Ghosts of the Vikings

by Marsali Taylor

  ‘Mid-afternoon. I will just check on Bryony, then go back to sleep, if I can. I do not suppose you could come with us to Lerwick?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, alarmed. ‘Maman, are you sure you’re okay?’

  ‘Just tired. I have been up and down since dawn. But I would be glad of my daughter.’

  I hadn’t been much of a daughter all the years I’d been knocking round the world in boats. I was touched that she wanted me now. I’d be there. Khalida would be fine in Cullivoe overnight, and I could go down with Maman to Lerwick, and come back on the bus tomorrow. I’d planned to go down anyway, to get to Palm Sunday mass; I’d just stay longer.

  I was almost halfway across the sound now. ‘I’ll be with you as soon as I can,’ I promised. ‘I’m just putting my boat in safety – it’s going to blow up. An hour, an hour and a half.’

  Our course was looking good for Cullivoe. I nipped below for the Shetland marina guide, and looked it up. Damn. The pontoons were only suitable for 1.2m depth, and Khalida drew 1.5m. However, she could lie at the visitors’ berth against the pier in reasonable safety, and I’d tie her within an inch of her life.

  It was 07.50. I needed to phone Gavin. He’d be at his Inverness flat, preparing to go in to the station. I pressed the buttons, we exchanged ‘good morning’ in Gaelic and Shetland, then I launched into my story.‘It’s probably on the news already,’ I finished. ‘Tragic death of opera star.’

  I heard the sound of his computer switching on. ‘I haven’t heard anything yet. We may be contacted, in case there’s anything suspicious, but from what you say it sounds an accident.’

  ‘Hang on,’ I said, and explained about the allergy. ‘And Maman knew about it, so she wouldn’t have phoned to ask specially for seafood.’

  ‘Your waitress was quite sure about that?’

  ‘Positive. She wasn’t just a waitress, she seemed a senior person in the firm. She sent the rest home, and stayed herself to clear up. Anyway, I got her to take what dishes hadn’t been washed and keep them, Kamilla’s and mine for comparison.’

  ‘And your mother’s not well. How about you?’

  ‘Me?’ I said, surprised. ‘Cast iron stomach. I’m fine.’

  I could hear his pen scribbling. ‘Bryony was sick, your mother was ill. Anyone else?’

  ‘I don’t know. The other thing was, I heard Kamilla having an argument with someone, in the summer house. She hissed something in German, then said, “You’re mad. Mad!”. I don’t know who it was, but the footsteps were heavy, like a man’s.’ Something tugged at my memory and was lost again, before I had a chance to catch it.

  ‘Adrien, Caleb, Per, Fournier.’

  I hadn’t thought of Fournier as one of the company, but of course he was. A charmer ... I wondered if he, too, might be a former lover of Kamilla’s. I made a mental note to ask Maman how the troupe had been assembled.

  ‘And the other odd thing was in the kitchen.’ I explained the incident. ‘It looked like she recognised something, and it was a shock. There were letters, and she took the top one. It was handwritten, and Per said it had a French stamp. It could have been that, or maybe my oilskin jacket hanging on the chair back, that she thought someone had come by sea, someone she wasn’t expecting. Or maybe it just sparked off a memory. Whatever it was, it definitely upset her.’

  Gavin was silent for a moment. ‘I’ll get in touch with Lerwick,’ he said eventually. ‘The phone call is definitely worth investigating. That could make it actionable, if someone who knew she had an allergy deliberately ordered seafood. I’m not quite sure if you could make a charge of murder, because death wasn’t certain to result. Manslaughter, perhaps.’

  He fell silent again. I waited.

  ‘What’s the tour itinerary?’

  ‘Lerwick this evening, on the boat tomorrow, then the big one in Edinburgh on Monday, in the Georgian House.’

  ‘Charlotte Square. I know it. Then back to France?’

  ‘No, the other half of the tour, stately homes in Scotland. Down to Edinburgh first, the big one in the Georgian House, then one near Loch Earn, then Tayside, the House of Dun, and across to your patch, Cawdor Castle.’ I used my fingers again. ‘Thursday. Then the last one’s Castle Frazer, on Good Friday, and home on the next flight to Paris, on Saturday. Just in time for the bells to bring the chocolate eggs.’

  ‘I’ll presume that’s an Easter oddity from your French childhood. All over Scotland. I’ll get moving on that now. Speak to you later.’

  Chapter Ten

  The tide was beginning to strengthen now. I set Khalida’s nose almost straight into it. We were past halfway now, rocking to the sideways eddies, when, with a shrill whistle in the rigging, the wind arrived. The first gust tilted Khalida over to the kind of angle I’d normally associate with full sails in a force five; her lee windows were twenty centimetres from the water, the dish towel hung at a crazy angle against the wooden bulkhead, and up in the mast the halyards thrummed like a didgeridoo. I reached into the cabin for my safety rope and clipped on, then let the mainsail loose. She came slightly more upright, but now the boom was jerking at the traveller, adding to the noise. I sheeted in until it stopped.

  Wild wasn’t a strong enough word for it. The sea was white with crests and hazy with spindrift. I pushed the throttle forward and felt the engine clank into top speed. The brown-painted ice-plant on the pier showed clearly above the encircling rock wall, the green cone gave me my heading. We jolted through the eddies that created white-capped standing waves at the entrance and into the calmer water behind. The rattle of my rigging made it hard to think, and I’d need to get the mainsail dropped before I could try to berth. I set the engine to ticking over, leaving Khalida nose-on to the wind; if I was quick, she wouldn’t drift into danger. I clipped my safety rope to the line running from stem to stern, tucked the sail ties into my lifejacket, then took a firm hold of the guard rail with one hand, the wooden handhold on the cabin roof with the other, and crouched my way forward. The wind on my chest was like trying to push against a crowd going the other way. I ducked lower, showed it the top of my head and shuffled forwards until I could grasp the mast, then re-clipped my safety rope around it, and stood upright.

  The wind buffeted me against it. I put one arm round the mast’s solid metal, and let the mainsail drop, putting the first tie on as it fell, then edging along, one arm around the boom, to fasten the others. I’d laid the bow and stern lines ready in Lunda Wick; now I loosened them, clumsy with haste, the wind freezing my hands even in my sailing gloves. The wind was blowing Khalida around, pushing her back towards the eddies. I shoved the throttle forward, then turned her to the visitors’ berth. I was just coming alongside when an older man in a navy jacket came to the edge. ‘You’d get better shelter over there,’ he shouted. He gestured towards the other side of the pier. ‘The head of the fishing boat pier.’ Another circular gesture, indicating I was to go right in. ‘There’ll be nobody more coming in this day.’

  I always take local advice. I turned Khalida around and manoeuvred her into the sheltering arm of rock, with an iron step handily amidships, and the toilet block only a hundred yards away. The tidal rise and fall here was less than a metre. I passed my mooring warps up to the helpful stranger and made a rough moor, then began to prepare her properly: a fenderboard and fenders between her and the pier; double warps on each of her four cleats; and bow and stern springs for good measure.

  Halyards next. I might be able to tighten them in the lulls, but equally the wind might snatch them from me and make things worse. It took me a couple of minutes to work out a series of moves to defeat it, and my ears were ringing with cold by the time I’d secured them to my satisfaction. The silence was a relief for a moment, then the other sounds took over: the waves slapping at the pontoon, the wind moaning between the houses and emerging in a roaring, buffeting force that blackened the grey water, and pushed me back against the mast. It was icy on my cheeks as I tied a restrainer round the jib, put the cover on
the mainsail and looped a rope along and round it, in case the wind thrust tugging fingers into my furled sails, and set them loose and flogging. I re-checked the mooring warps: all holding, and the fenders were lodged securely between Khalida’s hull and the hard dock edges. I lashed the rudder, and stretched, feeling as if I’d just run a marathon.

  ‘You’re surely expecting wind,’ my helper said, watching approvingly from above me.

  ‘I have to leave her overnight,’ I explained.

  He shook his head at that. ‘I live just up above there.’ He gestured to a new-build wooden house five hundred yards up the hill. ‘I’ll keep an eye on her for you.’

  My biggest worry was Cat. I couldn’t leave him aboard alone with this forecast. I’d take him to Peter’s, and see if he could maybe stay with Magnie overnight.

  ‘Where are you off to?’ my helper asked.

  I gestured eastwards with my chin. ‘Back to Unst. My mother’s one of the opera singers, and they’ve had an upset.’

  Of course he knew all about it. ‘I heard it on SIBC this morning. A young lass had an allergic reaction, seemingly, and died. You’ll be Cass, then. I thought you must be. Give me ten minutes to get the car, and I’ll run you to the ferry.’ He checked his watch. ‘There’s one at half past nine.’

  Ten minutes. I threw half my wardrobe into an overnight bag, added Cat’s tins and biscuits, and put Cat, protesting, into his basket. I hesitated, then added Gavin’s bottle of champagne. If I was staying in Lerwick, if he was, if we were staying together ...

  I’d secured the washboards, drawn the hatch over them, and was giving a last look around, when Gavin called back. His phone echoed, as if he was in an open space, and just as I answered there was the crackle of an airport tannoy. ‘You’re on your way already?’

  ‘The boss doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like the phone call, but she’s also wary of coming down heavy on international artists, delaying their tour, all the rest of it. So she said, “Why not head up on the first flight to spend the weekend with your girlfriend, then fly down first thing on Monday morning? If anything develops, you’re on the spot, and if it’s nothing then we haven’t ruffled any feathers.”

  ‘When can you get here?’

  ‘11.45 in Sumburgh, but there’s a lunchtime gap in the ferries. I can’t get on one until 13.55. I won’t be with you until 15.30.’

  ‘We’ll be heading for Lerwick by then, you might as well meet us there.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Maman wanted me to come too. She’s shaken by it all. If you have a hired car, I might need you to put me back to the Yell ferry so that I can hitch a lift to Cullivoe, to get back aboard.’ I made a face.‘Living on an island’s so complicated.’

  ‘Keep me posted about what’s going on. A watching brief. What I’d be really interested in is information about Kamilla. People will want to talk about her. Ask how long they’ve know her, that kind of thing, get them talking.’

  ‘Cass Lynch, girl detective. Will do.’

  ‘And Cass –’He paused. I waited. ‘Cass, no sleuthing. At best someone played a nasty trick, and at worst murder was intended. Don’t do anything that might make a murderer feel unsafe. Just chat.’

  ‘Just chat,’ I promised. ‘See you soon.’

  It was a ten-minute ferry run back to Belmont, with the dozen-car boat bucking like a playground horse on a spring. From here, the house was a pale yellow toy above its green fields, with the two lines of daffodils running down to the beach. There was a ferry at roughly hourly intervals throughout the day, but how long they’d be able to keep running, with this forecast, was anyone’s guess. I had a feeling the inter-island ferries were automatically stopped if the wind rose above a force eight, so the company might need to leave sooner than mid-afternoon. Cat grumped to himself in his basket, as befitted a cat accustomed to travelling by sail. Out in the middle of the voe here, the sea was slashed with white horses, the ragged clouds racing. I hoped Gavin wasn’t having too bumpy a flight.

  We must have come into a pool of mobile signal, for my phone started bleeping. Inga first: Whts gng on r u in thick of it? My Scalloway friend, Reidar, next: Shet Nws says dth of opra str r u okay? Then Anders, in Norway: Have seen death on Shet News. What’s hapning should I come over? I sent one reassuring reply to Reidar and Inga: Death probably accidental seafood. All well. C. Anders took a bit longer. Things were awkward, just now, with the growing relationship between Gavin and me; we were friends, Anders and I, but there’d been a time when we could have moved closer. With Gavin coming up, I didn’t want Anders jumping on the next fishing boat heading for Shetland. In the end I managed, Sad accident seafood allergy, otherwise ok. C u soon Norge. Hopng set out Tues.

  The ferry pier was on the other side of the bay from Belmont House. I came ashore into the ferry car park, with its portakabin toilet block, a xylophone boat, and the improbable scarlet double-decker bus labelled “Café”. Hefting Cat’s basket in one hand, and trying not to shoogle him too much, I strode on up the turf verge of the narrow road towards Peter’s lodge. I’d need to stop and tell him about last night’s shenanigans, if he was there. A lone man was up on the hill above the road, apparently inspecting the site up there. I looked up and he raised a hand: Magnie. I waved in reply, then continued along the road.

  Peter was in, lacing up his walking boots from a comfortable chair by the white enamelled Rayburn. He had a nicely old-fashioned kitchen, like Magnie’s, with a scrubbed table in the centre, and a dresser piled with letters and catalogues, held in place by a pair of binoculars.

  I saw straight off that he’d heard the news.

  ‘That poor lass. These allergies can be an awful thing.’

  I nodded. ‘The hospital said we did everything we could.’

  ‘That’s good to know.’ He left a pause, then changed the subject. ‘How got you on last night?’

  ‘Ah,’ I said, and told him the whole story. ‘But because I had to take that tide, I never got the chance to look on the hill, to see if someone really had been digging there.’

  His mouth was grim. ‘I’ll drive over later and look. But, here, lass, are you sure you didn’t dream it all? It’d been a hard evening for you.’

  I shook my head. ‘There was sand in my hair, and the dinghy wasn’t tied as I’d have done it. Someone really had drugged me. You didn’t notice Adrien doing anything odd with my cup?’

  ‘Lass, I was never even looking at him. I passed it to him, and he passed it on to you, and that was that.’He shook his head. ‘You’re sure it was this Adrien, the een wi’ the high voice, that was sniffing around yesterday?’

  ‘Yes, and in that place too. What’s more, he was on his own in the room last night, because he was sharing with Per, and Per went with Kamilla to Lerwick. You know you said the police were up here – can you get a warrant to search his bags on suspicion?’

  ‘Lass, I canna tell you that. I’ll gie them a phone. Are you going up to the house now?’

  I nodded. ‘But Maman wanted me to go down to Lerwick with them, just for the night. I was wondering if I could possibly leave Cat with you, rather than dragging him on a long bus journey to Lerwick?’ I nodded my chin at the basket, which was rocking slightly as Cat tried to claw his way out.‘He could maybe sleep with Magnie.’

  Peter nodded. ‘Yea, yea, that would be no bother. Your yacht’ll be far safer in Cullivoe, if it blows up anything like the forecast. Just bring your cat down as you go on the ferry. He’ll be fine here until you get back to him.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  I said goodbye, and headed out, the wind tugging at my plait and buffeting my jacket. The landing at Sumburgh would be fun in this, with a crosswind on the runway. I just hoped Gavin’s flight would make it in.

  Footless and horseless I gallop abroad,

  Mouthless I cry, and handless I destroy.

  ... the wind

  .

  Saturday, 28th March (continued)

  Tide Times at Mid Yell, UT
<
br />   Low Water11.15, 1.0m

  High Water17.32, 1.7m

  Low Water23.49, 1.3m

  Sunrise05.44

  Moonrise11.00

  Sunset18.33

  Moonset03.04

  Waxing quarter moon

  I’ll come unbidden, and stay as I please,

  I’ll chain dee in misery, drag dee in mire,

  Or make dee dat blyde at du’ll walk i da air,

  For me du’ll clim mountains, or walk into fire ...

  Chapter Eleven

  Belmont House had that stillness of a place in mourning; it should have had drawn blinds, and black crêpe on the door. I went in quietly through the kitchen door. A middle-aged Shetland woman in a pink nylon pinnie, the caretaker, I supposed, was setting out a plate of freshly baked cheese scones in front of Caleb and Adrien. Caleb, in a grey jumper, was eating cornflakes, Adrien was brooding over a cup of coffee. One look at him drove all thoughts of treasure from my mind. His eyelids were red, his face thinned, as if misery had drawn the skin tight against the bones, and he clutched the cup to him like a lifeline. He was formally dressed in a black suit and tie. I gave them a subdued ‘good morning’, and let Cat out. He miaowed indignantly, and settled on the cushioned window seat to smooth his ruffled fur. I helped myself to a cheesy bannock and spread it with butter.

  ‘Your mother will be glad of you,’ Caleb said. He looked as if he was glad of me himself, as if supporting Adrien was hard.

  ‘Has she had any breakfast?’

  Caleb shrugged. ‘I haven’t seen her this morning.’ He glanced at the clock, and his face lightened. ‘But I wouldn’t expect to see Eugénie this early anyway.’

  ‘We were all ill in the night,’ Adrien said. ‘And my poor Kamilla –’ He stopped, his mouth working, then tipped his head forward so that his dark hair fell over his eyes. A pause, then he spoke, his smooth voice rough. ‘What time do we have to be on the ferry?’

  Caleb nodded his head at a sheet of paper on the worktop, and Adrien got up to look at it, moving stiffly, as if he had aged overnight. ‘15.30,’ he said. ‘Five hours.’ They sounded like a long road stretching before him. He looked at the door, as if he was considering going out, then slumped back into his seat. ‘Per said he would have to leave her there, in the hospital, in Lerwick.’ He shuddered. The feeling of unreality hit me again: lively, sparkling Kamilla, lying stretched and still with a sheet over her. There would have to be a post-mortem, I supposed; and she was young, her parents would still be alive.