The Chessmen

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It was a grey, miserable morning, low cloud moving at speed over the town, dropping a fine wetting rain that made everything shiny and stole colour from streets that looked like old black-and-white prints. The Sheriff Court, in Lewis Street, was a blonde sandstone Victorian edifice with rain-streaked gables and tall stone chimneys. It sat two doors away from the Church of Scotland. One dispensing earthly justice, the other promising judgement in the afterlife.

There was a crowd of people hanging about on the pavement at the railings, huddled in shelter from the rain and the wind under a cluster of shining black umbrellas. Guilty and innocent, witnesses and relatives, all equal under the dismal sky and sharing their addiction for tobacco. Most wore sombre suits with white shirts and dark ties. Sunday best trotted out to impress the Sheriff. There was an old joke which had been circulating in the town for many years about what it was you called a Stornoway man wearing a suit. The response, appropriately enough, was the accused.

Fin had arrived late, held up on the road from Ness by a lorry which had shed its load. So he had no idea if Whistler had turned up for the private hearing or not. He had debated long and hard about whether or not he should tell George Gunn, but decided in the end that he would rather speak to Whistler himself first.

He stood alone on the other side of the street, his back to the closed gates of a builder’s yard with its cluster of concrete buildings and red tin roofs. He wore boots and jeans, a baseball cap and a waterproof jacket, and stood with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, hunched against the cold. He had been waiting for half an hour before he recognized the social worker he had met at Whistler’s black-house. She emerged from the arched doorway of the courthouse to raise a pink umbrella towards the sky and hurry away through the waiting crowd. A couple of solicitors in black gowns came out to stand on the steps and light cigarettes, before Whistler pushed his way between them and strode down the path to the gates. It was the first time Fin had set eyes on him since the discovery of the plane, and his immediate reaction was one of relief.

But he was taken aback by the change in Whistler’s appearance. He had shaved, his hair washed and shiny and pulled back in a neat ponytail at the nape of his neck. He wore his funeral suit — for Fin was certain that he never went to church — and a collar and tie. His black shoes were polished to a shine. He could almost have passed for respectable. But he had no coat or umbrella. He turned, surprised, as Fin called his name. Fin hurried across the street to catch him.

‘I’ve been looking for you for days, Whistler.’

Whistler did not look pleased to see him, and avoided his eye, staring off into the distance as if having spotted something of much greater interest. ‘I’ve been busy.’

Fin smiled. ‘So I see. How did it go?’

Whistler’s eyes flickered towards him then away again. ‘The Sheriff’s called another hearing in two weeks to give him time to read the social work reports.’

Fin nodded. ‘Have you had a chance to talk to Anna?’

‘No.’ He turned a dark, resentful gaze on Fin.

Fin said, ‘I spoke to her.’

Whistler’s eyes blackened. ‘Why would you do that?’

‘I went looking for you at the croft and found her sitting in the house.’ Fin saw consternation now in his eyes.

‘What was she doing there?’

‘Remembering how it was, Whistler. With you and her mum. Wishing she could have that time back again.’

‘Well, she can’t. Seonag’s dead.’

‘But you’re not.’

‘The lassie’s not interested in me. She thinks I’m a. . well, she thinks I’m weird.’

Fin couldn’t contain the laugh that forced itself through his lips. ‘Whistler, you are!’ He paused to take in the dangerous tilt of the other man’s head, and the brief flare of anger in his eyes. ‘But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you.’

‘Don’t talk shite, man!’

‘She told me you were a pure fucking embarrassment. Her words. But she also said she loved you. In her own inimitable way.’

Whistler looked at Fin for a long, unseeing moment. ‘She’s never told me that. Ever.’ He spoke in barely a whisper, as if afraid that he might not have control of his voice.

‘Have you told her, Whistler?’

‘Told her what?’

‘That you love her.’

Whistler was unable to hold eye contact and turned his head away again.

But Fin wouldn’t let it rest. ‘You do, don’t you?’

‘Of course I fucking do.’

Like father like daughter, Fin thought. The two of them were so alike. ‘Then maybe you should let her know it.’

‘I’m her father. It goes without saying.’

‘Nothing goes without saying, Whistler.’ Fin paused. ‘Like what it is you’ve been keeping to yourself since we found Roddy in that plane.’

Whistler was wary now. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘You didn’t want me to open up the cockpit, did you? I think you knew what I was going to find. At least, you thought you did.’ Fin tried to read him, but a cloud of obfuscation had come down over his eyes. ‘But you were as stunned as I was by what was inside, weren’t you?’

‘Why don’t you mind your own fucking business?’ Whistler lowered his voice to little more than a growl, but the menace in it was unmistakable.

‘Is that why you’ve been avoiding me, Whistler? In case I asked?’

His big hand came out of nowhere. Not in a fist, but palm first, like the flat of a shovel, and it slammed into Fin’s chest. Fin was unprepared for it and stepped back, his foot dropping down from the kerb to the road, sending him sprawling to the tarmac. His baseball cap spun away across the street. Whistler loomed over him, a thick finger stabbing down through the rain. ‘Stay away from me, Fin. Just stay away. All right?’ And he turned and strode off through the crowd.

The hubbub outside the gates of the courthouse had faded to silence, and all eyes were turned towards Fin lying in the road. The solicitors, still smoking in the doorway, cast curious eyes in his direction.

Fin barely had time to recover his breath before a large hand hooked itself around his upper arm and almost lifted him to his feet. Big Kenny handed him his cap and looked searchingly into his face. ‘What’s going on, Fin?’

Fin saw the concern in the big man’s eyes. ‘I don’t know, Kenny. I wish to hell I did.’

He spotted Anna Bheag standing outside the gate with a group of her schoolfriends. There was consternation and hostility in her face, the metal that adorned it glistening in the rain. And he saw that whatever rapport he had struck with her that day at Whistler’s place was long gone. For a moment it looked as if she were going to say something, then she turned towards her friends. ‘Come on,’ she said, and the group of teenage girls hurried off towards Francis Street. Fin doubted that they were heading back to school.

Fin brooded darkly on Whistler’s inexplicable behaviour through all the long drive back up the west coast.

October was a breath away, and the approaching winter was making its presence felt for the first time. The Indian summer had bypassed autumn, and it looked as if they would plunge straight from summer into winter. The temperature had fallen, and the wind was swinging around to the northwest. It had an edge to it as sharp as a razor, and the rain carried the promise of hail, stinging and cold.

Village after village drifted past Fin’s windows in the rain. Wet and dark, and stretched out along the road like so many little boxes strung on a thread, treeless and naked, exposed to the elements. Only a few hardy shrubs grew in the peaty soil where hopeful souls had made vain attempts to hack gardens and lawns out of unyielding moorland. Barabhas, Siadar, Dail, Cros. Each marked by its prayer hall or church, the occasional village store, or filling station. Tiny primary schools. And potteries established by incomers to sell to the tourists, as if the island itself and the people who lived there were incidental.

As he reached Ness, he could see waves breaking white all along the northwest coastline, and the stubble of gravestones rising across the machair above the cliffs where the people of Crobost had been burying their dead for hundreds of years. The thought of another winter here closed around his heart like icy fingers. Work on restoring his parents’ crofthouse would grind to a halt, and without a job he would be left to dwell upon a life without purpose or direction. Through all the wrong turnings he had taken at all the crossroads of his life, it seemed that he had finally lost his way.

He thought about Donald, and his admonition that Fin was always alone with his grief and his hatred. Grief for his dead son, hatred for the man who had killed him and escaped the consequences. But Donald had left out despair. Despair of a life wasted, and a love squandered. Mona, the woman who had borne his son, but whom he had never loved. Marsaili whose love he had so carelessly discarded. He might share her bed once again, but something precious had been lost all those years before, and somehow they had never quite recovered it. Just like all those souls lost in middle age, searching for the past on social networking sites, only to find that present reality can never live up to rose-tinted memory.

He almost envied Donald his faith. It’s the feeling that you’re never alone, he had said, and Fin wondered how that must be.

As he drove up past the Crobost Free Church, he saw a strange car parked beside Marsaili’s on the patch of gravel above the bungalow. When he drew up alongside it, he saw that it was a local registration, but not one that he recognized. On the island you knew your friends on the road by the registration number of their car. Windscreens were usually too wet, or occasionally reflected too much sunshine, for the recognition of faces behind wheels. He peered in through the driver’s window as he got out of his jeep, and saw a car rental agreement lying on the passenger seat.

Curiosity drew him down the path and up the steps to the kitchen door. He heard women’s voices raised in laughter as he pushed the door open, then silence as he stepped out of the wind into the warmth. Marsaili was standing, leaning back against the far worktop, cradling a mug of tea in her hands. A woman with cropped dark hair and a long black coat sat at the kitchen table, a mug on the coaster in front of her. She looked expectantly towards Fin, with a hint of sad amusement in her eyes.

It was Mairead.