The Trowie Mound Murders (24 page)

My answering smile was a feeble effort. ‘It was pretty wild at us.'

‘They reckon they can do better, though. These art thefts, they were simply done. The perp went straight in, ignoring any ringing alarms, through the nearest window to the painting or whatever most worth taking, took it, and scarpered. Most of the places were small operations, but one of the owners heard about the thefts through the lairds' grapevine, before it hit the headlines, and installed an amateur version of CCTV. We've got a good portrait of Olaf in action. Even in dark clothes and a pull-down knitted hat, he's pretty unmistakeable. Even better, Northlink Ferries are already working on a print-out of his boat trips down south to visit his best pal Brian. If the dates don't match the robberies, I'll eat my sporran.'

His face sobered. ‘There's one drawback, though. When David Morse and Sandra Wearmouth were shot on the platform above you, Olaf was at home. He'd just had the news of Alex's death broken to him by two officers, and his wife had collapsed. He didn't leave the house for as long as ten minutes, let alone for the time it would have taken to drive the pick-up to the trowie mound. Their murderer's still out there.'

A cold shudder ran down my spine. Gavin continued, in that neutral voice, ‘He might think, you know, that you can identify him. It's an outside chance – it's far more likely that you'd have told us everything you know.'

‘We've certainly been seen together by half the west side,' I agreed cordially. He'd treated me like a partner, dammit, and now I was going to be sent behind the firing lines -

‘All the same, I'm not sure you should be staying on the boat on your own in the marina.' The carefulness of his voice made it clear he knew he was pushing his luck. ‘Espcially with the whole place at the show dance. Would you consider going to your father's?'

I'd sailed to America in a 32-foot boat. I'd seen more dangerous corners of the world than he'd had hot dinners. ‘I had to sleep ashore during the film murder,' I said. My inner three year old rose up; I borrowed Peerie Charlie's phrase, and said it with his air of gentle finality. ‘I not.'

‘No,' Gavin said. ‘I didn't think you would.' He hesitated, his eyes looking round
Khalida
as if he was considering hiding-places. ‘I could leave an officer on board.'

I jutted my chin at him. ‘I don't need protected.'

There was a long silence. I could see in his eyes that he was considering making it an order, and I had no doubt that he could see in mine that coercion would do serious damage to whatever tentative relationship was between us. In the end he said, mildly, ‘If the murderer believes you can identify him, then he may try to silence you.'

‘You keep saying
he
. Do you know who it is?'

Gavin spread his hands, palms up. ‘We have a suspicion, but no proof.'

‘If I'm surrounded by officers,' I said, ‘he can't try.' I leant back against the shelf, stretched my legs out to the opposite berth, and looked sideways at him. ‘You can't charge him with anything.'

I saw him think about that; think about whether I could be relied on as a colleague. Then he nodded, and gave in. ‘Do you have any idea of what will happen to my official head if I set you up as a tethered goat, and the tiger gets to you before I get to him?'

‘Then make sure he doesn't,' I said.

10

Seldom comes a doo fae a craw's nest.

(Old Shetland proverb: A dove rarely comes from a crow's nest.)

Chapter Twenty-Six

It took an hour to sail up to Brae. The wind had fallen away, but it was still nicely on the beam, so I hauled up
Khalida
's red, blue, and white geneker, a half-balloon of a sail which crinkled and rustled like tissue paper as the wind came and went. It was a slow sail down long Olna Firth between the sea-serpent humps of mussel rafts. Voe House, the noisy pier, the fluttering bunting of the show, receded behind us until we came through the narrows at the Point of Mulla, and they were hidden behind the curve of headland. The tide was against me, a mid-tide stream with the full moon thrusting the water shorewards. On the sun-catching side of Souther Hill, there was already a purple tinge to the heather, and the clouds were building up away to the west, piled high like the stern of a ship of the line. Tomorrow, the moon's face would be flattened to the other side. The end of summer was on the horizon, the colder days, the autumn gales, the equinox.

Rat was anxious. He'd watched as I'd prepared for sea, looking from me to the shore, then once we'd cast off he stayed in the cockpit, staring back. He knew we'd left Anders behind, and I hadn't any way of reassuring him. I picked him up to curl around my neck, and he sat there for a bit, but once Voe was out of sight, he squirmed below to his nest. Cat wriggled after him, stubby tail gesticulating as he squeezed down between the cushions. I wished I could explain to them.

I sighed, and made myself a cup of drinking chocolate, then settled back on my seat in the cockpit. The green shore slid past us, the ruined houses, open boxes of walling standing in rectangles of brighter green, where tatties and kale had once grown, and tethered cows had grazed. The tangle of rusting metal above a stone pier had been Shetland's last whaling station. Crofting and whaling, once major Shetland industries, gone now. Maybe Dad's windfarm was all we'd have left to keep us in prosperity once the oil ran out.

As
Khalida
sailed herself onwards towards the heather-dark curve of Linga, I tried to think. I had to work this out, for word would have spread round the Show, with the whole of the west and north mainland meeting together, of how the Lynch lass, you ken, her that lives on the boat, had been rescued by helicopter from a cliff. There'd been two bodies shot – no, no her doing the shooting, someen else, but she'd been there.

If I was the killer, I'd want to know where the Lynch lass had been during the shooting, and what she'd seen. Gavin had wouldn't give me a name, but if he could work it out, so could I. I needed to know who to be afraid of.

There had been too much going on, too many strands confusing the plot. Kevin, Geri, the mysterious bucket, the locked boat, that was clear now. The cottage, and Olaf's sex videos, with Kirsten bullied into taking part, and Cerys drawing new people in, to amuse her when Brian brought her up to the dull country for the summer, I understood that part of it too. It would make sense that Brian's best pal Olaf would have a key, to keep an eye on things – and if Olaf had a key, then he could have given one to David, so that they could use the cottage in their visits. The watcher of my first visit could have been Madge, making sure I didn't come near Peter's body, if it'd been stored in the cottage before being transferred to the motorboat. Robbie's gossip had made Brian suspicious. He'd gone there on Thursday, the day I visited his mother, driven along to the old cottage. He'd flung the sexy bedding and camera tripod out on the shore, and changed the locks. There'd be no more goings-on there.

I frowned, and sat up straighter. This timing didn't work. The cottage locks had been changed on Thursday, so David, Sandra, and Madge couldn't have been using it after that. The trowie mound had been cleared, I presumed, on the night Magnie had seen the lights going up and down. That had been Thursday night, the night after
Genniveve
had been scuttled. It had been empty, except for the crates, when I'd been thrown in there on Friday. Yesterday. Had it really only been yesterday? I felt I'd lived a year since then.

They'd killed Alex yesterday, after Peter's body had been sunk and the mound cleared.
So what had he seen
?

The question stopped me short. I'd been working on a vague assumption that he'd gone up there and seen them moving art works, or otherwise behaving in a suspicious fashion, but that didn't make sense. The loot had been shifted, Peter's body disposed of, a day before he came along on his quad. Like I'd reasoned before, he wasn't an easy person to dispose of, and there would be ten times the hue and cry about a child that there would be for an adult. Unless he'd been a serious, direct danger to them, then he was a stupid person to kill, and Sandra hadn't been stupid. So what had made him so dangerous?

Now I'd thought it through, it was obvious. I heard Alex's voice:
See, I ken them. I'm seen them before, anyroad, when I was down at Brian's
…
we were haeing a holiday down there, where he lives, and that's where I saw them.
Talking to his father Olaf, perhaps, arranging the next robbery. Then he'd paused, and I'd thought he was just making up detail, but if it had been true it would be fatal:
I mind the man.

He'd seen David Morse, with his bulky stomach and walrus moustache. He'd even half-remembered his name:
It began with a B … No, no, an M.
He'd watched them, in the marina. He'd have known that slim, ash-fair Sandra wasn't the motorboat woman. Him identifying the mixed-up couple, David and Sandra, would spoil their nicely set up scenario of the good guys killed by the bad.

I kept thinking from there, as we slid smoothly past Linga, past where
Genniveve
lay ninety metres deep. I remembered Olaf as a boy; I remembered the way Brian used to withdraw from him when his bullying got too much.
Always a bit secretive …
Kirsten had withdrawn that way now. I hoped she would be all right. I thought about Cerys' games at the cottage, and Barbara's sharp voice.

Most of all, I thought about peerie Charlie, playing engines with his fish fingers, and comforting Inga in her own voice.

I poled the geneker out and put a protector to stop the main swinging back, and we drifted goose-winged up Busta Voe towards the marina. By the time we reached it, I'd a pretty good idea of who'd shot David and Sandra above my head on the trowie mound ledge, and why.
An outside chance
, Gavin had said, but this murderer might not think that rationally. For a moment I wondered what my pride had got me into, when I could have been safe at Dad's, with a policeman guarding
Khalida.
The thought jolted my courage back. I'd crossed oceans. I'd keep myself safe.

The marina was quiet as I ghosted in. I couldn't be bothered starting the engine, so I drifted outside for a bit, getting the geneker and pole stowed, then went in under mainsail, taking a wide curve around the inner pool to slow
Khalida
down before steering her into her berth. I slung a loop of the stern rope over the aft cleat and left her like that, with the start battery on, and the key still in the engine. I might need to make a quick get-away.

It was almost ten o'clock, an hour and a half yet to high tide. The dusk was gathering in the curves of the shore, and the moon was scattering silver light across the glassy ripples. The tirricks gossiped as they settled down for the night. There were clinking sounds from the caravan park that ran around the shore side of the marina, a biker working underneath an old-fashioned Triumph. Saturday night or no, it was still as death, no cars moving around, no noise of television or radio blaring out from open windows. Even the club was closed tonight. Those who felt up to it were at the Voe Show dance. It seemed a hundred years ago that I'd talked of dancing with Anders.

My heart was thumping unevenly. An outside chance. I hung up my sailing clothes, and put on a T-shirt, jeans, and light canvas shoes. I was still thinking of exits. They were clothes I could swim in, if need be. I went along the pontoon to the RIB's berth, just below the marina gate, and checked the key and kill-cord were in place, just as the lifeboat men had left her. I untied her ropes too, except for the bow line. It was a still night; she'd come to no harm. The biker raised his head and watched me for a moment, then went back to his mechanics.

Rat swarmed out as I came back aboard, and sat for a bit on the cabin roof, looking around, then went back below, and into the forepeak. Cat curled around my neck and purred. Above me, in the green park around the standing stone, a ewe called her lamb home for the night, and it answered in a high bleat. I thought of Kirsten, lying sedated in her bed. Her child wouldn't ever come home. David and Sandra had paid for that. Surely that was enough?

Their killer had been watching for my sail coming up the voe. I'd only sat in the cockpit for five minutes when I heard the pick-up scrunching down the boating club gravel. A shadow came out from it, unlocked the marina gate and slipped through, leaving it open behind him. He came walking steadily down towards
Khalida
, along the pontoon and paused by her berth, seeing me in the cockpit. His hands were empty. I was glad of that. I have an understandable dislike of having a gun pointed at me.

‘Hello, Norman,' I said.

Norman, Olaf's son. Just as Peerie Charlie copied Inga's voice and gestures, Norman had grown up to imitate his father. I could hear Olaf's philosophy,
Life's what you make it. I could put you in the way of earning …
I didn't think Norman had been actively involved in the thefts, though I wouldn't have liked to bet on that one either. He was quick, Norman. He could have squirmed in a narrow window, grabbed the chosen object, and been out again before the alarm bells had time to warm up. Fagin teaching waifs to pick-pocket wasn't just a Victorian exploitation.
I stuck in the cat flap …

He paused beside me. ‘Bonny night.'

‘It is,' I agreed.

The silvery light of the pontoon lamps shone on his face. He looked bleak and young and lost, and his breath caught in his throat as if he'd been crying, but I wasn't going to let that get under my guard. Olaf had done a good line in repentence too, when trouble loomed over him. I gestured to the cockpit seat opposite me. ‘Come aboard.'

I let him get settled before I moved to make a cup of tea. I was careless of my safety, Gavin reckoned, but not so careless that I'd go out of sight with Norman. ‘Sit still,' I said. ‘I'll put the kettle on. Tea?'

He nodded.

‘Milk, sugar?'

‘Yeah.'

I could feel his eyes on me as I lit the gas, put the kettle on, brought out the mugs, teabags, and milk, and gave the hardened sugar an experimental dunt with a teaspoon.

‘It's cool,' he said. ‘Living aboard like this. You have everything you need. Nobody bothers you. You can just take off and go.'

‘Wouldn't you miss the widescreen telly and full-speed broadband?' I asked.

He shrugged. ‘I'm no' sure I would. I watch stuff but I never really get into it. Games, I like games. I like the stuff where people play tricks on people.' His eyes travelled up the mast. ‘How far've you sailed in this?'

‘I bought her in the Med and sailed her to Norway, but that was coast-hopping. The crossing from Bergen to here was the longest ocean-crossing I've done in her.'

‘Cool,' he repeated.

I handed him his mug, and clambered out into the cockpit beside him. ‘Your wee brother had the makings of a good sailor,' I said.

‘He liked it,' Norman said. He jutted his lower lip, determined not to show feelings. ‘He wouldn't miss it whatever.'

‘You usually ran him along,' I said.
Inga's lasses, taking Peerie Charlie's hand to lead him back to Mam.
I'd always wanted a brother. I'd have looked after him. He'd have looked up to me, the way Peerie Charlie looked up to Vaila and Dawn – the way Alex had looked up to Norman. If Norman had asked him to do something, however dodgy, Alex would have done his best.

He gave a ‘whatever' jerk of one shoulder.

‘How's your mother now?' I asked.

He would have learned to disregard anything his mother said from the way his father ignored it. He shrugged again. ‘She's doped to the eyeballs. Cerys is with her. The pigs have dad down at the nick.' He glanced sideways at me. ‘They say he's mixed up in art theft. Up at the trowie mound.'

For his father, the law wasn't important.
The pigs, the nick.
You did what you wanted, made money the way that seemed best to you. If the chance came up to make big money, money that would mean you didn't have to kow-tow to anyone else, then why not? I could hear Olaf's schoolboy voice as he pocketed another pencil, or helped himself to a video from the library: ‘Why no'? They've got loads.'

Olaf's son shifted in his seat again, and took a breath. His voice was too casual. ‘Didn't you get stuck up there? Yesterday?'

This was what I knew he'd come to ask, while I was alone here in the twilight, with everybody else at the dance in Voe:
Did you see me?

‘When the shootings were,' Norman pursued. ‘You got rescued by the helicopter. Everyone was talking about it, at the show.'

I knew they would. My record of never having needed to call out the lifeboat was ruined. I didn't have thoughts to waste on regretting it.

‘I was on the cliff, on a ledge below the grass in front of the trowie mound.' I looked him straight in the eye. ‘I heard it all, but I didn't see anything. I couldn't identify the killer. I told the police that.'

I sensed rather than heard the relieved breath. He leaned back against
Khalida
's guard rail. I waited in silence. He looked so vulnerable, with the gold earring dangling towards his thin cheek, and his grey-green eyes, Kirsten's eyes, narrowed in doubt. Perhaps I was making too much of his resemblance to Olaf. Perhaps the conscience, the principles that Kirsten would have tried to instill into her sons was struggling to free itself. Eventually he set his cup down and turned to face me again. I saw that he hadn't believed me; that he wasn't just going to go away and forget me. His voice had lost its aggressive edge and become tentative, young.