The Chessmen

II

The duty sergeant directed him to the parking area at the side of the police station, informing him that his jeep had been parked there after being brought back from Uig by a uniformed officer.

Fin stepped from the police station out into Church Street and the fitful sunshine of a blustery October day. What amazed him was that life went on as if nothing had happened. A young mother, her hair spiralling around her head, wheeled a toddler by in a pushchair. Two old men stood talking outside the Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Cars cruised down towards the harbour where clouds of seagulls wheeled in endless circles around incoming trawlers, their eternally plaintive cries carried on the wind along with the rumble of traffic from Bayhead.

Whistler was gone, but the world kept turning. It had felt like that, too, when Robbie died. Toys scattered on the bedroom floor where he had left them. A crayon drawing he had made of Fin, still lying on the kitchen table beside the open pack of crayons. My Dadby, he had scrawled underneath it. Even at eight years old he was still managing to confuse his d’s with his b’s. And every time Fin had walked along the upstairs hall, it had pained him to realize that Robbie would never again come running from his bedroom to jump up into his daddy’s arms.

He had the clearest recollection of sitting on the edge of his bed the Sunday morning after the accident and hearing a neighbour mowing his lawn. So banal. Life just didn’t stop, even although Robbie was no longer a part of it. It was that sense of a world that hadn’t even noticed which affected him the most. Then as now.

His legs were leaden as he walked around into the semienclosed parking area next to the station. His key was barely in the door of the Suzuki when he heard the scrape of a shoe on gravel behind him. He turned, startled, to stagger back against the jeep under a hail of blows, fists hammering into his chest and his face, screams in his ears, hot breath on his skin. He had the fleeting impression of being under attack by a flock of demented birds, his vision filled with flailing arms, his ears with shrill shrieks of anger. Now feet kicked at his legs, well-aimed painful blows to his shins. It almost came as a surprise to realize it was all the fury of one small girl.

He fought to stop fists like pistons punching him in rapid succession. He saw her father in her eyes, in her anger, in the temper he had never been able to control himself. And after what felt like an eternity, he managed to grab and hold both her wrists, turning her around, pinning her arms across her chest and pulling her back hard against him to stop the assault.

‘Stop it! Stop!’ he shouted at her.

But she continued to struggle and he almost lost her again. ‘You killed my dad! You killed him!’

‘For Christ’s sake, Anna, I didn’t kill your dad. Would the police have let me go if I’d killed him?’ He felt the effect of his words almost immediately, as the struggling began to subside. ‘I loved that man.’

Her body went limp, and the uncontrollable sobbing that racked it shook him to the core, bringing tears to his own eyes. He had never before given voice to his feelings for Whistler. Had no reason to provide them with shape or form. Whistler was just his friend, the boy and man who had twice saved his life. Connected by history, and all the hours they had shared as teenagers, the hopes and the dreams, the fights and the friendship. Whistler had been unpredictable, bad-tempered, sometimes cruel. But he had always been there when Fin needed him, a commitment he had made that day so many years before at the Iolaire monument. And now he was gone, and all that remained of him was in Fin’s arms.

He let go of her wrists and turned her to face him. Her black cropped hair with its slash of pink, the rings and studs that punctuated her face, seemed like a grotesque caricature in grief. Black eye make-up ran down her cheeks. Her purple-painted lips trembled like a child’s. Her nose ran and she could barely breathe for sobbing.

‘I. . I never told him,’ she said.

Fin frowned. ‘Told him what?’

‘That I loved him.’

He closed his eyes and felt the tears hot on his skin, and put his arms around her, enveloping her, drawing her close.

‘And now it’s too late.’ Her voice came muffled from his chest. ‘For everything.’

Fin took her by the shoulders then and made her take a step back, forcing her to look at him. ‘Anna, listen to me.’

‘What?’ she glared at him defiantly, as if he were trying to force her to listen to something she wouldn’t want to hear.

‘Men don’t often talk to one another about love.’ He drew a deep, trembling breath. ‘But we did, your dad and me. The other day, outside the Sheriff Court. And I told him what you told me at the house.’ In spite of everything, he smiled through his tears. ‘Of course, I left out the profanity. Though he wouldn’t have minded that. Just don’t think he died not knowing that his wee girl loved him.’ It took him a moment or two to control his voice again. ‘And I know the only regret he’d have right now, is that he never had the chance to tell you the same.’

She stood staring back at him with her father’s eyes, her face a mess, her breathing still irregular, and he could feel her pain and confusion.

‘Let me take you home.’

She raised an arm in sudden anger and broke his grip on her. ‘No,’ she shouted. ‘Just stay away from me. You, Kenny, everyone. I hate you. I hate you all.’ And she turned and ran away down Church Street, giving free vent to her tears as she ran. She was gone from view and hearing in seconds.

Fin stood for a long time, leaning back against the jeep before turning wearily and climbing up into the driver’s seat. There he sat for even longer until finally he succumbed to his own grief. For Whistler and his little lost girl.