another several hours of daylight remaining. But soon those days would start shrinking fast, and the islanders would take badly to the onset of another long, bleak winter in the aftermath of the best summer in living memory.
The striking of a match turned Fin’s head and he saw with something like shock that Donald was lighting a cigarette, hands cupped around a flickering flame. It seemed discordant, out of keeping with the black cotton and the dog collar, which themselves struck an odd note with his jeans and trainers. His face became thinner as he sucked on his cigarette. The last time Fin had seen Donald smoking would have been nearly eighteen years before, at which time it would almost certainly have been a joint.
‘When did you start smoking again?’
Donald drew more smoke into his lungs. ‘When I stopped caring.’
‘About what?’
‘Myself.’ He blew smoke into the wind. ‘Oh, don’t worry, Fin. I’m not wallowing in self-pity just yet.’ He glanced at him. ‘Let’s walk on the beach. I need to ask you a favour.’
The tide was on its way in again. Creamy foam rushing over compacted virgin sand broken only by the tracks of seagulls where they had foraged for creatures just below the surface. Fin and Donald left their own trail of erratic footprints in their wake, breaking frequently up the slope to avoid the incoming wash. Gulls wheeled and cawed overhead, enjoying the last of the sunshine that caught the gable ends of houses all along the road above the harbour. The wind was stronger now, but still soft in their faces.
They had walked some way in silence before Donald said, ‘I heard the other day that they might ask me to quit the manse.’
Fin was astonished. ‘What happened to innocent until proven guilty? You’re only suspended, for God’s sake!’
‘It’s for the Church’s sake, Fin, not God’s.’ Donald kept his eyes focused on some distant point far ahead of them. ‘Apparently some of the elders feel that the minister they have sent to preach in my stead should also have my house.’
‘The same elders who’ve brought the charges against you, no doubt.’
The merest smile played about Donald’s lips for a second. ‘Of course.’ Then it vanished almost as quickly. ‘I think Catriona might be going to leave me.’
Fin stopped dead in the sand, and Donald had taken several more steps before he realized it and stopped too. He turned. Fin said, ‘Why?’
Donald shrugged. ‘Because I’m not the man she married, she says.’
‘You’re the man who saved her daughter’s life.’
‘By killing another man.’
‘The fiscal himself said there wasn’t a jury of your peers who would have convicted you for killing to save innocent lives. You did nothing wrong.’
‘In the eyes of the law perhaps.’
‘You had no choice.’
‘There’s always a choice.’
‘And you chose the lesser of two evils.’
‘God is clear, Fin. Thou shalt not kill. It wasn’t a request, it was a command.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘At any rate, that’s what my accusers will argue. And that’s what I wanted to ask you about.’
‘The sixth commandment?’
Which drew a chuckle. ‘No, Fin. I think I am familiar enough with your views on the subject of anything to do with God and the Church.’
‘What, then?’
Donald’s smile evaporated. ‘The Presbytery has decided to take the matter to a disciplinary court. Effectively a trial. Under Church law. If I want to keep my job I will have to defend myself. And they want to call witnesses. They want to call you, Fin.’ Now, for the first time, he appeared to be uncertain of himself. ‘Will you testify?’
And Fin remembered all those moments from childhood when Donald had stood up for him, even when it had meant putting himself at risk. He felt emotion rising in him like a river in flood. For a moment he could barely trust himself to speak. Then at last he found his voice. ‘Donald, how could you ever imagine I wouldn’t?’
II
It was the following day that Fin had had his first meeting with Jamie in the landlord’s private office. Fin and Kenny stood looking over the No. 13 Ordnance Survey Landranger map of West Lewis and North Harris spread across the desk, while Jamie used an orange felt-tipped marker to outline the various water systems that made up the Red River Estate.
It had been clear that Big Kenny was bored. He knew the estate and its water systems probably better than any other living soul, but Jamie was his boss, and Jamie wanted to brief Fin personally.
Jamie’s office was cluttered, a large desk very nearly filling it. Glass cases of stuffed fish and fishing flies lined the walls, an imperious-looking stag’s head mounted on a plaque above the door.
Fin remembered Jamie from teenage years spent in Uig with Whistler. Sir John Wooldridge had brought his son up to the island from boarding school somewhere in the south of England every Christmas, Easter and summer holiday to learn about the estate. He was a couple of years older than the rest of them, but even as a teenager had already acquired the subliminally patronizing attitude of the landowner. It had not really been that long since the whole of Lewis had belonged to a single landowner, and those of its people who rented crofts and worked the land were treated little better than serfs. When it had been decided, back then, that grazing sheep was a more profitable use of the land than crofting, many tenants had been forcibly evicted and shipped off on boats to Canada and America, with not much more control of their lives than the slaves taken there from Africa.
Memories were long, stories of the land clearances spanned generations, and landowners were still regarded with suspicion and a little fear. And although their powers these days were restricted by Act of Parliament, and crofters had security of tenure on the land, a landowner continued to be seen in a strange, reluctant way as being superior. A regard landowners also had of themselves.
Jamie was lean and tanned, but losing his hair, and since his father’s stroke had brought his wife and two children to live with him full-time at Cracabhal Lodge. He had a creamy, languid, southern accent, although to Fin’s surprise demonstrated a remarkably good grasp of Gaelic. His speaking of it was close to unintelligible, but his understanding was impressive. He wore moleskin trousers, knee-length boots and a Barbour jacket.
‘We have five water systems on the estate, Fin, rivers that feed in and out of the various lochs. There is salmon, sea trout and brown trout fishing throughout. In fact, we have more than a hundred lochs for brown trout fishing, though it’s not the brown trout that the poachers are after.’
He moved his marker across a landscape broken by myriad patches of blue to circle a long body of water that arced from the south to the north, and from west to east. ‘Loch Langabhat. Old Norse for the long loch. It’s about eight miles long. The largest freshwater loch in the Hebrides.’ And there it was, in that single imparting of information, the condescending assumption that he was telling Fin something he wouldn’t know — although it was Fin who had grown up on the island, and not Jamie. ‘We share the fishing rights with another five estates. With proper management we’ve been increasing our average catch there year on year, doubling the take in the last five. These bloody poachers are going to wipe them out. Not just in Langabhat, but across all our water systems. And if they put us out of business, a lot of local people are going to lose their jobs.’
He straightened up and regarded Fin with speculative brown eyes.
‘I’m relying on you, Fin, to find these people and put a stop to it. You’ll have whatever resources you need.’
To Fin it seemed like a fairly straightforward police investigation. The poaching was not the work of outsiders. These were local people who knew their way around. Someone must know who they were. And it wasn’t just a matter of catching the fish. Others were smoking it. Someone was buying it. There was a supply line leading away from the island to destinations in Europe or further afield, and since freshness was an issue where fish was concerned, it would be leaving by plane rather than boat.
‘Well, I don’t see why we can’t wrap this up within a month or two, Mr Wooldridge.’
