streaks of turquoise and emerald that marked out the distant shallows. ‘It’s a dead end.’
But Fin was looking across the hillside towards the figure of a man stacking peats beside a freshly whitewashed cottage. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s see what the neighbour knows.’ And he set off, striding through the long grasses, fresh green pushing up through winter dead, flowers of purple and yellow reaching for the sky to herald the start of the spring season. The grass moved like water in the wind, ebbing and flowing in waves and eddies, and Gunn waded through it almost at a run in an effort to keep up with the younger man.
Everything about the neighbouring croft seemed to have been renewed. The paint, the roof, the fencing. Doors and windows were double-glazed. A shiny red SUV sat parked in the drive, and a man with a thatch of thick greying hair turned from his task at the peats as they arrived. He had the weathered face of someone who spent time out of doors, but his wasn’t an island accent. He replied to Fin’s Gaelic greeting in English. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t speak the Gaelic myself.’
Fin reached out to shake his hand. ‘No problem. Fin Macleod,’ he said, turning as the breathless Gunn finally caught up. ‘And Detective Sergeant George Gunn.’
The man seemed a little more wary now as he shook their hands in turn. ‘What does the polis want up here?’
‘We’re looking for information about the family who used to live next door.’
‘Oh.’ The man relaxed a little. ‘The Macdonalds.’
‘Yes. Did you know them?’
He laughed. ‘I’m afraid not. I’m Glasgow born and bred. This is my folks’ place. They moved to the mainland in the late fifties and had me just after they got there. I might even have been conceived in this house, though I couldn’t swear to it.’
‘They would have known the neighbours, though,’ Fin said.
‘Oh, aye, of course. They knew everyone around here. I heard a lot of stories when I was a boy, and we used to come up for the summer holidays. But we stopped in the late sixties after my dad died. My mum passed away five years ago, and I only decided to come back and restore the place last year after I got made redundant. To see if I could make a go of it as a crofter.’
Fin looked around and nodded approvingly. ‘You’re doing a good job so far.’
The man laughed again. ‘A little redundancy money goes a long way.’
Gunn asked, ‘Do you know anything at all about the Macdonalds?’
The man sucked in a long breath through clenched teeth. ‘Not first-hand, no. Though they were still here the first year or two we came on holiday. There was a family tragedy of some sort, I don’t know what. One year we came back and they’d upped sticks and gone.’
Gunn scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘You don’t know where?’
‘Who knows? A lot of folk followed their ancestors from the days of the Clearances, over to Canada.’
Fin felt a chill now on the edge of the wind, and zipped up his jacket. ‘They wouldn’t have been Catholics, would they? The Macdonalds.’
This time the man roared his mirth above the howl of the wind. ‘Catholics? Here? You must be kidding, man. This is Presbyterian country.’
Fin nodded. It had seemed an unlikely scenario. ‘Where’s the nearest church?’
‘That would be the Church of Scotland at Scarista.’ He turned and pointed south. ‘Just five minutes away.’
‘What are we doing here, Mr Macleod?’ Gunn stood disconsolately in the metalled parking area at the top of the hill, huddled in his quilted jacket, nose red from the cold. Although the sun rode in patches like untamed horses across the hill and the beach below, there was little warmth in it. The wind had turned around to the north, breathing unpitying arctic air into their frozen faces.
The church at Scarista stood proud on the hill above a strip of mown grass peppered with headstones marking the final resting place of generations of worshippers. A hell of a view, Fin thought, to take with you to eternity: the smudged and shadowed blue of distant mountains beyond the yellow of the Scarista sands; the ever- changing light from a neverresting sky; the constant refrain of the wind, like the voices of the faithful raised in praise of the Lord.
Fin looked up at the church building. As plain and unadorned as the church at Crobost. ‘I want to see if there’s a boat inside,’ he said.
Gunn scowled. ‘A boat? In the church?’
‘Aye, a boat.’ Fin tried the door and it opened in. He passed through the vestibule into the body of the church, Gunn at his heels, and of course there was no boat. Just a plain beechwood altar draped in purple, a pulpit raised high above it from which the minister, in his exalted and privileged position closer to heaven than the masses to whom he preached, would deliver the word of God.
‘What in heaven’s name made you think there would be a boat in the church, Mr Macleod?’
‘Tormod Macdonald spoke of a boat in the church, George. A church built by fishermen.’
‘He must have made it up.’
But Fin shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. I think Marsaili’s dad is confused and frustrated; he has trouble with words, and memories, and how to communicate them. And maybe he’s even hiding something. Consciously or otherwise. But I don’t think he’s lying.’
Outside the wind had, if anything, grown stronger and less forgiving. They felt the blast of it as they stepped from the church.
‘The whole of Harris is pretty much a Protestant island, George, isn’t it?’
‘It certainly is, Mr Macleod. I suppose there might be one or two Catholics around, like sheep who’ve strayed from the fank, but for the most part they’re all in the southern isles.’ He grinned. ‘Better weather and more fun.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I hear the supermarkets even sell you booze on a Sunday.’
Fin smiled. ‘I think hell will freeze over before we ever see that on Lewis, George.’ He opened the car door. ‘Where to now?’
‘Back to Tarbert, I think. I’d like a copy of Tormod’s birth certificate from the registrar.’
The office of the registrar was to be found in council offices occupying the former school hostel in West Tarbert, a drab, flat-roofed building erected in the late 1940s to provide accommodation for pupils from far-flung corners of the island attending the town’s secondary school. The house opposite hid in seclusion behind a profusion of trees and shrubs, almost certainly cultivated to hide the ugliness of the building on the other side of the road.
An elderly lady looked up from her desk as Fin and Gunn brought the cold in with them.
‘Shut the door!’ she said. ‘It’s bad enough that the wind blows in through every ill-fitting window in the place, without folk leaving the doors wide open!’
A chastened George Gunn quickly closed the door behind them, then fought to retrieve his warrant card from the depths of his anorak. The old lady examined it through half-moon spectacles, then looked over the top of them to conduct a thorough examination of the two men on the other side of the counter. ‘And how can I help you gentlemen?’
‘I’d like an extract from the register of births,’ Gunn told her.
‘Well, you needn’t think you’ll get it for free just because you’re a police officer. It’ll cost?14.’
Gunn and Fin exchanged the hint of a smile.
Fin tilted his head to read the nameplate on her desk. ‘Have you been here a long time, Mrs Macaulay?’
‘Donkey’s years,’ she said. ‘But retired for the last five. I’m only standing in for a few days on holiday relief. Whose is the extract you would like?’
‘Tormod Macdonald,’ Gunn said. ‘From Seilebost. Born around 1939, I believe.’
‘Oh, aye …’ Old Mrs Macaulay nodded sagely and peered at her computer screen as she started rattling age- spattered fingers across her keyboard. ‘Here it is: 2 August 1939.’ She looked up. ‘Would you like a copy of the death certificate as well?’
In the silence that followed, the wind seemed to increase in strength and volume, moaning as it squeezed through every space left unsealed, like a dirge for the dead.
Mrs Macaulay was oblivious of the effect of her words. ‘A terrible thing it was, Mr Gunn. I remember it well. Just a teenager he was at the time. A real tragedy.’ Her fingers spidered across the keyboard again. ‘Here we are. Died 18 March 1958. Would you like a copy? It’ll be another?14.’
