Coffin Road

Chapter eighteen

I have no idea what time of day it is. Early afternoon, maybe? I am hungry and tired, and still far from convinced that I have done the right thing. Because now, I know, I am in more trouble than I ever thought possible.

It feels like hours since the interview concluded. A difficult interview that increased the intensity of my headache with every unanswered question. I suppose it must have begun somewhere around mid-morning.

I spent the night at Dune Cottage. Alone. In turmoil. Before he left, Gunn warned me that under no circumstances was I to drive my car, since I was unable to produce a valid licence. And I was absolutely forbidden to leave the island. An unnecessary additional stricture, it seemed to me, since I could not achieve the latter without doing the former.

When it got dark, I could see lights on in the Harrison house up the road, but they didn’t come visiting, or bring my dog back. The cottage seemed so very empty and lifeless without Bran. The only visitor I had was Mrs Macdonald from across the road. She was so very pleasant and helpful to me that first day we met on the road, but last night her face might have been chiselled from ice as she told me that I was to quit the cottage by the end of the week, and I realised it was she who had been renting it to me. She would refund the last few weeks of my let, she said, but could not tolerate the idea of my staying there for another four weeks after the shame I had brought on her and her family. I am still not sure how anything I say or do reflects well or badly on her family in any way. But she was not to be argued with.

The police sealed up the shed again so that I would have no further access to it. What I find so extraordinary is how familiar its contents seemed to me. All that equipment. I knew and understood what almost every piece of it was for. But why it was there, and the use it was being put to, is still a mystery to me. That I must have equipped the shed myself seems undeniable. I must have had a reason for it, but what it might be I can’t think.

I barely slept all through what felt like an interminably long night. At first I was tense, listening for Sally. I was sure she would come. But she didn’t. By 2 a.m. I came to realise that she wasn’t going to. It’s hard to describe how lonely it seemed in that place where I had spent the last eighteen months of my life. Perhaps lonely is the wrong word. It doesn’t really convey how utterly alone I felt. Abandoned. Hopeless. And still do.

I suppose I must have drifted off sometime shortly before dawn, because I was awakened by a knocking at the door. I had not undressed the night before, but simply lain on the bed, still with my shoes on. And it wasn’t until I opened the door to the uniformed officer who stood on the step that I realised how I must look. Unshaven, hair a mess, clothes dishevelled and creased. I recognised him as one of the policemen who had been searching my house the day before. He was young — ten years or more younger than me — and was trying to appear professionally impassive, but I could see the eager curiosity in his eyes. This was a story he would tell to gatherings of friends in pubs and at parties for years to come.

He said, ‘Detective Sergeant Gunn has asked me to invite you to help him with his inquiries.’

‘Has he? And if I decline?’

‘I’ll have to arrest you.’

I tried a smile, but it probably didn’t seem like one. ‘Then that’s an offer I can’t really refuse, is it?’

There was not a flicker in his face. ‘I’ll be driving you to Stornoway, sir. It might be advisable to bring a toothbrush and pack some underwear. In case we don’t get back tonight.’

I thought, So this is what volunteering to help the police with their inquiries is like.

At least he didn’t make me sit in the back of the car, like a prisoner. I sat up front in the passenger seat beside him, with my overnight bag on my knees, and saw Mrs Macdonald watching from her window as we turned out on to the single-track road.

Towards the end of the road, where it meets the A859, we passed a man out walking. He moved on to the verge as he heard us coming, and turned as the car drove by. It was the man from the caravan across the bay. I recognised his distinctive stoop and long, tangled hair. He wore a shabby green parka, with a pair of binoculars on a strap dangling around his neck, and carried a walking stick. A worn and torn cloth cap was pulled down on his brow, but for the first time I saw his face quite clearly. It was a long, guarded face with a cultivation of several days’ growth on it. His eyes were dark and, in the moment that they met mine, seemed almost black.

But it was a moment that passed in the blink of an eye, and then he was gone. I glanced in the wing mirror and saw him move out on to the road again, to resume his walk. We rounded a bend in the road and he vanished from view.

I am not sure how long my interview with Gunn lasted. When we arrived in Stornoway I was taken into the police station through a back entrance. We passed a charge bar from behind which a uniformed sergeant glowered at me, and in a corridor off to my right I saw doors opening into cells on either side of it. The interview room where I am sitting now is somewhere upstairs. There is a table, the chair I am sitting in and two chairs opposite. A window looks down into a courtyard, and I can see a yellow-painted roughcast wall.

I know that Mr Gunn found my answers to his questions irritating. I am sure that he thought I was just being difficult, or obstructive, covering up my role in the murder of the man they found on Eilean Mòr. My difficulty was that I could not say with any degree of certainty whether I had killed him or not.

He came into the room with another officer, whom he named when identifying those present for the benefit of a digital recording machine. But I don’t remember the name. Just that he was tall and thin and never once opened his mouth. But his eyes, any time I looked at him, spoke volumes. I was guilty as sin.

We got off to a bad start, and Gunn’s veneer of patience quickly wore thin. ‘You are Neal David Maclean, is that correct?’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Gunn, I really can’t say.’

He gave me a look. ‘Can’t or won’t?’

‘Can’t.’

He frowned, and I could see the wheels turning behind his eyes as he decided how to proceed. ‘Neal David Maclean is the name under which you have been living at Dune Cottage, Luskentyre, for the last eighteen months, is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘And yet there was nothing in the cottage or carried about your person to confirm your identity. No credit cards, no chequebooks, not even a driver’s licence.’

I nodded. ‘That’s right.’

‘So how do you explain that?’

‘I can’t.’

By now, I am sure, his irritation was morphing into anger, but he hid it well. ‘And the newspaper cuttings on Neal Maclean, and the bundles of cash in the briefcase?’

I shrugged. ‘I found them in the attic, just as you did.’

‘Are you saying you didn’t put them there?’

The more I tried to answer his questions honestly, without telling the truth, the more blind alleys I stumbled into. ‘I think it’s very probable that I did.’

He sat back and drew a long, slow breath before deciding on another tack. ‘You are writing a book about the disappearance of the lighthouse men on the Flannan Isles in the year nineteen hundred, yes?’

‘Apparently.’

‘Well, are you or aren’t you?’ An edge to his voice now.

‘Since neither you nor I can find any trace of a manuscript in the cottage, Mr Gunn, I think we’d probably have to assume that I’m not.’

‘But you’ve been making trips back and forth to the Flannans ostensibly to research it.’

‘From all accounts, yes.’

‘I take it you’re not denying that you went out to the Flannan Isles five days ago in a boat hired from Coinneach Macrae at Rodel?’

‘I’m not, no. And I did, yes.’

‘But you do deny finding a body in the old ruined chapel below the lighthouse?’

I had lied about this yesterday, though every fibre of my being was now screaming, Tell him, tell him, tell him! But I still wasn’t ready to let go. ‘I’d rather not say.’

Which clearly threw him. I could see his eyes narrow, not just with anger or frustration, but from consternation. ‘Yesterday, when we opened up the hut at Dune Cottage, we found all kinds of scientific equipment in it, including what would appear to be the accoutrements of a beekeeper. Do you keep bees, Mr Maclean?’

I nodded. ‘It seems that I do.’

‘Where?’

‘Hidden. Off the coffin road.’

He seemed taken aback by this, and took some moments to frame his next question. ‘When you showed me your hands yesterday, you had what appeared to be several bee stings on them.’

‘Yes.’

‘During the post-mortem on the man found murdered in the old chapel on Eilean Mòr, the pathologist discovered very similar stings on the back of his hands.’

This came as a devastating blow to me. Until now, there had been no link between myself and the dead man. There had been nothing about him that I recognised. But bee stings on our hands? That was an irrefutable connection, beyond the possibility of coincidence, that I couldn’t explain. And it made me even more inclined to believe that perhaps it was me who had killed him. I felt my face redden.

‘Can you explain that?’ Gunn asked.

‘No, officer, I can’t.’

I became aware for the first time, when he flipped it open, of the beige folder that he had brought in with him and laid on the table. He began shuffling through sheets of typed notes. He seemed to find what he was looking for and read for several moments before looking up.

‘Do you know a lady called Sally Harrison?’

‘I do.’

‘And do you deny having a relationship with her?’

‘I don’t.’

He seemed surprised. ‘She claims not to be having one with you.’

I felt my brows creasing. ‘You asked her?’

‘How else would I know she’d denied it?’

I thought about that. ‘In the presence of her husband?’

I saw his mouth tighten. ‘Yes.’

‘Well, then, that would explain it.’

Now he pursed his lips. ‘So how long have you had this... alleged relationship with Mrs Harrison?’

I shrugged. ‘I’m not really sure.’

Then, out of the blue, ‘You have a boat, I believe. The one you’ve been using to go back and forth to the Flannans.’

‘Yes, I believe I do.’

‘Where is it?’

I realised that I had no satisfactory answer to this. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Yet you told the boatman at Rodel that you had taken it up to Uig. I know, because I have checked, that you did no such thing.’

‘Sally told him that. Rather than have me try to explain that I’d lost my boat.’

‘And why would she do that?’

‘I told you, Mr Gunn. We’re having an affair. Why else do you think she was with me at Rodel?’

Gunn nodded thoughtfully. ‘Are you married yourself, sir?’ I sighed and went for honesty. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you have any children?’ This time there was discernible aggression in his voice.

And for me it was the tipping point. I simply couldn’t keep it up any longer. For better or worse, I knew that I was about to relinquish what little control I had left over my own life. I dropped my face into my hands and closed my eyes, aware that my breathing had become quite erratic. When I let my hands fall away and lifted my head again, I saw both men looking at me with strangely concentrated stares. I said, ‘Mr Gunn, I wasn’t entirely straight with you yesterday. I did find that man in the chapel the day I visited the island. I have no idea who he is, but obviously the bee stings connect us somehow. If you were to ask me whether or not I’m the one who killed him, I’d have to tell you that I really don’t know. But I guess I’m scared that maybe I did.’

There was an extraordinary silence in the room. Thick enough to cut into slices. It seemed as if both police officers were holding their breath. But I had started down the road of truth, and I knew there was no way back. So I told them everything. About washing up on the beach at Luskentyre with no memory of who or where I was. Discovering that apparently my name was Neal David Maclean, and that I was in a relationship with a married woman. Learning that I was writing a book I could find no trace of. I had gone out to the Flannan Isles in search of answers and found a body. Then searched my house from top to bottom looking for anything to confirm my identity, but finding nothing. Just the money and the cuttings.

Gunn glanced down at his notes, perhaps looking for inspiration among them, but finding none. When he looked at me again, I could see that, although he was sceptical, I had also cut away the ground of certainty from beneath his feet. Finally he said, ‘You say you learned that apparently you were Neal David Maclean. Does this mean you think you might not be?’

‘I know I’m not.’

‘How?’

‘I went to Edinburgh to find out.’

‘And?’

‘Neal David Maclean has been dead for two years.’

Now, as I sit here on my own, I regret telling them the truth. Because I can’t prove a word of it, and I am no longer the master of my own destiny. I cannot imagine what will happen now, and perhaps they are as uncertain as I am about what to do next.

I can hear the sound of distant voices from somewhere deep inside the building, the clack of computer keyboards, the odd trill of a telephone. I can hear, too, the rumble of traffic out in Church Street, and the call of gulls drifting up from the harbour. There is rain running down the window, driven in on the edge of a blustery wind.

I turn, startled, as the door opens unexpectedly, and Gunn returns with the tall, thin officer whose name I can’t remember, and the young man in uniform who drove me up from Harris.

Gunn says, ‘I’d like your permission, sir, to take your fingerprints and a swab of your DNA. If you are in either of those databases, then we’ll be able to make a positive identification.’

‘And if I’m not?’

‘One step at a time, sir.’ He looks awkward. ‘Would you be prepared to submit to a medical examination?’

I think about it. Perhaps, if there is some medical explanation for my loss of recollection, diagnosis might lead to treatment and a return of memory. I nod. ‘Okay.’

‘Then Constable Macritchie will escort you to the Western Isles hospital.’

‘Am I under arrest, Detective Sergeant?’

He presses his lips together in grim resignation and his upper lip whitens, as if he has drawn a chalk line along it. ‘Not yet, sir.’

From the yet, I take it that my arrest is therefore imminent, and almost certainly on suspicion of murder.