Marsaili was out at the peat stack filling a bucket. She wore jeans, and wellingtons and a thick woollen jumper. For once her hair was unclasped and was blowing all around her face. With the wind driving down from the north she did not hear Fin’s car pulling in at the top of the drive. A tiny Daewoo, the colour of vomit, which he had rented in town on a cheap oneday hire. All along the line of the coast below her, the sea broke in angry white wreaths, winding itself up for the storm gathering in the north-west like an invading army.
‘Marsaili.’
She stood up, startled by his voice at her shoulder, and she wheeled around, surprised to see him, and then alarmed by what she saw in his face. ‘Fin, what is it?’
‘You must have known that he was beating the boy.’ And she closed her eyes and let the bucket drop to the ground, spilling its peats all over the turf.
‘I tried to stop it, Fin. I did.’
‘Not hard enough.’ His tone was harsh, accusing.
She opened her eyes and he saw the tears collecting there, preparing themselves to spill. ‘You can’t imagine what he’s like. At first, when Fionnlagh was wee, and I saw the bruising, I couldn’t believe it. I thought it must have been an accident. But there’s a limit to the number of accidents you can have.’
‘Why didn’t you take him and leave?’
‘I tried, believe me, I did. I wanted to. But he told me if I ever left, he would come after us. Wherever we went he would find us, he said. And he would kill Fionnlagh.’ Her eyes desperately sought Fin’s understanding. But he was like stone.
‘You could have done something!’
‘I did. I stayed. And I did everything I could to stop the beatings. He would never do it if I was around. So I tried always to be there. To protect him, to keep him safe. But it wasn’t always possible. Poor Fionnlagh. He was wonderful.’ The tears ran freely down her face now. ‘He took it all like it was something to be expected. He never cried. He never complained. He just took it.’
Fin found himself shaking. With rage and pain. ‘Jesus, Marsaili, why?’
‘I don’t know!’ She almost shouted it at him. ‘It’s like he was doing it to get at me for some reason. Whatever it is that happened out on that bloody rock, whatever it is you’re not telling me, either of you, it changed him beyond recognition.’
‘You know what happened, Marsaili!’ Fin lifted his arms in a hopeless gesture, and then let them fall again in frustration.
She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t.’ And she looked at him long and hard, baffled by his obduracy. ‘It changed all of us, you know that, Fin. But Artair was the worst. I wasn’t aware of it at first. I think he was hiding it from me. But then, after Fionnlagh was born, it just started coming out of him, like poison.’
Fin’s mobile started ringing in his pocket. Scotland the Brave. Cheerful and jaunty. Ludicrously inappropriate in the circumstance. They stood staring at each other, the ridiculous ringtone fibrillating in the wind. ‘Well, aren’t you going to answer the stupid thing?’
No one on the island knew his number. So it had to be someone from the mainland. ‘No.’ He waited for the answering service to pick it up, and was relieved when the ringing stopped.
‘So what now?’ She wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand, and left a dirty, peaty smudge across her cheek.
‘I don’t know.’ He saw the weariness in her eyes, the life ground out of her by all the years with Artair, and the guilt for all the beatings her son had been forced to endure, beatings that she had been unable to prevent. His phone started ringing again. ‘Jesus!’ He snatched it from his pocket, punched the phone symbol and slapped it to his ear. It was his answering service calling him back to let him know that he had one new message. He listened impatiently and heard a familiar voice, but so out of context that it took him several moments to identify it.
‘Too busy to answer your bloody phone, eh? Out catching our killer, I hope.’ It was the pathologist. Professor Angus Wilson. ‘If not, I’ve got a little something for you that might help. It’ll be in my report, but I thought I might give you a little advance notice. That wee ghost pill that we found in the killer’s vomitus? It contains an oral form of the steroid cortisone, known as prednisone. Commonly used to treat painful skin allergies. But also very effective in reducing inflammation in the airways, so it’s frequently prescribed for asthma sufferers. I suggest, therefore, that you keep your eyes peeled either for someone with a nasty rash, or an habitual asthmatic. Happy hunting, amigo.’ The answering service told him there were no more messages.
Fin wondered why the ground had not swallowed him up. Everything else about his world had just fallen apart. So why should the earth still support him? He disengaged the phone and slipped it back in his pocket.
‘Fin?’ Marsaili was scared. He could hear it in her voice. ‘Fin, what is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
He looked at her without seeing her. He was in the boatshed at Port of Ness. It was Saturday night, and it was dark. There were two men there. One of them was Angel Macritchie. The other one moved into the moonlight. It was Artair. Fin had no idea why they were there, but when Macritchie turned away, he saw something like a metal tube or a wooden pole flash through the light of the small open window and crash down on Angel’s head. The big man dropped to his knees before falling forward on to his face. Artair was excited, breathing rapidly. He got down on his knees to pull the big man over on to his back. The dead weight was heavier to move than he had expected. He heard something, sounds from the village. Was it voices? Maybe it was just the wind. He began to panic, and with the panic he felt his airways start to close. His stomach reacted by heaving its contents out through his mouth. A reflex response. All over the unconscious Macritchie. Artair fumbled in his pocket for his pills and swallowed one and sucked on his puffer while he waited for it to work, still on his knees, breath rasping in the dark. Slowly his breathing became easier again, and he listened for the sound which had sparked his attack. But he heard nothing, and returned then to his task, slipping thick fingers around the big man’s throat. And pressing. An urgency now about everything he would do.
Fin closed his eyes tight to try to squeeze the images out of them, and then opened them again to see Marsaili’s consternation. ‘Fin, for God’s sake talk to me!’
His voice, when he found it, sounded small and caught phlegm in his throat. ‘Tell me about Artair’s asthma.’
She frowned. ‘What do you mean, tell you about his asthma?’
‘Just tell me.’ He was finding strength in his voice. ‘Is it worse than it used to be?’
She shook her head in frustration, wondering why he was asking her such stupid questions. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It was becoming a nightmare. The attacks were getting worse and worse, until they put him on new medication.’
‘Prednisone?’
Her head tilted in surprise, and something darkened the blue of her eyes. Premonition, perhaps. ‘How did you know that?’
He took her arm and started pulling her towards the house. ‘Show me.’
‘Fin, what’s this all about?’
‘Just show me, Marsaili.’
They went into the bathroom, and she opened a mirrored cabinet on the wall above the washbasin. The bottle was on the top shelf. Fin lifted it down and opened it. It was nearly full.
‘Why doesn’t he have these with him?’
Marsaili was at a loss. ‘I’ve no idea. Maybe there’s another bottle.’
Fin did not even want to think about it. ‘Is there somewhere he keeps his private papers? Stuff he never lets you see?’
‘I don’t know.’ She thought about it, distracted, finding concentration difficult. ‘There’s a drawer in his father’s old desk that he always keeps locked.’
‘Show me.’
The desk was pushed up under the window in Mr Macinnes’s former study, buried beneath an avalanche of papers and magazines, and wire trays overflowing with paid and unpaid bills. Fin had slept in here the other night, but not even noticed it. The captain’s chair that originally went with the desk was nowhere in evidence. An old dining chair was tucked between the pedestals. Fin pulled it out and sat down. He tried the lefthand drawer. It slid open to reveal a concertina folder full of household papers. Fin flicked quickly through it, but there was nothing to interest him. He tried the right-hand drawer and it was locked.
‘Do you have a key?’
‘No.’
‘A heavy screwdriver, then. Or a chisel.’
She turned without a word and left the room, returning a few moments later with a large, heavy-duty screwdriver. Fin took it, driving it between the top of the drawer and the pedestal, levering it upwards until the wood splintered and the lock broke. The drawer slid open. Suspension folders hung from a built-in rack. Yellow, blue, pink. He went through them one by one. Bills, investments, letters. Newspaper articles, downloaded from the internet. Fin stopped and heard himself breathing. Short, shallow breaths. He tipped the articles out on to the desktop. The Herald, the Scotsman, the Daily Record, the Edinburgh Evening News, the Glasgow Evening Times. All dated late May or early June. Disembowelled Corpse Found in Leith. The Edinburgh Ripper. Strangled and Mutilated. Death in the Shadow of the Cross. Police Issue Appeal over Leith Walk Murder. More than two dozen of them over a three-week period, when reporting of the murder was at its most frenzied, and before news of an impending increase in council tax took over the front pages.
Fin slammed his fist down on the desk, and a pile of magazines slid on to the floor.
‘For Christ’s sake, Fin, tell me what’s going on!’ A hint of hysteria was creeping into Marsaili’s voice.
Fin dropped his head into his hands and screwed his eyes tight shut. ‘Artair killed Angel Macritchie.’
There was a hush in the room so thick that Fin could almost feel it. Marsaili’s voice, small and frightened, forced its way through it. ‘Why?’
‘It was the only way he could be sure of getting me back to the island.’ He scuffed his hand through the printouts of the articles, sending several of them fluttering through still air. ‘The papers were full of the murder in Edinburgh. All the gory details. The fact that I was in charge of the investigation. So if another body turned up here on Lewis, same weird MO, what was the betting I’d get involved at some stage? Especially when the victim was someone I was at school with. A gamble, maybe. But it paid off. Here I am.’
‘But why? Oh, Fin, I can’t believe I’m even hearing you say these things. Why would he want you here?’
‘To tell me about Fionnlagh. So that I would know he was my son.’ He thought about what Donna Murray had said. Like he was taking out the sins of the father on the son.
Marsaili sat heavily on the edge of the bed and put her hands to her face. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘You said you thought he beat Fionnlagh to get at you. It wasn’t you he was getting at. It was me. All those years, beating that poor kid, and all the time it was me he was punching, me he was kicking. And it was important to him that I knew that before …’ And he broke off, frightened even to give voice to the thought.
‘Before what?’
Fin turned slowly to look at her. ‘He wasn’t bothered about giving a DNA sample to the police. He knew he’d be on the rock by the time we figured out it was him. Too late to stop him.’
Marsaili stood up abruptly, as suddenly it occurred to her where all this was leading. ‘Stop it, Fin! Stop it!’
He shook his head. ‘That’s why he didn’t bother taking his pills with him. After all, why would he need them if he wasn’t coming back?’
He checked his watch and stood up, scooping the newspaper articles back into their folder. Outside the wind was picking up. He could see all the way down to the shore, waves smashing across the rocks, retreating in foam. He turned towards the door, and Marsaili caught his arm.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to try and stop him killing our son.’
She bit down hard on her lip and tried to stop the sobs that threatened to choke her. Tears coursed down her cheeks. ‘Why, Fin? Why would he do that?’
‘Because for some reason he wants to hurt me, Marsaili. To inflict more pain on me than I can bear. He must know I’ve already lost one son.’ And he saw a look in her eyes that told him she had not known. ‘What better way to turn the screw than to kill the other?’ He pulled himself free of her grasp, but she followed him to the door and grabbed him again.
‘Fin, look at me.’ There was something compelling in her voice. He turned to meet her intensity. ‘Before you go … there’s something you need to know.’