Below me, the watches were beginning to muster. Agnetha came up beside me. Her face was bone-white, with dragged circles under her eyes and a long line running down each side of her mouth. The eyeshadow she’d put on didn’t quite disguise the red rims to her eyes. Involuntarily, I put out a hand to her. ‘Are you sure you’re well enough to stand watch? I can keep going.’
Her eyes brimmed full of tears, but she shook her head and moved away from my touch. ‘I’m fine. I’d rather be busy. What’s our course?’
‘288 degrees. Just keep well off Stroma, and be ready for the Merry Men.’ I had the pilot book ready at the right page. ‘Here.’ I checked the plotter, marked our course and scribbled the log entry. ‘God vakt.’
‘God vakt skal vaere.’
But it wouldn’t be, I knew. I waited there until she’d instructed the new helm and standby, then we went below together to lunch.
Captain Gunnar waited on his feet until we were all present, and then closed the door. ‘I have something to say to you all.’
I could feel everyone trying not to look at Mike’s empty place.
‘We are fortunate that Mike is not a member of a specific watch, so that his absence has not yet been noticed by the trainees. I beg of you all, do not mention it anywhere outside this cabin. We do not wish a panic.’ He sat down in his place, letting himself fall heavily, an old man at the end of his career. He had been almost twenty years on the Sørlandet, and loved her as a sailor came to love the ship that took him flying though the waters, that sheltered him in storms and brought him safe to port. He was doing his best to lead us through this, but it was a situation he’d never foreseen, and the damage it would do to his ship’s reputation was breaking his heart.
‘I have talked to you all. Mike was seen at various times earlier in the evening. He was at Jenn’s muster. After that, he went below for a while, to his cabin, but then he came out and was on deck, chatting to the trainees. He was last seen coming aft with a person who has not yet been identified.’
I felt the words cold in my breast. Captain Gunnar gave us all a long, steady look. ‘Two people missing. I would like to say that it is a second tragic accident, but I cannot believe it. Mike was not one to have a heart attack and fall silently overboard.’ His dark eyes went around us. ‘I have contacted the police.’
There was silence, like an indrawn breath.
He looked round us all. ‘You will remember Gavin Macrae, who joined us on the first fjord trip of this season.’ If it hadn’t been so serious he would have smiled. ‘The Scotsman who climbed the mast in his kilt.’
My heart thudded.
‘Macrae is an inspector in the Scottish police. I called him directly. He passed me on to his superior officer, but I stressed the international nature and youth of the crew, and the unfortunate media coverage that might create, as well as diplomatic difficulties. I made a good case that DI Macrae’s familiarity with the ship would be of help in investigating Mike’s disappearance. I have asked that all be kept as discreet as possible, but—’ He shrugged, and gestured with his hands. ‘I beg you all, let us do what we can to minimise the damage to the ship’s reputation.’
‘How can we keep it from the trainees,’ Nils asked, ‘if we have police here?’
‘He does not look like a policeman, and I suggested that he could be sent aboard in a pilot boat.’
Aboard? A full four days before we expected to be together … I had difficulty keeping my face impassive over the leap in my heart. He was coming, and soon.
‘A routine customs inspection of the ship,’ Henrik suggested. ‘The trainees will not know how very far from routine it is.’
‘Say nothing unless you’re directly asked. If you are …’ He paused for a moment, one hand stroking his moustache. ‘No, not customs. It is a police visit to do with the death of Olav.’
‘But won’t he need to interview the trainees?’ Nils asked.
‘I will allow that only if it becomes necessary,’ Captain Gunnar said. He didn’t know Gavin. Interference with the investigation wouldn’t be allowed, as I knew from my own attempts. There could be an interesting clash of authorities here. My spirits were rising by the second. Gavin was coming, we’d have professional backup at last, and I’d be able to tell him about the Russian, about Sean and the gun, and be believed. ‘Inspector Macrae has asked that you do not discuss what you saw yesterday evening with each other. Think for yourself where you saw Mike, and when, but do not talk about it. In particular, think about his state of mind – if he has seemed worried to you, or depressed. The inspector will interview you when he comes aboard.’
We all nodded.
‘And if anyone asks where Mike is?’ Henrik asked.
‘Say vaguely that he is somewhere about, and ask if you can help, or offer to give him a message.’
We all nodded, and the captain rose, picked up an apple and headed into his cabin, closing the door behind him, and leaving silence in the mess room. We were all struggling to take it in. This kind of thing didn’t happen aboard a tall ship. We were braced to deal with storms and whales, cold-water showers and grumbling trainees, but two unexplained disappearances were outside our experience. I knew I should be used to death, because I’d seen enough in the past year, but it still came as a shock, a blankness in the mind, that Mike had been here with us yesterday and was gone today.
I was glad Gavin was coming.
None of us had any appetite now. We left the table and headed about our duties. I went to stand on deck for a moment, greeting the trainees mechanically as I moved among them. Orkney was to starboard, with the red cliffs round the west of Hoy just starting to come into view; we’d be able to see the Old Man of Hoy soon. On port the north coast of Scotland was spread out, a long line of humped hills, grey as the fretted clouds above them, with the opening to Scrabster and Thurso just visible. Seeing the land reminded me I’d get a signal now. I fished out my mobile and dialled Gavin. ‘Hey.’
‘Halo. What on earth have you been up to?’
I glanced around me at the trainees lining the rail, mobiles in hand. ‘I’ll tell you all about it when you get here. When will that be?’
‘It’s not that easy. Your captain suggested a pilot boat, but he doesn’t know our Highland roads.’ In the background there was that echoing bustle of an airport, and a bing-bong announcement. Gavin paused to listen to it. ‘That’s us. 13.40 to Stornaway.’
I visualised my map of Scotland. Stornaway was on Lewis, in the Western Isles, and at least a day’s sailing away. ‘Why Stornaway?’
‘They talked of a pilot boat from Scrabster, but by the time I get there, you’ll be coming up to the Cape Wrath light. A bit of a trip. So my boss talked to the coastguard helicopter instead. The government closed half the stations, but Stornaway is still open, so all I have to do is get there, and then they’ll fly out to you and land us right on the deck. Hopefully avoiding the masts. Hector – he’s the winchman – sounded quite excited about it. He says he’s never done a drop on a tall ship before.’
‘You sound quite keen yourself.’
‘I’ve never done a helicopter drop before.’
I thought about being dangled from a spinning bird in the sky and felt my stomach lurch. ‘You’re welcome to it. So when do you hope to get here?’
‘Arrival in Stornaway, 14.25 … say an hour to get to the chopper and get all organised … then we have to fly to you. Not before five o’clock.’
‘I’ll be glad to see you,’ I admitted. ‘Beanneach leat, safe flight.’
Up on the boat deck, Jenn was assembling her troops for yoga. I went up to join them, and spent the next half hour twisting myself into odd shapes, with the water rolling grey below us. As I placed my hands, my mind was writhing too. The captain had sent straight for Gavin, and pulled rank to steamroll his objections. Perhaps that meant he thought I was in the clear. Or, I thought gloomily, manoeuvring myself so that I was on my side, balanced on one leg and one hand, more likely he had m
e in the frame for everything, and hoped that Gavin would minimise the publicity for my sake. Not that a public arrival by helicopter could be called unobtrusive …
On the aft deck, opposite us, Agnetha was on duty. Her face was still pale, but she was moving on her round of nav shack, chart plotter and helm as briskly as if nothing had happened. I looked across at her from under my braced arm, and she spotted me and lifted a hand. I moved into the position we’d nicknamed ‘the crab’, levered up on backward twisted arms, and saw her wavering upside down. Pregnancy must have upturned her world, stealing all her certainties for herself: her life aboard, her career, her ambition to be the first female master of a tall ship. I lowered myself back to the deck and lifted again. Upside down … my plait swept the deck. Jenn counted to eight, and I collapsed, thankfully. I’d thought I was fit, but this used muscles I didn’t know I had.
My talk on the Vikings and Orkney/Shetland was at three, so I headed below, my whole body glowing, to check over my notes. I hated public speaking, but it was part of the job. In this case, I was planning to take the trainees through the Norse/Shetland history, starting with the first Norse settlers in Unst in the eighth century. They’d spread down to the rest of Shetland, then to Orkney, Caithness and the Scottish and Irish coasts. I talked myself through it in my head. The early homesteads, the kleber industry, the fish trading enterprise at Jarlshof for the Norwegian longships heading south or west. Shetland had stopped being a Norse colony in 1469 with the marriage of Christian I’s daughter to James IV, although the treaty pawning it to Scotland insisted on maintaining the Norse laws and language, ready for it being redeemed again. The Scots crown wangled their way round Denmark’s many tries. The links continued through the Hanseatic League, with a series of booths in Shetland supplying best quality salted fish to traders from Germany, Flanders, the Baltic, and Norway. It ended with the Union of Parliaments in 1705, when an act was made to stop Scotland trading with anyone but England, followed by a heavy tax on imported salt. It was Shetland’s bleakest time. That should take twenty minutes of my half hour. After that, I’d talk about how aspects of modern Shetland reflected our Viking heritage: the double-ended boats, the spread-out settlements and narrow fields stretching down to the water, the long, low croft houses that were being replaced everywhere by Norwegian wooden ‘kit houses’, the place names. I’d finish by reciting a poem in dialect.
It was pleasant out on deck, dry and calm, so I got Rolf to lug me out a whiteboard and the trainees gathered round. Cat came out and sat on one of the benches, washing his whiskers and smoothing out his plumed tail. It took me back to summer, teaching the Brae bairns, with them crowded round the shed whiteboard and Cat presiding from the top of one of the boats, though talking about Viking Shetland was a far cry from reminding my Brae trainees about the no-go area and five points of sailing. I suppressed the pang of homesickness and busied myself drawing a rough map of Shetland, Orkney and Norway.
It all seemed to go fine. I talked as clearly as I could, and used the slowly passing scenery of Orkney to illustrate some points, and tried not to listen for the sound of a helicopter which couldn’t be here for two hours yet. The adults nodded their heads, and the teenagers took photos and winged them back to Norway. I answered a few questions, then my audience dispersed, and I headed to the aft deck to join the others in a well-earned cup of tea. 15.40. An hour and twenty minutes to go.
The aft deck was busy with the off-duty crew gathered together over flasks of tea and coffee. Kjell Sigurd brought me a coffee, exactly as I’d asked for it last time. I watched him go on round the crew and realised he’d memorised everyone’s preferences. The boy was a star. The galley girls must have decided we needed cheering up, for today there was a plate of meltingly gooey chocolate brownies. Anders was still on engine duty, but from the chocolatey look of Rat’s whiskers, he’d already had his share. I helped myself to one, as good as it looked, a crunchy crust with a toffee-soft inner.
‘That was interesting,’ Erik said, leaning on the rail beside me, mug suspended in the air above the glinting water. His voice was too cheerful; I shot a quick look at him and saw that he was pale under his tan. The hand holding the mug shook slightly. Quickly, he cupped the mug in both hands and raised it to his lips, then held it on the rail. ‘You must guide us when we come to Shetland at the end of July.’
‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a much better guide lined up for you: my friend, Magnie. What he doesn’t know about Shetland isn’t worth knowing.’
‘I’ll look forward to that. Once this voyage is over.’ He turned his back to the trainees and lowered his voice. ‘How soon do you think Gavin will get here?’
‘An hour or so.’
‘But what can he do?’ Erik drained the last of his tea and cradled the empty mug. ‘He’s surely not going to search the ship himself. After all, if this mysterious stowaway the trainees talked about …’ He paused, biting his lip, then continued. ‘If this man killed Mike, he’s not just going to come out with his hands up for one policeman.’
I certainly hoped he wouldn’t try to arrest the Russian single-handed. ‘Captain Gunnar’s just trying to do the right thing.’
Erik nodded gloomily. ‘I wouldn’t want him to get hurt, hunting this man.’ His eyes were unhappy, his tone bitter. ‘Sometimes doing the right thing causes a lot more trouble than if you’d done the wrong thing straight off.’
I gave him another look, under the cover of resettling myself on the rail. I wondered if he was thinking of Mike and Agnetha’s affair, though it was too late now to say what the right thing was; leaving his wife or abandoning Agnetha both felt like wrongs to me. Erik flicked a speck of loose paint over into the water, and echoed what I was thinking. ‘Or maybe it’s just that what felt like the right thing was actually wrong after all, and then trouble multiplies from it, and you’re left with a choice of wrongs.’
‘Mike and Agnetha?’ I said softly.
He started at that, as if he’d forgotten I was there, and looked behind him again. His voice echoed my murmur. ‘Did Agnetha tell you too?’
I shook my head. ‘I overheard something. Is there anything I can do to help?’
‘Not if Mike’s gone.’ His barely audible voice was heavy with grief. ‘There’s nothing anyone can do.’ His shoulders straightened, his voice hardened. ‘Except get the bastard, whatever it costs.’
I didn’t like the emphasis he put on the last words. Whatever it costs. I hoped he wasn’t going to try any heroics. ‘Remember Micaela, and the children,’ I said awkwardly.
His eyes blazed at that. He shot out a hand to grasp my wrist. ‘What do you mean?’
I stared at him. ‘I was just worried that you were going to get him yourself.’
‘Oh.’ He drew the sound out long. ‘No. No, I won’t try to do that.’ He let go of my wrist and turned away, walked off without another word, leaving me staring after him, disquieted. Something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. I had a sudden memory of Micaela’s anxious face as she waved us off. She still expects a sudden knock on the door, Erik had said. I wondered if that was what was at the root of her fears: not an affair on board ship, but the fear that someone would come for her while Erik was away. Maybe their marriage didn’t automatically make her a Norwegian citizen … My next thought was to wonder how she’d got out of the repressive regime. A student visa, which had long since run out? If she was an illegal resident, the nightmares were understandable. Furthermore, if she was illegal, I wasn’t sure what the children’s status would. It was all so complicated nowadays.
Something was wrong, for Erik to blaze out like that; but I didn’t see how Micaela’s nationality or status could be relevant to what was going on aboard. Erik and Mike were mates. If Mike had known Michaela was illegal, he wouldn’t go threatening Erik. I didn’t believe that for a moment. Besides, Erik could just have countered with threatening to tell Captain Gunnar about Agnetha’s pregnancy, since he was in her confidence.
I thrust the
thought away. Agnetha. Nils. My cousin Sean, if there was some past history between him and Mike. I wondered if his gun had a silencer. The stowaway, if he was still aboard, was the most likely of all. Even if Captain Gunnar refused to believe in him, Gavin would.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I went to see if Agnetha wanted a coffee refill. She was still on duty, checking the chart plotter, giving instructions to the helm, then turning to receive the safety watch. Her eyes were red, but she was holding herself together well.
‘More coffee?’
‘Oh, yes please, Cass.’
I took her mug, refilled it, grabbed the last brownie and took them over. ‘How’re you doing?’
She flicked a quick glance at me, and I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to know about the baby, about Mike. ‘Good.’ Her voice was determinedly normal. ‘Steaming steadily towards America. We’ll turn the corner during your watch, about ten o’clock.’ She nodded at the red cliffs on our right. ‘There’s your Old Man of Hoy.’
I looked, and saw the sandstone column jutting up above the cliffs. ‘You wouldn’t catch me climbing that.’
‘Yes, people do odd things,’ Agnetha agreed. The ghost of a smile touched her lips. ‘Nothing like a nice safe mainmast.’ She tilted her wrist to check her watch. ‘Ten minutes.’
Below us, the trainees were starting to gather to their sides of the ship. Nils drained his mug and came over to us. ‘Course?’
‘Steady as she goes,’ Agnetha said. ‘We’re out of the tide race now.’ She went into the nav shack with him to do the handover stuff, then came out and linked her arm through mine. The gesture was friendly, but the arm was bar-hard, and shaking. ‘So, your Gavin’s coming aboard to sort us all out.’
‘Something like that,’ I agreed.
‘You’ll be glad to see him.’ She gave me a sideways look. ‘Won’t you?’
I smiled. ‘A whole four days before I expected him.’ I felt the tension in her arm, and wondered if she needed a chance to talk. ‘Come and collapse.’
Death in Shetland Waters Page 13