Free The Blackhouse by Peter May Page A

terrible crimes.’
    ‘And he comes from Edinburgh.’ Fin was thoughtful. ‘Has anyone checked to see if he has an alibi for the Leith Walk murder?’
    ‘No, sir.’
    ‘Might be an idea. DNA evidence will rule him in or out of the Macritchie killing, but that’ll take a day or two. Maybe I should have a word with him.’
    ‘He’s at the Park Guest House in town, Mr Macleod. I don’t think Allies for Animals has the biggest of budgets. And DCI Smith has told him not to leave the island.’
    They started walking across the machair towards the road, sheep scattering before them as they went. Fin raised his voice over the wind. ‘And sexual assault, you said. What was all that about?’
    ‘A sixteen-year-old girl accused him of rape.’
    ‘And did he rape her?’
    Gunn shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s very difficult to get the proof you need to bring a charge in a lot of these cases.’
    ‘Well, it’s probably not an issue. Not in this case, anyway. I’d have said it was virtually impossible for a sixteen-year-old girl to have done to Macritchie what his killer did.’
    ‘Maybe so, Mr Macleod. But her father would have been more than capable.’
    Fin stopped mid-stride. ‘Who’s her father?’
    Gunn nodded towards the church in the distance. ‘The Reverend Donald Murray.’

FOUR
     
    Guy Fawkes night was just three days away. We had collected a huge stash of old rubber tyres and were looking forward to the biggest bonfire in Ness. Every village had one, and every village wanted theirs to be the best. It was a competition we took very seriously in those days. I was thirteen, and in my second year of secondary school at Crobost. The exams I would sit at the end of that year would pretty much determine my future. And the rest of your life is a lot of responsibility to carry when you’re thirteen.
    If I did well I would go to the Nicholson in Stornoway and sit my Highers, maybe Sixth Year Studies, even A levels. I would have a chance of going to university, the opportunity to escape.
    If I did badly I would go to the Lews Castle School, still at that time in the castle itself. But there my education would be vocational. The school had a proud tradition of turning out first-rate mariners, but I didn’t want to go to sea, and I didn’t want to learn a trade and be stuck in some building yard like my father when the fishing no longer offered him a living.
    The trouble was, I hadn’t been doing too well. The life of a thirteen-year-old is full of distractions. Like bonfire night. I had also been living with my aunt for five years by then, and she kept me busy on the croft, cutting peats, dipping the sheep, tupping, lambing, bringing in the hay. She wasn’t interested in how well or badly I was doing at school. And it is not easy at that age to motivate yourself to burn the midnight oil over some dry history book, or mathematical equation.
    That was when Artair’s dad first came to see my aunt and offered to tutor me. She told him he was daft. How could she afford a private tutor? He said she didn’t have to. He was already tutoring Artair, and it would be no more bother to tutor me as well. Besides, he told her (and I know this because she relayed it to me later, word for word, and with no little amount of scepticism in her voice), he believed that I was a smart boy who was underachieving. And that with a little push in the right direction he was sure I could pass my exams at the end of the year and graduate to the Nicholson. And, who knows, maybe even university.
    Which is how I came to be sitting at a table that night in the little back room of Artair’s bungalow that his dad liked to call his study. One whole wall was lined with shelves that sagged under the weight of books stacked along their length. Hundreds of books. I remembered wondering how it was possible for one person to read so many books in a lifetime. Mr Macinnes had a mahogany desk with a green leather-tooled top and a matching captain’s