Down a track, at the end of the village of Steinish on the Isle of Lewis, police incident tape dances crazily, incongruously, in the wind. The Lewis wind is always bone-chilling in its ferocity. Today it whips up off the white, tossing waves across the mudflats of the bay, rustling the cellophane of bouquets left in tribute to a murdered 16-year-old boy, Liam Aitchison. There are pink roses and a bright spray of orange and yellow flowers. "Rest in peace, Liam," a young female friend has written. "God only takes the best."
Further up the track, hidden behind the police van and the trees, lies a derelict house, once owned by the Ministry of Defence. It makes an unprepossessing grave, but Liam's body was found here by coastguards on 29 November, around a week after he was killed. He wasn't reported missing for several days. Relatives have reported being told by the police he suffered a violent death, his head repeatedly struck with sharp-edged and blunt weapons
The events have bewildered – and frightened – a community that has not had a murder since 1968. "When we heard it was murder, we didn't believe it," says one young woman from the main town of Stornoway, just a few miles from Steinish. She wasn't even born when the last murder, that of an 80-year-old woman, was committed. "I feel very scared," she admits.
The story of Liam Aitchison is not just that of the murder of a vulnerable boy, who had neither a permanent home nor a job, but perhaps also the tale of the passing of a way of life. "This has stained our community," says John MacLeod, 45, who had tried to help Liam in the final weeks of his life. MacLeod, who met Liam on a ferry to the island, bought him food when he bumped into him again and was also helping him with his CV. "It's the loss of innocence. It will change the place irrevocably."
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