Death in Shetland Waters

by Marsali Taylor

  ‘That’s a very good effort,’ my cousin Sean said, appearing suddenly at my elbow.

  Involuntarily, I moved nearer the centre of the rail, towards Gavin. ‘I’m not sure I heard you singing,’ I said. Gavin and I had joined in everything.

  Sean leant back on the rail, entirely at his ease. ‘Ah, I never had the voice. I only croak.’

  ‘You don’t need a voice for “Strike the Bell”,’ I said.

  ‘I approve the sentiments. Sure, the last half hour of a watch lasts for an eternity, and the last ten minutes of it’s even longer.’ He looked towards Gavin, and went into embarrassing family mode. ‘So you’re the man who’s going to tame this wildcat?’

  I glared at him, but Gavin took it entirely in his stride. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ His shoulder was firm against mine. ‘She’ll tame herself or not, as she pleases.’

  Round one to us. ‘Well, good luck to yez.’ Sean’s gaze swept down my face. ‘You came a bit of a cropper there, last night. You alright?’

  ‘As always. We bounce, we Lynches.’

  ‘We do that.’ He lifted one hand and turned my face up to the light, tilting it to check my chin. ‘Down one of the steps here, a fella on me watch was saying.’

  ‘That one there.’

  ‘Sure-footed as a mountain goat, so you were. D’you remember that time we fell foul of that old fella in the pub, and had to take off over the roofs? It’s a good thing Granny Bridget never found out about that one.’

  I remembered it very well, the frantic climb up someone’s outhouse and over slates wet with rain. ‘Our narrowest shave.’

  He turned around again to look out at the deck. His voice came back, softly, ‘The fella on me watch was after saying someone pushed you.’

  I shook my head. ‘Just tiredness, with the extra hour’s watch. I stumbled. Careless.’

  His expression said he didn’t believe me. ‘Still, nearly in Belfast. That’ll quieten things down a bit, surely. What’s the drill once we get there?’

  I couldn’t think of any reason why he’d want to know, but I could feel the tension in his arm, and knew that this was what he’d come over to ask. ‘We’ll get a pilot from the outside of the harbour, and there’ll be a tug to guide us to the berth. Then we tie up, and customs put a guard on us until we’ve had our passports checked.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Morning, probably.’ Customs offices liked paying overtime no better than anyone else.

  ‘Whereabouts will we be berthed? In the inner harbour there?’

  ‘It depends what other ships are arriving.’ The pilot book showed Belfast Harbour as three rectangles, with the southernmost one almost in the centre of the town. ‘But there’ll be a water taxi or a shuttle bus to get to where the action is. These tall ships host towns vie with each other to give us all a good time.’ Beside me, Gavin grinned, and Sean turned to look at him, and abandoned the inquisition.

  ‘Ah, still the life and soul of every party going, is she?’

  I’d had enough of this man-to-man over-my-head baiting. ‘She,’ I reminded him tartly, sounding exactly like Granny Bridget, ‘is the cat’s mother. And she has work to do.’

  I didn’t, but I headed down to deck level. Mona was just finishing off the last touches of rust-covering hardener, leaving every white part of the ship gleaming, and Erik was busy removing the tape markers from the braces and putting fine cord around them. I paused by him, vaguely disquieted. He was whipping the lines as neatly as I’d have expected, but there was a tremble in his hands as he wound the cord round and it took him three goes to get the needle thrust under the whipping. He turned to me, smiling, but there were strain lines around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. ‘Just thought I’d neaten these up a bit.’

  ‘Tape’s apt to pull off,’ I agreed. ‘This’ll be much better when we’re racing, to make the midships point as we pull the yards round.’ I leant against the rail. ‘Have you been to Belfast before?’

  ‘No. You?’

  I shook my head. ‘I spent Christmases in Dublin as a child, but we didn’t cross the border.’

  Erik eased his needle into the next whipping. ‘I’ll be glad to get there. This voyage has been jinxed from the start. Never again.’ The last two words were a vehement undertone, so that I wasn’t quite sure I’d caught what he’d said. ‘They’ll take Mike ashore?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about shipping him home?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m not sure. Yes, but maybe not soon.’

  ‘Do you know if they’ve told Klaudina yet? I wanted to phone, but I wasn’t sure.’ He grimaced. ‘I knew Mike better than I know her. I didn’t want to have to break the news, not like that, over a dodgy phone connection from miles away.’

  ‘They’ll have sent police officers. It’ll all be done as gently as they can manage.’

  ‘What about catching the man who did it? The Russian. Is your policeman any further on with that?’

  It was natural that he should be anxious about it, but I thought there was an extra strained note in his voice. I shrugged. ‘He wouldn’t tell me. Confidential police stuff.’

  Of course, Erik was below the salt. The whisperings that Cass was unbalanced were captain’s mess only. I changed the subject. ‘What shall we do with them this evening?’

  ‘How about touching the top of the mast? Particularly for the ones that are leaving us at Belfast.’

  ‘Couldn’t get a better day for it,’ I agreed.

  ‘It’s a plan.’ Erik bent his head back to his whipping and I watched him for a moment, then headed up to the aft deck, where Kjell Sigurd was dishing out tea. He pressed a mug into my hand. I took a handful of ginger nuts, and went forward to join Agnetha at the rail. ‘Hei! Pepperkaker?’

  ‘Thanks, Cass,’ she said. We each took a couple, and leant on the rail as the watches assembled below.

  ‘They’re coming on,’ I said, looking down. ‘Almost straight lines, nobody leaning on the rail, and it looks like all Nils’s trainees are present and correct, instead of having to be hauled up on deck.’

  ‘Yes, they’ve been a good bunch. It’s been fun having so many youngsters on board.’ She watched them for a moment, nodding in approval at the enthusiastic ‘God wakt!’ that echoed up to us. Then she turned back towards me, face averted still, and spoke softly. ‘I’ve been thinking. About …’ Her hand touched her belly. I nodded. She gestured with one hand. ‘Well, in so far as I can think. And I know it’s crazy, and I know I’ll change my mind back and forward over the next weeks, but I think – I want …’ She paused, moistened her lips. ‘It’s all that’s left of Mike, you see. I don’t know if I can bear …’

  There was a long pause. She closed her eyes for a moment, then resumed, in a more normal tone. ‘I was thinking, you see, that we could manage with two of us, on different watches. One on duty, and one in charge of the children.’ The colour flooded up her neck, rose-pink under her fair skin. ‘If the captain would allow. I’d need to look up the legislation about employers’ duty to childcare, but I think we might be able to swing it, if we were both determined.’

  I didn’t know what to say. I opened my mouth and shut it again, then turned to look at her. ‘The fall … I lost it.’ For a moment there was anger in her face, and envy. The policeman’s girlfriend, having all the luck. It wasn’t luck, I thought, from my grieving space, and I was going to try and explain this when Nils came up beside us. His voice was as soft as Agnetha’s had been, but with an iron sound, like the first harsh cut of a saw.

  ‘I don’t care what you do,’ he said, in Agnetha’s ear. ‘That’s your business.’ He glanced sideways at me. ‘Nothing to do with me.’ His gaze went back to Agnetha. ‘But I’m warning you now. Klaudina knows nothing about you. I don’t want her ever to know.’ His voice bored into us. ‘Not ever. D’you understand?’

  Agnetha flushed scarlet.

  Nils gave a moment’s pause, then, when she didn’t answer, he stepped back fr
om us both. ‘This is my watch. I’d like you off my deck.’

  Agnetha headed for her cabin in silence, and I went for a lie-down. I’d thought Gavin might come and join me, but there was no sign of him or Sergeant Peterson, just a murmur of voices from the officers’ mess. I tried to read for a bit, with Cat on my chest, but I couldn’t concentrate. There were too many different things spinning round in my mind: Agnetha, thinking that Gavin would focus on her to get me off, word going round that I was unstable, and Captain Gunnar’s encouraging smile. Not long to go now … Agnetha’s new idea, to keep both ship and baby. I didn’t want to ask myself whether this turnaround gave her less of a motive, but my brain kept ticking round anyway. If she didn’t want an abortion, she had no motive to kill Mike – but she had wanted one, most desperately, at the time of his death. Nils’s anger … I’d like you off my deck.

  I shook myself mentally and tried to think. Somebody was setting me up. What did I know about them? Well, they’d seen me with Sean’s gun. That made it someone who’d been on deck and followed me down. A cold shudder went down my spine at that thought: one of my shipmates lurking in the shadow of the tunnel, watching me find it. Anders and I had wondered how the captain came to find me there, but now I thought he’d been tipped off. Someone could easily have gone to his door and suggested … what? That they were a bit concerned about me, and that I was down in the tunnels, seemingly searching for something.

  It was too long ago. I couldn’t even begin to remember who might have been around. Focus, Cass! It had been just before my watch, so Erik, Mona and Petter would have been there. Just before four, and we left at five, so everyone would have been on board. That didn’t help.

  Then, that night, Olav had died. I tried to fit that into the pattern of framing me, but it didn’t go. I couldn’t be blamed for his death, because Mike had been watching me. No, Olav had made his interest in Bezrukov too obvious, and Bezrukov had killed him. Then the next day Sean’s gun had gone missing. The captain had blamed me, but I was certain it was Sean who had taken it back. That was separate from framing me too.

  Then, that evening, Mike had died. Forget who for the moment, I told myself, and think about why. Agnetha had a motive: she wanted an abortion, and he wanted to stop her. Nils had a motive: he’d quarrelled with Mike over the way he was treating Klaudina. I wasn’t convinced that either of these were very good as motives. I didn’t know how injunctions worked, but I couldn’t see what could stop Agnetha going to a private clinic and having her abortion if she’d wanted to. Killing Mike wouldn’t help Klaudina; the police investigating would certainly ask her if she’d known about Agnetha. I shook my head. No, I didn’t believe Mike’s affair with Agnetha had caused his death.

  Bezrukov was much more likely. Mike had found out who had smuggled him aboard. He’d tackled that person about it, and the person had decided Mike had to go, before he told the authorities.

  I couldn’t imagine Agnetha people smuggling, but I wasn’t certain about Nils. I remembered the map I’d drawn for Sergeant Peterson. Nils had been about, Jenn, Rolf, Henrik. Erik had been with the trainees, and Mona, and Petter. The thought pulled me back on myself. I’d assumed Petter had been forrard, but now I came to think about it, I hadn’t actually visualised him when Sergeant Peterson was taking me through them. I’d seen him earlier, so he was in my mental picture as being there. He could easily have come forward and caught up my jacket. Petter, who always wore designer polo shirts and had the latest gadget. What my friend Magnie would call the likely o’ him had made me assume he had rich parents, but maybe he was creating his own income by people smuggling; not in bulk, just the occasional person who wanted to get into another country without passing through customs. Drugs sprang to mind, of course. A mule, carrying half a million pounds worth of whatever the latest craze was. Terrorism: a backpack full of detonators. It would be naive to say he wouldn’t have those kind of contacts. Anyone, these days, could make those contacts if they wanted to.

  Very well: Petter. Only Mike found out about it. He’d looked at the pictures, and then, later – probably not long before his death, because if I was Petter I wouldn’t want to give him the chance to tell anyone else – he’d seen Petter talking to the man who shouldn’t be on board. He’d tackled him, and Petter took the first chance he could to kill him: when the dolphins were focusing all eyes on them.

  I tried to see Petter in my head. Tall, but not as tall as Mike, with his fashionably cut fair hair, like the hairs that had glinted silver on my hat. That air of privilege, with his Lacoste shirts and well-cut trousers. The latest in all-singing, all-dancing watches on his wrist: tacking angle, GPS, distance to waypoint. The idea of him doing drugs at a party didn’t surprise me. He was sharp enough to come up with the framing me plan at the last minute, and agile enough, bold enough, to carry it through.

  Part of me wanted to jump at that solution. Gavin would arrest him in Belfast, and all would be well. The other half of me was going, wait. It just all felt too complicated, too dependent on the coincidence of him having seen me go below, followed me, so that he could tell Captain Gunnar about the gun, of Mike speaking to him just before the dolphins gave him the opportunity to kill him, of him knowing that I’d take the helm and be so caught up in my own world of wheel and sails and sky that I wouldn’t hear murder being done behind me. Clever, bold, ruthless, Gavin had said. Somehow I didn’t see Petter like that … and it was all too rigged somehow, and my brain was tired. I curved a hand round Cat’s soft side, and closed my eyes.

  I was just dozing off when I heard soft voices outside my door, two men speaking in Norwegian. One was Henrik; I knew his voice, because he usually spoke to the galley girls in Norwegian.

  ‘It’s all arranged.’

  The other man sounded slightly further away, as if he was in the doorway of the officer’s mess, with Henrik in the corridor. I couldn’t place his voice. The sound was familiar, of course, but it had to be someone who habitually talked to me in English, which didn’t help, as most of the crew did. ‘Where did you put …?’ The voice faded, as if he was leaning in. Henrik answered equally softly:

  ‘In my room, for the moment.’

  ‘And the delivery of the merchandise?’

  ‘As planned. Thursday.’

  ‘Good.’

  I heard footsteps walking away as Henrik returned to the galley. I lay back. Henrik! The delivery of the merchandise … were they talking about Bezrukov? Henrik was well-placed to shelter a stowaway, with his own domain in the middle of the ship. He’d been amidships at the time of Mike’s death, and anyway he was too tall to be the man I’d seen, but who was the other one? This made better sense than the timing of Mike seeing Petter and Bezrukov. Henrik was equal to him in rank. He could have persuaded Mike not to go to the captain straight away, giving him time to start rumours about me. If there were two people working together, that made it easier. Henrik and Petter? Henrik to be clever and ruthless; Petter to be bold, to wear my jacket and kill Mike.

  The merchandise … it was an odd thing to call a person. The scenario I’d come up with for Petter, where the smuggled person carried drugs or bombs, made more sense.

  I didn’t know Henrik very well. He kept himself aloof from the sailing side of things, and hid his face behind shades at mealtimes. He disapproved of Cat. The galley girls jumped to his bidding. Other than that, well, he was heading towards his sixties, I supposed, and as far as I knew had no family. He’d be high on the pay scale, but perhaps he needed a decent sum to retire on. He could be a compulsive gambler, or a collector of expensive china. I could imagine him with a fussy, old-maid house, whose sofa, carpets and curtains were changed every year. Perhaps, because he wasn’t a sailor, his commitment to the ship was less – because that was what I found hardest to believe, that one of us who loved the ship, and worked her, and cleaned her, and rejoiced in her white sails and speed over the waves, would betray her for money. We were all part of her crew, she was our ship, and it would take the stro
ngest of motives to do something that would bring her into such disrepute if it was found out. I could just imagine the headlines: Tall ship used to smuggle drugs. The funding we scraped and wheedled for would be cut off instantly at the least hint of wrong-doing, and the sponsors would find another ship to fly their banners. As for her becoming an academy, the deal that would keep her solvent for the next two years, that would be off instantly.

  I shook my head and headed for a breather on deck before preparing for dinner and Jenn’s ‘moments of awesome’ gathering. It was longer than usual: she had a great list of instructions for the evening, particularly whether people would be able to go ashore the moment we arrived (no), and the activities people could sign up for over the weekend. The paintball and laser quest were instantly popular, but there was also a bus tour of Belfast, bodhrán playing and a tour of the Belfast Titanic museum.

  Gavin nudged me. ‘Shall we sign up for that? I’ve been told it’s good.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, and signed our names on the sheet as it came round. ‘14.30 tomorrow.’ Of course it depended on us both being free. I meditated gloomily on the double meaning of that for a moment, then headed aft, ready for eight bells to ring.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It had become a most beautiful evening. The sky was whisked with skeins of teased grey fleece, tinted gold by the sun behind them. The land had taken shape from misty shadows to wooded hills punctuated with white houses, soft and enchanted in the mellow light. The sea was like grey velvet under Sørlandet’s white sides.