Deathly Wind

chapter one

The Reverend Lachlan McKinnon, known throughout West Uist as the Padre, was in a subdued mood, just as he had been for the last three days. For twenty-four hours following the discovery of the West Uist Police Seaspray catamaran, drifting empty like a latter-day Mary Celeste, he had hoped that they would find Ewan McPhee alive. On the second day, as hope started to peter out he had prayed fervently that the big police constable, the hammer-throwing champion of the Western Isles, would have somehow kept himself afloat on the sea until he was rescued. First thing that morning he had simply prayed that they would find the constable’s body before too long, so that Jessie McPhee, his elderly mother, would be able to get on with her grief.

And then there was poor old Gordon MacDonald. His had been a sad and lonely way to die, but at least he could be put to rest. He ran over the notes that he had made in readiness for the funeral then tossed them on the desk and sat drumming his fingers on the surface for a moment. Finally, with a sigh, he got up and put on his West Uist Tweed jacket that was hanging on the back of his study door. He glanced in the mirror, adjusted his clerical collar a mite and ran his hand through the mane of white hair that permanently defied both brush and comb. He pushed his horn-rimmed spectacles higher up on his nose and reached for his golf bag that leaned in readiness beside the bookcase.

Life had to go on, as he told everyone. And golf was one of his ways of coping; apart from giving his bagpipes a good airing. Yet with his nephew, the local police inspector, Torquil McKinnon still away on a protracted leave of absence after his own recent personal tragedy1, the pipes held little attraction for him.

A few moments later, with his golf bag slung over his shoulder and his first pipe of the morning newly lit and clenched between his teeth, he let himself out of the front door of the house and scrunched his way down the gravel path to the wrought-iron gate, then crossed the road and mounted the stile that led directly onto the ten-acre plot of undulating dunes and machair that he and several local worthies had converted and transformed into the St Ninian’s Golf Course. There was a fine early morning mist, and under its cover a few terns were dive-bombing some of the sheep that grazed freely over the coarse grass fairways of the links. He stopped on top of the stile and removed the horn-rimmed spectacles that had already misted up. When he replaced them and dismounted he saw that three men were standing by the first tee.

‘Latha math! Good morning!’ Lachlan greeted them. ‘If you are already playing don’t let me hold you up.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Not many start this early at St Ninian’s.’

‘It is the Reverend McKinnon, isn’t it?’ replied the older of the trio, in an unmistakable Glaswegian accent. ‘See, I heard that you usually have an early round and I wanted to try out this famous golf links of yours. Maybe we could have a game?’

He was an olive-skinned, well-built man in his mid-forties, of medium height, with cropped black hair and a small, slightly upturned nose. Neat though it was, however, it seemed a tad smaller than one would have expected from his overall bone structure. That and a certain taughtness of the skin on his face suggested to the Padre that at some time he had submitted himself to the skill of the cosmetic surgeon.

A bit of a peacock; a preening peacock, the Padre silently concluded.

‘I’m Jock McArdle,’ the man went on, assuming that the Padre had accepted his invitation. He extended a muscular hand bedecked with expensive thick gold rings. ‘I’ve just moved into—’

‘You’ve just moved into Dunshiffin Castle,’ Lachlan interjected with the affable welcoming smile of the clergyman. ‘Which makes you the new laird of Dunshiffin. I heard that you bought the estate a fortnight ago, Mr McArdle, and intended paying you a visit as soon as you took up residence, but I am afraid that we have had a few upsets on West Uist lately.’ He shook hands and suppressed a wince at the power of the other’s grip. He assumed that it was the habitual grasp of a hard-bitten entrepreneur, designed to indicate dominance. He duly ignored it, having long since refused to feel intimidated by anyone.

‘No worries, Reverend, I only arrived four days ago. I’ve had to tie up a lot of business before I could move in. But I’ll be living at the castle most of the time. I have big plans for the place.’

The Padre smiled unenthusiastically. ‘Are you all three playing this morning?’ he asked, his eye hovering over the single professional-spec leather bag and the two men standing a pace behind Jock McArdle.

‘Naw, Reverend, it’s just me,’ Jock McArdle returned with a grin. ‘These are two of my employees that I’ve brought from Glasgow. I thought that a bit of good clean sea air would be good for their health. Is that not right, boys?’

‘It’s a bit deathly if ye ask me,’ returned the one holding the golf bag. ‘There’s no night life. Just a handful of pubs.’

Jock McArdle guffawed. ‘This is Liam Sartori, Reverend. As ye can see, he’s a wee bit lippy, but he’s a good lad.’

The Padre shook hands, his practised pastoral smile belying the shrewd appraisal that he had made of the two young men. Liam Sartori was a tall, well built and excessively tanned fellow, probably the result of a sunbed rather than the sun’s rays, the Padre reflected. Possibly a third or fourth generation Glasgow Italian. His clothes were casual and brashly expensive. A gold medallion hung from a heavy gold chain on the front of a red, white and blue sports shirt. He was unsure whether Jock McArdle’s criterion of goodness matched his own.

‘And this is Danny Reid,’ Jock McArdle said, introducing the other young man who was in the process of opening a cigarette packet and offering it to Liam Sartori. ‘See, he’s the quiet one.’

‘I’m the thinking one, Reverend,’ said Danny Reid, clipping the cigarette in his lips and shaking Lachlan’s hand.

He was a shade shorter than his associate, possibly a touch under six foot, well muscled, with a tattoo of a claymore on his right forearm and at least six body piercings that the Padre could count on lips, ears, eyebrows and nose. Like his associate he had a medallion on a thick gold chain. His blond hair was spiky and most probably the result of peroxide. Lachlan watched as he lit their cigarettes with a gaudy Zippo lighter.

‘I can only manage nine holes, I’m afraid,’ Lachlan said. ‘I have a funeral to conduct in a couple of hours.’

‘Nine holes would be excellent,’ returned Jock McArdle, enthusiastically. ‘But see, would I be insulting your cloth if I suggested a wager?’

The Padre struck a light to his pipe, then replaced his box of Swan Vestas in his jacket pocket. ‘A small wager always adds a frisson to a game, so I don’t see why not. Match play or Stableford?’

‘I prefer simple match play, Reverend. Winner takes all.’

The Padre blew a thin stream of smoke from the side of his mouth and nodded. It fitted with his assessment of the Glaswegian. The new laird was clearly a man confident in his own abilities. ‘Shall we say five pounds for the winner? What’s your handicap, Mr McArdle?’

‘Fourteen.’

‘And mine’s a rather shaky eight. Exactly one eighth of my age. So, that means I give you three shots over the nine holes. That will be at the second, the fifth and the ninth.’

Jock McArdle nodded to Liam Sartori who unzipped a side pocket of the golf bag and extracted a box of Dunlop 65 balls, and a tee, then pulled out a Callaway driver. ‘You’ll be needing the big one, boss,’ he said with a confident grin.

The Padre puffed thoughtfully on his pipe and pulled out his two iron, the club he favoured for the tricky first drive, especially when the wind was gusting as it tended to do on the first three holes.

‘I am thinking that you will enjoy the course, Mr McArdle. It isn’t exactly the Old Course at St Andrews, but it’s a good test of golf. Nature designed it with the Corlins on one side and the North Atlantic Ocean on the other, and we just added a few refinements. It has six holes dotted about the sand dunes of the machair, with three tees for each one, so you can either play a straight eighteen, or, when it is quiet, string any number of combinations together. The fairways are mowed once a week, the sheep nibble the green to billiard-table smoothness and the bunkers have been excavated by generations of rabbits. Watch out for the gorse and the thistles; think your way round and you’ll be all right.’

He puffed his pipe again and nodded at the honesty box hanging from the fence. ‘And, of course, the green fee is pretty reasonable.’

Jock McArdle grinned and nodded to Danny Reid, who drew out a roll of money and peeled off a five pound note. Is this safe here, Minister?’ Danny Reid asked incredulously as he deposited it in the box.

The Padre pointed to the nearby roof of the church. ‘This is West Uist, Mr Reid. St Ninian’s Golf Course is beside church land. Who would steal from the church?’

Liam Sartori sneered, ‘I’m willing to bet that you’ve never been to my part of Glasgow, Minister.’

Jock McArdle eyed the yardage marker by the side of the first tee, then the two iron in the Padre’s hand. He handed his driver back to Liam Sartori and pulled out his own two iron. ‘Aye, golf is a thinking game, Reverend. A careful game.’ He grinned, a curious half smile with no humour in it. ‘You’ll find that I am always careful. It’s a good policy in my book.’

Jock McArdle was a bandit off a handicap of fourteen, Lachlan decided, after they had played three holes and he found himself three holes down. Or rather, he was a ‘bandit chief’, on account of the fact that his two boys seemed to take it in turns to caddy and to find their boss’s ball, a task that they seemed to achieve with miraculous skill. Indeed, knowing the extent of the gorse and thistle patches on the undulating dunes as well as he did, the Padre was almost certain that twice his ball had been discovered at least twenty yards further on than it should have, and on both occasions had seemed to fortuitously find a nice flat piece of fairway.

‘You play well for a fourteen handicapper, Mr McArdle,’ the Padre said, as they walked onto the fifth tee. ‘And your two finders have done sterling work this morning.’

‘I like to win at everything I do, Reverend. That’s why I’ve been successful in business. That’s how I came to buy the Dunshiffin estate.’

The Padre pulled a dilapidated pouch out of a side pocket of his jacket and began stuffing tobacco into his battered old briar pipe. ‘Am I right in sensing that you have something more than golf on your mind this morning, Mr McArdle?’

‘You’re a shrewd man, Lachlan,’ returned Jock McArdle with an ingratiating grin. ‘Do you mind if I call you, Lachlan?’

The priest shrugged. ‘Most people on West Uist just call me Padre.’

‘OK then, Padre. I’m not the sort of guy who beats about the bush.’ He nodded to his two boys and raised his voice:

‘You two go and have a smoke over by that pot bunker. But keep your eyes open. I’ll be driving over your heads in a minute, so mind and duck.’

When they were out of earshot he went on, ‘Do you know how I came to buy the Dunshiffin estate, Padre?’

Lachlan had won the last hole and gained back the honour to drive first. He shoved a tee into the ground and perched his ball on top. ‘I was aware of the liquidation of Angus MacLeod Enterprises after the death of the last laird of Dunshiffin, Angus MacLeod.’

‘I picked the estate up for a song. Two and a half million, if you want to know.’ His mouth twisted in a curiously self-satisfied way. ‘That’s not bad, is it, for a lad who started selling cones and wafers from a fourth-hand ice-cream van. I built up the biggest confectionary business in Midlothian over the last twenty years. And I have plans, Padre. Big plans.’ He bent and picked up a few blades of grass and threw them into the air where they were caught in the breeze and wafted sidewards. ‘The wind is not too bad here, is it?’

‘No, the Corlins give us a bit of shelter.’

‘But it is really windy on the west of the island, isn’t it? Especially over by the Wee Kingdom.’ He seemed to puff up his chest. ‘You know that as the owner of the Dunshiffin estate,’ he beamed and corrected himself, ‘— or as you rightly said, as the new laird, I own all the land on the Wee kingdom.’

The Padre stiffened a tad. ‘Aye, you own it all right, but there are crofters there. They lease the land from the estate.’

‘Exactly. See Padre, I’m their new landlord.’

‘And you are thinking of erecting windmills on some of your land?’

Jock McArdle tossed his head back and laughed. ‘So you know all about the wind farm idea?’

‘Mr McArdle, I’ve been the minister on West Uist for thirty-five years. People have been talking about introducing wind farms in the Hebrides for a decade. They are almost a reality on Lewis already. It’s only our remoteness on West Uist that has prevented talk of them coming here. That and the cost.’

‘I am an entrepreneur, Padre. I have no ties to the energy department, or the electricity boards. I see an opportunity to generate a lot of electricity on this windy island, enough to supply every family and every business at a fraction of the cost. And where better than to start up a wee wind farm than on the Wee Kingdom? The most westerly point of the most westerly island. The wind is roaring in from the sea; it’s a power source just waiting to be tapped.’

‘I doubt if you’ll have much support. They’re unsightly things and we are proud of our wildlife on the island.’

Jock McArdle shrugged. ‘There is little evidence about it affecting wildlife, Padre,’ he said dismissively. ‘In any case, I’m used to resistance. It doesn’t worry me.’

The Padre glanced at his watch. ‘I have to give you a shot at this hole, so I’d best nail this drive down the middle.’ And taking his trusty three-wood from the bag he did just that.

For the next four holes the Padre watched his opponent’s ball like a hawk and himself played with grim determination. Despite the strokes he had to give away, by the time they had reached the ninth green they were all square on aggregate.

‘How many of these windmills are you thinking of having?’

‘I’d be starting small. Just two or three to see how it goes, then who knows? My boffins tell me that twenty-five would produce a sizeable amount of power. That would be my target in the first year.’

The Padre stared aghast at him. ‘You cannot be serious! There is no room. And you would need to be building pylons to carry the electricity.’

The Glaswegian nodded. ‘I know all that, Padre. I have had it all researched. I have the means to invest and I have the permission to go ahead. I’ve had my lawyers check with everyone that matters – the Land Court, the Crofters Commission – you name it, I have had it checked and double-checked.’

‘But you don’t have the crofters’ permission. They’ll never agree to this.’

Jock McArdle smiled. It was a strange crooked smile that seemed to be formed by two very different halves of his face. One side was all innocence while the other was cunning personified. ‘Technically, I don’t need their permission, Padre. The original deeds that go with the Dunshiffin estate are quite clear: it is my land to do with as I please.’

He looked at their two balls, comparing the distance of each from the hole. ‘I’m on in three and you’re there for two. With my stroke that makes us all square. And it looks like it’s me to putt first.’

He lined up his putt and struck the ball, cursing as it slipped a yard past the hole. ‘I’m going to begin with the MacDonald croft. I have a couple of boys on their way to West Uist now with the components for a couple of wind-testing towers.’

The Padre eyed his opponent askance. ‘This funeral that I have to take, did you know that it was Gordon MacDonald’s?’

Jock McArdle nodded as he lined up his return putt. ‘Aye, I knew that, Padre. I never knew the man myself so I won’t be going to his funeral.’ He tapped the putt and grinned with satisfaction as it rattled into the cup. ‘A five, net four. You have a putt for the match.’

His two boys smirked and lit fresh cigarettes.

As the Padre lined up his five-foot putt, McArdle remarked casually, ‘Of course, as the new laird I thought it my duty to attend the wake after the funeral.’

If the remark had been intended to make the Padre miss the putt, it did not succeed. Lachlan struck the ball smoothly and it disappeared into the cup with a satisfying rattle. The Padre retrieved it and held out his hand. ‘My game, I think.’ After shaking hands he pulled out his pipe from his top pocket and struck a match to it. ‘I am thinking that is your right, Mr McArdle, but perhaps you should go easy on the wind-farm information.’

Jock McArdle again gave his curious half smile. ‘I was hoping that maybe you could smooth the way a little. See, Padre, I am a good man to have on your side. I am always grateful for help shown to me.’

Liam Sartori smirked and was rewarded with an elbow in the side from Danny Reid.

‘I am thinking that you will find that the folk of West Uist make up their own minds, Mr McArdle.’

The Glaswegian gave a wry smile and gestured meaningfully at Danny Reid. ‘Well, it was good to play and talk with you anyway, Padre. And so I owe you five pounds. That’s one thing that you should know about me: I always pay my debts – in full.’

The Padre smiled as he accepted a five pound note from the roll of notes that the be-pierced Danny Reid peeled from the roll that he produced with the dexterity of a conjurer. ‘Well, let’s just hope that you don’t run up too many debts on West Uist, Mr McArdle. West Uist folk are pretty keen at calling in debts themselves.’

1 See The Gathering Murders