Death on a Shetland Isle

by Marsali Taylor

  ‘Very respectable so far.’

  ‘Oh, respectable entirely. The son was their golden boy, hope of the house, a fifth-generation Whittingham on the board – except that he wasn’t a sticker. Exam results achieved by last-minute work, left school at sixteen, tried college and flunked out. “Very flash,” Richard said, “all show, but no substance behind it.” He’s in his late twenties now, and still in the office.’

  ‘A reason for him to resent his clever sister,’ Maman agreed.

  ‘The daughter was a couple of years younger. She tended to be overshadowed by the boy, but she’s hard-working, with a good flair for money. She went to St Andrews, got a First.’

  The old-established firm had obviously done well. St Andrews was one of the prestigious universities, and keeping up with the crowd there wouldn’t have been cheap.

  ‘The father wanted to promote her to a seat on the board, but I gather the mother wanted to hold it for Oliver, once he settled down.’

  So much for equality. Their father wanted to promote his little sister above him. That was enough to breed resentment in someone used to having the world lie down for him to walk on …

  Dad took a sip of his whisky. ‘Good stuff, this.’ He set the glass down again. ‘After that, it gets interesting. The parents died together in a car crash, just before New Year, did you know that, now?’

  I nodded. ‘I got the impression that it was part of the reason they’d taken this holiday.’

  ‘Sure. Well, the firm was slightly shaky at the parents’ death – the recession, all that. Laura was given her mother’s seat on the board, straight away. Voted in nem con. “Good judgement,” Richard said. The last audits gave it a clean bill of health. There was talk that they might get rid of the brother, ease him out, like. There’s been no action yet, but his days are numbered. Your Laura might be able to block that, of course, but it would put her in a difficult position.’

  ‘Resentment on resentment,’ Maman said. ‘Humiliation, to have to depend on his little sister to be allowed to keep the job that should be his by right.’

  Humiliation enough to drive the golden boy to attempted murder on a steep flight of stone stairs? Was that what had given Laura that shocked look?

  ‘It gets even more humiliating. I knew Richard would know all about it.’ Dad leant forward. ‘This ought to be confidential, but it was the speak of Edinburgh, he said. The will was read after the funeral, and a fair shock it caused. Everyone expected there would be an equal division between the two of them, but that wasn’t the case.’

  ‘Was there much to leave?’ Gavin asked.

  ‘Shares in the firm, of course, a quarter-holding each, worth a good bit, and their house in Heriot Row. A four-storey Edinburgh New Town house, with a garden behind it.’

  Gavin nodded. ‘Moving upwards towards a million.’

  ‘The sister got pretty near the lot, in consideration of debts incurred by the son. That wasn’t the wording of the will, but that’s what the facts were. An equal amount to what they’d spent on him was to be given to the daughter, before the remainder was divided. Richard didn’t know the exact sum, but it was substantial. They’re both still living in the house, but the sister owns most of it.’

  ‘Spent on him?’ Gavin cut in. ‘Spent on what, did he know?’

  ‘I asked that too, but Richard had only a vague idea. He had some notion of college debts, and a couple of failed business attempts.’

  Gavin was looking thoughtful. ‘It’s worth a watching brief.’ His hand linked with mine. ‘Your ship wants you back at eight-thirty tomorrow morning, did you say?’

  I nodded. ‘A huge concession. I’m being allowed to miss the formal raising of the ensign at 08.00 precisely.’

  Gavin rose. ‘Then shall we head for Khalida?’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Dad drove us back round to the marina. Cat was out as soon as I opened the door; he recognised home. I followed, looking eagerly at my Khalida. My friend Magnie had kept an eye on her for me, of course, but it wasn’t the same as seeing her. I let us onto the pontoon and hurried forward, then remembered to hold back and wait for Gavin. He smiled. ‘On you go. How long has it been, three weeks?’

  Cat was already trotting down the pontoon ahead of us, tail held high, the evening sun lighting his pale underside. He leapt aboard, then turned to wait for us. I paused on the pontoon to look up at all the halyards leading to the top of the mast. I’d frapped them before I left, tying them outwards so that they wouldn’t rattle, and they were still secure. The wind indicator turned on its pin. The jib was furled tight, the sail cover still neatly on, the plastic covers of the mooring ropes where they would stop chafing, and the fenders between her white sides and the metal pontoon. All was good.

  I opened the hatch, and that familiar smell of old diesel came back at me. Cat swarmed in before me, sniffing all round to make sure no other cats had invaded his territory, then headed out again to sit on the cabin roof. Yes, she was as she should be inside too: the varnished wood gleaming, the faded navy cushions dry. That feeling of home swept over me. I looked down into the cabin and loved her, this little wooden space with its fish horse-brass above the sink, and the lantern swinging gently above the chart table, and the sun striking gold gleams from my bookshelf. My berth was made, waiting. For a moment, I wanted to put the kettle on, settle down with a book, and be Cass of Khalida again, but I had our joint bed to make up, in the forepeak. I looked up at Gavin. ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ll stay quietly in the cockpit while you talk to her.’

  He seated himself peaceably on the slatted seat, fished a tin out of his pocket, and began looping invisible line around a tiny hook. I started the engine and left it to run while I checked everything else: no sign of water in the bilges, nothing dislodged in any gales they’d had in the last three weeks, and all the ropes properly secure. I gave the sink a quick rinse and ran a damp cloth over the work surfaces, took the duster and gave the fish a shine, plumped up the cushions, shook up my downie, and shuffled the books to make sure air was circulating between them, then shoved the sails out on deck to clear the forepeak, and made our bed.

  Satisfied, I came up into the cockpit to sit beside Gavin. The wind had fallen now. It was still daylight, but the bright land colours had dimmed. The eastern sky was the creamy blue of a duck’s egg, barred with dark lines of cloud; there was an amber flush to the west, with a pink light highlighting the edges of the clouds. Even as I watched, the amber brightened to a bar of molten gold, then faded. The thick white clouds that rested on the highest hills spilt over, running down the river gullies like milk first, before the whole mass of cloud lippered over and blotted out the hill crests. The engine snuffled like a friendly seal at Khalida’s stern, and the white tirricks screeched above us as they swooped, dived, soared again. Cat was a pale blur scouting along the tideline at the slip.

  ‘All’s well.’ I leant back against the white fibreglass and felt my bones relax. ‘It’s good to be home.’

  His shoulder was warm against mine, his spread kilt-pleats touching my regulation cargo breeks. ‘Kenny and I have been working on beefing up the mooring at the cottage.’

  ‘Your grandparents’ cottage?’ I’d seen it in my visit to his loch: a square-built stone cottage with a white porch, skylight upper windows and a slate roof that glistened mauve in the rain. They’d left the tenancy of it to Gavin, but so far he’d lived mostly at the farm on his weekends off, rather than travel the extra three miles by boat each day.

  His eyes were intent on the tiny fly in his hands, but his voice showed how much it mattered. ‘I wondered if you might like to come and stay during your winter leave, while your Academy pupils are home for Christmas. You could moor Khalida there.’ He turned to look at me. ‘You’d have the sea road to the isles at your door. The Atlantic’s only six miles away. If I was called away, you could just take off, and explore Skye, or Lewis, or head for St Kilda.’

  I hea
rd his meaning. I wouldn’t be trapped on land while I had Khalida on a mooring, ready to take off as I liked. This lover wasn’t going to hide his selkie wife’s skin to stop her returning to the sea.

  ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘Good.’ He smiled, and returned his attention to the fly. ‘We were looking at rigging a pontoon too, using a bit of salmon walkway, from the rocks at the point – it’s the only place it’s deep enough. But the mooring will hold you for now. Six railway wagon wheels joined together with heavy galvanised chain, and the first ten metres of line is chain too, then twenty-millimetre rope.’ He turned his head to kiss my cheek, then trailed his lips along to kiss me properly, and murmured into my cheek, ‘I don’t want to be the man responsible for letting your Khalida be dragged ashore.’

  We kissed again. I was just about to suggest moving below when a car slid down the road and stopped at the pontoon in a scuffle of gravel. We exchanged a mouth-turned-down glance. ‘Visitors, at this hour?’ he said.

  It was Inga. She fished round the marina gate for the key and headed down the pontoon towards us.

  We’d been best friends all our schooldays, Inga and I. We’d been driven together to nursery, with Maman and her mother taking turns, then we’d jolted in the back seat of the minibus to primary school and secondary. We’d gone to discos and moaned about homework, and had a shared part in all the childhood pursuits of the area, from New Year guising through to the bairns’ Christmas party. She was plumper now, after three children, and her long, dark hair had been cut to a practical bob, but she still had her enthusiasm for action.

  ‘Now then,’ she said, and clambered neatly over the guardrail to join us in the cockpit. She proffered the ice-cream tub she had in one hand to me. ‘A fish from the freezer for Cat. I microwaved it for him.’

  It would be good bribery for getting him back into the car tomorrow. ‘Thanks. Cup of tea?’

  Inga shook her head. ‘I winna bide long. Dinna want to spoil your peace, this bonny evening. I just saw the pair of you down in the boat.’ Inga’s picture window had a commanding view over the voe which let her keep well abreast of any marina goings-on. ‘I was wondering, Gavin, how you’d feel about being kidnapped on Monday?’

  It was a good conversation-stopper. We gaped at her, open-mouthed. Inga unwound her scarf from her neck and leant back. Behind her, the street-lights flickered on, reflecting orange on the water. Squares of light had sprung up in the houses, darkening the land around them, but the sea was still silver. Cat moved from the slip to the pier and sat there, contemplating the water.

  ‘It’s part o’ a week o’ protests against increasing centralisation. Computers and technology, along wi’ dis “austeritee”, are hitting the country areas harder as the toon. You ken there’s been aa the fuss about the junior high schools, Cass, them wanting to close them to save money. Oh, they say it’s for the good o’ the bairns, to gie them a better education, but aabody kens it’s no. It’s aboot costs. We’re focusing on education on Tuesday, the good reports the junior highs have had from the inspectors, and the local jobs that’ll be lost. But it’s no joost here. It’s spreading Scotland-wide.’ She nodded at Gavin. ‘You should ken aa aboot that, wi’ Police Scotland instead o’ the local forces.’

  Gavin made a non-committal face.

  ‘Yea, yea,’ Inga said, ‘I ken you canna comment. But there’s a gradual sucking away o’ jobs from the rural areas, and focusing them in the town. Then the big supermarkets move into that same town, and sell produce for half the price. Shetland used to be self-sufficient in milk afore Tesco came. Noo half our dairies have had to close. More country jobs lost. And they do online shopping, their own brand goods at half the price local shops can manage, delivered to your door. Well, it’s no wonder the country shops’re fighting for survival, and it’s just as well local folk value them enough to keep using them. Once the shop is gone, the heart’s out o’ the community.’

  ‘And the stupid things,’ Gavin said. I could see Inga had touched the right nerve. ‘Firms south’ll no deliver to us, because everything’s centralised with couriers. I went into a shop in Inverness to buy a bookcase, and the shop there had almost nothing, because half of the firms they used to deal with won’t deliver north of the border.’

  ‘Yea,’ Inga said. ‘They make it harder and dearer to bide in the country, so that nobody real, that was born in the place, can afford it.’ Her dark eyes focused on Gavin’s face. ‘We were doon in the Highlands for a visit, Charlie and the bairns and me, an’ you ken, compared to Shetland, I towt it was like a tourist theme park. Every hoose we passed was a B & B, or a tea shop, with the verges clipped round it, and an auld cart filled wi’ flooers in front.’ Her voice grew passionate. ‘I dinna want Shetland to become like that. Tourists can come and welcome, an’ park their motorhomes on a bit o’ space, but I want real industries, things that keep our world running. I want to see the folk going in to clean the school and make the maet and serve in the shop. I want to see the peerie boats heading to the creels and the mussels. I want our roads with lang verges o’ wildflooers, an’ auld cars roosting by byres, an’ tractors clanking aboot, an’ sheep grazing on the hills, the way they’re aye done.’

  Gavin nodded. ‘I don’t want to live in a theme park either. Our loch’s gradually getting busier with weekend walkers, and there’s a car park for them, but so far there’s no point in creating a caravan park.’ He grinned. ‘They couldn’t get down our road.’

  ‘So far, though,’ Inga said, ‘we’re managed to protect our local infrastructure. We kept our coastguard—’

  ‘After a fight,’ I said. The government’s first idea had been to control all shipping emergency services from Portsmouth, and only howls of protest from seafarers throughout the UK had persuaded them to leave services in Stornoway, in the heart of the cliff-fanged western isles, and in Lerwick, two hundred miles out in the North Sea.

  Inga nodded. ‘But they’ve centralised the emergency services, you ken, dialling 999, so that some peerie wife wi’ a Yell accent has to try and explain to someone in Inverness.’ She went into mimicry. ‘Me man’s collapsed. He’s had budder wi’ his puddins, and da doctor said if he went poorly I was to ring da ambulance straight away. I’m Ruby o’ da Hoyt, an’ I bide joost sooth o’ Efstigarth. Na, I dinna ken the number o’ the road … B 9-something. Weel, why sood I ken? There’s only ae road tae the hoose …’

  Gavin nodded. ‘Tell me about that! You’re better off than we are in that respect, with your smaller distances. There’s an awful lot of the Highlands to be covered by ambulances from Inverness, or the emergency helicopter.’

  ‘We hae ferries, though,’ Inga said. ‘Only forty miles from Lerwick to Unst, but there are two ferries on the way.’

  ‘Didn’t they send an ambulance to Yell, when it was needed at the south end of the island?’ I asked.

  Inga rolled her eyes. ‘That’s no’ the worst – they had a sick baby in Orkney and someen in the Aberdeen hospital sent the air ambulance to Shetland. And if they can get it wrong just fae Aberdeen, think what they could do from further south. Dundee, they’re talking about now, for the emergency services phone centre.’ She paused to watch the dark head of the marina seal scull past, then resumed. ‘Anyway, the next thing was, they came up with this airport plan. Well, the radar is controlled in Scotland already, Aberdeen, but they still hae a real person at Sumburgh to do a visual check as the plane comes in. They want to get rid o’ that, save a bit o’ money. They’ll have one person down in Portsmouth somewhere, watching the video screens for every small airport in Britain, and telling the pilot, “Yes, yes, on you go, the screens say it’s clear.”’

  ‘The boat for me, if they do that,’ I said. ‘Do they ken where we are? Do they really think we’d trust a video link for something that important?’

  Inga grinned. ‘Wir MP telt them. “If it’s that reliable,” he said, “then build your central control tower up here in Shetland.” So far there’s no’ been a comeba
ck, but I doubt they’re still plotting.’

  ‘I bet they are,’ Gavin said.

  Inga leant forward. ‘And now the latest scheme baffles all common sense. You’re no’ going to believe this. Wir power station in Lerwick is due for replacement. They’re no’ going to bother.’

  I stared at her, mouth open.

  ‘So how are you going to manage for power?’ Gavin said. ‘Dermot’s wind farm?’

  ‘Oh, na,’ Inga said. ‘That’s for getting magabucks by sending electricity south. Na, they’re going to run a cable. No’ the cable that’s taking the wind farm’s energy south, another one, to bring energy north to us.’

  Words failed me.

  ‘A cable fae Caithness was the latest news, lying on the seabed right in the middle o’ the fishing channel, to be dredged up twice a week. A fine, reliable source o’ electrics, that. Oh, they’re going to give us a backup emergency generator. That’s awful good o’ them.’

  I found my voice. ‘You are joking.’

  Inga shook her head, and returned to the point in hand. ‘So that’s the first thing we’re drawing attention to, on Monday. Closing the power station will lose twenty-five jobs, so we’re doing twenty-five high-profile kidnaps. Both wir MPs are game, and the leader o’ the cooncil, and one of the BBC Radio Shetland journalists. Charlie’s friends wi’ the husband o’ a weel-kent Norwegian model, that’ll add an international slant an’ a bit o’ glamour, and we hae a German artist working at the Sumburgh light, and she’s willing too. Wha else?’ She began ticking them off on her fingers. ‘We want twenty-five o’ them, to represent the lost jobs. The head warden at the Sumburgh bird reserve, and the boss o’ Shetland Arts, and your minister, Cass. And I saw the pair of you there, and thought, well, it would be fine to have a high-up policeman too, if Gavin would play ball.’