The Chessmen

III

The drive down to Uig passed in a painful blur. Great fat raindrops spat on his windscreen like tears spilled for the dead. They fell from a sky so dark and so low, bumping and scraping across each rise of the land, that Fin felt he could almost reach up and touch it. The mountains of the southwest were lost in the mist of its all-enveloping cloud.

Fin’s thoughts were focused and fixated on just one man. The only man capable of inflicting enough damage on Whistler to kill him.

Minto’s Land Rover sat on the compacted hard core outside his cottage. The rain blew horizontally across the acres of sand that stretched across the bay towards Baile na Cille, flattening the tall grasses that grew like reeds around the house.

If Fin had stopped for one moment to consider his actions, he might have paused to rethink, but he was blinded by the pall of red mist which had descended on him. He pushed open the cottage door with such force that it smashed against the wall of the interior hallway, its handle gouging a deep hole in the plaster. ‘Minto!’ He heard his own voice roar back at him from the house. He barged into the sitting room and felt the faintest residue of heat from the embers of an almost dead peat fire. There was no one there. The door to the kitchen was half open. He blundered into it, but it was empty. Then he spun around at the sound of a creaking floorboard behind him.

Minto stood in a singlet and boxer shorts, a shotgun raised and supported by his left arm, and held fast against his left shoulder by his left hand. It was shaking slightly, but pointed directly at Fin. His right arm was strapped across his chest.

‘What the fuck do you want?’

He glared at Fin with a mixture of anger and confusion. But Fin couldn’t tear his gaze away from the sling that held Minto’s arm tight to his chest. He raised his eyes to meet Minto’s. He had forgotten that Whistler had dislocated the man’s shoulder during their encounter at Tathabhal. ‘Someone murdered Whistler Macaskill.’

‘I know. The bastard beat me to it.’ Minto kept the barrel of his shotgun trained on Fin. He managed a half-smile and a snort of contempt. ‘You thought it was me?’

Fin shook his head. Not even Minto could take on Whistler with one arm. But if it wasn’t Minto, then the only other possibility led him into the realms of the unthinkable.