Death in Shetland Waters

by Marsali Taylor

  The captain nodded, and gestured him towards the nav-shack steps. Descending back to deck level, I caught a buzz of Norwegian speculation among the youngsters in the smoking corner: ‘Don’t be stupid. The police could easily wear kilts as a uniform in Scotland.’

  ‘He didn’t have a gun.’

  ‘Yes, he did. I saw the bulge of it, strapped under his jacket.’

  Full marks for observation. I’d missed that one. Police Scotland must be taking this very seriously, if they were allowing an armed officer aboard a training ship full of youngsters. Still, if somebody had to have a gun, I’d prefer Gavin to my cousin Sean.

  ‘See?’ Dimitri crowed. ‘I said they were police. They’re investigating the mystery man in the tunnels.’

  ‘Do you think there’ll be a gun battle?’ Sindre turned to flick his fag-end overboard, and saw me. There was a sudden silence. I murmured ‘God dag,’ and tried to pass on, but was instantly surrounded.

  ‘Is it true we have a stowaway aboard?’

  ‘Did he kill Olav, because he saw him?’

  ‘Are they the police?’

  Captain Gunnar wouldn’t want me to answer any of these questions. I did my best. ‘The Norwegian Special Branch searched the ship in Stavanger, you saw that. There can’t possibly be a stowaway aboard. However, there are formalities to do with losing poor Olav overboard like that.’

  ‘Is he a policeman?’ Nine persisted.

  I nodded. ‘DI Gavin Macrae of Police Scotland.’

  ‘His kilt’s really cool,’ Anna said. ‘It’s a much more interesting uniform than ours. Why doesn’t the woman get one?’

  ‘They’re both in plain clothes. DI Macrae wears the kilt because he likes it.’

  ‘Don’t his legs get cold?’ Sindre asked.

  I shook my head. ‘He’s got a treble thickness of best wool cloth round his upper legs, compared to your single thickness of denim, and his socks are wool too.’ I gave up on heading below, and went for my Scottish Tourist Board badge. ‘Did you notice the knife?’

  Some heads nodded. ‘In the top of his sock,’ Nora said.

  ‘That’s called a sgian-dubh. The sheath’s under the sock. And the leather pouch thing’s called a sporran.’

  Someone had to ask. ‘What does he wear under his kilt?’

  ‘I’ll leave you to ask that,’ I said, and escaped. Four bells rang out over my head as I gained the quiet of my cabin: six o’clock. An hour till dinner. My constant hunger was explained now too. The baby inside me was grabbing all the nourishment it could get, planning to grow from blueberry size to plum size over the next week. Surely I’d have a bit of time before it showed … enough time to tell Gavin, and my parents. My heart plummeted at the thought of the trouble ahead. Dad – well, Dad’s reaction would depend on Gavin’s. He still had the belief that what a woman really needed for happiness was a husband and a skirtful of bairns, and if Gavin wanted that too, then all would be congratulations there – except that I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to become the Old Woman in a Shoe, with a good Catholic family that would sit between us in the pew, in descending height order. I didn’t want to be like Maman, longing and longing for the music she’d lost until she could bear it no longer and just ran. Maman would understand that I didn’t want to get married and have six children when the sea was still calling me …

  I made a cup of tea in the crew’s galley. The captain’s door was closed, but a steady sound of voices came from within. I was carrying my mug back to my room when the door opened and Sergeant Peterson came out. ‘Cass. I was just coming to look for you.’

  That was my lie-down gone. I followed her into the room.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  They were seated round the captain’s polished table, with Captain Gunnar at the head of it and Henrik at the other end. On the far side was an open laptop, policeman’s notebook and pen that I took to be Sergeant Peterson’s, then Gavin, with Jenn and Rolf beside him. Agnetha was facing Gavin, with Sadie and Anders on each side of her, and Nils had been called down from on duty. Gavin nodded gravely at me and indicated the spare seat opposite him. ‘Thank you all for joining us.’

  Formality was obviously the order of the day. I glanced quickly at his green jacket and saw the bulge my sharp-eyed youngsters had spotted. We all nodded, murmured variants of ‘You’re welcome’, and waited for the inquisition to begin.

  ‘I’ve called you all together to get an overview of what information we have. We’ll then do individual interviews. Now, with regard to this suspected stowaway.’ He nodded at Sergeant Peterson, who sat down behind her laptop and began to tap instructions into it. ‘While I was waiting to come aboard, I got in touch with the police in Kristiansand for more information about the man they warned you about. They sent a photograph and description.’

  Sergeant Peterson turned her laptop around. There, bang in front of me, was the man I’d bumped into in the fish market: the cropped hair on that bull head, the flared nostrils. I gave an involuntary ‘Oh!’ and Gavin looked across at me. ‘You recognise him, Ms Lynch?’

  ‘I saw him in the Fiskbrabaren, the morning that we sailed. He was dropped off by a motorboat, and I walked straight into him. That’s why I remember his face so clearly.’

  ‘Alexander Viktor Bezrukov. Wanted in several countries, traced as far as the Warnemünde district of Rostock, right on the Baltic Coast.’ He turned back to me. ‘What sort of motorboat?’

  ‘An Aquador, maybe thirty foot.’ Anders nodded; it was the sort of boat that could have come across from the Baltic. ‘I didn’t take any notice of registration or name. It was just one of those fibreglass hulls, white and cream.’

  ‘He’s a very dangerous man. That’s why we’ve been sent aboard.’ He spread his hands: tanned hands made for use, not ornament. ‘Now, there’s not a lot we can do about him at the moment. Can we establish that he was indeed on the ship?’

  Anders leant forward. ‘There was someone similar to this. I saw him the first day, on deck. He was wearing a dark jacket. He smoked on the boat deck.’

  Gavin’s gaze moved to me. ‘I can’t swear it was the same man,’ I said. ‘But the man I bumped into, this Bezrukov, smelt of tobacco, and the day we sailed, someone who smelt of cigarettes had been lurking in either the sail locker forrard or Erik and Petter’s cabin.’

  ‘Did you see the person?’ Sergeant Peterson interrupted.

  I shook my head. ‘But the smell didn’t come from any of the suitcases. On Friday, Olav – the first man to go missing – spoke to me about a Russian-looking man.’ I tried to recall his exact words. ‘He called him a “mystery man” because he didn’t talk, just nodded and turned away. He described him as having “iron-grey hair, cut short, and a Russian face. Broad shoulders, and a dark jacket.” He’d seen him at meals.’

  ‘And it was Friday you were knocked over by somebody in the tunnels.’

  I nodded. ‘It was all too quick for me to see who. Big and strong, and smelt of cigarettes.’

  ‘Then on Saturday the ship was searched by the Special Police.’

  ‘They found nothing,’ Captain Gunnar said.

  ‘But Petter remembered a hiding place which they might have missed,’ I said. I looked sideways at Anders. ‘In the engine room, in a corner, floorboards which lift up and lead to a cargo space.’

  ‘He didn’t look there?’ Gavin said quickly.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Good.’ Gavin looked around us all. ‘I must emphasise to all of you that we don’t want heroics. I’d rather this man got away than have a multiple shooting aboard this ship. If this man is still aboard, then don’t approach him, don’t draw attention to him. Keep well away from him.’ His gaze went to Anders. ‘Do you know of this hiding place, Mr Johansen?’

  Anders shook his head.

  Gavin’s grey eyes travelled round us. ‘Is it a hiding place that would be known to all the crew?’

  Henrik frowned, as if he was trying to remember something. Nils and Agn
etha shook their heads. ‘I don’t know it,’ Agnetha said. ‘But then, I wouldn’t be in the engine room, except for safety checks.’

  Gavin’s gaze moved to Jenn and Rolf. ‘Not my area of the ship,’ Jenn said.

  ‘I think I remember,’ Rolf said. He flushed, as if he thought he was incriminating himself. ‘I forget why we were down there, but I did know about it. When you said Petter, I remembered. We were down there, Petter and Erik and I. I think we were perhaps talking about using it for storage, but it was so inaccessible that we decided not to.’

  ‘But it’s not somewhere obvious to, say, people visiting the ship while it’s in port?’ Sergeant Peterson asked.

  Rolf shook his head. ‘Oh, no. The engine room is off limits while there are visitors aboard.’

  ‘So,’ Gavin said, ‘it’s unlikely that the man could have explored the ship beforehand, on an open day, and spotted that hiding place?’

  Erik and Rolf spoke almost as one. ‘Very unlikely.’

  Erik continued, ‘He could perhaps have found it if he’d known what to look for. The engine room is made off limits only by a chain across the door. It’s not locked. He could have waited for his chance and ducked under.’

  ‘So you think that somebody who did know of the place showed it to him.’

  Reluctantly, Rolf nodded.

  Captain Gunnar stiffened. ‘You are accusing one of my crew of smuggling him aboard?’

  Erik flushed, Rolf opened his mouth to protest and Petter looked down, uncomfortably.

  ‘I didn’t draw that inference, sir,’ Gavin replied. ‘I presume the ship’s hull is worked on over the winter. A carpenter or caulker in the yard could have found that space, and remembered it.’ He nodded to Sergeant Peterson, and she turned the laptop back and rattled her fingers on the keypad. ‘Now, to the voyage since Stavanger. Is there any evidence he is still aboard?’

  I took a deep breath. Captain Gunnar wasn’t going to like this. ‘Yes. On Saturday, in the mist, Olav came up to speak to me, and Captain Gunnar sent him forrard as an extra lookout while the radar was off. I asked Petter to find out what Olav had wanted, and he came back to say Olav had told him that the mystery man in the dark coat was still aboard. Olav had been on galley duty, helping prepare and serve meals, and he recognised the man’s face.’ I paused, then kept going. ‘The last time Olav was seen was at the end of his shift as lookout.’ I remembered the smear of blood I’d seen, but couldn’t force myself to declare it. It was too melodramatic.

  Gavin flicked at glance at his notes. ‘Olav Olsen, who went missing between ten and midnight on Saturday.’ He looked at me. ‘Your watch, Ms Lynch?’

  I nodded.

  ‘On the face of it, it seems astonishing that someone could be killed on board this ship, filled with trainees, with nobody noticing.’

  ‘I agree,’ Captain Gunnar said. ‘A deliberate killing is most unlikely. Of course, an accident is also unlikely. But if the man suffered a sudden heart attack and fell, silently, when nobody was looking at him—’

  Gavin nodded, and returned to me. ‘Ms Lynch?’

  ‘I’ve thought about that,’ I said, reluctantly. ‘It was a misty night. The off-watch trainees were almost all below, and the wind was blowing on the side he presumably fell from – the steps he was about to go down when he was last seen – so the on-watch trainees were on the other side of the banjer, having a breather from taking sails down. The lookout pair, who were nearest, were focused on what they could see forwards, and paying no heed to anything behind them.’

  ‘That explains very well,’ Captain Gunnar said swiftly, ‘why nobody saw him fall.’

  Gavin nodded, and left that one there. ‘If you can give me the names of the last people to see him, I’ll talk to them. An investigation of a person lost overboard is a perfectly legitimate excuse for me to be aboard.’

  ‘He was watching with Ludwig and Ben,’ I said, ‘and the relief lookouts were Ellen and Naseem.’

  ‘Your watch? Then I’ll borrow them from you this evening, and get a quick statement from each of them.’ He looked round us all again. ‘It could very well have been an accident, of course, though accidents are unusual aboard Sørlandet.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve looked up your record.’ Captain Gunnar bowed his head in acknowledgement of the compliment. ‘All the same, I don’t like the coincidence that has Olsen disappearing immediately after believing he’s seen our possible stowaway.’ He flicked the pages of his notebook again. ‘Now, Mike Callaghan, your chief officer. If you could think, please, about when you last saw him, and with whom. I would ask you, as your captain has already asked you, not to discuss your memories with each other. Now, the white watch is on duty currently, and then the blue, immediately after the whole-crew muster?’

  Captain Gunnar nodded.

  ‘If you’ll permit, sir, we’ll talk to the non-watch officers first.’ He checked a list. ‘The chief steward.’ He looked up and Henrik nodded. ‘The medical and liaison officers.’ His gaze flicked to Sadie and Jenn, moved on to Rolf and Anders. ‘The bosun and the chief engineer.’ He turned to face Agnetha. ‘Then the officers of the red watch.’

  Agnetha had herself well in hand, and neither moved nor changed colour. All the same, I saw Sergeant Peterson shoot a look at her, then fire a clicking of words into her laptop.

  ‘There’s one thing about Mike which might be relevant,’ I said. ‘He had a wonderful memory for faces and names.’ As I’d hoped, Sergeant Peterson diverted her attention from Agnetha to me. ‘Yesterday, before I went on watch, I went into Jenn’s room and found him checking the trainee photos on the computer.’ I looked at Gavin. ‘Rolf photographs every trainee on board, when they arrive. I wondered if Mike had spotted the odd man out, and was checking that he wasn’t a trainee.’

  ‘Possible,’ Gavin agreed. He looked back at Agnetha and continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘Depending on the time. Do you usually have a sleep before your watch?’

  ‘I do,’ Agnetha said, ‘and one of my ABs does. My watch leader and my other AB are night owls, so they stay up till midnight, then have an extra sleep after breakfast.’

  ‘Then if it’s before nine o’clock, we’ll speak to you and the other AB first, and the night owls after that.’

  Agnetha nodded agreement.

  ‘The white watch tomorrow morning, after breakfast, and the blue in the afternoon.’

  There was a short silence, broken by six bells ringing above our heads. Henrik leapt up. ‘You must excuse me. Detective Macrae, now is the time that our evening meal is served.’ He made a sweeping gesture at the table.

  ‘Of course.’ Gavin nodded at Sergeant Peterson, who began putting her laptop away.

  ‘You will of course eat with us,’ Captain Gunnar said. ‘Rolf, show Sergeant Peterson to the other ranks’ mess, and bring an extra chair here.’

  Ha! Below the salt. I tried not to grin as Sergeant Peterson was shown along the corridor. It had probably been arranged so that she could assess the other ranks as Gavin assessed us.

  It was a subdued meal. From the blue watch point of view, that was partly because I didn’t have time to talk, if I was to be on deck booted and spurred – that is, with full evening watch gear and teeth pre-brushed – for Jenn’s pep talk and ‘moments of awesome’. Naturally, the helicopter descent was voted the most awesome, but the view of Orkney got a vote from the older trainees.

  We were still chugging along the north of Scotland, with Cape Wrath off our beam. It wasn’t yet time to make the 90 degree turn that would take us down the Minch, but we could start shortening the distance with a bit of slant. I checked the course on the plotter and took it back to the helm, Nora. ‘270 degrees.’

  She repeated it. ‘270. Right.’ She looked as if she was struggling with the weight of the helm; on the other side, Jan-Ole, the stalwart fisherman, leant against it. I waited till they were on the new course, then went back to check the chart plotter for other vessels. None within ten miles.

  It was a grey e
vening: grey fleece skies, grey hills spread out in the distance, grey sea. It was strange to be sailing this route again. I’d done it in my Khalida just six months ago, going down to Gavin’s loch for Christmas. I’d sailed in the dark, steering by compass from lighthouse to lighthouse. Now we were in the light nights, even this far south, with only a couple of hours of twilight after midnight.

  On the thought, Gavin came to lean over the rail beside me, his green sleeve touching my black mid-layer. ‘This was the way you sailed to visit us at Christmas.’

  ‘I was just remembering that.’ I leant against his shoulder and felt the warmth of him, close to me, caught a breath of Imperial Leather soap. I felt a surge of love for him that shook me. I wanted to cuddle close, but I was afraid he’d read the rising panic within me. When, how, was I going to tell him? His hand clasped mine on the rail, let go again. ‘Your captain’s put me in the hospital cabin. I’m to keep strictly to the book on this one.’

  ‘I know.’ I straightened up again.

  ‘I’m still compromised, so Freya will do your interview.’

  I made a face, but swallowed the ‘What’s she doing here anyway?’ that sprang to my lips like a three-year-old. ‘OK.’ I remembered the blood. ‘I couldn’t come out with this one in front of Captain Gunnar, because he’d say I was being melodramatic, but I was sure I saw blood on the porthole in the easiest place to throw someone over.’

  ‘Where?’

  I nodded forward. ‘To starboard, where the steps from the forrard deck come down, in the space where there’s no rigging. There’s a porthole just below there. It’ll be clean to the naked eye now, with the sea washing it, but your forensics experts might get something, come Belfast.’

  ‘They might, but blood’s not evidence of murder. He might have scratched himself falling.’ He turned around, making a space between us, his back to the sea, and looked upwards, then turned to smile at me. ‘Have you been allowed any mast-climbing?’

  ‘We officers are too dignified. Maybe in Belfast, when the trainees aren’t looking.’ If we weren’t going to get to be together, then I’d have to wait till Belfast to tell him. A jolt of relief ran through me, followed by apprehension. I couldn’t keep it from him through all those sea miles; he was too quick. He’d know something was wrong.