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Back The Lewis Man Save as PDF
Chapters (43)
  1. Pronunciation
  2. Prologue
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Eight
  11. Nine
  12. Ten
  13. Eleven
  14. Twelve
  15. Thirteen
  16. Fourteen
  17. Fifteen
  18. Sixteen
  19. Seventeen
  20. Eighteen
  21. Nineteen
  22. Twenty
  23. Twenty-one
  24. Twenty-two
  25. Twenty-three
  26. Twenty-four
  27. Twenty-five
  28. Twenty-six
  29. Twenty-seven
  30. Twenty-eight
  31. Twenty-nine
  32. Thirty
  33. Thirty-one
  34. Thirty-two
  35. Thirty-three
  36. Thirty-four
  37. Thirty-five
  38. Thirty-six
  39. Thirty-seven
  40. Thirty-eight
  41. Thirty-nine
  42. Forty
  43. Acknowledgments

He laid the report to one side, and picked up the open folder containing the details of Robbie’s hit and run. He had spent nearly an hour going through it once more when he got back to the tent from Marsaili’s. Futile, of course. He had lost count of the number of times he had read it. Every statement, the smallest measurement of every tyre track on the road. The description of the car, the driver. The police photographs he had photocopied in Edinburgh. He knew every detail by heart, and yet every time he read it hoped to stumble upon the one vital thing he had missed.

It was an obsession, he knew. An unreasonable, illogical, unviable obsession. And yet, like the addicted smoker, he was simply unable to put it aside. There couldn’t be closure until the driver of the car had been brought to book. Until that day there would be no steering his life out of the rut, no getting it back on to the open road.

He cursed under his breath and tossed the folder away across the tent, before switching off the fluorescent, and throwing himself back to lie on his groundsheet, head sunk in the pillow, so anxious for sleep to take him that he knew it wouldn’t.

He closed his eyes and listened to the wind and the rain, then opened them again. There was no difference. No light. Just absolute darkness. He doubted if he had ever felt quite so lonely in his life.

It was impossible for him to guess at how much time had passed. Half an hour, an hour? But at the end of it he was no closer to sleep than when he had first lain down. He sat up again and switched on the light, blinking in the harshness of its glare. There were some books in the car. He needed something to take him away from here, from who he was, who he had been, where he was going. Something to stop all the unresolved questions in his head endlessly repeating themselves.

He pulled his oilskin on over his vest and boxers and slipped bare feet into his boots, grabbing his sou’wester before unzipping the tent to face the rain and the wind. A twenty-second dash to the car, and he would be back in under a minute shedding dripping waterproofs in the outer tent, to slide back into the warmth of his sleeping bag. A book in his hand, escape in his heart.