The Chessmen (11 page)

Later, when I reflected on Whistler’s words, I thought that if that were the case then John Finlay Macleod must have felt responsible for an awful lot of lives. And when my mind drifts back to the first day we learned about the
Iolaire
, I often wonder who that old man was, and how he’d known exactly who we were.

The sound of the wind outside barely disturbed the silence in Whistler’s crofthouse.

Fin said, ‘Your dad’s great-grandfather saved my grandfather’s life in the
Iolaire
disaster.’

Anna frowned.

‘It was a ship bringing island men home at the end of the First World War. It sank on a stormy night just outside Stornoway harbour and two hundred and five men lost their lives.’

‘Jesus.’ Her voice was reduced to a whisper.

‘Your dad figured that saving a life makes you responsible for it, and that the responsibility passes down the generations.’

Her smile verged on the incredulous. ‘So he took on responsibility for you and your life?’

‘He did. And saved it, too, not that long after.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Another time.’

‘Who says there’ll be another time?’

‘Maybe there won’t.’ Fin paused. ‘What are you doing here, Anna?’

And now it was her turn to avoid his eye. She looked away towards the remains of the long-spent peat fire.

‘Did you come to see your dad?’

‘No!’ Her denial was fierce and immediate. ‘I only come when I know he’s out.’

‘Why?’

She turned eyes like hot coals back on him. And he could see the conflict in her face. Why should she tell him? She had her own reasons. Personal ones. It was none of his damned business. And yet he had answered her questions, and told her personal things that had caused him pain. ‘I spent the first half of my life in this house. With my mum and my dad. I have . . . I have happy memories. Sometimes, if I just sit here and close my eyes, I’m back there again. Just for a moment. But that can be enough, you know. When life’s shit.’ She sucked on the rings in her lower lip. ‘I loved my mum. I miss her.’

‘And your dad?’

‘What about him?’

‘Do you love him, too?’

‘You must be joking. He’s a pure fucking embarrassment. I hate him!’

‘Which is just another way of saying you love him.’

Her face screwed up in disbelief. ‘Crap!’

‘Is it? If you feel so strongly about him that you claim to hate him, it’s almost certainly only because you love him and hate to admit it.’

Scorn was etched into every crease in her face. ‘Bull. Shit.’ When he said nothing he saw her certainty wavering, and
she fought to recover her resolution. ‘Like you’d have told your parents at my age that you loved them.’

Fin said, ‘My parents were killed in a car crash when I was very young. I’d have given anything in the world to be able to tell them I loved them.’

She turned wide appraising eyes in his direction. For the second time in the short period that they had been talking, he had told her things about himself at obvious personal cost. Perhaps she was wondering why. Perhaps she was thinking that talking about your inner feelings was easier with a stranger. No embarrassment in it. No judgements made. ‘I’d rather be with my dad than with Kenny.’ She took a moment to digest this admission herself. ‘Nothing against Kenny. He’s a good guy, and my mum loved him I think.’ She paused. ‘But he’s not my dad.’ She sighed deeply and shook her head in frustration. ‘If only he wasn’t such a total fucking shit-head!’

If a vehicle had drawn up outside, then neither of them had been aware of it, so they were both startled by the knock on the door, and the appearance silhouetted in the frame of it of a young woman in her thirties.

She was not unattractive, with shoulder-length blonde hair, blown and tangled by the wind. She wore pressed black trousers and a white blouse beneath an open grey anorak, and held a leather briefcase in her hand. Fin stood up.

‘Mr Macaskill?’ She blinked as her eyes grew accustomed to the light, or the lack of it.

‘Who wants to know?’

‘My name’s Margaret Stewart.’ She stepped in and leaned forward to shake his hand, and appeared a little nervous, eyes darting away towards Anna and back again. ‘I’m from the social work department in Stornoway. I’m compiling a background report for the Sheriff. Macaskill versus Maclean for the custody of young Anna Macaskill.’

Fin raised an eyebrow and turned his head towards Anna. ‘You’ve not met, then?’

Margaret frowned. ‘You’re Anna?’

‘Is there someone else here?’ Anna’s truculence had returned.

The social worker seemed confused. ‘I thought you and your father didn’t get on.’

‘Who told you that?’ Fin said sharply.

Now she was embarrassed. ‘I’m not at liberty to say.’

‘Well why don’t you ask the girl herself? Presumably you’ll be interviewing her anyway.’ Both he and Margaret turned their heads towards Anna, whose defiant facade was suddenly less impregnable. She stuck out her lower jaw and glared at them both. Fin caught her eye and raised his eyebrow an eighth of an inch. But still she hesitated, until the silence became almost embarrassing.

Then finally she blurted, ‘I fucking love my dad. Okay? Why else would I be here?’

In the ensuing silence, with only the sound of the wind whistling around outside the house, the social worker appeared entirely discomposed. It was clearly not what she had been expecting. She recovered a little of her composure
and looked at Fin. ‘Perhaps, Mr Macaskill, we could make an appointment for a private interview?’

Fin said, ‘I’m sure John Angus would be happy to meet with you, Mrs Stewart. But you’ll have to ask him.’

Her face flushed red with embarrassment. ‘Oh. I thought . . .’ She paused. ‘You’re not Mr Macaskill?’

Fin smiled. ‘Let’s start over, shall we?’ He offered her his hand once more, and she took it uncertainly. ‘My name’s Fin Macleod. Ex-CID, Lothian and Borders police. Now head of security here on the estate. I live in Ness, and I’m one of John Angus Macaskill’s oldest friends. So if you’re looking for a character reference, I’ll be more than happy to give you one.’

Evening was wearing on by the time Fin got back to Ness. Having failed to find Whistler, the worry of his disappearance was starting to gnaw at him.

The lull in the wake of the storm was over. The sunshine respite of this single day was already spent, and legions of dark clouds were assembling out on the western horizon, where the last dazzle of the dying sun spilled its gold on distant waters. A gale was getting up, blowing through the heather like wind on water.

He turned his Suzuki off the main road at the Crobost Stores, and climbed the hill towards the bend in the road. The land fell away to his left, to the cliffs that dropped to the crescent of beach below. The Crobost Free Church rose darkly against the sky to his right, stark and unadorned. As he reached the turn-off to it, he could see Marsaili’s car on the road ahead, parked on the gravel above the bungalow. He had called her to let her know that he was all right, but she knew nothing of the discovery of the plane. That could wait.

He took the turn up towards the church instead, and rattled over the cattle grid into a parking area where neatly
painted white lines guided the faithful into orderly rows like so many drive-in pews. There was a solitary car parked at the foot of the steps leading up to the manse, and he saw Donald’s wife making her way down towards it bumping a large case from step to step.

She wore jeans and a knitted jumper, her coat hanging open, a satchel dangling from her shoulder. She reached the foot of the steps as Fin drew in beside her car. Her glance towards him was fleeting, a flick of auburn hair to get it out of her face, and she turned to open up the boot. By the time Fin got around to the back of her car she already had the suitcase inside it. Her face was flushed from the exertion, and perhaps embarrassment. She was reluctant to meet Fin’s eye.

‘Going somewhere, Catriona?’

She brushed past him and walked around to the driver’s door. She opened it, and turned to face him with something like defiance in her stance. ‘I’m moving in with my parents.’ And then added, like an afterthought that might bring mitigation, ‘Until all this gets sorted out.’

Fin frowned disingenuously. ‘All what?’

‘Oh, come on! You know perfectly well.’

‘Maybe you should tell me.’ He was playing quite deliberately on her guilt.

‘You have no idea how humiliating this is.’

Fin said, ‘You’re humiliated because your husband’s in trouble for saving your daughter’s life?’

She gave him a look so filled with pain and anger that he almost recoiled from it. ‘There is another minister preaching
in our church. They let us stay in the manse, but we’re like lepers. No one comes near. No one wants to be seen talking to us. There are those who want Donald gone. And those who don’t are too frightened to stand up and say so.’

‘All the more reason, then, for you to stand by him. For better or worse. Isn’t that the vow you made when you married him?’

Her lip curled with contempt. ‘You hypocrite! You stand there and judge me? A man who walked out on his wife a month after his son died in a hit-and-run. The very time she probably needed him most. What about
your
vows?’

Fin felt the colour rise on his face, just as if she had slapped him on both cheeks. He saw, perhaps, regret in her eyes at hurtful words spoken in anger. But it was too late to take them back. She slipped into the driver’s seat and pulled the door shut.

The engine coughed into the fading evening light, and Catriona’s car clattered away across the cattle grid. Fin watched it go, and depression descended on him like the night.

He stood for a long time, then, before climbing the steps wearily to the manse. There was no response to his knocking on the door. He opened it and called Donald’s name, but the house was in darkness. He looked down across the car park and saw in the twilight that one half of the church doors stood open.

It was very nearly dark inside, but he saw Donald sitting at the end of the front pew, staring at the pulpit from which he had so often preached to the converted, exhorting them
to greater faith and sacrifice. From the outside, Fin could hear how the wind was whipping up its anger, but here, in the body of the kirk, it was unnaturally still, haunted by the ghosts of guilt and despair.

He sat down beside Donald without a word, and the minister cast him a silent glance before returning to contemplate the emptiness in his heart. Finally Donald said, ‘She’s moving out.’

‘I know.’

Donald turned towards him, surprised.

‘I saw her in the car park.’

Disappointment settled on Donald like snow. Perhaps he had hoped she might have a change of heart. ‘She’s gone, then?’

Fin nodded. And they sat without a word passing between them for five minutes or more. Then Fin broke their silence. ‘What happened to us, Donald?’ He thought about his own question. ‘I mean, all that hope and expectation. When we were just kids and life was nothing but potential. Everything we wanted to be, everything we could have been.’ And he added quickly, before Donald could speak, ‘And don’t talk to me about God’s grand plan. It’ll only make me more pissed off with Him than I already am.’

He was aware of Donald’s head dropping a little.

‘Remember that beach party we had the summer before we left for university? On that wee island somewhere off the coast of Great Bearnaraigh.’ It had seemed idyllic. Camp-fires and barbecues on the beach, drinking beer and smoking dope beneath a firmament filled with bright stars
shining like the hopes they’d all had for themselves. ‘Our whole lives ahead of us, and nothing to lose but our virginity.’

Donald turned a wry smile in his direction. ‘Some of us had already lost that, Fin.’

And Fin smiled, remembering how gauche he had been that night, making love for the first time to Marsaili, only to discover that Donald had already taken her virginity. His smile faded. ‘And look at us now. Trapped in this narrow corner of the world. Nursing our pain and our guilt. We look back with disappointment, and forward with fear.’ He turned towards Donald. ‘Does none of this test your faith, Donald?’

Donald shrugged. ‘It is the nature of faith that it is constantly being tested. Complacency means taking it for granted. And if you do that, you lose touch with God.’

Fin blew contempt through pursed lips. ‘Too easy.’

Donald leaned forward, his arms folded across his thighs and swung his head slowly towards him. ‘Nothing easy about it, Fin. Believe me, there is nothing simple or easy about faith when your life is turning to shit.’

‘So why do you bother?’

Donald thought about it for a long time. Then he said, ‘Maybe it’s the feeling that you’re never alone.’ He met Fin’s eye. ‘But you won’t know what that’s like, Fin. Being always alone with your grief and your hatred.’

And for the second time that night Fin felt a knowing mind reach into his soul to touch the rawness there. He said, ‘Have you heard about the plane?’

‘What plane?’

‘Roddy’s plane. The Piper Comanche. You remember? Call-sign G-RUAI.’

Donald sat up, then, frowning. ‘It’s been found?’

‘It has.’

‘How? Where?’

‘At the bottom of a loch in Uig.’

Wrinkles creased around Donald’s eyes in incredulity. ‘How in the name of God did it get there?’

Fin shrugged.

‘Bloody hell!’ It sounded just like the old Donald. And then he smiled suddenly. ‘I always thought that Roddy would come waltzing through the door one day, grinning all over his stupid face and telling us it had all been an elaborate joke.’

‘It’s no joke, Donald. Roddy was murdered.’

The smile vanished. Shock was writ large all over Donald’s face. He sat bolt upright, staring at Fin in disbelief. ‘Tell me.’ Then he thought better of it, as if remembering suddenly where they were. ‘No, not here.’ He stood up. ‘Let’s get some air.’

And as they stepped out into the blustery night, Fin remembered how it was Donald who had set Sòlas on the road to success, until his spectacular fall-out with Roddy.