I right a small table that has been upended, replacing the lamp that stood on it, thankful that the bulb remains intact. Then move into the bedroom to pick up the pieces of broken bulb from the bedside lamp and run the vacuum cleaner over the carpet to suck up any shards I might have missed.
The very act of cleaning up after the attack has allowed me to calm down. My heart is beating almost normally again, and the focus on finding every skelf of glass has stopped me thinking too much about it. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to think about anything. I want to go back to the day before yesterday and be who I was then. With whatever secrets I might have had. At least I would have known what they were.
Finally I let Bran back through, and he runs around the house, sniffing in every corner. Strange, threatening scents. He is still on full alert, even if I have put it behind me. Well, not behind me, exactly. It’s more like I have slipped into denial.
Which is when I notice the blade of my attacker’s knife catching the light where it lies, almost obscured beneath the television cabinet. I drop to my knees and bend down to fish it out and hold it in my hand with a sense of awe. This is a hunting knife with a nine-inch blade, razor-sharp along its curved edge, serrated along the other. Its black haft has finger grips. My insides turn to water as I imagine how it would have felt to have this cold, deadly blade slice through my flesh and veins and organs. And I carry it with me through to the bedroom to slip below my pillow before climbing back into bed, Bran jumping up to stretch himself along my length for comfort. If anyone comes for me again, this time I will be ready.
Day two, AML. After memory loss. Morning greets me with dried blood on the pillow and a scab that has formed over my right temple where it struck the coffee table during last night’s struggle. I have a thumping headache, which might owe as much to oversleeping as to my injury. Of the last twenty-four hours, I count up that I have slept away as many as fifteen. I suppose I must have needed to, but it hasn’t improved either my physical or mental well-being.
It is just after six and Bran is already up, sitting patiently in the boot room, waiting for me to open the door and let him out. I oblige, and he scampers away across the dunes, watched by the Highland pony that grazes habitually among the beach grasses. I put out food and water for him and leave the door open for his return, then set the kettle to boil and spoon coffee into a mug.
As I wait, I go through to the sitting room. The only evidence of the life-or-death struggle that took place here at midnight last night is the buckled remains of the coffee table. I lift it up and carry it through to the spare room, and when I come back the sitting room seems bigger, empty somehow. I cross to the French windows and gaze out across the beach, watching sunlight chase shadows across turquoise and silver before they race each other over the purple-grey hills beyond. Buford’s caravan draws my attention, and I realise it is because his Land Rover is gone. And I wonder where he might be at this time of the morning. What does he do all day, every day? And what is his interest in me?
The kettle boils and I make my coffee, pouring in milk to cool it enough to drink, then sit at the table with the view of the beach spread out before me. I close my eyes as I let the warmth of the coffee slip back over my throat, and try to focus on what it is I need to do now. Where do I go from here? I can’t continue to live in this vacuum of ignorance. I have no purpose, no reason to get up in the morning without a past, or any future. Somehow I have to make sense of all this, figure out who I am and what I am doing here.
I incline my head to look at the map on the wall. If what I told Jon and Sally about an academic career in Edinburgh is true, why have I spent the last year and a half on the Isle of Harris pretending to write a book? My eyes come to rest on the cluster of dots on the map that are the Flannan Isles. I make regular visits to the islands, Sally says. But if I am not writing that book, then why? I must have had a reason. I cannot for the life of me think of anything that would connect the Seven Hunters with eighteen beehives hidden off the coffin road. But those islands seem like as good a place to start looking for answers as any.
I hear Bran returning, claws scraping on laminate floor, and his thirsty lapping of water before the rattle of food as he sticks his face in his bowl. I move around the table to sit in front of the laptop and open up my browser, searching for images of the Flannan Isles. There are plenty, it seems, on the internet, mostly amateur photographs taken by tourists, and not particularly useful. I spend nearly ten minutes searching through them before I stumble on the site of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, and a detailed map of the lighthouse island, Eilean Mòr.
Shaped a little like a turtle on its back, it reveals a ragged coastline, with cliffs rising all around it. Both landing stages are marked, east and west, on the south side of the island, along with the siting of the cranes which must have been used to lift heavy tackle and supplies ashore. Paths lead up from each to converge almost in the centre of the island, before heading on up to the lighthouse itself. A helicopter landing pad is marked to the right of the path, which leads me to assume that service engineers must be brought to and from the island by helicopter. I am surprised to see a ‘Chapel’ marked on the map, just below the lighthouse, and I wonder who must have lived here once, long enough to have built a place of worship.
Bran pads through to sit beside my chair and look up at me, then pushes my elbow with his snout, in search of my hand. I ruffle his head absently, and stroke behind his ears. My boat has gone, God knows where. And I wonder how I will get out there.
Chapter seven
The harbour at Rodel is deserted as I drive down from the church and park in front of the hotel. There are a couple of other vehicles there, but not a soul in sight. I have no idea where Coinneach lives, and wander along the quay to the boat I saw him climb out of yesterday. It is a Sea Ray 250 Sundancer powerboat with a 454 Magnum Alpha One engine. I seem to know every little detail about it, although I am not sure how. It is a sleek beast, white with purple trim, and a plastic cowling that can be mounted to shelter the driver in bad weather. Though it would not, I know, last long in the winds it would encounter around these coasts. This is a fairweather boat.
I am turning away when I hear my name called, and I swing back to see Coinneach emerging from below, climbing the couple of steps to the left of the driver’s seat, and straightening himself with palms pressed into his lower back. ‘On your own today?’ he says.
‘Aye.’
‘So what brings you back to Rodel when your boat’s up at Uig?’ And something about the way he says this makes me think that he didn’t believe a word of Sally’s story yesterday.
‘I was wondering if I could borrow yours.’
He laughs, and his amusement seems genuine enough. ‘I’m not in business for the good of your health, Neal. But I’ll rent you one. Where are you going?’
‘The Flannan Isles.’
He frowns and looks up at the sky. ‘Well... it’s fair enough now, alright, but the forecast’s for squalls moving up from the south-west. You’ll maybe not get landed.’
‘I’ll take my chances.’