water in undulating waves through the long machair grasses.
‘Aye, it is.’ And Fin thought about the crofter who had discovered, buried in the sands of Uig, the Lewis Chessmen, carved from walrus tusks by twelfth-century Norsemen. And he could imagine how it was possible, as legend had it, for that crofter to think that they were really elves and gnomes, the pygmy sprites of Celtic folklore, and to turn on his heels and flee for his life.
A man came out from the front door of the crofthouse as they slammed the car doors shut. He wore moleskin trousers tucked into knee-high black boots, and a thick woollen jumper under a jacket with leather patches at the shoulders and elbows. He had a shotgun broken over one arm, and a canvas satchel hanging from his shoulder. His black hair was cropped short and his face lean. But even a deep summer tan could not hide the yellow remains of bruising around it, and there were several healing scars on badly split lips. He had striking pale green eyes, and Fin decided that he was about the same age as himself. The man paused for a moment, then closed the door behind him and sauntered towards them with the hint of a limp in his gait. ‘Can I be of any assistance to you gentlemen?’ He was softspoken, his gentle cockney cadences barely audible above the racket of the wind. But his voice did not reflect the wariness in his strange green eyes, or the tension Fin could see in the way he held his body, something of the cat about him, all wound up and ready to spring.
‘James Minto?’ Fin said.
‘Who wants to know?’
‘Detective Sergeant Finlay Macleod.’ Fin nodded towards Gunn. ‘And Detective Constable George Gunn.’
‘Identification?’ Minto was still eyeing them cautiously. They both showed him their warrant cards, which he examined, and then nodded. ‘Okay, you’ve found him. What do you want?’
Fin cocked his head towards the shotgun. ‘I take it you’ve got a licence for that?’
‘What do you think?’ Wariness was turning towards hostility.
‘I think I asked you a question which you haven’t answered.’
‘Yes, I’ve got a licence.’
‘What are you thinking of shooting?’
‘Rabbits, if it’s any of your business, Detective Sergeant.’ He bore all the hallmarks of a soldier in the ranks displaying his contempt for a senior officer.
‘Not poachers.’
‘I don’t shoot poachers. I catch them and I hand them over to you people.’
‘Where were you on Saturday night between eight and midnight?’
For the first time Minto’s confidence wavered. ‘Why?’
‘I’m asking the questions.’
‘And I’m not answering unless I know why.’
‘If you don’t answer I’ll put you in handcuffs in the back of that car and take you to Stornoway where you’ll be charged with obstructing a police officer in the course of his duties.’
‘Fucking try it, mate, and you’ll end up with two broken arms.’
Fin had read Gunn’s printout on Minto. Ex-SAS, serving in the Gulf and Afghanistan. And something in Minto’s tone told him that he meant what he said. Fin kept his voice level. ‘Threatening a police officer is also an offence, Mr Minto.’
‘So handcuff me and throw me in the back of your car.’
Fin was surprised by the quiet menace in Gunn’s voice at his side. ‘I think you’d better answer Mr Macleod’s questions, Mr Minto, or it’s you who’ll have the broken arms, and it’s me who’ll break them while I’m putting them in cuffs.’
Minto flicked him a look of quick appraisal. Hitherto, he had paid little attention to Gunn. If he had dismissed him as a junior officer of no consequence, he was now clearly rethinking. He reached a decision. ‘I was at home Saturday night. Watching the telly. Not that you get a very good picture down here.’ He dragged his eyes away from Gunn and back to Fin.
‘Can anyone verify that?’ Fin said.
‘Yeh, like I’ve got a lot of mates round Uig. They’re always dropping by for a beer and a chat.’
‘You were on your own, then?’
‘You’re quick for a copper.’
‘What programmes did you watch?’ Gunn asked with the authority of someone who had probably been watching TV himself on Saturday night.
Minto threw him another wary glance. ‘How the fuck should I know? Bloody telly’s the same every night. Crap.’ He looked from one to the other. ‘Look, the sooner you ask me what it is you want to know, the sooner I’ll tell you, and we can put an end to this little game, okay?’
‘Maybe we should do this indoors,’ Fin said. ‘And you could make us a cup of tea.’ It seemed like a good way of defusing hostilities.
Minto thought about it for a few moment. ‘Yeh, okay. Why don’t we do that?’
For a man who lived alone, Minto kept his house in perfect order. The tiny sitting room was spartan and clean, devoid of pictures or ornaments, except for a chessboard on a table by the window, opposing chessmen in various stages of conflict across the black and cream ivory squares. Fin could see into the kitchen as they sat waiting for Minto to come through with the tea. There wasn’t a dirty dish in sight. Cutlery hung in neat racks on the wall, and dish towels hung drying, carefully folded above a heater. Minto carried in a tray with a pot of tea and three cups and saucers, a small jug of milk and a crock of sugar cubes. Fin had been expecting mugs. There was something faintly manic in Minto’s fastidiousness, a tidiness and discipline dinned into him perhaps by years in the army. Fin wondered what motivated a man to come to a place like this to live on his own. His job, by its nature, would not lead him to make many friends. But he seemed to go out of his way to make enemies. Nobody liked him much, Big Kenny had said. And Fin could see why.
As Minto poured, Fin said, ‘Not easy to play chess with yourself.’
Minto glanced across the room towards his chessboard. ‘I play by telephone. My old commanding officer.’
‘You have the Lewis Chessmen, I see.’
Minto grinned. ‘Yeh, not the originals, unfortunately. Ain’t figured out how to break into the British Museum yet.’ He paused. ‘Beautiful things, aren’t they?’
Beautiful was not a word Fin had expected to hear passing Minto’s lips. If he had suspected for a moment that Minto might have been aware of life’s aesthetics, he would not have thought him likely to appreciate them. But the one thing Fin had learned from his years in the police was that however much you believed you had them figured out, people invariably surprised you. ‘Have you ever seen the originals? They keep a few of them at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.’
‘Never been to Edinburgh,’ Minto said. ‘In fact, I haven’t been anywhere in Scotland except here. And I haven’t been off the island since I arrived fifteen months ago.’ Fin nodded. If that was true, it would rule Minto out of any connection with the Leith Walk murder. ‘I thought at first maybe you’d come to tell me you’d got the bastards who did this to my face.’
‘Afraid not,’ Gunn said.
‘Nah,’ Minto drawled. ‘Don’t know what I was thinking. Like every other bugger round here, you’re more interested in looking after your own. Right?’ He sat down and dropped two lumps of sugar in his tea and stirred in some milk.
‘A lot of your poachers turn up pretty badly marked themselves,’ said Gunn.
‘A lot of my poachers don’t like getting caught.’
Fin said, ‘Do you work alone?’
‘Nah. There’s a couple of other guys on Sir John’s payroll. Locals, you know, probably out poaching themselves when they’re not out with me.’
‘Sir John’s payroll must be quite hefty then,’ Fin said. ‘Three of you on a salary just to catch poachers.’
Minto laughed. ‘A drop in the bloody ocean, mate. You know, there’s consortiums of fishermen come up here, stay in the lodge, and pay ten grand a week just for one beat. Over a season that’s a lot of dosh, know what I mean? And these guys ain’t too happy paying that kind of money if there ain’t no fish in the river. A hundred years ago, over on Grimersta Estate, they was catching more than two thousand salmon a year. Back then, they say the guy who owned the place caught fifty-seven of the buggers off the same rod in one day. These days we’re lucky if
