Then, out of the blue, ‘You have a boat, I believe. The one you’ve been using to go back and forth to the Flannans.’
‘Yes, I believe I do.’
‘Where is it?’
I realised that I had no satisfactory answer to this. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Yet you told the boatman at Rodel that you had taken it up to Uig. I know, because I have checked, that you did no such thing.’
‘Sally told him that. Rather than have me try to explain that I’d lost my boat.’
‘And why would she do that?’
‘I told you, Mr Gunn. We’re having an affair. Why else do you think she was with me at Rodel?’
Gunn nodded thoughtfully. ‘Are you married yourself, sir?’ I sighed and went for honesty. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you have any children?’ This time there was discernible aggression in his voice.
And for me it was the tipping point. I simply couldn’t keep it up any longer. For better or worse, I knew that I was about to relinquish what little control I had left over my own life. I dropped my face into my hands and closed my eyes, aware that my breathing had become quite erratic. When I let my hands fall away and lifted my head again, I saw both men looking at me with strangely concentrated stares. I said, ‘Mr Gunn, I wasn’t entirely straight with you yesterday. I did find that man in the chapel the day I visited the island. I have no idea who he is, but obviously the bee stings connect us somehow. If you were to ask me whether or not I’m the one who killed him, I’d have to tell you that I really don’t know. But I guess I’m scared that maybe I did.’
There was an extraordinary silence in the room. Thick enough to cut into slices. It seemed as if both police officers were holding their breath. But I had started down the road of truth, and I knew there was no way back. So I told them everything. About washing up on the beach at Luskentyre with no memory of who or where I was. Discovering that apparently my name was Neal David Maclean, and that I was in a relationship with a married woman. Learning that I was writing a book I could find no trace of. I had gone out to the Flannan Isles in search of answers and found a body. Then searched my house from top to bottom looking for anything to confirm my identity, but finding nothing. Just the money and the cuttings.
Gunn glanced down at his notes, perhaps looking for inspiration among them, but finding none. When he looked at me again, I could see that, although he was sceptical, I had also cut away the ground of certainty from beneath his feet. Finally he said, ‘You say you learned that apparently you were Neal David Maclean. Does this mean you think you might not be?’
‘I know I’m not.’
‘How?’
‘I went to Edinburgh to find out.’
‘And?’
‘Neal David Maclean has been dead for two years.’
Now, as I sit here on my own, I regret telling them the truth. Because I can’t prove a word of it, and I am no longer the master of my own destiny. I cannot imagine what will happen now, and perhaps they are as uncertain as I am about what to do next.
I can hear the sound of distant voices from somewhere deep inside the building, the clack of computer keyboards, the odd trill of a telephone. I can hear, too, the rumble of traffic out in Church Street, and the call of gulls drifting up from the harbour. There is rain running down the window, driven in on the edge of a blustery wind.
I turn, startled, as the door opens unexpectedly, and Gunn returns with the tall, thin officer whose name I can’t remember, and the young man in uniform who drove me up from Harris.
Gunn says, ‘I’d like your permission, sir, to take your fingerprints and a swab of your DNA. If you are in either of those databases, then we’ll be able to make a positive identification.’
‘And if I’m not?’
‘One step at a time, sir.’ He looks awkward. ‘Would you be prepared to submit to a medical examination?’
I think about it. Perhaps, if there is some medical explanation for my loss of recollection, diagnosis might lead to treatment and a return of memory. I nod. ‘Okay.’
‘Then Constable Macritchie will escort you to the Western Isles hospital.’
‘Am I under arrest, Detective Sergeant?’
He presses his lips together in grim resignation and his upper lip whitens, as if he has drawn a chalk line along it. ‘Not yet, sir.’
From the yet, I take it that my arrest is therefore imminent, and almost certainly on suspicion of murder.
Chapter nineteen
When the door to the interview room closed behind the suspect, Gunn stood for a moment, gazing from the window, his mind a firestorm of mixed emotions. He became aware of Detective Constable Smith watching him, and he turned to find himself fixed in the other man’s hawklike stare.
‘What?’ he said, almost defensively, as if there were an accusation in Smith’s eyes.
‘You believe him?’
‘It’s the most unlikely story I’ve ever heard, Hector.’
‘Aye, but do you believe it?’
Gunn thought about it. ‘On balance, probably not.’ But there was still a part of him that found quite compelling the tale that Maclean, or whatever his name was, had told them. And something in the way he told it that had the ring of truth. ‘We need to check out his story about Neal David Maclean.’ He opened his folder on the desk and shuffled through its contents, finding and retrieving the birth certificate. He handed it to Smith. ‘Should be simple enough to check this out. There’s an address written on the back. Let’s see if the man whose birth certificate it is lived or lives there, and if he’s dead, as our man says.’
‘And if he is?’
‘Then we’ll know that at least a part of his story is true.’ He glanced at Smith and saw in his face that his junior officer was dubious of the credence Gunn seemed to be giving the suspect’s story. And as if to justify his thinking, Gunn said, ‘Mrs Macdonald, the lady who owns Dune Cottage, told me that she met our man on the road about a week or so ago, around the time the pathologist thinks the bloke on Eilean Mòr might have been killed.’ He consulted his notes. ‘He was soaked to the skin, she said, and wearing a life jacket. He’d come up from the beach, head bleeding, and was shivering so much he could hardly speak. Her exact words? He hardly seemed to know me.’ He looked up at Smith. ‘All of which would tie in with his claim to have been washed up on the beach, unable to remember what had happened.’
‘Very convenient, if he’d just killed that fella.’
‘Well, to be fair to him, he’s admitting that’s a possibility. Though we don’t have a single piece of evidence, for the moment, to suggest that he did.’
‘Well, it’ll all be out of our hands soon enough.’
Gunn grunted. ‘When does the CIO arrive?’
‘On a flight from Inverness sometime tomorrow.’
Gunn closed his folder. With an average murder rate on the islands of just one a century, it was felt that investigating officers in Stornoway didn’t have the requisite experience. And so any time anything interesting happened, Police Scotland liked to send a more senior officer from the mainland to take charge. Gunn breathed his frustration. ‘It would be nice if we could have this all wrapped up before he gets here.’
‘It would,’ Smith said, though it was clear from his expression he didn’t think it likely. ‘Oh, by the way, our man’s car... It’s a long-term rental, paid for by some company down south. Might take a while to find out exactly who’s behind it.’ He turned towards the door. ‘I’ll check out this bloke Maclean.’
‘While you’re at it, Hector, might as well run a wee check on that couple who’re staying up the road from Dune Cottage.’ He ran an eye over his notes again. ‘Jon and Sally Harrison. From Manchester, apparently. She clearly lied to me about her relationship with our man. And her husband says he’s in concrete.’