by Alys West
She glanced at the man in front of her. He was playing with the talisman around his neck. His fingers opening and closing around the tiny piece of wood that she now knew was his druid’s staff. He was the most unboring person she’d ever met. And the most provoking. She should have known he wouldn’t be satisfied with what she’d said yesterday. He’d agreed not to push her for answers but he hadn’t said he wouldn’t look elsewhere. With a deep sigh, she raised her gaze to meet his. “From what the police told us, the head injury could have been caused by hitting her head on a boat while she was swimming. Only she never went out that far. She always swam along the shoreline not directly out to sea and the weather wasn’t bad enough for any boats to have been that close in.”
“They’re not in the newspaper reports. The police must have kept that back.” Winston leaned forward. “As we know the other members of The Order were murdered, it’s not hard to see that the bang on her head and the other marks were caused by whoever killed her. The seawater found in her lungs indicates drowning and if the head injury and the bruises on her neck and shoulders were inflicted pre-death—”
“Don’t sugar coat it, will you?” Jenna folded her arms and glared at him across the table.
“What? Oh hell!” He reached towards her, his hand stopping inches short of her arm. “Are you alright? I didn’t think.”
“This isn’t some long dead Neolithic skeleton you’re talking about. This is my mum.”
“Sorry, I’m not used to talking about individuals who folk actually knew. By the time they’re in my hands they’ve usually been dead for at least two thousand years.”
Jenna took a large gulp of wine. “Try it again but remember I’m sitting right here and I’ve got feelings.”
“I’d never forget you’re sitting right there.” His right eyebrow arched as he treated her to his trademark grin.
“And cut the flattery, Dr Grant. You know it doesn’t work.”
“You can’t blame a guy for trying.”
“I can when it’s you.”
“Harsh, Miss Henderson. Very harsh.”
And unbelievably she found she was smiling. How did he manage to flip her mood like that? Trying to keep the amusement out of her voice, she said, “Just get on with it.”
“I guess what I was trying to say is that it’s not a murder that was magically created like the others, but a murder where someone physically inflicted those injuries.”
“So Mum’s murder doesn’t fit the pattern? The others could have been caused by magic but hers wasn’t?”
“Exactly.” He spoke in the brisk tones of a lecturer with a bright student who’d just picked up on a salient point. “And if that’s the case then why was it different and does it mean the others weren’t murdered by the same person?”
She blinked at him. “What are you suggesting? That a whole group of people were in on it? That there was some kind of conspiracy to kill The Order?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t got that far.” He shook his head. “But I think we need to look at it all again because what happened to Nina doesn’t fit with what we think we know.”
Jenna sagged back. “I’m not sure if that’s better or worse.”
“We’ve all got used to the idea of one deranged but super-powerful individual who wanted to destroy The Order—”
“But has been strangely reticent about coming forward to seize power.”
“Or benefits from this vacuum in some way. That’s what Maeve Blackwell did in Glastonbury.”
“Who?”
He frowned. “How have you not heard about that?”
“Since Mum died and well—” Jenna looked into her wine glass “—I guess you could say, it’s my own fault, seeing as I’m the one who stopped Grace ringing, but I don’t get to hear anything anymore. Not about things like that.” Although there were only a couple of teenage girls drinking pints and smoking on the other side of the garden she wouldn’t risk mentioning magic more directly.
“How is that possible? You’re Nina’s daughter for Christ’s sake!” When she only shrugged, he added, “You know I mentioned Finn yesterday? He was the one who found out what Maeve was up to.”
“Which wasn’t good, right?”
“Which was very bad indeed. You got time for this? It’s a bit of a long story.”
“I’ve got time.” After all, there was only her empty bed waiting. It was long past her usual bedtime and Mansie had probably gone out by now, prowling the streets of Kirkwall as he did every night.
She propped her chin in her hand and listened as he told her of Maeve’s healing retreat in Glastonbury, of Finn’s sister who’d fallen under Maeve’s mind control, of Finn’s attempt to rescue her and how he’d met Zoe who was discovering her abilities as a seer. His hands tightened around his whisky glass as he described the battle at the stone circle and, although he kept his tone light, she could tell he’d been frightened for his friends.
“Oh my God! That’s massive,” she said, when he’d finished. The words were inadequate but she was stunned. Firstly that someone was blatantly practising dark magic but on top of that and, pressing far more on her emotions at this moment, was the shock that Winston had done all that for his friend. She’d really not thought him capable of it.
“It is a bit, isn’t it?” He glanced up at her from under a raised eyebrow.
“Are Finn and Zoe alright? I mean, you couldn’t be, not after all of that. But are they coping?”
“They’re—” he seemed lost for words for a minute “—Zoe’s doing alright. I wasn’t sure about her at the beginning. Finn’s a bit soft when it comes to women. He falls fast and he falls hard and I was worried he’d get hurt. But I was wrong. Zoe’s good for him. I think she’s the only thing holding him together at the moment.”
“I guess it’s a lot to handle. He lost six months of his life.”
He looked at her for a second too long. “I wouldn’t blame you if you thought he should just man up. After all, you’ve pretty much lost six years.”
“I have not!” She crossed her arms and then uncrossed them because you couldn’t stand up from a stupid picnic bench like that. “You may think that giving up my career to take care of Dad and the teashop was a mistake but I don’t. I did the right thing. No matter what you or anyone else thinks.”
“Jenna, don’t go.” His hand was on her arm, heavy against the sleeve of her jacket. She shrugged it off.
“Give me one good reason why I should?”
“Because I wasn’t judging. I was trying, ineptly apparently, to let you know that you’ve lost things too.”
“Oh.” She sat down. “Don’t be nice. It’s confusing when you’re nice.”
“You’re asking me to be nasty?”
“No, Dr Grant. I’m asking you to be your usual insensitive, smug, arrogant self.”
He tossed the remains of his whisky back. “I object to insensitive.”
She blinked at him. “But you don’t mind the other two?”
He shrugged, glanced away. “Let’s say, you wouldn’t be the first to mention them.”
Jenna leaned in. Was he uncomfortable talking about this? “Really? Who else?”
He pushed his hair back from his face before he spoke. “You know what happens, folk say things when they’re angry.”
“What kind of folk?”
“Women, mainly.”
“You mean, girlfriends?” Jenna grinned. She was enjoying herself all of a sudden.
“I wouldn’t call all of them girlfriends. Some were a wee bit less significant.”
“What does that mean?”
“We had—” he hesitated as if choosing his words carefully “—a briefer acquaintance.”
She frowned for a second and then his grin explained the words. “You mean one-night stands?”
The grin widened. “Some didn’t last the whole night.”
She laughed. It was what she’d heard from the folk on the dig; the reputation that had preceded h
im from Glasgow and which had made her so frosty when he’d started flirting with her during their first meeting. She would not be another one of these women who fell for his obvious good looks and easy charm. Only somehow, she was now laughing with him in one of the least reputable pubs in Kirkwall late on a Friday night and it didn’t feel wrong at all.
“In a blatant attempt to change the subject—” Winston opened his laptop.
“Why? I’m enjoying this. About time we talked about you for a change.” Jenna gazed at him over the rim of her wine glass as she took another sip. She should stop. Everything was becoming distinctly fuzzy around the edges and she’d got things to do tomorrow.
“Another time, eh?” Winston swung the laptop around so that the screen faced her revealing a sketch of two people clinging together in the centre of a circle of fire, their faces obscured by the flames. Behind them were two enormous black birds with curved talons and sharply-pointed beaks. A woman lay prone on the floor with a gaping wound on her skull. “Zoe drew this. Do you have any idea where this is?”
“Is this one of her visions?” When Winston nodded, she added, “But this is remarkable. The clarity is extraordinary.”
“I know. I keep telling her she’s something special but she doesn’t believe me.”
“She should.” Jenna glanced at him and then, when his gaze met hers, quickly looked back at the screen. “Mum’s visions were nothing like this.”
“How did they work?”
“Mostly they came in dreams but sometimes it was more amorphous, just a feeling or a sense of something before—” She broke off. The rug looked a lot like Mum’s which, when you put it together with the bookcases... “Oh!”
“What?”
“I’m not sure. It looks a bit like Mum’s room. The one she saw patients in. It’s got a rug like that.”
“Shit!” Winston swivelled the laptop towards him. “Those birds are unreal. Nothing is that big and that evil looking.”
Jenna wrapped her arms around her chest. “Doesn’t Zoe know where it is? Who it is?”
“No, her dreams don’t work like that. If she doesn’t draw it, she doesn’t remember it.”
“But this is going to happen, there’ll be…” Jenna trailed off as the implications hit her.
“Probably. She’s been pretty accurate so far. She saw the stone circle where Maeve battled Finn. If she hadn’t, there’s no way we’d have got there in time and—” he fiddled with a leather strap wound around his wrist “—well, things would have worked out very differently.”
“So you think this is coming?”
“Don’t freak out about it. I mean, it’s hard not to with birds like that but it might mean nothing. It’s early days with Zoe’s visions yet.”
“It’s not the birds that worry me. It’s the woman on the floor.” She swivelled the laptop back to get another look. “Do you think she’s dead? That wound looks pretty nasty.”
“Do you know who she is?”
“I can’t see enough of her. She’s well dressed. Nice shoes.”
“You noticed her shoes?” Winston peered at the screen. “What’s that? Some kind of fashion superpower you’ve got going on?”
Jenna laughed. “I used to like shoes. Then I came back to Orkney and I wear boots ten months of the year, but I had good shoes.”
“I can see you in good shoes.”
The way he said it made it sound like that was the only thing he saw her in. Colour rushed up her cheeks. She made a show of glancing at her watch. “I need to be going. It’s getting late.”
“Hard to tell with this light.” Winston frowned up at the pale wash of blue sky with skeins of dove-grey cloud unravelling across it.
“That’s the simmer dim.” She stood, realising belatedly that she was going to have to extricate her legs from the picnic bench while he watched.
Winston turned the laptop back to him and spoke with his eyes fixed on the screen. “Two questions before you go.”
Swinging one leg over the seat, Jenna said cautiously, “Okay.”
“Nina lived in Birsay, right?”
“Right.” With the other leg free, Jenna picked up her bag. “That was an easy one.”
“No, that wasn’t the question. ‘My bad’ as my students say.” The phrase sounded absurd in his crisp Edinburgh accent. “No, the question is how far is Birsay from where Nina’s body was found?”
“Oh!” Through the haze of alcohol, Jenna felt the familiar clenching of her stomach. “You need to warn me about questions like that.”
“Shit, there I go again! Alright, you were spot on earlier. I am insensitive.”
“And smug and arrogant.” The retort came automatically but the words didn’t do anything to ease the tension in her body.
“Guilty as charged.” He raised his hands. “Look, don’t worry. I can find out. That’s what Google’s for.”
“No, it’s alright.” She took a breath, dumped her bag on the top of the bench and walked around until she stood behind him. He’d got Google Maps open on his laptop. Leaning forward, all too conscious of his proximity, she pointed. “This is Birsay village, see the tearooms are marked? The Point of Buckquoy is about a mile away. There’s a bit of a beach and lines of rock that stick out into the sea. Mum swam from there, the rocks make it pretty sheltered. Her body was found—” her finger traced a line along the coast “—at Skipi Geo which is here.”
Winston turned his head to look at her. He’d got nice eyes. Dark brown. Darker than any other eyes she could remember and they were looking right at her.
Then, realising what was happening, she looked down, colour stealing up her cheeks. Oh, God! What was she doing? He was nice to her for two minutes and she’d let her guard down so much they’d nearly had a moment. She was not going to have moments of any kind with Winston Grant. She straightened, took a step back.
“Did Nina swim from there every day?”
“Not every day. Three or four times a week. She’d been wild swimming for years, way before it was popular.”
“And people knew?”
She walked back round the table and picked up her bag. “That’s far more than two questions.”
“Jenna?”
“What?”
He held his hands up. “No more questions, I swear. I want to find out what happened to Nina. You shouldn’t be left with no answers. It’s not right.”
Jenna wrapped her arms around her middle. “You think you can do it when the police failed?”
“They didn’t know who she really was. I do.” Effortlessly disentangling his black jeans-clad legs from the picnic bench, he stood and came towards her. “I don’t expect your blessing. I don’t expect you to want anything to do with it. I just...”
“What?”
“I’m going to have questions and you’re the only person I can ask.”
Her eyes focused on the back door to the pub as a man stumbled out and lit a cigarette. “There’s Google.”
“You know as well as I do there’s some things Google can’t answer.”
The sigh that escaped her had the full weight of six and a half years of grief in it. She could say no. She could walk away and not have anything to do with him or this ever again. She could fill in application forms and get a new job and leave Orkney and put it all behind her. Only she wanted to know. Even if she could never tell anyone, even her dad, what really happened, she wanted to know. Plus, there were now the insanely large birds to worry about. If they were in her future, she didn’t want to face them alone.
Her arms slipped open, fell to her side. “Alright. But only when Google can’t help.”
Chapter 9
On Saturday afternoon Kirkwall was suffering an American invasion as tourists from the cruise liner moored at Hatston pier outside the town, wandered around peering into shop windows and listening to tour guides. Jenna skirted the entrance to the Orkney Museum and ducked into her favourite gift shop. She was looking for a present for Rosie whose birthday wa
s in a ten days’ time.
After fifteen minutes of happy browsing she’d found a couple of possibilities but nothing that felt quite right. Deciding she’d have a look at the Orkney Craft Association shop, she headed out onto Broad Street. The shop was full of amazing things created by craftspeople living on the islands and Jenna found a pair of silver earrings that were pretty much perfect. After she’d bought them she walked back the way she’d come, heading for home.
Strolling down the road towards her was a group of men in smart shirts and newly- washed jeans. As they drew closer Jenna recognised Kenny, Hal’s cousin, from his shock of bright red hair and then at the back was a sandy head two inches above the tallest of the other men. She blinked. Whoever it was looked an awful lot like Hal. The group passed her in a waft of aftershave and then the man at the back turned and spoke. “Hey, Jenna!”
She stopped in the centre of the street. It couldn’t be. “Hal?”
After a quick word to the man next to him, he came over to her.
“What are you doing here? I thought you were in Toronto.”
“I was until yesterday morning.”
“But…” Then the pieces fell into place. She’d heard Kenny Skebister was getting married. “Are you here for Kenny’s wedding?”
“Partly. I’ve been trying to call you to let you know.” He’d rung again earlier and she’d let it go to voicemail hoping that whatever message he left this time would prepare her to hear his news.
“I know. Sorry, I’ve been busy.”
“Too busy to talk to your old friend who’s about to move to Orkney?”
“You’re moving here?” She’d definitely have rung him back if she’d known that’s what he was going to say.
He grinned. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. I’ve got a job on the Atlantis tidal energy scheme. I start on Monday.”
“Wow, that’s fantastic! Well done!” Her hands shot out as if to hug him and then dropped back down to her sides. Their hugging days were long gone.
“I’m glad you’re pleased. It’ll be a bit like old times.” A couple of tourists passed them, one swinging a heavy bag that banged into Jenna’s arm. She winced. Hal put his hand under her elbow and guided her towards the nearest wall. “I was going to ask you if you wanted to get together to play some tunes,” he said, resting his hand on the wall above her head, boxing them in from the passers-by. “I’m a bit rusty but I want to get back into it.”