The Trowie Mound Murders (11 page)

‘What was it like?' I asked.

He shrugged. ‘Joost a space inside a built wall, du kens, no' dat different from inside our lambie hoose. I couldna see the attraction o' it.'

‘I expect the archeologists would get all excited about it,' I said.

‘I daresay they would,' Olaf said, ‘but it's on Brian's land – he owns it, you ken, it's been de-crofted – and he'd never let them lay a finger on it. I mind them trying, oh, twartree years back, when he was home over the summer. That Val Turner and her team were keen to put their noses inside, and he wouldn't have them near the place. He even filled in the tunnel we'd got in – we slid through a gap under one of the big stones, a rabbit hole that went right through.'

The kitten's burrow. I gave a quick look across at the Mirror, where Cat and Rat had oozed out again, and were balancing along a spar playing follow-my-leader.

Olaf changed tack suddenly, sitting up straighter, as if this was what he'd really come about. ‘I was vexed to hear Norman had been annoying you wi' the jet-ski. They're all the rage south, you ken. When we were on holiday down aside Brian they were everywhere, and the bairns were just wild to try it, so when we got home I got them one for the voe here.'

‘I'm just worried about the safety of it,' I said. ‘You ken what bairns are. You can tell them to bide wi' the boat till you're blue in the face, but there's always one who lets go of the sheet, or gets thrown clear, and then you have a head on its own in the water, and it's not always easy to see, especially if you're going at any speed.'

‘I'm told him he's to keep away from the dinghies in future.'

‘Thanks,' I said. I remembered Norman's interest in the motor boat, and thought I'd try a bit of fishing on my own account. ‘It's always a problem, with strange boats coming in and out – far too many people seem to have heard of Brae marina, these days. It's been like Piccadilly Circus.' I tried a guileless look. ‘Oh, I'm forgetting – that last lot were friends of yours, were they no'?'

The hand winding cord around the cut rope end jerked, then stilled. He gave me a slanted look, like a cormorant on a mussel bouy deciding whether to dive for cover. ‘That last lot?'

‘The white motorboat, David and Madge,' I said. ‘I'm sure Norman said you knew them. They were from … no, I can't remember. The Clyde, maybe?'

‘I mind a flash white motorboat,' he said slowly, his hand beginning to make careful loops again, ‘but I don't think I saw the folk aboard.' He gave me another quick sideways look. ‘Where did we ken them from, did Norman say?'

I shook my head. ‘I can't even remember what he said – no, I don't think he said anything specific. He just gave that impression.'

Olaf's face went blank; I could see he was calculating something, but I couldn't tell what. He sat frowning at the piece of rope in his hands for a moment, then the worried parent took over from the prosperous businessman. ‘Boys,' he said. ‘I ken we were just as bad at their age, but there weren't the same temptations. We went for the drink. Oh, yea, there was drugs around, but it was a soothmoother thing to do, so we paid no heed to it. Nowadays wi' the ideas this internet gives them, they get into –' He broke off at that, then gave me a surprisingly charming smile. ‘But you'll ken more about that, being still in the singles scene. Us old married men don't know the half of it.'

I wasn't going to be smarmed by Olaf Johnson. ‘I can't remember the last time I went to a disco,' I said.

‘How do you manage, money wise? You'll no' earn much at the boating club here.'

‘I manage,' I said. ‘I work for my keep, mostly.'

‘You should do better for yourself than that. Life's what you make it.' He gave me that considering, predatory look again. ‘I could put you in the way of earning.'

I wasn't going to earn anything through Olaf Johnson. ‘I'm fine ee now.' I went back to the motorboat, ignoring the voice that said
My ship, Cass – 
‘Do you think that boat might be mixed up in drugs, then?'

He shook his head, more in resignation than in rebuttal. ‘I do mind the motorboat,' he repeated. ‘They arrived fairly late, didn't they, then left again first thing.'

‘They didn't bide long,' I agreed. I waited a moment, but he didn't say any more, just looked gloomily out over the ruffled grey water. I tied my last half hitch and stood up. ‘That's good, that's three boats we'll be able to tow when the wind dies away without the rope breaking on us.'

‘Or when they cowp right over near the shore,' Olaf agreed, ‘and break the mast.'

‘Heaven forbid,' I said fervently. ‘The price of spares for these things …'

He laughed at that, but still in a preoccupied way.

‘Thanks for the help,' I said.

‘You're very welcome. I'll tell Kirsten to send word with Alex then. See you.' He spun around and swung into his pick-up, slamming the door behind him, and fumbling for his mobile. I could have told him there was no signal right here. The heavy pick-up scattered gravel from its thick tyres as it went up the hill down to the hard standing. I watched it curve round onto the main road and stop again on the verge. His hand went up to his ear.

He could, of course, be phoning Kirsten with the good news that I'd help her out, but I doubted that. I wondered if there was any way that Gavin could trace his calls.

Nowadays wi' the ideas this internet gives them, they get into – 
He'd broken off there and started talking about the ‘singles scene', but I wasn't sure that was really what he'd meant. Norman had been curious about the motor-boat, setting Alex on to ask me questions. I remembered how he'd spoken to me:
I ken how you got that scar.
Was he stupid enough, or confident enough, to try those tactics on international smugglers?

5

Hit's no' fir da kyunnen's god ta be ower cosh wi' whitterets.

(Old Shetland proverb: It's not to the rabbit's good to be too friendly with weasels.)

Chapter Twelve

It was not quite nine o'clock. The sun was still bright on the west-facing hills, but the mist was beginning to creep in, long tendrils that fingered their way over Scallafield, over Grobsness. Even though it was the promise of another good day, I had a sailor's uneasiness with mist. The first ghost of the full moon was silvery over the hills, and the tide was already up to the top of the slip. I rigged the Mirrors for tomorrow, then went up to the bar to yarn a bit, but I couldn't settle. I thought about phoning one or other of my parents, but Dad would be busily wining and dining all his Edinburgh contacts to make sure permission for his firm's proposed wind farm passed smoothly through the Scottish Parliament, and Maman would be in the thick of rehearsals I left a good-luck message on her mobile, then went back to
Khalida
, wriggled into my bunk, and lay on my stomach with my chin pillowed on my arms, thinking.

I knew I was doing the right thing. My parents had tried to get me a good education, and between hurt at Dad leaving me for the Gulf, and stubborn homesickness with Maman in Poitiers, I'd thrown that back at them, and run away to sea. I'd spent the last fourteen years in a hand-to-mouth roving life, making friends with people I'd not see again for two years, ten, never. It was time I settled down, but to get on the promotion ladder at sea these days you needed a commercial ticket. I'd swallowed my pride to ask Dad to fund me through college. After that, I could go to sea again. The course began in September, ended in June. Ten months, and it wouldn't all be in a classroom. There would be hands-on work. I could do ten months. I could still live aboard
Khalida,
only in Shetland's ancient capital of Scalloway, moored right alongside the North Atlantic Fisheries College.

Inside, though, I was howling with protest. I'd be shut in a classroom, on shore, with the hard ground under my feet day after day. I'd not be able to hoist
Khalida
's sails and just go, footloose Cass. I'd be surrounded by strangers who would look at my scar and wonder, until they found someone who'd tell them the story of how I'd killed my lover out in the Atlantic –

The night was still, but the echo of that baby's wail shuddered in my ear. The selkie wife who'd committed herself to a life ashore, and couldn't keep faith with her promises … I lay as the sky darkened to blue, then grey, and the orange of the street lights blinked on and slanted a thin shadow across the chart table. Cat and Rat did a last mad chase along the starboard fiddles, up to the binoculars holder with a leap and scrabble that did my varnish no good, scampered down the steps that covered the engine, and came up to curl one each side of my neck. Cat went straight to sleep, his lion-sized purr vibrating through his little round belly, but Rat was lightly poised, waiting for Anders to finish his intergalactic war and come home.

He swung lightly aboard at last, barely rocking
Khalida
in her berth, and slid through the forrard hatch. Rat oozed away, leaving a cold airspace. I heard Anders undressing, getting into his sleeping bag, then there was silence again, but I could hear that he wasn't sleeping either. I humped myself out of my berth, like a hermit crab leaving its shell, hauled my jeans on over my night T-shirt, and put the kettle on. If he was sleeping, I wouldn't wake him. If he wanted to talk, he could join me.

The kettle was just starting to boil when he came through, in jeans and a checked workman's shirt, and sat down in his usual corner, fair head against the wooden bulkhead, the planes of his cheekbones lit queerly by the gas flames. ‘I can't sleep either,' he said.

I put the mugs of drinking chocolate on the table and sat down opposite him, but facing sideways, across the boat, with my right elbow on the table, my cheek on my hand. ‘That boy the other day, Norman …' I said.

His eyes flicked across at me, then away again. ‘“
I know how you got that scar
,”' he quoted. I could smell the beer on his breath. ‘I'd have knocked him down if it would have made him be quiet.'

I turned my face to him. The cabin was in shadow now, lit only by the orange of the streetlights falling slantways through one corner of the long windows; his face was a pale blur. The dimness made it easier to talk. ‘Everybody knows the story. It's the first thing they ask, once I'm out of earshot: What on earth did she do to her face?'

‘No,' Anders insisted. His voice was loud against the soft creakings of a boat on the water. He repeated it softly. ‘No. You must not think of it like that, Cass. They do not say that, truly they do not.' He chuckled. ‘I was in my father's yard, remember, when you brought
Khalida
in, that first time. They said, Johan and Lars –' He switched into Norwegian, with Johan's north Trondheim accent, ‘Did she really sail that little boat, single-handed, all the way from the Med?' And Lars said – he went into housing estate Bergen  – ‘she must be mad.'

I took a sip of drinking chocolate and answered in Norwegian: our private language, our language of confidences. ‘When did you hear the story?'

I felt him tense. ‘I haven't heard it. I don't need to hear it, unless you wish to tell it.' His voice was clumsy in the dark. He went back to the ponderous compliment mode that he had used on me before we'd come to Shetland together, before we'd become friends. ‘Beautiful Cass, you don't need to justify anything to me. Don't you think I know you better than that by now?'

‘What the boy said was true,' I said. ‘I did send him overboard.'

‘I'd never have been a sailor if it hadn't been for you,' Anders said. ‘Tell me, if you want to.'

I had told the story, re-lived it, with Gavin. It had faded a little since. ‘We were crossing the Atlantic, and the boat gybed, and hit him a real whack on the head. I thought he was okay.' I could see him still, swallowing as if he was tasting blood, his face paper-white under the tan.
Don't fuss, Cass – 
‘He went for a sleep, and when he got up he was delirious. He thought I was pirates. It was a particular fear of his, that's why he kept the gun on board. He was seeing two of me, and he fired at me. I kicked the helm across, and let the jib fly, and as she tacked, it knocked him overboard. I didn't mean it to do that, but I knew that it might.' The definition of murder was where you did something that could be reasonably supposed to cause death. ‘I waited. I searched, but he never surfaced again.'

‘When he shot at you,' Anders said, ‘when that bullet scored your cheek –' He reached one hand out to me. His fingers were warm on the scar. They moved a few centimetres to touch my forehead. ‘If it had been just that to the right, he would have killed you. It would have been you who had died, out in the Atlantic.' He drew the hand back, lifted his mug, drank, and set it down again. Rat sat on his hindquarters to peer into the cup, whiskers twitching. He was fond of chocolate. ‘No, Rat,' Anders said. ‘I've been thinking about you, Cass. I was thinking that your scar was why you do not want to go to college after all.'

‘Partly,' I conceded.

‘Would it be easier if your scar was inside?'

I stared at the pale blur of his face. The whites of his eyes glinted silver. ‘I don't get you.'

He gestured with one hand. ‘Everyone, you see, has things they have done that they would rather not think about.' It was too dark to see if his fair skin had flushed, but his voice was constricted. ‘They try and stamp them down, but the memory thickens, it is still there. Then, when you want a new relationship, the scar is there, but nobody knows it but you, and you have to decide whether to risk telling, or to hope your new friend will not touch it by accident.'

I hadn't thought of it like that. I couldn't escape my past, but if circumstances had been different – if I'd had two smooth, tanned cheeks, if I'd met someone I was serious about – I'd have had to tell them, if only to make sure that the moment would never come when I returned home to someone asking with cold eyes, ‘Why did you never tell me you'd killed a man?'

I wanted to look across the table and ask, ‘What is your scar?' but it seemed too intrusive. I left the silence, in case he wanted to talk.

His head lifted. He spoke in English. ‘I thought –' He went to the forrard hatch in one fluid movement, lifted it, listening, then shook his head and closed it again. ‘Magnie's stories are sticking in my brain.'

‘The baby, or the trowie fiddler?'

He stretched, showing off his magnificent pectoral muscles, and shaking his head. He took both mugs and pumped water into them, then added the last of the hot water from the kettle. I took the drying cloth. ‘Did you win tonight?'

‘It is not that easy,' Anders reproved. ‘It is like real life. You have to learn skills, and make allies. But we will soon reach the big battle, and then – then, when it is over, I'll have to go back home. There is always a fishing boat going that way.'

‘It's going to be strange.' I suddenly imagined
Khalida
without Rat balancing along the fiddles, tail at an angle, without Anders sleeping in the forepeak. ‘It felt so odd at first, you being aboard, but it's going to be odder still without you.'

His hand stilled in the act of passing me his mug, the dark blue one, then moved again. He sighed. ‘Cass, you are so young.'

‘I'm three years older than you,' I retorted, and held out my hand for my own mug.

‘Ah, but you did not grow up in Bergen.'

‘I don't see what that's got to do with the price of fish.'

‘And you will have Cat with you, for company.' He ducked under the bulkhead towards his bunk. ‘Komme, Rotte. Goodnight, Cass.'

Friday 3 August

Tide times for Brae:

Low Water 04.22           0.2m

High Water 10.49          2.1m

Low Water 16.32           0.5m

High Water 22.53          2.3m

Moon full

I woke to a greyer morning, with the wide sky covered with mottled clouds. Anders hauled on his overalls, deliberately brisk, and headed for work. I was just brushing my teeth in the cockpit before going to get the rescue boat when a red Bolt's hire car turned into the club, scrunched down the gravel, and drove along to the marina gate nearest us. It parked there, and Gavin got out.

I nearly choked on my mouthful of toothpaste. I spat it over the side, laid the brush down on the teak seat, and went forward to let him in. He stood there, watching me walk towards him, and the pontoon had never seemed so long. I felt like a fish being reeled in, dragged inexorably from the familiar green depths of ocean towards the dangerous air.

He looked as I remembered him. Even at this distance I could see the alertness of him, the way he stood like an sea-eagle in its eyrie, stone-still, seeing everything around him. It was the first thing I'd noticed about him. He wore his green kilt and a plain leather sporran, for use, not for show, and a grey-gold jumper with a round neck: good working clothes, like a crofter about to walk the fences, but not expecting to do anything dirty. As I came forward he reached into the car and brought out black rubber boots and an olive-green oilskin jacket.

I came up the sloped gangway to the gate. He was a metre back from the meshed gate, not crowding me as I opened it. Our eyes met while the diamonds of wire were still between us, and suddenly it was all right. The first time I'd seen him, I been shocked by seeing his eyes the shape and colour of Alain's, but now they were his own, sea-grey, fringed by dark lashes, smiling at me. The wind ruffled his dark-red hair, cut just short enough to try and get rid of the curl.

‘Hi,' I said. My voice sounded too casual. He'd told me it gave me away. I tried for a natural tone. ‘I didn't expect to see you so soon.'

‘I had three days of holiday to take.' He clanged the door shut behind him. ‘Any chance you could run me out to where the yacht's light went out?'

‘I've got a gaggle of bairns coming to go sailing in fifteen minutes, but we could easily take them out that way.' I gave him a sideways look. ‘Any particular reason?'

‘I'm riding a hunch.'

‘It'll take most of the morning. I can't leave them to put you back, once they're out.'

‘It's a bonny day to be out on the water.'

‘Okay. D'you want to start up the RIB?' I nodded at the grey rubber rescue boat. ‘I'll just get my fleece and life-jackets.'

‘An initiative test,' he agreed. I'd only just reached
Khalida
when I heard the RIB's engine roar out, then throttle back. I grinned to myself, flung on my fleece, and returned, life-jackets in hand. He was busy undoing the ropes.

‘D'you want to steer?' I asked. I passed him the spare life-jacket.

‘On you go. You're the instructor here.'

‘While you've only had thirty years of messing about in boats.'

‘Thirty-four,' he corrected. ‘According to Kenny, whose memory is better than mine, our mother used to use the boat as a play-pen.'

‘I never had a chance to phone Kenny. I couldn't think of an excuse.'

‘Any old message would have done.'

‘Oh, no, I did think of an excuse. It's maybe nothing, though.' I bumped the rubber side of the RIB against the pontoon and reached over the side for a ring to tie to. ‘It was this icon –' I told him, rapidly, about the Russian St Nicolas.

‘Interesting,' he agreed, ‘but I think you're right, the seaman grandfather is more likely. The security firm thing is interesting too, but I'm sure Wearmouth's team would have picked up on something as obvious as all the burgled houses having used the same security firm.'

 There was the sound of tyres scattering the gravel above us. Magnie's ancient mustard-coloured Fiesta swerved round the corner and slid down the drive to the hard standing just as we reached the dinghy slip above the pontoon. He abandoned it by the caravan utilities cage and came over. He was dressed for going on the water: yellow rubber boots, jeans, an ancient grey jersey, and his council issue oilskin jacket.‘Now then, Cass.' His eyes narrowed as he recognised Gavin. ‘Now.'