The Trowie Mound Murders

by Marsali Taylor

  ‘But it was Kirsten, his mother, who was doing the stall.’

  The arms around me jerked. ‘His mother is called Kirsten?’

  ‘You wouldn’t have met her,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t often come after the sailing.’

  ‘I did not know –’ Anders said. ‘The poor lady.’

  ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘Be a good girl,’ Anders said, ‘and stop asking questions. I think you are half-mongoose, like the old English stories by the grandfather of the man who makes the cakes.’

  I didn’t bother to disentangle that. ‘She wouldn’t take communion,’ I said. ‘And now this. Poor Alex. He would have made a good sailor, and it would have kept him out of mischief too. He was so young –’

  The spell was broken. I pulled back against Anders’ arm, and he left it fall. I clutched the fleece blanket around my nightshirt, not looking at him, and sat back on my engine box. ‘Do you want to come to the show too? I’d likely need to set off straight after breakfast.’

  ‘Are you sailing around?’

  ‘I was thinking to.’

  ‘Then set out as soon as you like, and I will wake to help moor up in Voe.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. I wriggled my way back into my bunk and curled into my sleeping position. ‘Goodnight –’ and then I added, self-consciously, ‘Anders, thank you.’

  He sat for a moment longer, then sighed, and rose. Khalida rocked as he moved forward and undressed; I heard the nylon rustle of him wriggling into his sleeping bag, then there was silence.

  7

  ‘Hit’s a fine day in Voe.’

  (Shetland saying from the times of prohibition: Voe was one of the few places where alcohol could be bought.)

  Chapter Eighteen

  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 just after half past six, and lay for a moment, feeling the events of the last days rushing back at me. Gavin’s arrival, and he and Magnie winding me up about trowie lights. Finding the Siamese cat. Alex winning the race – Alex’s death. Jimmie looking for Kevin, and the boat still locked up. The dark cottage, with the tripod broken over the charred remains of the bed. The earth smell of the mound, and the raw stone of the cliff. Anders, comforting in the night.

  That memory sent me wriggling out of bed. I felt stiff all over, and the cuts hurt each time I used my hands. Once I’d got dressed and pulled my boots on, I found the tube of Norwegian hand cream and rubbed it in thoroughly.

  The wind was soft, in keeping with Voe Show tradition. Those in the know took their oilskins to Walls Show, for the morning at least, but their suntan cream to Voe. The first Saturday of August had been glorious summer for every childhood year I remembered, and judging by the fret of cloud around the horizon and the burnished blue above, today was going to be the same again. I left my oilskins hanging in the locker, and hoisted the mainsail while we were still in the berth. No need to wake Anders by putting the engine on; I cast the ropes off, flinging them to lie neatly on the pontoon, then pushed the boom out to edge Khalida backwards. Once we had the wind on the quarter, I unfurled the jib, and we slid silently out of the marina and set our noses to the south. Naturally, that was the direction the wind was coming from; I sheeted in, and we tacked across to the old Manse, back to Busta House, across to short of the underwater Cuillin and back to the Burgastoo, that odd volcanic plug at the mouth of the canal separating Muckle Roe from the mainland. That should make sure we’d clear the cluster of rocks just off Weathersta Point.

  I wasn’t the first out on the water. I’d heard Inga’s Charlie’s boat going out just as I’d woken, and now I saw her red hull out in Cole Deep, with a varnished fishing boat that was usually kept in Voe sidling out past Linga to join her. Both were all-purpose boats, thirty-five foot long, with a white superstructure jutting up behind the wheelhouse – the winches they used for hauling up a line of creels. As I sailed down Busta Voe, the varnished boat came out into Cole Deep, and the two began steaming steadily across the stretch of water, in line. When they neared Muckle Roe, they turned, as a pair, and went back again. Dragging, I thought at first, but searching the bottom with their echo sounders seemed more likely. These days, even the smallest fishing boat had instruments that could spot a bucket on the bottom, let alone a substantial boat with a mast that would make a distinctive shape on their screens.

  I’d just come to that conclusion, off Burgastoo, when my mobile rang. It was Gavin.

  ‘Good morning. I see you’re none the worse for your adventure yesterday.’

  What had Anders called me? ‘SuperCass, that’s me.’

  ‘And where are you going, this bonny morning?’

  ‘Round to Voe. Where are you?’

  ‘On the varnished fishing boat.’

  ‘Are you dragging, or echo-sounding?’

  ‘Echo-sounding. If we find her, it will take more than these two boats to lift her.’

  ‘Good luck,’ I said. ‘I’ll hear how you get on.’

  ‘I’m sure you will,’ he agreed. ‘Would you like the news from last night?’

  ‘If you’re allowed to tell it.’

  ‘The local force is in charge of the death of that poor boy, but they’re happy to have me liase with Newcastle over the other two. We found one of your bodies, the woman. The helicopter will have another look for the other one today, but it may have sunk faster, or have been more in the current. They won’t find him alive, after a night.’

  ‘It won’t make any difference,’ I said. ‘They were both dead when they went over. Hang on, I need to tack here.’ I laid the phone down, swung Khalida round, changed sides with the jib, and lifted the phone again. ‘I’m back.’

  ‘Newcastle is sending somone up to identify the body we found. I would have thought fingerprints and a photograph would do, but they seem determined.’

  ‘Was their motorboat moored at the cottage?’

  ‘It was indeed, but we can’t do anything with it until we’ve identified it as theirs. You could do that for us, then we can get a preliminary warrant. We’ve not had a chance to talk to the owner of the cottage yet.’

  I remembered Inga’s talk. ‘He’s busy setting up a rifle range.’

  ‘Voe Show. I’m a countryman myself, remember. I could only get these fishing boats for an hour, this early. After that, Keith here will be busy frying mackerel and monks’ tails on the barbecue, and Tam, on the other boat, has to go and judge cattle.’

  ‘I’m helping with lifeboat souvenirs.’

  ‘The Newcastle officer wants to see all the set-up here, which will mean opening up your mound.’

  ‘Will you be allowed?’

  ‘I’ll try to make the case that others have been in there recently. No doubt the county archeologist will want to be present, and probably someone from Historic Scotland too. I don’t know how long it will take to get permission from them.’

  ‘I’m not volunteering to go back in and take photos.’

  ‘I’ve already suggested one of those robot cameras. Chief Inspector Talley, the Newcastle man, insisted on leaving a guard up there too. You can imagine how popular that made me.’

  ‘Especially with the guard.’

  I heard a shout behind him, both through the mobile and echoed across the water. The varnished boat stopped, backed a little. ‘I must go,’ Gavin said. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  I put the mobile back on the chart table, and set Khalida on course to slip into Olna Firth, between Weathersta and Linga. I linked the autopilot chain over her tiller, and left her to sail herself while I watched what was going on five hundred yards away. Both boats had stopped now, right in the middle of Cole Deep. I could hear an excited buzz of conversation from one to the other.

  They had found the yacht.

  I’d been conscious, as we came closer to Voe,
of more traffic than usual going along the main road that skirted the voe here, all in the Voe-wards direction, and now as we came between the narrows into inner Olna Firth, it was very clear it was show day. The road was clogged with cars indicating the left turn-off. The marquees were up behind the hall, and the green fields stretching down to the school were covered with busy people, just as they had been when I’d been a child, and the Voe Show was the highlight of the summer holidays.

  Voe was a divided village, set around the end of long, thin Olna Firth. On each side of the voe the hills were steeper than usual in Shetland, and on our starboard side was a trail of croft ruins, spaced out along the green hill. The grey stone rectangles had once been ten minutes by boat from the pier, but now that everything had to be accessible using wheels, they were an unthinkable mile’s walk. The first still-inhabited houses were by the road that ran over the Camel’s Back to Aith, substantial two-storey croft houses with porches and dormer windows, looking chunkily workmanlike below the pale-yellow Georgian elegance of Voe House, restored by BP for its executives to hold receptions. The stone-built Pierhead Restaurant was owned by Keith, who was echo-sounding for Gavin, but about to go and take over the barbecue, then the road curved up to meet the main road north. The houses continued along the shore, a mixture of traditional and new-builds. A west Highlands-style burn tumbled down the hill, wooded by spiky-branched electricity pylons.

  The north side was a different world, big business come to Shetland. Down by the shore were the remains of an old kirk and graveyard, with the newer kirk a hundred yards further, solidly whitewashed, but the houses above were single-storey bungalows, painted blue, white, rose, and yellow – Mulla, this estate was called, and it had been built by the oil companies to house its officials and their families. On this side too was the shop, Tagon Stores, with a petrol pump, and behind that was the school, with three wooden extensions around the old school building, and the hall, extensively refurbished in the eighties.

  I stuck some bacon under the grill once the narrows were passed, and buttered two rolls. Rat came out to check for crispy rind, whiskers twitching hopefully. I sent him out to the cockpit with it, but kept Cat below with his. He’d not been loose at sea yet, and he was too small for a pet lifejacket. The Siamese cat would have had one, and I betted he’d have worn it; another reason to be sure it hadn’t been Peter and Sandra who’d sunk the Rustler. Besides, it was their home. I remembered the interior, posher by far than Khalida’s, but with that same air of being lived in, books open, cushions set ready, mugs to hand. It wasn’t some hired boat to be jettisoned. No, they wouldn’t have sunk Genniveve any more than they’d have drowned their cat.

  The sun hadn’t quite broken through the mist yet, but the grey was thinning, and you could see it would soon be a glorious morning. The show was laid out as it always had been. Immediately behind the hall there was a mesh of wooden-built pens, filled with black and white Shetland cattle. I could hear them bellowing from here. There was always one bull who spent his day objecting to being penned in a space four metres square. Next to that, there was a green agricultural shed like a giant tin can sliced longways, which housed the plants, and a rectangular shed joining it. Above that, fluttering multi-coloured bunting, was the small white ‘admin’ caravan where you bought the programme. There was a slot-together stage flanked by huge speakers on this side of the shed, then the battery of small pens with hens, geese, and ducks. The marquee next to that would be pets and fleeces, with the dogs on tethers beside it, and the one after that’d be the beer tent. I’d never been in there, as the bar staff had always included one secondary teacher from Brae High School, who knew to a day when every child in the area became legal drinking age. I’d not quite been sixteen when Dad had gone to the Gulf, and I’d been packed off to Maman in France, old enough to have a couple of tins at a disco, but the show would have been pushing my luck.

  After the beer tent came the two trade-stall marquees gable end on to me, with a straggled row of pick-ups, trucks, and horse-boxes parked behind them. The lifeboat stall would be in one of those. The barbecue was in the middle of the field, and already doing good business; I could see the blue reek standing above it, and there was a snake of people waiting for their first bacon roll. My 6.30 rising had been a long lie compared to the people who’d been giving horses, sheep, and cattle a last brush at 4 a.m. before loading them onto trucks. Even from here, I could smell the first waft of fried mackerel, drifting on the air along with the bull bellowing, a dog barking, and the country classics CD that had said ‘show day’ as long as I could remember.

  The pens in the lowest field were sheep and horses. The sheep were just wooly backs within their squares, white, grey, black, brown, like a chessboard. The horses were judged in the ring, and a circle of black, chestnut and piebald was making its way around the field set aside for them, enclosed by a square of spectators. Below that, at the back of the school playground, the green grass was checkered by the first two lines of parked cars, chrome and mirrors glinting as gleams of sun broke through.

  I rolled the jib and slipped the mainsail down just below the old kirk, two hundred yards from the pier. Anders appeared at the first turn of the engine, and made the mooring ropes and fenders ready. We motored alongside the pier that once shipped Shetland knitwear all over the world. The long, low building just on the other side of the road, which was now the Pierhead, had once been Adie’s Knitwear – as in Kate Adie, intrepid BBC war correspondent – and the jumpers Tenzing and Hillary had worn as they stood on the summit of Everest had come from this factory.

  Of course, here in Shetland, Voe had been a fishing village too. We’d come along the long, sheltered voe that had made it a safe haven for the herring boats casting their nets out to the west. They’d rowed and sailed their sixareens fifty miles towards America, until the western island of Foula was just below the horizon, and dropped their long lines for haddock, cod, turbot. There would have been a haaf station on the beach, for slitting, salting, and drying the fish, and the building just above the pier was the Böd, once the net-shed and sail loft for Voe’s fishing fleet. It was turned now into camping-style accomodation, but there were still commercial fishing boats at the pier, along with a beautifully restored fishing smack, and a cluster of little boats moored side-by-side and nose-to-nose in the small marina.

  We moored on the outside of the last berth, and sat in the cockpit to eat our bacon rolls. Keith’s varnished boat came in just as we were finishing, turned on itself with a roar of bow-thrusters, backed into its berth, and cut the engines. Keith looped his mooring warps over his cleats, then raised a hand to us.

  ‘Your policeman’s still out there,’ he called. ‘Charlie brought his diving gear, and he’s going down to take a look.’

  ‘You found it then,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘No doubt about it. The mast showed up on the echo-sounder, plain as plain.’

  I grimaced at Anders.

  ‘I think the idea was to put a rope on any bodies, and bring them up, even if lifting the boat has to wait,’ Keith finished. He stepped ashore. ‘I’ll wedge the gate. There’ll be a few coming to the show by boat.’

  I hadn’t thought of bodies being aboard the boat, but I supposed it was logical. If Peter and Sandra had been killed at the trowie mound or the cottage, then it would have been easy to transfer bodies from the motorboat using the boom as a crane. If she was to be found, in two, three, twenty years time, then the bodies might as well be found inside her, instead of surfacing somewhere else and starting off an enquiry. The brightening day was dimmed by the reminder.

  We finished off our bacon rolls, had a cup of tea each, then Anders and I set out for the show, leaving Cat and Rat behind. Shows were only suitable for animals who could be trusted to behave on a lead. The Pierhead car park was empty, but the tables were set out ready for the throng who’d naturally gravitate there once the tent bar stopped selling. They’d be serving fish and chips during the day, too, and the restaura
nt upstairs with the dormer windows that looked right out over the voe would likely be booked out for the evening, as well as them doing a roaring trade in pub meals downstairs. It was worth coming to Voe just to eat there; Keith grew or caught all his own scallops, mussels, salmon, haddock, and monkfish. The only way you’d get fresher was in one of those restaurants with a pick-your-fish tank.

  We came down the steps by the side of the Böd, scrunched along the beach, then cut up the steep, green hill directly for the show. My legs protested as we went upwards again, after yesterday: two hills in two days. If I went on like this my fellow sailors would be volunteering me as a runner in the Shetland equivalent of the ‘three peaks’ race. The grass was like a medieval tapestry, studded with gold tormentil, the first pincushion-scabious, sky-blue squill, the hooded dusky pink of lousewort. A lark twittered above our heads, and the smell of barbecued mackerel hung tantalising in the air. I reminded myself I’d just had a bacon roll. I’d save the fish for dinner, after a morning selling souvenirs.

  We came between two houses and reached the road at last, a two-lane highway, the arterial route between Brae and Lerwick. We crossed it, and headed up through the car park to the marquees.

  I’d forgotten that the rifle range was set up between Marquees D and E, in that nice clear space where stray bullets would fall harmlessly into the stretch of grass between the back of the marquees and the line of animal trailers. The stall-holder was still putting the last touches to it. I stopped to stare. Brian’s no changed, Inga had said. Go to the rifle-range.

  The range itself was competently home-made, with a high, plyboard back, two sheets of eight-by-four standing upright, and a shelf with pyramids of tin cans ready to be shot at. The plyboard was painted white, and well pocked with missed shots from previous years; the cans stood out in neon orange. There was a counter set up in front, a metre from the targets, with an upright pole bobbing with furry toys in garish colours, smaller toys along the front, and, in the middle, a two-metre space with a business-like rife lying in it. The dull gleam of the metal told me it was well used and maintained. There were several neon posters with slogans like ‘Try your luck, pardner!’ and ‘Show off your sharpshootin’ skills!’ Above the counter, keeping it steady, was a title board, with Wild West lettering spaced between painted cowboy hats and pistol belts: ‘Shooting Range’.