I'll Keep You Safe

Chapter Twenty-Five

Gunn pulled in on a hardcore passing place on the edge of the old Bilascleiter settlement and he and Braque got out to feel the wind filling their mouths and tugging at their clothes and hair. They had a good view from here back towards the Macfarlane house, and the ruins beyond it. A green corrugated tin hut stood resolute against the gales that swept across the moor in all seasons. A blackened wooden door was bolted, but peering through net curtains, Gunn could see into a gloomy interior where an old settee was pushed up against the back wall.

A stainless-steel sink lay in what remained of an old blackhouse in front of it, abandoned to its fate, bog moss and grasses slowly claiming it. The footings of perhaps a dozen more old stone dwellings were still visible here, climbing the slope to the top of the hill.

‘What was this place?’ Braque asked.

Gunn shrugged. ‘A settlement of some sort. More than just shielings, I think.’ It didn’t occur to him to explain what a shieling was, and she didn’t ask.

She was just baffled that anyone would ever have chosen to settle here. ‘Looks like they didn’t stay long.’

‘Oh, they might have been here a century or more, I have no idea,’ Gunn said. ‘They’re hardy souls that hail from these parts.’

Braque didn’t doubt it.

Gunn removed a walking stick from the back seat of the 4×4 and used it for support as he walked up to the top of the hill. Braque picked her way carefully after him. While he was wearing a pair of stout wellies, she had only leather boots with Cuban block heels. And by the time she reached him she could feel peaty bog water seeping through to her feet. It was with dismay she accepted that the boots were probably ruined.

As she scrambled up the last few feet to stand beside him, she saw the coastline zigzagging off to the south, each successive headland reaching further out, it seemed, into the Minch. Gunn said, ‘I put out a few feelers when they told me you were coming. I got some feedback first thing this morning.’ He turned to look at her, and she saw his oiled black hair whipped up by the wind to stand on end. ‘You’ve heard of Lee Blunt?’

‘The fashion designer?’

‘The very one. A few years back he was using Ranish Tweed in his collections, and making a name for it all over the world. Then he had a very public fallout with Ruairidh. Fisticuffs, I believe, in a pub in London, though there were no charges ever brought.’ He paused. ‘Turns out he was here on the island just a few weeks back. Flew in on a private chartered jet.’ He took out a black notebook and flicked through it. ‘Tuesday the fifth of September to be exact. Stayed a couple of days, and hired a car to take him to the mill at Shawbost.’ He turned to look at her. ‘What do you know about Harris Tweed?’

She shrugged and admitted, ‘Not much.’

‘It has to be hand-woven by weavers in their own homes. The big mills spin the wool and supply the weavers with both the orders and the wool. When the weaving’s done, the cloth goes back to the mill to be finished. They repair any flaws then wash and dry it. They even shave it to make it nice and smooth. With very few exceptions the weavers work to order for the mills.’

‘So if you were going to place an order you would go to one of the mills?’

‘Indeed.’

‘But Ranish isn’t Harris Tweed.’

‘No. Because they use different types of fibres that don’t conform to the requirements that are defined for Harris Tweed by Act of Parliament. They have their own designs and patterns, take their own orders, and only use the mills for the finishing process.’

‘So what was Blunt doing at the mill?’

‘I’ve no idea. But here’s the interesting thing. Air traffic at the airport tell me that he’s due in again this afternoon. Another private charter. Him and a few others coming for the funeral, apparently.’

‘Why would he be coming for the funeral if he had fallen out with Ruairidh?’

‘A very good question, Ma’am. And that’s something you might want to ask him.’

The sound of a vehicle starting up carried to them on the wind and they looked down to see Niamh backing her Jeep away from the house, turning and then heading along the track towards them. As it passed their 4×4 at the foot of the hill, they saw Niamh glancing up towards them. A pale face behind reflections on the driver’s window. She must have wondered what they were doing there, standing among the ruins.

When the Jeep had gone, Gunn said, ‘In the meantime, maybe we should make a wee visit to the mill to find out just what Mr Blunt was doing there.’

The mill at Shawbost stood on the far side of a small stretch of slate-grey water just north of the village, a collection of blue and white sheds and a tall white chimney that reached up to prick the pewter of the sky. Beyond it, the brown and purple shimmer of autumn moorland undulated away into a changeable morning, off towards an ocean that broke along a shoreline somewhere unseen.

It was in the dyeing shed that they found the brand director of Harris Tweed Hebrides.

Two young men in dark blue overalls were hoisting steaming batches of freshly dyed wool from vast stainless-steel vats. Virgin Scottish Cheviot wool sat around in half-ton bales waiting to be transformed from peat-stained white to primary red or blue or yellow. From adjoining sheds came the deafening clatter of the machinery that dried, blended and spun the dyed wool into the yarn that would eventually go out to weavers in their sheds all over the island.

Margaret Ann Macleod was an attractive woman in her late thirties or early forties. She was tall and slim, and wore a long Harris Tweed jacket over jeans and boots. Straight red hair, cut in a fringe that fell into green eyes, tumbled over square shoulders. ‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t be at liberty to tell you,’ she said, when Gunn asked her about Lee Blunt’s visit earlier in the month.

They followed her through to the drying room, where the noise level grew louder and Gunn had to raise his voice. ‘This is a murder inquiry, Ms Macleod. You can either tell us here or at the police station.’

Which stopped her in her tracks. She turned her gaze in his direction and he felt momentarily discomfited. ‘We take customer confidentiality very seriously,’ she said.

‘I’m sure you do.’

Margaret Ann glanced at Braque and then back again. ‘He was choosing patterns to place an order. In fact, he was back again last week to finalize it.’

‘An order with Ranish?’

‘No, Detective Sergeant, with Harris Tweed Hebrides.’

Braque said, ‘But it was with Ranish that he had a relationship in the past.’

‘Yes it was.’

Gunn scratched his smoothly shaven chin thoughtfully. ‘So he’s switching from Ranish Tweed to Harris Tweed.’

‘So it would seem.’

‘That’s going to be a bit of a public slap in the face for Ranish, isn’t it?’

The merest smile played around Margaret Ann’s lips. ‘You might say that, Detective Sergeant, I couldn’t possibly comment.’

Outside, the wind had stiffened further, shredding the sky, allowing sunlight to sprinkle itself in fast-moving patches across the land. While further out at sea, bruised black rain clouds gathered ominously along the horizon. Braque and Gunn stood by their 4×4 and she said, ‘Interesting timing. Choosing Harris Tweed over Ranish just weeks before Ruairidh’s death. And then coming to the funeral. Sounds like he is celebrating the death rather than mourning it.’

Gunn nodded. ‘Come to gloat rather than grieve.’

She looked thoughtful. ‘So where to now?’

‘Dalmore,’ Gunn said. ‘The beach and the cemetery. That’s where they will bury Ruairidh tomorrow.’

The single-track road that led down to the beach descended gently between the hills. Off to their left, sheep that thought Gunn and Braque might be bringing them feed came running down a rough track towards the road. They stopped abruptly in disappointment as the 4×4 carried on by.

The blades of a couple of small wind turbines turned in the wind up on the hillside, and they passed a croft house and outbuildings on their right before descending steeply to the metalled area of car park. Straight ahead the cemetery rose in a gradual slope across the machair to where wooden piles had been driven deep into the sand, delineating the line between cemetery and beach. The erosive nature of the weather, and the sea, had been in danger of eating into the soft sandy soil of the cemetery to spill bones and headstones on to the giant pebbles below.

A sandy track beside a waterway led along the side of the cemetery to the beach itself, and on the far side, set proud on an elevation, stood a newer patch of burial ground where residents commanded an even better view of the beach.

Braque’s heart sank when Gunn retrieved his walking stick from the back seat. Her feet had only just dried out. But the ground he led them on to, beyond the tarmac, was firm and dry and took them on a relatively easy climb towards the top of the cliffs at the north end of the beach.

‘Is it not dangerous for you to be exerting yourself like this?’ she called after him, hoping that he might go slower.

‘Not at all,’ he called over his shoulder, oblivious to the unsuitability of her footwear. ‘The doctor says the more exercise the better.’

When finally they reached the end of their climb, the most spectacular vista opened up below them. A crescent of pale gold arcing away to the south, tide receding in white foam across smooth shiny sand to the sparkling turquoise of water that turned a deep marine as the sand shelved steeply away beneath it.

Accumulated all along the foot of the wooden piles at the innermost curve of the beach were marvellously marbled pebbles the size of dinosaur eggs, rock squeezed into layers during the first days of creation, then worn smooth and rounded by aeons. To be washed up here on this far-flung European outpost, well beyond the reach of what had once been the Roman Empire.

Immediately below them, the ocean foamed fiercely around jagged black rock stacks that rose sheer out of the water and stood stubborn against the relentless power of the Atlantic. The sun flitted intermittently across the sands, and there was not another soul in sight. The rain clouds they had seen in Shawbost were, thus far, biding their time out at sea.

Gunn pointed to the far headland. ‘Just a year or so ago, an oil rig being towed around the Hebrides broke free and washed up at the other end of the beach there. Because of the bad weather it stayed put for quite a while before they managed to tow it away. Brought as many tourists to see it as the beach itself. A huge bloody thing it was.’ And then self-consciously, ‘Begging your pardon Ma’am.’

But Braque had not noticed his lapse of language, and wouldn’t have cared if she had. She was gazing in wonder at the view that filled her eyes. ‘I cannot imagine,’ she said, ‘a more beautiful place to spend eternity.’

‘Personally, Ma’am, I’d rather see it from the perspective of the living than the dead.’

She turned a smile on him. ‘But we are all going to die sometime, Detective Sergeant.’

‘That we are, Ma’am. But some are taken before their time.’

‘Like Ruairidh.’

‘Aye. And others.’ His own gaze turned reflective as he panned it across the beach and cemetery below. ‘The brother that Niamh Macfarlane has gone to meet off the ferry. Uilleam...’ He drew a deep breath. ‘There was no love lost between him and Ruairidh Macfarlane.’

Braque frowned. ‘Love lost?’

He smiled. ‘Sorry. They didn’t like one another very much. And that would be an understatement.’ He snorted. ‘Not that there was much contact between them. Not for a long time, anyway. Uilleam’s been away from the island for years. Based in Dundee, on the east coast of Scotland. A software developer, I’m told, for one of the big online games companies.’

She frowned again. ‘I’m not sure I understand.’

‘Computer games. You know, things like Grand Theft Auto and World of Warcraft. Stuff like that. I’m no expert myself.’ He turned to look at her. ‘I wouldn’t even know what they called Grand Theft Auto in France.’

She shrugged and smiled. ‘Grand Theft Auto, I believe.’

He grinned. ‘Oh, well, that’s original, then.’ The grin faded. ‘The thing is, Ma’am, I heard this morning that Uilleam was on the island himself earlier this month. It never came to my attention officially at the time, but I understand that he and Ruairidh had a confrontation in McNeill’s bar in Stornoway. A chance meeting apparently, that ended in fists and flying beer glasses. No complaints made, and no arrests, but I gather that Uilleam took a bit of a beating. Ruairidh was a big lad. But it was Uilleam that picked the fight.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘Well, like I said, Ma’am, there was no love lost.’ He turned his eyes back towards the beach. ‘And the seeds of it were sown right here on these sands. Something that happened twenty-five years ago now. And there’s probably not anyone on the island who doesn’t know the story.’

Braque looked at him, intrigued. ‘Tell me.’