Death on a Shetland Isle

by Marsali Taylor

  I shoved it in my pocket, put Cat’s harness on him, and headed out on deck. Agnetha was waiting by the rail.

  ‘So, the handsome prince to the rescue act worked out?’

  I gave her a withering look. She shook her head. ‘You can’t expect to keep anything secret on board.’

  ‘He was just in time to see me rescue myself,’ I said. It was barely worth asking, but I asked all the same. ‘No word for me from Gavin?’

  She shook her head. ‘Has Laura Eastley been caught?’

  I nodded, and explained as much as I’d worked out as we putted the inflatable back shorewards, beached her and walked up to the hotel, with Cat pausing to investigate promising clumps of grass or wall crannies, then bounding on rocking-horse legs to catch us up.

  ‘Clever,’ Agnetha agreed. ‘Revenge for her parents, and a new life for her and Daniel … until he became a liability.’

  I stopped dead in the middle of the hotel car park. I’d forgotten about Daniel. ‘A liability?’

  ‘He was going to pieces,’ Agnetha said. ‘Remember how worked up he was, in the afternoon.’ She smiled. ‘I was at the same table as him, for the tafl game. He was sitting on needles and constantly checking his phone.’

  Laura and Daniel. Not an odd threesome of Oliver, Daniel and Anna, but two pairs: Oliver and Anna, and Laura and Daniel. Suddenly I remembered that first morning, in Kristiansand. Not Oliver: the man I’d seen had had his face masked by Laura’s head. Daniel. I put new words to her urgent gesture: ‘Go, before anyone sees us together.’ And his hesitation when I’d asked them if he and Oliver knew each other; he’d been waiting to see if Oliver recognised him. I needed to think this out. I waved Agnetha forwards. ‘I’ll be in in a minute.’

  She gave me a speculative look. ‘Don’t get run over.’

  I moved to the low wall overlooking the dancing sea and sat down. Cat took that as permission to explore the next-door garden, and headed off into the bushes, tail flattened into hunting stealth. A flock of sparrows flew upwards, cheeping indignantly, and sat in a row on the roof gutter, heads turned sideways to watch him.

  Laura and Daniel. They were the same age, far more likely to make friends at a teen disco than Daniel and Oliver. I remembered how rehearsed I’d thought his greeting to her had been. Laura would have rehearsed anything she could; she was a planner, not a chance-taker, like Oliver, who’d pushed her down the broch stairs … but now that memory was turned on its head too. Oliver had said Laura had stumbled and brought him down; it was she who said she’d been pushed. Another make-weight of evidence against Oliver for when she went missing. Laura had said that coming on board Sørlandet had been Oliver’s idea; Oliver, I remembered now, had said it had been Laura’s … Take that further. Supposing the whole thing had been Laura’s plan, all along … trailing herself as bait, to see if her brother, having got rid of their parents, would really try to get rid of her too? The brother she’d looked after, got out of trouble, for all those years?

  I remembered how her face had lit up as she’d recalled her university days. She’d enjoyed the freedom, away from parental expectations, away from Oliver’s trouble. She’d got involved in outside activities: ceilidhs, and sports clubs, and an operatic society … I wondered if she’d been able to do that before, or if she’d been the mothering sister at home too, making her brother a snack and watching TV with him, while all her friends were doing after-school clubs. I wondered if she’d resented him as much as she loved him, escaped to university, then returned home to find him like an albatross around her neck. She’d have gritted her teeth and prepared to bear it, until his betrayal, the death of their parents. After that, she’d decided – and she must have decided almost straight away – he’d be thrown to the wolves, while she made a new life for herself. No, herself and Daniel, if he was in on it too. I tried to visualise his face. Yes, I thought, he might have been tempted by a share of two million pounds and a life in the sun.

  Another block fell in place with a click. Laura and Oliver shared a house … which meant she had access to his computer. His emails. His phone. As soon as she’d been suspicious about their parents, she could have read everything he’d plotted with Anna: arriving separately on Shetland, travelling with Sørlandet to Fetlar, the booking at the camping böd, where Daniel had been waiting. He’d been waiting for Laura to return and tell him she’d dealt with Anna. Now, with a cold chill, I wondered if he’d known about her next move, the hiding in plain sight, or if he’d always been expendable. I looked out over the shimmering sea and felt the wind cold on my cheek. Maybe she’d have let him make it to Italy, if he hadn’t been so on edge.

  There was a sick feeling in my stomach. I’d liked Laura. I’d felt sorry for her.

  The phone in my pocket bleeped. I grabbed for it and saw I’d a message from Gavin. I stood for a moment, heart thudding, almost afraid to open it. Slowly, I pressed the buttons, and found the words: On my way now. See you soon. xxx

  The wind was warm after all, and the parks spread around the houses were the bright green of a summer day. Our swan-white ship reflected the dancing ripples on her hull. He was coming; it was going to be all right.

  On my way now from Lerwick meant he’d be here in fifty minutes. I went in to join the crew and trainees, and chatted away about the beauty of Shetland, and parried questions about the police investigation with ‘I believe there’s been an arrest’, and watched the grey space of car park for his car. There were two false alarms before he came at last, sitting by the driver, his head silhouetted against the dancing water behind. I excused myself and went out, trying to make it casual, when all I wanted was to fling myself into his arms and feel them close about me.

  He came out into the sunshine. We looked at each other uncertainly for a moment, then I slipped my hand into his. ‘How are you doing?’ he said.

  ‘I’m fine. You?’

  He smiled at that, rather bleakly. ‘Fine too.’ He rubbed his hand up his face and over his hair, making it stand up. ‘I’ve had enough of Police Scotland.’

  I jerked my head round in surprise. ‘I thought you loved it.’

  He drew me towards the wall and we sat on it together, backs to the windows of watching eyes, faces towards the shining sea. ‘I did, at first. It was exciting. I felt I was really at the cutting edge, making a difference, you know? Helping catch the big villains.’

  ‘You were,’ I said hotly, as if I was defending him against someone else’s criticism. ‘That people-trafficking ring you broke up, how many folk did you save there?’

  He shrugged. ‘Yes, but other villains have already oozed into the holes we left.’ His fingers tightened on mine, and he began speaking as if he wanted to pour his soul out before he could think better of it. ‘And now this. We’ll never prove that Oliver killed his parents, whatever Laura believes, though she says she has all his emails to Anna to prove that he intended to kill her … but it’s still her we’ll be charging with murder and fraud.’ The wind lifted a corner of his kilt, and he smoothed it down again. ‘I’m not a city person, Cass. I don’t do mean streets. I don’t want to spend my days where each person I meet is worse than the next, and even the most respectable of Edinburgh accountants has another face. I’m used to the country, where the bad’s mingled with the good in all of us. I want to go back to Inverness, where one day I’m dealing with a pub brawl and the next I’m looking for a missing collie. I want to see life whole again, instead of being a stranger in hostile city police stations.’ He stopped as suddenly as if he’d run out of breath, and I was left not knowing what to say. I curled my hand around his, feeling our shared warmth. I understood how he felt. His hills were calling him, his ordered world where he knew everyone, just as the sea called me.

  ‘Then you need to get out.’

  ‘And be a DI in Inverness all my days?’

  I understood that too. You only got one chance at promotion, and if you decided to go backwards, the powers that be would write you off. ‘If you’ll be happy
there. That’s what really matters.’ I took a deep breath. ‘You’re not doing big good, like you are when you take villains off the streets, but isn’t it as important to look after your own patch? Our own place, that’s what we’ve got. If you can keep the folk of Inverness walking safe at night, that matters too. They deserve that.’ I spread the hand that wasn’t holding his and tried to explain what I felt when people said that the low crime rate of Shetland wasn’t ‘real life’. ‘It’s their lives. It’s all they’ve got. They deserve you looking after their world for them.’

  He was silent for a moment, thinking about that. Then he sighed and rose. ‘When do you need to be back aboard? Do we have time for a dram first?’

  We made love as if we were clinging to each other for protection against the outside world, then slept, curled around each other. When I woke again it was ten to four, and time I was on watch. I scrambled into my clothes, trying not to wake him, but I’d only been on deck for twenty minutes when he came out with two mugs of tea and stood beside me, watching the sun make a golden pathway from the head of the voe seawards.

  I was the first to break the silence. ‘Are you going to have to go down with Laura? To the mainland, I mean?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m on leave. Sergeant Peterson can deal with it all now. She’ll remain in custody, of course.’

  ‘Poor Laura,’ I said. ‘She nearly made it to freedom.’

  ‘With other people’s money.’

  ‘I s’pose so.’ I sighed. ‘I just don’t think she had much fun in her life.’ I remembered my teens: junketing round the regattas, then on tall ships, and waitressing, and doing up Marielle with Alain, the achievement and the dreams. ‘She looked after her brother, then went straight from university into Mum’s firm.’

  ‘I felt sorry for her too,’ he said. He paused, watching, as a kittiwake flew overhead, drifted down in a circle, then settled on the water, turning its head to look at us with bead-black eyes. ‘When were you going to tell me about Alain?’ he said at last.

  ‘When I could,’ I said. ‘At first I just didn’t understand why he pretended not to recognise me. Why he was going under another name. But then he told me he’d lost his memory. I wasn’t sure I believed him. Then I didn’t know what to do, how to tell him.’ I turned my face to his. ‘I couldn’t tell you when he didn’t know. It would have been like’ – I spread my hands, trying to explain – ‘like we were conspiring against him.’ I looked Gavin straight in the eyes. ‘I owed him that much loyalty, at least. I thought maybe I could write to his parents and tell them to come. Then, on Saturday night, at the dance, someone who’d known us both recognised us – congratulated us on still being together.’ I made a face. ‘The fat hit the fire.’

  ‘The blazing row in the car park,’ Gavin said. ‘I heard at least six versions of it.’

  I opened my mouth and he lifted his hand to lay a finger on my lips. ‘No need to explain.’ His grey eyes were steady on mine; he used the words I’d used to myself. ‘So long as you’re sure that he’s in the past.’

  I nodded and threaded my fingers through his. ‘I’m sure.’

  We leant shoulder to shoulder, and watched the sun come up.

  A NOTE ON SHETLAN

  Shetland has its own very distinctive language, Shetlan or Shetlandic, which derives from old Norse and old Scots. In Death on a Longship, Magnie’s first words to Cass are, ‘Cass, well, for the love of mercy. Norroway, at this season? Yea, yea, we’ll find you a berth. Where are you?’

  Written in west-side Shetlan (each district is slightly different), it would have looked like this:

  ‘Cass, weel, fir da love o’ mercy. Norroway, at dis saeson? Yea, yea, we’ll fin dee a bert. Quaur is du?’

  Th becomes a d sound in dis (this), da (the), dee and du (originally thee and thou, now you), wh becomes qu (quaur, where), the vowel sounds are altered (well to weel, season to saeson, find to fin), the verbs are slightly different (quaur is du) and the whole looks unintelligible to most folk from outwith Shetland, and twartree (a few) within it too.

  So, rather than writing in the way my characters would speak, I’ve tried to catch the rhythm and some of the distinctive usages of Shetlan while keeping it intelligible to soothmoothers, or people who’ve come in by boat through the South Mouth of Bressay Sound into Lerwick, and by extension, anyone living south of Fair Isle.

  There are also many Shetlan words that my characters would naturally use, and here, to help you, are some o’ dem. No Shetland person would ever use the Scots wee; to them, something small would be peerie, or, if it was very small, peerie mootie. They’d caa sheep in a park, that is, herd them up in a field – moorit sheep, coloured black, brown, fawn. They’d take a skiff (a small rowing boat) out along the banks (cliffs) or on the voe (sea inlet), with the tirricks (Arctic terns) crying above them, and the selkies (seals) watching. Hungry folk are black fanted (because they’ve forgotten their faerdie maet, the snack that would have kept them going) and upset folk greet (cry). An older housewife would have her makkin (knitting) belt buckled around her waist, and her reestit (smoke-dried) mutton hanging above the Rayburn. And finally … my favourite Shetland verb, which I didn’t manage to work into this novel, but which is too good not to share: to kettle. As in: Wir cat’s just kettled. Four ketlings, twa strippet and twa black and quite. I’ll leave you to work that one out on your own … or, of course, you could consult Joanie Graham’s Shetland Dictionary, if your local bookshop hasn’t joost selt their last copy dastreen.

  The diminutives Magnie (Magnus), Gibbie (Gilbert) and Charlie may also seem strange to non-Shetland ears. In a traditional country family (I can’t speak for toonie Lerwick habits) the oldest son would often be called after his father or grandfather, and be distinguished from that father and grandfather, and probably a cousin or two as well, by his own version of their shared name. Or, of course, by a Peerie in front of it, which would stick for life, like the eart-kyent (well-known) guitarist Peerie Willie Johnson, who reached his eightieth birthday. There was also a patronymic system, which meant that a Peter’s four sons, Peter, Andrew, John and Matthew, would all have the surname Peterson, and so would his son Peter’s children. Andrew’s children, however, would have the surname Anderson, John’s would be Johnson, and Matthew’s would be Matthewson. The Scots ministers stamped this out in the nineteenth century, but in one district you can have a lot of folk with the same surname, and so they’re distinguished by their house name: Magnie o’ Strom, Peter o’ da Knowe.

  GLOSSARY

  For those who like to look up unfamiliar words as they go, here’s a glossary of Scots and Shetlandic words.

  aa: all

  an aa: as well

  aabody: everybody

  aawye: everywhere

  ahint: behind

  ain: own

  amang: among

  anyroad: anyway

  ashet: large serving dish

  auld: old

  aye: always

  bairn: child

  ball (verb): throw out

  banks: sea cliffs, or peat banks, the slice of moor where peats are cast

  bannock: flat triangular scone

  birl, birling: paired spinning round in a dance

  blinkie: torch

  blootered: very drunk

  blyde: pleased

  boanie: pretty, good-looking

  breeks: trousers

  brigstanes: flagged stones at the door of a croft house

  bruck: rubbish

  caa: round up

  canna: can’t

  clarted: thickly covered

  cludgie: toilet

  cowp: capsize

  cratur: creature

  croft house: the long, low traditional house set in its own land

  croog: to cling to, or of a group of people, to huddle together

  daander: to travel uncertainly or in a leisurely fashion

  darrow: a hand fishing line

  dastreen: yesterday evening

  de-
crofted: land that has been taken out of agricultural use, e.g. for a house site

  dee: you (du is also you, depending on the grammar of the sentence – they’re equivalent to ‘thee’ and ‘thou’. Like French, you would only use dee or du to one friend; several people, or an adult if you’re a younger person, would be ‘you’)

  denner: midday meal

  didna: didn’t

  dinna: don’t

  dip dee doon: sit yourself down

  dis: this

  doesna: doesn’t

  doon: down

  downie: an eiderdown quilt, a duvet

  drewie lines: a type of seaweed made of long strands

  duke: duck

  dukey-hole: pond for ducks

  du kens: you know

  dyck, dyke: a wall, generally drystone, i.e. built without cement

  eart: direction, the eart o wind

  eart-kyent: well known

  ee now: right now

  eela: fishing, generally these days a competition

  everywye: everywhere

  from, frae: from

  faersome: frightening

  faither, usually faider: father

  fanted: hungry, often black fanted, absolutely starving

  folk: people

  gansey: a knitted jumper

  gant: to yawn

  geen: gone

  gluff: fright

  greff: the area in front of a peat bank

  gret: cried

  guid: good

  guid kens: God knows