The Blackhouse (30 page)

Fin saw that the golf course the mad potter had laboured so hard to create all those years before was drowning now amongst a sea of long grasses, neglected and left to grow wild. Eachan glanced up when his gate scraped across an overgrown path. His eyes narrowed quizzically as Fin approached. He was threading pottery windchimes to hang amongst the two dozen or more already lined up along the front of the cottage. The dull pitch of colourfully glazed terracotta pipes rattling in the wind filled the air around him. He looked Fin up and down. ‘Well, from the look of those shoes you’re wearing, lad, I’d say you were a policeman. Am I right?’

‘You’re not wrong, Eachan.’

Eachan cocked his head. ‘Do I know you?’ His Lancashire accent had never left him, even after all these years.

‘You did once. Whether you’ll remember me is another matter.’

Eachan looked hard into his face, and Fin imagined he could almost hear the wheels of his memory creaking and grinding. But he shook his head. ‘You’ll need to give me a hint.’

‘My aunt used to buy, shall we say, some of your more unusual pieces.’

Lights appeared in the old man’s eyes. ‘Iseabal Marr,’ he said. ‘Lived in the old whitehouse up by the harbour. Got me to make her those big pots in primary colours for her dried flowers, and she was the only local ever to buy one of my pairs of fucking pigs. An eccentric creature she was, right enough. God rest her soul.’ Fin thought it was rich, Eachan calling his aunt eccentric. ‘And you must be Fin Macleod. Jesus, lad, the last time I saw you was when I helped carry you from the
Purple Isle
the year old man Macinnes died on the rock.’

Fin felt his face redden, stinging as if from a slap. He’d had no idea that Eachan was one of the men who’d carried him from the boat that year. He had no recollection at all of the journey back from An Sgeir, or the ambulance dash across the moor to Stornoway. The first things he recalled were the starched white sheets of his hospital bed, and the concerned face of a young nurse hovering over him like an angel. He remembered thinking for a moment that he had died and gone to Heaven.

Eachan stood up and pumped his hand. ‘Good to see you, lad. How are you?’

‘I’m fine, Eachan.’

‘And what brings you back to Crobost?’

‘The murder of Angel Macritchie.’

Eachan’s bonhomie dropped quickly away, and he became suddenly wary. ‘I’ve already told the coppers everything I know about Macritchie.’ He turned abruptly and went into his cottage, a shambling figure in denim dungarees and a grubby-looking long-sleeved grampa shirt. Fin followed him inside. The cottage was one big room that served as workshop, showroom, living room, kitchen and dining room. Eachan lived, worked and sold his wares here. Every available space on every table and shelf was crowded with his pots and goblets and plates and figurines. Where there was no pottery, there were piles of dirty dishes and laundry. Hundreds of windchimes hung from the rafters. The kiln was in a lean-to out back, and he had an outside toilet in a broken-down shed in the garden. A dog slept on a settee that looked as if it doubled as Eachan’s bed, and smoke leaked from a small cast-iron stove where he burned his peats, misting the light that fell through crowded windows into the room.

‘I’m not here officially,’ Fin said. ‘And there’s only me and you to know what passes between us. All I’m interested in is the truth.’

Eachan lifted an almost empty whisky bottle from a shelf above the sink, swilled the tea leaves out of a dirty cup and poured himself a measure. ‘Very subjective thing, the truth. You want one?’ Fin shook his head and Eachan emptied the cup in a single draught. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Macritchie was supplying you with dope, right?’

Eachan’s eyes opened wide in amazement. ‘How do you know that?’

‘The Stornoway police suspected for some time that Macritchie was dealing dope. And everyone in the world, Eachan, knows that you enjoy the odd spliff or three.’

Eachan’s eyes opened wider. ‘They do? I mean, even the police?’

‘Even the police.’

‘So how come I never got arrested?’

‘Because there are bigger fish to fry than you, Eachan.’

‘Jesus.’ Eachan sat down abruptly on a stool, as if the knowledge that everyone knew, and had always known, that he smoked dope took away all the illicit fun of it. Then he looked up at Fin, suddenly alarmed. ‘You think that gives me a motive for killing him?’

Fin almost laughed. ‘No, Eachan, I think it gives you a motive for lying for him.’

The old man frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The Donna Murray rape. The animal rights activist that he beat up right on your doorstep.’

‘Aw, now, wait a minute.’ Eachan’s voice rose in pitch. ‘Right. Okay. I admit it. Big Angel kicked the living shit out of that lad. I saw him do it, right on my doorstep, just like you said. But a lot of other people saw it, too. And I might have felt sorry for the boy, but he was asking for it. There was nobody in Crobost who’d have grassed on Angel for that.’ He poured the dregs of the whisky bottle into his cup with a shaking hand. ‘But that wee Donna Murray, she was just telling lies.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because I went up to the Social that night for a pint before closing time, and I saw her coming out into the car park and then heading up the road.’ He knocked back his whisky.

‘Did she see you?’

‘No, I don’t think she did. She seemed right preoccupied. I was on the other side of the road, and that street light up there’s been out for months.’

‘And?’

‘And then I saw Angel coming out. Or should I say staggering out. Man, he was pissed. Even if he’d had the inclination he’d never have had the wherewithal. The cold air hit him like a bloody sledgehammer and he threw up all over the pavement. I gave him a wide berth, I can tell you. I didn’t want him to see me. He could be bloody aggressive when he’d had a drink in him. So I stood in the pool of darkness by the street light that doesn’t work and watched him for a couple of minutes. He leaned against the wall, getting his breath back, and then he wobbled off down the road towards his house. The opposite direction from Donna Murray. And I went and had my pint.’

‘You didn’t see anyone else out there?’

‘Nope. Not a soul.’

Fin was thoughtful. ‘So why do you think she accused him of raping her?’

‘How the hell should I know? Does it matter? He’s dead now. Doesn’t make any difference.’

But somehow Fin thought that it might. ‘Thanks, Eachan. I appreciate your frankness.’ He moved away towards the door.

‘So what really happened out on the rock that year, then?’ Eachan had lowered his voice again, but it couldn’t have had more impact if he had shouted.

Fin stopped and turned in the doorway. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, everyone said it was an accident. But nobody ever talked about it. Not in all the years since. Not even Angel, and he couldn’t keep a secret for five minutes.’

‘That’s because there was no secret to keep. I fell on the cliff. Mr Macinnes saved my life and lost his own in the process.’

But Eachan just shook his head. ‘No. I was there, remember, when the boat came in. There was more to it than that. I’ve never known so many men say so little about so much in my life.’ He squinted through the gloom at Fin and took a few unsteady steps towards him. ‘Go on, you can tell me. There’s only me and you here to know what passes between us.’ There was something unpleasant in his smile.

Fin said, ‘You any idea where Calum Macdonald lives?’

Eachan frowned, disconcerted by the sudden change of subject. ‘Calum Macdonald?’

‘He’s about my age. We were at school together. I think he works a loom these days.’

‘The cripple?’

‘That’s him.’

‘Squirrel, they call him.’

‘Do they? Why?’

‘I’ve no idea. He’s in the pebbledash cottage at the top of the hill. The last one in the village, on the right.’ Eachan paused. ‘What’s he got to do with what happened on An Sgeir?’

‘Nothing,’ Fin said. ‘I just want to look up an old friend.’ And he turned and ducked through the windchimes out into a freshening north wind.

III

Calum Macdonald’s pebbledash bungalow sat amongst a cluster of three houses just over the brow of the hill. When Fin was last in Crobost it had been semi-derelict, an old single-storey, tin-roofed whitehouse left to rot. Someone had spent a lot of money on it since then. A new roof, double-glazing, a kitchen extension built on the back. There was a walled garden, the wall sprayed with the same pebbledash as the house. And someone had spent a lot of time taming the wilderness, laying lawns and planting flowerbeds. Fin knew that there had been some kind of compensation paid, although no amount of money could compensate for a lifetime in a wheelchair. He assumed that the money had gone on the house, or that at least a part of it had.

Calum’s mother had been widowed before Calum was born – another fatality at sea – and the two of them had lived in a row of council houses near the school. Fin knew that Calum had never told her about the bullying, or about what happened the night he broke his back. They had all lived in terror of what would happen when the full story came out. But it never did. Like everything else in his life, his fears, his dreams, his secret desires, Calum kept it to himself, and the expected storm never broke.

Fin parked by the gate and walked up the pavings to the kitchen door. There was a ramp there in place of a step. He knocked and waited. There were two houses behind Calum’s, and a large breezeblock garage with rust-red doors. An overgrown yard was littered with the remains of cannibalized tractors and broken-down trailers. A stark contrast with the neat and tidy garden on this side of the wall. Fin turned, as the door opened, to find an elderly woman standing at the top of the ramp. She was wearing a print apron over a woollen jumper and tweed skirt. When he had last seen Calum’s mother her hair had been the purest black. Now it was the purest white. But it was carefully arranged in soft curls around a face almost as colourless, a face scarred by a tracery of fine criss-crossing wrinkles. Her eyes were a pale, watery blue, and they peered at him without recognition. Fin was almost startled to see her. He could never quite get used to the fact that people his age had parents who were still alive.

‘Mrs Macdonald?’

She frowned, wondering if she should know him. ‘Aye.’

‘It’s Fin Macleod. I used to live up near the harbour with my aunt. I was at school with Calum.’

The frown faded, but there was no smile. Her mouth set itself in a hard line. ‘Oh,’ she said.

Fin shuffled awkwardly. ‘I wondered if it might be possible to see him.’

‘Well, you’ve taken your time coming, haven’t you?’ Her voice was hard, the Gaelic giving it a steely edge. It also had the rasp of an inveterate smoker. ‘It’s almost twenty years since Calum broke his back, and none of you even had the decency to visit. Except for Angel, poor boy.’

Fin was torn between guilt and curiosity. ‘Angel came to see Calum?’

‘Aye, every week. Regular as clockwork.’ She paused to draw a wheezing breath. ‘But he’ll not be coming any more, will he?’

Fin stood for a moment, uncertain how to respond, before deciding there was no adequate response he could make. ‘Is Calum there?’ He looked beyond her into the house.

‘No, he’s not. He’s working.’

‘Where can I find him, then?’

‘In the shed, round the other side of the house. Angel built it for the loom.’ She took a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of her apron and lit one. ‘You’ll hear it when you go round. Just knock.’ She blew out a cloud of smoke and closed the door in his face.

Fin followed the path around the bungalow. The paving stones had been carefully laid and cemented to smooth out the passage for the wheelchair, and Fin wondered if Angel had been responsible for that, too. He ducked under a clothesline heavy with washing blowing in the wind, and saw the shed in the lee of the house. It was a simple breezeblock structure, harled to protect it from the rain, and had a steeply pitched tin roof. There was a window in each face, and a door facing out to a hump of peatstack and the moor beyond. Sunlight reflected in momentary flashes on fragments of water gathered in all its hollows.

As he approached the door he heard the rhythmical clacking of the loom, the turning of wheels turning wheels, sending wooden shuttles shooting back and forth across lines of spun wool almost faster than the eye could see. When he’d been a boy, it was nearly impossible to walk down any street in Ness without hearing a loom in action somewhere, in someone’s shed or garage. Fin had always wondered why tweed woven on Lewis was called Harris Tweed. Whatever it was called, its weavers had never made much money at it. Harris Tweed was not Harris Tweed unless woven by hand, and at one time islanders had laboured at home in their thousands to produce the stuff. The mills in Stornoway paid them a pittance for it before selling it on to markets in Europe and America for a handsome profit. But now the bottom had fallen out of those markets, tweed replaced by more fashionable fabrics, and only a handful of weavers remained, still earning a pittance.

Fin raised his hand to knock on the door and hesitated, closing his eyes, and feeling again a surge of the guilt that had haunted him through all the years since it happened. For just a moment he wondered if Calum would remember him, before dismissing the thought as foolish. Of course he would remember. How could he forget?

THIRTEEN

It might seem like stating the obvious, but the Lews Castle School in those days was in Lews Castle. Many of the students and staff lodged at the school, in accommodation created amidst the castle’s rabbit warren of corridors and landings. I only mention it, because the year that Calum and I climbed up on the roof was the last year that the school was actually in the castle. The building was in a poor state of repair and deteriorating fast, and the education authority couldn’t afford the upkeep. So the school moved elsewhere, even though it was still called the Lews Castle School.

Oddly enough, the place it moved to was the Gibson Hostel in Ripley Place, where I lodged during my first year at the Nicholson, which was my third year of secondary school.