The Trowie Mound Murders (20 page)

‘Pretty regularly, I think, to keep an eye on his mother.'

‘Mmmm.' Gavin made another note, then flipped to a new page. ‘What about the dead boy's father, Olaf? Would he have known about the mound?'

‘Yes, he'd been inside once, he said, Brian had taken him in, then rushed him out before he got a right look around.'

‘So he not only knew there was a way in, but he'd visited Brian south too. And he had a key for the cottage. That puts him pretty high on my list of local suspects.' He smiled at my surprise. ‘You're in the thick of it, Cass. You're too busy sailing and being attacked and escaping to have a chance to think.'

‘I'm still confused,' I admitted. ‘Sandra seemed so nice, so ordinary, just half of a contented couple. I'd never have suspected her.'

‘Stock-in-trade for the professional criminal. You'd be astonished at how nice the really good ones are, how plausible. It's the small fry that show their villainy on their faces.' He had a nice smile, slightly squint, the sort of smile that made you feel he was a friend. He hadn't used it as part of his inquisitor act; it was genuine. I smiled back. ‘And that certainly explains why Newcastle was being so cagey. If they had the least suspicion that the wife of a high-level officer was involved in a drugs operation, they'd want to make as little stir as possible about bringing her to book. If there's one thing we police loathe, it's the loss of public confidence and the “told you so” of the press when one of us goes wrong.'

‘So … was Sandra the Ms Big?'

‘It's looking like a possibility. She employed Olaf or Brian as the thief, for her art vs drugs trade-offs, and David and Madge as the couriers. Olaf or Brian brought the goods up to Shetland, and stored them in the trowie mound, David and Madge picked them up and took them on abroad. Or perhaps she, David, and Madge ran the operation together. We need to find out the connection between them.'

‘I don't suppose –' I began.

He looked at me, waiting.

‘Lying dead like that, her face all swollen, and her eyes open, I thought it was Madge for a moment, and then I realised the hair was wrong. When I saw her first, her eyes reminded me of someone's, and I couldn't think who, but now I think it was Madge. I don't suppose … might they have been sisters?'

‘It's worth looking at.'

 He returned to efficient detective mode. ‘Let's do a timeline, using what we now know or surmise. It began on Monday evening, with the arrival of the boats?'

‘Before they came, there was shooting up at the trowie mound. Magnie told me about it, the next morning. He blamed Norman, but that was the night Norman was blasting around the voe on one of those infernal jet-skis. It wouldn't have been Brian either, because he was busy doing sheep things, nor Peter and Sandra – they'd just come in. They and the boat had all the signs of having done what they said they'd just done, sailed all the way along the top and down from Muckle Flugga.'

‘You think it was the motorboat pair, then, David and Madge?'

I nodded. ‘They were shooting Cat's mother, because she was showing people there could be a way in under the walling. So David and Madge had been up there before they came around.'

‘Why should they come into Brae at all? Wasn't that drawing attention to themselves?'

‘Fuel,' I said promptly. ‘That boat would drink like a sea-cook. They filled all their tanks up before they left. Then on Tuesday morning there was the conversation in the showers – that could have been put-on, for my benefit, but Sandra also told Madge that they were going up to the trowie mound.' I frowned. ‘Somebody searched
Khalida
too.'

‘Okay.' Another note. ‘On Tuesday, Peter and Sandra headed for the tomb by land, and the motorboat couple went around by sea. Peter was probably killed there, and his body put aboard the motorboat.'

‘You seem very sure Madge is still alive.'

‘Someone took the motorboat away.'

I shook my head in disbelief. ‘They felt like such an ordinary couple, except that she didn't like his cat much.'

‘People who love each other tend to extend that to their pets.' His grey eyes flicked to Rat, comfortably curled round my neck, with his tail neatly tucked in, and his whiskers tickling my cheek. ‘So the boat sat there all day Tuesday. Did anything particular happen on Tuesday evening?'

I shrugged. ‘No – oh, yes. There was a points race, and Magnie was asking me if there was any sign of them. It was one of those moments where I was calling back over the spinnaker flapping, then it went quiet, all of a sudden, so the whole voe heard me say I'd have to do something if they didn't come back soon. Olaf Johnston was crewing. He certainly heard.'

‘Wednesday. You went around to the cottage mooring in the evening, and saw David fishing, but no sign of anyone else on board, and somebody was watching you from the cottage. So they were still hanging around then. And that was the night somebody took the yacht out.'

‘I thought it wasn't Sandra,' I said, ‘but I'm not sure now. I saw only one person, but whoever it was certainly got her started up and out with no fumbling of ropes or searching for unfamiliar gears. Maybe it was Sandra and Madge, with David bringing the motorboat around to meet them.'

‘They put Peter's body on board, cut that pipe, and scuttled her, not caring if the cat drowned, and then headed off.' He scribbled another couple of words. He used a black pen, very clear and definite on the off-white paper, and wrote a thin, italic hand. He was left-handed, like me.

‘And then, Wednesday night,' I said, ‘that was the night Magnie saw lights, moving up and down the hill, in the gloaming.'

‘David, Madge and Sandra clearing the mound?'

‘It was certainly cleared when I was inside. Thursday. I phoned round to see where the yacht had ended up, and drew a blank, so I phoned you. Then I visited Inga – oh, Brian's mother. The lady with the icon, I told you. She was wanting a cleaner, and I applied.'

He didn't look at me, but the smile quirked the corner of his mouth again.

‘I've been sacked already,' I said. ‘She told me this morning that Brian had talked her out of having me.'

‘And then on Thursday evening you got shut into the trowie mound.'

‘Thrown, more like. I've got a wonderful collection of bruises.'

‘We found the boy just after six. He must have gone straight up to the mound, and been killed there, either because he saw something suspicious, or because he recognised them. Had he seen the two couples close enough to know which man belonged with which woman?'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘He was hanging around on Tuesday morning – that's when he asked me about them.'

‘So perhaps he simply saw David and Sandra together. Or maybe he came on them as they were taking the last items out of the mound. Who knows? But they killed him.'

‘They were very ruthless. Peter, Alex – did they need to leave such a – a trail of blood behind them?'

‘Once you get into the drug game, people are ruthless. I've heard stories, even in the quiet Highlands.' Gavin closed his notebook. ‘One young man, he'd got deep into debt to them. They kidnapped him and held a knife to his throat as he phoned his parents, begged them to find the money.'

‘And did they?'

Gavin's mouth twisted, wryly. ‘They were an ordinary middle-aged couple who couldn't believe the nightmare world he'd catapulted them into. They re-mortgaged their house to pay that set of debts, and sold it entirely the next time.'

‘What I don't understand,' I said, ‘is why they should still have been hanging around. They'd cleared the mound, they'd sunk
Genniveve
, so there was no reason to stay.'

‘They were meeting someone. You said that, in the helicopter. They were waiting for someone who came over the hill in a pick-up – the person who shot them. You can't give me any clue, however small, as to who that was?'

I shook my head. ‘It was just a pick-up. It came over fast, and stopped, the shots were fired, and then the person hauled the bodies to the edge. I could hear they didn't find it easy, they were rolling as much as dragging.'

Gavin shook his head. ‘Dragging a heavy body would take two, but rolling it could be done by one, especially on level ground like that cleared space in front of the mound.'

‘There was no sound of it being two.'

The sun was warm on the back of my neck. I stretched backwards and found myself leaning against the rope from Kevin's noisy motorboat. It reminded me of this morning's conversation among the hens. ‘Are we sure that David and Madge were the couriers?'

‘It looks that way, certainly.'

‘It's just there's this other couple, in the marina, who've been acting oddly.' I described Kevin and Geri to him, and jerked my chin at the dark-blue boat tethered alongside. ‘That's their boat. They go off to places like Faroe and Iceland too, and the locked boat's really odd. Even Kevin's best pal Jimmie didn't seem to be allowed inside.'

‘Ah.' Gavin grinned. ‘I watched the boat being unloaded while I was waiting for you to come down.' He flicked a glance over at the Pierhead. ‘I think you might be about to get that mystery solved.'

Chapter Twenty-two

I followed his gaze. While we'd been speaking, a bus had parked opposite the Pierhead, where the white van had been, and the group of T-shirt clad drinkers around the tables had been joined by men in fancy dress. Some were in fishing waders and green oilskins, while others had exaggerated Edwardian plus-fours in neon check and tweed hats with flies stuck all round. They were all laughing with the raucousness of youngsters who'd begun drinking just after breakfast. Jimmie was in the centre of them, festooned with badges and a sash that no doubt said something like ‘Last day of Freedom'.

‘I was at a pre-wedding do of one of my colleagues, in Orkney,' Gavin said, shifting round on his seat so he could see better. ‘It was enough to persuade you to do the bride-and-groom-only wedding in Thailand. Here's the bride's bus arriving.'

You couldn't have missed it. It was fluttering blue, white and yellow balloons from every possible tie-on point, and blaring steel-drum music from the open roof-hatches. It lurched to a halt just before the narrowing of the Pierhead road, and Donna and her pals shimmied out.

They'd gone for a tropical island theme. There were grass skirts in neon colours, bright bikini tops or short-sleeve shirts twisted in a knot just below the bust, black wigs surmounted with wreaths of flowers, and tans that glowed in the sun. You could tell they were going all out to have a memorable day. Donna's skirt was silver and white, and her bra was two heart shapes. I was glad she was too far away for me to read what was written on them, as I was pretty sure I wouldn't appreciate it. Her blonde hair was back-combed, Amy Winehouse style, and she wore a tiara that glinted in the sun.

The men greeted them with cheers and whistles, and there was an instant mingling of the two groups, with dusky maidens swarming all over their Edwardian fishing gents and vice versa. ‘I still don't see –' I said.

Gavin was looking to the left, where the road swooped around to upper Voe and the showground. I followed his gaze, but didn't see anything special: a pick-up, a couple of cars, another pick-up with what looked like a couple of plastic chairs in the back. He stood up. ‘Shall we get a little closer?'

‘I'm not sure I want to,' I said frankly, looking at the mingled costumes and hearing the shrieks of laughter. ‘I don't much care for drunken gatherings.'

‘My highly tuned detective senses tell me they'll be heading off soon.' He turned to smile again, his tanned cheeks reddening. ‘I didn't tell you last time how a mere DI got sent up here, to such a high-profile case.'

‘No,' I agreed. I put Cat and Rat below, and shut the washboards.

He pulled
Khalida
to the pier and stepped ashore with a swirl of green pleats. ‘Something got lost in translation. The message that ended up at Inverness HQ was just that a body had been found on a boat up at Brae.' He went into a clipped imitation of a Chief Constable. ‘What's that man from the west, Macrae? Send him up there, he's good with the crofters. He's one of them, dammit.' The corners of his mouth turned down, ruefully. He held out a courteous hand from the pier. I ignored it. If I couldn't get from my own boat to the pier over a four-foot gap, I'd take to cleaning china carthorses for a living.

 ‘So there I was, in the middle of the highest-profile case the Highlands had seen since the murder of the Red Fox, and with a line-up of equally promising suspects.'

‘With me at the head of them.'

‘Yes,' he agreed. ‘At one point you were the width of a bracken leaf from being arrested.' His eyes were grave, his voice matter-of-fact. ‘You had form.' Alain's death.

We'd reached the parked buses. I lifted a hand to the driver, and stopped level with the bumper, a road's width from the unruly mob at the tables. ‘Now what?'

‘There,' Gavin said. He nodded at the pick-up that was rattling around the curve and along towards us. My guess had been right; it was two plastic chairs in the back, that hard, institutional, red plastic type, with rusted metal legs. They were attached side by side with orange baler twine to a wooden beam across the pickup. When the pick-up pulled up, I could see inside. A familiar red bucket stood in one corner, and a couple of boxes. It was all beginning to make horrible sense. I glanced over my shoulder at Gavin. ‘The smell should have told me. Whale guts, from Faroe?'

‘That'd be my guess. Do you want to see the whole process, or shall we cut along the shore ahead of them?'

‘The shore,' I said, and threaded the way between buses and store, alongside the converted fishing boat and to the stony beach. Behind us, the shrieks of laughter intensified, mixed with yells of protest. I risked a glance over my shoulder, then turned to look properly. It reminded me of the first time I'd crossed the Equator on a tall ship. No amount of arguing that I'd done it in a small one was going to persuade my shipmates not to do the whole Neptune ritual. Jimmie was being man-handled into the pick-up by a dozen of his mates. Three held him down in the chair while another two tied him up firmly. Beside me, Gavin nodded. ‘They're doing it properly.' The water chuckled half-way down the shore. An irridescent shag bobbed not six metres away, long bill tilted towards the noise. I could just imagine it going home to its nest: ‘And you'll never believe what those humans were doing …'

Donna was going for dignified acquiescence. A throng of her hula-skirted mates helped her up into the pick-up. It was hard to recognise any of the women under their black tresses, but I was pretty sure the one tying Donna to the throne beside Jimmie's was Geri. She flicked her hanging hair back, raised the bucket, grimaced, and handed it to Kevin. He lifted the lid. There was a disgusted, gleeful roar from the crowd, and when the stench reached us, a few seconds later, I recognised it. Whale guts, two days riper than when I'd smelled them in the marina. I'd have gagged if anyone had hung something like that around my neck. Jimmie and Donna yelled in protest, but their friends weren't bothering. Kevin looped up a length of slippery, glistening intestine and hung it round and round Jimmie's neck, then did the same to Donna. For good measure, he tipped the red-tinted water over their heads.

The second bucket contained what looked like an oatmeal mixture, that trickled down their faces, and sat in their hair and on their shoulders in mealy lumps. After that, Kevin handed out one of the boxes, then jumped down. It was eggs, and the crowd were drunk enough to make a fun throwing match of it, like Tudor villagers tormenting a couple put in the stocks. The aim was mostly at their bodies, but I saw Donna wince as one smashed across her cheekbone. It had been a whole cardboard box of egg boxes, maybe twenty dozen, and by the time they'd finished throwing them, Gavin and I were half-way up the green hill, looking back at them.

‘It's a very good argument against marriage,' I said.

‘They wouldn't do it to you,' Gavin said. ‘You don't move in those circles.'

‘I'm beginning to,' I said. ‘I've got settled back here now. I know all the faces again.'
Settled …
‘Inga's trying to talk me into joining her netball team, once the summer's over. That'd make me one of the lasses.'

Far away, below us, the pick-up was enveloped in a white cloud. ‘Flour next,' Gavin said. I sat down on the grass to watch. My thigh muscles had definitely had enough of this land-climbing lark. Gavin sat down beside me, spread hand ten centimetres from mine.

‘My leg muscles hurt,' I explained.

The little figure that was Kevin was back in the truck, ripping open bags of flour and scattering the contents over the snowmen pair. Four of the hula maidens were tying bunches of balloons to the corners of the truck. I didn't need to be closer to know that the pink ones, on Donna's side, would be festooned with slogans like ‘Hen party – no cocks', or ‘naked hunk' cartoons, and the blue ones on Jimmie's would say ‘sexy male' or ‘the party's here'. There were cheers as a couple of shaped balloons were added to the front corners of the cab. From here, they looked like a scarlet penis and a blow-up woman.

Gavin sighed. ‘It all makes me feel as if I'm somehow missing out on the modern world. I can't imagine how this is supposed to be fun. I don't even like getting drunk, particularly, though I'd never refuse a dram of a decent whisky at the end of the day.'

‘You and me both, boy,' I agreed. ‘Luckily drink's just too expensive in Norway for them to want to go there, but there were loads of stag parties on the Med. They were awful. They'd get boozed up all night, men and women, and be a real nuisance. The whole bar area would be a no-go zone until they'd gone. They'd each spend enough for me to live on for a fortnight in one night's getting smashed, then remember nothing about it the next morning. I just couldn't see the point.'

 ‘Being police, we had to stay sensible at that Orkney one. Well, at least we kept it within the hotel. There was no parading round the streets.'

Below us, the last box was being opened. From the sounds floating up, it contained a selection of what Maman would not have called musical instruments. The squeal of plastic penny-whistles, trumpet-squeakers, the choked sound of kazoos and the rattle of maracas shrilled up to us. The steel band tape blared out again, the pick-up turned around in a ripple of foil curtain and swaying balloons, and the crowd fell in behind. The hula-skirts swayed as the lasses waved their arms in the air, and the men raised their cans and fired off party-poppers. As it passed closer to us I saw Jimmie and Donna, sitting up straight as though for a coronation, but encrusted in flour that was already drying with the egg in the sun to make a hard, grey paste. Jimmie was drunk enough to be taking it as a joke, but Donna's smile looked forced, and the gunge-encrusted tiara sat squint on her powdered head. The clamour swelled towards us as they came along the road and up the curve, and died away as they went around the hill. Above us, a lark was singing. The wind rustled gently in the grass beside us, and for a moment it was beautifully peaceful. Gavin lay back, crossing his arms behind his head, and closing his eyes. The sun picked up lines of strain on his forehead and running from nose to chin. I remembered that even although it wasn't his case, he'd been up a good part of the night, and then early this morning. Then the noise came around the road again, mixed with hooting of horns from passing cars. I sighed, and rose.

‘I'd better get back to my stall. I must have been away an hour. Inga'll be tugging at her mooring lines.'

Gavin rose too. ‘I'll get back to Lerwick, and liase with Newcastle. See you later.'

He went off down the hill, and I began scrambling upwards again. When I looked down from the road, he had already reached the shore.

The pick-up with Jimmie and Donna was doing a triumphant round of the showfield as I reached it. I dodged behind the laughing crowds, feeling snooty. I could almost hear my voice sounding like Maman's, ‘
Vulgaire …
' and felt ashamed. Their mates had gone to a good deal of bother to make sure their impending big day was celebrated with the maximum fuss, and just because it wasn't my style of fuss didn't mean they weren't having fun. The laughter from the crowd was a mixture of sympathy and affection.

Inga was at the door of the marquee, clapping and laughing with all the other stallholders. I stepped over the guy ropes to the side and slipped in beside her. ‘I'm sorry that took so long. Did Charlie tell you?'

She nodded. ‘Was it bad?'

‘Horrid. Gavin fed me extra-sugared drinking chocolate after it. Then we got diverted by this lot.'

Inga grinned. ‘Geri's been planning this for weeks. You wouldn't believe the choice of hen party balloons and banners on the internet.'

‘Netball team too?' I couldn't imagine the immaculate Geri doing anything that would get her flushed and sweating, except maybe a heads-down bicycle run in the gym, clad in black lycra.

‘Hockey.' Ah, now that I could imagine; a killer game if ever there was one. ‘Okay, if you're fine to go back on the stall, I'll go and round up the bairns. Peeriebreeks is with his dad, and the lasses are around somewhere. So long as they're not winning more goldfish …' She rolled her dark eyes. ‘Either you find them belly up, or they eat each other.'

‘Really?' I said. I'd never heard of cannibal goldfish.

‘Really. We got four one year, and by the end of September there was only one left, three times the size he'd been. Have you eaten? D'you want to get yourself a bacon roll before you're trapped?'

I shook my head. ‘I don't feel like it.'

‘Must have been bad. See you later, then.' She gathered up her russet jacket, hoisted her bag over one shoulder, and headed off. There weren't any customers in the tent, so I stayed in the sun, leaning against the pole that held the marquee door flap back.

The show was in full swing now. The traditional tape had been replaced by a live band consisting of three fiddles, an accordion, and a bass guitar, all played with expert panache by T-shirted youngsters. The leader looked fourteen, but she leant and swayed to the music as if this stage was her home. Behind her, the bass player grinned as he thumped his backing notes. The flowers had spilled out of their half-can green hut behind the stage, great pots of scarlet begonias that were as big as roses, and hanging baskets of pale blue lobelia and silvery fern. I couldn't grow things aboard
Khalida
, but I enjoyed looking at flowers ashore. Sometimes, I'd sneak a gardening catalogue on board a tall ship where I'd be out of sight of land for weeks, although I made sure nobody saw me reading it.

The tethered dogs slept in the sun. A child came out of the pet tent carrying a ginger kitten as small as Cat. She took it to a clear patch of grass by the marquee and let it run around, catching it back when it went too far. The hens settled in their pens, making that broody noise. The sun dazzled off chrome and warmed my face.