‘Oh,’ she said, looking me over, and dismissing any pretensions I had to looks or fashion sense, ‘not more interruptions.’
‘This,’ said Barbara, coming in behind her and banging her tea-tray down smartly on top of the latest Shetland Life and iiShetland on the coffee table, ‘is the lass who’s coming to give me a hand with the house. Cass Lynch o’ Finister – you ken, the house very nearly at the end of the Muckle Roe road.’ She busied herself with pouring the tea, her every movement so brisk and determined that I wondered why she needed a hand; perhaps she was having bother with her heart, or just wanted more time to go to swimming classes, or arrange flowers, or do charity work.
She took the thought out of my head. ‘No’ that I’m needing help in the house, you understand, but I’m that busy with organising the charity shop rota and the work I’m doing in Lerwick just now that I don’t have the time, so Brian said, “Well, Mam, why don’t you see if you can get a girl in to give you a hand?” He’s a very good son to me.’
The WAG – what had Inga called her, Cerys? – let out an irritated breath. ‘Do you take milk, Cass?’ She had a flat, bored-sounding voice, with a Liverpool accent.
‘No, thank you,’ I said. It was only since I’d been living at Brae that there’d been in-date milk aboard Khalida. She made a grimace, presumably at the strength of the tea, as she passed it over.
‘Now then,’ Barbara said, sitting down in one of the two armchairs set square on to the TV, ‘what experience have you of cleaning?’
‘Only on ships,’ I said, ‘but I’m a quick learner, and I know how to follow instructions.’
She gave a dry cackle of laughter. ‘Well, that’s something these days. Those girls in the Co-op, well, I don’t think some of them have anything in their heads beyond painting their faces –’ a sideways glance at Cerys – ‘and as for following instructions, well, I don’t think any of them could remember an instruction long enough to obey it.’ She had one of those thin, aggrieved voices like a saw working through wire. ‘I don’t ken what the world’s coming to. Too busy talking to their pals on the phone to serve you, half the time. I’m telling you, if I get one like that I just put the goods on the counter and walk out of the shop.’
‘And the police officers are getting younger,’ Cerys said, with a malicious sideways glint of her eyes under the thick mascara.
Barbara rose straight to that one. ‘Policeman! I’m telling you, if that blonde Peterson lass so much as puts a foot back on my path I’ll be straight on the phone to Lerwick.’
I’d met Sergeant Peterson over the film murder. She’d made me think of a mermaid, with long pale hair tied in a pony-tail, and ice-green eyes that looked detachedly at the follies of humankind. I wondered what she’d been doing that had annoyed Barbara so much.
Cerys shrugged and added fuel to the flames. ‘She was just doing her duty.’
Barbara snorted. ‘Duty! I’ll duty her. I remember her in her pram, and if her late mother could have seen her coming in here and asking about what my Brian was doing, well, she’d have got the makkin belt out faster than my lady could run, I’ll tell you that.’
The Shetland makkin belt was a leather belt with a padded section, for sticking the ends of the knitting needles in, and it was the motherly weapon of choice in the days when you were allowed to hit children. Every Shetland housewife wore one, for idle moments when she might take up her knitting, and the faster shots could get it off the waist and across the back of a recalcitrant child’s legs in under five seconds. It’d gone out of fashion with mothers by the time I was growing up, of course, but everyone else’s granny was still a dead shot with it in a case of suspected misbehaviour. My schoolmates envied me my French and Irish grannies.
And why, I wondered, was Sergeant Peterson chasing up Brian? I couldn’t ask, and Barbara was back on track again. ‘Seven pounds an hour, if we’re suited, and two hours twice a week.’
Twenty-eight pounds, for just four hours’ work. I could live on thirty pounds, just, although I could see it was going to be hard-earned. I agreed to that one, and we settled hours: Tuesday and Friday evenings, seven till nine, which left my days free for sailing.
‘And that rat doesn’t come in the house,’ Barbara stated. Cerys jerked her blonde-streaked head up.
‘What rat?’
‘It’s my shipmate’s rat,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t bring him here.’ I didn’t add that Rat was very particular about where he went, and wouldn’t have been impressed by this house with neither air nor crumbs.
Cerys was still staring at me. ‘You’re the girl who lives with Anders, at the marina?’
‘We share my boat,’ I said clearly.
She didn’t like that. I couldn’t tell why; I was surprised she’d ever come across Anders, unless she was an undercover intergalactic warrior queen. She rose, twisting the strap of her clumsy leather bag between her fingers. ‘How come you’re cleaning houses, if you live on a boat?’
There was no point in making up an impassioned spiel about my mission to keep china horses shining. ‘Money,’ I said simply. ‘Do you know Anders, then?’
‘No,’ she retorted. ‘No, how should I? I’d just heard about the rat, that’s all.’ She turned her back on me, and Barbara rose.
‘We’ll see you on Friday, then. And if either of us is not suited, well, we’ll just say so, and that’ll be that, with no hard feelings.’
We shook hands on it, and I edged into the postage-stamp hall. She went before me to open the door. As she was showing me out I asked, very casually, ‘Do you ever use the old house, Staneygarth is it?’
I was looking her straight in the face. She took a step back. Her thin-lipped mouth snapped, ‘Never! I told that policeman, I’ve not been there in years!’ then set like a trap. Behind her, Cerys made a startled movement, then was still, staring at me, eyes blazing with fury.
‘I just wondered,’ I said mildly, and made my way to the door. Just before the porch, I stumbled forwards on one of the dozens of rugs scattered round and had to catch at the doorjamb to steady myself, which brought my nose up almost against the line of paintings hanging down the fifteen-centimetre strip of wall between the inner porch door and the bathroom door.
The top two were hideous daubs: a little girl with an oversized grin holding a watering can, and a boy, equally toothy, hiding a bunch of flowers behind his back. The third was different. It had a thick frame of dark wood, with an inner border of what looked like gold leaf, and in the centre was a painting of an old man with a long beard. St Nicholas, I’d have said, but I’d have needed longer to look at it to be sure. His robes were a rich purple-pink, his raised hand ivory-pale. The writing below it was in Cyrillic script.
Now what, I wondered, among this jumble-sale of bric-a-brac, was Barbara Nicolson doing with what looked like a centuries-old Russian icon?
She didn’t mind me looking at it, but Cerys had raised a hand to her mouth. I pretended not to see, and walked jauntily down the path, turning at the gate to wave. Barbara waited to make sure I’d closed it properly, then went back inside, clicking the door shut behind her. I vaulted back over the gate and slipped to the door, easing it open to listen.
‘How did you ken his name, then?’ Barbara asked, tack-sharp. ‘Anders, you said his name before she did.’
‘Someone spoke about him having a rat.’ There was a clicking as she fiddled with the clasp of her bag. ‘I can’t remember who.’
‘Someone at the old cottage, maybe.’
There was a long pause, then Cerys’ voice came again, clear and cold. ‘If you were to spread lies about me, you’d be forcing Brian to choose between his mother and his wife. Are you sure enough of yourself to do that?’
There was a long silence, then a slammed door. I scarpered, just in time, for I was barely out of the gate when a red pick-up slammed to a halt in front of the house, and Brian jumped out.
If I hadn’t been at his mother’s house, I’d never have recognised him
. He’d been a slim primary bairn who’d grown upwards like a weed through secondary; he’d certainly not had the muscled shoulders and chest of the man confronting me, nor the bandit’s moustache. He was a ‘black’ Shetlander, with the colouring of seamen from the Armada ships known to have been wrecked here: blue-black hair curling crisply around his ears and neck, and a swarthy complexion that took a tan with the first blink of spring sunshine. There was something piratical about him, even in his crofter clothes of boiler suit and yellow wellies, an independent tilt to the head, a sharp look to the brown eyes. I wasn’t sure I’d want him as a hand aboard any ship of mine. He’d be brewing trouble.
Furthermore, he looked to be in a furious temper, black brows drawn so hard that they met above his nose, mouth hardened to a thin line. His hand was clenched around something. I couldn’t see what – a rectangle of metal. Then he glanced over his shoulder and saw me. There was a flare of surprise, then his face lightened. He smiled, and took three steps towards me. His boiler suit reeked of sheep and Jeyes fluid, but as he moved I got a whiff of wood smoke too, as if he’d been working with a bonfire.
‘Hiya, Brian,’ I said.
‘Hey, cool Cass. Good to see you again. You’ve had a few adventures since we shared a classroom.’
Since the adventures included Alain’s death and last month’s shenanigans with the film crew, I suspected he was being malicious. Living south had smoothed some of the Shetland from his voice, but I’d no doubt it returned during the holidays. It was a smooth enough voice to listen to, resonant in his chest.
‘So have you, no doubt,’ I replied. ‘You’re working south, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah, I’m an electrician. So much for old Taity chucking me out of the techy class.’
‘Someone said you were working with security systems in stately homes,’ I said. My ship, Cass …
He grinned. It made him look more like a pirate than ever. A gold ring glinted in one ear. ‘Amazing places. Not right posh stately homes, du kens, more the kind o’ houses that’s belonged to one laird’s family for twa or three hundred years. Just lived in. The kind o’ house that money can’t buy. They even make me wish I’d listened to more history at the school.’ His mouth thinned again. ‘Me wife hates them. She likes everything modern.’ He cast a dark look at the curtained windows and his hand clenched on the metal rectangle. Then he focused on me again. ‘So, Cass, what’re you doing here? Never say me midder’s roped you in for stewarding her fancy work at the show.’
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘I heard she was looking for a cleaner.’
His reaction was the same as Inga’s. ‘Cleaning houses? You’re no’ lived in a house for ten years.’
‘You seen the brass aboard a tall ship?’ I retorted.
‘I’ll warn Mam no’ to let you sluice down the kitchen floor.’ His hand clenched on the metal object again, then turned it over, and this time I got a chance to see what it was. ‘See you, Cass.’
He strode off up the garden path. I turned away and headed for the Co-op.
The object he’d been clutching as if he was about to throw it in someone’s face was the rectangular innards of an ordinary, old-fashioned mortice lock.
Chapter Eleven
I struggled against the impulse to phone Gavin with those snippets of information all the way back to the main road. An icon hanging on a wall wasn’t enough to link Brian with the missing art works. He could have had a suffragette great aunt who’d gone to Russia with Dr Inglis’s Women’s Hospital unit, or (more likely) a great-grandfather who’d been a seaman in the Baltic.
All the same, he was working south, with a security firm, which all linked in a bit too neatly. Who would know better how to circumvent security than the man who installed it? I wondered if the police had worked that one out too, and sent Sergeant Peterson to check it out. If that was the case, there was definitely no need for me to be phoning any other policeman. Stick to your own ship, Cass, where you belong.
And just what was Cerys up to at the old cottage, and how did Anders come into it? I tried to remember what he’d said when I’d mentioned the old cottage, and he’d got so uptight. Something about me being too young – If you were to spread lies about me, Cerys had said. The answer was pretty obvious, I supposed, as obvious as Cerys herself – and I rather suspected she’d have to be really obvious to get Anders into bed, unless she’d lured him with promises of an engine. He could do a good line in courtly phrases, but they never came out quite right, and I’d never actually seen him with a girl. We had an amiable relationship going, and I was sorry to think he’d got entangled with someone as fake-looking as Cerys.
But it was none of my business.
I went into the Co-op on the way past. They didn’t have kitten food, but I got a piece of haddock for just now, and some stir-fry vegetables for tea. I’d try dropping a line from the inflatable tomorrow, and see if I could get some whitefish instead of the ubiquitous mackerel.
Anders was already on board, sitting back in the cockpit with his feet up and Rat curled around his neck. His skin was pale under the tan, and there was a grease smear down his cheek.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Good day?’
He shrugged, making Rat wobble like a dinghy on a swell. ‘We had to get the engine out of an old wooden fishing boat, and start installing a new one. It meant a lot of heavy lifting – the hatch was a size too awkward to use the hoist properly.’ He looked at the bags I’d swung over the guard rail. ‘Is that tea?’
‘I got some stuff,’ I said.
‘Good. I was just wondering if I should be going along to the garage for some meat.’
‘Can you wait five minutes?’
He nodded, and I sat down on the opposite side of the rail from him. Very domesticated. There was a scrabbling from behind the washboards, and an indignant mew.
‘I was unsure that you wanted the kitten to come up into the cockpit yet,’ Anders said.
‘He has to learn not to fall overboard sometime,’ I said. I raised the washboard and Cat swarmed out. I lifted him onto my knee and stroked his bony back. He purred obligingly, but was too interested in this new environment to settle. He whiffled his way around the cockpit floor, poking a paw into each drain, clambered up onto the tiller and swung from it, and finally jumped onto the seats and swarmed his way onto the side deck, to peer with interest down into the dark water.
‘Don’t try it,’ I said, retrieving him, then, to Anders, ‘I have a job. Twenty-eight quid a week, for four hours.’
‘That is good. What have you to do?’
‘Clean an ornament-infested house,’ I said with feeling. Anders laughed. ‘The woman who owns it is the woman from the cottage round under the trowie mound,’ I added. I was tempted to say something about Cerys, but anything she and Anders might be up to was none of my business, and I hoped I wouldn’t be seeing much of her.
He flushed red at the mention of the cottage and went straight into Neanderthal mode. ‘I do not think you need to go out to work. I am earning a good wage now.’
I stared at him, aghast. ‘But –’
‘I have enough to keep us both, if the money you got from the film has run out.’
‘It’s not that,’ I protested. ‘I can’t have you paying for all our food. That’s not fair.’
‘I do not think they are the sort of people you should associate with,’ Anders said. I could see generations of black-clad Lutheran ancestors lining up at his back. ‘They are not good company.’
‘I won’t be keeping company with Cerys,’ I said, forgetting my resolution not to mention her. ‘I’ll be cleaning her mother-in-law’s house.’ I jutted my chin at him. ‘And I’ve never lived on anyone else’s money, and I’m not starting now.’
‘You are going to take money from your father for your college course.’
This was a sore point which I preferred not to think about. ‘If I can earn a bit more now, maybe I won’t need to.’
Anders sighed. ‘Cass, I would rather
not explain, but I think you should not go to this woman, and you should definitely not go near that cottage, whoever asks you. It is not a good place.’ He shook his head. ‘And now I have told you not to, of course you will go.’
‘I’m not that stupid,’ I said.
‘Think of it as a pub you have been warned against, in a strange port,’ Anders said.
‘Can’t you just tell me why not?’
The tide of crimson rose up from his neck again. ‘I would rather not. But I wish you would let me use the money I have earned to keep us both.’ He shrugged, and retrieved Cat from where he was making his way along the side-deck, then gazed at me, blue eyes earnest. ‘Please, Cass.’
I didn’t quite get why it mattered so much to him, but I could see that it did. For these three months he’d been my friend, my companion, who rarely asked anything of me. I wished that he wasn’t asking this, but I couldn’t see how to say no.
‘I’ve said that I’ll do it, so I’ll have to go for this week, then I’ll say I’m just too tired after a day on the water. Will that do?’
He nodded. ‘Thank you, Cass.’
We didn’t talk of Cerys or the cottage any more. After tea, Anders went off to conduct his next bit of interplanetary war, the green-baize roll of painted figures under his arm. I fed Cat his haddock, then took him and Rat across to the shed to play in a half-rigged Mirror while I messed about with boat repairs. Although the Pico hulls were pretty indestructible, their fixings weren’t, and we had several boats whose bow-ring was gone, leaving a small hole for water to ooze into the hollow shell. I took out the bungs at the aft end, and propped the boats up to drain. They sailed badly enough without adding several litres of interior water. I glued in new bow-rings, then began searching for decent bits of rope to use as painters, to replace the tatty string the current painters had become. I was just on my knees fishing out a likely piece from underneath an ancient Wayfarer when a pick-up rumbled down the gravel drive, booming eighties rock for a three-mile radius. Rat and Cat froze, then dived under the folded red sail. The shed darkened, there was a door slam, and I heard footsteps behind me.
The Trowie Mound Murders Page 10