The Lewis Man

THIRTY-NINE

As they drove up the path to her house Ceit frowned and said, ‘There are no lights. The timer should have switched them on ages ago.’ But it wasn’t until they clattered across the cattle grid that they saw the white Range Rover parked next to Fin’s car.

Fin glanced at Ceit. ‘Looks like you’ve got visitors. Do you know the car?’ Ceit shook her head.

They all got out of the Mercedes and Dino went running, barking, to the front door. As they climbed on to the deck in the dark, Fin felt glass crunching beneath his feet. Someone had smashed the light bulb above the door.

He said to Ceit, ‘Pick up the dog!’ And something in his tone brought an immediate and unquestioning response. He was on full alert now. Tense and apprehensive. He moved cautiously towards the door, hand outstretched to grab the handle.

Ceit whispered, ‘It’s not locked. It never is.’

He turned it and pushed the door into darkness. He held his hand behind him to warn the others against following, and stepped carefully into the hall. More glass ground itself into the tartan carpet beneath his feet. The bulb in the hall had been smashed, too.

He stood listening, holding his breath. But he could hear nothing above the barking of Dino in the arms of Ceit on the deck outside. The door to the living room stood ajar. He could see the shadow of the silver panther cast by moonlight streaming in through the French windows. He stepped into the room and immediately sensed a presence, before a baby’s muffled cry sounded in the dark.

A match flared, and by the light of its flame he saw the illuminated face of Paul Kelly. He was sitting in a chair by the window on the east side of the room. He puffed several times on his cigar until the end of it glowed red, then he reached across to turn on a glass standard lamp. Fin saw the sawn-off shotgun lying across his lap.

Directly opposite him, perched on the edge of the settee, Donna sat clutching her baby. The black-haired young man from the villa in Edinburgh stood beside her with another sawn-off shotgun extended towards her head. He looked nervous. Donna was like a ghost. Shrunken and shadoweyed. Visibly shaking.

Fin heard the crunch of broken glass behind him, and Morag’s gasp. The dog had gone silent, but Marsaili’s whispered ‘Oh my God!’ seemed almost deafening.

No one moved, and in the seconds of silence that followed, Fin’s assessment of the situation was bleak. Kelly had not come all this way just to frighten them.

Kelly’s voice was obversely calm. ‘I always figured it was John McBride who murdered my brothers,’ he said. ‘But by the time we got people up here he’d vanished without trace. Just like he never existed.’ He paused to draw on his cigar. ‘Until now.’ He lifted the shotgun from his lap and stood up. ‘So now he can watch his daughter and his granddaughter die, just the way I watched my brothers die in my arms.’ His mouth curled into a barely controlled grimace, ugly and threatening. ‘I was in the hallway behind them that night when they were gunned down and left bleeding to death on the steps. You’ve got to know what that feels like to know how I feel right now. I’ve waited a lifetime for this day.’

Fin said, ‘If you kill one, you’ll have to kill us all.’

Paul Kelly smiled. His eyes creased with genuine amusement. ‘You don’t say.’

‘You can’t take us all at once. Shoot that girl and you’re going to have to deal with me.’

Kelly raised his shotgun and swung it towards Fin. ‘Not if I take you first.’

‘This is crazy!’ Marsaili’s voice pierced the still of the room. ‘My dad is in an advanced state of dementia. Killing people won’t serve any purpose. It won’t mean a thing to him.’

Kelly’s eyes turned cold. ‘It will to me. In the end, an eye for an eye’ll suit me just fine.’

Ceit stepped forward, Dino still clutched to her chest. ‘Only it won’t be an eye for an eye, Mr Kelly. It’ll just be plain bloody murder. You weren’t on the bridge that night. I was. And Peter McBride never pushed your brother. Patrick lost his balance in all the panic with the cops showing up. He was going to fall. Peter risked his life going up on the parapet to try and grab him. Your brothers killed an innocent man. A poor half-witted boy who would never have harmed a soul. And they got their just desserts. It’s over! Let it go.’

But Kelly just shook his head. ‘Three of my brothers are dead because of the McBrides. It’s payback time.’ He half-turned towards Donna, shotgun levelled at the baby. And even as a desperate Fin started his lunge towards Kelly, he saw the younger man swing his shotgun to point straight at him.

The sound of the gun was ear-splitting in the confined space of the living room. The air seemed to fill with shattered glass. Fin felt it cut his face, and his hands as he raised them to protect himself. He felt warm blood splash across his face and neck, the smell of it filling his nostrils. He was only half aware of the bulk of Paul Kelly staggering backwards with the force of the blast, but was wholly confused by it. The big man crashed into the window at the far side of the room, turning it red, a gaping hole in the centre of his chest, a look of complete surprise frozen on his face as he slid to the floor. A woman was screaming, Dino was barking. Eilidh was sobbing. Fin felt the wind in his face and he saw Donald Murray standing on the far side of the window he had shattered with his shotgun. He held it still, levelled at Kelly’s young protégé. The man looked shocked and dropped his weapon, quickly raising his hands.

Fin darted forward to grab it and throw it away across the room, and Donald lowered his weapon. Beyond him, in the dark, Fin saw a pale, wide-eyed Fionnlagh.

‘He wouldn’t let me call the police. He wouldn’t.’ The boy was very nearly hysterical. ‘He said they would just make a mess of it. I called you, Fin, I called you. Why didn’t you answer your phone?’

There was not a scrap of colour in Donald’s face. Desperate eyes flickered towards Donna and the baby. His voice came in a whisper. ‘Are you all right?’

Donna couldn’t bring herself to speak, her sobbing baby clutched tightly to her chest. She nodded, and her father’s eyes briefly found Fin’s, lingering for just a moment. Somewhere behind them was a recollection of all those beliefs asserted on a drunken night when they had fought in the rain, and again on the windblown cliffs in the cold light of the next morning. Blown away in the pulling of a trigger. Then they returned to the man he had shot dead, where he lay among shattered glass and ornaments in a pool of his own blood. He screwed his eyes closed to shut out the sight of him.

‘God forgive me,’ he said.