‘Well, I’ll go down and start these interviews. You just behave now, tomorrow, when Freya talks to you.’ He glanced around. ‘I’m hoping that if our man is coming out among the trainees, he’ll go back underground when he hears them talking about police officers on board.’
My heart gave a terrified bump. ‘You don’t think he’ll try to take you out?’
He gave me a reassuring smile, and shook his head. ‘Not unless he’s cornered, and I’m not going to go anywhere near that situation.’
He strolled away and wove his way around the trainees amidships, where Erik and Mona were taking them through the names of the sails in Norwegian English and (with help from Dimitris) Greek. Erik had got out chalk, and was busy drawing a diagram of the sails over the deck. We’d be popular with the red watch tomorrow, come scrubbing time. I listened to the litany that breathed Drake, Spanish galleons, romance, royals, topgallants, upper topsail, lower topsail, foresail. They’d do the square sails first; then the staysails, the triangular sails suspended between the masts, would come easily. Røyl, bramseil, merseseil, stump, fokk. I peered down at the writing on the deck. βασιλική πανί, topgallant, άνω topπανί, χαμηλότερες topπανί, προσκήνιο πανί, Dimitris had written. πανί was sail – I knew that much Greek from my days teaching children in the Med. Good improvisation; the boy would go far.
The wind had turned bitter, but it was a bonny enough night. Erik organised races to reach the right sail first, then they began racing to its ropes. Lena, the trainee in the Bob Marley jacket, whose mutinous face I’d noticed on the dock, came up from below to join in, even though it wasn’t her watch. She was flushed and laughing, the delight of being at sea glowing in her face. Slowly, at a gentle jogging pace, we crept across the wrinkled waves. I looked ahead on the chart and began drawing angles. Another half hour and it would be time to turn, ready for the run straight down to the Minch.
Jan-Ole had moved from standby to helm when I went back to give the order. ‘205 degrees. Right.’ He began to spin the wheel, and it jammed. He looked up at me, frowning, then tried again. I put out a hand to stop him; he was strong enough to do serious damage. ‘No, don’t. Steady as she goes for the moment.’
We were, of course, right in the middle of Scotland’s fishing grounds. The chances were we’d picked up a great lump of net, which the wash from the propeller had sucked into the gap between the rudder and the skeg it was hinged from, wuppling the rudder so that it couldn’t move.
Jan-Ole was thinking along the same lines. ‘It’ll be a net in the rudder.’
We exchanged a That’s a pain face. The rudder stretched down to ten feet below the surface of the water. Fixing it would be a wetsuit job, and of course we’d have to switch the engine off while the diver was down, so we’d be wallowing. I gave the mountains of Scotland a measuring glance. We were well offshore. We’d have searoom to do this now, so long as it was a straightforward cut-it-off job. I just hoped it was rope or net, and not something with wire in it.
Check the obvious first. There was no reason why anyone should have shoved anything on top of the cogs and shafts of the steering mechanism in the captain’s coffin, but people could be incredibly lazy about taking life jackets back where they belonged when there was an apparently handy locker to shove them in. I’d look there first.
It was called the captain’s coffin from its shape, six feet long and with a raised top like an old-fashioned coffin, double-lidded. The word Sørlandet was carved along each upright side. I came around Jan-Ole and lifted the port side.
I knew then, of course. On my side the long, threaded shaft stood out clear, but it was jammed by something on the other side: a curl of hair, an arm’s length of navy jumper with one limp hand dangling, navy trousers dim under the pointed lid. I felt the deck sway around me and closed the lid, hanging on to its raised edge with my fingertips until the world had steadied again.
I was glad I had two adults on the helm. The youngsters didn’t need to know about this if we could possibly keep it from them. I turned and met their eyes. They could see something was wrong. I squared my shoulders, and spoke calmly. ‘There’s been an accident. No, don’t look. Aage, could you go and tell the policeman in the kilt that the captain wants him here. Go down the nav-shack stairs. He’ll be interviewing in the captain’s cabin.’ I looked at them imploringly. ‘Don’t say anything to anyone else. Please. We don’t want the youngsters to get all panicked.’
‘We will say nothing,’ Jan-Ole agreed. He swept a glance around the deck. ‘It is the chief officer who is missing, no?’
I nodded. Aage set off down the steps, leaving Jan-Ole and I staring at each other. ‘You will not be able to keep it from them for long,’ Jan-Ole said, practically.
‘As long as I can,’ I said. ‘Keep as you were.’
It felt a long two minutes before Gavin and Aage came clattering up again. A pause, then Gavin came strolling forward beside Aage, the pair of them as casual as sea-gazers on a beach promenade, with Sergeant Peterson behind them.
‘I’ve found Mike,’ I said. I jerked my chin towards the captain’s coffin. ‘In there.’
Gavin’s brows drew together. ‘What did you touch?’
‘The lid, this side. He’s under the other side.’
‘OK. Can we leave him in situ until we can get forensics out here?’
I shook my head. ‘He’s fouling the steering. That’s how I came to find him. We can’t turn the wheel, and we need to.’
‘Have you told the captain yet?’
‘No.’
‘Right. Freya, you go and do that now.’ He checked his watch, and looked at Jan-Ole and Aage. ‘You two are on the wheel until …?’
‘Another twenty minutes, then there will be a new standby.’
‘Twenty minutes. That should do it.’ He waited beside me until Sergeant Peterson reappeared with the captain behind her. They went straight to the far side of the captain’s coffin and lifted the lid. I turned my head away, but not quickly enough. Mike had been shoved under the lid, scrunched up to make him fit, so that his face was canted at an odd angle, and there was a dark bruise on his nose where the lid had pushed it down. His eyes were open, staring in blank surprise. I gave a quick glance around to make sure Agnetha was safely below. She didn’t need to see this. Whatever the Russian in the dark jacket had done to him, she didn’t need to know the details. But it was a strange sense of humour that had left him here, in the captain’s coffin. How could Bezrukov have known that was what we called it? Why not just throw him overboard? Was he hoping for a panic, to cover his leaving the ship in Belfast? But surely a dead body would only bring the police aboard in swarms.
Gavin closed the lid again. ‘Normally, sir, we’d leave everything until forensics can get here. However it’s obvious he’s been placed here, rather than this being where he died, so I have no objection to his being moved. Can he be taken to your cold store without being carried across the deck?’
Captain Gunnar frowned. ‘Down the nav-shack stairs and through the tunnels, yes. I’ll organise crew to do that. Erik, Nils and Rolf should be able to carry him between them.’
I looked down at the main deck. My watch was having a breather from racing around from sails to ropes. ‘If I get Petter to bring the rope bag out, my watch could tie knots up forrard, under the shelter of the banjer, on the far side from the nav-shack door. That way we might be able to lift him out without too much attention.’ The captain nodded approval, and I went down to call Petter up and explained what I wanted him to do, without going into why. ‘We need to keep their attention off the aft deck for half an hour.’
It took ten minutes to get them all settled; some had to have a smoke first, of course, others had a quick swing from the bars along the side of the banjer roof, but eventually they were all lined up along the furthest half of the main deck, heads bent over pieces of rope, learning reef knots, bowlines and clove hitches. Cat went along to join them; he always enjoy
ed rope work because there were dangling ends to chase. By that time Rolf had found a spare piece of canvas, and he, Erik and Nils were standing by. I sent my safety watch youngster off to do his rounds. The captain gave the trainees a last look, then nodded. ‘Go.’
They’d just started to lift the lid when Agnetha came up the nav-shack steps. I saw by her face that she knew something was wrong. Swiftly, I tucked my arm in hers and drew her forward to the railing in front of the nav shack that looked out over the main deck. ‘Don’t look. We need to mask what’s happening behind us.’
She heard the urgency in my voice. I felt her sag against me, but she had the self-control to keep her voice soft. ‘What’s happened?’
She would have to know sometime. ‘We’ve found Mike.’ I felt her instinctive jerk forwards. ‘He’s dead. Don’t turn.’ I could imagine how he would look as they brought him out, frozen in that scrunched-up position, with the hand that should be dangling as stiff as a dead starfish. ‘They’re taking him below.’ It would be like manhandling a statue down the narrow, curved nav-shack steps, down the stairs to the next level and through the tunnels. Gavin had gone ahead of them. I wondered if he would take his gun in his hand before entering the below-decks region.
There were several soft thumps and knocks as they got him around the corner and down the stairs, elbows and feet banging the wood as they passed, followed by the scuffling of feet negotiating the corner. The closing of the lower door cut off the sound. We stood there in silence, imagining it. The shuffling along the corridor and down the next stairs. Edging their way through the tunnels, one man at Mike’s head, the other two at his feet, all on the alert for the least sign of movement. I suddenly thought of The Phantom of the Opera and pushed the idea of deformed monsters lurking in the darkness away.
The moment dragged on. They should be getting to the galley now, ready to open the door into the freezer. Trainees didn’t go in there. Erik and the others would make sure he was swathed round with the canvas, then they’d leave him to Gavin and Sergeant Peterson. I thought Gavin would say a prayer in his head, and joined him silently, my eyes on the tracery of rigging against the darkening sky: Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon him …
My hands were shaking. Delayed shock, I supposed. Agnetha put her hand on my shoulder. ‘Was it you who found him?’
I nodded.
‘I’ll get you something hot. Tea, coffee?’
‘Tea.’
She hesitated before going into the nav shack, then squared her shoulders. I heard her footsteps descending. On deck, we seemed to have got away with it. The toorie-capped heads were still bent over their knots. I just hoped that Jan-Ole and Aage were as reliable as they seemed. From lazy races aboard my Shetland friend Jeemie’s Starlight, I knew all about what men could do in the way of gossip.
To work. There was no point in standing here watching the banjer door for Gavin and Sergeant Peterson to come out. I checked our course again, and went back to Jan-Ole. ‘Go for 205 degrees now.’
The wheel turned smoothly under his hands. Slowly, the ship turned until the mountains of Scotland were stretched along our port horizon. Ahead of us, a grey headland stretched out, with a humped island crouched before it: the point of Sandwood, and Am Balg. The great lump of mountain with its high peak wreathed in cloud and a lower peak to the side was Beinn Dearg.
Agnetha returned, and slid a mug of tea into my hands. I clutched it gratefully.
‘Was he,’ she said softly, ‘in … there?’ Her chin tilted back behind us.
I nodded.
‘What had been done to him?’
‘I couldn’t see.’ I put a hand on her arm. ‘Try not to think about it.’
She jerked away. ‘I can’t help but think about it,’ she hissed, and clattered down the nav-shack steps, leaving me feeling foolish. Tactless. I looked bleakly out at the grey water.
‘It’s done,’ Erik said, in my ear. He came to lean on the rail beside me. ‘We laid him out in the cold store. The police want to look at him, then they’ll put him into the freezer until we reach Belfast.’ His voice was chilled, as if the cold had entered it. His hands clenched on the rail. ‘We have to do something about this.’
‘Two whole days till Belfast,’ I said. ‘We should arrive there about midnight on Wednesday.’
‘Two days is too long. We need to find the bloke and confront him.’ His voice was shaking with anger. ‘Deal with him.’
‘You know we can’t.’ I nodded down at the trainees. ‘Our first duty is to them.’
Erik’s voice was savage. ‘We failed in our duty to Olav, didn’t we? And what about Mike?’
There was nothing I could say to that. Erik waited beside me for a moment, fingers rattling a tattoo on the varnished rail, then he flung away, clattered down the steps to the main deck and began to do a tour of the ropes, tightening some, freeing the others which had been secured for the helicopter’s arrival.
I sympathised with him, but I was with Gavin on this one. There was nothing we could do now to help Olav or Mike except make sure we caught this man without further loss of life. We weren’t in the theatre, to take blazing torches down into the bowels of the ship. We were a little wooden world out in the Atlantic. The nearest city with a squad of arms-trained police was Glasgow, through the islands and up the Clyde; we could reach Belfast as quickly, and with less need for wondering about the change of destination on the part of the trainees. Some were leaving the ship in Belfast; they’d have flights booked. All in all, it would cause less fuss if we could keep going. Once we got to Belfast the ship could be cleared of all her crew and swept by the police. This time, they’d get him.
My safety watch came back from his round, reported that all was well and rang four bells. Halfway through the watch. Aage took over from Jan-Ole, Naseem came up as standby, Jan-Ole took over safety and Sindre headed for the foredeck. Cat came up to see what was going on and sat on the bench by the nav shack, looking out at the grey mountains as if he remembered them from our voyage at Christmas. Rolf came with tea and coffee all round, and insisted on putting two spoonfuls of sugar in mine.
It was a long two hours. Instead of enjoying our progress through the flat sea, with the mountains creeping by on the horizon and the glimpses of moon through the fleece-grey clouds, my attention was on the banjer door, waiting for Gavin and Sergeant Peterson to come out. They’d not go back through the tunnels, with just two of them; they’d come up the galley stairs, and so I watched the opening like Cat at a suspected mouse hole.
Six bells had just rung when they came out at last. You would never have seen in either of their faces that they’d spent the last hour dealing with a dead man: bagging his hands and feet, I supposed, removing the items in his pockets, covering him with clean plastic so that any traces of DNA on him would be left as uncontaminated as possible. Finding the cause of death. Gavin was brisk and upright, making a smiling comment to Sergeant Peterson as he came out on deck, then turning to join the trainees and inspect their knots. He took a length of rope and tied a reef knot, a bowline and a clove hitch in quick succession, then seemed to be answering questions the trainees were firing at him. One must have been about his gun, for he took it out, tipped the bullets into his palm and let them pass it around. You could see the country youngsters were used to handling firearms, squaring up and sighting through it knowledgably; the town ones, as I had with Sean’s gun, exclaimed at the weight.
Sergeant Peterson strolled along the deck, exchanging greetings as she went, leant for a while admiring the view, then came up to the aft deck and looked down at the chart plotter, with the little circle that was us flashing in the middle of the screen. She took a moment to match the map before her to the real world, looking down and up again. I nodded out to the right. ‘As the light dims, we should just pick up the lights on the Butt of Lewis and Tiumpan Head. Three o’clock.’ I touched the screen and drew the headlands out. ‘What I like about this programme is that it s
hows you the flashing pattern you’ll see. The Butt of Lewis is visible for nine miles.’ I was chattering, and knew it; I fell silent, and left her staring out into the grey mist of the horizon. If she wasn’t going to tell me what had happened to Mike, I wasn’t going to ask.
Then she turned around, staring aft at the wheel and the captain’s coffin behind it. ‘It would take some strength to lift someone the size of Mike into that.’
I hadn’t thought about it yet. I remembered trying to lift the half-weight dummy in my fire-fighting course, back in Scalloway, before I’d been shown how. ‘You think he knew how to do a fireman’s lift?’
Her eyes flashed green. ‘Do you know how?’
‘Yes.’ All the officers would, for the fire certificate was part of the Officer of the Watch course; but I wasn’t going to say that. ‘That explains what had puzzled me.’
She looked an enquiry.
‘How the person managed to put him in the coffin without me hearing. If he was on their shoulders, they just had to open the lid softly and lower him in.’
‘The coffin?’
‘The captain’s coffin. That’s what the steering box is called.’
I could see her focusing on that. ‘Appropriate name. D’you think that’s why he was put there?’
I shrugged at that one, and she turned away, back to her interviews. The evening dragged on to mustering and handover time. Eight bells. Undress. Bed.
I managed a quick goodnight to Gavin in the galley. ‘I wish I could join you,’ he murmured into my hair. There was something odd about his manner, as if he knew something he couldn’t share with me, yet wanted to.
‘No compromising suspects,’ I agreed, and he gave me a sharp look as if I’d hit a nerve.
Death in Shetland Waters Page 16