He pursed his lips and raised his voice above the wind. ‘Mr Buford. This is the police; open up, please.’ But it was only the wind that responded, incessant in its eternally mournful cry. Gunn stood for some moments, nursing his frustration, before returning to his car, turning it in a wide circle, then bumping back along the path towards the road.
The Harris Post Office in Tarbert was housed in a harled bungalow with a grey-tiled roof that stood below the anonymously roughcast Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Almost opposite, a house with rusted yellow gates displayed incongruously ornamental lambs atop each gatepost. The Post Office was set halfway up the hill above the town, and, beyond the shambles of parked cars and red Post Office vans, Gunn could see the bright yellow railings of the car ferry terminal below.
He passed a row of black bins lined up along the outside wall and ducked into a dark interior, lit in patches by burned-out sunlight that fell through the windows of the cluttered little office.
Mary Macleod was younger than her friend from Luskentyre, but only by a few years. ‘I’m just part-time now,’ she told Gunn quite happily when he showed her his warrant card. ‘But I’ve not much else to do with my time, so I spend most of it here. I’ve worked for the Post Office close on thirty years, since my husband died and the children went off to make their own lives.’ But her face clouded when Gunn asked her about Neal Maclean. ‘Oh, I don’t know that I’m at liberty to divulge confidential details about customers, Mr Gunn,’ she said.
Gunn cocked one eyebrow. ‘That doesn’t seem to have stopped you from relaying them to Flora Macdonald at Luskentyre, Mrs Macleod.’
She flushed to the roots of her silver hair. ‘I’m sure I didn’t tell her anything I shouldn’t have.’
‘Then you won’t mind telling me, too.’
She glanced about self-consciously, aware of the eyes of customers and staff upon them. ‘You’d better come through.’ And she led him into a small private office, its wall pinned with posters and leaflets. ‘What exactly is it you want to know?’
‘Mrs Macdonald tells me that Mr Maclean is in the habit of sending regular packages from here.’
The old lady nodded. ‘Yes. At least once a week. Sometimes twice.’
‘But only during the summer?’
‘Well, I couldn’t say exactly when he starts and stops. He’s only been here two seasons. But I can tell you that we hardly saw him all last winter.’
‘And when was he last in?’
She thought about it. ‘About two weeks ago, I’d say.’
‘And how does he send these packages? Registered post, or...?’
‘Special Delivery.’
‘So you’ll have a record of the address he sends them to?’
‘Well, I suppose it’ll be in the computer. But I wouldn’t be at liberty to divulge that information to you, unless you had some kind of official authorisation.’
‘Well, I can get that if I think it’s necessary, Mrs Macleod. But perhaps you might just remember. Off the top of your head, that is. Since he’s been in so often.’
She glanced nervously towards the door. ‘We handle so much mail here, Mr Gunn, I really couldn’t say.’
But he let it hang, and she became uncomfortable.
‘It was somewhere in Edinburgh, I remember that. Some kind of laboratory. But where, exactly, I really don’t remember.’
Gunn nodded. ‘Mrs Macdonald told me he had a PO box here.’
‘Oh, did she?’ And something in Mrs Macleod’s tone told him that she would be having words with her old friend from Luskentyre.
‘So he has all his mail delivered here?’
‘No, no. Most of it goes to Dune Cottage with the postie. The mail that comes to his PO box is usually Special Delivery, too. From the laboratory he sends his packages to. Though he doesn’t always pick it up straight away.’
‘Is there anything waiting for him to pick up right now?’
She gave him a look. ‘No, there is not, Mr Gunn. And even if there were, I’d need permission to let you see it.’ Then she relented a little. ‘He’s not had anything for about ten days or so.’
Gunn reached into the inside pocket of his anorak and produced the photograph of the man whose body they had found on Eilean Mòr. ‘Have you ever seen this gentleman in here?’
She lifted the reading glasses that hung on a chain around her neck and put them on to squint at it closely. But she shook her head. ‘No, Mr Gunn, he doesn’t look at all familiar to me.’
The bright early sunshine which had accompanied Gunn on his drive down from Stornoway was intermittent now as cumulus bubbled up from the south-west, blown in on a strengthening wind and casting more shadow than sunlight across the southern half of the island.
Occasional rain spots spattered on his windscreen as he headed down through Northton and past the Seallam genealogy centre, to Leverburgh. But it didn’t come to anything, and was brighter when he reached the southern coastline and headed through the hills on the long straight road to Rodel.
It was a long time since Gunn had been here. He had once brought his wife on a weekend drive from Stornoway, and they had eaten the most marvellous seafood in the Rodel Hotel. But he imagined it would only be a matter of weeks now before the hotel would shut down for the season, and the little harbour below it was quite deserted. Despite the absence of people, there were plenty of boats. Fishing boats and motor launches, a couple of sailing boats and a handful of rowing boats which had seen better days, all lined up side by side, nudging each other playfully on the incoming swell, pulling on ropes and creaking in the wind. Many more boats than Gunn remembered from his previous visit.
He was about to walk up to the hotel when a voice called from the far side of the harbour. ‘Can I help you?’ Gunn turned to see a man walking round the quay towards him, and could only assume he had come from one of the boats, because there had been nobody there a moment ago. He wore heavy boots and yellow oilskin overtrousers, and an intricately patterned Eriskay jumper. His weathered face was young, but thinning hair aged him.
Gunn showed him his warrant card. ‘That all depends,’ he said. ‘You are...?’
‘Coinneach Macrae.’ He held out a hand to shake Gunn’s and very nearly crushed it. ‘I run a boat-charter business out of the harbour here.’
‘Ahhh,’ Gunn said. ‘Didn’t think there were this many boats last time I visited.’
‘It’s my first year at Rodel,’ Macrae said. ‘Used to be based at Leverburgh, but Rodel’s a bigger attraction for the tourists.’ He turned and ran his eye around the harbour. ‘Doesn’t come much prettier than this.’
Gunn nodded. ‘Gone well, then, has it? Your first season.’
Macrae’s shoulders rose and fell noncommittally. ‘Could have been worse. So what can I help you with, Detective Sergeant?’
‘I’m wondering if you know a fella called Neal Maclean.’
‘I do indeed.’
‘He keeps his boat here, I believe.’
‘He does that.’
Gunn turned towards the boats tethered in the harbour. ‘And which is his?’
‘It’s not here.’
Gunn frowned. ‘So where is it?’
Macrae ran a hand back through what was left of sandy hair. ‘No idea. It’s all very odd, really.’
‘What is?’
‘Well... five, maybe six days ago, he went off to the Flannans, like he quite often does. But he never came back. His car sat parked over there in front of the hotel for a day or so. Then he shows up with a woman I’ve seen him with a few times. A Mrs Harrison.’ He crinkled blue eyes and turned them skywards, thinking hard. ‘Sally,’ he said suddenly. ‘That’s what he calls her. Anyway, they arrive in her car to get his, and he seems surprised that his boat’s not here.’ Macrae took in Gunn’s expression and laughed. ‘I know, I know. Sounds crazy. How would he not know his boat wasn’t here? Anyway, she jumps in with this cock and bull story about them having berthed it up at Uig, and he shuts up. I didn’t believe a word of it.’