lined up against the wall. ‘You don’t seem to be selling many.’
‘These were commissioned,’ Whistler said. ‘Sir John Wooldridge wants them for the chessmen gala day. You know about that?’
Fin nodded. ‘I’ve heard they’re bringing them home. All seventy-eight pieces.’
‘Aye, for one day! They should be in Uig year round. A special exhibition. Not stuck in museums in Edinburgh and London. Then maybe folk would come to see them and we could generate some income here.’ He dropped into one of his armchairs and cupped his hand around his face to run it over bristled cheeks. ‘Anyway, Sir John wanted these for some kind of giant chess game on the beach. The estate’s helping fund the gala day. I suppose he must reckon it’ll be good publicity.’
Fin found his eye drawn by the band of gold on Whistler’s wedding finger. ‘I didn’t know you were married, Whistler.’
He was momentarily discomposed, then took his hand from his face and looked at his wedding ring. An odd melancholy washed over him. ‘Aye. Was. Past tense.’ Fin waited for more. ‘Seonag Maclennan. You probably knew her at school. Left me for Big Kenny Maclean. Remember him? He’s the bloody manager now on the Red River Estate.’ Fin nodded. ‘Took my wee girl with her, too. Wee Anna.’ He was silent for a moment. Then, ‘Anyway, the bastard didn’t profit for long. Seonag got herself breast cancer and went and died on him.’
He sneaked a glance in Fin’s direction, and then quickly away again, as if he was afraid that Fin might see some emotion in it.
‘Trouble is, that makes him Anna’s legal guardian.
‘And what are your chances?’
Whistler’s grin was touched by sadness. ‘Just about zero. I mean, look around you.’ He shrugged. ‘Sure, I could clean up my act, and maybe that would hold some sway. But there’s a bigger problem.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Anna. The lassie hates me. And there’s not much I can do about that.’
Fin saw pain in his eyes, and in the tightness of his jaw, but he was quick to laugh it off, pushing himself suddenly out of his chair, unexpected mischief in his grin.
‘But I’ve carved out my own secret revenge.’ He replaced the bishop among the chessmen along the wall and selected another which he lifted on to the table. ‘The Berserker. You know what that is?’
Fin shook his head.
‘The Berserkers were Norse warriors who whipped themselves up into a trance-like state, so that they could fight without fear or pain. The fiercest of the Viking warriors. Well, those old twelfth-century craftsmen made the rook in the likeness of a Berserker. Crazy bulging eyes, the mad bastard biting the top of his shield.’ Whistler grinned with delight as he turned his carving around to the light. ‘I’ve taken a few liberties with my version. Have a look.’
Fin rounded the piece to better catch the light and realized suddenly that Whistler had made his Berserker in the likeness of Big Kenny. There was no mistaking it. The same flat-faced features and broad skull. The scar on the left cheek. An irresistible smile crept across his face. ‘You clever bastard.’
Whistler’s laughter filled the room. ‘Of course, no one will ever know. But I will. And now you will, too. And maybe when the gala’s by, I’ll present it to him as a gift.’ He looked at Fin with sudden curiosity. ‘You got any kids, Fin?’
‘I’ve got a son by Marsaili Macdonald that I never knew I had till a year ago. Fionnlagh, she called him.’
Whistler glanced at Fin’s left hand. ‘Never married, then?’
Fin nodded. ‘I was. For about sixteen years.’
Whistler’s eyes searched Fin’s, sensing concealment. ‘And no kids?’
Fin found it hard ever to speak about it without pain. He sighed. ‘We had a wee boy. He died.’
Whistler held him in his gaze for a long time, and Fin almost found himself wishing he would hug him again. If only just to share the pain, and maybe halve it. But neither man moved, then Whistler lifted his Berserker back on to the floor. ‘So what brings you down to Uig, man? Not just to see me, surely?’
‘I’ve got myself a new job, Whistler.’ He hesitated just for a moment. ‘Head of security on the estate.’
And Whistler flashed him a look so filled with betrayal that Fin very nearly winced. But it passed in a moment. ‘So you’re here to warn me off, then.’
‘Seems you really pissed off the landlord.’
‘That wee shit Jamie Wooldridge is not his father, let me tell you that. I remember him when his dad used to bring him here as a kid. Snotty wee bastard he was then, too.’
‘Well, that snotty wee bastard’s running the estate now, Whistler. Seems his father had a stroke in the spring.’
This appeared to come as news to Whistler, and his eyes flickered momentarily towards the chessmen.
‘He’s got bigger poaching problems than you. But you’ve made it personal. And he’s your landlord, remember. You don’t want to lose your castle.’ Fin drew a deep breath. ‘And I don’t want to be the one to catch you poaching.’
To Fin’s surprise, Whistler threw back his head and peals of laughter filled with genuine amusement issued from his whiskered face. ‘Catch me, Fin? You?’ He laughed again. ‘Not in a million fucking years!’
CHAPTER FOUR
The jetty at the fish-processing plant at Miabhaig passed below in a blur, smudges of red that were the Seatrek inflatable powerboats anchored in the bay. And although the waters of Loch Rog penetrated only a short way along the deep cleft in the land that was Glen Bhaltos, the single-track road followed it in a straight line, flanked by green and pink and brown, broken only by the lichen grey of the gneiss that burst through it.
Fin saw the shadowed shape of their helicopter sweeping across the land beneath them, vanishing among the cloud shadows that chased and overtook it. The roar of its rotors in his ears was deafening. Ahead lay the golden sands of Uig beach, and the shimmering turquoise of the incoming tide, deceptive in its allure. For even after a long hot summer the waters of the North Atlantic retained their chill.
To the south, the mountains rose up, dark and ominous, casting their shadows on the land, dominating the horizon even from the air.
Fin and Gunn sat squeezed together in the back, while Professor Wilson sat up front wearing headphones and chatting to the pilot. As they swept across the beach he removed them and handed them back to Fin, shouting, ‘He wants to know where to go!’
Fin guided the pilot the only way he knew, by following the road below. They overflew Ardroil and the gravel pits, banking left to pass above the huddled buildings of the Red River Distillery, and picked up the track that led south towards Cracabhal Lodge. They saw a convoy of three vehicles bumping its way among the potholes between the rise of the mountains. A police Land Rover, a white van, an ambulance. The recovery team making its way as close as it could get to the last resting place of Roddy’s aircraft. They would have a long trek on foot up the valley.
Everything looked so different from the air. Fin saw Loch Raonasgail in the shadow of Tathabhal and Tarain, and identified Mealaisbhal to the west of it. He pointed, then, leaning forward. ‘Up there, through the valley.’
The pilot banked steeply to the right and dropped height, and they saw the sprawl of house-sized rock that littered the valley floor, the spoil of primeval ice explosions sitting in water now where the inferior loch had burst its banks and flooded the lower reaches. Above that, beyond the giant slug trail through the peat, lay the simmering black hole left by the empty loch. It looked even more unnatural from the air, like the cavity left by a dental extraction.
The plane at the bottom of it, starkly visible in its final resting place among the rocks, seemed unreasonably small.
The pilot circled the valley looking for a place to set the chopper down, before finally deciding on the relatively flat and stable shelf above the loch where Whistler and Fin had sheltered from the storm. It was a soft landing among the high grasses, the broken mounds of ancient beehive dwellings all around, and when the rotors
