Chapters (43)
- Pronunciation
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Acknowledgments
He ran back to the kitchen and looked around in a frenzy. There were knives in a block on the worktop, but he didn’t see how he could access them to cut the wrist bindings behind his back. He had to get help.
With difficulty, he managed to open the kitchen door, his back to it, fingers fumbling for the latch. And then he was out. Into the rain. Running through the long grass up the slope towards the road. As he reached the tarmac he stumbled and fell, landing heavily, and grazing his cheek on the metalled surface. The rain slapped his face as he staggered back to his feet and ran through it, into the teeth of the wind, down the road to where the turn-off led up to the church and the manse.
There was not a soul around anywhere. No one in their right mind would venture out in this unless they absolutely had to.
He felt his strength ebbing as he ran up the hill to the car park, picking his precarious way across the cattle grid rather than trying to negotiate the gate, then sprinting towards the steps leading to the manse. He took them two at a time. When he reached the front door he realized he could neither ring the bell nor knock on it. So he started kicking at it and shouting, tears and blood almost blinding him.
Until the door flew open, and Donald Murray stood there, staring at him in utter consternation. It took only a moment for that consternation to turn to fear, and Fionnlagh saw the colour drain from his face.
Thirty-seven
Thirty-seven
They had left the bad weather far behind, wind and rain driving down with them from the north-west, foundering finally on the mountains of North Uist. The further south they had come then, the more it had softened, rain retreating, the wind sinking into the ocean, the yellow sunlight of the late afternoon sending long shadows across the land.
Only when they stopped at a tea-room in Benbecula did Fin realize that his mobile phone was dead. Nights spent in hotel rooms and his tent had meant that it was several days since he had last charged it. When they got back to the car, he plugged it into the cigarette lighter and dropped it in the cup holder between the seats. An hour later, as they rounded the headland at East Kilbride, they saw the little jetty at Ludagh, and the island of Eriskay drenched in sunlight across the water.
It was a light wind that ruffled the clear blue surface of the Sound as they drove across the straight stretch of causeway to where it curved around and climbed gently between rising slopes. At the road end, Fin turned down towards the tiny bay and harbour at Haunn.