I'll Keep You Safe

Chapter Thirty-Seven

In the dark, Braque got hopelessly lost. She missed the turn-off to Skigersta at Cross, and carried on until the road descended gently into Port of Ness, with its row of bungalows and its white villa standing in solitary defiance on the clifftop overlooking the harbour. The storm drove the sea with relentless violence into an already shattered harbour wall, breaking fifty or sixty feet into the air, spray joining rain to lash the village. Somewhere away off to her left she saw the intermittent beam of a lighthouse rake the dark, but somehow instinct told her that was not the way.

She cursed herself for not paying more attention when Gunn had driven her up to Ness the day before. At the end of the road she turned her car and headed back the way she had come, making another wrong turn that took her this time to the settlement of Five Penny and closer, she saw, to the lighthouse. Following the road took her on what felt like a long loop, past some sort of social club where cars stood parked beneath sodium street lamps, and then a school, before rising again to what she was sure was the road she had left earlier.

Which way to turn? She went left, and then to her relief saw a sign to Skigersta. She turned right, up through Crobost, and headed south into darkness until she saw the tiny clutch of street lights around the settlement at Skigersta itself. From this point, she was fairly confident, she would soon find herself at the road end, and the beginning of the track that led out to Taigh ’an Fiosaich.

Out here, if anything, was even more exposed to the wind, and she felt waves of it battering her car. She clung, white-knuckled, to the steering wheel and leaned forward in her seat to peer through the rain that washed relentlessly across her windscreen, straining to see in the darkness that lay ahead. A darkness barely penetrated by her headlights.

It was almost with relief that she found herself on the pitted and potholed track that stretched away across the moor, her car lurching and pitching from one hole in the road to the next. She never got out of second gear the whole way, and spent much of it in first. She could have walked faster.

Finally she reached the shielings at Cuishader. Tin huts and caravans, that somehow miraculously survived everything this climate could throw at them. A red light flickered momentarily in her peripheral vision, and she thought for a moment her lights might have caught the rear reflectors of a vehicle tucked away behind the old rotting bus. She glanced towards it but saw nothing in the darkness, then forced her concentration back to the track, which dipped down across the concrete bridge at the foot of the hollow. The stream it spanned was in full spate, and for a moment Braque thought her car might get washed away. Then she was over it and climbing the other side, only to be hammered again by the full force of the gales that swept unrestrained across the moor from the west.

Gunn, she was sure, must be back in Stornoway by now. And he would have seen the video. She wondered if he might follow her up to Ness, and wished now that she had waited for him. Driving all the way out here in a storm to see Niamh Macfarlane seemed like the worst idea she had ever had. She checked her mobile phone. No signal. No point in turning back now. She was almost there.

She navigated the bend in the track at Bilascleiter and to her relief saw the lights of Niamh’s house burning into the night, like tiny welcoming beacons of hope. She let her car trundle down the hill, then, to pull it into the gravel apron at the house. She sat for a moment, lights on, engine idling, and wondered where Niamh’s Jeep was parked. There was no sign of it anywhere. So how could she be home if her car wasn’t here? It was possible, she realized, that the lights could be on a timer, set to come on when it got dark. That would make sense if you were returning at night.

She was just about to switch off the ignition and get out of the car, when the house was plunged suddenly into darkness. She was startled. Had there been a power cut? Or had someone inside turned off the lights? Then they flickered, several times, and Braque saw the blades of the two wind turbines at the side of the house spinning manically in the wind. Backup power, perhaps, in the event of a mains failure. But if that was their purpose then they failed, for the house remained in darkness.

Braque decided to leave her engine running and the headlamps on. That would at least provide some light inside the house through the windows. She ducked out into the storm, fighting to close the door of her car against the power of the wind. Then dashed for the house. The door was unlocked. On the drive up yesterday, Gunn had taken great pride in telling her that islanders felt no need to lock their doors. Niamh, obviously, was no exception.

Braque pushed the door shut behind her and stood dripping in the hallway, amazed at how the insulation of the house immediately snuffed out the storm. It seemed now like a very distant threat. The house warm and dry inside, almost silent.

Light from the car outside permeated faintly through the back windows, casting deep shadows in their reflected illumination. She could only just see along the length of the hall to the large living — dining — kitchen area she knew lay beyond. The darkness there seemed impenetrable.

‘Hello?’ The sound of her voice calling into the dark was swallowed by the silence of the house. ‘Is there anyone home?’ She leaned to her right and opened the door into Niamh’s bedroom. Yellow light from the window lay across an unmade bed. She turned back to the hall. ‘Madame Macfarlane, are you there? I believe I know who killed your husband.’

Saying it out loud, even to no one, seemed to make it more real. She really did know who had killed him. Or, at least, ordered his execution. Though she had no idea why.

‘Madame Macfarlane?’

Still no response. Braque debated what to do. She could wait, but had no idea when, or if, Niamh would be home tonight. If she left, she might pass Gunn on the road without seeing him. And that would be stupid. Even if Niamh didn’t show up, Gunn would. Almost certainly.

She moved forward carefully towards the living room at the end of the hall, fingertips on the wall so as not to lose her orientation. Her eyes were growing accustomed to the faintest of light provided from the outside by her headlamps. Furniture began to take shape around her. The breakfast bar off to her left.

Then suddenly a shadow rose up straight in front of her. A face, barely lit, but burning with some inner intensity. A face she had seen on CCTV video footage barely two hours ago. She had no time to react before she felt the blade punching into her abdomen. Ice-cold, razor-sharp. Once, twice. The third time it slid between her ribs and up into her heart. She dropped to her knees, clutching feebly at her wounds and feeling the blood running warm through her fingers. The life ebbing out of her.

She realized, with a sense of disbelief, that she was going to die. How was that possible? How could this have happened?

She would never catch those flights tomorrow, or tell Faubert what he could do with his job. She would never see her children again, nor they her. The choices she should have made long ago would never now be taken. And as darkness consumed her she knew, too, that there was nothing she could do to stop her killer from taking Niamh’s life as well.