Death on a Shetland Isle

by Marsali Taylor

  ‘Keep an eye on them,’ Agnetha said. ‘Nip it in the bud. We’ve had enough trouble on board.’

  I was about to head below when I noticed the younger of the teenagers turning his head, as if he was looking for someone. His eyes found me, and he began crossing the deck. I searched my memory, and found his name. ‘Hei, Geir. Can I help you?’

  He nodded. ‘Can I use the ship’s phone?’

  That was easily answered. ‘I’m afraid not. If it’s an emergency, you could explain it to the captain, and he could contact shore for you.’

  He looked at me blankly, as if what I’d said didn’t make sense, then waved his phone at me, and spoke in English. ‘I don’t have a signal.’

  ‘You’ll get one again as we come close to Shetland.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘Friday morning.’

  His jaw dropped. ‘Friday? Like, the day after tomorrow? You’ve gotta be kidding. I can’t be without a signal for that long. I’m in the middle of a game.’

  ‘You’ll be able to play games, so long as you keep your phone charged,’ I said.

  He looked at me as if I was stupid. ‘Man, I’m limbering up for the tournament. Playing online.’

  I gestured him towards the nav shack bench. ‘Have a cup of coffee, and explain to me. What tournament?’

  ‘Well, tafl, of course. Hnefatafl. The tournament’s on while we’re on Fetlar.’

  At last a bell rang. We were spending Sunday on the island of Fetlar, and one of the things they’d organised was a hnefatafl tournament. ‘Hnefatafl.’ I tried to imitate his pronunciation. Na-f’-taffle. ‘That’s the Viking game, isn’t it?’

  He nodded, and got enthusiastic. ‘See, it’s like the Viking equivalent of chess, only the moves are simpler. It’s all about how you can out-think your opponent. Fetlar was the place that really started it up again. I play online with folk all over the world, but when Mum suggested this trip, well, I saw it was coming to Fetlar at the time of the tournament, so I entered straight away. Right now I’m in the middle of three different games online, and one of them’s against someone else who’ll be there, so I really need to know how he thinks, in case I draw him to play.’

  My friend Anders was a gamer too. ‘I do understand,’ I said, ‘but I’m afraid I just can’t help. While we’re at sea we only have emergency contact with land. But, hey, do you have a board with you? I know it’s not the same, but why not get a game going?’ Inspiration struck. ‘We usually do a talk or activities in the mid-afternoon slot. Why don’t you give us a talk on hnefatafl? Show us how it’s played?’

  His chin was still tripping him. ‘You really can’t help? With the phone?’

  I shook my head. ‘I really can’t.’

  He sighed, and stuck his hands in his pockets. ‘You think people would be interested? Usually everyone just says it’s geeky.’

  ‘I think they would,’ I assured him. ‘Because of the tournament. You wouldn’t need to speak for long. Just explain how it’s played.’

  ‘OK then.’ He was silent for a moment. I could see him revolving ideas in his head. ‘Can you give me time to prepare notes, like I would for a talk at school?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Could I speak tomorrow morning, then, instead of the afternoon? So I can get a game going?’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’ Jenn was leaning against the leeward rail, the wind ruffling her chestnut plait. I caught her eye, and she came over. ‘Jenn, this is Geir, from my watch. You know our Fetlar visit? It coincides with the World Hnefatafl Championship, it’s a Viking board game, and Geir’s an enthusiast. I was suggesting he might like to tell us all about it, so folk would know how to play if they wanted to join the tournament.’

  ‘Sounds a great idea,’ Jenn said.

  I left her to sort out times with Geir and headed below. Brush teeth, brush hair. Into the thermals that did duty as pyjamas on board. Door closed behind me to say that I was sleeping. I lay on my bunk with Cat purring in the crook of my neck, feeling the ship move beneath me, hearing the sloosh of waves curling along the ship’s sides. The last gold rays of sun slanted through the window above my bunk and shone on the white vee-lined wall. Sunset was just after ten, but it would be light at sea for a good hour and a half after that. I reached out to draw the blue velvet curtain across, blinking the sunlight out. Alain’s face swam before my eyes. It was no good me trying to think of him as Rafael. He was Alain; I knew he was. It wasn’t just the way he looked. Every movement, every gesture was familiar; the way he spoke, the things he said. If anything, it was more surprising how little he’d changed.

  Relief flooded through me. I hadn’t killed him. However it had happened, another ship had picked him up.

  Yet if Rafael was Alain, he’d have known me. There hadn’t been a flicker of recognition in his eyes, not when we’d been introduced, nor since, just his teasing way with any presentable female, which had caused a good few quarrels when we’d lived together. I ran a finger along the scar on my cheek and thought of how much I’d changed from the nineteen-year-old who’d set sail to America with him.

  I wondered if I could get a look at his file in the ship’s computers, or Jenn’s passport box. San Juan … I don’t have any family.

  Alain’s family had returned to France, after his death. I wondered where they were now – if they knew he was alive.

  PART TWO

  Opening Moves

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Thursday 29th July, at sea

  Low water 02.14 BST

  High water 07.01

  Low water 13.11

  High water 20.01

  Moonrise 01.11; sunrise 05.05; moonset 17.40; sunset 21.50

  Crescent moon

  I slept badly that night. Part of it was simply going to bed when I wasn’t tired yet, but most of it was Alain. I didn’t relive that awful moment when he’d come up from the cabin with the gun in his hand, nor when I’d tacked Marielle and the jib had knocked him overboard. My night was tangled up in a dream of knowing my ship was about to leave and searching for Cat onshore, hearing him miaow but not being able to find where he was. It was dark, the night was wet, I was soaked through and cold. I awoke at last, wringing with sweat.

  It was dark outside, but the crescent moon made a white pathway on the shifting water. I reached out for my watch and pressed the luminous button. Half past three. Time I was getting up. I rolled out of my bunk, hauled my laid-ready clothes on top of the thermals, and splashed cold water on my face to wake me up. There’d be a flask of coffee on the go once I got up to the aft deck. I navigated the companionway by the faint blue of the deck lights, and leant against the midships rail to take four long breaths of the crisp air. The sails were ghostly in the sliver of moonlight, their ropes a forest of darker black against the glinting sea. The dim shapes clustered around the banjer door were the red watch, dozing away their last quarter-hour. Off to starboard, a fishing boat’s lights blinked. I went up to the chart plotter to check it.

  ‘A Norwegian,’ Nils said. ‘Maria Christina, headed for Hull, a mile and a half away. I took a sighting on Polaris at midnight – it’s in the log. Our course is the same as it was, 281 degrees. The sails are the same, the wind is steady. You might like to add the t’gallants once it’s light enough to see. Sunrise is at 05.05.’

  Anyone else would have said ‘in an hour’, but Nils liked to be precise.

  ‘Once my watch is awake enough for climbing.’

  ‘That too.’ He yawned, and nodded to Jonas, his watch leader. ‘You could gather them now and we’ll change the physicals over.’

  I got Petter to round them up, and we sent the physicals off to their stations: lookout, helm, standby, safety. The light was coming now, a rose flush spreading up into the sky and tinting the sea far away to port, while on starboard the sky was still navy, with stars sharp as tacks.

  I gave my watch an hour to wake up, filled by Petter and Mona doing knots with them under the banjer lights. The rose dee
pened to orange, veiled by mist, so that I was able to look straight at the sun: first a sliver of crimson, then half a disc rising slowly to become a great red ball like a hot-air balloon. The stars on the other side of the sky dimmed, the sea lightened to grey, and then the mist burnt off and the sun blazed out, turning the water to molten gold. The sky arched above us, summer blue; the horizon was fretted with wisps of cloud. It would be a glorious day at sea.

  At five, we began the process of setting the extra sail on each mast. The sun brightened the red of jackets and gold of hair, gilded the yards and warmed the creamy canvas as each sail was shaken free from its gaskets. The deck crew hauled the sail down and fastened the sheets. The water along the ship’s sides curled faster in a lace of white foam. The ship’s bell rang four times, five, six. Seven o’clock.

  It was my job to wake Rafael; we couldn’t have a mere AB going into an officer’s cabin. The shock of Alain being alive had dissipated during the night. I didn’t know why he was being Rafael, a Spaniard from San Juan, but no doubt time would make it clear. For the moment I just had to play along and treat him as the stranger he was treating me.

  I tapped on his door, then pushed it open. He was lying on his back with one arm flung over his forehead to shield his eyes from the light. He hadn’t closed his curtains; he never did. I gave his toe a shake. ‘Rafael?’ I said. ‘Seven o’clock.’

  He nodded and muttered a thank you, then his eyes flew open and registered me. ‘Thanks, Cass. Do we get prayers at breakfast too?’

  ‘Every meal.’ I closed the door and went back on duty. The last hour was always the longest, with the smell of breakfast wafting out from the banjer door. The first half of my watch could go down for it now, and the others once they returned. I nodded down to Petter. ‘Breakfast.’ He sent the eight nearest him downwards, with sympathetic grimaces to the others, and gave me a thumbs-up sign.

  Captain Sigurd appeared on deck then. ‘A fine morning, Ms Lynch.’

  ‘Beautiful, sir, and forecast to be like this for the rest of the day.’

  He squinted upwards. ‘We’ll fly all sails. Tell the next watch.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘What about sea-room? Any vessels around us?’

  I’d checked less than ten minutes ago. ‘No, sir. A couple of fishing boats in the night, two cruise ships crossing to Norway and one coming from there, all well away from us.’

  ‘Good.’ He gave me an approving nod. ‘Well done, Ms Lynch.’ He strolled over to check the plotter for himself. I gave the helm a last check – it was the teacher, Unni Pedersen, on duty, with Frederik Berg on standby – then nodded to Petter, who came up to take over from me while I went down to breakfast. ‘Still on 281 degrees. No other vessels, but keep an eye open for cruise ships; the Lerwick Port Authority website gives three in this weekend. They’ll be out there somewhere.’

  Petter nodded, and bent over the plotter. As I turned away, Berg came up to look over his shoulder. Petter straightened and smiled at him. ‘I’m looking for these ships using the AIS, here.’

  My stomach was rumbling. I followed Captain Sigurd down for breakfast.

  It was a good day at sea. Our ship flew with her white wings curved above her, ten knots, eleven, twelve and a half, once Alain’s watch had climbed to the top of the masts to release the royals. The sky was blue above us, the sea filled with dancing curves of light, and Sørlandet moved with a stately dipping motion. I leant against the rail and looked out at the horizon, and heard the work of the ship go on behind me: the trainees assembling to pull on ropes, the bustle and chocolate smell of the galley girls bringing out a tray of mid-morning brownies, the soft voices of the officers conferring above me, the bell ringing.

  Geir did his talk at eleven. He’d made himself a little sheaf of notes, but he barely glanced at them. Once he’d unrolled his cloth board, he was confident.

  ‘This is the Fetlar tafl board. Eleven squares by eleven. Other places have different sizes, and that affects the length of game. The four corner squares are the king’s refuge. The centre one’s where he starts, surrounded by his warriors.’ He began placing them: the taller king on the centre square and the round-helmeted warriors two on each side. ‘There are thirteen king’s men.’ He put his hand into the box and brought more warriors out. ‘These brown ones are the attackers, and there are twenty-four of them. They begin on the patterned edge squares.’ He placed them, five along each edge and one in front, only a square away from the outermost of the king’s defenders.

  ‘It’s a strategy game. The defender’s aim is to get the king to safety in one of the four corners, with a warrior on each of the three squares around him.’ He picked up the king and warriors to demonstrate, then returned them to the centre. ‘The attacker’s aim is to capture the king by completely surrounding him, horizontally and vertically.’ He lifted the king and put him between four brown warriors. ‘The diagonals don’t matter, because none of the pieces move diagonally. You move one piece on each turn, as far as you like. You take a piece by sandwiching it, like this.’ He placed a white warrior between two brown ones. ‘And that’s it. The attacker begins.’

  He gestured to the person nearest him. ‘Grethe. Have a go.’

  She considered the board for a moment, then moved one of the brown warriors a step forward. Geir nodded, and gestured to Janne, who lifted one of the white warriors and looked at it, then moved it outwards. Grethe moved a brown towards it. Janne moved another white. ‘Simple as that,’ Geir said. ‘Finn, Ivar, want a go?’

  The two older sailors came forwards and made half a dozen moves in rapid succession, ending with Finn taking one of Ivar’s men. ‘A game generally takes around half an hour, depending on the size of board,’ Geir said. ‘The king usually wins more quickly than the attackers, although statistics have the number of wins of king and attacker as about even.’

  I’d got the gist of it now; one of those games that was simple to learn, hard to play. It was 11.45; time to take a sighting. I glanced upwards at Alain on the quarter-deck. I’d tried not to see him moving on his rounds, head high, the officer cap set at a jaunty angle, pausing to speak to everyone. He’d lingered particularly beside Laura, tall and golden and beautiful like the girls he used to chat up in Edinburgh. I looked at them laughing together, and felt that stirring of anger again. Now the shock of surprise was over, I wanted him to acknowledge me. I didn’t want an emotional scene, but I couldn’t take this indifference either.

  Agnetha, coming up behind me, nudged me, smiling. ‘Playing hard to get,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t he make you even consider swapping your policeman for a fellow sailor?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s interested. Haven’t you noticed the way he watches you?’

  As well he might, if he was wondering when I’d blow the gaff on who he really was. I turned around on the rail so that I was facing inwards, towards where Alain was checking the chart plotter, and let my gaze wander indifferently over him. ‘No.’

  Agnetha shot me a sideways glance. ‘You two haven’t met before, have you?’

  Your voice gives you away … I gave her my blankest look, and tried to sound mildly curious. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Just a sense of … oh, sparks being struck off each other. Have you?’

  I shook my head and tried to tell the truth. ‘The name Rafael Martin rang no bells.’

  She gave me an odd look at that, and I knew I hadn’t fooled her. ‘So long as it doesn’t affect the ship.’

  She was my senior officer, and anything that affected one of the crew might also affect the ship. I answered her honestly. ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ I said. I turned my chin along my shoulder to look directly at her. ‘I really don’t.’ I spread my hands. ‘You know this world. People sometimes just change their names because they want to move on. Leave something behind. I did know him, but he wasn’t Rafael then.’

  ‘Ah.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘You knew him well?’

  I nodde
d.

  Her hand rested on my shoulder. ‘If you need to talk, then I’m here.’

  ‘Thanks.’ It was her old voice again. We smiled at each other, but there was nothing I could say. The ship’s routines saved me as the trainees began to move into their watch lines. ‘I’d better get my sextant. Must be coming up to noon.’

  I went down into my cabin for my sextant, the navigator’s badge of office, a hand-held triangle of carefully calibrated lenses and mirrors nestled in green baize within a wooden case. You took a sight on the sun or a star, read off the angle between them, worked your way through the thick book of tables and then worked out where you were on the Earth’s surface. Captain Sigurd and I were agreed on our total distrust of even the most foolproof of electronic systems, backed up, as Sørlandet’s was, with not one but two independent chart plotters. Using a sextant to take sightings was a skill I was determined to keep honed, and so I’d taken over the task of doing the noon sights for this voyage while Nils did the midnight one.

  The sextant was the one thing I’d kept of Marielle. It was a black forties instrument in a battered case, and we’d learnt to use it in the Forth, practising until we were both able to pinpoint our position accurately. I’d see Alain recognise it. He’d know I’d kept it.

  I headed to the very aft of the ship, where I’d get peace. I wedged the case into one corner of the captain’s coffin, the big wooden box that covered the steering gears, unfolded the horizon mirror and turned the screw until the two horizons joined into one, then waited, checking my watch, until it was dead on noon. I put the filter over the mirror and turned the arm slowly until the noon sun sank to the horizon.