None but the Dead

by Lin Anderson

  The farmer who’d reported seeing the jeep had initially assumed that someone was taking a shortcut across the bay to the ruins of Tresness Farm on the neighbouring peninsula, a common enough occurrence. Or that a joyrider was taking advantage of the wide expanse of firm sand while the tide was out.

  Neither had been the case.

  Having finally realized it might be Sam Flett’s vehicle, he’d called the community centre looking for the ‘Glasgow detective’.

  McNab didn’t like crossing the large area of wet sand, but wasn’t prepared to display his discomfort in front of PC Tulloch. As well as being nervous of wide open spaces, he also wasn’t a fan of beaches. He mistrusted the sand’s intentions, believing its real goal was to suck him down, like quicksand. Neither was he keen on tramping across what looked like an army of worms. Even as he did so, spoots of water erupted on all sides, marking his progress.

  If Tulloch picked up on his discomfort, he neither mentioned nor showed it, although he did explain why they were being fired at.

  ‘The razor clam feels the movement on the surface and digs down deeper to avoid you. That causes the fountain of water.’

  McNab made no comment.

  They’d left their own vehicle next to a small squat concrete building, which Tulloch had referred to bizarrely as the brickie hut, telling him it had once served as a lookout shelter. McNab would have preferred to drive rather than walk across the sand, but Tulloch had advised against it. ‘The chassis’s too low on the car. We could get stuck.’

  As they neared the small jeep, McNab felt his pulse quicken. The man who’d called in said he hadn’t approached the vehicle, just checked it out with his binoculars. He didn’t think there was anyone inside, but couldn’t be sure.

  McNab upped his pace, the surface of the sand no longer an issue.

  The film of water was a little deeper here, indicating that the jeep stood in the lowest part of the bowl, halfway across. McNab sloshed through it.

  The driver’s window was down, the seat wet with the rain that had fallen overnight. The passenger side was empty too, the window on that side wound up. On the floor round the pedals was a sprinkling of what looked like shell fragments.

  McNab moved to the back door and opened it with gloved hands.

  The narrow back seat lay empty, but not the floor.

  He hesitated, registering the find, feeling the blood rushing to his head, his throat tightening. And all the time, the word No was repeating in his brain, like a mantra.

  McNab reached down for the child’s anorak that covered the motionless bundle, and drew it back.

  38

  ‘There was a pair of wellington boots under the anorak.’

  Rhona had imagined the scene, seen the bundle on the jeep floor and tasted McNab’s fear as he’d pulled back the coat.

  ‘But it wasn’t Inga’s body,’ she’d said firmly. ‘And the boots will give us some indication of where she’s been.’

  Rhona had expected the soles of the wellingtons to have deposits of shell sand on them, similar to that retrieved from the jeep’s pedals. Instead she’d extracted soil which, by its scent alone, contained a high proportion of manure. The floor of the back seat had yielded more of the same mix. It seemed the girl had likely been on farmland prior to the jeep picking her up, whereas the driver of the jeep had last been walking on shell sand. The tyres of the jeep may yet give them more evidence, but driving it onto Cata Sand had resulted in both the sand and seawater removing the surface deposits. Perhaps that was the reason it had been abandoned there, in the hope that it might be washed clean.

  The evidence she’d already extracted had conjured up a variety of scenarios, which she and McNab had discussed at some length. The most common being that Inga had been intercepted as she’d taken a shortcut across the fields on her way to Sam’s place.

  The question was, by whom?

  McNab had voiced his opinion at this point that Sam was the chief suspect.

  ‘He could have met the girl, something could have happened between them, then he went to her home looking for her,’ he’d said. ‘We both know it’s often the one who declares a child missing who made it happen in the first place.’

  Rhona hadn’t argued, because McNab was right. It looked as though the girl had been in Sam’s vehicle. The anorak and wellington boots were definitely Inga’s. She recognized them herself from her encounter with Inga at the schoolhouse. There could of course be a different explanation for their presence in the vehicle. They may have been planted there to make it look like Sam had abducted the girl.

  And now Sam Flett was dead and couldn’t defend himself, which to Rhona, at least, seemed a little too convenient.

  ‘Maybe he couldn’t live with what he’d done?’ McNab had responded to this.

  ‘There was evidence of blunt-force trauma to the back of the head,’ she reminded him.

  ‘He could have hit his head after he drowned,’ McNab said.

  And there they were, back round again to the postmortem results.

  ‘The most important thing is to locate Inga. And the soil deposit may be our way of doing that.’

  They’d retrieved the jeep and it now stood behind the heritage centre. In normal circumstances, a SOCO team well versed in forensically examining vehicles would have taken over. She’d discussed with Erling transporting the jeep to Kirkwall for examination and they’d decided it would be swifter for her to process it here, and have the evidence lifted off the island and down to Chrissy as quickly as possible.

  Rhona would have given anything to be back in her lab, or any lab, but if she left the island, there would be no one on hand to process what they might find next.

  And everyone involved, including Erling, thought it was likely to be a child’s body.

  McNab was glad to be alone for the short journey from the museum to the community centre. He had to concede that PC Tulloch had conducted himself well up to now, but his presence in the car would have been a distraction. He needed time on his own to think.

  In most of the cases he’d worked on, there had been a sudden moment of insight, when experience, intuition or a mixture of both drew aside the intricate layers and showed you what lay beneath.

  Not here. Not in this place.

  Whatever he’d learned on the job in Glasgow, plainly didn’t work on Sanday. He’d played it all wrong. Been too accommodating. Far too polite, even when he suspected folk were lying. And who was afraid of being interviewed in a community centre? If he’d been able to conduct the interviews in a police station. Put the fear of death in them. He would have got the truth then.

  Maybe even prevented some of this from happening.

  McNab drew into a passing place as a car approached, and was rewarded with a wave of a hand.

  Fuck, he was even driving like them.

  He put his foot hard on the accelerator, kicking up sand as he rejoined the road. Things would be different from now on, he vowed.

  Hege Aaker denied the accusation. Again.

  ‘It came from your phone.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean I sent it.’ She met McNab square in the eye.

  ‘Who has access to your mobile?’

  ‘When I’m here, anyone and everyone.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘I leave it by the coffee machine while I’m working.’

  They both glanced at the said machine where at least five people were gathered.

  ‘See,’ she said, ‘anyone might have used it.’

  ‘What about your access code? Who knows that?’

  ‘I don’t use one. It irritates me to have to keep putting it in every time I want to use the phone.’

  ‘The text arrived on Saturday,’ McNab said.

  ‘I did come in that morning.’ She looked thoughtful.

  ‘Who else was here?’

  ‘I’d need to check the diary. The place is used for different meetings, family gatherings. Plus we get individuals coming to check emails and to use
the internet.’

  ‘Get the diary,’ he told her.

  It seemed there had been a meeting of the directors of the Sanday Development Trust. The group who worked on Sanday archaeological sites had also been there. And a Golden Wedding tea party.

  ‘Is there a list of names available?’

  ‘For the first two groups probably, but I’m not sure about the tea party.’

  ‘Anyone apart from that?’

  ‘There were a few folk popping in and out. There always are.’

  ‘I take it my number is on your mobile?’

  ‘You asked everyone to take it down, remember?’ she reminded him. ‘In case we thought of anything else to tell you.’ In that moment her face clouded over. ‘Everyone liked Sam Flett. Who would want to harm him, or Inga?’

  McNab wanted to say, That’s what I fucking need to know. In different circumstances, he would have said exactly that. But he wasn’t in Glasgow. He was on Sanday. Hege had given an explanation for the text from her mobile. Looking at those around him in the centre now, plus the diary, he recognized it was probably true. Plus, he didn’t think she was lying, and he didn’t believe she’d try to point the finger at Sam.

  But then maybe he was going soft?

  The next interviewee was Don Cutts. McNab had offered to visit him at home, but the old man had declined. ‘I don’t get out much. This is exciting for me.’

  He wheeled himself in, like an actor coming on stage. His expression suggested he had something to say and was looking forward to it. When McNab asked if he wanted coffee or tea, he dismissed this with a wave of his hand.

  ‘Mr Cutts—’ McNab began.

  Before he could get any further, the old man interrupted him. ‘I heard about the sweetheart brooch you found with Sam.’

  McNab wanted to ask, How could you know about that?

  Before he was able to, Mr Cutts came back in. ‘I had to think back. I couldn’t be sure.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Eric Flett. Beth Haddow was seeing Eric Flett, Sam’s half-brother. And, maybe, the guy that was staying at the Flett’s house at the time.’

  ‘Jamie Drever? Tall, skinny, with ginger hair?’

  The old man nodded, a glint in his eye. ‘Aye, Jamie. But there was another one. A veritable triangle of them. It’s a long time ago. But the memory of that time seems stronger every day. The other guy was older. Eric and Jamie had no chance really. Like me.’ He shook his head, recalling, it seemed, the adolescent trauma of it all.

  ‘Who?’ McNab urged him.

  ‘Tall, dark-haired, local, although he worked away a lot on the fishing. He liked a drink, I remember that much, and he had a way with the women. I wanted to learn what it was. But I don’t think I ever did.’

  ‘Who was he?’ McNab tried again.

  He shook his head. ‘I’m damned if I know. And he’ll be dead now anyway.’ A mix of pain and sadness swept his face. ‘There were only a few local surnames back then. No incomers, you see, except for the military personnel. Get Sam Flett to tell you the family names in the north of the island.’ He looked pleased by his solution, then his face crumpled. ‘But Sam’s gone now too.’

  ‘Did Sam talk to you about this?’

  His rheumy eyes focussed on McNab. ‘His mother had dementia. Sam said she was spilling the family secrets.’

  ‘And they were?’

  ‘What are they always?’ he said.

  39

  The chopper would be returning from Sanday bearing Sam’s body and the evidence that Dr MacLeod had collected on the island. But it wouldn’t land here in Kirkwall.

  The thought of Sam heading south to be dissected in a Glasgow postmortem disturbed Erling more than he’d thought possible. He could have insisted it go to Inverness, but for what purpose? So that it might stay above the Highland line? His ‘adopted’ uncle had never regarded himself as a Highlander, nor even Scottish. Sam Flett had been a Sanday man, an Orcadian, through and through. So what did it matter where they cut him open, if it wasn’t here on the island?

  He was aware too that Sam had to feature as a suspect in the child’s disappearance, particularly now that his jeep with her jacket and boots had been found. But why would he harm the child?

  The fact that it had become a distinct possibility meant he could no longer be directly involved, and the ongoing investigation would have to be managed by DS McNab with local support. His thoughts on McNab he’d kept mostly to himself, not even divulging them to Magnus. He’d heard tales of the detective, particularly during the Stonewarrior case, in which Orkney had featured, but had never met the man in person until now.

  McNab, if he was honest, had really got under his skin. He didn’t like the detective’s dismissive attitude to Sanday, its way of life and its people, but he was used to townies thinking themselves superior, whatever their profession.

  Irritation wasn’t the only emotion he felt. There was another. Envy.

  Envy because McNab didn’t care about his position, his future, even his own well-being. He didn’t care what people thought or said about him. In that he was like Rory. In fact, there was a lot about the two men’s characters that was similar. Apart from the fact that McNab was so demonstrably straight. He seemed at times to play the gung-ho tough guy just to make that more obvious.

  Is that why he pisses me off?

  Even as he asked himself that, he knew the real reason for his dislike of the Glasgow detective. McNab was rooting about in his family, opening up the past. A past that Erling had his own preferred version of. A version he didn’t want to see destroyed.

  Their latest phone call, in which McNab had brought him up to date regarding their search of Sam’s cottage, and the discovery of the jeep and its contents, had left Erling with a profound feeling of unease. Sam’s declared affection for Inga had been transformed in his mind into an obsession. Added to which, his preoccupation with the second sight, his belief in the significance of the flowers in the schoolhouse attic and his declared fear for Inga’s safety, all pointed to the likelihood that Sam had been losing his mind.

  Had Sam been fearful that he might harm the girl himself? Was that what he’d been trying to prevent?

  Sam’s possible involvement in Inga’s disappearance hadn’t been the only bombshell McNab had dropped. Old Don Cutt’s recollections of a triumvirate of possible lovers for the missing Beth Haddow had included both Eric Flett and Jamie Drever. Old Mr Cutts could of course be telling lies, revisiting adolescent grievances or just stirring the pot. Although if Dr MacLeod had seen the missing skull in Maesry Mound, then someone currently on Sanday was trying to prevent them discovering the identity of the remains at the schoolhouse.

  No one wants to discover a murderer in the family. Including me.

  Rhona had set up the Skype call in the research room, where Sam Flett had installed her when she’d first arrived on the island. Back then the mystery had centred on a cold case. Not any more.

  Chrissy peered into the screen as though she was looking through a window at her. Rhona felt a surge of affection and relief at seeing Chrissy again and realized just how much she’d missed her forensic assistant’s straightforward evaluation of everything.

  ‘So, you’re still there?’ Chrissy said.

  ‘I’m still here,’ Rhona agreed.

  ‘But no more Sam Flett.’ Chrissy looked over Rhona’s shoulder as if searching for the museum curator. ‘What the fuck’s going on up there in Sanday land?’

  ‘We found his body on the causeway.’

  ‘A man who knew all about the tides died on a causeway? I don’t buy it.’

  ‘His body’s on its way to Glasgow. Will you attend the postmortem?’

  ‘You bet I will.’

  ‘There’s other stuff.’ Rhona proceeded to talk about the samples she’d sent from Inga’s boots, plus the shell sand.

  ‘I need you here at the lab,’ Chrissy said. ‘But I know why you’re not coming back.’

  ‘I don’t think
she’s dead,’ Rhona found herself saying.

  There was a moment’s silence as Chrissy absorbed this.

  ‘For a scientist, that’s a pretty big statement.’ She waited for Rhona to respond.

  Eventually she did, trying to put into words what had occurred to her as a possibility.

  ‘Sam Flett was freaked by the muslin flowers found in the attic,’ she stated. ‘He found an old school photograph that featured a girl that looked like Inga. His fear for Inga wasn’t rational but it was very real, and growing. What would he do?’

  There was a long pause as Chrissy thought about this. ‘If it was me, I would hide her, until I worked out what the threat was.’

  ‘I wondered about that too.’

  ‘What about her coat and boots in his jeep?’ Chrissy said.

  ‘It’s too convenient. As was the jeep’s placing on the sands. Whoever did that, I don’t think it was Sam, although I’ll need the postmortem to confirm the timing.’

  They talked then of the missing skull.

  ‘Someone’s screwing with you and you know now it’s not kids.’

  Rhona agreed. ‘If that someone knows or thinks they know who killed that woman seventy odd years ago, they don’t want it broadcast.’

  ‘Which suggests it’s someone living there,’ Chrissy said. ‘Otherwise why would they care what their ancestors had done?’

  ‘Maybe the killer isn’t dead,’ Rhona countered.

  ‘Someone that old can’t sneak about, removing a skull and hiding it on Start Island in a cave.’

  ‘Not a cave, a Neolithic tomb,’ Rhona corrected her.

  ‘If the killer was from Sanday, isn’t it likely they would have come from a family local to the area around the radar station?’

  Chrissy was right. Back then, family names had been local to parishes. Fletts, Drevers, Sinclairs, Weirs.

  ‘Sam Flett was the authority on all of that,’ Rhona reminded her. ‘And he’s dead.’

  They talked then of what the grave had produced.