under the grill. So perhaps he was at home after all. The front door was not fully closed, and Fin pushed it into the gloom.
‘Whistler, you there? Whistler? We have to talk.’
Silence. He stepped inside, and caught his breath at the sight that greeted him. It was pandemonium. Furniture overturned, shards of broken crockery strewn across the floor among the wood shavings. Whistler’s line of chessmen had been breached, several lying tipped over on their backs. He took a further step in, and by the light that fell obliquely through the narrow window in the rear wall, he saw the big prostrate form of Whistler lying face down on the floor. There was blood oozing through his hair and pooling on the floorboards.
‘Jesus, Whistler!’ Fin crossed the room in three strides and knelt by his side to feel for a pulse in his neck. His lip was split and blood oozed from his mouth. Fin saw the bruising and blood on the knuckles of his big, outstretched hand. But he was still alive. The scrape of a footstep coming from behind startled Fin. He half-turned and a light flashed in his head. The pain of it shot through his body. And darkness followed in an instant.
III
Padraig Post had been delivering the mail in this part of the island for almost as long as anyone could remember, and no one even thought his nickname funny anymore. He always left his van on the metalled road, and walked up the track to Whistler’s place. Today he had a registered letter from the Sheriff Court that required a signature. Which is why he knocked and pushed the door open into the chaos beyond.
Fin could barely move, but was aware of the light that spilled across him as the door swung open. He shut his eyes against the pain and was blinded by the light in his head. When next he opened them, he was aware of someone kneeling beside him, a sack of Royal Mail discarded among the debris. He felt a hand on his shoulder, and a voice told him not to move. There was an ambulance on the way. It was a voice that thundered in his ears. He blinked away the blood running red in his eyes and saw Whistler lying not a foot away, his big whiskered face folded hard against the floor, bloodied lips parted, jaw slack. And the faces of the Norse warriors all around silently mocking.
It was impossible now to tell how much time had passed. He was aware of moments that came and went like blinks of sunlight from a cloud-broken sky. The rumble of wheels beneath him, the sound of a siren. Light, dark, then light again. A blue light now. And then white lights overhead, passing like a succession of large balloons. He thought he saw Marsaili’s pale face, etched with concern, but couldn’t be certain it was not a dream.
Until finally, emerging from darkness, the world seemed somehow solid again. The pain was still there, like a distant echo in the back of his mind, felt through gauze and cotton wool. He was in a bed. Tubular metal at the head and foot of it. Another beside him. Two opposite. All empty. Sunlight leaked from behind vertical blinds. The figure of a man leaned over him. A man in a white coat with a foreign accent. German perhaps. And he remembered, from nowhere, George Gunn once telling him that the hospital was full of foreign interns. God only knew what brought them here.
He peered into Fin’s eyes, peeling back the lids, one after the other. ‘He is severely concussed,’ he said, and Fin wondered who he was speaking to. ‘I will want to keep him here under observation for another twenty-four hours.’ He straightened up and turned away from the bed. ‘After that. .’ Fin could see the shrug of his shoulders. ‘You can have a few moments with him now.’
He moved out of Fin’s range of sight and Fin found he could not turn his head to follow. A shadow fell across him. And then another. He smelled aftershave, almost overpowering, worn like a whore wears too much perfume. That, and something of the demeanour of the man standing closest to his bed, told Fin immediately that he was a cop.
‘Detective Inspector Colm Mackay.’ The voice confirmed it. He half turned. ‘Detective Sergeant Frank Wilson.’ A pause. He moved closer, his voice a little lower. ‘As soon as you are fit, Mr Macleod, I’ll be arresting you on suspicion of the murder of John Angus Macaskill. In the meantime I’ll be leaving an officer at the door. Just in case you decide to take a walk.’
And all that Fin could think, with a pain greater than the one that filled his head, was that Whistler was dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I
Sunlight slanted in through the barred window high in the wall. Fin sat on his bunk, hands holding on to the edge of it as if he were afraid he might fall off. His head was bowed, and he stared at the concrete floor. On the far side of this tiny space, a white-painted arrow on the floor near the door pointed east. If he had believed in God, and were of that persuasion, he might have been tempted to kneel down and pray. A prayer for a dead friend. A moment passed, and a life lost. No way to bring it back. No way to rewind the clock and do it all differently. Whistler existed now only in his memory, and in the memory of others. And when they were gone there would be no trace of him left on this earth, except for his bones in it, and his wind turbines and his chessmen. And a daughter who was now an orphan.
Fin’s head still felt as if gripped in a vice. A white bandage around his forehead kept the dressing in place at the back of it where they had stitched up the wound. But there was no pain. He was still too numb to feel it. Only when the numbness had gone would the full realization of all that had happened visit its pain upon him. And he wondered if he would be able to bear it.
He closed his eyes. How many lost souls had passed through this place? Drunks and wife-beaters, frauds and fighters. But he was, he knew, one of very few ever likely to be charged with murder. For the moment he was just helping police with their inquiries. Not that he had been, or could be, of much help. He had no idea what had happened to Whistler, and they had not asked him yet. He had lost a day in the hospital, and now he had lost his freedom, locked up in a police cell, a victim of events beyond his control.
He heard the scrape of a key in the lock, and the door swung open. George Gunn slipped in and shut the door quickly behind him. He was still wearing the quilted anorak he had worn yesterday morning. He turned and looked at Fin, and Fin could see the tension in his face. ‘I suppose the salmon’s all gone by now,’ Fin said.
But Gunn didn’t smile. ‘For God’s sake, Mr Macleod! You know they want to charge you?’
Fin lowered his head to look at the floor again and nodded.
‘He’s a twenty-four-carat bastard that DI Mackay. Knew him when I was at Inverness.’
‘I didn’t kill him, George.’
‘Jesus Christ, Mr Macleod. I never thought for one minute that you did.’
‘Whistler was still alive when I got there. I felt a pulse.’
Gunn nodded. ‘It looks like he crawled across the floor while you were unconscious. You can see the trail of blood where he dragged himself over it, almost as if he was trying to reach something. The pathologist said he died from an epidural haematoma, and that it wasn’t uncommon for there to be a brief period of lucidity after unconsciousness. But then followed by coma and death. He’d had a helluva crack on the skull, Mr Macleod.’
‘There’d been some kind of a fight, George.’
‘Well that much was obvious. But what were you doing there, Mr Macleod? What did you see in that postmortem report that made you go looking for Whistler Macaskill?’ When Fin failed to respond he blew his frustration through clenched teeth. ‘Well, let me tell you what
Fin drew a deep breath. Mairead, and now Gunn. ‘I do. But I can’t tell you, George. Not yet.’ He heard the other man’s sigh of exasperation.
