Death in Shetland Waters

by Marsali Taylor

  ‘Good idea. Your place or mine?’

  ‘Either,’ I said.

  ‘Yours is nearer.’ She led the way across the passage. The two heads, black-and-white and grey, lifted as we came in. Rat yawned and snuggled down again, but Cat disentangled himself, stretched, and came down to settee level. I sat down and lifted him onto my knee. ‘Good Cat.’

  Agnetha shut the door behind us and sank down on the settee beside me. ‘Oh, that’s good, after standing for four hours. Hallo, Cat. Hei, Rotte.’ She leant her head back against the mahogany side of my berth, and closed her eyes. I sat beside her, and waited. She was tough, Agnetha, and proud; she wouldn’t break down in tears. I tried to imagine what she was going through, but the thought of Gavin going missing, believed killed, made an iron hand clench around my heart. I thrust the thought away. That was different. There was relief as well as grief in Agnetha’s rigid face. She’d lost Mike, and she’d give the world to have him back in it, even if it meant giving him up, but losing him also meant the end of the deception, each meeting being stolen from her duties or his wife. It meant she’d be free to have an abortion, if that was what she’d decided.

  The moment drew out. The last waves of the Merry Men overfalls slapped against the side of the ship. Then suddenly Agnetha’s control broke. She gave a gasping sob and buried her face in her hands, her whole body shaking. She wasn’t crying; her breath came in harsh rattles. Tentatively, I moved along and put an arm around her shoulders, lightly, giving her human contact, if that would comfort her. To do any more would feel an intrusion.

  We sat like that for a good five minutes and then she took a deep breath, and straightened, and I drew back from her. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Making an exhibition of myself. I needed that, though. I’ve been controlling myself all day. Since last night, when I looked for him, and couldn’t find him.’

  I nodded.

  She turned towards me, face shadowed. ‘You knew. Didn’t you?’

  ‘Only since yesterday morning.’ I picked my words carefully. ‘I heard your voice in his room.’

  Her eyes flew to mine, then flicked to the wall behind her. ‘When I was at the washbasin.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you know about—’ One hand indicated her stomach. There was no time to think of a lie. ‘Of course you do.’ Her gaze hardened, as if I was suddenly an enemy. I stared back, puzzled. ‘Well, don’t start preaching. The choice is mine.’

  There was nothing I could say to that. She was an adult who could look up all the latest medical thinking about what a foetus was: a joining of cells that gradually grew a head, a backbone, limbs. When it became a human being was where we differed.

  Agnetha held out a hand to clasp mine. ‘I’m sorry, Cass. I’m all on edge. Hormones.’

  ‘Grieving,’ I said. ‘Shock.’

  ‘Yes, those too. He was ten times more alive than anyone else. I can’t believe he’s gone. I keep thinking I hear his voice, or expect to see him when someone walks along the corridor.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘And the worst of it is: we parted on a quarrel.’

  I didn’t know how to comfort her. ‘You’d have made it up, if he’d lived.’

  She shook her head. Then, suddenly, as clearly as if she’d said it, I saw her remembering who I was: the policeman’s girlfriend. She managed a smile. ‘Yes. You’re right. Of course we would have.’ Her voice rang out as false as poor-quality copper nails under a carpenter’s hammer. ‘In fact, that’s why I was looking for him, to say sorry, and make up.’

  Her sky-blue eyes were peering sideways at me as if she was checking that I was swallowing this. ‘It wasn’t a serious quarrel – well, you heard. I was just feeling wretched, and taking it out on him.’

  I wanted to tell her that I hadn’t heard the words, but I knew how bad a liar I was. I nodded. Agnetha changed position. ‘It’s hard, this. Hormones everywhere, and feeling bloated and sick.’ Her eyes were on my face. ‘You know.’

  For a moment I didn’t know what she was talking about. Then, suddenly, it all rushed together, like blood to the head. The way I’d been feeling bloated and lethargic, which I’d put down to too much rye bread and not enough exercise, and the queasiness in the mornings. My mouth fell open. I couldn’t think of anything to say, just sat there gaping at Agnetha like a guillemot panicking at an approaching boat.

  Her eyes were still guarded. ‘You hadn’t worked it out?’

  I shook my head. My brain was doing sums. Seven weeks since Gavin had been aboard, on the fjord trip. Could these changes happen so quickly? I’d missed a period, but I wasn’t particularly regular anyway, so I hadn’t worried about it. The time we’d been together before that was in March. That was too long ago; surely I couldn’t be a whole three months gone and not have known it. And we’d been careful …

  ‘Morning sickness can start at six weeks,’ Agnetha said, reading my thoughts. ‘And last till twelve weeks. I’ve been looking it all up.’

  ‘I suppose,’ I said slowly, ‘that I’m seven weeks.’ But how, my brain was saying, could it be? We’d had so little time together …

  ‘Too late for the morning-after pill, but plenty of time to get rid of it.’ Agnetha’s voice was flat, as prosaic as if she was talking about throwing away an old jumper. ‘It’s no big deal.’

  She made it sound so easy. Instinctively, my hands moved to clasp my abdomen, even as my head was going, Of course, that’s the easiest way out. Suddenly it was hard to breathe. What was I going to do? Gavin and I had barely begun to know each other, and I’d just got back to sea; I couldn’t bear to leave it again … and yet inside that curved space under my fingers was my child, a tiny living human being, already dependent on me. I hadn’t meant to create it, but now I had to live with the consequences.

  ‘I’ll have to leave Sørlandet,’ I said, slowly. My heart wrenched, like a fish trying to escape a hook. ‘But only for a while. When she turns into an academy, I could leave for those two years, while she’s a teaching ship, and then return.’

  Agnetha shook her head. ‘Only if you’ve got a devoted mother who’s prepared to raise the child for you.’

  I tried to imagine Maman taking on a toddler. ‘No.’ I didn’t want even to think what she would say about me giving up my career so soon. My brain began scurrying ahead, trying to make plans. Khalida’s cabin would be fine at first, while it was at the carrycot stage, but what about when it began to toddle? I tried to remember the arrangements of netting on the guard rails that I’d seen used by other parents, and caught myself up on the word ‘other’. I was thinking like one already.

  ‘Or if you have a house-husband.’ Her eyes were steady on mine. ‘Would your Gavin give up his career so you could keep yours?’

  I shook my head. It wasn’t just that he was proud of his role as part of the Police Scotland serious crimes team. I knew that being in work mattered to him in a fundamental way. You couldn’t reconstruct a thousand years of Scottish male breadwinner bloodline with a mere thirty years of women in equal roles. Could I give the sea up more easily? A knot of panic gripped me at the thought. Yet he’d want his child to grow up ashore … I’d like to have a family, he’d said. Were we somehow so in tune that he’d felt my body changing?

  Agnetha spoke over my thoughts. ‘You see, I’ve considered it all, over and over. It’s just not possible. Sure, you have plenty of time off, and that’s all very well when the child’s sleeping, but if it’s a wild day and you’re on duty, you can’t expect other people to amuse your child below. Or if it needs you at night while you’re on watch, you can’t abandon your post to go below and soothe it, or read an extra story because it can’t sleep, or whatever. No. Captains can have their children aboard because they bring their wives to do the actual caring. Cruising couples can take them round the world, the family together, and good luck to them. But for us, no. The child or the career. The choice is that simple.’ She rose. ‘Look, I can see this was a shock to you. I know how that feels. I’ll leave you to get
used to the idea. See you later.’

  I slid to my bunk and swung my legs up. Cat and Rat came to cuddle in; Cat in the crook of my shoulder, Rat on one arm. The engines throbbed reassuringly, and the sea curled around the porthole with a soft shoosh. Above my head, Nils went aft to the helm; I could just hear the murmur of his voice. It would be steady as she goes until we were well clear of Cape Wrath.

  I felt as though I’d received a crack from a flying block. My brain had simultaneously accepted the news and rejected it. I knew I was pregnant, yet I didn’t believe it. A ridiculous voice in my head was saying triumphantly, See, you weren’t seasick!

  Seven weeks. I reached for my laptop, then remembered that of course there was no Internet. There was a basic medical book on the captain’s shelf, ready for a quick consultation when the ship’s hospital cabin was locked. I checked nobody was about, nipped through and brought it back to my cabin, heart thumping. Pregnancy. The picture showed that the baby inside me was well past the collection of cells stage, well past being a tadpole. It had a misshapen head, with bumps where the features would be, and stumpy arms with tiny webbed fingers. According to the text, it was the size of a blueberry. I couldn’t honestly say it was recognisably human, but if you had to guess, human would be the most likely.

  What it looked like didn’t matter. The church taught that it was human from the moment of conception, and I felt that too. I couldn’t see any other defining moment where you could say it went from being a collection of cells to a person. I put the book back and came slowly into my cabin again. I felt sick. There was a tiny human being growing inside me. I laid one hand on my stomach, feather-light, and tried to imagine the little heart beating under it.

  What was I going to do?

  What Agnetha had said made sense, of course. I couldn’t have a baby and the sea too, or not this life, aboard Sørlandet. I’d still have Khalida, though, with her sails bent on, ready to take me out into the ocean. It would only be the end if I let it be. Once he or she was born, I’d work out how we’d live. I was young, and strong. We’d do it somehow.

  That ‘we’ reminded me that Gavin was in this too. His promotion meant he was no longer stationed at Inverness, although that was his base, but might be sent anywhere in Scotland. If he wanted to be a hands-on father, that wouldn’t fit in so easily – and I was sure that he would want to be, although as I said it so certainly to myself, I felt as though a cold hand was gripping my breastbone. Maybe, when it actually came to it, he wouldn’t want to be involved. Maybe a here, there and everywhere girlfriend was one thing, and a wife and baby quite another. I suddenly realised that we’d only ever talked about when our joint schedules would let us meet up. We’d never seriously discussed how our separate lives could be twisted to make one.

  I was looking at the white wood ceiling and thinking about it all when I heard another noise swirling through the wind: the chop of helicopter blades, the sound rising and fading as it turned. Gavin! I shoved the apprehension away under thankfulness. Whatever was going wrong aboard this ship, now we’d have professional help. I rose, ignoring Cat’s protests, hauled on my boots, and headed up on deck.

  The helicopter was still a mile away. I glanced at my watch: ten past five. Not bad timing. Captain Gunnar was on deck, talking on a hand-held radio to the pilot. ‘The aft deck, then. I’ll make sure it’s cleared. Sørlandet standing by.’ He clipped the radio back on his belt and turned to us. ‘They’ll land Macrae and his sergeant on the aft deck. Nils, make sure all trainees and crew are off the aft deck for now, and put your watch leader on the helm.’ He glanced round at me. ‘Cass, tell the trainees the helicopter’s going to land a couple of men. There’ll be a lot of wind, so although they’re welcome to take photos, they’ll need to watch they don’t lose cameras and hats overboard.’ A sweeping glance round us all. ‘Get all hands on deck. Go round making sure everything is stowed securely. White watch: midships; blue watch: boat deck; red watch: foredeck.’

  I gave a quick glance round for my team. Yes, Erik was there, Mona, Petter. ‘Erik and Petter, you go for the boat deck, and Mona and I will warn the trainees and check the main deck.’ Loose items didn’t stay long aboard ship, so everything should be lashed down, but it wouldn’t hurt to check. I went down to deck level and found a bunch of my youngsters watching the helicopter. It was close enough now to see the chevrons on its underside.

  ‘It’s a coastguard helicopter,’ I told them. ‘They’re dropping a couple of people off. It’ll be spectacular to watch, but keep a tight hold on your phones; the down-draught’s fierce. Can you pass the word round?’

  I did a quick headcount, nipped below to get the last stragglers on deck, and grabbed four of the reliable ones. ‘Can you go round the ropes making sure they’re all fast round a belaying pin. Thanks.’

  ‘Line up the watches!’ Rolf yelled from the aft deck. I repeated it below, and the blue watch came into its place. The chopper was coming downwards now, circling the ship. The hatch in its belly opened and the winchman began to descend with another person strapped to his chest. I saw the flutter of Gavin’s kilt, a corner of plaid tugging loose from the climber’s harness.

  The noise was horrendous, and the down-draught far worse than I’d expected. It was like being in the centre of a hurricane. The air sucked at my jacket and tugged my hair from its plait, and my ears hurt with the deafening throb that started overhead, then echoed from all around the ship. It got louder, wilder. The double spider above us descended on its thread, growing to become a man in orange, with goggles and white helmet, and Gavin, also helmeted, kilt fluttering around his bare knees. A moment with legs flailing, and the winchman talking into his helmet, then the pilot dropped the pair of them dead centre of the space aft behind the captain’s coffin. Gavin undid the buckles and straps, handed the helmet back to the winchman and came forward, looking as trim as if he’d stepped on board at the quayside. I knew he’d spotted me from the air; a quick nod, then he headed for Captain Gunnar, standing straight and stern on the captain’s promenade.

  Gavin wasn’t tall, but he carried himself with the upright bearing of a Highlander, alert as a golden eagle on a crag. He was wearing his second-best kilt, the green hunting Macrae, teamed with a faded green tweed jacket whose pockets bulged, due to his habit of carrying a little tin of fly-making equipment. He had green wool knee-socks with a little dagger in the top of one, wood-handled to match his plain leather sporran. Behind me, phones flashed as our young Norwegians sent photos of this Scottish native home. The down-draught from the helicopter ruffled his dark red hair, cut short enough to discourage its natural curl.

  He and the captain shook hands as the winchman returned upwards, and waited together for the sergeant to be buckled on. The twin burden came out of the hatch and eased downwards. I saw a flash of gold hair tugging free from under the helmet and a familiar dark trouser suit, and felt my jaw stiffen. What was she doing here? I must be mistaken … but as she descended, it became clear that I wasn’t. There, suspended with the winchman, was Sergeant Peterson from the Shetland force, she of the mermaid-green eyes and calm indifference to human oddities. The last time I’d seen her, in the Viking treasure case, she’d accepted that I was on the side of the angels (‘For once,’ her raised brows had added), but she’d still banished me to tea-making once things got interesting. Civilians, her calm dismissal had made clear, particularly disreputable civilians who’d been the prime suspect twice over, weren’t allowed into confidential police business. I supposed that was fair enough, but I didn’t have to like it.

  My next thought was dismay. I’d expected some anonymous sergeant who could be pushed off to the lower ranks mess. I was never going to manage to talk to Gavin, really talk to him, with Freya Peterson hanging around, determined to be top sidekick.

  She landed on deck, took the helmet off and stood there, neat and lean as a cormorant on a skerry, pale beak tilted up to the sun. Not a hair was out of place. She gave a quick look around, establishing the layo
ut, then she too walked forward to Captain Gunnar. I lip-read her greeting. ‘Sergeant Peterson, sir.’

  The winchman jerked upwards, the chopper rising as it reeled him in, then it spun sideways and headed back south-westwards. As the noise faded away, I became aware of my ears ringing. Around me, my watch was chattering and comparing photos. Rolf stepped forward once more. ‘White watch, back to your stations,’ he called from above our heads. ‘Blue and red watches dismissed.’

  That included me, of course, and however much I might want to stick my nose in, I knew my place at sea. Gavin would come and find me when he got the chance. I was just heading for the passage to the officers’ quarters when Captain Gunnar called Agnetha and me up. Inwardly sticking out my tongue at Freya Peterson, I went smartly up the steps. ‘Sir?’

  He turned to Gavin, very formal. ‘The other officers of the watch: Second Mate Solheim, and Third Mate Lynch.’

  Gavin held out his hand to Agnetha first, then to me. ‘Gavin Macrae.’

  ‘Sir,’ I said, in my best no-nonsense manner.

  His grey eyes gleamed with amusement. He wasn’t good-looking, my Gavin; or perhaps he was, but in a plain, Scottish way, with a square jaw, a long, rather wooden mouth, a nose that had been benkled by too much rugby in his youth, and level, uncompromising brows over eyes the grey of a misty sea. A good bloke, that’s what he looked like; a mate who’d lend you a fiver in a pinch, or who could be trusted to take your girlfriend to the pub when you had to stand her up. Not somebody who’d be cleverer than a murderer; definitely not. If he wasn’t convinced a suspect had got that idea yet, he brought out his battered tin and tied flies. Nobody can remember what lie they’re telling when they’re busy watching my fingers, he’d told me once. ‘When do you go on watch, Ms Lynch?’ he asked, blandly, as if he didn’t know.

  ‘Eight till midnight, sir.’

  ‘Then I’ll talk to you in the morning.’ He turned to the captain. ‘May I talk to you first, sir?’