Coffin Road (13 page)

She frowned. ‘He doesn’t look very well.’ Then shook her head. ‘No, I’ve never seen him before. And I’ve a good memory for faces.’

Gunn slipped it back in his pocket and handed her a dog-eared business card. ‘I’d be obliged, Mrs Macdonald, if you could give me a call when Mr Maclean gets back.’

She took the card and examined it carefully. ‘I knew a Gunn once. From South Uist, she was.’ She hesitated, pursing her lips slightly. ‘A Catholic.’ Though she didn’t ask, the question was in the eyes that she turned towards Gunn.

‘Church of Scotland,’ he said. And she nodded, apparently satisfied.

‘So what’s all this about, then?’ She glanced from one to the other. ‘Has he done something he shouldn’t?’

Gunn scratched his cheek, and fleetingly recalled Professor Wilson’s aspersions about his facial growth. ‘No, no, nothing like that, Mrs Macdonald. Routine stuff.’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t suppose that you would mind if we took a wee look around his house?’

She folded her arms, only too aware that he had just fobbed her off. ‘Well, you’d suppose wrong, Mr Gunn. It may be my house, but since Mr Maclean has it long-term it’s effectively his. You’ll have to get his permission if you want to go inside it.’

*

They stood on the road outside, with the wind whistling about them. Donnie pulled his cap low over his brow to stop it from blowing off, but Gunn had given up the unequal struggle to keep his hair in place and spoke animatedly into his mobile phone with tendrils of black hair waving about his head like the tentacles of a sea anemone. When he finished his call, he hung up and slipped the phone thoughtfully into his pocket. ‘I’ve asked them to get a search warrant from the Sheriff, but it might be a while. You’d best head on back to Tarbert, Donnie, and I’ll give you a call when we get the go-ahead.’

He watched Donnie’s blue and white wending its way past the cemetery along the single-track towards the main road, before turning and walking up the hill to the house with the glass front. There was a Volvo estate parked in the drive, and he walked up to the door of a porch that rose in a double pitch to the second floor like a two-storey conservatory. He rang the bell and turned to take in the view. A handful of small clouds raced across acres of blue, chasing their shadows over the sands below. On the far machair, he could see the Seilebost primary school, and wondered how it must have been to grow up and go to school in such a place. Though he imagined that generations of kids had probably taken it quite for granted, and only with the experience born of life and age would they have come to understand how privileged they had been.

He turned as the door opened to find himself looking at an attractive young woman with short dark hair. She cocked her head, eyes wide and quizzical, and smiled. ‘Hello. Can I help you?’

‘Detective Sergeant George Gunn,’ he said. ‘From Stornoway. I wonder if I might have a few words.’

‘Of course.’ She opened the door wide. ‘Come in, come in.’

He followed her through a hall flooded with light from the conservatory, and into a sitting room with a large picture window looking out across the bay. A young man was sitting smoking in an armchair by the fire, and he stood up, stubbing out his cigarette as they entered. He cast an inquiring look towards his wife, who shrugged and said, ‘Detective Sergeant Gunn would like to talk to us.’

The young man seemed startled. ‘Police? What could you possibly want to talk to us about?’

A chocolate Labrador, which had been stretched out in front of the fire, eased himself to his feet and came snuffling around Gunn’s legs. Gunn absently ruffled his head. ‘It was actually Neal Maclean I was looking for, but I hear he’s gone to the mainland.’

‘Yes,’ said the young woman. ‘We’re looking after Bran while he’s away.’

‘And you are Sally and Jon Harrison, is that correct?’

‘Yes,’ Jon said. ‘Is there a problem? Is Neal okay?’

‘As far as I know, sir. We’re just making some routine inquiries.’

‘About what?’ Sally, it seemed to Gunn, had paled a little.

‘We found a body on Eilean Mòr, out on the Flannan Isles, Mrs Harrison. And I understand Mr Maclean was a frequent visitor out there.’

Jon said, ‘Yes, he was. He’s writing a book.’ Then, ‘A body? Whose body?’

Gunn retrieved the photograph of the dead man and showed them it. ‘Do you know him?’ He watched carefully as they both took a good look but shook their heads, and he saw no sign of recognition in their eyes.

‘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 Post 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.’