ITS frontage a blaze of pink, the Dil Se restaurant stands out on the narrow lane that winds towards Kirkwall's harbour. A plaque on the wall boasts of a visit by Sir Walter Scott in 1814.
But it is another date in history, 14 years ago, that stands out in the minds of locals and divides a town.
On the sunny summer's evening of 2 June, 1994, Michael Ross walked through the restaurant door, strode up to a waiter serving a couple and their two daughters, and shot him point-blank in the head. The balaclava-clad gunman was only 15.
Ross, the son of a former policeman who grew up to become a decorated soldier in Iraq, was yesterday sentenced to a minimum of 25 years behind bars for the shooting of Shamsudden Mahmood.
The murder would have been shocking enough to any community. But for people living in the safest part in Britain, the killing could barely be believed.
"It's been stuck in everyone's minds for the past 14 years," says street cleaner Michael Baikie, 43, as he removes cigarette butts and pieces of paper blown about by the wind on Kirkwall's seafront. "I don't think anyone could really believe that a teenager from the town would do something like that. Walking into a restaurant, wearing a balaclava, and shooting somebody in the head. It's incredible, really."
Less than 100 yards away stands the restaurant, barely recognisable from the one where the shooting happened. The Mumutaz, as it was then known, was taken over three years ago by Anwar Hussain, a Bangladeshi, who renamed it. The bullet hole in the wall has long since been plastered over.
As staff prepare for the first wave of customers, they are reluctant to talk about the night of the shooting. But as people take in the news that "one of their ain'" will spend the best part of three decades in prison, those opinions that are expressed are as utterly inconsistent as the October weather in these exposed isles.
"Have they got the right man?" asks Mr Baikie, sceptically. "For a man that young to go in there and shoot somebody, I just can't believe it. I would say most people have real doubts."
But David Moffat, 45, who has worked on the ferry from Kirkwall to Stromness the past nine years, is more convinced by the court's verdict.
"I think he did it. What was lacking was a decisive piece of evidence. But a lot of people will now want to put it all to rest."
ALISTAIR Gordon was relaxing at home when the phone rang. "It was the editor. He wanted me to check something out," recalls the 58-year-old.
Mr Gordon was a reporter on the Orcadian, the islands' local paper, and was therefore used to being called out on jobs.
But the scene he was confronted with, at about 7:30pm on 2 June, 1994, was unlike anything he'd ever witnessed.
"The police had already cordoned off the restaurant. I said something like 'I hear there's been some kind of shooting', 'Yes' said the officer. 'He's dead'.
"We don't run into murders very often. The previous one was in 1969. The reaction was one of amazement."
Marian Flaws was waitressing in the restaurant on the night. She can vividly remember the events, and it's clear from her anxious expression that the memories are painful.
"This man came in, with a mask over his face. He went past me, straight up the restaurant," she says.
"The next thing, I heard a shot. I don't think I was looking at him at that moment. I just recall hearing the shot. I was next to the door, so I went out, thinking maybe he was going to shoot everyone. The door closed behind me and I went up a lane to the right of the restaurant.
Shamsudden Mahmood
"I heard the door open again and he went up the lane on the other side. It was a good job he didn't come up the same lane."
Ms Flaws, who still helps out at the restaurant, went back inside, to be faced with the sight of Mr Mahmood, known as Shamol, dead in a pool of his own blood.
Donald Glue had not long sat down with his wife and two daughters when Ross burst in. Mr Glue said that when the assassin went over to their table and brandished the gun, he thought it was a water pistol.
Almost immediately after the shooting, rumours spread that the killer had headed to the airport to fly out of Kirkwall. That night, a homicide team from Inverness travelled north and all the ports were quickly covered.
"Everyone was in shock," says Mr Gordon, who now sits on Orkney Islands Council. "No-one could believe someone had walked into a busy restaurant, in broad daylight, and shot someone in the head."
Suddenly, the couthie, cosy community of Kirkwall was gripped by fear.
"For the first time, I locked the front door that night. That sort of thing was unheard of," says Mr Gordon.
A MASSIVE police investigation swung into action. More than 2,700 statements were taken, 2,300 homes visited and 2,900 vehicles checked. But no forensic evidence linked any individual to the crime scene and no murder weapon was found.
There was, however, one important piece of evidence – the 9mm bullet used in the shooting. It was examined by Orkney's firearms expert, Eddie Ross – Michael's father. He was tasked with checking all 9mm weapons on the island and concluded none could have fired the bullet.
As police struggled for a breakthrough, fear in the community eased as people began to assume it was a contract killing.
Then came a startling revelation by PC Ross that put police on the trail of his son. Two months after the murder, he told Detective Inspector Angus Chisholm, the second most senior officer at the time, that he owned a sealed box of bullets of the same type used in the shooting.
Mr Ross later said he had got the bullets from a former Royal Marine called James Spence. But Mr Spence told police he had given Mr Ross snr two boxes of bullets – one sealed and one opened.
POLICE searched the Ross family home in St Ola, a couple of miles outside Kirkwall, and found a black balaclava, with holes for eyes and mouth, and a deactivated 9mm submachine-gun hanging on the wall of Michael's bedroom. In addition, detectives found a notebook with a Nazi swastika, an SS symbol and "death to the English" written on it.
It also emerged that Ross had been seen dressed in clothing similar to the killer's performing military-style manoeuvres in woods a fortnight before the shooting. Nine months after the murder, Ross snr was suspended from duty and later charged with perverting the course of justice.
During his trial, after which he received a four-year jail sentence, Michael Ross was named as a suspect for the murder.
But the investigation ground to a halt, as the prosecution decided there was not enough evidence.
Then, in May last year, Northern Constabulary carried out a cold-case review after receiving an anonymous letter from a local resident who claimed to have seen the gunman in a public toilet on the night of the killing.
The conviction of Ross, and yesterday's sentencing, has relieved some degree of anguish for Ms Flaws.
"It's a big weight off for me," says the 65-year-old, whose house sits on a hill overlooking Kirkwall.
"It has gone on for so long. As time went on, people tended to forget about it. At least they pushed it to the back of their mind. But the trial has brought it all back again.
"Opinion is still split. Some people think it definitely was him – some think it definitely wasn't."
Eddie Ross, however, is adamant a grievous wrong has been committed against his son, and says he will not rest until the conviction is quashed.
Meeting the 57-year-old father of three in the Kirkwall Hotel, it quickly becomes obvious that the restaurant shooting will linger in the consciousness of those close to Michael Ross, and, by extension, the whole Kirkwall community.
"This isn't the end. This is just the beginning," Mr Ross tells me, during his first extensive press interview since he completed his two years in Inverness prison.
In that time, life has moved on, to an extent, for Eddie Ross. His police career over, he now works as an undertaker.
"The feeling within the family is more anger than agony," he says. "We've had very little official information about what's going on, except what we have read in the papers. What I read in the papers about my family, I don't recognise any of it."
While clearly angry at the police and prosecution, he doesn't hold any malice towards Mr Spence, whose testimony led to him being jailed and, by extension, formed a pillar of evidence against his son.
The police investigation that convicted his son is something that Mr Ross continues to examine closely. An appeal, he indicates, is highly likely. A prepared statement he hands me states the heart has been "ripped out" of a young family.
"Our family does not accept the verdict given at the end of this farcical trial and consequently the sentence has no meaning," it says.
"The incarceration of our son does not mean the matter is at an end, of that I can assure (you], it is only the beginning of a new chapter."
All these years after Shamsudden Mahmood's brutal and tragic murder, it seems unlikely that the lingering doubts in Kirkwall over who was responsible for the killing will be cleared any time soon.
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