The Chessmen Read Free Page B

all my time as it is.’ He sounded like a brochure for the estate. ‘And it’s no small problem we have.’
    II
    Kenny’s Range Rover bounced and rattled over the potholed track, following the course of the river, the ground rising up ever more steeply around them. Bare, rugged hills peppered with rock and slashed by gullies rose up into mountainous peaks lost in cloud. Boulders clung to the hillsides, great chunks of gneiss four billion years old. Kenny glanced at Fin and followed his eyes. ‘Oldest rock in the world,’ he said. ‘Those slabs of it have been lying around these hillssince the last ice age.’ He pointed up into the shadow of the mountain on their left. ‘You see those watercourses running through the rock? Originally cracks in the face of it, they were. And when the water in them froze the ice expanded till the rock exploded, and threw these massive big fucking lumps of it all over the valley. Must have been quite a show. But I’m glad I wasn’t around for it.’
    Ahead of them a small loch reflected the cut-glass blue of the sky overhead, its surface ridged by the wind, and Kenny drew in beside a green-painted corrugated-iron shed that he called a lunch hut. A place where fishermen and their ghillies could shelter from the weather to eat their sandwiches. The vehicle track ended here. A footpath led down to the water while another wound its way up over the hill, climbing steeply through clusters of rock and fording clear-watered streams that would normally be in spate at this time of year. After weeks of drought most had been reduced to a mere trickle.
    Kenny was fit for such a big man, and Fin fought to keep up with him as he strode quickly along the rising path. The track snaked between the cleft of the hills, hugging the south side of a sheer rock face to their right, before Kenny stepped off it and over the bed of an almost dry creek. Then he struck off through long grass and heather, heading for a hilltop to their left. Long strides that took him upwards to the peak a good few minutes ahead of Fin.
    It wasn’t until he reached him that Fin realized how high they had climbed, first in the Range Rover, and then on foot. He felt the wind fill his jacket and then his mouth,stealing his breath as the ground fell away beneath them to reveal a startling panorama of sun-washed land and water. Browns, pale blues, greens and purples faded into a shimmering distance at their feet.
    ‘Loch Suaineabhal,’ Kenny said. He turned, grinning, towards Fin. ‘You feel like a god up here.’ Something caught his eye high out over the loch. ‘Or an eagle.’ Fin followed his gaze. ‘We have twenty-two nesting pairs of them between here and the North Harris estate. Highest density of golden eagles anywhere in Europe.’
    They watched the bird riding the thermals, almost on a level with them, a wingspan of more than seven feet, feathers spread at their tips, and fanned out at the tail, like fingers, manipulating every movement of the air. Suddenly it dropped, like an arrow fired from the sky, vanishing briefly among the patchwork colours of the land below, before rising unexpectedly into view again, a small animal hanging from its undercarriage, gripped by lethal talons and dead already.
    ‘Look down there towards the head of the loch. You’ll see a collection of stone buildings with tin roofs. A shieling and a couple of barns. Two of our watchers live there. No way to get to them by vehicle. Only by boat or on foot. And it’s a full day if you’re walking it. You’ll need to make yourself known to them.’
    ‘Who are they?’
    ‘Students. Making a bit of money during the holidays. It’s a hard bloody life, let me tell you. No running water, no electricity. I should know, I did it myself when I was at theAC.’ He turned to the west, then, and pointed towards the four peaks that delineated the far side of the valley, Mealaisbhal standing head and shoulders above the others, the highest peak on Lewis.