The Chessmen (4 page)

‘Because I wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth. What on earth possessed you, man?’

‘I’ve no idea, Whistler. I took a wrong turning somewhere.’

‘Aye, you did. Clever you were, Fin Macleod. Could have made something of your life, so you could.’

Fin looked pointedly around. ‘Not as much as you could have made of yours. School dux. Smartest boy of your generation, they said. You could have been anything you wanted to be, Whistler. Why are you living like this?’

There was a time when the Whistler of old might have taken offence, cursed vituperatively, even got violent. But instead he just laughed. ‘I’m exactly who I want to be. And there’s not many can say that.’ He unslung a canvas satchel from his shoulder and threw it on the couch. ‘A man’s home is his castle. And I’m a king among kings. You saw those solar panels on the roof?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Made them myself. And the wind turbines. Generate all the electricity I need. King of the sun and the wind, I am. And the water. Got my own freshwater spring. And fire too,
begod. The peat’s as free as the rest. All it costs is your labour. Look at this . . .’

He strode to the door and stepped outside into the wind. Fin followed.

‘Grow my own food, too, or raise it on the hoof.’

‘Or poach it from the estate.’

Whistler threw Fin an ugly look, but the darkness in it vanished in a moment. ‘As we always did. A man’s entitled to take from the land that the Lord gave us. And He gave it to us all, Fin. You cannae take it with you when you die, so how can anyone think they own it while they’re living?’

‘The estate spends money and time and manpower managing the fish and the deer, Whistler. And it was man who introduced the rabbits and the mountain hares for hunting.’

‘And if I take a fish here or a deer there it does no harm at all. When the fish spawn there’s more of them in the river. When the deer rut there’s aye one on the hill. And the rabbits?’ He grinned. ‘Well, they breed like fucking rabbits, don’t they?’ His smile faded. ‘I steal from no man, Fin. I take what God gives. And I owe nothing to no one.’

Fin looked at him carefully. ‘What about your rent?’ And he saw a shadow cross the big man’s face.

‘It’s in hand,’ he said, and turned back into the house, bumping carelessly past Fin’s shoulder as if he weren’t there. Fin turned, too, and leaned against the door jamb looking into the darkness of the house.

‘What do you do for money, Whistler?’

Whistler still had his back turned to him, but Fin could hear his confidence wavering. ‘I earn what I need to get by.’

‘How?’

His old friend spun around and glared at him. ‘None of your fucking business!’ And there he was. The Whistler Fin had always known. Prickly and quick-tempered. But he relented almost immediately, and Fin saw the tension slip from his shoulders like a jacket removed at the end of the day. ‘I pick up driftwood from the beach, if you must know. Fine, dry, bleached wood. And I make carvings of the Lewis chessmen for the tourists.’

He flicked his head towards the giant chessmen lined up against the wall. And then he laughed again.

‘Remember, Fin, how they taught us at school that when Malcolm Macleod found the wee warriors hidden in that cove just down there at the head of Uig beach, he thought they were sprites or elves and was scared shitless. Scared enough to take them to the minister at Baile na Cille. Imagine how scared he’d have been of these big bastards!’ And he hefted a bishop up on to the table.

Fin stepped in to take a closer look. Whistler, apparently, had unexpected talents. It was a beautifully sculpted figure, a minutely accurate replica, down to the smallest detail. The folds in the bishop’s cloak, the fine lines combed through the hair beneath his mitre. The originals were between three and four inches tall. These were anything from two and a half to three feet. No doubt Whistler could have found employment in the Viking workshops in Trondheim where the actual pieces were thought to have been carved out of
walrus ivory and whales’ teeth in the twelfth century. But, Fin thought, he probably wouldn’t have liked the hours. He ran his eyes along all the pieces lined up against the wall. ‘You don’t seem to be selling many.’

‘These were commissioned,’ Whistler said. ‘Sir John Wooldridge wants them for the chessmen gala day. You know about that?’

Fin nodded. ‘I’ve heard they’re bringing them home. All seventy-eight pieces.’

‘Aye, for one day! They should be in Uig year round. A special exhibition. Not stuck in museums in Edinburgh and London. Then maybe folk would come to see them and we could generate some income here.’ He dropped into one of his armchairs and cupped his hand around his face to run it over bristled cheeks. ‘Anyway, Sir John wanted these for some kind of giant chess game on the beach. The estate’s helping fund the gala day. I suppose he must reckon it’ll be good publicity.’

Fin found his eye drawn by the band of gold on Whistler’s wedding finger. ‘I didn’t know you were married, Whistler.’

He was momentarily discomposed, then took his hand from his face and looked at his wedding ring. An odd melancholy washed over him. ‘Aye. Was. Past tense.’ Fin waited for more. ‘Seonag Maclennan. You probably knew her at school. Left me for Big Kenny Maclean. Remember him? He’s the bloody manager now on the Red River Estate.’ Fin nodded. ‘Took my wee girl with her, too. Wee Anna.’ He was silent for a moment. Then, ‘Anyway, the bastard didn’t profit for long. Seonag got herself breast cancer and went and died on him.’

He sneaked a glance in Fin’s direction, and then quickly away again, as if he was afraid that Fin might see some emotion in it.

‘Trouble is, that makes him Anna’s legal guardian.
My
daughter. No harm to Kenny. He’s all right. But she’s my kid and she should be with me. We’re fighting it out in the Sheriff Court.’

‘And what are your chances?’

Whistler’s grin was touched by sadness. ‘Just about zero. I mean, look around you.’ He shrugged. ‘Sure, I could clean up my act, and maybe that would hold some sway. But there’s a bigger problem.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Anna. The lassie hates me. And there’s not much I can do about that.’

Fin saw pain in his eyes, and in the tightness of his jaw, but he was quick to laugh it off, pushing himself suddenly out of his chair, unexpected mischief in his grin.

‘But I’ve carved out my own secret revenge.’ He replaced the bishop among the chessmen along the wall and selected another which he lifted on to the table. ‘The Berserker. You know what that is?’

Fin shook his head.

‘The Berserkers were Norse warriors who whipped themselves up into a trance-like state, so that they could fight without fear or pain. The fiercest of the Viking warriors. Well, those old twelfth-century craftsmen made the rook in the likeness of a Berserker. Crazy bulging eyes, the mad bastard biting the top of his shield.’ Whistler grinned with
delight as he turned his carving around to the light. ‘I’ve taken a few liberties with my version. Have a look.’

Fin rounded the piece to better catch the light and realized suddenly that Whistler had made his Berserker in the likeness of Big Kenny. There was no mistaking it. The same flat-faced features and broad skull. The scar on the left cheek. An irresistible smile crept across his face. ‘You clever bastard.’

Whistler’s laughter filled the room. ‘Of course, no one will ever know. But I will. And now you will, too. And maybe when the gala’s by, I’ll present it to him as a gift.’ He looked at Fin with sudden curiosity. ‘You got any kids, Fin?’

‘I’ve got a son by Marsaili Macdonald that I never knew I had till a year ago. Fionnlagh, she called him.’

Whistler glanced at Fin’s left hand. ‘Never married, then?’

Fin nodded. ‘I was. For about sixteen years.’

Whistler’s eyes searched Fin’s, sensing concealment. ‘And no kids?’

Fin found it hard ever to speak about it without pain. He sighed. ‘We had a wee boy. He died.’

Whistler held him in his gaze for a long time, and Fin almost found himself wishing he would hug him again. If only just to share the pain, and maybe halve it. But neither man moved, then Whistler lifted his Berserker back on to the floor. ‘So what brings you down to Uig, man? Not just to see me, surely?’

‘I’ve got myself a new job, Whistler.’ He hesitated just for a moment. ‘Head of security on the estate.’

And Whistler flashed him a look so filled with betrayal that Fin very nearly winced. But it passed in a moment. ‘So you’re here to warn me off, then.’

‘Seems you really pissed off the landlord.’

‘That wee shit Jamie Wooldridge is not his father, let me tell you that. I remember him when his dad used to bring him here as a kid. Snotty wee bastard he was then, too.’

‘Well, that snotty wee bastard’s running the estate now, Whistler. Seems his father had a stroke in the spring.’

This appeared to come as news to Whistler, and his eyes flickered momentarily towards the chessmen.

‘He’s got bigger poaching problems than you. But you’ve made it personal. And he’s your landlord, remember. You don’t want to lose your castle.’ Fin drew a deep breath. ‘And I don’t want to be the one to catch you poaching.’

To Fin’s surprise, Whistler threw back his head and peals of laughter filled with genuine amusement issued from his whiskered face. ‘Catch me, Fin? You?’ He laughed again. ‘Not in a million fucking years!’

The jetty at the fish-processing plant at Miabhaig passed below in a blur, smudges of red that were the Seatrek inflatable powerboats anchored in the bay. And although the waters of Loch Ròg penetrated only a short way along the deep cleft in the land that was Glen Bhaltos, the single-track road followed it in a straight line, flanked by green and pink and brown, broken only by the lichen grey of the gneiss that burst through it.

Fin saw the shadowed shape of their helicopter sweeping across the land beneath them, vanishing among the cloud shadows that chased and overtook it. The roar of its rotors in his ears was deafening. Ahead lay the golden sands of Uig beach, and the shimmering turquoise of the incoming tide, deceptive in its allure. For even after a long hot summer the waters of the North Atlantic retained their chill.

To the south, the mountains rose up, dark and ominous, casting their shadows on the land, dominating the horizon even from the air.

Fin and Gunn sat squeezed together in the back, while Professor Wilson sat up front wearing headphones and chatting to the pilot. As they swept across the beach he removed
them and handed them back to Fin, shouting, ‘He wants to know where to go!’

Fin guided the pilot the only way he knew, by following the road below. They overflew Ardroil and the gravel pits, banking left to pass above the huddled buildings of the Red River Distillery, and picked up the track that led south towards Cracabhal Lodge. They saw a convoy of three vehicles bumping its way among the potholes between the rise of the mountains. A police Land Rover, a white van, an ambulance. The recovery team making its way as close as it could get to the last resting place of Roddy’s aircraft. They would have a long trek on foot up the valley.

Everything looked so different from the air. Fin saw Loch Raonasgail in the shadow of Tathabhal and Tarain, and identified Mealaisbhal to the west of it. He pointed, then, leaning forward. ‘Up there, through the valley.’

The pilot banked steeply to the right and dropped height, and they saw the sprawl of house-sized rock that littered the valley floor, the spoil of primeval ice explosions sitting in water now where the inferior loch had burst its banks and flooded the lower reaches. Above that, beyond the giant slug trail through the peat, lay the simmering black hole left by the empty loch. It looked even more unnatural from the air, like the cavity left by a dental extraction.

The plane at the bottom of it, starkly visible in its final resting place among the rocks, seemed unreasonably small.

The pilot circled the valley looking for a place to set the chopper down, before finally deciding on the relatively flat and stable shelf above the loch where Whistler and Fin had
sheltered from the storm. It was a soft landing among the high grasses, the broken mounds of ancient beehive dwellings all around, and when the rotors finally came to a stop, they all jumped down to look out over the gaping hollow of the valley below.

It was late afternoon by now. The sun was well up in the sky and tipping gently to the west, creating a subtle change in the angle and direction of the shadows in the valley. They had come equipped with boots and waders and stout sticks, and Fin led them down the same way that he and Whistler had gone that morning, carefully picking their way over rocks that had dried in the warmth of the sun, the surface of the peat at the bottom of the loch already starting to crust and crack.

There was not a breath of wind down here, and the midges clustered around them, getting into their hair and their clothes, biting, biting, biting, like myriad needles piercing their skin, not painful exactly, but irritating almost beyond endurance.

‘For Christ’s sake, did no one think to bring any bloody repellent?’ Professor Wilson glared at Gunn as if it were his fault. His face was red with irritation and exertion, his unruly copper beard exploding from it like wire bursting through its cable sheathing. A frizzy halo of ginger grew around a head that was otherwise bald across the top, white and splattered with big brown freckles. He slapped at it with open hands. ‘Jesus fucking Christ!’

But by the time Fin had given him a hand up on to the nearside wing, he had forgotten about the midge clouds,
and was absorbed by the scene that confronted them. His eyes darted about, taking in every visible detail of the plane, before slipping on a pair of latex gloves and pulling open the door to the cockpit. Even he, used as he was to the multifarious perfumes of post-mortem, recoiled from the smell that struck them almost like a physical blow. In the enclosed space of the cockpit, baking as it had been for hours now in the sun, the rate of decomposition had accelerated, catching up on seventeen lost years. The smell was much worse than when Fin and Whistler had opened it up that morning.