‘So where do you think his boat is, then?’
‘I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea, Mr Gunn. But he shows up here again the next day wanting to hire one of mine.’
‘And you hired him one?’
‘Why wouldn’t I? He’s an experienced sailor, and he paid me in cash right there and then.’
‘So that would have been when? Two days ago?’
‘No...’ Macrae scratched his chin. ‘Must have been the day before that. I’ll have a record of it in the books.’
‘And did he say where he was going?’
‘Aye, the Flannans. I was a wee bit worried, because the weather was on the turn.’
‘But he brought it back?’
‘Oh, aye, he did. A few hours later. Looking like he’d seen a ghost, too. Face so white it was green. You know, like folk get when they’re seasick.’
Gunn knew only too well.
‘Only, a man like him doesn’t get seasick, Mr Gunn. So I’ve no idea what his problem was. But he was in no mood for chit-chat, and he was off like a bat out of hell.’
Gunn dug out his photograph of the dead man. ‘Ever seen this fella at all?’
Macrae took it and examined it closely before handing it back. ‘Afraid not.’ He paused. ‘Is that the dead man, then?’
Gunn scowled. ‘How do you know about that?’
And Macrae grinned. ‘It’s a small island, Mr Gunn. You should know that better than anyone. It bothered me, you know, Mr Maclean’s story about taking his boat up to Uig. So I called Murray at Seatrek last night, just out of curiosity. Turns out Maclean’s boat’s not at Miavaig at all. And, of course, that’s when he told me all about taking you folk out to Eilean Mòr yesterday, and what it is you found there.’
Gunn slipped the photo back into his inside pocket and breathed his annoyance. ‘Tell me, Mr Macrae, how would you get out to the Flannan Isles if you didn’t have a boat yourself?’
Macrae pushed his hands deep into his pockets and sucked air in through his teeth. ‘There’s a few excursion operators that run trips out to St Kilda and the Flannans, Mr Gunn. One at Leverburgh, another at Tarbert, and then of course there’s Seatrek itself.’
‘Scotland The Brave’ began playing in Gunn’s pocket, and he fumbled to pull out his mobile. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, and turned to walk, swishing, away along the quay to take the call. It was the desk sergeant at Stornoway to say he had just dispatched a constable to Luskentyre with the search warrant from the Sheriff.
Chapter fifteen
It is after three thirty when I drive off the ferry from Uig on to the ramp at Tarbert. Brightly coloured yellow railings guide the disembarking traffic on to the road that leads out of the town, past the Harris tweed shop. It is spitting rain, and my windscreen wipers smear it across the fly-spattered glass.
It is hard to say that I am glad to be back, but this feels more like home to me than anywhere I went to in Edinburgh. Wherever I might truly belong, I have spent the last eighteen months of my life on this island, and so there is a sense, however illusory, of returning to the womb. Here, for better or worse, there are people who know me, or at least know me in the part I have been playing this last year and a half.
But, during all the long hours of the drive back from Edinburgh, I have been wrestling with the concept that I have no name I can answer to. The only name I am known by is that of a dead man. Since I have no past, I am without a present. And without a present I have no future. It is a thought that has driven a wedge of depression deep into my consciousness, and I am falling into a trough of sheer despondency. I am tired now, my concentration shot, and I almost collide with another vehicle as I turn south on the main road. The blast of the other car’s horn sets my heart racing and clears from my mind the cloud that has been obscuring my immediate future in all its uncertainty. I have no idea what I am going to do when I get back to the cottage. I desperately want the comfort of Sally’s arms around me, soft and warm. I want to breathe in her scent, drift off in her embrace, like a child. And, who knows, maybe waken with tomorrow’s dawn, memory fully restored, knowing exactly who I am and why I am here.
Everything on the drive to Luskentyre feels reassuringly familiar. The sign on the left for the Episcopalian Church, the roadsigns for Rodel and Geocrab and Manais. The Golden Road. Even the roadworks on the brae leading down to the fabulous expanse of silver and turquoise in the bay.
The bizarrely wind-sculpted Scots pines to the right of the single-track seem to be welcoming me home as I turn at the cottage before the cemetery and come up over the rise to see a phalanx of police and other vehicles crowded on to the tarmac behind my house.
It comes like a punch in the gut. Debilitating and painful, suffusing my entire being with a sense of utter hopelessness, and very nearly robbing me of the ability to turn the wheel and guide my car over the cattle grid. For the briefest of moments I consider driving past, as if just passing by. But the road goes nowhere, except to the beach at the end of it, and I would have to turn and come back. And then what? I have to face up to the reality of my situation some time.
As I draw in behind all the other vehicles parked in my drive, I cut the motor and close my eyes. There can only be one possible reason for this congregation of policemen at my house. And I see once again the face of the man I found dead in the ruined chapel on Eilean Mòr, the blood and brain tissue, and know that they, too, think that I killed him.
The afternoon is blustery, grey and depressing as I step out of my car. The clouds over the beach are low, almost purple on their underside. The wind is fierce and I feel it filling my mouth and bringing tears to my eyes. A uniformed policeman climbs out of one of the cars and approaches me. ‘Excuse me, sir, what’s your business here?’
And I hear myself saying, ‘I live here.’
I see his eyes open wide. ‘You’re Mr Maclean?’ I nod, knowing that it is absolutely not who I am. ‘Better come with me, sir.’ I feel his fingers closing around my upper arm, and he is leading me down the drive towards the door of the cottage, which is standing wide open. We reach the foot of the steps and I can see several uniformed officers moving about inside my house. The constable who has my arm calls, ‘George!’ And after a moment a stocky man in a black quilted anorak appears at the door. His face is pink and round and shiny, and a black widow’s peak cuts a V into his forehead. He looks at the constable, then at me, and the constable says, ‘Detective Sergeant Gunn, this is Mr Maclean.’
I see Gunn’s expression change in an instant. He looks at me again, but with different eyes this time. ‘Mr Neal Maclean?’ he says.
‘What’s going on?’ I ask, although I know perfectly well.
Gunn comes down the steps and a wedge of his gelled hair lifts up in the wind. ‘Three days ago, Mr Maclean, you were seen by several witnesses, running from the old ruined chapel at Eilean Mòr, out on the Flannan Isles. Yesterday, the body of a dead man was discovered in that building. A death we are treating as murder. I’m wondering how you could have entered that building without seeing the body and, if you did, why you didn’t report it.’
Thoughts tumble through my head, disordered and incoherent. I know that I have to come up with a convincing story, but I am finding it almost impossible to think clearly. And it occurs to me in that moment that I should just tell him the truth. The whole truth. What kind of relief might that be? But equally, I realise that the truth will sound even more unlikely than anything I might invent. And it seems to me now that the black cloud which has been masking my memory since I washed ashore on the beach must be obscuring something worse even than murder. Because it is still there. So I rush into a lie. ‘You probably know by now, Detective Sergeant, that I am writing a book on the disappearance of the Flannan Isles lighthouse men.’