‘I just thought,’ he began, ‘that, well, Oliver was saying Laura was missing, and I remembered this place and thought I should check it out. I’d passed it earlier. And I was out of the tournament, so I was at a bit of a loose end.’ His eyes followed my hands. ‘And I thought, well, she could have been hurrying to get back, in case he was worrying, and turned an ankle or something. That’s why I was looking upstairs.’
He plummeted right to the bottom of my list of people to be in a conspiracy with. Gavin was looking uneasy at this voluble giveaway, and as soon as I’d finished my bandage and got my shoe back on, he gave me his arm. ‘How’s that?’
I put my foot down with artistic care, then stood on it. ‘Fine. That’ll get me home.’ I turned to Daniel. ‘Thanks. See you back at the hall.’
‘Yeah, yeah, I’ll come with you. You might need an arm or something.’
‘No, I’ll be fine,’ I said. I could feel Gavin’s unhappiness. ‘Could you maybe go on ahead and say that we’re on our way? Then I can take it easy.’
He didn’t ask why I couldn’t phone in, just scuttled off like a guillemot chick suddenly confronted by a sailing boat.
‘Thanks,’ Gavin said, once he was safely out of earshot. ‘I was dreading he was going to come out with something I’d have to take official notice of, with only you as a witness. You’ve no idea of the hassle that would cause in a trial. We’ll interview him properly later.’
‘He was waiting for someone here. Anna Reynolds?’
‘Don’t think about her any more either. I’ve already asked you more questions than I should have. Freya’ll come as soon as your captain phones the coastguard, so she can do the official stuff.’
‘Google Anna Reynolds, images, and see if I recognise anyone?’
He shook his head. ‘Identikit first, then photos.’
I foresaw a long evening ahead.
When we got to the hall, the shuttle bus was just drawing up with Alain and his team aboard. Petter, Mona and Johan were already at the hall, standing beside Captain Sigurd, with Oliver hovering in the background. I went up to Captain Sigurd. ‘No sign, sir.’
‘Very well.’ His gaze dropped down to his watch. ‘If she was not in trouble she would have returned by now. I think we must contact the coastguard.’
PART FIVE
Warriors Taken
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The coastguard would take time to arrive, of course. Captain Sigurd gathered the crew into the first room as you came into the hall – the playgroup rendezvous, judging by the plastic cars parked in one corner. A buzz of excited chat came from the main hall. It sounded like the break between the all-comers’ jamboree and the serious play-offs. I hoped Geir would do well.
Captain Sigurd looked around us all.
‘I have given the coastguard what information we have. Laura Eastley was last seen heading eastward with another woman, who does not seem to have been a bona fide trainee, although she came off the ship. That was at 09.15, so it would be reasonable to expect them to have returned by now. Her phone is switched off. There are coastguard volunteers at Baltasound and Mid Yell, who are being assembled for a search. They will come across on the next ferry, at 19.35, and take control, along with local volunteers.’
He paused for emphasis. ‘In the meantime, there is nothing further that we can do. I count on you all to support me in making sure our other trainees continue to enjoy the voyage. Our programme of events will continue as planned with the final rounds of hnefatafl, a meal on board ship and the dance in the hall this evening.’
He looked across at me. ‘Ms Lynch, you and your watch may now go and take up your duties, relieving Ms Solheim. The trainees will be coming soon.’
I collected Cat and headed out. Gavin was waiting for me by the door. ‘He’s made it official?’
I nodded. ‘I’m back on duty.’
We walked down the hill to the pier with Cat trotting ahead, tail high. Now the beach was a smooth curve of rock above glistening olive-brown kelp. At the far side of the bay, an otter was hunting in the shallows, chestnut back darkened with water, the cat head bobbing up then ducking under again. We chugged over to the ship, handed the dinghy to Agnetha, and Gavin went below to boil the kettle while I checked the anchor was holding then did a walk round the ship. All well.
After that I went to the clipboards in the nav shack. The one with the names from yesterday should be there. I found it and ran my finger down the list. Williamson, Williamson, Tait, Georgeson, Jamieson, Nowacki, Kowalski, Reynolds. My finger went past it, then returned. Anna Reynolds. She had been on board, and Oliver had used the family to smuggle her ticket off.
I took the register to Gavin. ‘She was here. Look.’
We sat down and looked out over the hills, cup of tea in hand, Cat washing his whiskers at our feet.
‘And I never told you about what I overheard this morning.’ The flurry of disembarking had driven it clean out of my head. ‘Someone I think was Oliver was talking to her.’ I explained how I’d heard a phone ring, in the banjer, and how I’d heard the whispering, forrard, between the heads. ‘I only caught one phrase. We’ve come too far to give up now.’
‘You’re certain it was Oliver and Reynolds?’
I shook my head. ‘The phone rang in the hammocks of my watch, round about where Oliver and Laura were, and the person I saw going up there was tall and male. But …’ I frowned. ‘Petter saw Daniel coming back, on the other side from the way the tall man had gone. So it could have been Daniel speaking to Reynolds … but he couldn’t have been the person getting the phone call. Could she have been in cahoots with both Oliver and Daniel?’
Gavin’s mouth turned down. ‘I don’t like that idea of a threesome, when it comes to murder. Two, possibly.’
‘But Daniel seemed to be looking out for someone at the camping böd.’
‘And Oliver stayed aboard until he could come off with a group of other people and head straight for the hall, under everyone’s eyes, until he started worrying about Laura being missing.’
‘Giving himself an alibi, while the woman did the actual murder?’
‘You’re reading my nasty suspicious police mind.’ His phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket. ‘Freya? … OK, good. Right … Yes, I’ll get her to do that. We’ll see you then.’ He pocketed the phone again. ‘They’re sending the chopper and lifeboat for a sea search, so Freya’s coming up with them. About an hour, she reckons. Who else might have seen the woman that Laura went off with? We need to get a decent description while people’s memories are fresh.’ He fished in his sporran for a notebook and pencil, found a new page, and waited, looking at me.
‘Me,’ I said. ‘Mona was the one who noticed her going off with Laura – Mona Jakobson. Jonas was the other one on the boat, he might have noticed. Then the people on the boat.’ I wrinkled my nose, trying to remember.
‘Stop there,’ Gavin said. ‘I don’t want you inducing false memories. Freya can get a list of them as she talks to you. Anyone else?’
‘Jenn might have spotted her as someone who wasn’t a trainee – the rest of us would just assume she belonged to one of the other watches.’ Suddenly, I remembered the pier in Lerwick, Rafael’s head bent over the glossy dark one.
‘Yes?’ Gavin said.
‘I don’t know if it’s the same woman … but in Lerwick, as we were going round, I had this feeling of being followed.’
Gavin nodded. ‘I had it too.’
‘Did you see anyone?’
He nodded again. ‘The yellow jacket. A woman, you thought?’
‘I saw her again, at the corner of the pier.’ I had a heavy feeling in my stomach, but if we were talking murder, then my allegiance was to Gavin. ‘Her hood was down, so I could see her hair. She was talking to Rafael.’ I paused, then added, ‘But she could just have been asking him if the ship was open for visitors.’
He gave me a long look out of those grey eyes that were so like Alain’s, but with a kindliness that
Alain had never achieved. I could see that now. Brilliance, charm, life, all those danced out of Alain’s eyes, but never this understanding tolerance. I stretched out my hand to Gavin’s and was grateful I had come to so secure a haven.
We sat there in silence. The sun was warm on our faces; a tirrick flew past, forked tail white against the blue sky. A tissue-paper sliver of moon hung above the pink-tinged hill. The water lapped against the ship’s sides. Cat moved on to his paws, slurping noisily between each toe.
Our peace was broken by the roar of the outboard starting up. The first boat headed out from the pier, and I went to the guardrail to catch her rope and help the trainees on board. Geir was in the second load, clutching his trophy: second place. Once we’d got all the loads on board, the watches lined up for a muster. I looked slowly round. There was no yellow oilskin jacket, no dark, glossy head. But then, why should there have been? She’d done what she came for …
I was just about to hand over to Petter and head below for dinner when I heard the roar of the lifeboat engines in the distance. A look with the spyglasses found it, the orange superstructure above a great wash of water, heading straight towards us. I assembled a team for the gangplank and got my ABs ready with fenders. The trainees held their phones and tablets up as it came closer, closer, then curved to a halt five metres from us. The propellers churned as she edged up to us; on the shore, the white wash raced up the pebble beach and broke into lacy foam.
The sunlight glistened between the two boats, rippling on the lifeboat’s navy hull, then blacked out as we caught their lines and pulled the two together. Sergeant Freya Peterson was standing on the deck, blonde hair pulled back too tightly to be ruffled by the wind. She was wearing her usual smart black trouser suit, teamed with a POLICE waterproof jacket as a concession to the maritime life. A laptop bag was slung over one shoulder. She came easily across the gangplank, shook hands with Captain Sigurd and Agnetha, and turned to Gavin. ‘Hi. So, what’ve you done so far?’
Up on the aft deck, Alain’s arm came around my shoulders. ‘There you are,’ he murmured. ‘A perfect match. Cop and cop. It would save you having to learn to bake.’
I shook his arm off and didn’t answer.
‘I’ve commandeered Jenn’s office for interviews,’ Gavin replied. ‘Cass ferried the woman last seen with Laura Eastley over to the shore, and there are several other people who might have noticed her.’
‘Good.’ She raised a hand to the lifeboat. It cast off and left the bay in a swirl of water, then began feeling its way eastwards, with several crew members on the high deck, spyglasses in hand. Faintly, over their engine throb, I could hear the higher whine of the coastguard helicopter, and soon it swept over us, displaying the red and white chevrons on its belly. It would have heat-seeking infra-red cameras, in case Laura was still alive somewhere in that wilderness of rocks and sea.
Sergeant Peterson and I shook hands briskly. ‘Then I’ll start with you, Cass.’
I followed her into Jenn’s office. Naturally it was also her cabin, with a bunk bed and a porthole window, but her desk was pulled across the room to leave a square workspace behind it, with shelves of files and paperwork. Sergeant Peterson went for the chair behind the desk. Gavin sat on the padded seat in front of the bed and prepared to take notes. Sergeant Peterson cleared Jenn’s computer to the side, took out her laptop, and faced me over the desk.
‘Well, Cass, tell me about the woman that Laura was last seen with.’
‘I don’t know that of my own knowledge,’ I said. ‘I just put them on the pier and brought the boat back. It was Mona who said she’d seen her going off with another woman, heading towards the bird loch.’
‘Noted. But it was you who ran Laura’s group over to the pier, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Right, let’s see what you remember about that boatload. Close your eyes and take us round who was sitting where. Start beside you.’
I closed my eyes. ‘Unni Pedersen, from my watch, was right beside me. I had to avoid bumping her with my elbow as I steered. Then two teenage boys from Nils’s watch. There was a bit of shoving going on, Jonas had to calm them down. Then two men from blue watch on the other side. Then the girl up in the bows, and Laura.’ I felt a sudden surge of excitement. ‘That was her, the stranger. I remember thinking I didn’t know whose watch she was on.’
‘Fix your memory on her. Say everything you can.’
‘Dark. Dark-browed, and with dark skin – that ruddy tan you get among’ – I groped for a comparison, and remembered people I’d seen in the north of Norway – ‘Sami folk, maybe, or Inuit.’ Finn people. I shook the thought away. ‘That kind of look. High cheekbones, a broader face. Her hair was bundled up under her hat – she had one of those knitted caps with the ear flaps, red-patterned, and fleece-lined.’
‘Eyes?’
I tried to remember, and got a flash of the sea’s colour in her face. ‘Oh, blue! I was surprised at that. Blue, with dark lashes. I’d have expected them to be brown.’
‘Was she wearing make-up?’
I shook my head.
‘Age?’
‘Maybe thirty.’
I was remembering what the Orkney man had told me about his Finn man: He was there, and he wasn’t there somehow … when I tried to look straight on at him, I couldn’t quite grasp his face … I felt like that now. The more I tried to remember her face, the more it slipped from me, just the blue eyes with a slight slant to them, and something tight about the lips as she’d smiled at Laura, that curled-in smile like a Greek statue.
‘How did she look on the boat?’ Gavin asked.
That was the sort of thing I did notice. ‘At home. She came down onto the boat as if she was used to it.’ Memory surfaced. ‘She was wearing boots, some kind of soft leather, and jeans, and a navy jumper, and she had a little rucksack on her back, grey.’
‘OK, let’s go back to them coming on board the rubber boat. Can you remember what order they came in?’
I thought. ‘She must have been one of the first, because I directed them to sit forward. She and Laura, and the two men from the blue watch. They were first on, then Laura, then the stranger.’
‘Was there any interaction between Laura and the strange woman?’
It was coming back as I visualised them. As I’d looked round to check they all had a secure hold, she’d spoken to Laura. ‘She said something about the scenery, from the way she looked around. Laura looked at her and nodded.’
‘How about once you got to shore? Think about the seaweed smell of the pier, and the boat bumping against it. Did you see them go into the minibus?’
I shook my head, then memory suddenly returned. ‘Oh, yes. They didn’t get on the minibus. But they did speak to each other then. The driver said she was going east first, and Laura said, “Eastwards sounds good.” Then she asked the other woman which way she was going, and she said …’ I closed my eyes, trying to remember, feeling the concrete pier gritty under my hand as I fended the boat off. ‘She said, “Oh, I want to see the birds.”’
‘Try and imitate her voice.’
I tried. ‘Oh, I want to see the birds. It had a sing-song feel about it. No obvious accent, normal Scots.’
‘High register, low?’
‘The low side of medium. Friendly sounding.’
‘OK. Can you guess at her height, compared to Laura?’
‘Smaller, I think, but not by loads.’
‘That’s a good start,’ Gavin said. He flipped back a couple of pages of his spiky writing. ‘About thirty, dark-browed, blue-eyed, average height, tanned with high cheekbones. A red-patterned ear-flap hat, navy jumper, jeans, soft leather boots. Do you mean walking boots, or town boots?’
‘Town ones. Pixie-style short ones.’
Gavin nodded and scribbled. ‘A small grey rucksack. Was she pretty?’
‘I just can’t see her face clearly. I don’t think so. Striking.’
‘Do you think it was the same woman as
you saw on the pier, in the yellow oilskin?’
Sergeant Peterson looked up sharply at that, and Gavin made a Tell you later gesture.
I shrugged. ‘I’m sorry. It was all too brief and far away. I just can’t tell.’
‘Well, let’s see how you do with the computer imaging.’ Sergeant Peterson opened up her laptop and tapped away. ‘Tanned, high cheekbones, blue eyes, dark brows.’ A pause, then she turned the laptop around. There was a face on the screen. ‘Rounder chin, I think,’ I said, ‘but the breadth of the face looks right. A slight slant to the eyes.’
Sergeant Peterson tapped a few keys, dragged the mouse. ‘Yes?’
I shook my head. ‘It looks roughly right, but at the same time it’s nothing like her.’
‘Keep trying.’
We tried for a bit longer, but I just couldn’t fix the face in my memory long enough, and I was relieved when Sergeant Peterson saved my best effort, turned the laptop away from me again, and tapped away. Then she turned it back. ‘Have a look at these.’
She’d called up Anna Reynolds on Google, and swiped me through photo after photo of women: old, young, dark, fair, curly-haired, sleek, laughing, posed. No … no … no … and then, there she was, in a party shot, leaning against a kitchen worktop. I lifted my hand to stop the flicking of photos. ‘I think that might be her. The girl with the drink.’
She was striking rather than pretty, as I remembered, with broad cheekbones and slightly slanted eyes, spiked with dark lashes. Her hair was glossily dark, straight, hanging below her shoulders. She wore a scarlet top, laced across the chest. I stared at her, trying to get an impression of character. She looked competent, determined, someone who would work for a plan she’d decided on. Someone who would commit a murder?
Sergeant Peterson turned the laptop back and began tapping again. ‘It’s a photo from someone else’s Facebook page. Edinburgh, April of this year.’ She scribbled down the names, and took her phone out. ‘Andy – Freya here. I’m trying to find out more about an Anna Reynolds, who’s in a Facebook party shot. I’m sending you the link, and the address from the voters’ roll. I need to know where she works, friends, particularly if she’s a friend of Oliver Eastley … Yes, see what you can find out, and call me.’
Death on a Shetland Isle Page 17