I'll Keep You Safe

Chapter Forty

It would be some time, they were told, before they would be allowed to return to the house at Taigh ’an Fiosaich, but Niamh had the sense that no matter how it might clean up, the stain of blood and death would always haunt their home.

They signed into the Royal Hotel under the curious eye of the receptionist, who couldn’t take her eyes off the bandaging on Ruairidh’s neck. There couldn’t be anyone in Stornoway who did not know by now what had happened out on the moor south of Skigersta in last night’s storm. Or at least some version of it.

They had both spent most of the day being interrogated separately and giving statements at the police station in Church Street. Senior officers from the mainland were apparently on their way. Niamh and Ruairidh had been warned not to leave the island.

George Gunn, it seemed, had never made it back to Stornoway the previous evening, detained at Uig until late by a tragic accidental death on the cliffs at Mangersta, and staying there overnight. It was only on his return in the morning that he had picked up Braque’s message and watched the video.

Lee Blunt’s car had been found in a ditch near Hushinish, Blunt himself unconscious but alive.

Once in their room, they drew the curtains and sat in disconsolate silence. Who knew how long it might take to get over something like this, if ever. It was some time before Niamh finally got to her feet to search her bag for the slim parcel in its brown paper wrapping that she had intended to give to Ruairidh in Paris. She held it out to him and he looked up in surprise.

‘What’s this?’

‘Maybe the only bright spot anywhere on our horizon,’ she said.

He frowned, then took it and tore away the wrapping. He looked up in consternation. ‘A compendium of Scots Gaelic Christian names and their history?’ It was the tiniest booklet.

She said, ‘I was afraid, after she pushed me into the sea, that I might lose it. But they scanned me at the hospital this afternoon while you were still with the police.’

His eyes opened wide. ‘But I thought...’

She nodded. ‘I know. Me, too.’

He stood up. ‘You really are?’

‘Yes.’ And she felt his arms around her, pulling her close and holding her tight in a way she had thought he never would again. And it felt like life had given them a second chance.