The ferry pulled into Gutcher, jaws opening as it turned the corner and pressed itself to the rubber-hung jetty. Before us was the Portakabin cafe, and the ex-post office with the WW2 bullet holes in the walls. There was a payphone there. While I waited for Inga, I’d phone Gavin. He could send a squad to pick Reynolds up at Toft, coming off the Yell ferry.
I was first off, striding towards the cafe. I’d only vaguely registered the black car with one rear door open when suddenly a blanket was flung over my head. A strong arm clamped round my shoulders and shoved me inside, pushing me across the seat. The door slammed. The car was moving before I’d even had time to shout. I grabbed at the door handle, but it was locked. Cursing myself for stupidity, I sat myself up in my seat, clawed the blanket off and turned to face my captor.
It was Fireman Berg.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I stared blankly at him for a moment, then realised that Inga’s husband Charlie was driving, with Berg in the front seat beside him. The hard edge beside me was Peerie Charlie’s car seat. He was in it, grinning broadly, kicking his legs and clapping his hands.
I was being kidnapped. No doubt a dozen photos were already winging their way to the Shetland News website and Radio Shetland’s homepage, so that the whole world would see me being hauled off under a blanket, like a criminal … yes, in the front seat, Berg was already working away on his phone.
Peerie Charlie pulled my sleeve. ‘Aye, aye, Cass.’
‘Aye, aye to you too,’ I said. I pulled the rest of the blanket off myself and shoved it to the floor. ‘I wasn’t expecting the blanket.’
‘Sorry,’ Berg said. ‘I hope I didn’t hurt you?’
Peerie Charlie laughed. ‘Funny Cass! Blanket over your head.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed through gritted teeth, feeling like Cat with his dignity ruffled. I tried for a friendlier tone. ‘Funny blanket.’ I leant forward to Big Charlie. ‘Where are we heading for now?’
‘Inga’s secret destination,’ he said.
‘Secret to me as well?’
‘You’ll like it,’ he assured me.
I was always dubious about things I was assured I’d like. The secret destination, wherever it was, would hold twenty-four strangers, two of them politicians, with a barrage of cameras waiting to greet us all when we were ‘released’.
‘Where’s the secret?’ Peerie Charlie demanded.
‘If I telt you,’ his father said, ‘it wouldna be secret, would it?’
Peerie Charlie brooded over that for a moment, lower lip jutting out and one foot tossing towards the back of his father’s seat, but he knew he’d get short shrift if he tried for a tantrum. Then his face brightened. He turned to me instead. ‘Cass, I went swimming. Yesterday.’
‘Good for you,’ I said.
‘I swimmed all the way across.’
‘Even better.’
‘So I come in the Picos now.’
I could see Big Charlie’s reflection grinning in the mirror. The thought of taking a livewire like Peerie Charlie out in a Pico made me pause. Peerie Charlie’s lower lip jutted again. ‘You promised. When I could swim, you said.’
I had, too. ‘So I did,’ I agreed.
He brightened up immediately. ‘Today?’
‘I don’t think there’ll be time today,’ I said. I managed a real note of regret. Given the choice between Inga’s paparazzi and Peerie Charlie in a Pico, I’d plump for the roller-coaster ride of a dinghy steered by a three-year-old any day.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Big Charlie said encouragingly from the front seat. ‘We could maybe find you time for a peerie skoosh around the marina. You’ll no’ be dat far fae the boating club, an’ you’re the last een I needed tae kidnap. I can be guard boat.’
He, of course, had spent his day kidnapping people and looking after Peerie Charlie, with the occasional touching base with the two older lasses, who were no doubt stravaiging round Brae with their friends. I could read his mind easily. An hour in peace on the water with me looking after Peerie Charlie would be a welcome break before he had to take Peerie Charlie home to bed, late, and bouncing from having spent a fair bit of the day in the car. A turn on the water with me could wear him out quite nicely. He might even be asleep before the football started.
‘I can gie you a loan o’ me drysuit,’ Charlie added. ‘We can pick up the boy’s wetsuit fae the hoose.’
Peerie Charlie and I eyed each other from the corners of our eyes.
‘Captain Cass,’ I said to him. I’d trained him to obey aboard Khalida. ‘If I tell you to do something, you do it.’
His face lit up in a huge smile. ‘Sailing in a Pico now?’
‘When we get to Brae. Just inside the marina.’ I added to Big Charlie, ‘I’ve a wetsuit aboard Khalida.’
Peerie Charlie bounced up and down in his seat. ‘I steer.’
In for a penny … ‘You steer,’ I agreed. He could manage a reasonably straight course in Khalida. I tried to remember what the forecast had been. Outside the car, the sky had cleared to blue again, with just an airy, half-formed rim of cumulus round the horizon, like a child’s scribbles. The sun was hot through the glass, the sea gently rippled. It was a pleasant August evening, with the water as warm as it would go. He’d take no harm from half an hour afloat.
I knew there was a good signal at the Ulsta ferry terminal, so I plugged my phone into the car socket to charge as we sped down Yell. As soon as it connected, I saw I’d had a call from Gavin and three from Alain. I left it to charge and borrowed Charlie’s to phone Gavin, getting out of the car and walking over to the lee of the reservations hut, where I could speak in peace. His phone went straight to voicemail.
‘Hi, it’s me,’ I said. ‘Listen, I think Anna Reynolds was on my ferry from Fetlar. She could be on the bus, heading for the mainland. I’m at Ulsta, getting the next ferry to Toft.’ I checked my watch. ‘It’s twenty to six now. We’re heading for Brae, be there about quarter past.’ It seemed too abrupt an end. I paused, then added, in what I hoped wasn’t too offhand a tone, ‘Hope I see you later. Bye!’
I got my cup of tea on the ferry between Yell and the mainland. ‘So,’ I said to Fireman Berg, while Charlie dealt with convincing Peerie Charlie he’d prefer crisps to a bar of chocolate, ‘how come you’re mixed up in all this?’
‘Because of Petter,’ he said. A tinge of red crept up under his tan, but his dark eyes met mine frankly. ‘He does not talk about his private life when he is on Sørlandet, I know. We were married last summer.’
I still didn’t get it. ‘Well … congratulations. But are you being kidnapped too?’
He shook his head. ‘Petter is.’ He sighed. ‘Petter feared you would laugh at him, you with all your sea experience, who have done every sort of odd job just to keep on the water.’
I gave him a blank look. Then I remembered Inga, sitting in Khalida’s cockpit: Charlie’s friends wi’ a friend o’ a weel-kent Norwegian model … It all came together: Petter’s good looks, his air of being posed. ‘He’s a model?’
‘Not so much now,’ Berg said quickly. ‘The sea was always his dream. But you need money to sail, yes?’
‘Yes,’ I agreed.
‘So, when he was in his last year at school, someone offered him money to do an advert, and then he was taken up by an agency. Men’s clothing, T-shirts, that sort of thing. His face is known all over Norway.’ He gave me a dry look. ‘Not by you.’
‘I don’t read magazines,’ I agreed. I tried to think of the right thing to say. ‘I bet the pay beats odd jobs, any day. Wish I’d had the looks.’
He laughed at that. ‘He does not badly.’ I staggered as he clapped me on the back. ‘I’ll tell him his guilty secret is out.’
Big Charlie won the argument over the crisps, and we sat at a table with our paper cups, watching the dimpled waters of Yell Sound slip by us, almost calm, but with the swirls of whirlpool to show the way the tide would race through when it turned again. Yes, it was a fine evening for a sail,
with the hills soft green in the sun and the water glinting pale gold.
I turned my mind to the ‘secret place’. If we were going to be near the marina, there was no need to rack my brain to think of a venue for holding a fair number of important folk. If the boating club was too homely, then it had to be Busta House, just along the road. I looked across at Charlie. ‘Is it Busta we’re going to?’
He nodded. ‘The hotel folk were well up for it, and it meant the kidnapped folk would be comfortable while they hung around. Scenic for the press photos too.’
Indeed it would be, with its white crowstepped gables and long steps down past the terraced garden. I cheered up slightly. If the press conference wasn’t till eight, Inga would surely have organised some kind of meal there, and Busta’s cooking was deservedly eart-kyent.
It was only ten minutes by car from the Yell ferry to Brae. By the time we’d got to the marina, Peerie Charlie was too excited to sit still in his seat. ‘Captain Cass,’ I reminded him, and sent him into the clubhouse with Charlie to get into his wetsuit while I rigged a Pico and trundled it down the slip to the water’s edge. We launched the boat together, with me resigned to going in to the thighs, and Peerie Charlie squealing as the cold hit his toes. By the time we’d done that, Big Charlie had brought his motorboat curving round into the water between the pontoon and the marina opening. I lifted Peerie Charlie into the Pico, and he sat while I got the rudder and daggerboard down, then I scrambled in with him. ‘For now, you just sit there comfortably. I’ll steer first.’
I hauled the sail in, and within a few seconds we were moving. The wind was light enough to keep the boat on an even keel, so that all Peerie Charlie had to do was enjoy the feel of the boat surging forwards, the closeness of the water rippling past. He reached out to trail one plump hand in the water. We went up to the far end of the marina, then I warned him that I was going to tack, which meant I was going to turn the boat. I’d say ‘Ready about’ and if he was ready, he’d say ‘Ready’, loud and clear, just like on Khalida. The metal thing above his head would go over, I explained, reaching out and rapping it, and when I said ‘lee-oh’ he had to lean forward so it didn’t hit his head. We practised that a couple of times, with him yelling ‘Ready’ loud enough to startle the marina seal, who was keeping a wary eye on us from behind the keelboats, then tacked in earnest. The boom went safely over his head, and we came back down to the pontoon and tacked round again. Charlie and Berg rocked peaceably in the mouth of the marina, between us and the open sea. Peerie Charlie waved at them, and shouted, ‘I sailing!’
Charlie’s phone flashed several times. Paparazzi everywhere.
‘Do you want to steer now?’ I asked.
He thought about it for a moment, considering the water so close, then nodded.
‘OK, keep your head down while I stop the boat.’
I turned her nose to the wind, and we swapped places in a series of wobbles. I got him comfortably seated with his hand on the tiller. ‘The tiller goes the same as on Khalida. Pull it towards you, and the boat’s nose goes in the other direction.’
He tried it, and we went round in a circle, sails flapping.
‘It’s fine,’ I said, and dealt with the mainsheet as the boat spun. ‘Try again, gently. Pull it just a little way, until the boat’s pointing at your dad.’
I kept hold of the mainsheet, controlling the sail, and put my other hand on the end of the tiller, keeping us on course. We headed towards the motorboat, with Big Charlie photographing us all the way.
‘Now we need to turn,’ I said. ‘You say “Ready about” and I say “Ready”.’ We yelled the words at each other, and then I said ‘Lee oh’, and eased the boat around. ‘Now you steer straight at my Khalida, see her in her berth there?’
He had the makings, Peerie Charlie, and so he should have, with every male ancestor on both sides a seaman. He sat up straight and concentrated ahead, like I told him, looking at a point above the boat’s nose instead of at the water, and by the time we’d crossed the marina half a dozen times he was steering a pretty straight course, helped by me messing about with the mainsail. When I saw his concentration starting to go, I put him back on crewing, and we skooshed at top speed up and down once more, then turned the boat into the pontoon. I held her while he scrambled onto the jetty.
‘Now you go upside-down swimming, like Dawn did?’ Peerie Charlie asked from the safety of the wooden walkway. I’d forgotten that he’d watched us doing capsize practice.
‘Next time. Now we get the boat ashore.’
He puffed up the slip beside me, putting his small weight on one side of the trolley, and we put the boat back in its place. We’d just stowed the mast when Big Charlie and Berg arrived. Charlie glanced at his watch with a harassed expression. ‘Can you shower quickly, Cass? I had a text from Inga saying we’d need to be along there.’
‘Well, you go,’ I said. ‘Perriebreeks and I’ll shower, then we can walk along the shore to Busta. Can’t we, boy?’
His teeth were beginning to chatter and his face was a bit white, but he nodded gamely. I took him into the clubhouse, got him warm and dressed, then sat him with a Mars Bar from upstairs while I showered. While we crunched along the beach together, he boasted about how straight he’d steered, and I said I’d take him out again. By the time we came round the point below Busta House, he was clinging heavily on my hand and stumbling on the stones, so that I was wondering if I should try carrying him. I’d be glad to get to Busta … then I saw the serried ranks of vans up in in the car park above us. Several had dark figures leaning against them, and I could see at least three tripods with lenses the length of a Pico’s tiller. Suddenly a beach with a tired toddler seemed a good place to be.
‘Lots of people,’ Peerie Charlie said, looking up. He gave the car park a good look. ‘Mammy there an’ aa.’
Yes, there was a red car that looked like Inga’s runabout.
‘Mammy there,’ I agreed. ‘Daddy too.’ I’d hand him over and hide in a corner until I could escape.
We scrambled over the sea wall between the beach and the lower road, which ran between the shore and the long garden leading up to Busta House. I took Peerie Charlie’s hand again, and we dragged along together, through the lower gates and onto the long sweep of grass.
Not everyone was up in the carpark, or corralled in Busta’s impressive Long Room, with the portraits of the first owners looking down from the wall. We were halfway up the grass to the house when a woman strolled out of the terrace door and began walking down towards us. I froze, my heart beginning to race. It was Anna.
Her gaze went over us, a woman with toddler, then her head stiffened. She’d recognised me. A long pause, then she took a purposeful step towards us.
We couldn’t turn and run away. Safety was behind her, up there in the house. Safety was the twenty-four other hostages looking out of the window. It was only her and me. If we went forward, I could tackle her, while Peerie Charlie ran on to Inga.
I bent down to him, my voice firm. ‘Captain Cass speaking. We’re going to keep walking. When I say “Go!” I want you to run past that wife to the house, shouting for Mammy as loud as you can. Run your fastest and shout your very loudest. OK?’
‘Yes, Captain Cass.’ He looked up at the house. ‘What about the man?’
My gaze shot upwards. A man was hurrying out of the house, following Anna. Oliver … and then I saw the dark hair. Not Oliver; Alain.
For a stifling second I didn’t know what to think, whether he was in with Reynolds too, or whether he was the cavalry somehow come to help us. I couldn’t risk Peerie Charlie’s life on guesswork.
‘Dodge round him. If he grabs you, kick him.’ His eyes went round and horrified. The nursery had strong views on kicking. ‘Like Spidey fighting Iceman,’ I said firmly. ‘Keep shouting for Mammy all the time.’
Anna was only fifty metres from us now, standing, waiting, at the top of the flight of stone steps. I marched Peerie Charlie towards her. She hadn’t
found me hiding from her, hadn’t seen me at the folly. I could still be an innocent bystander who hadn’t recognised her. Twenty metres – ten … and then, when we were two metres from the foot of the steps, she tilted her head down, and I recognised the movement. I knew her. She wasn’t the Anna Reynolds I’d glimpsed so briefly in the inflatable; I knew her better than that.
The Italian woman was Laura.
It seemed like an endless moment that we stood there, staring at each other. She saw in my face that I’d recognised her, not as the Italian woman, but as herself, as Laura, whose body had been fished out of the sea off Fetlar.
Her right hand went to her pocket. ‘Go, Charlie!’ I yelled, and launched myself upwards at her in a rush that swept the feet from her and left us rolling on the ground together, coming down the steps again in a flurry of hard stone angles. I felt the vibration in the ground as Charlie ran past us, short legs pounding like pistons. His scream filled the air. ‘Mammy! Mammy, Mammy!’
I didn’t have time to listen for Inga responding, for a door opening from above me. This was horrible. It felt all wrong, attacking another woman. Being attacked by her. I’d ended up on the underneath, with Laura’s weight pinning me to the damp ground and her face distorted with fury above me, and it was the hatred blazing in her eyes that frightened me most. She’d thought she’d got away with it, and now here I was, making her whole plan come unravelled. Her hand had come out of her pocket as we’d fallen; now she reached for my throat and gripped, and although I was jerking upwards as much as I could, I couldn’t get any purchase with my feet. She was bigger than me, but, I told myself, she wasn’t stronger. I relaxed for a second, then dug my heels into the soft turf and thrust my body upwards, arching my back. Her body lurched sideways, but she kept that vice-grip on my windpipe. My head was beginning to spin with it. I flailed my hands up and shoved them against her face as hard as I could, feeling for her eye sockets with my thumbs. I found one and pressed, and felt her grip tighten. A red mist wavered in front of me, and I couldn’t hold my arms up any more, then suddenly there were pounding feet all around me, shouts, radio crackles, and I felt her being pulled back, her hand leaving my throat. I lay there for a moment, gasping.
Death on a Shetland Isle Page 26