Free The Blackhouse by Peter May

smiled. “Maybe you should be asking me where I was on Saturday night.”
    Gunn cocked an eyebrow. “Maybe I should, Mr. Macleod.”
    â€œDo you mind if we walk along the beach, George? It’s been a long time.”
    The beach was bordered on the landward side by low, crumbling cliffs no more than thirty feet high, and at the far end the sand gave way to rocky outcrops that reached tentatively into the water, as if testing it for temperature. Odd groups of rock, clustered together at points in the bay, were always just visible above the breaking waves. Fin had spent hours on this beach as a boy, beachcombing, catching crabs in the rock pools, climbing the cliffs. Now he and Gunn left virgin tracks in the sand. “The thing is,” Fin said, “being bullied at school twenty-five years ago is hardly a motive for murder.”
    â€œThere were more people it seems, Mr. Macleod, who bore him a grudge than just those he bullied.”
    â€œWhat people, George?”
    â€œWell, for a start, we had two outstanding complaints against him on the books at Stornoway. One of assault, one of sexual assault. Both, in theory, still subject to ongoing inquiry.”
    Fin was surprised only by the complaint of assault. “Unless he’d changed since I knew him, Angel Macritchie was always fighting. But these things were aye settled one way or another, with fists in the car park, or a pint in the bar. No one ever went to the police.”
    â€œOh, this wasn’t a local. Not even an islander. And there’s no doubt that Angel gave him a doing. We just couldn’t get anyone to admit they saw it.”
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œOch, it was some bloody animal rights campaigner from Edinburgh. Chris Adams is his name. Campaigns director of a group called Allies for Animals.”
    Fin snorted. “What was he doing here? Protecting sheep from being molested after closing time on a Friday night?”
    Gunn laughed. “It would take more than an animal rights campaigner to put an end to that, Mr. Macleod.” His smile faded. “No, he was here—still is—trying to put a stop to this year’s guga harvest.”
    Fin whistled softly. “Jesus.” It was something he hadn’t thought about in years. Guga was the Gaelic word for a young gannet, a bird that the men of Crobost harvested during a two-week trip every August to a rock fifty miles north-northeast of the tip of Lewis. An Sgeir , they called it. Simply, the Rock . Three hundred feet of storm-lashed cliffs rising out of the northern ocean. Encrusted every year at this time by nesting gannets and their chicks. It was one of the most important gannet colonies in the world, and men from Ness had been making an annual pilgrimage to it for more than four hundred years, crossing mountainous seas in open boats to bring back their catch. These days they went by trawler. Twelve men from the village of Crobost, the only remaining village in Ness to carry on the tradition. They lived rough on the rock for fourteen days, clambering over the cliffs in all weather, risking life and limb to snare and kill the young birds in their nests. Originally, the trip was made out of necessity, to feed the villagers back home. Nowadays the guga was a delicacy, in great demand all over the island. But the catch was limited by Act of Parliament to only two thousand, a special dispensation written into the Protection of Birds Act, passed in the House of Commons in London in 1954. And so it was only by good luck, or good connections, that a family would get a taste of the guga now.
    Fin could still recall with mouth-watering clarity the oily flavour of the flesh on his tongue. Pickled in salt, and then boiled, it had the texture of duck and the taste of fish. Some said it was an acquired taste, but Fin had grown up with it. It had been a seasonal treat. Two months before the men left for the rock, he would begin to anticipate the taste