A Handful of Ash

by Marsali Taylor

  ‘I would like to meet your mother,’ Gavin said, as we walked back to the car, leaving the clay fragments to blow with the wind and dissolve with the rain. ‘After the summer, I bought one of her CDs.’

  I’d forgotten that he hadn’t interviewed her, in the longship murder. Another policeman had crashed his shiny shoes into her fragile reunion with Dad, when she’d dropped everything to come and help us. I tried to imagine how they would get on, Gavin’s sturdy country aura and Maman’s Callas elegance. ‘I think you’d like each other,’ I decided at last. ‘You’re like my French family. They’re very proud of being paysanne, country folk. Their roots are in the earth. Maman’s are too, in spite of the way she looks. When I needed a dose of French common sense, I phoned her.’

  ‘And a glorious voice.’

  ‘When I was little,’ I confessed, ‘I thought the angels must sing like Maman.’

  I sat into the car beside him, and we set off. ‘Straight back to Scalloway,’ Gavin said. ‘I have a murder to solve still.’

  I watched the houses of Lerwick slide past, the grey fishermen’s houses, with the net sheds still behind. ‘That reading you did,’ I said. ‘Sin is lawlessness. Surely it’s the wrong way round?’

  His grey eyes sparked. ‘I thought that too, the first time I read it – oh, nine years ago, it must be. I’d done seven years.’

  ‘Like Jacob.’

  ‘In policing. Then I realised it was the right way round. Do you remember your seven deadlies, from the catechism?’

  I wouldn’t have, except that the Mariakirchen in Bergen had their opposites, the seven virtues, carved around the pulpit. The church also did organ recitals, and I’d spent several lunchtimes listening to the wonderful music and trying to work out which virtue was which. Temperance, charity, patience, kindness, diligence with her spindle. ‘Gluttony, greed, anger, envy, sloth.’

  Gavin nodded while I was trying to remember the last two. ‘Gluttony, not knowing when to stop drinking, for a start. That’s ninety per cent of our weekend work. In a broader sense, taking your own desires at the expense of others covers practically all of our criminal work. Greed, not sharing with others, wanting it all to be yours. There’s whole raft of laws against theft, from the financiers wanting another million to the petty thief wanting a newer iPad. Anger takes us back to pub brawls and domestic abuse. What was your last one? Sloth creates all sorts of difficulties when someone expects another person, or the state, to carry them instead of pulling their weight. Benefit fraud for a start.’

  I hadn’t thought of it like that. I imagined a world, Gavin’s world, spent battling against the consequences of people indulging in sin. He glanced towards me. ‘Last two?’

  I ran through the ones I’d done. ‘Despair?’

  His mouth curved in a smile. ‘Comes under sloth. Not one of your failings.’ His eyes shadowed. ‘The number of criminals I’ve arrested who’ve just stopped caring. They’ve been brought up on a minimal income in a broken home.’ His voice sparked into anger. ‘They don’t expect life will ever give them more, so why bother about the laws?’

  I’d seen them on a tall ship, through the Tall Ships Youth Trust, where they’d done special rehabilitation voyages for young offenders. ‘Send them on a tall ship,’ I said. ‘Oh, some don’t respond, but so many do. They have a fun job to do, and rules that make sense, and they have to discipline themselves. They can spend their energy climbing the mast.’ Of that team of thirty, we hoped twenty would go on to make good. I visualised the last two virtues now, Chastity, with her veiled face, and Humility. ‘Lust and pride.’

  ‘Lust’s easy. All the laws against rape and child abuse. And the last one.’ His profile was remote against the green hills speeding by. ‘Pride. By this sin fell the angels. The belief that you’re more important than anyone else. The murderer’s sin.’

  Suddenly I remembered the expression of the child who’d dropped the host. ‘Annette’s expression,’ I said. ‘It was guilt. “You’ve caught me”.’ His head turned quickly towards me, returned to face forwards, but not before his thought had flashed into my head. ‘You know who it is,’ I said.

  Now I was looking at a policeman. ‘I’m waiting for proof,’ he said. ‘Once you’re sure of who, it can be found.’

  If he wasn’t at liberty to tell me, I wouldn’t force his confidence by guessing. I’d had the clues that he had. I sat considering, as we passed the golf course, slid between the hills, came around the corner to see Scalloway spread below us, and arrived at last in the car park where Nate had been attacked. Gavin came to open the door for me.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. For not asking, he meant. I put a hand on the rough tweed of his arm.

  ‘You’ll phone me when you can? To tell me – ’

  He nodded, and I let my hand fall. I had no part in this investigation now.

  But I wanted to know. It wasn’t quite two o’clock. Instead of heading to college (Safety at Sea part II), I walked up New Street, between the coloured houses, and stopped just short of the lane leading up to the museum, the castle – the lane with the opening to Spanish closs, where I’d found Annette. I’d been here when I’d heard someone shout. I’d assumed it was a drunken person at the Chinese takeaway, but the police hadn’t traced any customer at that time.

  I turned and walked slowly up the lane. This was the way the murderer must have come, with Annette over his shoulder, a humped, misshapen beast, with his horned head and swinging tail. I turned my shoulder to the red-painted wood of the museum, and went downhill to the castle. The heavy, black-studded door was open. I climbed the re-concreted steps of the broad stair, and came out into the Great Hall.

  I stood in the middle of the floor, turning slowly, looking. The Great Hall was a rectangle some thirty metres by ten, with the main staircase at one end, and the little spiral stair which would once have led to the laird’s bedroom at the other. There were two small rooms at the head of the main stair, and another opposite it. The placard on the end wall showed this hall as it once was, wood-panelled and painted, with bright tapestries, and a blazing fire in the wide chimney. Here, Black Patie would have sat in his carved chair, and pronounced judgement on the miserable women charged with witchcraft that had been dragged before him by a howling crowd.

  Now it was a roofless box. The red-brown stone was hazed with drifting snowflakes. There were two rows of windows, for this floor and the missing floor above, unshuttered and uncurtained. The flagstones were hard underfoot, with pools of water where they were worn. I went to look up the spiral stair, barred by a grill, then returned to the chimney. There were the blackened remains of a fire in the hearth: ash, darkened to brown with water, and fragments of charred peat. Had Nate crouched over a fire here, with Annette waiting and watching, hoping to be freed of her demons?

  I had the place to myself. I went to one of the windows that looked out over Scalloway, and considered. Practical Cass. Forget this miasma of witchcraft, of devils, and think of how Annette’s death had come about. Annette had asked Nate to help her, and in return he’d asked for the witches’ ash. She’d taken her father’s key when he’d taken the dogs for their walk, and come to the museum below me to steal the ash. The container of ash, and the ash on her hand, made that certain. They’d come into the castle, for their ritual. I frowned here. Peter’s dogs’ walk, up the hill, out through the fields, and back down past the swimming pool into Scalloway, took an hour. It didn’t seem a lot of time for a witch-banishing ritual. Annette would know, too, exactly how long it took. Maybe she’d counted on his not needing his keys until morning.

  Leave that aside for the moment. The demon had materialised, and Annette had fallen. It had been a man who’d shouted – Nate or the demon. I looked doubtfully at the thick walls, the diamond-pane windows. Would I really have heard a shout from inside the castle all the way round the corner?

  Annette had fallen, and Nate had run for it. The demon had picked up Annette and followed. I looked down at the path winding rou
nd the castle and coming out in front of the museum, opposite Kevin’s nan’s house. It kept him off the street slightly longer, bringing him out directly opposite this end of New Smiddy Closs, but it seemed to me a good bit further, with the weight of a dead girl to carry. He had gone that way, though, for Kevin’s nan had seen him crossing the road here. That was a third unlikely thing, and while there was no accounting for people’s reactions, I didn’t like it. It felt like a tangled rope, twisting this way and that, instead of pulling in a straight line.

  Think again, Cass. If Nate wasn’t the demon, with his diary filled for the eve of All Hallows, then why was he doing this all-important ritual last Wednesday? Surely Hallowe’en was the big night, the night for hocus-pocus mumbo-jumbo, the perfect night for summoning long-dead witches. In which case –

  My heart stopped for a moment as it all began to make sense, then thudded into life again. In which case, the only thing Annette had been doing on Wednesday was stealing the ash. Peter’s hour up on the hills was plenty of time to do that. She’d phoned ahead to Nate to tell him, and he’d been waiting for her to bring it to him, ready for the big ritual on Monday night. She’d gone into the museum, taken the ash, come out again – and she’d been caught, caught locking up the museum she’d no business to be in late at night like that. The person had come up behind her, shouted angrily, put his hands on her shoulders. The wind had swirled the sound down the closs to me. Annette had dropped like a stone, and the person who’d caught her was left standing in front of the museum with a dead girl at his feet. He knew what she was up to, and for whom. He put the keys in his pocket to slip back at the first opportunity – I remembered Peter’s look of surprise as he’d found them in his old dog-walking jacket, which he never wore when he was driving the car or walking to the museum. Then the person who’d caught her lifted Annette on his back and carried her to Nate’s door. Nate had come out and searched Annette’s pockets for the link to him – the witches’ ash. In mischief or malice, he made the claw marks, and slipped back inside his door as my shadow crossed the lane towards the closs. Now my rope was running true. Then, when the police had announced that Annette had died of natural causes, the person who’d killed her had taken the law into his own hands. Nate had been morally responsible for Annette’s death. He’d die like the witch he’d pretended to be.

  My rope had paid out until I had only the bitter end in my hands. Now I needed to see the face. Somebody who knew what Annette was up to, and for whom; someone who loved her enough to kill for her. I looked out of the window and saw him, just as Kevin’s nan had described him, the words I’d taken as vivid imagination: ‘tall, he was,’ she’d said, ‘and black as the inside of a chimney, with a misshapen hump on his back, and a cloud of evil around him, and the hounds of Hell at his back’ and at last I knew who she’d seen.

  He was striding towards the castle path, his head smooth between the two pointed horns of his ear-flap hat, the tail of his dog-leash swinging around his legs. He looked up and saw me there in the window. It seemed an endless moment that he stood there, staring up at me. I saw in his face that he read the knowledge in mine. Then he began to move again, pace quickening, towards the castle gate. He’d be at the door before me, and I was alone in the castle with nowhere to hide.

  I had two possibilities – to hide downstairs, and hope he came up first, or to hide upstairs and run while he searched downstairs. I began moving towards the stair, then stopped dead. Below me, the door downstairs was being eased open. Soft footsteps went into the antechamber where the witches had been held, whispering on the flagged floor. I heard my name being breathed up the stairwell: ‘Cass! Where are you?’

  I wasn’t going to stay and be caught like a rat in a trap. The echoed ‘ss’ was still dying as I slid backwards from the main stair towards the far end of the hall, where the little spiral stair led upwards. It was barred now with a grill, but the stones to each side were worn enough to give me toeholds. I wedged one foot as high as I could reach and thrust myself up, clinging like a lizard to the rock. There was a doorway to the stair just above my head, from the long-gone bedroom floor. I got my forearms over the doorstep and hauled myself up onto level ground, legs flailing.

  Years of mast climbing had given me a head for heights. I glanced down at the flagged stones of the hall twenty feet below, then flattened myself behind the door arch to listen. My follower was coming up the main stair now; I heard the pad of feet on stone, the echo of breathing. I dodged into the spiral stair and began climbing. It had been solidly built, but the next curve had lost stones, and I had to chimney up it, pressing the flat of my left palm against the cold, rough wall, gripping the last of the central pillar with my right, and wedging my toes into what step remained. My hands would hurt later; the sharp edges of stone clawed the skin off. Claws …

  I reached the end of the staircase and paused, looking up. The last step was a flat landing stone, beside what had once been an attic doorway. The start of the inverted V of the gable was only three feet above the last step. I could go up onto the gable, four storeys above the ground, sixty feet, less than the height of the second platform on Sorlandet’s mast. I could see the double wall construction from here, filled between with rubble and earth. I’d go over the top of the gable and lie between the walls on the other side. If this devil was determined enough to come after me there, he would be the one in a vulnerable position. I would be lying securely, ready to grab at his ankles if he came too close.

  ‘Cass! Cass!’ The whisper came from below me now. I couldn’t move yet. I sent up a quick prayer that the stonework above my head was sound, and the stones and earth between the two walls packed down firmly.

  There were steps across the hall. I could hear ragged breathing and checked my own, drawing air steadily in through my nose and out again, silently, silently. The steps came to a halt by the spiral stair, as I knew they would. The person stepped back to look upwards. The voice came again, impatiently: ‘Cass, are you up there? Come down.’

  I wasn’t coming down to an empty building, with thick walls between us and the friendly outside world. Below me, I heard the person place a foot against the wall, then come up as I’d done, with a thrust and scrabble on the lime-faced wall. Now!

  I grasped each side of the gable. The stone blocks felt firm enough. I pushed up with my legs and scrambled up onto the gable. There was a rattle and scurry in the ledge between the walls, then three starlings flapped up from among the stones, wings rattling like an unsecured sail. Instinctively, I flung my arm up in front of my eyes, and flinched backwards. Birds around your face was one of the things I didn’t like about shore life. Furthermore, they’d made it clear to the person below that I was up here. I had to get into safety, and fast.

  It didn’t matter about noise now. The faced crowstep blocks under my left hand felt less secure than the inner gable. I put my weight more towards the hall side, then went down on hands and feet, scarlet jacket shrieking (I hoped) like an alarm signal, and scurried upwards to the squared-off top. The stones were slippery with ice. A long way below me, the grass of the castle courtyard glittered silver.

  I could hear the footsteps coming faster up the stair, then pausing. The person had found the broken stones. The voice came again: ‘Cass, don’t be stupid!’

  At the top of the gable, I let myself down into the gap between. To my relief there was no further flurry of wings. The stone in-fill wobbled as I put one foot on it, but it had been packed down by four centuries of weather, and gave no further. I crouched down between the walls for security, and waited, arms spread on the stone blocks, head high. The view was spectacular: the dark ring of stone that marked the Althing, the Viking parliament, outlined in snow, with the grey Manse above it. The hills on my right were the colour of dark chocolate, sprinkled with snow like the frosting on a Yule log; on my left, the hill had been reclaimed and re-seeded for grazing, short green grass where the snow lay smooth as icing. The five wind turbines stood proud over their kingdom.


  The voice called again: ‘Cass!’ Then suddenly there was noise from below, a car stopping, the gate slamming open with a click, running feet, and when I looked over my shoulder there was a squad of police officers swarming below me like more starlings. Before I could say anything, three had begun coming upstairs, the tramp of their shoes echoing up the wide staircase, while two came round to the gable end, directly below me, leaving the door unguarded.

  My pursuer heard it too. I heard feet skid and clatter on the spiral stair below, the iron rattle of railing, then he raced across the great hall and dived out of sight. He just made it into the anteroom before the policemen got into sight on the stair, then, as they charged into the main hall, I saw him slip out behind them.

  The first officer stopped half way along the hall, tilted his head back and called up in a friendly, reasonable tone. ‘Now, son, you’re not very safe up there. How about coming back down?’

  I recognised his face from the murder aboard my longship Stormfugl, when we’d had most of Shetland’s police force swarming around for a week. He was the one who wouldn’t let me aboard my own ship. I smiled sweetly down at him. ‘The view’s fantastic from up here. Come and look.’

  He did a classic double-take. ‘Miss?’ Then he recognised me. ‘Ms Lynch, isn’t it?’ The voice slid from friendly encouragement to scepticism. ‘What are you doing up there?’

  I looked over my other shoulder, at four black-clad figures converging on one in navy, sharp outlines on the grass sward four stories below me. Gavin had brought the cavalry.

  ‘Oh, just keeping an eye on events,’ I told the officer. The figures below me became six, as Gavin joined them, scarlet kilt clear against the green grass. I watched as Gavin gave the official caution, and then he and his squad led Peter Otway away.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The sky was dimming as I walked home from college, with the first frost-blue stars blazing above the dark outline of the Scord. I paused at the marina gate, looking onwards to where three rectangles of orange light shone out from Kate’s kitchen. I hadn’t expected to visit again soon, but things were different now. If she’d been alone after Annette’s death, she’d be even more alone now. I turned my back on the gate, and began walking towards the lighted windows. I wasn’t much, but I was better than no one. If she didn’t want me, I’d go away again. My steps grew slower and slower as I approached the gate. I’d have turned back if the dogs hadn’t come barking to greet me, and escort me up to the house.