‘Kevin, Ali, you’re both pinching. Come off the wind a touch.’ They obeyed; I did a thumbs-up. ‘Cheryl, you could go closer.’ She looked blankly at me. ‘Push the helm away a bit,’ I said, then, as she did the opposite, ‘no, the other way. Away from you.’ I gave her a thumbs-up too and leaned back. ‘Wouldn’t you think,’ I said, ‘that push it away from you would be a simple instruction?’
‘You should use the approved touchy-feely phrasing,’ Magnie said. ‘What do they say we should call the helm, the “steering stick”?’
‘Creator Lord,’ Gavin said devoutly. ‘What do you call the sail?’
‘I’ve heard it called the flappy thing,’ I said. I was pleased to see Gavin shuddered. ‘I won’t do it. Children can learn six new words a day. How can they possibly work their way up to a tall ship if they’re talking about steering sticks and flappy things? Peerie Charlie’s not three yet, and he could name his way right round Khalida.’
Peace descended, temporarily. The water tricked around the stones of the shore; a tirrick dropped into the sea and came back up with a fish glinting in its beak. ‘I should have brought a flask,’ Magnie said.
‘What amazes me,’ Gavin said, leaning an elbow against the grey rubber side and looking back at Brae, ‘is the prosperity here. All that you’ve done with your oil money – you’ve got employment, the best of social care, that school and leisure centre – and the roads! When I compare it to the Highlands, I can’t believe they’re both Scotland.’
‘That’s a matter of debate,’ said Magnie.
I intervened hastily, before we could get into the rights and wrongs of Scotland retaining this former Norwegian archipelago. ‘What are the Highlands like, then?’
Gavin’s grey eyes, long-lashed and clear as the sea on a winter morning, dimmed like a cloud going over. ‘Tourist country. That’s all there is. There’s nothing for locals, none of these centres, and the roads are worse than you have to the most remote cottage. And your young folk stay here – ours can’t. The land could be worked, but the minute a house comes up for sale the big letting agencies buy it up for a price no local could ever raise, and there’s another holiday cottage.’ His eyes sparked. ‘Don’t get me started. Do you know how much of Scotland is owned abroad?’ His chin went up. ‘But the first Act our new Parliament passed was the buy-out act, and I was over in Assynt, no’ long ago, they were the first crofters to buy the laird out. Now they’ve got plans – jobs, houses for local folk, making the moor productive again, and no’ just with wind turbines either. They’re going to get our way of life back.’
He stopped abruptly, as if this was getting too personal, but I was left wanting to ask more. The wind stirred the kilt on his brown knees, fluttered the little ribbon on each sock, just visible above the green wellingtons. He turned his head and shielded his eyes from the sun with one hand. ‘And where did your boat’s lights go out, do you think?’
‘I tried to look and see,’ I said, ‘but it’s hard to be sure. She could just have gone behind that headland there, on her way to the open sea.’
‘Think to before you assumed that. Where did you think she was as she was meeting the motorboat?’
‘Here,’ I said. I jerked my chin towards the circular expanse of water between Linga, the voe of Grobsness, the island of Papa Little, and this side of Muckle Roe. ‘Cole Deep.’
‘How deep is deep?’
‘Khalida’s echo sounder goes off its scale. Over 90 metres.’
Gavin gave the water a sweeping, speculative look. ‘90 metres. And being this close inshore, nobody’d have nets down. How about darrows?’
He meant a long hand-line with half a dozen hooks at the end; it was a Norse word, dorrow. The west coast Scots were descended from Vikings too.
Magnie shook his head. ‘Nae fish to catch in here. You’d go out into the Rona for that.’ He was watching Gavin with sceptical interest, as though he was a seaside pier conjurer about to produce a rabbit.
‘So this island, Linga, or that other one – Papa Little, is it? – would be the nearest land?’
‘I suppose so,’ I agreed.
Gavin fished out a pair of hand-sized binoculars, the old-fashioned sort with brass rims and brown leather around them. They looked like they’d belonged to his grandfather. A farm at the head of the loch – the spy-glasses conjured it up, a stone-built building at least a century old, with faded curtains, well-worn carpets and three generations’ worth of jackets, caps, and walking-sticks in the hall; a comfortable house where you’d feel at home. He turned his head and gave me a rueful smile. ‘I told you, I’m riding a hunch here.’
The first Mirror was approaching us. It tacked with a rattle of sails and halted using the simple method of ramming the rescue boat. Magnie fended it off and held it while Alex and Robbie sorted themselves out.
‘We were first by miles,’ Alex said.
‘That was because you weren’t pinching,’ I said, ‘and you remembered about trim. Well done. Wait for the others, then you can race back, gybing around the bouy off Busta.’
‘The one we came round?’
‘Any of them,’ I said.
I went back to watching the approaching Mirrors, ignoring an altercation in the one behind me. Alex had some ploy on that he wanted Robbie to join in, but Robbie was still in trouble after last night’s exploit. The next-door neighbour had been out checking sheep, and seen the pair of them, and he’d told Robbie’s mum, who’d grounded him for a week. After five minutes the second Mirror thumped against us, quickly followed by the next two and finally the fifth.
‘Okay, guys,’ I said. ‘Now you’re going to race back, and the race ends at the pontoon, with the boat tied head to wind, and the crew ashore.’ I went quickly through spinnaker drill with them, checked they were all set to operate the various bits of kit required, then set them off with the one who’d come last going first, and Alex kept until last, in spite of his protests. After five minutes of flapping and shouting, all the spinnakers were up and we had peace again.
Gavin lowered his glasses and shook his head. ‘Maybe I was wrong.’ He gave me a sideways grin. ‘Now I’m going to feel really stupid.’ He stood up in the boat and cupped his hands around his mouth. ‘Puss, puss, puss. Puss, puss, puss.’
The call echoed off the rocky beach and around the water, then died into silence. Gavin shrugged, and sat down, but his hands were tense on the binoculars, and his eyes still roving the island.
‘Here, what’s that?’ Magnie said. His head tilted, listening. For a moment, I thought it was a seagull, then I realised it was what we’d heard last night, that thin, wailing cry of a baby. A tingle crept down my spine. It was coming from the island, just as Alex had said.
‘We heard it last night, and thought it was your ghost baby,’ I said. ‘It must have been a seagull after all.’
Gavin lifted his binoculars again. He scanned the island, then gave a grunt of satisfaction. ‘Got him.’
‘That’s no seagull, lass,’ Magnie said. He turned his whole body, his yellow jacket creaking. ‘I don’t know what he’s doing here, but – my mercy.’ His head stilled; he leant forward. ‘Well, now, there he is.’
Gavin lowered his glasses and nodded.
The wailing cry was getting louder. I saw a flash of dark back like a wet otter slipping between the heather stems towards the shore.
‘What is it?’ I said.
‘You’ll recognise him in a minute,’ Gavin said.
‘Don’t you worry,’ Magnie called to it, ‘we’re not going to leave you. Haul the anchor up, Cass, and let’s get ashore for him. The Good Man alone kens how he got here but his folk will be glad to get him back.’
The creature had reached the shore now and come right to the water’s edge, waiting for us. Now I could see the white front, the chocolate brown paws, the black mask and ears, although it was too far off for me to distinguish the cornflower-blue eyes.
It was Sandra and Peter’s Siamese cat.
I
lifted the outboard up and paddled the boat to the shallows. Magnie sploshed over to pick the cat up. It stopped its unearthly wailing once it saw we were coming for it, and paced back and forward on the pebble beach instead, eyes fixed on us. I couldn’t tell if it looked tired, as if it had swum ashore. Its coat was as immaculate as it had been when we’d met it aboard Genniveve. I was certain that whatever Sandra and Peter were involved in, they wouldn’t have thrown their cat overboard to drown, or marooned it on this uninhabited island.
It came to Magnie straight away, and he picked it up and sploshed back with it in his arms. He put it on the padded seat while he made a dry nest for it with his jacket in the fish box where we stored the bouy-anchors and rope, then coaxed the cat into it, soothing it with his gnarled hands. He brought out a bottle of water and tipped some into his palm. The cat drank thirstily, then relaxed in the jacket, blue eyes fixed on Magnie. He sat back, shaking his head at me.
‘Now, Cass, ghost babies indeed! You’re been listening to too many of my yarns. Haven’t you heard a Siamese yowl before?’
‘Never,’ I said. So that was why Gavin had asked whether I’d had a pet as a child. I turned to him. ‘Did you guess that, just from what I said about the noise?’
‘A horrid, desolate wailing noise, you said. We had a Siamese when I was a child, and I remembered the minister’s wife coming in once.’ He leaned forward to let the cat sniff his hand, then scratched it under the ear. ‘She wondered where the baby was.’
‘Ah, they have good voices,’ Magnie said. ‘They’re talking cats too, you can have a conversation with them just as if they were Christian souls. I’ll be glad to look after this one for a day or two, until his folk get back for him.’
If they were alive to come back for him … I’d been thinking in terms of Genniveve sailing away, but I saw now that if you were going to scuttle a yacht with a fifteen-metre mast this wasn’t a bad place to do it. There was a fish farm with a floating shed behind Linga, and various lobster pots around the shore, but nobody would be dragging for scallops in the deep itself; no fishermen’s net would snag on a mast. A boat could sink into the bottom in peace.
I could see that Gavin was following my thoughts. His mouth was grim; he nodded as our eyes met. ‘Put me ashore when you can,’ he said, ‘and I’ll get things moving.’
I looked at the cat curled in Magnie’s jacket. ‘When we came aboard,’ I said, ‘he vanished into the locker at first, and only came out once he’d decided it was safe. If it hadn’t been Sandra who’d come to take Genniveve away, that’s what he’d have done, slipped down into his favourite hiding-locker, and stayed there.’ Until the intruder had gone … until the water began to come in, and he’d had to take to the cockpit first, and then to the cabin roof, and finally to the sea. The wailing we’d heard had begun after the light had gone out, after the rising water had taken out the boat’s electrics. He’d been calling for help, and nobody had come. At last he’d have had to swim for his life to the nearest shore. Most animals can swim, if they have to, and the light breeze would have blown him shorewards. Yes, he could have made those two hundred yards.
‘You’ll not be able to have him and yon boy’s rat in the same boat,’ Magnie said. ‘I’ll tak him home wi’ me, give him a feed and somewhere to sleep. You’ll manage fine without me for the afternoon, a day like this.’
We putted back to the pier, reaching it just ahead of Alex and Robbie. Magnie carried the cat ashore, and headed off in his car with it sitting beside him in the front seat. I hoped it would get on with his other cats.
‘I’ll come back later,’ Gavin said, ‘or phone to tell you what’s happening.’
‘Okay,’ I said, and turned back to order the chaos at the pontoon.
We did another beat up the voe, this time with me throwing coloured balls astern for them to pick up as they zig-zagged behind me, then a spinnaker run down to the club again. I couldn’t focus, though. I kept glancing over my shoulder at the ruffled steel waters of Cole Deep, and wondering what lay in their depths. Magnie joined me again at lunchtime, and reported that his visitor had eaten ravenously, then fallen foul of his top cat, Tigger. He’d left the Siamese shut in the spare room, exchanging menaces with Tigger through the closed door.
‘But I doubt,’ he said, glancing over at Cole Deep, just as I had been all morning, ‘that the pair of them had better get used to each another. Have you heard back from yon kilted policeman yet?’
I shook my head. ‘I think he has to deal with Newcastle as well as Lerwick.’
‘Aye, they were Geordies.’
The past tense echoed in a little silence. I took a deep breath and fished my whistle out from the neck of my lifejacket. ‘Well, what will we get them doing this afternoon?’
We did ‘follow my leader’ in pairs, and a rather sploshy game of ‘tag’ and ended with a couple of races. Once the boats were put away, I left the bairns to shower and went up into the clubhouse, where there were log-books to be signed, and biscuits and hot juice to distribute. There was a parent rota for that, and this time it was Kirsten’s turn. ‘Uh-huh,’ I thought, and waited to see if she’d mention the lifeboat stall tomorrow.
She did, straight away. ‘Thanks, Cass, for offering to come and help out on Saturday. It’s good of you – you’re doing so much with the children you mustn’t get much time to yourself.’
‘Oh, it’s no bother,’ I said. I touched wood. ‘I’ve never needed to call the lifeboat out, but I’m glad it’s there.’ I hadn’t offered, though.
‘I’ll be there from eight, but you just come when it suits you.’
‘I won’t be there as soon as that,’ I said. ‘I was thinking to bring the boat round, so say ten, ten thirty.’
‘That’d be plenty early,’ she said. ‘Thanks. D’you want some hot juice?’
‘I’ll make myself drinking chocolate,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a biscuit, though.’
‘You’ll not need to slim, you’re so active,’ she said.
‘You’re not needing to slim yourself,’ I said. This was the kind of female conversation that always left me feeling awkward. She was slim almost to the point of scraggy, one of these nervous women that couldn’t sit still for worrying. Even now, when all the bairns had had their juice, she was dabbing at the table with a cloth, and collecting tumblers almost from their hands. Her collar-bones jutted out above the neck of her pale blue vest top, you could see the bones in her shoulders, and her hipster jeans hung loose below the nobbles of her pelvis. I wondered again about all that had gone wrong in her life that she had to control her body so rigidly. Maybe it was the last area of herself that she owned; Olaf was one to take over everything else. She was pretty in a modern film-star way, with a long, thin face with high cheekbones, and green eyes smudged into their sockets. Her dark hair was super-sleek, and curved round her face in one of those symmetric cuts, the two sides touching her chin.
‘Thanks for doing the hot juice,’ I said, and went off to get my drinking chocolate and the box of log-books. I went through them one by one, calling the child over and noting what they’d done: Mirror, 3 hrs helm, 2 hrs crew, down-wind sailing, CL. I was only halfway through them when Kirsten went, calling ‘See you on Saturday.’ She must have taken Alex home with her, for when I got to the bottom of the pile, his book was there, but he didn’t answer to his name. Good. I was glad one parent had the sense to keep him off the road. I put the books back in the box, and the box back in the cupboard, washed up my mug, and headed home.
There was no sign of Anders yet. Rat and Cat were flatteringly pleased to see me. I hung my drysuit from the backstay and sat down to let them scramble all over me, Rat whiffling his whiskers and Cat purring like the rumble of water in a sea-cave. I propped my mobile up in the corner of the chart table, where it sometimes got a signal, but Gavin didn’t call.
I’d just switched off Radio Shetland and the six o’clock headlines, and was thinking about making some kind of tea, when I heard the marina gate clang.
Naturally I wasn’t going to rush out and look. There were footsteps, then somebody called my name from outside – not Gavin. I went out to see Olaf standing on the pontoon.
‘Cass,’ he said, ‘I was wondering if you’d seen Alex about after the sailing, or if he’d mentioned going anywhere else. Kirsten took it he’d come home already, when she left, and then we thought he’d likely gone with one of his pals somewhere, but he hadn’t said, and so we phoned around, and though he’d left the sailing with the others, nobody’d seen him after that.’
It was too soon to push the panic button, here in Shetland, but I could share Olaf’s concern. ‘No,’ I said, ‘he’s not still around here. He doesn’t have a mobile?’
‘It’s switched off,’ Olaf said. He rubbed a hand over his chin. ‘He didn’t mention anywhere he was going?’
‘Not to me,’ I said. ‘He was sailing with Robbie – he didn’t say anything to him?
Olaf shook his head. ‘We tried Gary and Peter too. Nothing. Ah well, I’ll just keep looking.’
‘Can I do anything to help?’ I asked. ‘I could go along the shore.’
He shook his head. ‘He’d not have gone that way, he had the quad.’
‘He’d not come to any harm, here in Shetland,’ I said.
‘No’ the south sort of harm,’ Olaf agreed, but the thought didn’t seem to comfort him much. He strode away along the pontoon, leaving it rocking.
I sat down in the cockpit, disquieted. It was, of course, entirely likely that Alex should have gone off on some ploy without telling anyone. All the same, bairns didn’t usually head off on ploys without another bairn to share the adventure, and his friends had been collected by their parents or gone blamelessly home on their bikes.
Then I remembered what finding the Siamese cat had driven right out of my head. He had had some plan in mind, for he’d been trying to persuade Robbie to it, while they’d hung on to the RIB, waiting for the others to come. Robbie had refused, because he was grounded for sneaking out the night before. Now what might Alex have had in mind?
The Trowie Mound Murders Page 13