The Chessmen

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

In the time it had taken Fin to drive down to Uig the day after his confrontation in the bar with Whistler, the wind had whipped itself up to a force-six or seven. But it was still unnaturally warm, and even stronger stratospheric winds had combed the incoming clouds thin across the sky in odd quiffs and streaks, like folds of gauze veiling the sun.

The tall reedy grass all around James Minto’s cottage, tucked away amongst the dunes overlooking Uig sands, moved in waves and eddies like water in the wind. There was a Land Rover parked in front of a dilapidated outbuilding that hadn’t seen paint for many a year. Fin turned his Suzuki off the metalled road and pulled up at the end of a sandy track that petered out at the front of the house. Beyond the dunes the mountains rose up in dark masses like waves of rock washing against the sky.

There was no sign of life behind either of the small windows set in thick whitewashed stone, and the sound of Fin’s knuckles rapping on the old wooden door had an empty ring to it. He was about to give up and drive on to Ardroil, when the door opened and the dishevelled figure of James Minto stood in his dressing gown blinking in the bright morning light. He squinted at Fin, one hand raised to shield his eyes.

‘Jesus Christ, mate! What kind of bloody time’s this to come calling? Don’t you know I work nights?’

Fin recalled the soft-voiced, flat-toned cockney accent from the first time they had met, and the latent threat that lay behind it. Minto was ex-special forces, brought in by the estate a couple of years before to deter poachers. Which he had done very successfully, by dubious means. He was feared and hated in almost equal measure by almost everyone in Uig. But no one man was equipped to deal with the poaching that was now taking place on an industrial scale, and Minto did not possess Fin’s skill as an investigator. He was a Rottweiler, not a hound.

Fin regarded him thoughtfully, unremorseful for dragging the man from his bed. ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’

Minto glared at him for a moment, before realization washed over him. ‘You’re that rozzer. Came calling a year or so ago to accuse me of murdering some poacher up in Ness.’

‘There were no accusations involved. We were simply eliminating you from our inquiry.’

‘Yeh, well that’s not how it seemed to me, mate.’

‘Anyway, that’s history. I’m no longer a. . rozzer. I’m head of security on the Red River Estate. My name’s Fin Macleod. And effectively I’m now your boss.’

‘Oh, well, fuck me if I ain’t trembling in me slippers, Mr Macleod.’

Fin looked into the palest of green eyes in a lean, tanned face. Minto’s dark crew-cut hair was liberally peppered with silver now, but he was not a man to mess with. Trained to kill, and still fit and honed beneath a dressing gown that hung open to reveal only boxer shorts and a pair of flip-flops. Fin said, ‘Well that’s probably because you’re so underdressed and feeling the cold. Why don’t you ask me in and you can slip into something more comfortable?’

Minto hesitated for a moment, as if not quite sure how to take this. But the twinkle in Fin’s eye brought a reluctant smile to his face. He stood back and held the door open. ‘On you go then. Into the living room. I’ll be with you in a minute.’

As soon as he entered the cramped little space that was the cottage living room, Fin remembered the impression he had taken away from his last visit, a sense of a manic and unmasculine tidiness. Every piece of furniture was placed for maximum efficiency and accessibility, clean white antimacassars draped over the arms and backs of a three-piece suite. Dust-free shelves were lined with carefully arranged books and ornaments. A range of fire irons hung neatly in the fireplace, tiles swept clean and polished to a shine. The open door to the kitchen gave on to tidy worktops, mugs hanging in regular rows from hooks fixed to the walls, washed dishes drying on a rack by the sink.

There was a faintly antiseptic smell in the air.

Fin turned towards the window and saw the chessboard on its small square table below the sill. There was no room for chairs at either side, but there was a game in progress. Resin reproductions of the Lewis chessmen in crimson and ivory. Fin wandered over to take a look, and lifted the Berserker from its square to look at the bristling beard and snarling mouth, teeth sunk into the shield. The original made Fin think much more of Whistler than of Kenny. He carefully replaced it and turned as Minto came into the room pulling a khaki woollen jumper over a white singlet. He wore jeans and sneakers now, and Fin saw how puffy his eyes were and still full of sleep.

Fin nodded towards the chessboard. ‘Still playing your old commanding officer by phone?’

‘By email now. Times move on.’ He headed for the kitchen. ‘Cup of tea, mate?’

‘Thanks.’ Fin sank into the settee and found himself looking at a wall lined with framed photographs of Minto with various groups of men, sometimes in uniform, sometimes casual. On parade, or in jungle camouflage in some lush tropical forest on the other side of the world. And he wondered at the solitary existence the man led now after years of comradeship and teamwork. But whatever he had lost in fellowship he had retained in the fastidious attention to detail and organization that the army had dinned into him. Everything had a place and had to be in it. A reason for going to bed at night and getting up in the morning. Except that with Minto, it was the other way around.

Fin glanced from the window across the acres of beach exposed by the outgoing tide, Baile na Cille on the far shore, the church, the burial ground, the wild, untamed beauty of this place. Did Minto have any real sense of it, or was this just somewhere to hide away from a life in civvies he had found hard to cope with? A misfit living on the fringes.

Unlike his last visit, Fin was served his tea in a mug, but the tray it came on contained a little china dish of sugar lumps and milk in a porcelain jug. Minto lifted the mug carefully on to one of half a dozen neatly placed coasters on the coffee table. He chose to drink his own tea standing in front of the fireplace, as if warming himself from the glow of non-existent peats. ‘You’ll be after these poachers, I suppose.’

Fin nodded and sipped at his mug. ‘Do you know Whistler Macaskill?’

‘Who doesn’t?’ Minto nodded towards a two-foot carving of a Lewis chessman on a small wooden table in the far corner of the room. Fin turned to look at it. ‘That’s one of his. Beautiful piece of work it is, too.’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘Bought it off him. In fact, it was seeing that what gave old Sir John the idea for the gala day.’

Fin cocked his head and looked at him closely. ‘What idea was that?’

‘To have a full set of them made and placed on a giant chessboard on the beach. You know, for when they bring the originals here in October. They’ll be up in the old church over there in glass cases.’ He nodded towards the window. ‘Interesting, it is. The geezer what found them way back didn’t know what to do with them. So he took them to the minister of the church at Baile na Cille. One Reverend Macleod. So it’s a nice touch, the chessmen going back to that church. It’s in private hands now, right enough, but seems the new owners are happy to let them use it for the day.’ He took a thoughtful gulp of his tea. ‘Apparently they’re going to have a couple of real chess masters playing a game with the originals. And each move’s going to be relayed to a guy with a walkie-talkie down there on the beach. Then they’ll move the men on the big board to mirror the game in the church. That was Sir John’s idea anyway.’

‘How do you know all this?’

Minto seemed surprised. ‘Well, the old boy told me, didn’t he? It’s no big secret.’

‘His son doesn’t seem to know.’

‘Prat!’ Minto muttered it almost under his breath, as if uncertain how Fin might react to his disrespect.

‘It might be an idea if you mentioned it to him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Sir John is still in recovery from his stroke somewhere in England, and Jamie’s claiming no knowledge of it. So Whistler hasn’t been paid.’

Minto grunted. ‘Typical!’

‘You know he’s been poaching?’

Minto frowned. ‘Who? Whistler?’ Fin nodded. ‘Course I do. But it’s one for the pot every once in a while. Don’t do no one no harm. So I leave him alone.’

‘Jamie wants me to put a stop to it.’

Minto’s mug paused halfway to his mouth. He regarded Fin speculatively. ‘Why?’

‘They don’t see eye to eye.’

‘Well, that’s hardly a surprise.’ He paused. ‘So what are you planning to do about it?’

Fin sighed. ‘I think there’s bigger fish to fry than Whistler, Minto. But there’s real enmity between those two, and if we can’t persuade Whistler to back off, Wooldridge junior might just bring in some heavies. And that would be bad news for Whistler, and maybe do you out of a job.’

Minto was thoughtful for a moment. Then, ‘We?’ he asked.

‘I can’t do it on my own. He’s a big guy. Well, you know that. He’d probably be a handful even for you.’

‘Oh, I could bring him down, Mr Macleod. No problem. But I’d have to hurt him.’

Fin shook his head. ‘I don’t want that. I don’t want to hurt him. Just stop him. Just so he gets the message.’

Minto looked doubtful. ‘How?’

‘He’s going to be up at Loch Tathabhal tonight.’

‘How d’you know that?’

Almost subconsciously Fin ran a hand over his jaw. It still hurt. ‘Because he wanted me to know. A stupid challenge.’

Minto shook his head. ‘Don’t like the sound of it, Mr Macleod.’

Fin set his mug down on its coaster and stood up. ‘I’m going to go up to his place now, to try and talk some sense into him. But if I can’t, I’ll meet you up there tonight, at the old bridge, where the river runs out of the loch.’

‘Okay, mate.’ Minto shrugged. ‘But I’ll still have to hurt him to bring him down.’

The summer sun had been turning slowly, irrevocably towards the equator, drawing a veil of darkness over the Hebrides a little earlier each night. Those long daylight nights, when it was possible on occasion to see the sun both rise and set at the same time, were gone. Official sunset was now 20.45, but although it was after 21.30 there was still light in the sky. An unusually clear sky, even over the mountains that loomed darkly to the south. And the wind of earlier in the day had dropped to an almost eerie stillness. Fin had been unable to find Whistler, and so he was going to keep the rendezvous which had been issued as a challenge the night before.

He saw pale swathes cut into the dark hills ahead as he came over the hilltop at Ardroil, scars left on the landscape by excavations at the gravel pits below, and early moonlight shimmered silver on the road that wound up above the Abhainn Dearg distillery towards Mangurstadh.

A couple of giant red chessmen carved in wood stood guard at the entrance to the island’s first and only distillery in nearly one hundred and seventy years. Abhainn Dearg was Gaelic for Red River, the same name as the estate, and the distillery was so called because it was sited close to where the Red River itself debouched into the Atlantic. The river, according to legend, had got its name following a bloody clan battle which had turned its waters red.

The last distillery on the Isle of Lewis had been closed down in 1844, when the abstainer and prohibitionist Sir James Matheson purchased the island. The irony, perhaps not apparent to the islanders at the time, was that Matheson had made the fortune that allowed him to buy the island by selling opium to the Chinese. But it was an irony not lost on Fin, and it brought the briefest flicker of a smile to his face as the shallow-pitched red and green roofs of the disparate collection of tin and breeze-block buildings that made up Abhainn Dearg passed below him on the road.

But the smile faded as he remembered why he was here. If Whistler had been trying to avoid him all day, then he had succeeded. And Fin was heading up to Loch Tathabhal for a rendezvous he’d rather not have kept.

Half a mile further on he left the road, and his progress up into the mountains slowed to little more than walking speed on a rough, potholed track that twisted its way laboriously up through wide, boulder-strewn valleys. Moonlight lay in silver ribbons on tiny streams, and reflected light from every scrap of water that lay in the dips and hollows of this primeval landscape.

But the moon was still low in the sky, and as the mountains rose up on either side, the track fell into shadow and all light was concentrated in the sky overhead. It skirted the black waters of Loch Raonasgail, the dark peaks of Mealaisbhal and Tathabhal looming ominously over opposite banks. By the time he got to the head of the loch and climbed several hundred feet more, he could see straight down the line of the valley ahead of him to the distant glittering waters of Loch Tamnabhaigh, and the twinkling lights of Cracabhal Lodge on its northern shore.

Here he turned east, tyres kicking up peat and stone in his wake as he left the track and followed the faintest outline of an ancient pathway. It rose steeply, taking him up to the still waters of Loch Tathabhal, tucked away in the shadows of sharply rising slopes of scree. Tongues of water in the river that ran out of it flickered and licked over an almost dry stone bed, tumbling in a succession of tiny falls to Loch Raonasgail below.

At the head of the loch, where the river left it, a wooden bridge straddled its banks, raised on drystone columns, a single shoogly handrail on the loch side. Here, an area of ground had been levelled to allow fishermen to park their vehicles. Minto’s Land Rover was drawn in close to the water’s edge, and when Fin parked up and stepped out of his Suzuki he heard the engine of Minto’s vehicle ticking in the dark as it cooled down. So he had not been here long. But there was no sign of him. And no sign, either, of John Angus Whistler Macaskill. Fin was aware immediately of the clouds of midges that clustered around him in the dark, and hoped that the repellent he had smeared liberally on his face and neck would afford him some protection.

Looking west from his elevated position, Fin had a view straight through the valley between the peaks of Mealaisbhal and Cracabhal, and although he couldn’t see it, he knew that the sea lay somewhere in the distance beyond them. What he could see were the clouds gathering there, black and ominous on the horizon. And the far-off crackle of lightning still too distant to be heard. He felt the first chill draught of the coming storm, the break in the weather so long anticipated, and turned to see Whistler’s full moon rising in a clear sky to the east. He hoped that this would not take long, and that he would be back home in his bed before the storm broke.

A sound, like a pebble landing in the water, drew his attention, and he could see silvered rings emanating from a point not far from the opposite bank. A fish, perhaps, jumping to catch insects. There was no sign of life. No further sound.

Fin stepped up on to the wooden bridge and scanned the loch. He felt the wind rising now, clouds that had been so distant starting to gather overhead, the advance guard of the coming storm. Even as he stood on the bridge, looking back down the length of the stream which had so nearly taken his life all those years before, he felt the temperature falling. The midges were gone already, and Whistler’s moon appeared and disappeared with increasing frequency, a bizarre, flitting, colourless light show.

As Fin turned back towards the loch he saw a movement on the far shore. A shadow drifting against the rise of the scree slope behind it.

‘Minto!’ he called out into the dark, feeling his voice whipped away from his mouth on the edge of the wind.

All that came back to him was a laugh that he knew only too well. And in a sudden blink of moonlight he saw Whistler standing there looking at him across the water. He raised his right arm, and Fin saw a huge wild salmon dangling from his hand, strong thick fingers hooked through the gills. ‘We could just go back to the croft, Fin. Roast her in tinfoil over the peat. Share a glass and a memory or two. What do you say?’

Fin was very nearly tempted. ‘Oh, come on, Whistler, cut it out. We need to chat, you and me.’

‘Is that what you brought your muscle man for? A chat? I’m disappointed in you, Fin. Thought better of you than that.’ And Fin realized then the mistake he had made by involving Minto.

Almost in the same moment, the moon vanished behind a cloud and Whistler was swallowed again by the dark. Fin heard a loud banging coming from the direction of Minto’s Land Rover. He jumped down off the bridge and ran across the parking area to throw open the back door.

Minto was lying curled up on the floor, securely bound by his own tow rope, trussed up like a chicken, an oily rag shoved into his mouth. He had manoeuvred himself on to his back so that he could kick the side of the vehicle with the flat of his feet.

‘Jesus, Minto!’ Fin climbed in the back and untied him, pulling the rag from his mouth. Minto gasped for several seconds until he had caught his breath, saliva foaming around his lips.

‘I’ll kill him. I’ll fucking kill him!’

Fin gazed at him in disbelief. ‘What the hell happened?’

‘He jumped me, that’s what fucking happened.’

Fin almost found himself laughing. ‘He jumped you?’

‘Strong as a bloody ox that geezer is, Macleod.’

‘I thought you were going to take him down, Minto?’

Minto glowered at him, his pride seriously dented. No one man should have been capable of doing something like this to him. ‘I would’ve. Given half a chance.’ He sat up and winced, his left hand crossing to his right shoulder. ‘I think he’s dislocated my bloody shoulder.’

Fin sat cross-legged on the floor and looked at him. ‘Well, you’re not going to be much damn use to me now, are you?’

Minto cast him a surly look. ‘You’ll never take him on your own, mate. A skinny little runt like you.’

Fin got to his knees, and crouching made his way to the back. He jumped down. ‘Go home, Minto.’

He stood and watched as Minto struggled into the driver’s seat and started the motor. His headlights were devoured by the dark, making almost no impression on it as the vehicle turned and bumped back down the track to the loch below. Fin felt the first drops of rain in his face.

Now it was just him and Whistler.

He turned and scanned Loch Tathabhal, the surface of it dimpled and ridged by the rising wind, floods of fleeting moonlight caught in brief spangled moments of illumination. And there was the shadow of his friend moving along the far shore, his laughter lifting itself above the wind. ‘Come on, Fin, catch me if you can.’ The voice distant, somehow, and carried off into the night.

To Whistler it was all a game. Not to be taken seriously. And yet to cross Jamie the way he had was to court disaster. If he lost his home it was likely he would lose the court case for custody of his daughter. And if he lost both, God only knew what might become of him.

For several long moments Fin contemplated getting back into his Suzuki and going home. What good would it do to play Whistler’s game? And yet to walk away would be like turning his back on the man who had saved his life. Whistler would never have done that to Fin. At the very least he needed to make him understand the trouble he was in.

‘Whistler, wait!’ But his voice was consumed by the night, and he saw Whistler outlined against the sky in the moment before he began slithering down the scree to the lower valley.

Fin sighed and hesitated briefly before opening up the back of his four-by-four and taking out his waterproof jacket and a small rucksack. He slipped into the jacket, slung the rucksack across his shoulders and grasped the non-slip grip of his telescopic walker’s stick firmly in his right hand.

Coming, ready or not.

At first it was easy to keep Whistler in his sights. Amazingly there was still some daylight in the sky, and plenty of moonlight washing across the slopes between clouds. He saw Whistler’s shadow moving nimbly among the rocks as he scrambled down the incline. The wind was increasing in strength, temperature falling further as the black storm clouds began to roll in. But the rain, as yet, was still only a spit in his face.

Loch Raonasgail was no more than a big black hole scoured out between Tathabhal and Mealaisbhal by shifting glaciers in some long-ago ice age, filled now with the millions of gallons of rainwater which the mountains that heaved up around it shed from their slopes. Fin saw Whistler circumvent its south-west shoreline, crossing the track, and heading off through the boulder-strewn valley in the shadow of Cracabhal.

The lightning came before the rain. Great jagged flashes of it that lit up the mountains and plunged their valleys into deeper darkness. His glimpses of Whistler now were few and far between as blackness settled over them like dust.

The heather and bracken beneath his feet were dry, and crackled in the dark. Normally sodden peat was hard and unyielding underfoot. Fin gritted his teeth and forced himself on. For forty minutes or more he followed the phantom that was Whistler. He found his leg muscles aching, joints hammered by the hardness of the ground, breath sucked with increasing rapidity into lungs that heaved and strained to pump sufficient oxygen to already tiring muscles.

No matter how hard he went at it, he never seemed to get any closer to him. And it became apparent that if Whistler wanted to, he could lose Fin in a heartbeat. But still he kept appearing, just when Fin thought he’d lost him. A glimpse here, leaping from one rock to another like a mountain goat. A glimpse there, as he turned to gaze back through the darkness. He was playing with Fin. Having fun. Making absolutely certain that he didn’t lose him, showing himself in tantalizing moments, like the lure of a fly drawing a fish on to the hook.

Lightning crashed so close to him that Fin instinctively ducked, and dropped to his knees, an image of the valley ahead of him left burned on his retinas. A bizarre and brutal landscape littered with the spoil of ice explosions millions of years old. For a moment he could barely hear, and his nostrils were filled with the ozone that suffused the air in the aftermath of the storm’s electrical discharges.

Whistler was there, too, in that image burned into his consciousness by the lightning, about three or four hundred yards ahead of him. Clambering over giant clusters of rocks. Then consumed again by darkness.

Absurdly, Fin found thoughts creeping into his mind of the bogeyman who had haunted the childhood imaginations of generations of island children. The outlaw Mac an t-Stronaich. A man credited with more brutal murders and assaults than any living soul might be capable of committing. And yet he had existed in reality, in some more minor incarnation no doubt, and on the run had escaped into these very mountains to avoid capture. Before being brought to justice, finally, and hanged in 1836. Whistler moved among the rocks like his ghost.

Sheet lightning lit up the sky once more, and Fin saw the black underside of the clouds that rumbled in low over the peaks, laden with moisture and threatening deluge. And in that moment he decided on the folly of this fruitless chase. Let Whistler go scampering off into the mountains. To hell with him! Fin would go back up to Tathabhal and pick up his Suzuki. He would drive to Whistler’s place and wait for him there. He was bound to return sooner or later, and he would have it out with him then.

Another flash saw Whistler silhouetted on the shoulder of the mountain, standing still and looking back down the slope towards him. His hair was blowing all around his head, and he stood proud, like an ancient Viking warrior, his face leached of all colour by the lightning. The thunder that followed immediately was so directly overhead that it felt like a physical blow. And then the rain came. Out of nowhere. Sweeping suddenly down the valley in a blinding mist, the first exhalation of the storm. Hail was whipped into Fin’s face by a wind whose sudden increase in force very nearly knocked him off his feet. He turned and began to blunder back the way he had come.

Within minutes he had totally lost his sense of direction. Visibility was zero. He could see only in those brief moments when the lightning came. And then he stumbled forward with a memory of the next few yards held briefly in his mind, until his confidence wavered and he stopped, waiting for the next explosion of light.

Very quickly he realized that he was going up rather than down. But when he turned towards the descent he had no belief that it was taking him in the right direction.

The rain whipped relentlessly into his face, finding its way beneath his jacket at the cuffs and neck. He wasn’t wearing waterproof overtrousers, so his jeans were quickly sodden and heavy. His feet, in their well-worn hiking boots, were wet and already starting to grow cold.

He crouched down and took off his rucksack, delving inside it to find his flashlight and a compass on the end of a loop of ribbon that he could hang around his neck. He clutched the torch, but before his fingers had closed around the compass, his rucksack filled with air from a blast of wind that nearly knocked him over and was torn from his grasp. He lunged at it as it flew off into the night, a hopeless leap in the dark that netted him only fresh air. And the rucksack was gone, leaving him sprawled among the grass and heather, water running like a river over the hard, impervious surface of the peat beneath him.

In desperation, he searched around for his stick, the thin beam of light from his torch making little impression on the dark. He was certain he had laid it down beside him when he crouched to open his rucksack. But there was no sign of it, and now it began to dawn on Fin that he was in trouble. He had no compass or map, no stick to help him keep his feet. He was soaked through and starting to feel the cold seep into his soul. He had no idea where he was or what direction to go in. And by now, for sure, in these conditions, Whistler must have lost him, too.

He crouched down on his hunkers, his back to the wind, and tried to make a rational assessment of his situation. But all the rational thought in the world could not displace the one that filled his mind. Men died in these conditions. Experienced walkers and climbers caught in a storm among the mountains, fully equipped and often in broad daylight, could perish in a matter of hours. Fin was inexperienced, ill-equipped and lost in the dark. One false step could lead to a twisted ankle or a broken leg, a fall that would leave him lying hopelessly exposed to the elements. The cold would steal his consciousness. Sleep would come quickly, and there would be no waking from it. He knew beyond any doubt that he had to find shelter, and find it fast.

He closed his eyes and tried to focus on where he thought he was. Whistler had led him up through the valley between Mealaisbhal, and Cracabhal to the south of it. The last time he had seen him, he had been standing on the shoulder of the rising shadow of what he took to be Mealaisbhal on his right.

Fin had covered almost no ground since then, and if he was climbing, then the rise would take him up over that same shoulder. He had never been in the valley to the north of the mountain. But he remembered from his schooldays the stories of the Cailleach of Mealaisbhal. Cailleach was Gaelic for an old woman, and this one had killed her son and lived wild in the caves of Carnaichean Tealasdale beneath the cliffs at the north end of Mealaisbhal. Or so the story went. But there were supposed to be numerous caves there, among the cliffs and rocks. Caves that would provide a man with life-saving shelter.

He decided to keep climbing.

With the beam from his torch trained on the ground immediately ahead of him, he forced himself up the slope, taking the shortest route over boulders and rocks lying in jumbles and clusters all across the slope of the shoulder. They were slippery and treacherous, and with the hail stinging his face, and the rain in his eyes, he could barely see.

But he could tell immediately when the ground beneath his feet began to level off, and at the same time he found himself even more exposed to the weather. He staggered forward through the rain, the wind hitting him with such force that he fell over several times. But still he kept going, even though every muscle and sinew in his body was crying out for rest.

The shadow of a massive rock rose up ahead of him, and he felt his way around it to the leeward side where he was briefly out of the wind. He pressed himself back against the sheer face of this giant slab and stood there gasping for breath. He had never in his life felt so small, or so vulnerable. The scale and scope of the land, and the power of the elements, dwarfed him into insignificance.

He found himself shivering now with the cold, teeth chattering. To stop would be fatal. He had to find shelter. As he turned again to face the black uncertainty that lay ahead of him, the sky lit up in a series of lightning flashes that cast their ghostly effulgence across the valley that fell away beneath him. It was startling and bleak in this unforgiving light, a landscape so alien and primordial that it would not have been out of place on the moon. Cliffs rose sheer at his right hand, pitch-black and shining wet, reflecting the flickering lightning from overhead. Then the ground fell away in shelves and inclines into a wide valley littered with boulders the size of tower blocks, massive chunks of gneiss and granite cast upon the land by long-ago ice bursts. Sometimes in clusters, sometimes in single, solitary chunks that stood at impossible angles, balanced on corners and edges, casting their shadows like elongated fists, before vanishing again into darkness. It was like nothing Fin had ever seen.

Further down the gully, a large body of water reflected the storm in long and short flashes, as if in response to some heavenly signal lamp pulsing Morse into the night. A hidden loch in the basin of the valley.

Fin began the descent, slowly at first, each step made with care. He slipped for the first time, sliding several yards before managing to bring himself to a stop. Then back to his feet, and on, faster now, as his body weight propelled him on down the slope, pushed by the wind like a hand at his back. His torchlight flashed back and forth across the tangle of bracken and heather ahead of him, before picking out the shambles of smashed stone that formed a steep scree declivity that plunged towards the dark shapes of jagged rocks distantly below. Rainwater ran off the hill in streams and rivulets, snaking its way through the stones at his feet as he stepped on to them. He had covered only a few slithering yards before the scree shifted to the left and right of him, gathering momentum. Then like an avalanche it took his feet and swept him away, to fall helplessly down into darkness, his ears filled with the rush of falling stones. Until he struck something so hard it took his breath away. For one brief, terrifying moment, his head was filled with light, before he was taken by a darkness from which he knew there would be no return.

A flickering yellow light filtered slowly through the gauze that fogged his consciousness. It brought pain, fear, an uncontrollable shivering. Whistler’s big pale face, with its smears of black and silver whiskers, flickered too, like a light bulb at the end of its life. The gauze was smoke. A thick, choking, hot smoke that filled the air. Fin coughed as he breathed it in, a painful racking cough, and he tried to sit up. But he couldn’t. He was wrapped, as if in a cocoon, unable to move.

Three feet above him, an irregular stone roof curved away into darkness. A complex tracery of spiders’ webs hung from it in broken veils, reflecting the light of the flames that licked up through the darkness no more than eighteen inches from his face.

‘Bloody idiot!’ He heard Whistler’s voice strained through the gauze. ‘If you’re going to follow a man up into the mountains on a night when they’re forecasting a storm, you should at least come prepared.’

Fin managed to unpeel a dry tongue from the roof of his mouth. ‘You knew there would be a storm?’

Whistler showed his teeth. ‘Of course I did. I thought you would have checked that.’

Fin saw his and Whistler’s wet clothes stretched over dry stones, steam rising from them on the far side of the fire, and realized for the first time that he was naked inside his cocoon. ‘What have you wrapped me in?’

‘A couple of woollen wraps and an aluminium blanket. And keep shivering, boy. That’ll generate about two degrees centigrade an hour. The blankets’ll keep it in and you’ll reheat yourself. With a bit of luck your clothes will be just about dry by the morning.’ He leaned over and put his fingers on Fin’s forehead, his touch as light as chiffon. ‘You’ve a nasty bang on the head, though. I’ve disinfected it and dressed it, but you’d better see a professional.’

Fin could see now that Whistler was sitting cross-legged on the far side of the circle of stones which contained the burning peats that were generating both the heat and the smoke. His long black hair was still wet, and swept back in a tangle from his forehead. The jumper he had worn beneath his jacket was dry, as were jeans protected by waterproof leggings. ‘What is this place, Whistler?’

‘We’re in a wee beehive dwelling at the north end of a pretty inaccessible valley somewhere between Mealaisbhal and Brinneabhal. There’s a few of them clustered here. Not real beehives, of course. That’s just what the archaeologists call them. God knows who built them, or why. Maybe shepherds at some point for when they brought the sheep up to the high grazing. Anyway, most of them are in ruins. Just circles of stone and turf. This one I remade myself, and keep it stocked with dry peats. Just as well, eh?’

‘What the hell do you come up here for?’

‘Deer. Mountain hare.’ He laughed, then. ‘And I’ve spent quite a long time in these parts searching for the cave of swords.’

Fin frowned. ‘What swords?’

A grin of something close to embarrassment split Whistler’s face. ‘Ach, it’ll be a bloody wild goose chase, I’m sure. But I was always fascinated by the story I heard once about a man who knew these valleys like the back of his hand. Got lost one time in a fog, and fell into a hidden cave among the boulders. There were steps down into it. And inside it he found a stash of rusted old swords. Dozens of the things. He couldn’t carry them himself, but he was sure he would find his way back with friends to bring them down to the village.’ Whistler shook his head. ‘He never did. No matter how many times he looked, he couldn’t find that cave again. No one ever doubted him, though, and there was a lot of speculation about where the swords had come from and who put them there.’

‘And?’

Whistler shrugged. ‘And nothing. I never found them either. My favourite theory was that they belonged to the men of Uig who hid them from the English after the defeat of the Jacobite army at Culloden. Everything “Highland” was forbidden, including the wearing of the kilt and the bearing of arms. So if the locals hid their weapons up here, there was no way anyone would ever find them, but they’d be quickly accessible if they were ever needed.’ He laughed. ‘I’d have loved to feel the weight of those Jacobite swords in my hand, Fin. Not least because they’d have been worth a bloody fortune.’ He tipped his head to one side, casting Fin an appraising look. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Bloody awful.’

‘Good. As long as you’re feeling something you’ll be okay.’

He took a stout stick and tipped several blackened stones out from the embers of the fire on to the beaten earth floor.

‘When these have cooled enough for me to handle, we’ll wrap them into your blankets to help generate a bit more heat. Under your oxters, and at the back of your neck. God knows, you’ve no brain to speak of, but what little you have has a wee bit at its stem that regulates your internal temperature, along with your breathing and circulation. The hypothalamus. We want to keep that warm and in good working order.’ It was typical of Whistler that knowledge like that could trip off his tongue almost without thought.

Fin let his head fall to one side, still shivering, and heard the sound of the wind thundering all around the outside of this tiny stone dwelling. ‘I guess you’ve done it again,’ he said.

‘Done what, boy?’

‘Saved my life.’

Whistler roared. ‘Well,’ he said, when he was finally able to stop laughing. ‘It’s a family tradition.’ He grinned. ‘And given that I exploited that stupid pride of yours to lure you up here in the first place, there was no way I could let you die. No matter how hard you were trying to kill yourself.’ His smile slowly faded to be replaced by something like guilt. He hesitated for a moment, then: ‘I’m sorry I hit you the other night.’

‘So am I.’ Fin managed a rueful smile.

‘I shouldn’t have done that.’

‘No, you shouldn’t.’

Whistler’s smile returned, burgeoning into a grin that made light in his eyes. ‘No. I should have fucking killed that bastard Jamie Wooldridge. Next time, I will.’

Fin closed his eyes, and for the first time since consciousness had returned, felt his shivering start to subside just a little. He was aware, then, of Whistler tucking the hot stones into the folds of his blankets, and he could feel the warmth of them bringing life back to his frozen body.

Whistler was right. He was a bloody idiot.

He woke to a sound like the end of the world, and felt the earth moving beneath him, as if the whole mountain was shaking. The fire was blazing, and he could see the fear and confusion in Whistler’s face on the far side of it. Fin sat up and almost cracked his skull on the roof of the beehive. ‘What the hell’s that?’

The noise roared, even above the blast of the storm, filling the air, the ground fibrillating all around them. Whistler placed a hand flat on the roof above his head as if afraid that it might fall in on them. ‘I’ve no idea.’ His voice sounded very small, and Fin could barely hear it.

‘Feels like an earthquake,’ Fin shouted above the noise.

‘Aye, it does. But it can’t be. Not on this scale, anyway.’ If anything the shaking was getting more violent. Whistler put both hands on the roof now, like Samson in reverse trying to hold the temple up. ‘Jesus Christ!’

Fin had no idea how long it lasted. It felt like a lifetime. A lifetime in which the end seemed just a breath away. Though neither of them voiced it, each feared that they were going to die, without any clear idea of why. And then almost as suddenly as it had wakened them the shaking stopped and the noise subsided, and the sound of the storm took precedence once more.

They sat in breathless silence for several minutes hardly daring to believe that it was over, whatever it was, and fearing that it would start again at any moment.

Then Whistler tipped forward on to his knees and crawled towards the entrance. ‘I’m going to take a look.’ He pulled aside the big flat stone that sealed them in, and Fin felt a rush of cold air that threw sparks from the fire and fanned the peats to fill the dwelling with their strange, incandescent light. Whistler wriggled out into the night, and Fin sat wrapped in his blankets full of uncertainty and apprehension.

Whistler was back in less than a minute, soaked even in that short space of time. His hair was wild and smeared across a face that was unusually pale.

‘Well?’ Fin searched it for enlightenment.

But Whistler just settled himself again on the far side of the fire and shrugged. ‘Can’t see a thing. It’s pitch out there. We’ll need to wait till dawn.’

‘What time is it now?’

‘Just after two. Another four hours or so.’

Fin lay down and rolled on to his back, still tense, waiting for the noise and the shaking to start again. But only the storm disturbed the night, rain and wind assaulting their tiny shelter with the fury of thwarted attackers. The long summer of drought was well and truly over.

The next time he awoke it was daybreak, which is when he had found Whistler out on the ridge in that strange, pink dawn light, looking down into the vanished loch where Roddy’s plane lay canted among the rocks.