The Trowie Mound Murders

by Marsali Taylor

  ‘They wouldn’t do it to you,’ Gavin said. ‘You don’t move in those circles.’

  ‘I’m beginning to,’ I said. ‘I’ve got settled back here now. I know all the faces again.’ Settled … ‘Inga’s trying to talk me into joining her netball team, once the summer’s over. That’d make me one of the lasses.’

  Far away, below us, the pick-up was enveloped in a white cloud. ‘Flour next,’ Gavin said. I sat down on the grass to watch. My thigh muscles had definitely had enough of this land-climbing lark. Gavin sat down beside me, spread hand ten centimetres from mine.

  ‘My leg muscles hurt,’ I explained.

  The little figure that was Kevin was back in the truck, ripping open bags of flour and scattering the contents over the snowmen pair. Four of the hula maidens were tying bunches of balloons to the corners of the truck. I didn’t need to be closer to know that the pink ones, on Donna’s side, would be festooned with slogans like ‘Hen party – no cocks’, or ‘naked hunk’ cartoons, and the blue ones on Jimmie’s would say ‘sexy male’ or ‘the party’s here’. There were cheers as a couple of shaped balloons were added to the front corners of the cab. From here, they looked like a scarlet penis and a blow-up woman.

  Gavin sighed. ‘It all makes me feel as if I’m somehow missing out on the modern world. I can’t imagine how this is supposed to be fun. I don’t even like getting drunk, particularly, though I’d never refuse a dram of a decent whisky at the end of the day.’

  ‘You and me both, boy,’ I agreed. ‘Luckily drink’s just too expensive in Norway for them to want to go there, but there were loads of stag parties on the Med. They were awful. They’d get boozed up all night, men and women, and be a real nuisance. The whole bar area would be a no-go zone until they’d gone. They’d each spend enough for me to live on for a fortnight in one night’s getting smashed, then remember nothing about it the next morning. I just couldn’t see the point.’

  ‘Being police, we had to stay sensible at that Orkney one. Well, at least we kept it within the hotel. There was no parading round the streets.’

  Below us, the last box was being opened. From the sounds floating up, it contained a selection of what Maman would not have called musical instruments. The squeal of plastic penny-whistles, trumpet-squeakers, the choked sound of kazoos and the rattle of maracas shrilled up to us. The steel band tape blared out again, the pick-up turned around in a ripple of foil curtain and swaying balloons, and the crowd fell in behind. The hula-skirts swayed as the lasses waved their arms in the air, and the men raised their cans and fired off party-poppers. As it passed closer to us I saw Jimmie and Donna, sitting up straight as though for a coronation, but encrusted in flour that was already drying with the egg in the sun to make a hard, grey paste. Jimmie was drunk enough to be taking it as a joke, but Donna’s smile looked forced, and the gunge-encrusted tiara sat squint on her powdered head. The clamour swelled towards us as they came along the road and up the curve, and died away as they went around the hill. Above us, a lark was singing. The wind rustled gently in the grass beside us, and for a moment it was beautifully peaceful. Gavin lay back, crossing his arms behind his head, and closing his eyes. The sun picked up lines of strain on his forehead and running from nose to chin. I remembered that even although it wasn’t his case, he’d been up a good part of the night, and then early this morning. Then the noise came around the road again, mixed with hooting of horns from passing cars. I sighed, and rose.

  ‘I’d better get back to my stall. I must have been away an hour. Inga’ll be tugging at her mooring lines.’

  Gavin rose too. ‘I’ll get back to Lerwick, and liase with Newcastle. See you later.’

  He went off down the hill, and I began scrambling upwards again. When I looked down from the road, he had already reached the shore.

  The pick-up with Jimmie and Donna was doing a triumphant round of the showfield as I reached it. I dodged behind the laughing crowds, feeling snooty. I could almost hear my voice sounding like Maman’s, ‘Vulgaire …’ and felt ashamed. Their mates had gone to a good deal of bother to make sure their impending big day was celebrated with the maximum fuss, and just because it wasn’t my style of fuss didn’t mean they weren’t having fun. The laughter from the crowd was a mixture of sympathy and affection.

  Inga was at the door of the marquee, clapping and laughing with all the other stallholders. I stepped over the guy ropes to the side and slipped in beside her. ‘I’m sorry that took so long. Did Charlie tell you?’

  She nodded. ‘Was it bad?’

  ‘Horrid. Gavin fed me extra-sugared drinking chocolate after it. Then we got diverted by this lot.’

  Inga grinned. ‘Geri’s been planning this for weeks. You wouldn’t believe the choice of hen party balloons and banners on the internet.’

  ‘Netball team too?’ I couldn’t imagine the immaculate Geri doing anything that would get her flushed and sweating, except maybe a heads-down bicycle run in the gym, clad in black lycra.

  ‘Hockey.’ Ah, now that I could imagine; a killer game if ever there was one. ‘Okay, if you’re fine to go back on the stall, I’ll go and round up the bairns. Peeriebreeks is with his dad, and the lasses are around somewhere. So long as they’re not winning more goldfish …’ She rolled her dark eyes. ‘Either you find them belly up, or they eat each other.’

  ‘Really?’ I said. I’d never heard of cannibal goldfish.

  ‘Really. We got four one year, and by the end of September there was only one left, three times the size he’d been. Have you eaten? D’you want to get yourself a bacon roll before you’re trapped?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t feel like it.’

  ‘Must have been bad. See you later, then.’ She gathered up her russet jacket, hoisted her bag over one shoulder, and headed off. There weren’t any customers in the tent, so I stayed in the sun, leaning against the pole that held the marquee door flap back.

  The show was in full swing now. The traditional tape had been replaced by a live band consisting of three fiddles, an accordion, and a bass guitar, all played with expert panache by T-shirted youngsters. The leader looked fourteen, but she leant and swayed to the music as if this stage was her home. Behind her, the bass player grinned as he thumped his backing notes. The flowers had spilled out of their half-can green hut behind the stage, great pots of scarlet begonias that were as big as roses, and hanging baskets of pale blue lobelia and silvery fern. I couldn’t grow things aboard Khalida, but I enjoyed looking at flowers ashore. Sometimes, I’d sneak a gardening catalogue on board a tall ship where I’d be out of sight of land for weeks, although I made sure nobody saw me reading it.

  The tethered dogs slept in the sun. A child came out of the pet tent carrying a ginger kitten as small as Cat. She took it to a clear patch of grass by the marquee and let it run around, catching it back when it went too far. The hens settled in their pens, making that broody noise. The sun dazzled off chrome and warmed my face.

  Everywhere, there were folk: men in T-shirts and jeans, and women like summer butterflies in shorts and vest-tops, white, candy-pink, sky-blue. Toddlers staggered across the warm grass, and were retrieved by older siblings; teenagers gathered in clumps, passing coke bottles between them, and sharing pictures on their phones. The older women showed off their best summer frocks, sprigged navy and sage green. Even the older men had left their jackets in the cars, and went shirt-sleeved, although they didn’t risk taking their caps off. The barbecue and ice-cream queues snaked separately towards each other, then joined in a double line, with people from one chatting to people from the other. The two heading the queues turned away together, and did a complicated swap of steak rolls and swirl-topped cones. My head didn’t want food, but my stomach considered the smell of barbecued minute steak with onions, and approved.

  Behind the food stalls, a long line of old engines had been set up. There were a few truly vintage tractors (in Shetland, most tractors are relatively vintage), the old grey sort whose registration numbers ru
n to only five figures, a rattling steam traction which looked like something from Tess of the D’Urbervilles and various contraptions set up on plank tables. Some were marine engines, with buckets of water and hoses leading to what would be a raw-water intake. Naturally, Anders’ fair head was among them; he and an old man were leaning over a great, square lump of metal piping. When it came to engines, his hands were sensitive as a lover’s; one caressed the injector pipes, the other smoothed round to indicate the fan belt. The old man jerked his head sideways, considered, prodding his pipe with a match, then nodded. Anders fished in his pocket for his multi-tool, and the pair of them bent over the machine again.

  I was just reckoning I had zero chance of getting away without a full run-down over our evening meal when I spotted a familiar maroon Clio being jolted recklessly over the cattle grid into the parking area behind them, and spinning into a space. The driver got out, leaving the door to swing to behind her, and walked forward in that careful, drunken way, as if the daisy-studded grass was ice beneath her feet.

  It was Alex’s mother, Kirsten.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Cerys said they had sedated her, but sedation didn’t always knock people out. I’d seen that on board ship. Kirsten looked as if it had wired her up instead of calming her, set her brain scurrying down whatever track it was fixed on so that she had to act, even though her body would barely obey her. It was a miracle she’d managed to drive the five miles from Brae without sliding into the ditch.

  She’d just reached the outermost row of cars, swaying and supporting herself on the sun-glinting roofs, when there was a blare of music and a roar of applause from the gate beside the hall. An open-backed truck swept in, decorated with flowers in cream, lemon, ochre, and buttercup. In the middle of it, dressed in yellow bridesmaids’ dresses and sitting on flower-woven thrones, were the Voe Show Queen and her two princesses. They were chosen each year from among the oldest lasses at Olnafirth Primary school, and this was their big moment. Every head was turned towards them as the truck made its round of the showfield.

  Kirsten looked at them as if she couldn’t remember what they were. She made a helpless gesture, then her head turned slowly, her eyes searching among the crowd. I scanned the people too, for someone who might come and lead her away from here: Cerys, Barbara, Inga, anyone who would be able to pet her and soothe her and get her back lying down, so that sleep could take the burden from her. At his stall behind my shoulder, Brian gave a sharp intake of breath, then came to speak softly in my ear. ‘She shouldna be here. Go you and get her over, sit her down, and keep her calm. I’ll try to get hold of –’ His face darkened, his mouth hardened, but Kirsten’s state over-rode his own feelings. ‘I’ll get Olaf.’

  Going to her was the last thing I wanted to do. I was no good at touchy-feely. I did plotting voyages and giving orders, calculating tides and riding out ocean storms. What could I say to a poor woman who’d lost her child?

  Brian’s hand was on my back. ‘Geng du, Cass, afore anyone sees her.’

  The truck had stopped in the middle of the green for the show president to do a speech. Somebody had to go, and it seemed the somebody was me. I cut across the soft turf to intercept Kirsten’s wavering track towards the crowd. She wore pink patterned leggings and a long T-shirt, like pyjamas, as if she’d been coaxed to bed, and had risen just as she was. Her feet were thrust into pink canvas pumps. Her handbag dangled from one hand, and the other was stretched forward, as if to catch at somebody’s shoulder. Her dark hair was tousled, and her eyes stared in her white face, the pupils dilated. She brought the stretched hand back to shade them, screwing her eyes at the brightness of the sun, and took slower steps, swaying as if she could barely stand.

  I caught the handbag arm. ‘Kirsten, it’s too bright for you out here. Come into the tent.’

  It took her a moment to react to my touch. She stopped walking, but didn’t look at me. ‘Cass. I need to find –’ She frowned, bloodless mouth closing and opening again. ‘I need to find –’

  ‘Come with me,’ I said, drawing her away from the crowd. ‘Come and sit down.’

  She let herself be drawn, but slowly, her eyes still searching. ‘I don’t see him.’

  ‘Come and sit,’ I said, ‘and if you tell me who you’re looking for, I’ll find him, while you rest.’

  ‘Rest –’ she echoed vaguely.

  I slipped my arm under hers, and took her weight as she stumbled beside me. Her feet were sliding along the grass as if it was too much bother to lift them, as if the will which had brought her here was almost exhausted. My fellow stall-holders knew her of course, and stood aside to let us through, the woman from the Gonfirth Kirk nodding in approval. ‘I’ll make a cup of tea,’ she murmured, and headed towards her stall.

  I eased Kirsten into one of our chairs. ‘You just sit down here,’ I said, keeping my voice very steady. She nodded, but I wasn’t sure she’d understood. My jacket was draped over the back of her chair; she fumbled for a hold of it, and tugged it to her. ‘Cold –’ I eased it from under her clutching fingers and draped it over her shoulders, tucking it around her. For all it was a fine day outside, she wasn’t dressed for sitting in the cool shadow of the marquee. She needed a doctor. There had always been a St John’s Ambulance tent, up behind the hall. Maybe I could send someone for help.

  She was sitting still now, eyes half closed. The Gonfirth Kirk lady came over to me with a mug of tea, milky, so that Kirsten could drink it straight away. I took it and held it in Kirsten’s lap, clasping her hands around it. ‘Here, drink this.’

  She lifted it obediently, and sipped. The warmth brought colour to her lips. She drank about half of the mugful, then handed it back to me, like Peerie Charlie when he’d had enough. Her eyes opened. The pupils were still too large, but at least they focused on me. ‘Cass.’

  I nodded. ‘Just sit still.’

  Her thin hand gripped my wrist. There was surprising strength in it, and the nails cut into my skin. ‘You go to our church. I’ve seen you there. You know –’ Her eyes were the green of sea over sand, and filled with a desperate earnestness. ‘Confession.’ Her other hand groped for mine. ‘I can’t sleep.’ Her voice sank until I could barely hear it and became a rapid mumble; her hand clutched my fleece. ‘I need Father Mikhail. I thought he’d be here. I want to go to confession. Olaf wouldn’t let me. I escaped, I took the car when he thought I was asleep. You know Father Mikhail. Is he here? I want to go to confession, before I sleep.’ She looked around, quick, furtive glances. ‘You’ll hide me, won’t you, if Olaf comes before Father?’

  I needed someone I could trust here. I wanted someone to go for the St John’s Ambulance worker, but I couldn’t deny this appeal for a priest. I had no right to judge the depth of her need, and refuse her on my grounds that she needed a doctor more. She was one of my fellow Catholics, and she was asking for a priest; that was all I needed to know. I had a vague feeling I’d noticed Father Mikhail’s black robe earlier. It was strange, I thought irrelevantly, how the ‘Sacrament of Reconciliation’ reverted to the old name of ‘confession’ when it was needed. I wouldn’t think about what she wanted to confess, a sin grave enough to keep her from the Eucharist. That was none of my business. My task was to find Father Mikhail for her, and make sure she was allowed to talk to him. I could put an appeal over the tannoy, asking him to come to D Marquee. I didn’t want to leave Kirsten, nor to draw attention to her, but Brian was looking for Olaf, so I had to act quickly.

  I grasped Kirsten’s hands in mine, and looked straight into her haunted face. ‘Kirsten, I’m going to go and look for Father Mikhail. I’ll bring him to you here. You just stay here and wait.’

  She gave a gasp of alarm. ‘Suppose Olaf comes? He won’t let me talk to him.’

  ‘I’ll be very quick,’ I said. ‘I’ll go straight to the tannoy, and ask Father to come here, then I’ll come back and wait with you.’

  She shook her head and struggled to her feet. ‘I won’t wait, he�
�ll come, he’ll take me away.’ Her arm slipped around mine, and clamped it to her. ‘I’ll stay with you.’

  I could see there was no point in arguing. ‘Then let’s be quick.’

  I gave the Gonfirth Kirk lady a quick glance. ‘Can you mind the stall?’ I mouthed at her, with a glance over my shoulder at our array of red, white, and blue goods. She nodded. I mouthed ‘Thanks’ and led Kirsten away.

  The president’s speech was finished now; the queen and princesses had come down from their flowered thrones, and were doing a ceremonial tour of the showfield, the president and queen together, the princesses arm-in-arm behind. The crowd was beginning to disperse. I saw people glance at Kirsten, and then look down at the grass, or away across the voe, shy as otters flipping away into the water, too kind to stare. Only those who didn’t know her looked twice at us, walking steadily across the grass.

  It felt three times the distance. Adapting my stride to her sleep-walker’s pace, I felt as if every hollow in the grass was the trough of a wave, every bump an ocean roller. The band had begun again – no, it was a different group, school pupils in a line with a dozen recorders in varying sizes, and their parents and relatives filled the space between us and the caravan. I steered Kirsten to starboard a little. We could cut through the flower hut and come out by the cattle. The bull was still bellowing indignantly. It would have a sore throat by the time the day was over. We were in luck though, for there was no sign of Brian and Olaf, not yet.

  Twenty metres from the flower hut door, Anders’ fair head was still bent over the engine he was tuning with deft hands. Now, if only he would look around – I willed him to see us, but he was twisting a nut with his adjustable spanner, too intent to lift his head. I thought for a moment of leaving Kirsten by the pots of scarlet begonias, but her weight was heavy on my arm, and I wasn’t sure she could stand unaided. I paused for a moment, looking at him, then called: ‘Anders!’ My voice was lost under the final flourish of recorder tune. I raised my free hand to cup around my mouth, but Kirsten caught at my wrist.