If I’d been airlifted off yesterday evening, what would I have missed? I started thinking ahead.
Wednesday. We’d be arriving in Belfast late today. There’d be all the customs inspections – tomorrow morning, probably, rather than today, by the time we’d docked. Then we’d be free to explore the city en fête – at least, the trainees would; we crew would be on duty that evening for an on-board party for some corporation that wanted to join in the tall ships experience. It was one of the ways Sørlandet kept afloat. Friday was the big crew parade through the city centre; all hands on duty again, in our best Sørlandet T-shirts. That would be followed by a prize-giving, and speeches, then some sort of party.
I couldn’t see any reason why anyone would want to make me miss all that fun. Granted, I wasn’t at my best in social situations, but I could talk about the ship to slightly drunk executive types with the best of them. Perhaps it was the customs inspection, with everyone on board lined up to be checked; was the person who’d worn my jacket and hat afraid I’d know them again? I considered that for a bit. Erik, Petter, Rolf, Agnetha. Erik was too tall, but the others were the right height, just shorter than Mike. Agnetha had slimmer shoulders than the men, but I reckoned any of them could have got into my jacket, and it would have been quicker for Petter to grab it from my cabin when the dolphins arrived than to get his own from his cabin beside the sail locker, forrard and down a flight of steps.
The stumbling block with that was that I knew them. They’d have no fear of the long, alphabetical customs line snaking round the deck as each person was taken into the officers’ mess and scrutinised. To worry about that, you’d have to be somebody I didn’t know. One of the trainees who wasn’t on my watch.
I could rule out Sean. He’d know I knew him, and besides, he had the Lynch height. Somebody else from the red watch? Bezrukov? But I thought I would have noticed him on deck last night.
I couldn’t see any pattern to it, but I had no doubt there was one. I lay for a bit longer thinking about it, then turned over towards Gavin. I’d need to be getting up soon. Cat leapt over us both, and landed on the floor with a soft thud. Gavin’s head lifted.
‘Only Cat,’ I assured him.
He curled his arm around me again. ‘How are you feeling this morning?’
‘Sore. I need to be getting up.’ Five bells rang as I spoke. I let the clang echo into silence. ‘Breakfast at seven.’
‘Mmmm.’ He sat up and stretched. ‘Can you stay in here while I shower?’
‘I can’t be kept under guard all day,’ I pointed out.
‘As much of it as I can manage,’ Gavin said. ‘Until we get safely to Belfast, and forensics. I want evidence.’
‘I was thinking about that,’ I said. ‘I wondered if the person who tripped me wanted me out of the way for the customs line-up. In case I recognised them.’
‘Maybe. But unless there’s something really important you’re not telling us, or something you know that you don’t know you know – that old one – I’m inclined to think someone’s trying to be clever.’
‘At my expense?’ I moved slightly, and winced.
‘I just have this feeling. You know, as if a conjurer’s trying to force a card on me. You’re being made too obvious.’ He lifted his head to look over me. ‘Is that the time? I must get up.’ He buckled his kilt around him in one swift movement, caught up one of my towels and headed out, closing the door firmly behind him.
I felt that shock of grief again as I moved. I had to try not to think about it. I got on with dressing, wincing every time I tried to raise my arm. My right arm, for a mercy; at least I’d be able to keep the log book. There was a nasty bruise on my hip, and a purple and yellow scrape on my ankle bone. I lifted my foot onto the settee to look at it more closely. Yes, it was where the person had hooked round my ankle, a defined circle, as if the point of a shoe had dug in, then a scrape backwards. The point of a shoe, or a boathook. I remembered the hard feel of it. If it had been a boathook then it had to be from where Agnetha had been standing, on the side of the bridge. Agnetha, my friend … I didn’t want to believe it, but my brain kept ticking on. I was the only one who could give her a real motive for killing Mike. Only she knew about the child that had been growing inside me. Maybe she thought a miscarriage might get me off the ship … she could have her abortion, and deny everything … Agnetha, my friend … I wanted to cry like a bairn.
I was dressed and in control of myself by the time Gavin came back, head damp. ‘Do you ever get used to having to step over a knee-high lip into any room with water?’
‘Normal life on board.’ My shoulder hurt too much for me to be able to do my usual French plait; I ran a brush though my curls and bundled them back with a band. My face was a sight: a graze on one side, to balance my scar on the other, and a mass of scab on my chin. There was more than a suspicion of black around one eye.
‘Maybe we’d better not go out together in Belfast,’ Gavin said. ‘I’d get taken in charge.’
‘Sure, and he’s my man, and a fine sowl when he’s not at the drinking,’ I said, in my best Dad accent. ‘You leave him be; I’m not after pressing charges.’ I straightened my shoulders. ‘Ready?’
‘Ready.’
One look at Jenn reminded me it was Canada Day: she had a Canadian flag blazoned on her sweatshirt and a maple-leaf transfer on each cheek. She pressed one into my hand. ‘You’ve got one whole cheek left. How’re you feeling this morning?’
‘Fine,’ I said. I dipped the transfer into her bowl of water and clapped it to my cheek, remembering the childhood thrill of peeling off the paper to see the vivid colours.
Agnetha had already applied hers, scarlet on her pale skin. ‘Hold on to it, Cass, it takes longer than you think. Let me see.’ She put her hands up to the paper and I felt a stab of disbelief that I could even think of her as Mike’s killer, peeling the backing off so gently. Her blue eyes met mine, clear and unshadowed. ‘There. Don’t touch it.’
Breakfast was a quiet meal. Anders gave me a concerned look, and I nodded, and shrugged with the shoulder that didn’t hurt. He nodded back, then flicked his eyes towards the captain’s cabin. I followed his gaze. The captain’s silver letter opener gleamed in one corner of the wooden rack above his desk. I should have told Gavin about it while I had him to myself. Captain Gunnar asked how I was, then focused on his oatmeal and raisins, lifting his head only to announce that the ETA for Belfast would be around 22.30. We’d spend the day making ready for port, please: touching up rust, brass, the usual.
It was a bonny morning. The wind was light, the sea moved only by the long Atlantic swell. The sun played chase with the turtle-back clouds just as the moon had done last night, spotlighting the sea with a pool of polished silver, then turning to a dazzling pathway snaking to the horizon. A Canadian flag waved at the mizzen cross-trees, and when I gave a swift glance into the banjer, there were maple leaves slung all along the front of the galley. To port was a long, low, grey island, Islay, with the Paps of Jura just visible behind it.
‘Islay,’ Nils confirmed. He seemed slightly less abrupt this morning. Maybe my damaged cheek and stiff movements were getting a sympathy vote. ‘You should see Ireland soon.’
We hadn’t far to go; less than a hundred miles now. ‘Course?’
‘190 degrees at the moment, changing to 110 when we enter the Irish Sea.’ He hesitated, then gave me a sideways look. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any truth in the rumour that you were pushed?’
He hadn’t been there. He shouldn’t have been there. His watch began at 4.00, and most folk on that watch slept early, then dozed in the afternoon. I hoped my sudden sharp suspicion wasn’t visible in my face. Your voice gives you away, Gavin had said to me once. I tried to keep it amused. ‘Pushed? The rumour mill’s working overtime.’
‘There have been too many strange happenings on board.’ He shot a glance forwards to the banjer. I knew he was thinking of the cold store below, where Mike lay shrouded.
&nbs
p; ‘Belfast today.’ They would take Mike away, and if Bezrukov was still aboard, he would presumably leave too, and cousin Sean, whatever he was up to, and we would have peace again.
Rolf had been sent to watch over me. His manner had changed too. Yesterday, he’d been a fellow crew member set to an awkward duty. Today, there was an odd sympathy in his manner, not quite patronising, but as if he felt I needed to be looked after until they got me safely ashore. I clenched my hands on the rail, and set my teeth, and endured it.
I set my watch to scrubbing off rust with a wire brush and painting over with anti-rust hardener, meanly leaving the brass for the red watch. The sun was warm on our backs, on the wooden decks. The Paps of Jura vanished into mist, Islay darkened from mist grey to slate, with a sharp cliff at one end, then slipped behind us. ‘Whisky,’ Jan Ole said wistfully, watching it retreat.
Halfway through, Rolf handed over to Captain Gunnar. He had that same paternal air. ‘Not long to go now, Cass,’ he said encouragingly, and took up his position on the nearest we had to a bridge, upright, beard neatly trimmed, one hand on the rail, the other on his staff, surveying his kingdom.
Not long to go till what? I wanted to ask, but didn’t dare.
He went back below when Agnetha came up with the mid-morning teas. She brought mine forward and leant on the rail beside me, looking out. She echoed my thoughts. ‘Belfast. They’ll catch this man, and then we’ll all be safe.’
‘I hope so,’ I agreed. ‘Oh, I do hope so.’
‘And Captain Gunnar will relax.’ Her hand rested on my shoulder. ‘You’ll see. He won’t really dismiss you in Belfast.’
My throat closed. I couldn’t look at her. ‘Is that what they’re saying?’
Her head bobbed downwards in the corner of my eye. ‘But it’ll all blow over. You’ll see.’
Dismissed. The word rang round my head like a blow. Captain Gunnar thought I was unstable. Trying to create excitement … I was the scapegoat for the stowaway, for things going wrong. I remembered Rolf’s careful consideration. Then the pain turned to anger. ‘Agnetha, how long have they been saying that I’m not right in the head?’
She looked uncomfortable at me putting it so bluntly, but she’d begun the conversation. She couldn’t back off now. ‘The first time I heard it was that morning.’ Her face twisted. ‘The last time I saw Mike. The morning we quarrelled. Somebody mentioned you at coffee, that the captain had caught you with a loaded gun and taken it off you.’
Nils had heard that rumour. I remembered him asking me about it.
‘That same evening,’ I said slowly, ‘someone dressed in my jacket and hat killed Mike, as everyone was watching the dolphins, when I was alone on the aft deck.’
Her mouth fell open, stretching the maple leaf on her pale cheek into a scarlet smear, like a bloodstain. ‘You think someone is setting you up to take the blame?’
‘I’m sure of it.’ The anger was warming. I felt my brain beginning to work. ‘I found that gun in the block store. I don’t know why the captain followed me down there.’ I couldn’t ask him if someone had sent him after me, but Gavin could. ‘That was in Stavanger. If someone had seen me then, the gossip would have been round straight away. Someone set it going the day Mike died.’
I turned to face her, and saw her thinking it through.
‘And the man in my cabin, two nights ago,’ I said. ‘He was gone before Gavin arrived.’
Agnetha bit her lip. Slowly, she nodded. ‘I heard about that too. That you’d said someone had come into your cabin.’
‘The only people who knew he was there were Gavin, me, and him. I haven’t said anything, and I don’t suppose Gavin would have. So why would that person spread it around, except to make it sound as if I was imagining things?’ I could hear it in my head: Oh, Cass said there was a strange man in her cabin. Nobody else saw him, of course.
Agnetha ran her tongue round her lips. ‘But who of us would do such a thing? Why?’ Then she saw it, and flung up a hand against me. ‘You’re not thinking that—’ The hand curved round to touch her chest.
I shook my head. ‘No.’
My safety trainee appeared at my elbow then: Gabriel. ‘I’m off to do the safety round.’
‘Good. Thank you.’
Agnetha was silent, watching him go down the stairs. ‘You would only have had a motive if you were mad. You had no quarrel with Mike.’
I thought I heard a courtroom voice say Unbalanced by pregnancy, and shuddered.
Agnetha kept talking, soft-voiced, eyes darting round to make sure nobody was listening. ‘But you’re not mad. And I quarrelled with him. That sergeant tricked me into admitting it, though I managed to keep why from her. But I didn’t kill him.’ Tears glinted in her eyes. She shook them away. ‘Who else might have had a motive? He got on with everyone.’
I laid my hand on hers. ‘Belfast. The police there will find this stowaway. They’ll investigate. It’s not our job.’
She pulled her hand away. ‘They always get it right, of course. No, that sergeant has one of us in her sights. You, because it looked like you, or me, because I have a motive.’
‘She might; Gavin doesn’t.’
She shoved herself upright. ‘Oh, Cass, don’t be so naive. Your Gavin will get you off. At my expense. Here, give me your mug.’
She snatched it from me and slammed it on the tray. I heard her feet clattering down the steps, and felt as though she’d slapped me.
I spent the next part of my watch mulling the thought over. Forcing a card, Gavin had called it. Someone was setting me up. The gun had been Sean’s, but someone had seen me find it, and sent the captain after me. That was a good start to making me look unbalanced. I was sure it had been Sean who’d nicked it back; if that same someone else had wanted to blame me, they’d have hidden it in my cabin. Still, it added another charge against me. Mike’s death, when only I was aft. The person had taken a huge risk. If Mike had cried out, I’d have turned – the thought made me wonder, with a shudder, exactly how he’d died. A knife. If he’d seen the knife, he’d have struggled, and he’d been strong and fit, likely to be able to hold a wrist and perilously sharp knife away from him for long enough to shout for help. No, if it had to be done silently, the old pirate movies would be the only possible way: a hand over the mouth, a knife in the back. In the films, it was quick and clean. I didn’t think it would be so easy in real life. You’d have to know exactly where to strike. I thought about that for a minute. We’d all done first aid, of course, but it dealt with hypothermia, airways, breathing, and consciousness, rudimentary bandaging and splinting. It didn’t say where you’d stab the spine to kill somebody so quietly that another person standing four metres away would hear nothing. Only Sadie, among us, had medical knowledge – but that didn’t mean it was her. You’d find it on the Internet … except that when Mike died, we hadn’t had any Internet connection since Stavanger, which meant someone had looked it up beforehand. Not a sudden fury, but premeditated murder.
I wished I could try talking this through with Gavin. I caught sight of Nils’s fair head on deck below, and wondered how long he’d known about Mike and Agnetha, about Agnetha’s pregnancy … except, I suddenly realised, he couldn’t have overheard the quarrel I’d heard. He’d been on duty. He could have heard them talking another time, though. I shook my head. It still didn’t work. However protective he was of his sister, killing Mike wasn’t going to help her. If it had been Nils, he’d have killed Agnetha.
Then there had been the person in my cabin. Someone who wanted to silence me, in case I’d recognised them? Or just another makeweight for madness?
My safety watch came back, handed over and headed for lookout. Now we were in the shipping lane. A container ship passed us, with a great extended deck and a white tower stuck on aft. Just after five bells the lookout spotted the first signs of Ireland, a low grey blur off the starboard bow, then Rathlin Island came into view, the same dark grey as the shadows on the clouds. Phones flashed and the tra
inees lined up on deck, enjoying the sun and the glinting sea, and watching the land come closer. The deck was alive with that air of excitement that you always get when port is creeping nearer; but it seemed to me there was an extra eagerness this time. There had been too many rumours flying round, of a dead man’s face peering up from the water, and a corpse knocking from inside a locked door. My bruised cheek and chin had got curious glances. Pushed … They hadn’t got to panic stage yet, but it was just as well we were coming into port. Land was safety to them.
I hoped it would be safety for me as well.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I’d been vaguely looking forward to hot soup, but I was out of luck; Henrik was starting to clear the galley for tomorrow night’s party on board. I ate my fill of rye bread, pickled herring and brunost, and headed back on deck to gaze idly at the red watch polishing brass.
‘Thanks,’ Agnetha said, looking at them. Her manner was back to normal. Life on board a ship was like living in a village; you couldn’t indulge in quarrels or hurt feelings. You just had to get on with everyone.
‘It’ll be us next time,’ I promised her. ‘Or we could shuffle it off on Nils.’ I glanced down at the trainees. ‘They don’t seem to mind. It’s quite a satisfying job, if you don’t have to do it often. And then Rolf’s going to do the singing, at 15.00. They always enjoy that.’
Enjoy it they did. Gavin and I watched from the aft deck as they lined up along the sides, backs against the ship’s rails to keep as far as possible from any embarrassing participation, but as Rolf launched in, they relaxed. He’d hung a whiteboard from the banjer roof, for scrawling the words on, and chosen the simplest possible shanties, starting with ‘What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor?’ He explained how the shanties, as well as being work songs to get everyone pulling in time, were the crew’s chance to be rude about the officers with impunity, and checked for where Captain Gunnar was before launching into a particularly scurrilous verse about the captain’s daughter. Ten minutes got them all laughing and joining in with ‘Heave away, haul away, and we’re bound for South Australia’. By the end of the half hour, they were ready to tackle whole choruses of ‘Liverpool Packet’ and ‘Strike the Bell’. When Rolf stopped, red-faced and hoarse, they thanked him with a hearty round of applause and walked away laughing and humming to themselves.
Death in Shetland Waters Page 21