‘No.’ Niamh dismissed the screensaver and opened Ruairidh’s mailer. ‘Ruairidh didn’t tell me about it. It wasn’t until I looked at his computer when I got home on Sunday that I saw it.’ She pulled it up on screen and both Braque and Gunn shaded their eyes against the light from the window to read it.
‘From well wisher,’ Braque said.
Gunn read out loud, ‘See you in hell.’
‘And you say he received this while you were on the RER coming into Paris? About two hours before the car bomb went off?’
‘From the time on the email, and the time I remember him receiving one on the train, I would say yes.’
‘Why didn’t he tell you about it?’
Niamh shook her head. ‘You’re really asking me that?’
Braque shrugged and took out her mobile phone. ‘Can you forward it to me?’
‘Sure. Give me an address.’
Braque wrote it down and Niamh forwarded the email. Braque said, ‘I’ll also need the access code for your wifi. I have no phone signal here. I would like to pass this on to our computer expert in Paris.’
As Braque was tapping in the code, the telephone rang on Ruairidh’s work desk. Niamh answered it quickly. ‘Hello?’
It was her mother. ‘Oh. So you are there?’ Her voice laden with sarcasm. ‘Nice of you to come and see us. I hear you visited the Macfarlanes yesterday.’
Niamh glanced self-consciously at the two police officers and turned away towards the window, where she could see the reflection of someone who looked only vaguely like herself. ‘Ruairidh is their son, Mum. We had to make the funeral arrangements.’
‘And it never occurred to you to drop in?’
‘We went straight to the funeral director in Stornoway.’ She tried to lower her tone, but it still came out full of anger. ‘For God’s sake, do you have to be so selfish?’
There was a long silence at the other end when she could hear her mother draw a slow breath. ‘Your brother is on the ferry.’
‘Uilleam?’
‘Do you have another?’
Niamh closed her eyes, fighting to keep control.
Then her mother said, ‘Can you pick him up at Stornoway and bring him down to Balanish?’
Niamh clenched her jaw. ‘Yes. What time?’
‘The ferry gets in at one.’
‘I’ll be there.’
There was another long silence before her mother said, ‘He’s coming for you, you know. Not for Ruairidh.’
‘I never imagined for a minute he was.’ Niamh hung up and took a moment to collect herself before turning back to her guests. ‘Sorry,’ she said, barely in control. ‘I need to get showered and dressed. I have to go and pick my brother up off the ferry.’
‘Of course,’ Gunn said, and he took Braque’s elbow to steer her towards the door. ‘Don’t you worry, Mrs Macfarlane, we’ll see ourselves out, no bother.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Gunn pulled in on a hardcore passing place on the edge of the old Bilascleiter settlement and he and Braque got out to feel the wind filling their mouths and tugging at their clothes and hair. They had a good view from here back towards the Macfarlane house, and the ruins beyond it. A green corrugated tin hut stood resolute against the gales that swept across the moor in all seasons. A blackened wooden door was bolted, but peering through net curtains, Gunn could see into a gloomy interior where an old settee was pushed up against the back wall.
A stainless-steel sink lay in what remained of an old blackhouse in front of it, abandoned to its fate, bog moss and grasses slowly claiming it. The footings of perhaps a dozen more old stone dwellings were still visible here, climbing the slope to the top of the hill.
‘What was this place?’ Braque asked.
Gunn shrugged. ‘A settlement of some sort. More than just shielings, I think.’ It didn’t occur to him to explain what a shieling was, and she didn’t ask.
She was just baffled that anyone would ever have chosen to settle here. ‘Looks like they didn’t stay long.’
‘Oh, they might have been here a century or more, I have no idea,’ Gunn said. ‘They’re hardy souls that hail from these parts.’
Braque didn’t doubt it.
Gunn removed a walking stick from the back seat of the 4×4 and used it for support as he walked up to the top of the hill. Braque picked her way carefully after him. While he was wearing a pair of stout wellies, she had only leather boots with Cuban block heels. And by the time she reached him she could feel peaty bog water seeping through to her feet. It was with dismay she accepted that the boots were probably ruined.
As she scrambled up the last few feet to stand beside him, she saw the coastline zigzagging off to the south, each successive headland reaching further out, it seemed, into the Minch. Gunn said, ‘I put out a few feelers when they told me you were coming. I got some feedback first thing this morning.’ He turned to look at her, and she saw his oiled black hair whipped up by the wind to stand on end. ‘You’ve heard of Lee Blunt?’
‘The fashion designer?’
‘The very one. A few years back he was using Ranish Tweed in his collections, and making a name for it all over the world. Then he had a very public fallout with Ruairidh. Fisticuffs, I believe, in a pub in London, though there were no charges ever brought.’ He paused. ‘Turns out he was here on the island just a few weeks back. Flew in on a private chartered jet.’ He took out a black notebook and flicked through it. ‘Tuesday the fifth of September to be exact. Stayed a couple of days, and hired a car to take him to the mill at Shawbost.’ He turned to look at her. ‘What do you know about Harris Tweed?’
She shrugged and admitted, ‘Not much.’
‘It has to be hand-woven by weavers in their own homes. The big mills spin the wool and supply the weavers with both the orders and the wool. When the weaving’s done, the cloth goes back to the mill to be finished. They repair any flaws then wash and dry it. They even shave it to make it nice and smooth. With very few exceptions the weavers work to order for the mills.’
‘So if you were going to place an order you would go to one of the mills?’
‘Indeed.’
‘But Ranish isn’t Harris Tweed.’
‘No. Because they use different types of fibres that don’t conform to the requirements that are defined for Harris Tweed by Act of Parliament. They have their own designs and patterns, take their own orders, and only use the mills for the finishing process.’
‘So what was Blunt doing at the mill?’
‘I’ve no idea. But here’s the interesting thing. Air traffic at the airport tell me that he’s due in again this afternoon. Another private charter. Him and a few others coming for the funeral, apparently.’
‘Why would he be coming for the funeral if he had fallen out with Ruairidh?’
‘A very good question, Ma’am. And that’s something you might want to ask him.’
The sound of a vehicle starting up carried to them on the wind and they looked down to see Niamh backing her Jeep away from the house, turning and then heading along the track towards them. As it passed their 4×4 at the foot of the hill, they saw Niamh glancing up towards them. A pale face behind reflections on the driver’s window. She must have wondered what they were doing there, standing among the ruins.
When the Jeep had gone, Gunn said, ‘In the meantime, maybe we should make a wee visit to the mill to find out just what Mr Blunt was doing there.’
The mill at Shawbost stood on the far side of a small stretch of slate-grey water just north of the village, a collection of blue and white sheds and a tall white chimney that reached up to prick the pewter of the sky. Beyond it, the brown and purple shimmer of autumn moorland undulated away into a changeable morning, off towards an ocean that broke along a shoreline somewhere unseen.