Mike looked up at me then. There was another long silence. I could see in his face that he knew I’d felt the hostility between him and Nils, but not how much I’d heard. His mouth opened as if he was going to say something, then closed again. I wanted to reassure him, but I couldn’t frame the words. I tried for an everyday tone. ‘I was wanting a look at them too. It’s harder learning them when you’re up on the aft deck, a step removed. I’m OK on my own watch, but I wanted a look at the other ones.’
The grim look left Mike’s face. He nodded, and stood up with a Be my guest gesture. He hesitated in the doorway, then headed out. I heard his footsteps recede along the corridor and clatter briskly up the stairs to the nav shack.
It didn’t take me long to call up Sean’s details, but the file didn’t tell me anything new. Sean Xavier Lynch gave his address as 31 Leinster Road, Dublin, and Seamus Lynch as his next of kin. Job: marketing. He had no medical conditions, and no dietary requirements. I was just going to snick the computer off when I wondered what Mike had been looking at. I scrolled down the list of ‘last opened’, and looked at the one before Maria. Sean Lynch. He’d been looking up my cousin. I’m thinking I recognise his face, he’d said. Is it Cork your family’s from? I was a bit wild … What sort of trouble might they have shared? I didn’t want to think about that one.
I called Cat and went out onto the main deck. It was raining now, light drizzle that darkened the dry decks and smudged the dulling brasswork. All the trainees were huddled under the overhang, waiting to be allowed back below once Jenn had finished her banjer cleaning. Happy hour, she called it, but my watch were looking particularly unhappy. After four hours on duty and a rushed lunch, they’d have preferred to lie in their hammocks reading a book, listening to music or just enjoying the rolling feel of being at sea, the long slow surge as the bow rose and fell, the sloosh of translucent water curling round the portholes, the rhythmic creak of the masts. I went to stand among them, exchanging greetings, and Cat let himself be admired. He’d been stand-offish with the trainees at first, not being a cat who liked casual caresses, but now he seemed to enjoy strolling across the deck, king of this moving kingdom, and hearing the compliments aimed at him. I answered the usual questions: yes, he used a litter tray and stayed below in bad weather; no, he didn’t seem to be seasick.
I was just standing chatting when the galley door opened, and Henrik came out, scowling. This was his domain. The cooking area opened out from deck level – right by the rail, for fire safety reasons – and the benches by it were generally reserved for the galley staff to chop carrots on, or take a breather when the galley became too hot for comfort. He was Norwegian, Henrik, from Bergen. I’d noticed in my travels that ship’s cooks came in two breeds: round, cheerful and accommodating, or sour, skinny and pernickety. James, the steward, and Elmer, the cook were both the former, and Henrik was definitely the latter. In particular, he didn’t like having Cat aboard. Goodness knows what he was saying about Rat. I gave him my best smile and said cheerfully, ‘North Sea weather.’
He grunted, and glared at Cat. ‘Don’t encourage that animal to come near the galley.’
‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘C’mon, Cat.’
I moved three paces forwards and leant on the rail, looking out at the grey water, brooding. It would be good to think that the missing drink boxes belonged to Henrik, that he was a secret toper, but I didn’t believe it for a moment. He was far more likely to be strict TT, and his sour expression suggested a box-of-Rennies-a-day habit. Nor did I see him selling wine on the black market once we got home. He was a law-abiding citizen.
When four bells sounded, the cleaning team came out from below and my watch bolted back down. The novelty of being aboard a tall ship under sail gave way to comfort and dryness. There’d be no deck yoga today. I strolled back to the aft door, giving a slow glance round the galley as I passed, but there was no sign of the white boxes. Cat went inside, shaking his paws fastidiously, and I headed up to the chart plotter. We were still bang on: another twenty hours like this and we’d be nicely off Orkney, ready to change course for going through the Pentland Firth.
I leant against the rail and looked at the watch below. They were spread along the rail now, with Sean just below me, hood up. I looked down at him, considering. I had to risk talking to him. If it was his gun, and he’d stolen it back, at least it was in experienced hands, not being gloated over by a wayward teenager, which would be a crumb of comfort. I wished I’d been quicker, yesterday; the wretched thing could have been rusting in Stavanger harbour, with no trouble to anybody. Still … I sauntered down to deck level, and propped my elbows on the shining wood beside him. ‘Hi.’
‘Now then, little cousin.’ He looked down at the top of my head. ‘Do you know, you’ve barely grown at all.’
My lack of inches was a sore point. ‘Better than growing like a weed,’ I retorted. I moved closer to him, and took the bull by the horns. ‘I don’t like the idea of a loaded gun loose aboard ship.’
He raised one eyebrow. ‘Loose?’
I looked him straight in the eye. ‘I’d like to be sure that it’s back with its owner. Preferably somewhere that none of the trainees can get hold of it.’
‘Ah.’ He didn’t pretend to misunderstand me, which I was glad of. ‘Yes, you can be sure of that.’
That was something. ‘I suppose if I asked why the owner was carrying it, I wouldn’t get an answer.’
He turned his back to the sea and leant again, arms folded. ‘I’d agree with that one, now. Little girls shouldn’t ask questions, as Da Patrick used to say, God rest his soul.’
I wouldn’t let him rile me. ‘Can you assure me there’ll be no accidents with it?’
Sean shrugged, and put on the country bumpkin accent that used to annoy Granny Bridget. ‘Sure, I haven’t a clue what you’d be talking about at all. Your captain’s already asked me if I know anything about a gun, and I told him I didn’t. That seemed to be good enough for him.’
I straightened my shoulders. ‘Very well.’ My voice was icy. I shot a glance towards the other trainees, and softened it to casual chat. ‘Your business is your own. But you’d better make sure nobody else gets hold of it.’
Both brows went up this time. ‘Well, who’d have thought my little cousin would have turned out such a spitfire?’
I went back to being family. ‘You would. Don’t you remember trying to kiss me, and getting a slap in the face?’
Now he was laughing openly. ‘You let me kiss you at New Year. I didn’t think you would object at Easter.’
‘It wasn’t a good Easter.’ Maman had gone, and instead of me going to her French family, where we’d always spent Easter, Dad had sent me to Dublin while he recce’d out the job that would later take him to the Gulf and send me to inland France.
Sean held out his hand. ‘Forgiven?’
We shook hands. ‘You do realise, though,’ I said, ‘that Captain Gunnar thinks I’m creating excitement to liven up life aboard? He’s threatening to search my cabin for the gun.’
He grimaced. ‘That’s hard on you.’ He gave me a sympathetic glance. ‘Good thing you’re tough enough to take it.’
No help there, then. Whatever he was up to, whoever he was working for, he wasn’t going to step in on my behalf. I leant back on the rail. ‘The other thing I was going to ask you was if you know—’ I stopped dead. If Sean knew Mike and hadn’t let on to him, he wasn’t likely to let on to me. If Mike knew him from some shady incident in their past, and Sean didn’t know Mike, then it might be safer to leave it that way.
Sean’s head had whipped round. ‘If I know who?’ I didn’t like the look in his narrowed eyes.
I substituted lamely, ‘… if you know the sail locker. I think that’s where the stowaway started his hideout.’
There was a long, charged silence. ‘Someone aboard thinks he knows me?’ His eyes searched my face. Then his light manner returned. ‘Ah, I’m a well-known man about town, so I am.’ Around
us, the other trainees straightened up as Nils’s ABs called them forwards to the centre of the deck. Sean nodded at me. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve duties aboard this ship.’
He lounged after them. Damn. I’d given away far more than I got in that little encounter. I waited for a moment, looking out at the shifting sea, then headed back to my cabin.
CHAPTER NINE
Nils did the handover briskly: course, distance from the Pentland Firth, no oil rigs in the way. I could see it took him an effort to say ‘God Vakt’, then he headed below, steps hard with simmering anger. Whatever was wrong between him and Mike, it was just as well Mike hadn’t come up to supervise. He still didn’t appear as the watches lined up. I took that as a good sign. Perhaps Sean had explained to Captain Gunnar about his gun after all … then the captain himself appeared, checked our course and heading with me and went to stand in front of the nav shack, looking down over his ship.
The youngsters were restless. They huddled together when they formed their line, with frequent glances over a shoulder or across the deck at the shifting waves. Ellen was my first standby helm. ‘What’s got into them?’ I asked her, nodding downwards, once I’d sent the safety watch on his rounds and got the helm, Gabriel, steady on his course.
She sighed. ‘Nonsense, of course. One of the boys was remembering an old photo he’d seen, with the heads of two drowned shipmates in the water, following their ship.’
I knew the one she meant, a black and white image of two faces looking up at the ship’s side from the waves. I’d seen odd things at sea, but that particular picture hadn’t convinced me – the faces looked too big, for a start, and the rigging framing one didn’t join the ship’s side. However, from a starting rumours point of view, it was perfect.
‘Then one of the others looked out,’ Ellen continued, ‘and said he’d seen something in the water, like a face, and then the girls became all excited, and started looking for it, and, well, you know how easy it is to see something you’re looking for.’
I did indeed. ‘So now there’s a rumour that we’ve got a ghost following us.’
‘They’re enjoying scaring themselves,’ Ellen said comfortably.
She was right, of course; they’d enjoy the thrill of it, but once that tension was aboard the ship, panic wouldn’t be far away. I hoped, how I hoped, that Olav had been mistaken, that the Russian had indeed got off in Stavanger and that Sean would keep his gun safe. We needed a positive distraction – and then the sun came out from behind the last grey rags of cloud and poured warm beams over us. The hanging sails went from smoke-grey to creamy white, the water dazzled in a gold pathway stretching from us to the western horizon. The last lumps of cloud at the edge of the sea could easily have been Tír na nÓg, the fairy land.
The sails were doing us no good now. The wind had fallen. I set my trainees to furling them up. Then, of course, there was rope coiling. Erik, Mona and Petter went around, encouraging, and Mike appeared on deck, but he didn’t come up to supervise me, just went round the trainees, exchanging a word with everyone. Sean appeared from below and began chatting to Erik.
Suddenly, there was an excited shout from the lookout. ‘Delfiner!’ An arm waved, pointing downwards. A grey and white torpedo burst upwards in a roll of foam, curved its sickle fin over the waves and dived under again. Rope coiling was forgotten as all the trainees crowded to the sides to watch. There were three of them, white-sided dolphins, playing on the bow wave of the boat, diving up and under her prow, slipping back along her side with the wave, then speeding forward again.
It wasn’t correct ship’s practice, but dolphins were a great treat for trainees, and on a day like this it would do no harm to have one experienced person at the wheel for ten minutes. I went forward to Captain Gunnar. ‘Sir, may I take the helm to let the trainees on duty go forrard and watch the dolphins?’
His eyebrows drew together. There was a long pause, as he thought about it, then he nodded. ‘Permission granted.’
I went back to Ellen and her standby. ‘On you go, they’re worth watching. I’ll take her.’
They hurried down to the waist of the ship, leaving me alone at the great wheel. I braced my feet and took a firm grasp of it, feeling the movement of the ship beneath me. The masts stretched above me; the dolphins played on the turquoise sea, so joyous in all their movements that it felt like they were welcoming us as fellow travellers in their element. I watched them diving and twisting, swift and lithe, and felt the wind on my cheek, and smiled at the misty horizon.
The moment stretched on. Nils came up the nav steps for a last look round before bed, and ducked down again. Mike and one of the trainees came up the starboard steps and passed aft, Mike pointing as if he was indicating Shetland, Fair Isle, Orkney; just to the north of us. I forgot I was Cass Lynch, Officer of the Watch, and returned to my first time on board a tall ship, standing at the wheel with the ship alive under my feet, and the embarrassment of trying to fit in with fashion-conscious French teenagers behind me. With the ruthlessness of sixteen, I’d blanked out Maman’s worry at finding me gone. After all, I’d left her a note. She knew where I was: I’d taken a tall ship to Scotland. After a year in exile fifty miles inland, I’d been back where I belonged, with the grey waves of the North Sea tumbling about me and the salt tang in the air.
As abruptly as it had begun, playtime was over. A last jump, a twist under the bow wave, and the dolphins were gone, leaving the glimmering sea empty. Ellen came back to her post. I handed over the wheel reluctantly, and checked our course again. Below me, Erik coaxed the excited trainees back to clearing spaghetti, but most of the younger ones were too elated to listen; they were comparing photos and describing what they’d seen to each other. The adults worked steadily away, foremast, mainmast, mizzen, coiling up the long ropes and hanging them up on their belaying pins.
The sun was setting by the time the decks were clear. Above it, long skeins of cumulus reflected their scarlet tint back to the water, so that we were sailing in blood-red waves, with the path to the sun brighter gold. The horizon dazzled, too bright to look at, then turned creamy yellow as the sun dipped below the glinting sea. The clouds faded to amber, whisky gold, and back to grey. On the other side of the sky, the first star peeked out through the rigging.
Six bells; eleven o’clock. The last hour of watch was always the hardest, with everyone’s thought turning bedwards. Mine too; I covered my yawn with a hand. Below me, Erik, Mona and Petter were gathered in the centre of the ship with the trainees spread in groups around them, leaning against the railing or sitting on the benches. Drowsiness clouded over us, slowing our movements and softening our voices. I shook myself out of it and went to check our course, re-instruct the helm and write up the log.
I’d just finished doing that when Agnetha came up the nav-shack steps and out on deck, a mug in each hand. ‘Here, Cass.’
I clasped my hands round the warmth, dipped my nose to it and smelt the rich chocolate. ‘Thanks. That’s welcome.’
We leant companionably against the nav shack. The ship’s lights had come on now, green on starboard, red on port, white at masthead and stern, darkening the blue sky, dimming the stars. We were our own little planet in this endless sea. Beside me, Agnetha’s coffee smelt rich and sharp. She drank about half of the mug, then cradled it to her chest. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen Mike about?’
Her voice was tense in its striving for a casual tone. I shook my head. ‘Not for a while. He was about earlier, on deck, talking to the trainees.’ I frowned, trying to remember. He’d been down in the waist of the ship, then come up aft with someone in a red jacket. ‘An hour ago, maybe – no, more than that. About the time we saw the dolphins.’
The worried lines about her mouth deepened, but she only said, ‘I’ll catch up with him later.’ Her voice became more natural. ‘The trainees always enjoy seeing dolphins. It makes the trip for them.’
I smiled. ‘For us too. I’ve never got over the thrill of a close encount
er.’
‘But they must feel very far down on this ship, compared to your yacht, where you could reach out and touch them.’
‘Far down is exactly what you want when it’s a pod of killer whales. I came up with a dozen of them off Shetland, every one of them the length of my Khalida. All I could think of was this video I’d seen on TV of them reaching up to take seals off rocks.’ It had been amazing, of course, thrilling to be so close, but my heart was pounding like I’d just run a marathon, and I’d never been as relieved as I was when they swam off.
She laughed at that, face lightening. I wished there was a way I could say, ‘I know, and you have my sympathy,’ but there wasn’t. The only way I could support her was by keeping everything normal. ‘We’re nicely on course for the Pentland Firth. We should spot Fair Isle and Orkney during blue watch tomorrow morning.’ Shetland would be just too far to the north, unless it was an exceptionally clear day. I felt a pang at my heart. I loved the Norwegian scenery, the soaring hills, the fjords with their spread-out houses, each with its own little jetty, the conical hat lighthouses, but Shetland had become home once more. Sometimes, waking up to another rain-washed morning between forest-green mountains, I longed for the low, brown heather hills around Brae, and the little sheep crunching along the shoreline, the white tirricks diving, then rising with a flirt of their forked tails, and the marina seals sculling round. I’d been a whole year at home; I’d watched the first daffodils open along the roadsides and seen the burns become yellow with marsh marigolds. The shalders had arrived, peep-peeping along the shore, then the Arctic terns, white swallows of a Shetland summer. The heather had bloomed purple and faded again, until the hills were rust auburn, then the snow had dusted them white. I’d got used to land colours around me, the subtle colours of Shetland, where there were few trees to usher in autumn in a blaze of scarlet or greet spring with a rush of new green. The colours were in the bones of the land and the tints of the sea.
Death in Shetland Waters Page 11