I took a sip of drinking chocolate and answered in Norwegian: our private language, our language of confidences. ‘When did you hear the story?’
I felt him tense. ‘I haven’t heard it. I don’t need to hear it, unless you wish to tell it.’ His voice was clumsy in the dark. He went back to the ponderous compliment mode that he had used on me before we’d come to Shetland together, before we’d become friends. ‘Beautiful Cass, you don’t need to justify anything to me. Don’t you think I know you better than that by now?’
‘What the boy said was true,’ I said. ‘I did send him overboard.’
‘I’d never have been a sailor if it hadn’t been for you,’ Anders said. ‘Tell me, if you want to.’
I had told the story, re-lived it, with Gavin. It had faded a little since. ‘We were crossing the Atlantic, and the boat gybed, and hit him a real whack on the head. I thought he was okay.’ I could see him still, swallowing as if he was tasting blood, his face paper-white under the tan. Don’t fuss, Cass – ‘He went for a sleep, and when he got up he was delirious. He thought I was pirates. It was a particular fear of his, that’s why he kept the gun on board. He was seeing two of me, and he fired at me. I kicked the helm across, and let the jib fly, and as she tacked, it knocked him overboard. I didn’t mean it to do that, but I knew that it might.’ The definition of murder was where you did something that could be reasonably supposed to cause death. ‘I waited. I searched, but he never surfaced again.’
‘When he shot at you,’ Anders said, ‘when that bullet scored your cheek –’ He reached one hand out to me. His fingers were warm on the scar. They moved a few centimetres to touch my forehead. ‘If it had been just that to the right, he would have killed you. It would have been you who had died, out in the Atlantic.’ He drew the hand back, lifted his mug, drank, and set it down again. Rat sat on his hindquarters to peer into the cup, whiskers twitching. He was fond of chocolate. ‘No, Rat,’ Anders said. ‘I’ve been thinking about you, Cass. I was thinking that your scar was why you do not want to go to college after all.’
‘Partly,’ I conceded.
‘Would it be easier if your scar was inside?’
I stared at the pale blur of his face. The whites of his eyes glinted silver. ‘I don’t get you.’
He gestured with one hand. ‘Everyone, you see, has things they have done that they would rather not think about.’ It was too dark to see if his fair skin had flushed, but his voice was constricted. ‘They try and stamp them down, but the memory thickens, it is still there. Then, when you want a new relationship, the scar is there, but nobody knows it but you, and you have to decide whether to risk telling, or to hope your new friend will not touch it by accident.’
I hadn’t thought of it like that. I couldn’t escape my past, but if circumstances had been different – if I’d had two smooth, tanned cheeks, if I’d met someone I was serious about – I’d have had to tell them, if only to make sure that the moment would never come when I returned home to someone asking with cold eyes, ‘Why did you never tell me you’d killed a man?’
I wanted to look across the table and ask, ‘What is your scar?’ but it seemed too intrusive. I left the silence, in case he wanted to talk.
His head lifted. He spoke in English. ‘I thought –’ He went to the forrard hatch in one fluid movement, lifted it, listening, then shook his head and closed it again. ‘Magnie’s stories are sticking in my brain.’
‘The baby, or the trowie fiddler?’
He stretched, showing off his magnificent pectoral muscles, and shaking his head. He took both mugs and pumped water into them, then added the last of the hot water from the kettle. I took the drying cloth. ‘Did you win tonight?’
‘It is not that easy,’ Anders reproved. ‘It is like real life. You have to learn skills, and make allies. But we will soon reach the big battle, and then – then, when it is over, I’ll have to go back home. There is always a fishing boat going that way.’
‘It’s going to be strange.’ I suddenly imagined Khalida without Rat balancing along the fiddles, tail at an angle, without Anders sleeping in the forepeak. ‘It felt so odd at first, you being aboard, but it’s going to be odder still without you.’
His hand stilled in the act of passing me his mug, the dark blue one, then moved again. He sighed. ‘Cass, you are so young.’
‘I’m three years older than you,’ I retorted, and held out my hand for my own mug.
‘Ah, but you did not grow up in Bergen.’
‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with the price of fish.’
‘And you will have Cat with you, for company.’ He ducked under the bulkhead towards his bunk. ‘Komme, Rotte. Goodnight, Cass.’
Friday 3 August
Tide times for Brae:
Low Water 04.22 0.2m
High Water 10.49 2.1m
Low Water 16.32 0.5m
High Water 22.53 2.3m
Moon full
I woke to a greyer morning, with the wide sky covered with mottled clouds. Anders hauled on his overalls, deliberately brisk, and headed for work. I was just brushing my teeth in the cockpit before going to get the rescue boat when a red Bolt’s hire car turned into the club, scrunched down the gravel, and drove along to the marina gate nearest us. It parked there, and Gavin got out.
I nearly choked on my mouthful of toothpaste. I spat it over the side, laid the brush down on the teak seat, and went forward to let him in. He stood there, watching me walk towards him, and the pontoon had never seemed so long. I felt like a fish being reeled in, dragged inexorably from the familiar green depths of ocean towards the dangerous air.
He looked as I remembered him. Even at this distance I could see the alertness of him, the way he stood like an sea-eagle in its eyrie, stone-still, seeing everything around him. It was the first thing I’d noticed about him. He wore his green kilt and a plain leather sporran, for use, not for show, and a grey-gold jumper with a round neck: good working clothes, like a crofter about to walk the fences, but not expecting to do anything dirty. As I came forward he reached into the car and brought out black rubber boots and an olive-green oilskin jacket.
I came up the sloped gangway to the gate. He was a metre back from the meshed gate, not crowding me as I opened it. Our eyes met while the diamonds of wire were still between us, and suddenly it was all right. The first time I’d seen him, I been shocked by seeing his eyes the shape and colour of Alain’s, but now they were his own, sea-grey, fringed by dark lashes, smiling at me. The wind ruffled his dark-red hair, cut just short enough to try and get rid of the curl.
‘Hi,’ I said. My voice sounded too casual. He’d told me it gave me away. I tried for a natural tone. ‘I didn’t expect to see you so soon.’
‘I had three days of holiday to take.’ He clanged the door shut behind him. ‘Any chance you could run me out to where the yacht’s light went out?’
‘I’ve got a gaggle of bairns coming to go sailing in fifteen minutes, but we could easily take them out that way.’ I gave him a sideways look. ‘Any particular reason?’
‘I’m riding a hunch.’
‘It’ll take most of the morning. I can’t leave them to put you back, once they’re out.’
‘It’s a bonny day to be out on the water.’
‘Okay. D’you want to start up the RIB?’ I nodded at the grey rubber rescue boat. ‘I’ll just get my fleece and life-jackets.’
‘An initiative test,’ he agreed. I’d only just reached Khalida when I heard the RIB’s engine roar out, then throttle back. I grinned to myself, flung on my fleece, and returned, life-jackets in hand. He was busy undoing the ropes.
‘D’you want to steer?’ I asked. I passed him the spare life-jacket.
‘On you go. You’re the instructor here.’
‘While you’ve only had thirty years of messing about in boats.’
‘Thirty-four,’ he corrected. ‘According to Kenny, whose memory is better than mine, our mother used to use the boat as a p
lay-pen.’
‘I never had a chance to phone Kenny. I couldn’t think of an excuse.’
‘Any old message would have done.’
‘Oh, no, I did think of an excuse. It’s maybe nothing, though.’ I bumped the rubber side of the RIB against the pontoon and reached over the side for a ring to tie to. ‘It was this icon –’ I told him, rapidly, about the Russian St Nicolas.
‘Interesting,’ he agreed, ‘but I think you’re right, the seaman grandfather is more likely. The security firm thing is interesting too, but I’m sure Wearmouth’s team would have picked up on something as obvious as all the burgled houses having used the same security firm.’
There was the sound of tyres scattering the gravel above us. Magnie’s ancient mustard-coloured Fiesta swerved round the corner and slid down the drive to the hard standing just as we reached the dinghy slip above the pontoon. He abandoned it by the caravan utilities cage and came over. He was dressed for going on the water: yellow rubber boots, jeans, an ancient grey jersey, and his council issue oilskin jacket.‘Now then, Cass.’ His eyes narrowed as he recognised Gavin. ‘Now.’
‘You remember Gavin Macrae, don’t you?’ I said.
‘I don’t mind us actually meeting,’ Magnie said, aimiably enough. ‘What’re we done now?’
‘It’s Cass’s missing yacht,’ Gavin said. ‘She’s got me intrigued.’
‘Ye, that was an odd thing, right enough,’ Magnie said. He turned to me. ‘Olaf o’ Scarvataing wasn’t giving you grief yesterday, was he? I saw his car as I came along the road, but I hadn’t time to stop.’
‘He was being helpful,’ I said. ‘Our problem parent,’ I added to Gavin. ‘Norman’s to keep away from the dinghies, and he whipped a couple of painters for me.’
‘There’ll be something in it for him,’ Magnie said darkly. ‘He’s no’ one to be helpful when he doesn’t get an advantage from it.’
‘I said I’d help Kirsten out with the lifeboat stall at Voe Show.’
Magnie shook his head. ‘He’d no’ be bothered about that. He’s like the old fishermen, get the wife to take the kist on her back all the way to Lerwick, while he swaggered along beside her.’
‘A kist?’ I repeated. ‘Do you mean the old-fashioned seaman’s chest?’
Magnie nodded, grinning. ‘Great, heavy things they were.’
‘Aye,’ Gavin said. ‘I mind that was the way in the western isles, as well.’
Now I had two of them baiting me. ‘Are you seriously telling me the wives carried them for their husbands, all the way to Lerwick?’
‘They carried the husbands too, if there was a burn to ford,’ Gavin said. ‘To keep their feet dry, for them going to sea.’
‘Piggy-back, I suppose,’ I retorted.
‘I suppose so too,’ Gavin said gravely.
‘I mind seeing it happen, as a bairn,’ Magnie added.
I gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘Come off it, Magnie. In the 1950s?’
‘Well, maybe no’,’ he conceded. ‘But my faider used to speak of it.’ He and Gavin exchanged a look over my head. Men. And if Magnie was going to take to match-making, he could just mind his own business.
‘Gavin wants a look at where I last saw the Rustler,’ I said, ‘so we’ll take the bairns up that way.’
I turned to look down the voe. The wind was still from the south, gusting up to 3, making pronounced waves with white-fretted tops. It was a beautiful sailing day, with enough wind to be fun, yet not so much that they’d have trouble with the spinnakers. The sky would clear; already the mottled clouds were separating out to show the blue behind them. The sheep had got over their panic and were spread out again, white, rust, brown, black dots moving against the dark green heather or lime-green moss patches. It was two hours yet to high tide. The water rippled up the boatclub slip, each new wave pushing a hairsbreadth further.
‘They can get the spinnakers out again. It’s a touch more of a dead run than it was, but they can’t knock themselves out with the boom in this.’
‘Never say “can’t”,’ Magnie said. We looked up as we heard the roar of a quad coming along the road. ‘That boy could damage himself in a flat calm.’
The quad swerved into the boating club drive at the last minute, in a splatter of gravel. I was surprised not to see a pillion-rider, then I realised it was Alex himself driving, even though he had to be well short of the legal fourteen.
‘Are you supposed to be driving that thing on the roads?’ I asked, as he sauntered over. Given my own record of illegal driving over the summer, I didn’t dare look at Gavin.
‘Dad said I could take it,’ he said. ‘Norman wasn’t around to run me, he’d gone off somewye. Dad wasn’t very pleased with him.’
‘Mirrors again,’ I said. ‘Let’s see how well you remember hoisting the mainsail.’
‘Where are we going today?’
‘Along to Weathersta.’
His eyes lit up. ‘Cool! Did you know it’s haunted? There’s a baby that cries and cries, because its mother murdered it.’ He put a gruesome emphasis on murdered. ‘She wasn’t married, and she killed it by hitting it with a stick until it died, but it screamed and screamed, and the neighbours heard and came and arrested her.’
Yuck! I preferred Magnie’s selkie wife who found her skin again, and couldn’t help herself. Alex took my silence for disbelief. ‘It’s true,’ he insisted. His lavender-blue eyes went round and solemn. ‘See, I was over playing with Robbie last night, he lives just at the back of the point, and we were messing about on the shore. We heard it, clear as clear, crying.’
‘What time was this?’
He went pink, deliberated within himself for a moment, then decided I wasn’t a parent, so would be safe to tell. ‘Well, see, we should’ve been in bed, but – well, we’d been to bed, and then I’d climbed out of my window and he’d sneaked out of his back door, and we met up. It was the middle of the night.’
‘What colour was the sky behind this hill?’ I asked, pointing eastwards. ‘Black, or grey, or dim blue, or first-light blue?’
He frowned, visualising. ‘Dim blue.’
That meant it had been between one and two in the morning. I could feel Gavin’s intent silence behind me. ‘Did you see any boats about?’
He shrugged. ‘But we heard the baby crying, Cass, really we did. Do you suppose, if you saw it, it would be all covered in blood, with a muckle gash in its head, like the dead people in The Sixth Sense?’
I didn’t have the heart to spoil his fantasies. ‘I suppose it might be.’
‘But then,’ Alex said, ‘maybe it’s like those light things, you know, Magnie’s stories, the closer you get, then it moves. Because when we heard it, we crept over the hill and towards the beach straight away, but then it sounded like it came from the island, Linga.’
‘There were lights up at the trowie mound dastreen,’ Magnie said. He gave me a sideways look, to see how seriously I’d take him. ‘Likely another trowie wedding. They minded me o’ the old Lea lights, in Aith – do you ken that story? The house called the Lea, well, it had earth lights apo the hill. We used to stop on the way home from dances to watch them. It was a regular thing. They’d just move up the hill, for all the world like someen walking up carrying a lantern. You could only see them from far off, though. The old man that lived there, he never saw them.’
‘Lights?’ I said. ‘Alex, you’ll notice what you’ve done wrong with that tiller the first time you try to tack.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ he said, and got the helm out over the traveller instead of tangled under it.
‘Moving up and down the hill ida mirkening,’ Magnie said. ‘I couldn’t sleep, so instead o’ taking them tablets, I went for a walk up over the hill.’ He slanted a quick, intelligent look at Gavin. He wasn’t going to help the police, exactly, but he didn’t mind passing on information he thought they should know. ‘I could see them clear as clear.’
Gavin looked at me. ‘The trowie mound, that’s the cairn your
sailors were going to?’
I nodded. I wondered, I wondered very much, if the inside of the trowie mound might be a good place to store things. Reasonably small, portable things, like paintings, well wrapped up against the damp, and little statues. I’d been concentrating on the cottage, but now I came to think of it, that wasn’t such a good hiding place. It was too accessible by land. All you needed for the loot to be discovered was a group of young boys daring each other to break in via a window, or a tramp looking for shelter. The trowie mound, by contrast, was an enclosed space with no obvious break-in points, and it was a stiff climb up the hill, to deter the casual passer-by. To retrieve your hidden objects, all you had to do was moor to the bouy at the cottage and go up the hill. To keep them safe, all you had to do was keep the nosy archeologists away. What had Olaf said? That Val Turner and her team were keen to put their noses inside, and he wouldn’t have them near the place. You didn’t even need to be seen, if you had a fast boat and plenty of fuel. You could arrive at the bouy from Norway, from Faroe, from Iceland, pick up your cargo, and be away again.
Gavin was watching me. He said, ‘My ship, Cass. You focus on your bairns.’
Chapter Thirteen
I focused, gathering them around me for the usual briefing at the whiteboard in the shed: where the wind was coming from, what the tide was doing, how would that affect getting out of the marina, knowing when to tack going upwind. There was the usual confused flurry as they trundled boats to the pontoon and set off, then once the last set of red sails had made it past the wind-shadow of the marina entrance, we led them up the voe. We started towards Busta, went around one of the mooring buoys there, zig-zagged back towards Weathersta, across to Muckle Roe, and back to the near corner of Linga. I steered, Gavin sat upright on the port side, looking forward, hair lifting in the wind, and Magnie settled comfortably on starboard, booted feet stretched across the boat.
We dropped the anchor just off the north end of Linga. I cut our engine, then turned side-saddle on the padded seat. A hundred yards behind us, Alex had his boat nicely balanced, but all the others were either sailing too close to the wind, or miles off it. I leaned over the side of the rescue boat and let the wind carry my voice back to them.
The Trowie Mound Murders Page 12