Footsteps in the Dark

by Josh Lanyon

  Calum closed the message wearily. He didn’t know why he kept reading them other than self-punishment, before the punchline finally came. Except…maybe he wanted to know what happened to the main character in this cautionary tale. The thing was, the sender didn’t seem to understand that Calum couldn’t go for the happy ending either.

  He studied Adam’s sleeping face again; drank in every aspect. Saving it up for when he needed it. Except he was going to have to try again to forget.

  He should go. But he couldn’t bear to just creep away. He couldn’t bear to leave at all.

  He raised his phone again to check the rest of his messages when a word in the list of emails skimmed the edge of his attention.

  Chessmen.

  He looked closer. It was one of the multiple newspaper notifications he’d set up to make sure he was on top of events. A tabloid. The Sun.

  A gap of apprehension opened in his chest.

  He clicked on the email.

  NEW LEWIS CHESSMAN FOUND AT ISLAND MURDER SCENE

  He stared at the screen as if a snake had appeared in his hand.

  He would suspect a leak at the station, except no one knew he’d found the chess piece at the scene other than Adam, Calum’s mum and dad, and Tormod’s parents and grandfather, none of whom were likely to call a tabloid. No one else knew. Not the rest of Calum’s team. Not his boss.

  He was totally fucked.

  His hand shook slightly as he clicked on to the newspaper website, and it got worse.

  Tormod was named as the murder victim, even though, until his postmortem confirmed it, the police were still publicly classing him as a “sudden death.” The story played up the fact that it was only the third murder on the island in fifty years, and the discovery of a new Lewis chess piece at the scene. Even worse, it reported rumors that the family of the victim had possession of many more chess pieces of unknown value. And then Calum finally registered something else: the article was illustrated with photographs of the new piece.

  He sat upright in bed as if someone had shoved a knife into his back.

  It was exactly what he’d joked about wanting for Kevin—a finger pointing at the culprit. A smoking gun.

  They were the same photographs Tormod had sent to Adam. No one else but Adam had them except, perhaps, Adam’s PR-savvy boss. But he wouldn’t know the piece was genuine, or its place in the murder.

  Unless Adam had told him after all, no matter what it meant for Calum. The pain of betrayal was stupidly agonizing.

  “Cal?” Adam murmured. “Is something wrong?”

  “For me…yeah. You could say.” He threw back the bedclothes and scrambled upright. His arse ached. He felt utterly disgusted with himself, and his heart was ready to break. “For you…well, maybe you and your boss have managed to force Uilleam’s hand.”

  “What?” Adam looked commendably bewildered.

  But what the fuck else should Calum have expected, with stakes like this? Why would Adam risk holding back on a find that could transform his own and his boss’s careers, especially if they could get Uilleam to surrender a whole new collection of chessmen? Calum had blindly trusted the word of the boy he’d known at uni. But he didn’t know the man he’d just given his body to, bared his soul to.

  “You can stop,” he snapped. “It’s in the fucking Sun.” He pulled on his clothes, crumpled from lying on the floor after their removal the night before. Adam was tapping at his phone, looking perplexed, until he fixed on the screen and read. He looked up as Calum was tying his shoelaces.

  “This wasn’t me.”

  “Then you told your boss.” Though you knew what he’d do.

  “I didn’t tell anyone!” Adam shouted.

  Calum’s phone began to ring as he pulled on his jacket.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. It would be Martin, ready to cut off his balls.

  “Cal!”

  Calum paused at the door, his back to Adam, but he shook his head and slammed out of the room before he answered the call.

  It was Willie John. A reprieve of sorts. But he’d let him down as well.

  The case had stripped Calum of every good copper’s instinct he had.

  “I don’t know if you got my messages, sir,” Willie John said. And, heroically, he didn’t launch into the story in the Sun, or the chess piece, or Calum’s decision not to tell his own team about it. “Kevin Reid has form. He served twenty months for assault and demanding money with menaces. I got the Council’s human resources woman out of bed.” On a Sunday too. Willie John was unstoppable. Calum kept walking until he reached the stairs, trotted down them fast, listening. “She said he declared his convictions and he’s been an exemplary employee.”

  Until, perhaps, unprecedented temptation was placed right under his nose.

  “We’ve also had, uh…a few calls from the press,” Willie said at last, with classic understatement. “I declined to comment. Or confirm anything other than a sudden death.”

  Calum sighed. The hotel reception was thankfully empty as he passed the desk. “Thanks, Willie John.” He hesitated, but what could he say in mitigation? He had evidence from a murder scene in his desk drawer rather than the evidence locker. “I’ve been trying to explore a…delicate line of inquiry.”

  “Yes, sir,” Willie John said staunchly. “That’s understandable. Something like that would overwhelm every other avenue we could look at. Um…Chief Inspector Martin’s been trying to get hold of you, sir,” he finished with unusual delicacy. “Just to let you know.”

  Calum closed his eyes briefly, but Willie John’s loyalty was steadying him. Willie John, at least, still had faith.

  The phone rang again immediately as Calum was pushing out through the hotel’s revolving glass door, into Sunday daylight.

  It was shaping up to be a beautiful day.

  Well, fuck that.

  There was no reprieve this time.

  Chief Inspector Martin, all the way from Seattle.

  “Is it true?” No preamble.

  Calum didn’t even try to play dumb. “Yes, sir.”

  There was a short pause before detonation.

  “What in all hell do you think you’re up to, Macleod?” Martin howled. “I’ve had Craig Campbell on to me for half an hour. Do you know who he is? He’s a bastard, that’s who he is! The bastard who’s arriving from Inverness tomorrow, as SIO on our case. I worked with him in Edinburgh, and by God, he loved getting the chance to accuse my officers of unprofessionalism! Destroying his case! Boxing above their weight! For God’s sake, man, why didn’t you say anything? A new Lewis chessman at the scene, and you don’t even mention it?”

  “Sir,” Calum said. At least he’d always had the ability to remain calm when cornered. “With respect, I found a chess piece in a plastic shopping bag at the scene. A relative of the victim claimed it was a new piece, but that was obviously hard to believe. I had to get it verified before the circus came to town and swamped the investigation for nothing.”

  He could hear Martin trying to calm down on the other end of the line.

  “And?” he sounded as if he half wanted, and was half unwilling, to be mollified. “Please tell me it’s a copy.”

  “An expert on the chessmen from the British Museum is in Stornoway, and I’m afraid he thinks it’s genuine.”

  “An expert?” Martin exploded again. “And that’s a coincidence, is it?”

  “No, sir. We have reason to believe the victim, Norman Macdonald, contacted him with a view to selling the piece. His grandfather in Uig claims the location of more hidden pieces has been known to particular family members for generations.” Martin groaned in despair. “But the queen piece is the only one not hidden. He says they’ve been passing it down. Since, um…he says since the twelfth century.”

  “Dear God.” Martin was a religious man, not usually prone to taking the Lord’s name in vain. But Calum had driven him to it.

  “At the moment I have two lines of inquiry,” Calum slogged on. “One is the thr
eats from whoever lent the victim money and possibly sent muscle to attack the victim’s sister and niece. The other is the grandfather’s care assistant. He has a record involving violence and theft. If the old man started to ramble and said anything to him about having those pieces, he could have decided to try to get ahold of the queen for a start. Except, Tormod…the victim walked in on him. The killer can’t have known the piece was in the carrier bag.”

  There was a long, long pause. “All right,” Martin said at last. “That sounds…plausible. I was told when you came that you’re a lone wolf, Macleod. But I do not appreciate being kept in the dark. I’m your superior officer.”

  “Yes, sir,” Calum said meekly.

  “I even agree with your call on the chess piece. I suppose. Except, I should have been the one to make it. Did you think I was going to call a press conference, man?”

  “No, sir.” But clearly, deep down, he had. “I…apologize. I should have told you immediately.”

  Martin made a harrumphing sound. “Twenty minutes of Campbell gloating and accusing is enough to strain anyone’s powers of forgiveness. You leave it here, Calum.”

  At least he was Calum again, he thought, before the sense hit home.

  “Sir?”

  “You leave it to him from this point. DCI Campbell’s arriving on tomorrow morning’s ferry with his team and the pathologist. And probably half the world’s press, but that’s his problem.”

  “But I still have a day—”

  “Leave it, Calum. We do not want to wade any deeper into this fiasco. Anything that arises from your existing lines of inquiry goes to Campbell from this point. That’s what he’s demanded, and much as I hate to say it, he’s right. You’ve done exceptionally well with the limited resources you had, so Campbell has live lines to pick up. That saves our face. But now you back away. This is too big even for Campbell, he just doesn’t realize it yet. Take the day off. It’s Sunday. Go to church. Go for a bloody walk, man. But let it go.”

  Calum walked to the station, picked up his car, and then drove home, all in a haze of frustrated, furious disbelief.

  He was relieved beyond measure to see that his parents were out when he got there—at church, of course, and Shep greeted him as always, as if he’d been away to war, but that unconditional adoration did nothing to lift his mood.

  Loss. Anger. Humiliation. Despair. Pain.

  He took a shower and changed into jeans and a thick jumper, then, on furious impulse checked his emails.

  There it was. “For Calum 7.”

  …I think what I feel is something like relief, but it’s been so…

  Calum archived it without reading any more.

  ***

  The sun blazed in a hot blue sky all the way to Uig. Calum drove fast along the Atlantic coast, up toward Mealista, passing bays that looked turquoise and then malachite in the sunlight, with pale sand setting them off like some scene from the Caribbean. And scattered over the sands, spectacular striated boulders of Lewisian gneiss, one of the oldest rocks in the world. In the right weather, Uig beaches were matchless, unless you tried to go into the water.

  Maybe Uilleam didn’t know what had happened yet.

  That was why Calum had come.

  He still stood a chance of getting there first.

  Once, he’d have been safe until tomorrow. As it was, almost every shop on the island was shut because of Sunday observance. Ferries and planes on Sundays were relatively recent developments. In fact, Calum had been eighteen, in Glasgow, when he first read a Sunday newspaper on a Sunday, rather than on Monday when they arrived in the newsagents shops in town.

  But there were now a scattering of tiny outlets which managed to get ahold of the few copies flown in. And there was radio and TV and the Internet. The story may be slowed down because it broke on Sunday, but it would be seeping out already. Calum couldn’t see Uilleam as someone who got his news online, but he had to try to reach him before anyone else did. To explain. Not that he really could. It wasn’t going to be an easy interview.

  His hopes plummeted when he drove up the narrow road toward Uilleam’s house. There were three cars outside. The same black Fiesta he assumed was Kevin’s; a Mini that looked like Julia’s, and another he didn’t know. He could only hope the press hadn’t found Uilleam already.

  Kevin opened the door to his knock. He looked less than pleased to see him.

  “You people…” he muttered darkly, though he stepped aside to let Calum into the back porch. “You tell the bloody Sun before you tell the community that Norman was murdered.”

  “We didn’t tell the press,” Calum gritted. He sure as hell wasn’t going to be talked down to by a suspected murderer. “And it’s still an unexplained sudden death.”

  “Well, Julia’s just arrived, and she’s furious,” Kevin said with satisfaction. “Your partner in crime’s been here more than half an hour.” Another police officer was here? Fuck! “Much good it’s done him. William hasn’t said a word to anyone since I told him. It’s just as well I got here first.”

  “Isn’t it just?” Calum said coldly.

  Kevin narrowed his eyes. “They’re in the living room. I’m making tea.”

  He stomped off along the corridor and disappeared into a room on the left. Calum followed the sound of muffled shouting to the closed door of the room in which he’d last talked with Uilleam.

  “And you think you can browbeat an old man into just handing everything he values over? After doing that?” Julia.

  “…do anything.” A much quieter male voice, trying to calm things down.

  Calum opened the door.

  The first person he saw was Adam, sitting at the wooden table.

  Calum froze for a beat, then walked inside and closed the door behind him.

  He should be relieved it wasn’t one of his colleagues and he hadn’t been caught in what might look like meddling in a case from which he’d been officially removed.

  But he didn’t feel relief. Adam had come here, unrepentant, hustling in to position himself, whatever might have happened to Calum as a result of the article.

  Adam stared at him, startled. Calum looked away.

  Uilleam sat in the same chair as before, still sternly upright, looking into the glowing peat fire—exactly the same, and yet, an entirely different man. His defiance, his sharp purpose were gone. He looked unaware…as if he’d left his body behind, sitting there in that chair.

  Beside him, Julia stood like an avenging harpy, defying all comers. She had dressed, haphazardly for her, in a navy-blue fleece and ripped jeans, and her bruised face was twisted with emotion. Calum could easily identify it as outrage.

  “And what the hell are you doing here?” she shouted at Calum. “Both of you—get out and leave us alone! You lie to me! You throw my family to the wolves! And then you turn up to pick at the carcass? Leave!”

  “We didn’t talk to the press!” Adam snapped before Calum could open his mouth.

  “Then how did they have the photos Tormod sent you? You did it to try to force Seanair Uilleam into the open, to give you what you want.”

  Calum held his impassive mask in place.

  Rationally, now that the first shock of betrayal was past, he couldn’t even blame Adam, really. He’d been sent on a mission by his boss to find out about the chess piece. And there were those laws of treasure trove he’d repeatedly warned Calum and Uilleam about, laws that Calum shouldn’t have expected a professional in Adam’s position to ignore.

  Calum was Adam’s distant past. How could Calum have expected him to put his career on the line for an ex-lover, and one who’d wounded him badly? Even when that ex-lover had become a one-night stand.

  The truth was, Calum had no one to blame but himself for letting his resolve soften. And now, remembering all the vulnerability he’d revealed, humiliation was a lash that shriveled his stomach and scattered his thoughts.

  He forced his focus back to Julia. He’d have more than enough time to take out his
regret and smear it over himself later. First, he needed to sort this out. And something had started to nag at him, like incipient toothache.

  “I came to try to talk to William about his options now,” Adam said. “That’s all.”

  “Oh, really?” Julia sneered. Strands of shining dark hair had come loose from her chignon, and along with her bruised mouth and blackened eye, it added to the impression of violent rage. “And what’s your advice, Adam, now you’ve forced his hand? Just…give you my family’s whole purpose? What?” she barked at Calum.

  Calum blinked. Her righteous fury was actually unnerving, because they’d never fallen out before. He’d never seen Julia angry.

  “You know what your great-grandfather is claiming, then?” he tried.

  “You mean my family’s eight-century history with the chessmen? Yes! I do! If Tormod hadn’t died, I’d never have been the wiser, of course, but Granny finally told Mum and me. Just in time to stop you rolling over all of us.”

  Adam said, “I told Uilleam that he can negotiate to—”

  “Negotiate? Look at him! You think he can negotiate with snakes like you? You’d do what you’re planning to do with the queen piece. If he ever showed you the rest, you’d take them away.”

  And Calum thought, She’s right. But at least the family now had a serious defender against the forces they were about to face.