Gunn cocked an eyebrow. ‘So she and Mr Maclean are having an affair?’
‘I really couldn’t say, Mr Gunn. But anyone who’s been watching the goings-on across the road would be entitled to draw their own conclusions.’ She handed a cup and saucer to Gunn. ‘Help yourself to milk and sugar.’ Then she turned to hand a cup to Donnie, who quickly replaced the figurine and grasped the saucer with both hands.
Gunn struggled to escape the clutches of the sofa to perch on the edge of it and milk and sugar his tea. ‘And her name is...?’
‘Sally. And her husband, Jon. They stay in the big house at the top of the hill. The one with the glass front. Incomers, too. But just renters like Mr Maclean.’
As he stirred his tea, Gunn said, ‘Have you noticed anything odd about Mr Maclean’s behaviour recently, Mrs Macdonald?’
She frowned. ‘Odd in what way?’
‘Well, anything out of the ordinary.’
‘There’s nothing very ordinary about Mr Maclean, Detective Inspector.’ And Gunn noticed she had promoted him. ‘Says he’s here to write a book, though I’ve never seen any evidence of it, and he doesn’t seem to spend much time writing.’
‘A book about what?’
‘The disappearance of those poor lighthouse men on the Flannan Isles.’ Though their disappearance was more than a century old, she spoke as if she knew them personally. ‘He was back and forth to the islands quite a lot, by all accounts.’
Gunn and Donnie exchanged looks. ‘So he has a boat, then?’ Gunn said.
‘Well, he must have.’ She paused to think about it. ‘Yes, he does. Because I met him on the road the other day and he said he’d had an accident with it.’
‘What kind of accident?’
‘He didn’t say. But he was in some state, Mr Gunn. Soaked to the skin, and wearing one of yon bright orange life-jackets. Came up from the beach, he did, shivering so much he could hardly speak. Bleeding from his head, too.’
‘When was this?’
‘Oh, let me think... About five days ago, it would be. He hardly even seemed to know me.’
‘I don’t suppose you’d know where he keeps this boat?’
‘I really couldn’t say, Mr Gunn. Tea’s not too strong for you, is it?’
‘No, no, it’s fine, thanks.’ Gunn sipped at it. ‘Is there anything else you can tell me about him? How he spends his days when he’s not writing? I imagine there’s not a lot to do around here.’
‘Well, he’s never once been to the church, I can tell you that. Godless folk they are that come from the mainland.’ She raised her cup to her lips, then lowered it again without drinking. ‘He goes for long walks with that chocolate-coloured Lab of his. Frequently on the beach, though he heads up quite often over the coffin road.’
Gunn had heard of the coffin road, and knew that these days it was a trekking route for hill walkers. ‘What’s up there?’
She shrugged. ‘Nothing. Rocks and heather and a few wee lochs and cairns. Though it’s a long time since I walked the coffin road myself.’
‘I suppose he must have taken his dog with him to the mainland?’
‘No, I’ve seen Mrs Harrison out walking it, so he must have left it with them.’
Which suggested to Gunn that his intention was to return. ‘Anything else you can tell me about him? Does he have visitors?’
‘Not that I’ve seen.’ She blew on her tea then took a sip. ‘But he’s back and forth all summer to the Post Office in Tarbert with wee packages.’
‘What sort of packages?’
‘Well, they’re not big, but, you know, quite bulky. He uses yon padded envelopes.’
‘How often?’
‘Every week or so, I’d say. I don’t always see him leaving, myself, but I have a friend at the Post Office, Mary Macleod, who tells me he’s in there all the time. He has one of those PO boxes, you know? I can’t imagine why; there’s a perfectly good postal delivery to the house. Mary says he’s in and out all the time, from May to September, but hardly ever in the winter.’ She sipped pensively on her tea. ‘Never goes up the coffin road in the winter months either, or very rarely, anyway. Not that I blame him. Very exposed to the weather up there, it is.’
Gunn placed his cup and saucer carefully back on the tray and stood up with difficulty. He searched in his pockets to retrieve the photograph of the dead man, taken at the mortuary the previous night. He held it out for her to look at. ‘Do you know this man, Mrs Macdonald? Has he ever been a visitor at Dune Cottage?’
She frowned. ‘He doesn’t look very well.’ Then shook her head. ‘No, I’ve never seen him before. And I’ve a good memory for faces.’
Gunn slipped it back in his pocket and handed her a dogeared business card. ‘I’d be obliged, Mrs Macdonald, if you could give me a call when Mr Maclean gets back.’
She took the card and examined it carefully. ‘I knew a Gunn once. From South Uist, she was.’ She hesitated, pursing her lips slightly. ‘A Catholic.’ Though she didn’t ask, the question was in the eyes that she turned towards Gunn.
‘Church of Scotland,’ he said. And she nodded, apparently satisfied.
‘So what’s all this about, then?’ She glanced from one to the other. ‘Has he done something he shouldn’t?’
Gunn scratched his cheek, and fleetingly recalled Professor Wilson’s aspersions about his facial growth. ‘No, no, nothing like that, Mrs Macdonald. Routine stuff.’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t suppose that you would mind if we took a wee look around his house?’
She folded her arms, only too aware that he had just fobbed her off. ‘Well, you’d suppose wrong, Mr Gunn. It may be my house, but since Mr Maclean has it long-term it’s effectively his. You’ll have to get his permission if you want to go inside it.’
They stood on the road outside, with the wind whistling about them. Donnie pulled his cap low over his brow to stop it from blowing off, but Gunn had given up the unequal struggle to keep his hair in place and spoke animatedly into his mobile phone with tendrils of black hair waving about his head like the tentacles of a sea anemone. When he finished his call, he hung up and slipped the phone thoughtfully into his pocket. ‘I’ve asked them to get a search warrant from the Sheriff, but it might be a while. You’d best head on back to Tarbert, Donnie, and I’ll give you a call when we get the go-ahead.’
He watched Donnie’s blue and white wending its way past the cemetery along the single-track towards the main road, before turning and walking up the hill to the house with the glass front. There was a Volvo estate parked in the drive, and he walked up to the door of a porch that rose in a double pitch to the second floor like a two-storey conservatory. He rang the bell and turned to take in the view. A handful of small clouds raced across acres of blue, chasing their shadows over the sands below. On the far machair, he could see the Seilebost primary school, and wondered how it must have been to grow up and go to school in such a place. Though he imagined that generations of kids had probably taken it quite for granted, and only with the experience born of life and age would they have come to understand how privileged they had been.
He turned as the door opened to find himself looking at an attractive young woman with short dark hair. She cocked her head, eyes wide and quizzical, and smiled. ‘Hello. Can I help you?’
‘Detective Sergeant George Gunn,’ he said. ‘From Stornoway. I wonder if I might have a few words.’
‘Of course.’ She opened the door wide. ‘Come in, come in.’ He followed her through a hall flooded with light from the conservatory, and into a sitting room with a large picture window looking out across the bay. A young man was sitting smoking in an armchair by the fire, and he stood up, stubbing out his cigarette as they entered. He cast an inquiring look towards his wife, who shrugged and said, ‘Detective Sergeant Gunn would like to talk to us.’