The Chessmen

II

‘I don’t want you to go.’ She repeated the refrain.

Fin looked up over the top of his laptop. Marsaili was framed in the open door of the study. The room which had once been Artair’s dad’s den, where he had tutored Fin and Artair in maths and English, history and geography, through long winter nights. Fin could have sworn the smell of Mr Macinnes’s pipe smoke still lingered in that room, even after all these years.

A desk lamp spilled its light all over his keyboard as he entered dates and times, and pulled up onscreen prices.

‘I mean it, Fin. I don’t want you to go.’ It was the same refrain that Mona had used when they first sent him back to the island to find Angel Macritchie’s killer.

‘I need to know, Marsaili.’

‘You need to go to the police and tell them what you know already. They think you have something to do with Whistler’s murder, for God’s sake. It’s madness.’

‘I’ll go to them when I know the truth. The whole truth.’

‘And you think you’ll get that from Mairead?’ The way she said Mairead positively dripped with sarcasm.

Fin looked up at her again, his hackles rising. ‘That’s what this is all about, really, isn’t it? Me meeting Mairead in Spain.’

‘I saw the way she looked at you, Fin. And I saw the look in your eyes too. It’s a look I know. We were old lovers once, too, remember?’

Fin met her eyes very directly. ‘I have no interest in Mairead, Marsaili. I didn’t like her then, and I don’t like her now.’

There was a momentary hiatus as Marsaili digested this, testing it for truth, but coming up with the uncertain results of a mind clouded by jealousy.

‘I don’t understand why you have to go there. Everyone knows Amran have a place in the south of Spain where they write and record. If Mairead has something to tell you, why couldn’t she tell you here?’

Fin was losing patience. ‘I don’t know! But if I have to go to Spain and back to find out why Whistler died then I’ll go. Jesus, Marsaili. He saved my life. Twice. And the one time he needed me I wasn’t there.’ He very nearly choked on the thought, and quickly refocused on his computer screen.

His search had come up with a return flight from Glasgow to Malaga in two days’ time, departing just after 9 a.m., returning the following day. He would have to fly to Glasgow tomorrow and stay overnight. He hit the return key to purchase the flight and proceed to checkout.

When he looked up again over the top of his screen, Marsaili had gone.