Oliver had access to it, though. If he’d let Daniel into the system, then Daniel could have got the money away, and left just enough of a trail to make Laura suspicious – a trail that led to Oliver. I thought of the hnefatafl king, mustering his troops, sacrificing them to get himself to safety. The fraud gave Oliver a double motive for murder: either for his inheritance from Laura, or because she’d discovered the fraud, and threatened to expose him. If Laura was to die, Oliver would be right in the frame for both the murder and the fraud. Meanwhile, Daniel had stashed the missing two million in some offshore bank account, and bought plane tickets for himself and Anna.
Then Laura had got suspicious. ‘Go ahead with your trip,’ Daniel had said. ‘I’ll come aboard too, and pretend to chat her up, keep her occupied. Behave as if everything’s totally normal, but be ready to do a moonlight flit.’
Only what Oliver didn’t know was that Daniel was planning to smuggle Anna aboard, to dispose of Laura. She’d been on the ship from Lerwick and she’d booked the camping böd in case she didn’t kill Laura in time to get the ferry off the island. But then … then Daniel turned into the weak link. Financial skulduggery was one thing, but waiting while someone he knew was being murdered was quite another. He’d been like a cat on hot bricks, and the police questioning wouldn’t have let up until he’d spilt the whole story. Any sensible accomplice would have got rid of him.
That sounded even better. Anna hadn’t turned up where he’d expected her to, and she wasn’t answering her phone, but she’d texted him. Meet me at the Haltadans, that stone ring, once it’s dusk. Ten o’clock. She’d walked up to him and shot him. Now she’d slip off the island, like a normal tourist, and get the ferry home. She didn’t know that we’d got her name. If it hadn’t been for Daniel, we’d have known nothing about the böd. She’d go home and say she’d had the flu, and then she’d get on that flight to the tax haven wherever, with two million to live on, and Oliver left holding the baby.
I rose, stretched, and headed to the door for several long breaths of air. My beautiful ship was still moored in the bay, graceful as a swan above her glimmering reflection on the rippled water, but there was smoke coming from her exhaust now, and I could see people moving around the capstan. The anchor light was switched off at the same moment as the nav lights came on: someone was on the ball. The sun had broken through the clouds, and the water danced blue; the Out Skerries were clear on the horizon. I sat down on the wall where I’d sat with Alain last night, and watched her: the anchor coming up, the first black figures going up the ratlines, the sails unfolding into festoons, then pulling downwards to their white curve. My ship was leaving without me. I felt my heart was clenched in my breast. The air that had been warm was cold on my face. One figure on the aft deck looked up – I knew that tilted-back head – and lifted a hand to me, here on land. There was a lump in my throat.
I shook the feeling away. I’d be joining her in Hillswick tonight. I wasn’t any use to the investigation, so I could go and explore a bit more of Fetlar. I hadn’t visited the Interpretative Centre, or seen Brough Lodge, which had looked an interestingly ruinous pile. It was too bonny a day to waste watching the sails diminish into the blue distance.
I supposed I’d better tell Gavin where I was going. I’d just gone back into the hall when there was a crackle from the VHF, and a Shetland voice. ‘Shetland Coastguard, this is the Lerwick lifeboat. Channel 67.’
The tone of his voice said it was important, and not good news. The officer by the hand-held turned it to 67 and waited. The soft bustle died down around him.
‘Shetland Coastguard.’
‘A local fisherman’s found a body. Female, powder-blue jacket.’
I remembered Laura walking up the slip with Anna beside her, the light jacket bright against the grey tarmac.
Gavin picked up the radio. ‘Shetland Coastguard, Lerwick lifeboat, this is DI Gavin Macrae, on Fetlar. The brother of the missing woman is still with us, on the island. Should we try for an ID now?’
The lifeboatman’s voice was deliberately matter-of-fact. ‘We took the body on board. He won’t be able to identify the face.’
The body would have sunk, once the clothing was wet enough to drag it down. There were crabs down there, and lobsters, and shoals of little nibbling fish. I felt bile rising in my throat and swallowed it down.
‘Request you bring the body to the pier here,’ Gavin said. ‘We’ll get a preliminary ID based on the clothing, then I’d be grateful if you could take the body to Lerwick. I’ll have you met there.’
A body that had lain on the sea bed all night wouldn’t look like Laura. The mortuary folk would do their best before they asked Oliver to look at her. Then it came cold over me that a representative of the ship would need to be with him. I rose and braced myself.
The lifeboatman came on again. ‘Yes, DI Macrae, we can do that. We’re just off Nousta Ness now. We’ll be with you in fifteen minutes.’
‘Good. Thank you. Over and out.’
I’d half expected him to ask more questions, like where the body had been found, until I remembered that every boat in Shetland had tuned instantly to 67 when the coastguard call came through, and every crew was gathered round the wireless, lugs pinned back and mobile in hand, ready to phone the news to their wives at home. It would be round Shetland in minutes that Laura’s body had been found.
Now the whole hall was galvanised into activity. Gavin looked around and picked on Sergeant Peterson. ‘Freya, you and Andrew interview the fisherman. We need to know exactly where the body was found. I’ll break the news to Eastley and take him down to the pier.’ He looked over at me. ‘Cass, I think you should be present, and – Shona, is it?’
A WPO moved over. ‘Sir.’
‘Once we’ve got an ID, bring him back up here for tea, and stick with him. Ivor, see if Lerwick can arrange accommodation for him there. It’s unlikely he’ll want to go on with the voyage.’
WPO Shona caught up her jacket. I followed the pair of them meekly to a modern-build house with a red door, tucked neatly behind the willow-and-white showiness of Leagarth House. Gavin knocked at the door, then opened it and stepped in, Shetland-style. A little, bustling lady in a pinny was already in the passage. Her eyes took in Gavin, Shona in uniform beside him, and she nodded. She’d obviously heard already. ‘Shall I call him down, or do you want to go up? You can have the sitting room to yourselves.’ She gestured at an open door, with a squashy brown velvet couch beyond.
There was no need to call him. Already, a door was opening up above us and Oliver’s voice called, ‘Is that the police?’
He appeared at the top of the stairs. He’d aged ten years overnight, with deep lines creasing each side of his nose and running down to the corners of his mouth, and his skin drained to a lifeless brown. His hair was shoved back any old how from his face, and his jeans were crumpled, as if he’d slept in them. ‘Is there news?’ he said, then he saw we’d come mob-handed, and put out a hand to the bannister to steady himself. Shona went quickly up the stairs to support him.
‘Come downstairs, sir.’ She ushered him into the sitting room and lowered him into an armchair. ‘Have a seat.’
‘I’ll make tea,’ the landlady said, and hustled off towards the light at the end of the passage.
I let Gavin and Shona sit down first, then slid to the empty end of the couch.
‘I’m afraid it’s bad news, sir,’ Gavin said. ‘A body has been found.’
‘Laura?’ Oliver said. There was a queer eagerness in his voice, as if he’d been expecting this. I felt my suspicions of him rising again.
‘We’ll have to ask you to tell us that, sir,’ Gavin said. ‘She’s on board the lifeboat, and they’re bringing her into the pier.’
‘Mrs Georgeson’s bringing you a cup of tea,’ Shona said. ‘Drink that, and then we’ll take you down.’
He gestured the idea away with his hand. ‘I’m not thirsty. Laura … can’t they tell from the clothes?’
Oliver dropped his tousled head into one hand. ‘Laura.’ He gave a couple of dry sobs, and I couldn’t tell whether they seemed stagey because they were put on, or whether real grief was theatrical. Shona laid one hand on his arm, and the landlady scurried in with a tray of mugs and distracted us with enquiries about milk and sugar. She gave Oliver three spoonfuls without asking, and a tot of whisky from the cupboard, and pressed the mug into his hand. ‘There, Oliver, you get that down you.’
She’d brought a plate of biscuits as well, but it felt heartless to take one. We sat and waited while Oliver drank his tea, and a touch of colour returned to his face. At last he set the mug down and lifted his head to look seawards out of the picture window over the bay. The lifeboat was manoeuvring into the pier. I could see the orange coffin-shape of the stretcher on the foredeck.
Oliver rose, and there was that same strange eagerness, as if he wanted to get it over with – as if he wanted his future decided, I thought suddenly. He had to have been part of the fraud, to let Daniel into the firm’s computer systems. Maybe beneath the tears he was already dreaming of the Costa del Sol, or the Caribbean.
We walked the hundred metres to the pier in silence, in a procession: Gavin first, Shona and Oliver, then me. Shona was trained to do the professional comfort thing, I reminded myself, to make the right gestures. I lagged behind in silence.
The lifeboat men waited on the pier. They were dressed in their formal navy jerseys, like a guard of honour behind the stretcher as Oliver walked down the concrete. A red ensign was draped over the still shape cocooned within it.
Oliver went up to it, and hesitated. Shona was there before him, bending down to lift the lower half of the flag and expose the sea-sodden trainers, a diagonal of jacket, one dangling hand. The skin was already cold grey, with the ragged edges of flesh showing white. There was an odd bulge in the hip pocket.
Oliver swallowed and nodded. ‘Those are Laura’s clothes.’ He looked down at the jacket. ‘That’s the jacket she was wearing. She must have gone too close to the edge. What’s that in her pocket?’ He made as if to lean forward, brows drawn together, and Gavin put out a hand to hold him back.
‘Don’t touch, sir. There may be prints.’
I was making sense of the shape now. It was a stone, to help sink the body. There was one in each of the jacket pockets. Anna hadn’t meant Laura to be found; she hadn’t reckoned on how close inshore the creelmen came.
‘Did your sister wear jewellery, sir?’ Shona asked.
Oliver nodded. ‘She had our great-grandmother’s wedding ring.’ He looked down at the crinkled skin. ‘On her other hand. She always wore it.’
Gavin bent forward to lift the flag slightly higher. The other hand was mangled too, as if it had hit the cliff face as it had flailed in space. The gold ring gleamed against the grey skin.
Oliver’s face was white, his mouth twisted, looking in horror at the contorted fingers. ‘That’s Laura’s ring.’ Then he leant forward and snatched the flag from her face.
I had only a second to look, before Shona on one side and two burly lifeboatmen on the other pulled him back, and another crewman covered her again. Oliver made a choking sound. By now Gavin was beside him: ‘Now, sir, we wanted to spare you that. Come and sit down.’
He and Shona took Oliver over to a seat by the pier. I turned away and faced seawards, struggling against nausea.
That one-second glance had been enough. There had been no face left on the poor body in the stretcher, just a mass of brown tissue with splinters of shattered bone sticking out from among it. I tried to will the image away, but it was as clear in my mind as if I was still looking at it. One eye socket had been intact, with a slimy mass hanging from it down the bones of the cheek. I gritted my teeth against the bile rising in my throat. The other socket had been ragged, and nose and mouth were lost in a jumble of torn flesh.
I lost the battle with my stomach and went swiftly over to sick up my breakfast into the sea. Damn. Swearing to myself, I washed my mouth out with salt water and drank a cupped handful to take the taste away. I splashed my face, then took a moment to steady myself before going back up.
When I headed back up to the pier, Shona was persuading Oliver to move with her up the hill, and Gavin, after a sharp glance at their retreating backs, had moved forward to the body again. Her hair, darkened with water, clung to his hand as he lifted her head. I gritted my teeth and looked seawards, but I couldn’t help still watching from the corner of my eye. The back of her head seemed undamaged, but the coxswain was indicating something to Gavin, and he was nodding.
We’d heard a pistol shot. Exit wounds were larger than entry … and the damage to her face seemed worse than even a direct blow against a cliff would make. She’d been shot from behind.
‘Where was she found?’ Gavin asked.
‘She came up with his creel twenty metres out from the south cliffs of Funzie Bay. Below the steepest part of the banks.’
It was where Gavin’s marker was. Laura had already been down on the seabed when we’d looked over yesterday afternoon, with the ripples of brown tang twisting over her.
Gavin pulled the map we’d been given from his pocket and unfolded it. ‘Can you show me?’
The coxswain obliged, and Gavin nodded, and put the map away again. ‘Well, you can take the poor lady to Lerwick now. Thank you, all of you.’
‘No sign of the other lady?’ the coxswain asked.
Gavin shook his head.
‘She’ll be long gone,’ another lifeboat man opined gloomily. ‘Even if she was here to shoot that man last night, she coulda been on this morning’s ferry.’
Gavin shook his head. ‘It was watched, and Lerwick’s checking the passengers on tonight’s south boat too.’
Unless we had two murderers instead of one. Anna to kill Laura, Oliver to get rid of Daniel, who’d done the financial skulduggery. Anna could have been gone on a midday ferry, as soon as she’d killed Laura, down on a bus to Lerwick and on the evening ferry south, leaving Oliver to shoot Daniel.
Gavin’s hand came on my shoulder, making me jump. ‘Back to the hall.’
I was grateful that he didn’t ask how I was. It was bad enough that the whole lifeboat crew had seen tough Cass Lynch spewing into the ebb at the sight of a dead body. I forced my voice to sound steady. ‘Do you want me to stick with Oliver?’
He shook his head. ‘We’ll have people with him all morning. Your captain will have heard that we found the body, but you could report it officially, and say that she’s been identified as Ms Eastley.’ He gave my face a shrewd look. ‘Why don’t you go and tourist for a bit? Have a picnic in the sun, then I’ll get someone to run you to the ferry.’
‘Sounds a good idea.’ I didn’t sound convincing. I paused in the road, looking at him. ‘Well … I’ll see you later, then.’ I tried for a matter-of-fact tone, the policeman’s girlfriend who was used to this sort of thing. ‘Now this is a full-blown murder enquiry, will you be joining the ship again?’ Will you be able to sleep on board? was what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t get my tongue around it.
He shrugged. His voice was as casual as mine. ‘If I can.’
I knew I’d got it wrong. I leant forward to kiss him, but he moved his head at the last moment so that my lips only touched his cheek, then stepped back from me. ‘Have fun being kidnapped. Text me.’
There was a lump in my throat. I nodded, and forced my voice to be cheerful. ‘See you in Hillswick.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
I turned away quickly before he could see the tears prickling in my eyes, and strode off down the road. I needed to talk to him. I needed to explain about Alain, before we went irretrievably wrong. Tonight, if he was on board … and then I had a sudden cold panic that he might use the excuse of the investigation to spend the night in
Lerwick. I hauled my phone from my pocket and sent a text before my courage failed: Hope we’ll spend tonight together xxx
I saw him get it. He paused, looked back, and raised his hand. I waved back and set off again, cheered. I was almost at the Interpretative Centre when his answer came through: Hope so too. If not, not my fault xxx
The cold feeling retreated. I paused to admire the Interpretative Centre’s mural, and sat down at the bench to make my official report to Captain Sigurd. I used as few words as possible, clean mechanical language: a body had been found, which Oliver had identified as Laura. I could hear the ship’s rigging creaking in the background, the waves against the hull, and that pang gripped me again, my ship sailing without me.
I would be back on board this evening. I checked my watch. Half twelve. I had until the 16.40 ferry to mooch about. It was only a four-mile walk, three and a bit to Brough Lodge – forty-five minutes, say – then another fifteen to the ferry. I could look at the Centre, see the old Brough Lodge movies Magnie had recommended, get some sandwiches at the shop, picnic at Brough Lodge, then explore the place itself before walking the last mile to the ferry.
The Centre was a Tardis inside, crammed full of Shetland spades, tuskers for casting peat, flat irons in every size, kettles, bottles, scrimshaw pictures carved on walrus tusks by long-dead seamen ancestors, a hand-operated sewing machine. There was a big board on Sir William Watson Cheyne, the owner of Leagarth House, and photos of the Time Team in action, watched by a ring of local folk.
The films were played on a screen set into the wall, and I found them unexpectedly moving. The Nicolsons hadn’t expected them to be shown to tourists eighty years later; they were family home movies for now, practising golf shots on the lawn, watching their car being winched off the ferry, dancing down the steps in a foursome, arms around each other’s waists. I remembered what I’d been told about the golden-haired girl smiling at the camera, and wondered what she would have said then if someone had told her she’d end her days an eccentric old woman among decaying grandeur. She, one of Britain’s elite, with money, breeding and style? She’d have laughed at the idea.
Death on a Shetland Isle Page 23