As I came out, I ran straight into Alain’s Italian dance partner, one hand up to struggle with her elegant but impractical sunhat, the other smoothing down her flowered skirts. Neapolitan promenade wear wasn’t quite practical in Shetland, glamorous as it made her look, like a fifties starlet at Cannes, with her sweetheart neckline, bare shoulders and white-rimmed shades. The scarlet lips curved in acknowledgement as I held the door open for her, and she gave a murmured ‘Zank you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ I said, and went back to musing. Perhaps Lady Nicolson had been happy with her bottle of whisky and tribe of cats – who was I to judge? It just showed, I moralised to myself as I walked briskly along the road to the shop, that money wasn’t as important as I’d thought in those struggling days when I was working as a waitress just to pay the marina bills. She’d had everything, and had still died in a squalor as bad as any half-pension council high-rise tenant could suffer. Yet perhaps she’d been happier than you’d think, judging from outside; she’d remained in her own home, with her cats as company, doing what she wanted, and not caring that she didn’t wash as often as the social services thought she should, or that her food didn’t pass the NHS nutrition guidelines. I thought of some of the meals I’d eaten on board long-passage yachts, where a tin was only condemned when the rust had actually eaten through into the food, and decided I was living in a glass house as far as that was concerned.
The shop had one room for the goods and another set out as a cafe, with home-made fancies under plastic cake containers on the counter. For a turnover of sixty people and summer tourists, the stock was impressive. There were tins and dry foods, and a cold-cabinet of milk, yoghurt, butter, cheese and fresh meat. The shelf next to it had loaves and fancies from Da Kitchen Bakery in Yell. The fruit and veg included cauliflowers, grapes and a pineapple. By the door was a display of locally made souvenirs, jewellery, cards and the inevitable puffin pictures, and shelves of passer-by food, Lindt chocolate, packets of crisps and chocolate digestives, and red-and-gold-foiled Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers.
I went for a bag of rolls and cheese slices to fill them. I got a banana and a bag of toffees for pudding, and decided against a bottle of water to wash them down. There would be plenty of burns along the road, with velvety-peat water straight from the hill. I paid for my faerdie maet and strode out again, still thinking about the last Lady Nicolson.
I didn’t want to end up a wild-haired live-aboard who talked to her cat. I’d learnt in these months aboard Sørlandet that only part of me was a natural solitary. I’d grown up in a community. I’d played on the beach with Inga and Martin, and gone round the regattas in a group of teenagers. I’d mixed with Alain’s friends in Edinburgh. It was only since then that I’d been one of a group of people who met and parted again: deck-hands in the Med, sports instructors doing a season in a holiday hotspot, transient waiters in busy cafes. The only home I’d revisited had been the Sørlandet, as an AB each season; and then, three years ago, my own Khalida had become my fixed world.
Now I’d got to feel at home on board Sørlandet again. It had taken a while to adjust from the free and easy ways of an AB to the formality of the captain’s cabin, but I’d got to know Agnetha. Petter, Mona, Johan and I had shaken down into a good sailing team. I was beginning to work well with Nils, and I respected Captain Sigurd’s ability as a captain even while his fussy ways drove me round the bend. I belonged again.
I breasted the hill and turned to look back. A flutter of a light-flowered dress was going along the road towards the Gord B & B. Alain’s Italian woman hadn’t stayed long in the Centre. A quick look, to show willing, before she headed for a lounger on the beach … not that Shetland was an obvious beach-holiday destination.
I stopped at that thought, open-mouthed, then began to walk on again, thinking hard. Suppose … just suppose I’d decided to commit a murder on a far-away island, with no CCTV cameras to track me. I’d got my victim alone and shot her from behind while she was unsuspectingly watching puffins by their rabbit burrows, or gannets diving. I’d filled her pockets with stones from the wall to sink her body. So far, so good.
But here I was, on this island. I knew my victim would be reported missing fairly quickly – before the end of the day, certainly. There’d be a big search. They’d be looking for me, and they’d question the boys on the ferries to find out if I’d been seen leaving.
So … I thought, so, being clever, I wouldn’t leave. Nobody would expect that. I’d stick around until the hue and cry was off. I wouldn’t skulk in a B & B either; that would make my landlady suspicious. I’d draw attention to myself. I’d wear flamboyant dresses and so much make-up that my face couldn’t be seen behind it, and piled up hair, and outrageous earrings, and dark glasses, and a hat which had to be held on to in a Shetland breeze, giving me a handy excuse to put my forearm in front of my face when I bumped into someone who might just recognise me. I’d say I was Italian, and didn’t speak much English, so that my voice would sound completely different. I’d behave like a tourist, even to the extent of going to the dance; it would have looked odd for a tourist to miss that.
I tried to square the woman I’d just bumped into with Anna Reynolds, and found I couldn’t tell anything. Height – no idea, for the woman in the boat had been sitting down, and the Italian had been wearing the stiletto heels she’d danced in yesterday evening. The woman I’d seen with Alain had been half a head shorter than him, the Italian woman almost as tall. Four inches of heels would do that. Skin colour: could have been anything under that bronzed tan; cheekbones: invisible, ditto. Eyes lost behind the mirror glasses, mouth scarlet. Her hair was glossily blue-black, darker than I remembered Anna Reynold’s having been, and curly where Anna’s had been straight.
Memory came back. That figure we’d seen from the filled-in longhouse, bending over the sink and bringing her dripping hair up … who washed their hair in a sink nowadays? I still did when I was moored up away from a shower, but the rest of the world had moved on. No. She’d been dyeing it, getting rid of that last tinge of dark brown for Italian charcoal.
Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. She’d booked the böd to change her look. She could get away with arriving in jeans, but she needed somewhere other than a windy hillside to do her full make-up before she met her landlady. Landladies had the sharpest eyes on the planet. Make-up, sunglasses, a stylish blouse. The practical but non-glam yellow jacket had been folded away before she reached the door. One of those elegance-plus silk scarves to hide her hair colour. As brief a hello as she could get away with, and up to her room to complete the transformation.
I needed to tell Gavin this idea. I fished my mobile out from my pocket and sent a text: Had you thought of Italian woman being AR in disguise?
I was only a hundred yards further along the road when my mobile pinged. His reply felt like a hug. Keep up at the back! xxx Enquiries ongoing with Ital police. She’s under surveillance. My ship xxx
Don’t go nosing around, he meant. Keep out of her way. I could do that, especially as she’d gone off in the other direction. I looked down the hill and saw the last flutter of coloured skirt disappearing into the B & B.
It was a beautiful day for a striding walk. The hill was grey-green with feathered grass that flowed like water in the wind, and crossed with lines of butter-yellow mimulus where the burns ran to the loch. The cream and rose clover spilt over the edges of the verge onto the white lines of the road, and a curlew gave its bubbling call from the golden curve of sandy beach. I shoved the thought of the Italian woman away and concentrated on enjoying the feel of my legs marching steadily, my arms swinging in rhythm, the wind in my face.
The road dipped down to the place where the ring road to Houbie rejoined, then rose up again for half a mile. I stopped at the highest point to take a drink from a handy burn, cupping the clear water and splashing my face, then stood for a moment to look around. The east end of the island was spread out in front of me now, with the ferry terminal of Hamars Nes
s hidden behind a low rise of hill. Sørlandet was well into Yell Sound, her white sails tall against the green shore. The grey bulk of Brough Lodge was in view down to my left, a jumble of buildings stretching along, and an artificial-looking hill with a tower rising from it.
All downhill now. I strode onwards, gradually sorting out the buildings. There was a square keep in the centre, buttressed by two lean-to houses and crenellated within an inch of its life. It had a little round archery post sticking out on each corner and a sloping roof on top; the side nearest to me had two sets of arched windows, one above the other, the Great Hall, no doubt, complete with fans of weapons above the fireplace. The roofs were of grey slate and the windows boarded up with wood that shone pale gold against the brown stone. Behind the main house was a trail of farm buildings and a line of stone wall, tumbled in places, with two walls leading up to the oval folly and its lookout turret, perched on the seawards side of the hill. It looked just the spot for a lonely governess and a mad wife in the attic.
The real approach was by sea, of course. The road ran on a further hundred metres and ended at the jetty. I leant on the last fence post and contemplated the house. The family home of the film clip was long gone. This was a building in decay, with the steps they’d danced down choked by long grass. On my right was the lean-to and square keep; the rest of the long frontage looked like facade, with a wall the height of the house running for another hundred yards. First was a carriage-sized arched doorway with a pediment on top and a niche on each side – the courtyard entrance, I supposed – and there seemed to be a building beside it which might be the grooms’ quarters or the factor’s cottage. The wall continued to another arch with portcullis decorations about it, and then a red brick tower, double the height, with a Moorish arch at ground level and a square bell tower above, like an Italian church.
A board beside the road gave some of the history of the place. Central government’s determination to get people out of inconvenient, expensive peripheries was just the latest in a long line of moves to shift people away from places that didn’t suit the authorities. From the 1820s, Sir Arthur Nicolson had evicted his tenants across the island to make way for grazing his cross-bred sheep, and many had been forced to emigrate. I sensed satisfaction in the board’s description of the ‘Round House’, a second folly built from the stones of evicted houses, which was so horribly haunted that Sir Arthur spent only one night there.
I’d been going to eat my lunch here, but it was too melancholy, the contrast between the wealth that had built this mansion and the people forced to leave their homes, between that light-hearted family in the film and these crumbling pretensions. An interesting old pile, no doubt, and it would make a wonderfully atmospheric place to hold conventions once it was restored, but just for once I thought I’d pay attention to the DANGEROUS BUILDING: KEEP OUT sign on the gate. Building work was in full swing: the road in front of what had once been the garden was well used, with a wider track up to the portcullis, a white Portakabin parked at the end of it and another beside the chapel wall. The keep bristled with scaffolding, the roofs were new and the guttering shone black with paint. Good luck to them. It would be another way of bringing folk to the island: money for B & B owners, caterers, cleaners, drivers, the local shop, employment for the craftspeople who ran the courses; a small stand for staying where you wanted to live.
Even as I thought about it, there was clanging and a thump or two from inside the courtyard, and the slam of a vehicle door. A pause, then a white builder’s van skidded out through the portcullis, curved round the garden wall, spinning gravel from under its wheels, and headed along the main road towards the hot pies the shop would no doubt have ready for them. Dennertime the world over.
I turned my back on the turrets of the Gothic mansion, the splayed ribs of the flit-boat still tied to its rusted winch, and plumped myself down on the jetty, legs swinging over the clear water. Across the sound, the sun picked out the white superstructure of the ferry lying at Gutcher. The breeze ruffled my hair and the waves lapped at the shore. I hauled my lunch out of my backpack, tore the rolls apart, added the cheese, and munched. A seal sculled along the bay, giving me a good look in passing, then shuffled himself up onto the seaweedy point for an afternoon’s sunbathing. Gradually his coat turned from gleaming black to sandy yellow.
I ate my banana and stowed the skin in my rucksack. Time I was moving. A quick scoit at this haunted ruin, maybe a climb up to the folly, and then on to the terminal.
I was just about to stand up when someone came around the bend in the road, three hundred metres away. I caught a flutter of patterned silk scarf above dark jeans and a flowered shirt.
It was the Italian woman, and she was coming straight towards me.
My ship, Gavin had said. Don’t meddle with her. If she was Anna, she was involved in the deaths of two people, and she had a gun. I’d survived seeing her at close quarters once, in the safe doorway of the Interpretative Centre. I didn’t give much for my chances if we had another encounter out here, with nobody watching.
It could be bad luck that she’d turned up here, part of pretending to be a tourist. But I remembered how quickly she’d gone through the museum, and the swift fluttering of her dress towards the B & B. Maybe she feared that the one glance I’d given her had been enough. Maybe she’d followed me here.
At sea, you thought through any move beforehand, because you’d make things worse if you jumped in and got it wrong. The cropped grass of the shore wasn’t a place to play hide and seek with a murderer, especially when I didn’t know how good a shot she was. She might be able to pick me off at a hundred paces. My only cover was the house. If I could get back up to it, then I could dodge her until the builders came back.
I’d be obvious against the pale pebbles and sun-glinting water the moment I stood up, but I could get as far as the shore end of the slip unseen. The water was only a metre below me, and a couple of feet deep. Keeping hunched over, I rolled my breeks up. I eased my legs over the side of the slip, toes reaching downwards. The water oozed into my sandshoes, ice-cold after the warmed concrete. I let myself slide until I touched bottom, then crouched down below the level of the slip and began working my way forwards. The seal raised his head to watch what I was doing, and I froze, willing him to stay put. A seal panicking towards the water would be a dead giveaway.
He kept his nose turned warily towards me and wobbled his upper body round a little, but didn’t do the seawards dash I’d feared. I got to the end of the slip and raised my head in the cover of the rocks. She was halfway between the hill and Brough Lodge now, walking with an easy stride, and somehow I had to get from here to the garden wall unseen.
I couldn’t do it. There were no walls, no ditches, nothing, just the strip of tarmac between the verges of clover. Very well, then. As she had, I’d hide in plain sight. My officer togs could pass for a boiler suit at this distance. I pulled my breek legs down, stood up, came around the rocks onto the road, and then, with my most masculine walk, swinging my knapsack in one hand, I strode back towards the house. I was an apprentice joiner. I hadn’t fancied the hot pies at the shop. I was a keen footballer who kept himself fit on healthy bread and cheese. Now I was going to boil up a cup of tea in our caravan before the others came back.
It was the longest hundred metres I’d ever walked. I didn’t look at her, but I could feel her upright figure coming closer, closer. The garden walls seemed to be retreating even as I walked towards them. I swung over the fence, cut across the grass, and was climbing up the gap-toothed steps at last, heart racing. A glance along the road showed me she was almost at the gate. I scurried through the arch and into the main courtyard.
It had once been a flagged yard. Weeds thrust up between the paving slabs, and old stones and timbers were piled up along one wall with a fringe of nettles straggling in front of them. The house entrance was on my right, a weathered wooden door, surprisingly plain after the imposing facade. There was a boarded window beside it, behin
d a bristle of scaffolding. For a moment I was tempted to go straight upwards, onto the roof, but I’d be in plain sight, and if she could shoot I’d be a sitting duck.
The side door into what I presumed was the stable yard proper was blocked by metal builder fences, but straight across from me was a stone doorway with enough light to suggest there might be a way through. I darted for it, and was met by a flurry of starlings rising up suddenly from the floor in a giveaway whirr of wings and chak-chak of alarm. I flung my arm up against them, suppressing my own squawk of alarm, and whirled round to look at the main door of the house.
The shabby door was ajar. I leapt over the wooden step and reached out for it, heart thudding. It swung open silently, and I slipped through and stood in the entrance hall, looking round for cover.
I was in a wide vestibule, with a curved bannister leading up to the landing above. The handrail and fret-turned bannisters were swathed in plastic, and the floor was covered with ply sheets. There were cables and tools everywhere. The bright working light had been left on, and a radio burbled to itself in one corner.
It was tempting to run up that wide stair and hide myself in the furthest reaches of the house, but I could see the raggedness of some of the ceiling timbers. Besides, that was the classic girl in danger scenario. Go upwards and end up trapped. No. Let my pursuer search for me upstairs, if she liked. I’d hide downstairs, near the door. There must be a toilet, with a bolt or key to let me lock myself in. I turned on my heels, scanning the shadowy rooms, getting glimpses of a plastic-swathed tallboy, a wall of cream vee-lining, a still-intact window with the panes reflecting the light back at me. No obvious cloakroom, and most of the doors were either missing or wedged open.
Death on a Shetland Isle Page 24