And my father smiled. ‘Murdag,’ he said. ‘After my mother.’ He put a hand on my shoulder. ‘You did well, son.’ And I felt such pleasure in the light of his praise. ‘The doctor tells me you carried the laird’s daughter all the way back to Ard Mor. Saved her life, without a doubt.’ He pushed his chin out and let his eyes drift thoughtfully across the hillside above us. ‘The laird will owe us for that.’
*
I can’t remember exactly how long afterwards it was that the new term at school began. Sometime after the New Year, I suppose. I do remember being on the path to the school-house that first day, passing below the church that served the townships of Baile Mhanais and Sgagarstaigh. The school sat out on the machair overlooking the bay on the far side of the hill and the strips of farmed land that rose beyond it. There were usually around thirty of us who attended, though that number could vary depending on the needs of the croft. But my father always said that there was nothing more important than a good education, and so he hardly ever kept me away.
My mother had made a good recovery, and baby Murdag was doing well. I’d been up at first light that day to fetch in a creel of peats and fill my stomach with the potatoes we’d left roasting among the embers of the fire overnight. Then when the fire was blazing my mother had boiled up more tatties, which we had with milk and a little salted fish. So with a full belly, I didn’t feel the cold too badly, barely noticing the crust of snow crunching beneath my bare feet.
When I got to school I was surprised to find that we had a new teacher: Mr Ross from Inverness. He was much younger than the other one, and he spoke both English and Gaelic.
When we were all seated at our rough wooden desks he asked if there was anyone among us who spoke English. Not a single hand was raised.
He said, ‘Well, who among you would like to speak English?’
I looked around and saw that once again, there were no hands up. So I put mine in the air, and Mr Ross smiled at me, a little surprised, I think.
It turned out that we were all going to have to learn the English. But I was the only one who wanted to, because I knew that if I was ever going to talk to that little girl whose life I’d saved, I’d have to learn to speak her language. Because there was no way the daughter of the laird was going to learn to speak the Gaelic.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I
‘Are you the cop?’ The voice startled Sime out of his recollections, and it took a moment to clear the confusion that fogged the transition in his mind from a nineteenth-century Hebridean winter to this salt-mine halfway across the world on the Îles de la Madeleine.
He turned to see a man stooped by the open window, peering in at him, a long face shaded by the peak of a baseball cap.
Almost at the same moment, the ground shook beneath them. A rumbling vibration, like a series of palpitating heartbeats. ‘What in God’s name is that?’ Sime said, alarmed.
The man was unconcerned. ‘It’s the blasting. Takes place fifteen minutes after the end of each shift. They leave it to clear for two hours before the next shift moves in.’
Sime nodded. ‘The answer to your question is yes.’
The man ran a big hand over a day’s growth on his jaw. ‘What the hell do you want to talk to me for?’ His brows knitted beneath the skip of his cap as he glared in at Sime.
‘I take it you’re Jack Aitkens?’
‘What if I am?’
‘Your cousin Kirsty’s husband has been murdered on Entry Island.’
For a moment it seemed as if the wind had stopped and that for a split second Aitkens’s world had stood still. Sime watched his expression dissolve from hostility to surprise, then give way to concern. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘I need to get over there straight away.’
‘Sure,’ Sime said. ‘But first we need to talk.’
II
The walls of Room 115 in the police station of the Sûreté de Québec on Cap aux Meules were painted canary-yellow. A white melamine table and two chairs facing each other across it were pushed against one wall. Built-in cameras and a microphone fed proceedings to Thomas Blanc in the detectives’ room next door. A plaque on the wall outside read Salle d’interrogatoire.
Jack Aitkens sat opposite Sime at the table. Big hands engrained with oil were interlinked on the surface in front of him. His zip-up fleece jacket was open and hung loose from his shoulders. He wore torn jeans and big boots encrusted with salt.
He had removed his baseball cap to reveal a pale, almost grey, face, with dark, thinning hair that was oiled and scraped back across a broad, flat skull. He nodded towards a black poster pinned to the wall behind Sime.