized they were a sharp, pale blue. The words Julia had used sprang to his mind. Overwhelming. Stubborn. And he’d bullied Tormod.
Adam said mildly, “It’s the law. Aimed to keep objects of cultural significance in the country.”
Uilleam’s lip curled. “What country?” His tone was so contemptuous, he may as well have spat on the floor. “I have no interest in any country, and they do not belong to any Crown.”
They.
Fuck.
Calum’s chest tightened with new tension. “The law is the law, sir, and if you have any information…”
“Spoken like a poileas,” Uilleam said. It wasn’t a compliment. “What my family has, is a trust which is unbroken. We have found nothing.”
“It’s your duty to tell us how you came to have that chess piece,” Calum countered. “Which is now evidence in a possible murder case.”
“That piece belongs with our family.”
“It makes no difference who found it,” Calum repeated. “It belongs to the Crown.”
Adam put in quickly, “Is that the only piece you found?”
Uilleam regarded them both like rude children.
“We thought the worst had come and gone with my great-grandfather. I should have known…when I did not have a son.” He scowled. “They were given by God, not found.”
He is gaga, Calum thought with weary certainty. But he said, with all the patience he could muster, “Would you like to explain?”
“No, I would not like to,” Uilleam snapped. “But it seems I must.” He let out a deep breath. It sounded like resignation. “The piece has been in the protection of our family since it came to the island.”
Adam threw Calum a quick, speaking glance, then looked away. “That was…most probably in the twelfth century,” he pointed out.
“Yes,” Uilleam said.
There was an uncertain silence. Calum had to fight not to roll his eyes, impatience rising in his chest like dread.
Calum’s grandmother had taken to seeing fairies everywhere, and accusing his mother of stealing her underwear. This was just more elaborate. Uilleam must have been a well-read man in his prime to weave all this in his head now, but Calum had no time to indulge him.
“Chan eil e air a bhith air a h-innse a-riamh roimhe ann am Beurla,” Uilleam said suddenly. It sounded like a formal declaration, and it defeated Calum’s basic Gaelic.
“Angus?” he gritted. Fuck, but it had been a huge misjudgment to come.
“He said, ‘It has never been told before in English,’” Angus replied, then muttered something in Gaelic to Uilleam, who snorted with disdain.
“Listen, then,” Uilleam said. “My forefather was on a great ship bound for Norway. A thrall and son of thralls, taken from Ireland to meet his fate. The pieces had been brought from Iceland to the court of a Norse lord.” Adam made a sound, but the old man ignored him. “He was taking them and his household back to his first home. But the ship foundered in a huge storm, and the lord and all on board perished. All except the Macaulay. He pulled himself onto the top of…of a table, which bore a chest. He did not know what it held, but inside it were the pieces. He washed ashore at Mealista beach.”
It sounded like a recitation. An oral legend learned and repeated, with the poetic formality of translated Gaelic.
“He was found close to death by a holy woman. One of the Cailleachan Dubha.”
“Old…black women?” Calum could translate that much.
“Nuns,” Adam said softly.
“Just that,” Uilleam agreed. “At the time there was a terrible plague in the land, and many were being cared for in their last hours by the woman and her fellows. But when the Macaulay was borne into their house with his treasure, the people began to heal. When the women and the Macaulay opened the chest, they found carvings of men bearing the mark of God. The holiest woman understood that they had been sent to the island with the Macaulay for a purpose, and here they must stay or pain and suffering would surely return. So the Macaulay remained. And for three centuries, his sons and their sons served the women, and the pieces were kept in a place of honor.”
A cheery knock broke the moment and Kevin pushed in, carrying a tatt
y tray covered with painted, varnished flowers and bearing four mugs and a plate of biscuits. He put it down on the table and straightened with a smile. Then he seemed to register the atmosphere.
“So,” he said uncertainly, “I’ll just… I’ll be off, then, William. Sorry again.”
Uilleam nodded. “That’s all right, Kevin. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
Kevin gave a wave of farewell. The door closed after him, to silence.
“He was a few minutes late,” Uilleam explained to Angus. “You’ll have to help yourselves.”
No one made a move to the tray. Uilleam gave a majestic nod and continued.
“The time came when the women’s house was overthrown. Their kind of religion cast to the winds.”
“The Reformation,” Adam said.
“They told the Macaulay to hide the carvings,” Uilleam went on. “To make sure they remained on this island, for the salvation of the people. And so it has been ever since. Eldest son to eldest son. Sgàire to Sgàire.”
“Sgàire?” Calum repeated. “There’s an old song isn’t there? ‘Calum Sgàire’?”
“It’s a song,” Uilleam said dismissively. “Sgàire is the name we all bear in memory. The name of the Macaulay. In English it has been made ‘Zachariah.’ But that’s not it.”
Zachariah was certainly not an island name.
Adam said, “But many of the pieces have been found.”
“When the holy women were cast out,” Uilleam said darkly, “the hoard was split into two smaller ones—easier to hide, and if the worst came, all would not be lost. And the worst did come. A Pennyroyal man found one hiding place…and then it was just as the holy woman had prophesied: the pieces were sent from the island, coveted and pawed and sold for coin, some lost to the four winds. And tragedy followed. The people were driven from the land. Mealista, and Pennyroyal, and villages like them, emptied of every soul. The very man who found and sold the pieces was exiled with the rest of his kin, never to see the shores of home. My great-grandfather watched it all, helpless, but he hid in the hills, starving and freezing, refusing to abandon his charge until it was safe to return, though all his people had gone. And here I am, in his wake. But…” His voice wavered, and for the first time, he sounded like an old man. “Now the next Macaulay is dead, and he had no sons.”
The room fell into thick silence. When Calum darted a look at Adam, he was staring at the bodach as if he’d turned to gold. Angus was crying.
Calum’s frustration burst into fury. That was the reason the old man mourned his grandson? That sad fairy tale? Julia had been absolutely right about him.
Stubborn. Implacable. Irrational.
The next Macaulay is dead.
“Your grandson was a Macdonald,” Calum pointed out.
Uilleam’s pale, watery eyes fixed on him. Grief hardened to contempt.
“You think I do not know how he was named, poileas? Tormod Sgàire Mhic Amhlaigh Mhic Dhomhaill.” Norman Zachariah Macaulay Macdonald. “He would have been next. But you say my boy betrayed his line.”
Angus made a sound of distress.
Calum clenched his teeth on the words that wanted to spew forth.
“So there are other chess pieces?” Adam asked. “Another set? Or more?” Uilleam’s stare was so flat, it could have passed for insolence. “You know where they are? But you won’t…show them?”
“I will not,” Uilleam snapped. “Even if the knowledge dies with me, at least they will remain here, and safe. And now you know there is nothing for you. You have no right to the queen piece. It’s been passed down my family as the symbol of their task. Which Crown can claim what has been our purpose for eight hundred years? They’ve stolen enough.”
“This is pointless,” Calum said to Adam. Then with cold, official politeness, “Thank you for your time, Mr. Macaulay.” He didn’t know who he felt more furious with—that baleful old man, or himself.
He didn’t wait for a reply he didn’t want to hear. He turned and made his way out of the house, letting the sharp, sane, sea wind cool the heat of his face. He put on his hat and pulled his phone from his pocket just as he heard movement behind him.
When he turned, Adam was standing just outside the open door, eyeing him as if he were a particularly obnoxious child. His hair blew wildly about his face in the Atlantic breeze. In the bright daylight, it had lighter streaks in it, the color of pale honey. Calum didn’t want to notice.
Adam said, “This needs some diplomacy, not—”
“This needs some fucking honesty,” Calum shot back. “Or have you really bought that bullshit? Whoever found that piece…him or his forefather…they’ve used it to feed this…family delusion. It makes them special. It keeps the eldest child tied here. Obedient.”
Adam frowned. “There were certain factors in that story that render it plausible.”
“Plausible? A magic chess set that saves the island from disaster?”
“That’s not the part—”
“You want that fairy tale he spun to be true!”
“Of course I want it to be true! Well, a bit of it. And I’m telling you there are valid reasons to take it seriously. Why won’t you listen?”
Calum paced and turned again. “I’m running a murder enquiry! This is a complete waste of time I don’t have.”
“And if I were someone else with expertise on the Uig chessmen, would you be sneering?”
Calum stilled. Would he?
Adam’s voice dropped to dangerous softness. “Or is it that you just can’t respect a poof?”
The word was like a bullet. Calum felt it hit home. He opened his mouth to utter an outraged denial, because it wasn’t true. But he could understand why Adam believed it. Once upon a time, he’d made Adam believe it.
Calum’s phone sounded in his hand like a half-time referee. There was a tight, furious knot of pain in his throat. But the name on the screen was a reminder of where he should be.
He choked out, “Inspector Macleod.”
“There’s been an incident, sir,” Willie John said. The apprehension in his tone was enough, even without the sound of a police siren wailing behind it.
“For fuck’s sake!” Calum spat. How many investigations had he run, and he’d never lost control of one like this. He closed his eyes and clawed back his temper. This wasn’t him. It felt as if everything was conspiring to erode his sense of control.
When he opened his eyes again, he fixed them on the everyday order of the peat stack; its herringbone neatness. “Tell me.”
“The sister and niece of the victim. Watch out, Alasdair!” Willie John yelled. “Sorry, sir. Joan and Julia Morrison. Their neighbor just called 999. We’re on our way.”
As if that wasn’t evident.
Calum’s chest was hollow.
This was his misjudgment. His stupidity. He should have been there instead of following this…glamorous fantasy, when the reality of the case was simple violence. But he’d known, hadn’t he, that Tormod’s death would pale, for his superiors or the press, next to the discovery of the chess piece.
And he’d allowed that to lead him away from murder.
Chapter Six
The journey back to Stornoway was conducted in tense silence.
Angus more or less shut down when Calum told him about the attack, as if he couldn’t take any more. Even Uilleam had the wind taken out of his sails. Adam climbed into the car without any further argument.
The road was single track most of the way, but the blue flashing light Calum stuck on the roof had oncoming drivers cowering into passing places to let them by. So they barely had to slow their headlong rush back to town.
Calum headed straight for the Western Isles Hospital, a sprawling, modern, two-story building set around a large car park. There were two police patrol cars idling outside the central reception area, and Willie John waited inside the glass doors. He was already moving as he began to speak to Calum.
“They’re in a private room, sir, with a couple of m
en outside as ordered.” They followed Willie through double doors into a generic corridor. “Mrs. Macdonald is in with them.”
Angus made an urgent sound behind Calum. “Chrissie’s awake!”
When Calum glanced around, he realized Adam had followed too, holding Angus’s arm to steady him.
“This morning,” Willie John said. “We took a statement from her first thing. They’re in here.”
He opened the door into a room containing two beds. One held Seonag. She’d already been extremely frail before this; now her face looked like a skull; her skin, the green-grey of a corpse. Her wheelchair sat by the window.
Chrissie lay in the other bed in a hospital gown, looking older than Calum had ever seen her. And in a chair by her mother’s bed, Julia, fully dressed and battle worn.
She had a burgeoning black eye and a split lip, her chignon had collapsed, but she stood gamely to greet them.
“This is bloody ridiculous,” she said, though her cut-glass voice trembled. “Like a Saturday night drama. Don’t they know they’re on Lewis?”
The tight ball of anxiety that had ground and scraped in Calum’s stomach since he’d heard about the attack began to shrink.
“What happened?” he asked.
“The doorbell rang,” she said. “And I opened the door without looking, like…” Like you did on Lewis. “Like an idiot. A man…a big man…pushed his way in. It was…” Her breathing shook. “He was wearing a black balaclava and…and surgical gloves. You don’t know how terrifying that is till you see it in real life.”
“What time?”
“About…half past nine.”
“What did he want?”
“Money,” Julia said. “Money we don’t have. He said we have a month to pay Uncle Tormod’s debt. And…” She touched her eye. “Mum was still in bed. He took me into her room and punched me a couple of times to show he meant business, and…I must have passed out. Mum couldn’t get up on her own…I think she thought I was dead. When I came to, I got our neighbor.”
Calum glanced at the bed. Seonag had her eyes closed, as if no one else was in the room. At the other bed, Angus huddled beside Chrissie, talking in whispered, urgent Gaelic.