I'll Keep You Safe

Chapter Thirty-Four

Just as she had driven up the west coast yesterday afternoon in the rain, so Niamh drove down it again this morning in the rain. A light rain, finer than drizzle. A smirr. Almost a mist, blowing in off the sea.

In the middle of the night, after lying in the dark for so many sleepless hours, she had finally got up to wander through to the kitchen and make herself a cup of tea. Anything to calm her growing sense of paranoia. For the first time since she and Ruairidh had built their house out there on the cliffs, she felt unsafe in it. That, in spite of having locked every door and secured every window.

The tiniest sound, or creak, or muted gust of wind, caused a flutter in her chest. It had occurred to her sometime in the small hours that whoever had tried to kill her might be the same person who had killed Ruairidh. Though the why of it escaped her. Just trying to make some kind of sense of it all had given her a headache that the tea did nothing to alleviate.

Eventually she had gone back to bed to lie tortured and afraid, stricken still with grief for the man she was going to lay in the ground in the morning.

Sometime, not long before the arrival of daylight, she drifted off into a shallow sleep that was interrupted immediately, it felt, by the alarm she had set the night before. Just that short period of sleep, while blessed in its fleeting relief, had left her feeling worse than if she had remained awake all night.

Now she found it hard to focus on the road. The smear of rain across her windscreen in poor light forced her to blink repeatedly to stay awake. Why, she wondered, could she not have felt this sleepy the night before?

Balanish was deserted as she drove through the empty main street. Away to her right, beyond the protective arm of the peninsula that sheltered the harbour, she saw the ocean rolling in, relentless white tops crashing all along the coast.

As she parked on the road above the house where she had grown up, and stepped out into the wind and rain, she felt like a ghost revisiting a past life. Wraithlike and insubstantial as she walked down the path, past the loom shed to the back door. She almost expected that her mother would not see her when she opened it.

‘Since when does a daughter of mine have to knock on the door of her own house,’ her mother reprimanded her. And Niamh was almost relieved that she was not invisible after all.

In spite of the oil-fired central heating, and the peat fire smouldering in the hearth, the atmosphere in the house was frigid. Uilleam sat by the window at the back of the sitting room and would not even meet her eye. Her father was installed in his habitual armchair by the fire, the morning paper folded across his thighs. He glanced at her over his reading glasses, and all that Niamh could see was his embarrassment.

‘So...’ her mother said. ‘To what do we owe the honour?’

‘You know it’s Ruairidh’s funeral today.’ It wasn’t a question.

‘Of course.’

‘Uilleam tells me you plan not to attend.’

Her mother glanced at her son, who turned his head to look out of the window. ‘Did he?’

‘Is that true?’ Niamh turned towards her father. ‘Dad?’

‘Your father’s not been feeling so good.’

Niamh wheeled angrily on her mother. ‘Why don’t you let him speak for himself, just once in his life?’ Her mother recoiled, as if from a slap. And Niamh turned back to her father. ‘Dad?’

He gave a feeble shrug of his shoulders. ‘I don’t see why we couldn’t.’

‘We’re not going.’ Her mother’s voice was hard as steel.

Niamh turned to look at her again. Stared directly into her eyes until her mother was forced to avert them. She said very quietly, ‘I’m not asking any of you to go for Ruairidh. I’m asking you to go for me.’ She paused. ‘And if you can’t do that... If you can’t do that, then I have no family.’ She turned and pushed her way from the room, out through the kitchen and the back door, almost hyperventilating. To stand for a moment on the back step, gazing out across the garden where she had played as a child. At the bothag which she and Seonag had imagined so colourfully as a house, filling it with dollies and miniature plates and cups and saucers. At the old blackhouse where her grandfather once wove Harris Tweed.

And still the rain wept from a sky that leached all happiness from once precious memories.

There was a large gathering of cars outside the Macfarlane croft house. Too many for the metalled parking area, and they extended well down the hill on the single-track road that led to the bridge. More were arriving all the time. Niamh parked by the bridge itself and walked up the hill through the rain. She wore a black dress and shawl, and a pillbox hat and net that she had bought for a previous funeral. Her hair was pinned up beneath it, severe and uncompromising. She wore no make-up and her skin was ghostly pale, penumbrous shadows beneath sad hazel eyes.

Mourners arriving at the house appeared almost embarrassed to see her, nodding solemnly before quickly averting their eyes. People parted to let her through, as if somehow death had contaminated her.

The hearse was parked on the road, and the coffin prepared by Alasdair Macrae sat across several chairs in the porch at the front. Ruairidh’s final view from the house in which he had grown up, blurred through windows distorted by rain.

Mrs Macfarlane led her through to the porch from the sitting room. ‘We’ve had literally hundreds come to pay their respects,’ she said. ‘A constant stream of family and friends, and well-wishers from around the island.’

Well-wishers. What irony. How could Ruairidh’s mother ever have known that this was the name adopted by her son’s killer. Well wisher. Whatever else he had wished Ruairidh, it wasn’t well.

‘The minister’ll be here soon. I wanted to have the service in the house, like they used to do it. As you know, Ruairidh was never much one for the church himself. So it seemed, you know, more appropriate.’

Niamh nodded. For once, Mrs Macfarlane had judged it right.

‘I’ll leave you with him for a few moments.’ And she withdrew discreetly to leave Niamh with the coffin and the knowledge of what lay inside. There was no comfort in it. Nothing could take away the horror of the moment in the Place de la République when the explosion had knocked her from her feet. Or when the undertaker in Paris had placed the coffin for still-borns on his desk, and Niamh had visualized for the first time exactly what that explosion had done to the man she loved. What little of him it had left her.

A slow tear, like molten sadness, trickled its way down her pale cheek, and she turned, startled by the sudden realization that there was someone standing beside her.

Donald looked awkward. Embarrassed like all the others, but there was something else in his eyes that went beyond mourning or sympathy. He could not hold her gaze for long. ‘What news?’ he said.

Niamh frowned.

He clarified. ‘Of the investigation.’

‘Oh. That.’ She succumbed to indifference. What did it matter now? ‘None.’

He hesitated, then to her surprise wrapped protective fingers around her arm. ‘You know... if they haven’t caught anyone for it, it’s just possible that you could be at risk, too.’

She turned her head up to look at him, crinkling her brows in surprise. ‘Why do you say that?’ It seemed an extraordinary coincidence, coming the morning after someone had tried to kill her.

He shrugged. ‘Just worried about you.’ His freckles were even more striking than usual against the whiteness of his skin, and she saw that his eyes were watery and bloodshot. Perhaps he had not been sleeping. ‘What are your plans after the funeral?’ he asked.

‘I have no plans.’

He let go of her arm. ‘You shouldn’t be on your own, Niamh.’ Then, as if he had spoken out of turn, added quickly, ‘It’s an emotional time.’

‘Every minute since it happened has been an emotional time.’

He nodded, and she saw what seemed to her like a fleeting shadow of guilt cross his face. And, yet, what would Donald have to feel guilty about? Ruairidh was his wee brother, after all. Grief showed its face in many ways. She took and squeezed his hand, and succeeded only in increasing his discomfort.

It was impossible to say how many folk were crushed into the house for the brief service conducted by the minister. And there were many more outside, standing in the rain.

The minister himself was an elderly man. The wind had ruined the careful parting of what was left of wiry white hair, and then the rain had flattened it so that it stuck in fine wet curls to his forehead. He was tall and impossibly thin, and in spite of the strictness of the Free Church had always, to Niamh’s mind, presented the human face of his dour religion.

In the silence that filled the house, pervading every corner of it, Niamh listened to the intonation of his voice rather than his words. It was hard to find the vocabulary truly to express your feelings. People and religions fell back on platitudes and favourite biblical readings. But the heart spoke through the voice, and Niamh just closed her eyes to listen. Here was the man who had thrown the first handful of sand over Anndra’s coffin, read the same blessings, offered the same sympathies. Drawing no distinction between one and the other. Apportioning no blame. For he, at least, carried the certainty in his soul that only God knew the truth of what happened all those years ago, and that it was His justice that would prevail.

But his final words rang out loud and clear, bringing tears to almost every eye in the house. Song of Solomon 4:6. So often read aloud at funerals, written in obituaries, carved on headstones. Gus am bris an latha agus an teich na sgàilean. Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away.

It was not until she got outside, drawing cold fresh air into her lungs, that it became apparent just how many people there were out here. Among the many she knew were others that she did not. Journalists, perhaps. A drone hovered high overhead and she realized that some TV news outlet, or freelancer, was filming the funeral for broadcast later in the day. She caught a glimpse of Lee Blunt, solemn and subdued, dressed all in black, and surrounded by so many of the famous faces of British fashion. Models and designers, photographers and fashion writers. Faces familiar around the world, turning up here for an island funeral, drawing stares of curiosity and wonder from awestruck locals. Such was the celebrity of Ranish Tweed, and Ruairidh’s renown, that people like these would travel the world to say their farewells.

Jacob Steiner tipped his hat towards Niamh as six men, Donald among them, carried the coffin out to the hearse. When the rear door closed on it, Ruairidh’s brother came to take her arm. ‘You come in the car with me,’ he said. ‘We can pick yours up later.’

She saw that her parents and Uilleam were standing among the mourners watching her, maintaining a discreet distance. She wondered why they had come after all. Perhaps to stop the gossips from whispering among themselves how her own family had failed to turn out for Ruairidh’s funeral. But she cut short the thought, even as it formed. And preferred, instead, to believe that for once maybe it was her father who had prevailed.

She sat in the front of the Audi with Donald. Ruairidh’s parents sat in the back. And they drove in silence down the hill behind the hearse. When they turned at the bridge, Niamh saw Seonag and her husband, and their two children, getting into their SUV to join the procession. For the briefest of moments their eyes met, before Seonag turned away to say something to her husband. And Donald accelerated up the hill on the main road towards the turn-off to Dalmore Beach, little more than half a mile away.

The car park at the beach was inadequate to accommodate all the vehicles in the procession, and most of them were forced to park in a line all the way up the hill, perched precariously on the verge, leaving the road clear for mourners to walk down to the cemetery.

The undertakers unlocked the door of a small concrete hut by the gate to slide out the bier on which the coffin would be carried. As well as half a dozen or more shovels to be taken to the grave for use by the family to fill it in afterwards.

Niamh could see where the grave had been dug at the far end of the cemetery, almost overlooking the beach, and only a few feet from where her brother lay.

Flowers and wreaths were carried from cars and laid by the gate, too many for the undertakers to carry to the grave themselves. And Niamh decided to break with convention. She stooped to gather up as many of the flowers as she could, and started off on the long walk through the cemetery herself. A lone figure. The coffin had not even been taken yet from the hearse. Others, who had no idea of the conventions, followed suit. Catwalk models in hopelessly inappropriate footwear, picking their precarious way across the uneven sandy soil, bearing bouquets and wreaths, like some procession of funereal fashionistas at a dark autumn collection. The coffin and all the male mourners followed on behind. A funeral the like of which had never before been seen on the island.

When Niamh reached the grave and looked back, she saw that Seonag was among the carriers of flowers. But that her mother, and Mrs Macfarlane, and many of the older women remained behind. Whatever else they might disagree upon, they remained punctilious in their adherence to the old ways.

The wind whipped the rain in off the sea, umbrellas abandoned or blown inside out. The gathering in black around the grave seemed drawn together in a collective huddle against the elements. But it was so exposed here that there was no protection to be had, and even the pages of the minister’s bible were stuck together by the wet, so that he had to peel them carefully apart to avoid tearing the delicate paper. And in an ultimate irony, his final words were lost in the roar of the sea and the howling of the wind, as if Nature herself were determined to have the last say.

When it was over, most of the mourners hurried off towards the shelter of their cars. Donald and several friends lifted the spades brought by the undertakers to start shovelling sand over the coffin, stooped by the weight of grief and sand and weather.

Niamh wandered away to the fence where a wooden bench provided a view across the beach. The crescent of sand was deserted, the sea thundering angrily over it in wave after wave of white breaking water. Off to her right she saw a lone figure standing watching from the far side of the cemetery. It took her a moment to realize that it was Iain Maciver. Peanut, as she had always known him. No longer the boy she remembered with his twisted, angry face as he sank his boot time and again into Ruairidh’s prone form on the ground. A man now, old before his time. Almost completely bald, a dark beard greying in streaks of silver. Strangely, he too was dressed in black, though he had not stood among the mourners.

Satisfied that Niamh had seen him, he turned and walked away, strangely bowed, hands plunged deep into his pockets. And she wondered why he had come. Not to mourn, she was sure.

Beyond, on the headland, stood two more figures, watching proceedings below. Even as she spotted them, they turned and headed back down the slope towards the car park. Only then did she recognize who they were. Detective Sergeant Gunn, and Lieutenant Braque of the Paris Police Judiciaire. What, if anything, could they possibly have gleaned from this sombre gathering in the rain? Somehow, she felt, it was not here that Ruairidh’s murder would be resolved.

A hand on her shoulder startled her, and she turned to find herself gazing into the rain-streaked face of Lee Blunt. She wondered if it was eyeliner he was wearing. Whatever it was had smudged all around his eyes in the rain, tears of black, creating the illusion of sunken sockets. The eyes at their centre had an oddly glazed quality, pupils dilated unnaturally, even in this light.

He slipped his arms around her and drew her tightly against him, turning her head to press it to his chest, and resting his chin lightly on top of it. ‘You don’t still think that Ruairidh was having an affair with Irina, do you?’

‘I don’t know that I ever did, Lee. In spite of evidence to the contrary. I’m even less inclined to believe it now. Back here with all my memories of him, and everything we shared.’

‘You’re quite right,’ he said. ‘I never believed it either. She was such a little nothing. Couldn’t hold a candle to my Niamh.’ He stepped back, still holding her by the shoulders. ‘Jake tells me he called at the house yesterday.’

She nodded.

‘So you know we’ve taken over Amhuinnsuidhe Castle for a couple of days? Me and everyone else on my plane.’

‘Yes.’

‘We’re having a party tonight, Niamh. What do you Scots call it, a wake? A celebration of the life rather than a mourning of the death.’ Apparently he had given up numbering himself among the Scots. ‘I’d like you to come. We all would.’

Niamh shook her head. ‘I couldn’t, Lee. Honestly. I couldn’t.’

‘Of course you could. What else are you going to do? Go home alone and cry into your pillow? Too many tears already. You need to come and get drunk with us. Raise a glass or ten to Ruairidh and Ranish.’

‘Lee...’ she started to protest, but he placed a forefinger on her lips. ‘Shhhh. I’m not taking no for an answer. You’re coming with us girl. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.’