I'll Keep You Safe

Chapter Twenty

The flight north from Glasgow was a bumpy one, in and out of cloud with only occasional glimpses of the ground below. Lochs and green valleys, and now mountain ranges that seemed unnaturally close.

Braque had read that the ferry crossing from Ullapool to Stornoway took three hours on a good day, but the flight across the Minch took only a matter of minutes. It was difficult to tell when the plane was over water, because it was the same colour as the cloud. Dull, grey, featureless.

Only now, as she saw fingers of white-ringed black rock reach out into pewtery water, did the island announce itself to her, appearing slowly out of the haze like some lost, mythical land.

As the plane dipped beneath the cloud, she saw peat-scarred purple bog stretching off into a misted distance, tiny clusters of houses clinging to the very edges of the island itself. And her heart sank at the prospect of the days that lay ahead of her, alone in this strange and foreign place.

Detective Sergeant George Gunn was waiting for her by the luggage carousel. She knew at once who he was. He looked like a policeman. Big feet in shiny black leather shoes, sharply pressed dark grey trousers, a quilted black anorak, and a face shaven to within an inch of its life. Pink and shiny and crowned by oiled black hair that divided his forehead in a widow’s peak.

It seemed he knew her, too. Perhaps police officers everywhere recognized fellow travellers of the same species. He stepped forward to shake her hand as she put out her own, and said hesitantly, ‘Bonjour madame. Detective Sergeant George Gunn. Je suis enchanté. C’est quelle, votre valise?’ He blushed and smiled and said, ‘School French.’

Braque forced a smile in return. ‘Perhaps we should stick to English.’

His smile vanished immediately. ‘Of course. Your French is much better than mine.’

‘I should hope so.’

He laughed awkwardly. ‘Oh. Haha. Sorry, I meant...’

‘It’s alright,’ she said, lifting a small suitcase from the conveyer belt. ‘And I can manage my bag myself, thank you.’

‘Of course.’

At the car-rental desk he said, ‘You really didn’t need to hire a car. I could have driven you wherever you wanted to go.’

She signed the rental and insurance documents. ‘I prefer to have my own wheels.’

He nodded and watched as she presented her French driver’s licence, wondering if Britain’s exit from the European Union would make this process more complex in the future. He said, ‘How did you recognize me?’

‘The same way you recognized me.’

He frowned. ‘They sent you my photograph?’

She turned, surprised. ‘No. They sent you mine?’

‘Some kind of faxed personnel document. Not a very good likeness.’ He thought about it for a moment. ‘So how...?’ But he decided to let it drop.

The wind that battered them as they stepped outside had an icy edge to it, feeling to Braque more like winter than autumn. She decided that she was distinctly underdressed in her short denim jacket and T-shirt.

‘I’m in the black Ford,’ he said. ‘If you want to just follow me into town...’

The drive into Stornoway depressed Braque further. Featureless harled houses lining the road, long grasses bowed by a biting wind that swept across the moor. An old, yellow-painted mill looked like it might have been abandoned. A grey concrete municipal edifice just beyond the roundabout embodied the blighted architectural style of the depressed decade that was the nineteen seventies.

At the top of the hill they turned right into a long, wide street, affluent villas set back from the road and brooding darkly behind mature trees still in autumn leaf. Then into Church Street, descending past Indian and Thai restaurants, and the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses, to a white-painted police station on their right. At the foot of the hill, pleasure and fishing boats rose and fell on the leaden swell of the inner harbour, seagulls circling like shreds of white paper thrown to the winds.

Braque followed Gunn into a tight square parking area, and then into the police station via the back door. Past the charge bar where a big red-faced uniformed sergeant nodded at them. Off to their right a row of police cells flanked a short corridor. Gunn followed her eye and laughed. ‘Not much use for those, except for drying out drunks on a Friday and Saturday night.’

Upstairs he led her into his office and closed the door. From the window she could see a charity shop on the corner opposite. He waved her into a chair and slumped into his own, which he pulled out from a desk pushed against the wall. He tried a smile, perhaps hoping that it might draw something reciprocal. ‘Not quite Paris,’ he said.

Braque nodded. It was not quite like anything she had ever seen.

‘So...’ He rested his palms on his thighs. ‘Niamh Macfarlane.’

‘Yes.’

‘I did a little checking. It seems she arrived back yesterday afternoon with what’s left of Ruairidh. They were at the undertaker’s this morning. The funeral will be on Wednesday.’

Braque cocked an eyebrow in surprise. ‘How did you find all that out so quickly?’

He chuckled. ‘Ma’am, there’s not much happens here that I don’t know about within the hour. It’s both a good and a bad thing, but everyone knows everyone else’s business. And if they don’t, someone else will tell them soon enough. Hard to keep a secret on this island.’

‘So you would know if anyone here bore Ruairidh Macfarlane a grudge of some kind?’

‘Well, I don’t know the Macfarlanes personally. Just by reputation. Though I did meet him once about twenty years ago, when he caught some lad poaching on the Linshader Estate.’

‘What happened?’

‘Ruairidh was working as a ghillie at the lodge for the summer, taking guests out fishing. He and the gamekeeper broke up a gang of poachers and caught one of them. Handed him over to us. Ruairidh and the boy were neighbours, from the same village.’

‘Was he charged?’

‘Aye, and fined. Nothing more. But it was a stain on his reputation. A criminal record. And I believe he’s not done too well for himself since.’ He smiled. ‘Though I doubt if that would have been motivation enough for blowing Ruairidh to bits in a car in Paris twenty some years later.’

Braque said, ‘I’ve seen people moved to murder by less.’

‘Aye, well, Ma’am, folk here tend to work out their differences without killing one another.’

‘You have a low murder rate in the islands, then?’

Gunn pulled in his chin and sucked air through his teeth. ‘Maybe about one every hundred years or so.’

Braque looked at him with astonishment. ‘If you exclude terrorism, there are around seven hundred murders a year in France.’

Gunn nodded. ‘Must keep you quite busy, then.’

Braque wondered if he was joking, and decided that he was, despite his straight face. ‘So what else can you tell me about the Macfarlanes?’

‘Well, I can tell you that there’s no love lost between his family and hers. There was a...’ He paused to search for the right word. ‘An incident. A tragedy, you might say. Must be a quarter of a century ago now. I wasn’t even on the island at the time. But I doubt if there’s a single soul in Lewis and Harris that doesn’t know the story.’

Braque’s interest was piqued. ‘So tell me.’

Gunn stood up. ‘Time enough for that tomorrow. I’ll take you there. It’ll make more sense to you if you can visualize where it happened.’ Then he said, ‘But I’m at your disposal. If there’s anywhere you’d like me to take you, just ask.’

Braque got stiffly to her feet. The trauma of leaving the girls, followed by the long journey from Paris to the Outer Hebrides, had taken its toll. ‘I should call on Madame Macfarlane, make it known to her that I’m here.’

‘You’re not undercover, then?’ He seemed disappointed.

‘No, Detective Sergeant, I’m not.’

‘Well, you’ll not make it out there in that car you’ve hired. You’d rip the arse out of her — excuse my French. I’ll get us a four by four.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘Better get you to your hotel.’

Braque followed Gunn’s black Ford through the town. Along Bayhead and past the inner harbour where trawlers sat high above the quay riding the tide. Shops and houses were painted blue, or yellow, or pink, sometimes harled, and sometimes just drab, rain-streaked stone. Two-and three-storey buildings clustered together along the spit of land that separated the inner and outer harbours, and it was opposite these that they parked, along the side of the quay.

Gunn led her up a short slope to the door of the Crown Hotel, self-conscious about letting her carry her own bag, and she checked in at reception. Gunn said, ‘There’s a lounge bar on the first floor. They do good grub. And the restaurant’s got a nice view over the harbour. The pedestrian street out there runs right through the town. You can get fish and chips there. They call it the Narrows. It’s where the kids all hang out on Friday and Saturday nights. There’s not much else to do if you don’t have any money, or you’re too young for the pubs. It can be a bit noisy.’ He glanced at her key. ‘But it’s only Monday, and I think your room looks over the harbour anyway.’

They stood awkwardly for a moment, and she said, ‘Do you want to join me for a drink in the bar?’ She registered his embarrassment again, and wondered if he saw her as attractive. She didn’t feel attractive. No make-up, hair drawn back severely in a ponytail. And why would she care? He was at least ten years her senior, carrying more weight than was good for him, and judging by the ring on his finger, a married man.

He looked at his watch self-consciously. ‘I can’t really stay, Ma’am.’

‘It’s Sylvie.’

He nodded and confirmed his marital status. ‘My wife will have my tea waiting for me.’

She had an image of his wife at home with a cup of tea, piping hot and ready for him coming through the door.

He must have seen her confusion. ‘My dinner,’ he clarified. And suddenly it occurred to him to ask her if she would like to eat with them. ‘I’m sure whatever we’re having would stretch to three...’

She smiled wearily. ‘Thank you, but no thank you.’ She had no desire to pass an awkward evening with this prosaic island policeman and his wife. ‘I should probably get an early night.’

He seemed relieved. ‘Righty-ho, then. I’ll drop by to pick you up in the morning. About eight?’

She nodded. ‘Thank you. Bonne soirée, Detective Sergeant.’

‘You, too, Ma’am.’

When he was gone she carried her case up to her room with leaden legs and a heavy heart. The room was clean and tidy and modern, with a view across the harbour which, on a good day, might be stunning. But now, with the wind ridging the water and rain marbling the window pane, was just depressing. On the far side of the harbour a castle of some kind stood sentinel on the hill. Grey and red sandstone with crenellated towers. It seemed oddly out of place in this weather-lashed fishing port on the very edge of Europe. And she wondered what sort of people lived here, and what kind of lives they led.

She sat on the end of the bed feeling sorry for herself and took out her mobile phone to call Gilles and speak to the twins. But there was no reply, and she hung up feeling emptier and lonelier than she could ever have imagined.