The Chessmen (3 page)

‘It’s good to see you, Kenny,’ Fin said, and meant it.

They stood looking at each other for a moment, assessing the changes that the years had wrought. The two-inch scar that followed the line of Kenny’s left cheekbone, the result of some childhood accident which had nearly taken his eye, had faded with time. Kenny had always been a big lad, bigger
than Fin. Now he was enormous, filled out in every direction. He appeared older than Fin, too. But, then, he had always been an old-fashioned boy, rough-hewn from country stock and not very sophisticated. Bright enough, though, to go to agricultural college in Inverness and return to the island eventually to manage the estate on which he had grown up.

Fin, although not a small man, had retained his boyish figure, and his tightly curled fair hair still grew abundantly, green eyes fixing on the hidden wariness he saw in the darker gaze of his old schoolfriend.

‘I hear you’re back with Marsaili. Living with her, I’m told.’

Fin nodded. ‘At least until I finish restoring my parents’ crofthouse.’

‘And her boy’s yours they say, not Artair’s.’

‘Do they?’

‘It’s what I hear.’

‘You hear a lot, it seems.’

Kenny grinned. ‘I keep my ear to the ground.’

Fin returned the smile. ‘Be careful, Kenny. You might get mud in it. Then maybe you wouldn’t hear so good.’

Kenny snorted. ‘You always were a smart bugger, Macleod.’ He hesitated for a moment as his smile washed away, like sunshine passing behind a cloud. ‘I hear you lost a son, too.’

The colour rose very slightly around Fin’s eyes, darkening them. ‘You heard right.’ Followed by a long pause in which it was clear he was not about to elucidate.

The end of this personal nature of their exchange was signalled by the replacement of Kenny’s cap, which he pulled
down low over his brow. Even his tone of voice changed. ‘I’ll need to brief you on your duties. I imagine Jamie will have covered the bullet points. But like most landowners, he doesn’t know much about the land.’

Fin didn’t miss the point. Jamie might be his boss, but Kenny considered himself his superior. And now he was Fin’s boss, and their brief exchange as equals was over.

‘I’m not sure I would have taken you on as head of security myself. No offence, Fin. I’m sure you were a good cop, but not so sure that it qualifies you to catch poachers. Still . . . ours not to reason why, eh?’

Fin said, ‘Maybe you could do a better job of it yourself.’

‘No “could” about it, Fin. But managing an estate of more than fifty thousand acres, with extensive salmon, brown trout and sea trout fishing, as well as stalking and shooting, takes up all my time as it is.’ He sounded like a brochure for the estate. ‘And it’s no small problem we have.’

Kenny’s Range Rover bounced and rattled over the potholed track, following the course of the river, the ground rising up ever more steeply around them. Bare, rugged hills peppered with rock and slashed by gullies rose up into mountainous peaks lost in cloud. Boulders clung to the hillsides, great chunks of gneiss four billion years old. Kenny glanced at Fin and followed his eyes. ‘Oldest rock in the world,’ he said. ‘Those slabs of it have been lying around these hills
since the last ice age.’ He pointed up into the shadow of the mountain on their left. ‘You see those watercourses running through the rock? Originally cracks in the face of it, they were. And when the water in them froze the ice expanded till the rock exploded, and threw these massive big fucking lumps of it all over the valley. Must have been quite a show. But I’m glad I wasn’t around for it.’

Ahead of them a small loch reflected the cut-glass blue of the sky overhead, its surface ridged by the wind, and Kenny drew in beside a green-painted corrugated-iron shed that he called a lunch hut. A place where fishermen and their ghillies could shelter from the weather to eat their sandwiches. The vehicle track ended here. A footpath led down to the water while another wound its way up over the hill, climbing steeply through clusters of rock and fording clear-watered streams that would normally be in spate at this time of year. After weeks of drought most had been reduced to a mere trickle.

Kenny was fit for such a big man, and Fin fought to keep up with him as he strode quickly along the rising path. The track snaked between the cleft of the hills, hugging the south side of a sheer rock face to their right, before Kenny stepped off it and over the bed of an almost dry creek. Then he struck off through long grass and heather, heading for a hilltop to their left. Long strides that took him upwards to the peak a good few minutes ahead of Fin.

It wasn’t until he reached him that Fin realized how high they had climbed, first in the Range Rover, and then on foot. He felt the wind fill his jacket and then his mouth,
stealing his breath as the ground fell away beneath them to reveal a startling panorama of sun-washed land and water. Browns, pale blues, greens and purples faded into a shimmering distance at their feet.

‘Loch Suaineabhal,’ Kenny said. He turned, grinning, towards Fin. ‘You feel like a god up here.’ Something caught his eye high out over the loch. ‘Or an eagle.’ Fin followed his gaze. ‘We have twenty-two nesting pairs of them between here and the North Harris estate. Highest density of golden eagles anywhere in Europe.’

They watched the bird riding the thermals, almost on a level with them, a wingspan of more than seven feet, feathers spread at their tips, and fanned out at the tail, like fingers, manipulating every movement of the air. Suddenly it dropped, like an arrow fired from the sky, vanishing briefly among the patchwork colours of the land below, before rising unexpectedly into view again, a small animal hanging from its undercarriage, gripped by lethal talons and dead already.

‘Look down there towards the head of the loch. You’ll see a collection of stone buildings with tin roofs. A shieling and a couple of barns. Two of our watchers live there. No way to get to them by vehicle. Only by boat or on foot. And it’s a full day if you’re walking it. You’ll need to make yourself known to them.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Students. Making a bit of money during the holidays. It’s a hard bloody life, let me tell you. No running water, no electricity. I should know, I did it myself when I was at the
AC.’ He turned to the west, then, and pointed towards the four peaks that delineated the far side of the valley, Mealaisbhal standing head and shoulders above the others, the highest peak on Lewis. ‘We had watchers over the other side in an old shieling at Loch Sanndabhan. You’ll find it on the Landranger map. But they’re gone. Beaten up three nights ago when they came across poachers laying nets at the mouth of Abhainn Bhreanais. And I can’t get anyone to replace them.’

‘I suppose you reported it to the police?’

Kenny laughed, his chest puffed out with genuine amusement. ‘Of course. But as you very well know, a fat lot of good that does!’ His bonhomie vanished in an instant, as if a switch had been thrown. ‘These bastards mean business. Big money in it, you see. The price of wild salmon on the mainland, or in Europe or the Far East for that matter, is astronomical, Fin. I’ve heard that some of it’s being smoked before being shipped out. Fetches even more. They’re netting the mouths of the rivers and taking hundreds of bloody fish. Stocks are down and it’s ruining our business. There’s consortiums of businessmen who’ll pay thousands for a beat on one of our rivers. But not if there’s no fucking fish in them!’

He strode south to the edge of the slope, and in the far distance, beyond the shoulder of Cracabhal, they could see the big lodge on the shores of Loch Tamnabhaigh. He spoke over his shoulder. ‘We manage the rivers and the lochs, making sure the fish get upstream to lay their eggs, conserving numbers. These bastards are taking indiscriminately. In ten years there’ll be nothing left.’ He turned
towards Fin, a dark determination in his eyes. ‘They have to be stopped.’

‘Have you any idea who’s behind it?’

Kenny shook his head grimly. ‘If I did, there’d be a few broken fucking legs around the island. We need to catch them at it. Jamie took over the running of the estate after his father’s stroke in the spring, and he’s prepared to go to pretty much any lengths to put a stop to it. Which is the reason you’re here.’ The disapproval in the glance he flicked towards Fin was clear. ‘But you might want to ease yourself in gently. Start with a soft target.’

Fin frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

Kenny’s smile almost returned. ‘Whistler,’ he said.

‘John Angus?’

Fin’s consternation made Kenny chuckle. ‘Aye. Big idiot that he is!’

Fin had not set eyes on Whistler since leaving the island. He had been the smartest boy of his year at the Nicolson, perhaps of any year. With an IQ so far off the scale it was almost impossible to measure, Whistler could have had the pick of any university he chose. And yet, of all of them, he was the only one who had chosen to stay.

‘Whistler’s involved with the poachers?’

Kenny’s chuckle turned to a laugh. ‘Good God, no, man! Whistler Macaskill’s not interested in money. He’s been poaching for years. Well, you know that. Deer, mountain hare, salmon, trout. But just for the pot. Personally, I’ve always turned a blind eye to it. But Jamie . . . well, Jamie has other ideas.’

Fin shook his head. ‘Sounds like a waste of time to me.’

‘Aye, maybe so. But the daft bastard’s got Jamie all riled up.’

‘What happened?’

‘Jamie comes across him a few weeks ago, fishing out of Loch Rangabhat. Broad daylight, bold as you like. And when Jamie asks him what he thinks he’s doing, gets a mouthful of abuse for his trouble, and a kick up the arse when he tries to put a stop to it.’ Kenny grinned. ‘Wouldn’t have minded seeing that for myself.’ But the grin faded. ‘The bad bit is that Jamie’s his landlord, too, and looking for any excuse to shoehorn him off his croft.’

‘I think he might find that Whistler’s protected by the Crofters Act.’

‘Not if he doesn’t pay his rent. And he hasn’t done that for years. Old Sir John might not have bothered, but it gives Jamie the perfect excuse. And since he also rents Whistler his house . . .’ Kenny pulled a gob of phlegm into his mouth and spat it into the wind. ‘The truth is, Fin, he’s just a bloody distraction. You and he were always tight. It might be an idea if you were to have a quiet word with him. Then we could get on with the real job.’

Whistler’s croft sat up off the road, not far from the cemetery at Ardroil, a steep strip of land rising to a restored blackhouse with views out over the dunes and the vast
expanse of Uig beach beyond. There were a handful of sheep grazing on the lower slope, and nearer the house itself old lazy beds had been reactivated to grow potatoes, rows of turned earth fertilized by layers of seaweed cut from the rocks and dragged up the hill.

Fin had been here often in his teens, sitting on the hill with Whistler, avoiding Mr Macaskill, smoking and talking about girls, and taking the view absolutely for granted. It was only his years of living in the city which had taught Fin how privileged they had been then.

But the place had changed. Gone was the old rusted tin roof, to be replaced by what looked like home-made thatch incongruously set with solar panels on the south-facing pitch. The whole was secured against the gales that blew in off the Atlantic by fishermen’s netting stretched over the roof and weighed down by boulders dangling on lengths of stout rope. It was like stepping back in time.

The cannibalized remains of three or four rusted old vehicles, a tractor among them, lay around like the carcasses of long-dead animals. A beautifully herringboned stack of drying peats had been built a few feet from the west gable, and rising fifteen feet above it were the fast-turning blades of two home-crafted wind turbines.

Fin left his car at the side of the road and walked up the hill. There was no vehicle parked at the house. Fin knocked on the door, and when there was no answer, lifted the latch and pushed it open. It was dark inside, traditionally small windows letting in a minimum of light. As his eyes grew accustomed to it, Fin saw that the place was a shambles.
An old settee and armchairs, filthy and worn, horsehair pushing through holes torn in their covers. A table littered with scattered tools, and wood shavings that spilled on to the floor. Bizarrely, carved wooden effigies of Lewis chessmen stood in serried ranks along one wall; some of them eight or ten times the size of the originals.

The remains of a fire smouldered in the grate where a chimney had been built against the far gable, and the distinctively toasty scent of warm peat smoke filled the house. Stepping into it was like falling down the rabbit hole.

Fin turned at a sound that came from behind him. The figure of a large man stood silhouetted in the doorway, very nearly filling it. There was a momentary stand-off until he stepped into the light of the window and Fin saw his face for the first time. A large, broad face, black-whiskered by a week’s growth. Long dark hair, shot through with what looked like strands of silver fusewire, was swept back from a deeply lined forehead. He wore patched and faded blue jeans, frayed around the ankles, and a thick woollen charcoal jumper beneath a waxed waterproof jacket. His boots were wet and caked with peat. Fin could smell him from where he stood.

‘Well, Jesus wept and shrank his waistcoat! If it isn’t that bloody Niseach, Fin Macleod.’ His voice filled the crofthouse. And to Fin’s embarrassment he took two strides towards him and gave him a hug that nearly squeezed all the breath from his lungs. His big whiskery face scratched against Fin’s. Then he stood back and gazed at him, holding his shoulders at arm’s length, liquid brown eyes wide and full of
pleasure at seeing his old friend. ‘Hell, man! Hell and damnation! Where in God’s name have you been all these years?’

‘Away.’

Whistler grinned. ‘Aye, well, I think I’d figured that out by now.’ He gazed speculatively at him. ‘Doing what?’

Fin shrugged. ‘Nothing much.’

Whistler stabbed a finger like an iron rod into Fin’s chest. ‘You were in the fucking polis. Think I didn’t know?’

‘Well why are you asking?’