The Trowie Mound Murders (22 page)

Chapter Twenty-four

Olaf looked as if he'd dressed by guess this morning, in an old pair of jeans and a grey jumper, rather bagged around the elbows and stomach. His face was tired, drawn, with lines running from nose to mouth-corners. His tanned cheeks were pale, and his Viking-red hair stood out around his head. He walked as if every step was an effort.

It was Father Mikhail that he saw first. His face closed down to wariness. Then he saw Kirsten, between the first-aid woman and I, and then Anders, walking at my side. His grey-green eyes narrowed. He looked from side to side, but there was a row of cars backed by a fence on his left, and the wall of the hall on his right. He took a step backwards, but retreat was blocked by the queen's truck, which had stopped to let the queen and princesses clamber down for their tea and cakes in the hall. For a long moment he stood there, sizing up his options, then he ran two steps towards us and darted into the alley between the cattle pens.

What he hadn't realised was that it was a u-shape, with the alleyway blocked at the far end by the biggest pen. He bolted in, then swung around to confront us. Brian took a step towards him, and Anders came forward too. I saw Olaf realise that he was trapped. He looked at them, then behind him, put a hand on the pallets and vaulted over, countryman style, into the pen. A crofter in a navy boiler suit shouted a warning, and another came running from by the water hose. The cow in the pen lifted its head and shifted uneasily, and I saw that it wasn't a cow but the bull who'd spent his day complaining, broad of face and chest, with long, lethal horns. Olaf wrenched at the metal latch and swung the gate open, towards us, then dodged behind the bull and slapped it on the rump. He was swinging himself into the main showfield as it turned towards him, catching the bottom of his jeans with one horn, and then it turned back to face us.

It seemed to move in slow motion at first, one cloven foot lifting and stamping. It gave a majestic sweep with its horns, then began lumbering towards us. The crofter flattened himself against the other pens, and it passed him by, mad red eyes fixed on us, this triple person of Kirsten, the First Aid woman, and me. Kirsten had no awareness of the danger, she was too slow, and it was going to be on us before we could drag her to safety. Around us people were shouting, and I heard running feet from behind us, then Anders shoved me aside, a swift push that had me stumbling towards the other side of its path. I fetched up against the pallets and clung there, and smelled the animal heat of it as it passed by me.

I looked around then. Anders had grabbed Kirsten by the waist and was spinning her towards the outside of the pens when it caught him in the back and tossed him. I couldn't see his face, but I felt the jerk of pain as the horn went into his back, as his feet left the ground. It hurled him two metres through the air, tossing him as if he was an unwanted coat, and he rolled as he fell, with a cry of pain. I leaped away from the sheltering pallet and flung myself on my knees beside him.

I didn't see how they managed to trap the bull. I heard the shouts behind me, but I was concentrating on Anders.
Please, God, please, God – 
Already his white T-shirt was blotched with red blood pulsing out. I dragged my fleece over my head and bundled it up to clamp over the wound, leaning on it with both hands. Anders groaned, and tried to pull away from the pressure.

‘Lie still.' I said it as if I was on deck, matter-of-fact, giving an order. ‘Stille, Anders, stille. I've got to stop the bleeding.'

There were people crowding around now. The blood was seeping through my fleece. I could feel the wet stickiness of it beneath my palm. The First Aid woman had a walkie-talkie; I could hear her talking to her colleagues, requesting assistance, an ambulance. ‘Urgent,' she said. I pressed down on Anders' back as he lay on the ground, face turned towards mine, eyes closed in pain, his colour draining away. The blood was oozing between my fingers now, and although I didn't feel as if I was crying, tears were running down my cheeks and dropping on my hands. Then there were more running feet. Black polished shoes under dark-green trousers appeared on each side of me. Hands came in over mine, sure, experienced hands, lifting Anders from the rough ground and winding white bandage around and around the fleece. The first layer was scarlet instantly, and the second, but they kept winding, pulling tighter, and at last the layers remained white. They'd brought a stretcher, and they laid him on it, on his front. He opened his eyes then, and I bent over him. I took his hand, and his fingers clenched around mine. ‘Stille, Anders. Hjelpe komme.'

One of the first-aid men bent over me. ‘Does he speak English?'

I nodded. The scarlet was seeping through the bandages again, but faintly, a seaweed-rust smudge. Anders spoke with an effort. ‘I speak English.' He managed a smile, and I felt my heart twist. ‘Better than Cass speaks Norwegian.' His eyes returned to mine, and he murmured, in Norwegian, ‘Det gjør vondt, Cass.' It hurts.

I nodded. ‘You saved Kirsten and me.'

‘Good.'

There was another burst of sound from the walkie-talkie, and a different voice replying. Around me, the feet were clearing backwards. There was an official voice over my head: ‘Stand back, please. Stand clear – thank you.' Someone was putting screens around us, green canvas screens with splayed silver feet. Anders closed his eyes again, lips tightened to a thin line, his hand tight around mine. I couldn't bear to think about how much pain he must be in.

I tried to remember what I'd seen. The horn had caught him high up, the point slicing upwards, and it had spun him around rather than piercing him through. There hadn't been any blood on his front when they'd lifted him. The gash I had leant upon had been just below the shoulder-blade, and I'd not noticed foam in the blood on his T-shirt. Please God, it had been above the lung. It hadn't touched his spinal cord, or he wouldn't be able to move his hands, although the arm on that side was lying limp. That might be the pain, that he was instinctively keeping that side still, or the horn might have caught a key muscle. I bent my head to his. ‘Kan du bevege ditt armen?'

He gave that faint smile again. ‘Lege … Kapitain.'

He was right. The medics were the captains now. I had to leave them to do their job.

I raised my head to look around me. They'd caught the bull. Half a dozen crofters were man-handling it back into a trailer, still stamping those splayed feet, but held in check by a stick attached to the ring in its nose. On the other side of the pens, Olaf was being marched away by two policemen. The First Aid woman was still with Kirsten and Father Mikhail, and now Cerys had arrived as well. They were coaxing her towards the exit. A blonde police officer tried to stop them, but Father Mikhail said two sentences to her, authoritative, and she let them pass. The queen's truck was being moved, in preparation for the ambulance coming.

‘Cass Lynch?' It was a woman's voice, a woman's polished shoes at my knees. I lifted my head, and recognised her straight away: Sergeant Peterson, with her smooth, fair hair clipped back at the nape of her neck in a pony-tail, and her ice-green eyes detatched, like a mermaid's eyes watching the follies of mankind. She looked down at Anders. ‘It's Anders, isn't it?' She frowned, consulting the card-index of her memory. ‘Anders Johansen.' I nodded. She flicked out her notebook. ‘Is his address still with you, aboard
Khalida
?'

I nodded again. ‘His home address is in Bildøy, just outside Bergen. He lives with his parents there, off the Døsjevegen, just by the marina.'

‘I'll need a contact number, and a statement from you, about what's happened.'

I fished out my mobile with my free hand and thrust it at her. My fingers were blood-stained. ‘It's under contacts, Anders home.'

Inga came over then, bag flying. ‘Cass!' She looked at my face and didn't ask stupid questions, but rummaged in her bag, found a pack of baby wipes and pulled out a handful. ‘Here.' I held my hand out, like Peerie Charlie, and she wiped it, then gave me two more. ‘There's blood on your face too.'

I wiped obediently.

‘Cerys has gone off with Kirsten, so I'll clear up the stall,' Inga said. ‘You'll likely do good business for this last hour. Everyone'll want to know what happened and how Anders is.'

‘Sore,' I said, ‘and lost a good deal of blood, but I don't think it's touched anything vital.' He was drifting away from consciousness, I could feel it. ‘I hope an ambulance comes soon.'

‘The only ambulance,' Inga said. ‘Cuts. If you're lucky, it's in Lerwick, waiting to go.'

Lerwick to Voe would be twenty minutes, with the blue lights flashing. I felt like I'd been kneeling on this gritty ground for a lifetime, but it would have been less than ten minutes. Ten more to wait.

If we were unlucky, the one ambulance could be delivering a mostly recovered old lady with a broken thigh back to Baltasound, two ferries away. Oscar Charlie could come, though, and land on the showfield. Inga echoed my thoughts.

‘If it's half-way to Out Skerries they'll send the chopper. They'll come soon.' She turned to go, calling ‘Phone you later,' over her shoulder.

Sergeant Peterson closed her notebook again, gave me back my mobile, looked at my face, and turned away to bother somebody else. Anders was becoming paler, as if he was cold; the shock of sudden injury, of losing so much blood. One of the first-aiders leant in to tuck a blanket around him. I curled it under his chin. His beard prickled the back of my hand.

The helicopter lived at Sumburgh. Sumburgh to Voe, even if they scrambled in less than two minutes, would still take half an hour. I sent up a prayer that we'd be lucky. I wanted Anders safe in the hospital, with new blood being pumped into him, and antibiotics being dripped into his system, and clean, starched sheets in place of this gritty, animal-trodden ground. While I listened for a distant siren, or the first hum of rotor blades, I willed my strength to flow into him through our joined hands. My thoughts fell into the rhythm of the rosary that had comforted me in my exile in France:
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you – 

Father Mikhail came back then. ‘Cerys has taken Kirsten home. She'll stay with her.' He looked at Anders. ‘Is there anything I can do here?'

I shook my head. ‘Pray.'

‘Of course. The young man is not from our church?'

‘He's a Norwegian Lutheran.'

‘We are all one in the Christian faith,' Father Mikhail said serenely, and took a step behind me. I could feel his willpower joining mine. Inga's Vaila came running up with my jacket clutched to her. She stopped by the stretcher, staring solemnly, then remembered her errand and thrust the jacket at me. ‘Mam said you'd need this if you were going to Lerwick with him. Your purse is in the pocket. She said we'll go and feed the kitten and Rat.'

Bless Inga's practical sense, mother of her family, used to organising the universe.
Khalida
would be fine. She was tied up properly. I'd get back later, once Anders was in safe hands, and sail her back to Brae. Dear God, why didn't they come?

At last there was the rumble of a heavier vehicle in the car park behind the hall, and the reflection of the blue flashing light on the curved white roof of the caravan. I heard the rattle of rubber wheels on the gravel, the metallic creaking of a trolley, then the ambulance men arrived, their trolley between them, and even as I was moving back to let them in, they had Anders on it, and were trundling him away. I grabbed my jacket and ran after them. They loaded him into the ambulance, and I clambered in after, before they could tell me I couldn't come. Anders turned his head. ‘Cass?'

I took his hand again. ‘You're in the ambulance now. Det er … ambulansen.'

He gave that faint thread of a smile again. ‘Sykebilen.'

‘I've never needed to call an ambulance in Norway,' I retorted.

I could rest now. The paramedic in the back with us was ready with an oxygen mask, and checked Anders' temperature every five minutes with an ear-gadget, his blood with a velcro collar round his arm, and his pulse with a clothes-peg on his finger. At the hospital, they did the same smooth process in reverse, and then I was left to fill in forms in that smelled of disinfectant and polish, while they rushed him through a double door into the bowels of A&E. I was just wondering when he'd last had a tetanus jab, if ever, when there were steps in the corridor, and Gavin came in and sat down beside me.

‘They reckon the honours are about even,' he said. ‘He threw you out of the path of the bull, you stopped the bleeding straight away. It's on the Shetland News website already.'

I made a face.

‘“Dramatic escape at Voe Show.” He grimaced. ‘Along with “Third body found”' He glanced up, making sure the nurse behind the desk was intent on her papers. ‘Now, if this had been even five years ago, it would all have been
sub judice
by the time Friday's paper came out, and we'd have had no coverage at all.'

‘Will it be
sub judice
?'

His glance flicked back to the nurse. ‘When did you last eat?'

‘Breakfast.' It seemed a different world. ‘Anders and I, we had bacon rolls when we arrived in Voe.' We'd been sitting in the cockpit, slightly shy of each other after the night before, with the sun still hidden behind the mist, and the tide coming in. It would turn again soon, flooding its strength into the world. I hoped that would help Anders, fighting behind those closed doors.

His brows drew together. ‘Breakfast.' He shook his head, rose and went over to the nurse, flipping out his warrant card. ‘Detective Inspector Macrae. I'll take Ms Lynch for some food. We'll be back within half an hour.'

‘I have to fill this in,' I said. ‘Two minutes.' I looked at the nurse. She was in her twenties, with light red hair, and an oval face on a long, slim neck. Her eyes flicked between me and her computer screen even as I was speaking to her. ‘I've filled in all the factual and contact details. As far as I know Anders has no food allergies, but I just can't tell you about medical ones.' I handed the sheaf back to her. ‘I'm not next of kin, just a friend, so I can't sign the consent form, but when I last saw him Anders was clear enough to be able to give his own consent, or you could phone his parents.' I stopped being efficient, and gave her a pleading look. ‘Please, could you just tell us how he is, before I go anywhere?'