31

Gus McIntyre was tense as he sat next to Sonya in the parked car. She had convinced him to drive to the Drummond workshop and cottage and he had finally agreed. He was a few months shy of his seventeenth birthday but had been driving the old Vauxhall his father had bought him for almost a year. Sonya was still plucking up the courage to knock on the door. Outside, night had fallen with such a suddenness that it had unnerved her, even though she was used to the island and its ways. She remembered the old tale her grandfather used to tell her about the night, that it was caused by swarms of blackbirds flying out of Beinn nan sìthichean and blocking the sunlight. Certainly raven-wing clouds had been gathering since early afternoon and were now folded over the moon and the stars. Occasionally headlights pierced the darkness from the north. They’d see them long before the vehicle made an appearance, the twin beams raking the sky, giving the feathery underside of the clouds some substance, before they’d flare through the windscreen, bathing them in bright light, then passing. When the vehicles came from Portnaseil, the lights would first flash in the rear-view mirror, then light up the interior before zooming on to float at speed over the road ahead and the hedgerows on either side before cresting the hill and vanishing. Each time lights glinted from either direction she and Gus would jump apart as if stung, for she knew there was no way he was going to spend this amount of time out here without getting something out in return. That something was still only fervent kissing and desperate groping, though her anger of the previous day was long gone so it wasn’t quite so fervent on her part as it had been at the loch.

Her grandmother had told her about the visit from the reporter and it had annoyed her. This was nobody’s business, certainly not the bloody papers. She wasn’t surprised her grandmother had spoken to the woman, though. Sonya had always suspected she had wanted to tell her more about the night her mother had died but her granddad prevented it. He didn’t like to speak of Mhairi and would dismiss her queries with a gruff excuse. It’s all in the past, Sonya. She hoped that her grandmother would tell her something, now the floodgates had opened, but it was as if talking to the reporter had emptied her. She waved away Sonya’s pleas to know more, saying she had already said too much and had only spoken because there was a chance the reporter would try to speak to Sonya. There had been a coolness between her grandparents that evening and Sonya knew it had been caused by the journalist’s visit and whatever Molly Sinclair had told her. She had discussed all this with Gus—she had to talk to somebody—and he had agreed with her. This was island business and had nothing to do with mainlanders. That reporter should just go home and leave them alone.

‘Somebody should make her go,’ Gus had said, his fingers brushing at the hair over her ear before he leaned in for the first kiss of the evening.

She let him kiss and tongue and nibble. She let him touch and fondle and grope. She responded. But her mind was always on the reporter, while her eyes seldom left the cottage door. As her fingers threaded through the short hair at the back of Gus’s head, she wondered if she would ever steel herself to stand at that door, to knock on that door, to wait for that door to open and to see Roddie Drummond standing at that door.

And then, the door opened.

And Roddie Drummond was there.

She pushed Gus away and peered through the windscreen. She could just make him out in the soft light cast through the curtains and the bulb above the doorway. He was wearing a long wax coat and a hat and was standing in the courtyard, as if taking the air.

Gus narrowed his eyes to sharpen his vision. ‘Is that him?’

Sonya didn’t reply. She watched Roddie, as he stood motionless for a few moments. Was he trying to decide what to do? She expected him to move towards his father’s transit van, but he thrust his hands in the pockets of the coat and began to walk towards them.

‘You going to speak to him then?’ Gus asked.

Again, she didn’t reply. He turned onto the road and walked towards Portnaseil, slowly, as if still unsure of his direction. As he came level on the opposite side of the road he studied the car parked on the grass verge. Sonya resisted the urge to duck down to avoid being seen. She didn’t move. She stared at him through the glass and his eyes caught hers.

Shock filled his face and he froze. His mouth fell open, as if he was about to say something, but then closed again.

‘Now’s your chance,’ said Gus. ‘Speak to him—that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?’

Roddie didn’t move and neither did Sonya. They stared at each other, separated by the window glass and the breadth of the road. And something else. As if standing between them was her mother, the woman she closely resembled.

‘Drive,’ she said, her voice hoarse, suddenly not wishing to be here. She needed to be somewhere else, anywhere, just not here on this stretch of island road with the clouds merging above them and the breeze whispering to the ghosts of the past who lurked in the darkness. ‘Drive!’

Gus turned the key and the engine roared. He hit the pedal so hard the Vauxhall jerked forward, its rear wheels churning at the grass verge, and they took off down the road. She twisted in her seat to look through the window behind her. Roddie was still standing there, watching them roar off. Then the darkness swallowed him.

* * *

Donnie Kerr stood on the stone harbour above the Kelpie and stared up at the black sky. He felt pressure in his temples and something heavy hung in the air. He could hear a hiss on the surface of the water, as if the air was telling it to limber up. No one else would hear it, only him. He looked down at his boat as it bobbed restlessly on the slight swell. It had been a slow day, only two customers, but when the storm struck there wouldn’t even be that. That was the season well and truly over, he decided. It hadn’t been the best but it sure as hell wasn’t the worst.

He breathed in a deep lungful of night air, felt a coppery tang on his tongue. Tomorrow, the next day, it would hit and hit hard. He gave the boat another look, satisfied himself that it was well battened down and would easily ride out the weather in the sheltered harbour. He had come to love that boat, something that would have surprised his younger self. It was the only thing standing between him and unemployment, but his affection came from something deeper. He was an islander and the boat was part of the island and its life. That was a lesson his father had tried to teach him, that Stoirm was more than simply the place he had been born, it was something that lived in the blood and the heart, but he had scoffed. His natural sailing skills and his affinity for the elements were things he had tried to deny and even escape. If heroin can be seen as an escape.

He knew the decline in the fishing industry had deeply affected his father, not to mention the decline in his son. Lachlan had scraped through, though he had taken risks that he shouldn’t have, going out in seriously rough weather, ignoring quotas occasionally, actively breaking the law in order to keep his head above water. Donnie was certain the stress of those years, when he himself took solace in drugs, had taken such a toll that his father’s body just gave up.

The unseasonably warm air was not unpleasant as he walked along the harbour towards the Square, even though it was the herald of something that would be the opposite. He thought about Henry’s offer. He thought about his own bills. He was getting by, but only just. He could have accepted the bribe, for that was what it was, and life would be easier. But he couldn’t—it would mean he was bought and paid for. He could not become part of Henry’s pursuit of profit, not again. He’d ride out any financial tempest somehow, just as the Kelpie would ride out the storm.

Seeing a figure on the edge of the Square, he stopped dead. He couldn’t make out who it was but that wasn’t what sent the shock tingling from the nape of his neck to his back, arms and fingers. It was the coat and the wide-brimmed hat. He had seen it before, years before.

That night.

It hadn’t been a junkie’s fever dream. It had been real.

It was the same one, he knew it. As he drew closer he saw the splash of red on the shoulder, faded now but still there.

He quickened his step and the figure turned. Donnie was on the harbour side of the Square and the man was on the far corner at the bottom of the road leading to the Spine, but even at that distance he could make out who it was.

Roddie.

Donnie began to run. He had intended confronting him after Mary’s funeral, there being something distasteful about doing so while his dead mother was still above ground. Once Mary Drummond was lying warm in the island earth, then he would speak to him.

Roddie heard him approach and looked his way briefly, recognition clear on his face, then he turned away again to head back up the incline towards the Spine, disappearing beyond the range of the Square’s lights. Donnie’s feet pounded on the concrete and he reached the roadway in seconds. He paused in the shadow created by the hotel and the bar and peered up the incline, his eyes very quickly adjusting to the darkness, but there was no sign of Roddie. Where the hell had he gone? Donnie held his breath and listened for footfalls but heard nothing. He sighed and turned back towards the Square, his mind spinning. The coat. The hat. The splash of red. It was real. All real. He forced himself to remember. The years and his condition at the time had caused his memory to fragment and shatter until what was left were shards that sliced behind his eyes. The wind. The rain. The figure in the roadway outside the cottage. A tall man, taller than Roddie. Not Roddie. Most certainly not Roddie. Then, who?

The realisation hit him just as he reached the rear corner of the pub, where the emergency exit opened out. So lost was he in trying to piece together the broken glass of his memory that he was unaware of the furtive movement and the dark shape breaking free of the shadows. He sensed the attack and tried to turn, but he was too late and the figure too fast. Something harder than a fist slammed into the side of his head. Bright lights danced before his eyes as the pain rocked through his skull and he staggered, dimly aware of something long and slim swinging up again and cracking across his left cheek, snapping his head to the right and taking the rest of his body with him. Then another blow crashed across his ribs and he slumped to his knees. He tried to raise his fists but he had no strength. Another hard crack across his face sent him spiralling to the ground.

He lay on his belly. He tried to move, his right cheek scraping against the gravel on the roadway. A pair of booted feet stepped into his line of vision. A foot was raised, he saw the treads on the underside of the work boots, then it was rammed into his face with such force that it put his lights out for a few moments.

Consciousness flickered briefly and he saw Roddie standing a few feet away, looking down at him, his eyes wide. Then Donnie’s vision began to swirl once more. He was sucked down and down and down, to where the world was cold and silent and deep.