The Chessmen

CHAPTER THREE
I

It had been an Indian summer, the long, hot dry spell stretching well into September, a rare phenomenon on this most northerly island of the Outer Hebrides. The furthest north and west you could go in Europe, the Isle of Lewis was burned brown by months of summer sun and unaccustomed weeks without rain. And still the weather was holding.

It had taken Fin nearly two hours to drive from Ness down the west coast to Uig that day. From as far north as Siadar, Fin had seen the mountains rising out of the south-west towards Harris, a dark brooding purple cut against the palest of blue skies. It was the only point on any horizon where the clouds still lingered. Not threatening but just there, drifting among the peaks. The yellow bloom of wild tormentil grew among the bracken, lending a hint of gold to a landscape in which even the heather was bleached of colour. The tiny petals dipped and bowed in the stiffening breeze that blew in off the ocean, carrying with it the smell of the sea and a distant whiff of winter.

On this first day of his new life, Fin reflected on just how much it had changed in little more than eighteen months. Back then he had been married, with a son, a life in Edinburgh, a job as a detective in ‘A’ Division CID. Now he had none of those things. He had come back to the womb, the island of his birth, but he wasn’t sure why. In search of who he had once been, perhaps. The only thing he knew for certain was that the change was irrevocable, and had begun the day a driver took the life of his little boy in an Edinburgh street and failed to stop.

As he rounded the head of Loch Rog Beag, Fin turned his mud-spattered Suzuki four-by-four off the single-track road on to a broken metalled path without passing places. Past a clutch of Highland cattle with their long, curling horns and shaggy brown coats, to follow the river upstream towards a puddle of a loch where, unusually, trees grew in the shelter of a fold of hills, and Suaineabhal Lodge stood in the shadow of their protection.

It was a long while since Fin had seen Kenny John Maclean. Big Kenny had left the island with the rest of them. But his life had taken an altogether different course. He lived now in an old crofthouse that had been extended and modernized, and sat on the far side of the path opposite the lodge. A rabble of dogs came barking out of a tin-roofed barn as Fin pulled up in the parking area. The lodge itself was based upon an old farmhouse, and when Sir John Wooldridge had first bought the Red River Estate he had built out side and back, and appended a conservatory at the front that looked out over the loch. Unlike Cracabhal Lodge at the head of Loch Tamnabhaigh, which could accommodate more than twenty during the shooting and fishing seasons, Suaineabhal had only a handful of bedrooms and was reserved exclusively for fishermen. But it had a public bar, and at this time of year was filled every night with fishermen and ghillies, and locals out for a pint and a dram.

This morning there was not a soul around, until Kenny came striding up to the gate from the loch side and shouted the dogs to silent obedience. Cowed by the reprimand of their pack leader, they contented themselves with snuffling about Fin in quiet curiosity, breathing in his strange scents, sunlight falling around them in dappled patches like rain. Kenny wore green Hunter wellies over khaki breeks, and a multi-pocketed waistcoat over a military green woollen jumper with shoulder and elbow patches. As he approached, he whipped off his flat cap to reveal a cropped fuzz of ginger hair that was losing its colour, and held out a big callused hand to shake Fin’s warmly.

‘It’s been a helluva long time, Fin.’ Although most of his day would be conducted in English, with Fin he reverted to Gaelic without thinking. It was the language of their childhood, the first language that would spring naturally to both their tongues.

‘It’s good to see you, Kenny,’ Fin said, and meant it.

They stood looking at each other for a moment, assessing the changes that the years had wrought. The two-inch scar that followed the line of Kenny’s left cheekbone, the result of some childhood accident which had nearly taken his eye, had faded with time. Kenny had always been a big lad, bigger than Fin. Now he was enormous, filled out in every direction. He appeared older than Fin, too. But, then, he had always been an old-fashioned boy, rough-hewn from country stock and not very sophisticated. Bright enough, though, to go to agricultural college in Inverness and return to the island eventually to manage the estate on which he had grown up.

Fin, although not a small man, had retained his boyish figure, and his tightly curled fair hair still grew abundantly, green eyes fixing on the hidden wariness he saw in the darker gaze of his old schoolfriend.

‘I hear you’re back with Marsaili. Living with her, I’m told.’

Fin nodded. ‘At least until I finish restoring my parents’ crofthouse.’

‘And her boy’s yours they say, not Artair’s.’

‘Do they?’

‘It’s what I hear.’

‘You hear a lot, it seems.’

Kenny grinned. ‘I keep my ear to the ground.’

Fin returned the smile. ‘Be careful, Kenny. You might get mud in it. Then maybe you wouldn’t hear so good.’

Kenny snorted. ‘You always were a smart bugger, Macleod.’ He hesitated for a moment as his smile washed away, like sunshine passing behind a cloud. ‘I hear you lost a son, too.’

The colour rose very slightly around Fin’s eyes, darkening them. ‘You heard right.’ Followed by a long pause in which it was clear he was not about to elucidate.

The end of this personal nature of their exchange was signalled by the replacement of Kenny’s cap, which he pulled down low over his brow. Even his tone of voice changed. ‘I’ll need to brief you on your duties. I imagine Jamie will have covered the bullet points. But like most landowners, he doesn’t know much about the land.’

Fin didn’t miss the point. Jamie might be his boss, but Kenny considered himself his superior. And now he was Fin’s boss, and their brief exchange as equals was over.

‘I’m not sure I would have taken you on as head of security myself. No offence, Fin. I’m sure you were a good cop, but not so sure that it qualifies you to catch poachers. Still. . ours not to reason why, eh?’

Fin said, ‘Maybe you could do a better job of it yourself.’

‘No “could” about it, Fin. But managing an estate of more than fifty thousand acres, with extensive salmon, brown trout and sea trout fishing, as well as stalking and shooting, takes up all my time as it is.’ He sounded like a brochure for the estate. ‘And it’s no small problem we have.’