Ghosts of the Vikings

by Marsali Taylor

  Bryony nodded. ‘He came to America. She’d unfriended him on Facebook, of course, but she had a public website, and he was following her on that. She thought about changing her name, but once she’d got away she felt embarrassed about the whole thing, felt she’d made a fuss about nothing. Then when he arrived backstage after a show she nearly fainted, but he was really nice about it – went on about understanding how she needed to pursue her career, and all her stuff was waiting at their flat for her. ‘As if I was a wilful child,’ she said. Then, when she came back to Europe, they kept meeting up, you know how it is. She didn’t like that. He’d kind of behave as if he was with her even though he wasn’t – you know, bring her drinks, and stand with her, and check she’d ordered a taxi. Other men would jump to the conclusion they were together. So she thought she’d try getting off with someone else, in front of him, and she began flirting with this guy from the chorus, and then caught Adrien’s eye, and she said her heart just turned cold. If looks could have killed, she said – not her, the guy. So she just left.’

  ‘He never tried to get her on her own?’

  ‘He came to her flat once, and she told him straight that if he ever dared to come back there she’d take out an injunction against him for harassment. He went over all smarmy and said she was making far too much of just a friendly visit, but she stuck to her guns and insisted he left.’

  ‘Good for her.’

  ‘And of course they were both working, so most of the time they were in different places, and that kept the lid on it. But when she heard he was coming on this tour – well. Nothing would persuade her he hadn’t wangled his way onto it on purpose. He wasn’t anywhere near when Latouche broke his ankle, but she reckoned he’d phoned straight away to offer himself as a substitute.’

  ‘I was wondering about that,’ I said. ‘You said he was Don José, which is a far cry from the Sun King, even I know that.’

  ‘Well, a good lyric tenor can move between them, but you’re right, of course it’s not usual. But he started doing early music stuff when Kamilla did, not all the time, but enough to get a name for it. Oozing his way back to her. Well ...’ Her eyes peeked at me from under the tousled hair. ‘Did your mother tell you about all this ghost stuff? The book being left open, and the rose that changed colour? I bet he was behind that. It fairly spooked Kamilla out.’

  Maman had suspected Bryony. I went for a general comment. ‘This tour must have been so awkward for everyone.’

  Bryony grimaced. ‘Well, you know, it was a strain, but they were carrying it off. She clung to me to keep him away, and we were sharing a room, so she knew he wouldn’t try anything at night. All the same, she said she’d be glad when we got to the end of it.’ She leaned forward. ‘The other thing is, she was rather keen on Caleb, and he liked her too. They both talked to me about it.’

  My head felt too full. This was so different from what Maman had said, what Adrien had said, from what I’d seen with my own eyes, that I needed space to digest it and sort out the nuggets of truth from the tissue of self-aggrandizement: Bryony as Kamilla’s best friend and supporter. I picked up the tray.

  ‘I’ll leave you to sleep.’

  Bryony held up a hand to stop me. That gossipy spark was in her eyes again. ‘They didn’t dare do anything about it under Adrien’s eye, of course, but Kamilla was intending to visit Caleb in Paris. If Adrien had found out ...’

  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...

  ... love.

  Saturday, 28th March (continued)

  Tide Times at Mid Yell, UT

  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

  A pinchful, a pillful,

  Fir spewing, spaigie, pains,

  A mouthfu’, a cupfu’

  For sleep that never ends.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Toft to Unst had to be a good forty minutes by fast motorboat. I needn’t begin watching the clock until two, at least.

  I went back up to Maman, and found her standing behind the door, hairbrush in hand, in front of the oval mirror above the mahogany chest of drawers where she’d spread out her make-up. ‘If you want to sit,’ I offered, ‘I could brush your hair for you, the way I used to, when I was peerie.’

  ‘Yes, please.’ She handed me the brush. Her hair tumbled in curls down to the middle of her back, as black and glossy as I remembered it from childhood. ‘Not a grey hair in sight,’ I assured her.

  Maman’s eyes met mine in the mirror, amused. ‘Of course not. One does not have to go grey. It is eccentric.’

  ‘At sea,’ I said, ‘one’s constantly surrounded by grey heads. Grey beards too.’

  ‘Not on your Norwegian ship. Besides, that is a calumny on your friend with the gold head of a young Norse god.’

  ‘Anders?’ I smiled. ‘He offered to look after Khalida for me while I was at sea, but Bergen’s a bit far from Kristiansand.’

  ‘When do you leave?’

  ‘There’s a weather window after this blows over.’ I gestured out of the window at the tumbling waves. ‘Tuesday. It’s a three-day sail to Kristiansand, so that should give it time to subside on the Norwegian coast.’

  Maman sighed. ‘By now I should be used to you heading straight off across hair-raising stretches of water, on your own, just like that.’

  ‘You should,’ I agreed.

  ‘Your last return, from your Gavin’s house, I could hear the wind rising, and there you were still out in it. I think I did not breathe until we saw you going past.’

  ‘See,’ I said, ‘it’s always a mistake to tell parents what you’re doing. They just worry.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Maman said, ‘keep telling me! What I can imagine is even worse.’ She leant forward to do her make-up. I watched with interest: the tinted cream smoothed over her skin, the eyeshadow brushed on and blotted off, the mascara wand wiped with a tissue before she applied it to her dark lashes.

  ‘Maman, what was Kamilla like?’

  ‘Talented, ambitious, attractive.’ She began drawing the dark line above her lashes.

  ‘No, I mean, herself. If you were playing her as a character, what would be the traits you would emphasise?’

  Maman’s face saddened. ‘All that brightness and sparkle, and inside, loneliness.’

  It wasn’t a word I expected.

  ‘Loss. This idea she had that her brother was always with her, like a guardian angel, it is not in the tenets of the church. Her brother is sleeping in our time, and already risen in God’s, but the dead do not haunt the living like that.’

  She was more certain than I’d dare to be. In that journey back across the Atlantic, I’d felt Alain at my shoulder so strongly that I expected to turn and see him.

  Maman brooded for a moment, then finished, ‘I think she believed it because she wanted to cling on to him.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Oh, I never heard properly. Some childhood illness, I assumed, but perhaps it was an accident. It was very sudden, and she never got over it. He was younger than she, so I suppose she was the motherly big sister. There is a photo in her room.’

  I frowned. ‘That’s her brother? But –’

  Maman’s mouth turned down. ‘One side is him as he was, the last photo she had of him, and the other side is – what do they call it, computer updating? They do it for missing children, you remember, that little girl who disappeared in Portugal. It is him as he would look now, had he lived to grow up.’ She shook her head. ‘No, it is not healthy to brood so.’ Her smooth, white hand moved to cover mine. I knew she was thinking of my little brother, Patrick, who hadn’t lived to be
born, and turned my hand to grip hers. ‘You must commend their souls to God and move on.’

  ‘He was definitely killed? He didn’t disappear?’

  ‘Oh, no, he is certainly dead. She spoke of his spirit watching over her.’ She gave a shudder of distaste. ‘Leaving her signs. Moving things.’

  ‘A book, and a rose that changed colour.’ Bryony had thought Adrien was responsible. It would be easy enough to open a book at an appropriate page, or change a flower in a vase.

  Maman nodded. ‘Little things that only somebody who was looking for portents would ever notice, especially when she was sharing a room.’ Her crimson lips curled. ‘I did wonder if it was Bryony doing it, to unsettle her. I had a word with her, oh, not mentioning that, but simply stressing how important it was that we were a company, and had to support each other. It seemed to stop after that.’

  ‘And Kamilla took it as a warning.’

  Maman didn’t reply. Echoing bleakly in the silence was the knowledge that Kamilla had indeed died.

  Gavin was on his way. My job now was to support Maman. ‘Well, it’s coming up to one o’clock. Do you think your company might be hungry?’

  ‘Not if they have had the night I had,’ Maman said, but she let me lead her downstairs. I foraged in the larder and found some tins of soup: creamy mushroom and soothing tomato, just what I’d feed to a crew who were emerging on deck after a gale that had sent them to their bunks with seasickness. I opened three tins of tomato and put them on to heat. Soon the smell brought the survivors into the kitchen: Adrien, in his black suit, and Bryony, still in her onesie, with her hair pulled back in a band. Charles came in behind them, a little pale.

  I served up the soup and made a rack of toast. Outside, the hills were hazed over with rain, and the sea was the grey of a herring gull’s back, streaked with white crescents of foam that rolled onto the shore. The swell was rising; the ferry’s navy hull disappeared between the waves and lurched up again on the crests as it battered its way across to the pier and clung there. The bow clanked down and the cars came off. The third one was white with a neon-green stripe: the police. Now, if Peter had managed to get hold of them before they left, they’d come straight here. Sure enough, the car came round the curve, slowed for the turn and rattled up to the Belmont parking space. I went to the porch door and held it open, waiting.

  I recognised the two officers straight away. The driver had smooth, blonde hair, tied back in a ponytail, and a general air of competence: Sergeant Freya Peterson, a Shetlander headed for higher things. The other one was in his twenties, a half-weaned looking object with sticking out ears and big feet, who’d tried to keep me off my own boat in the Longship case, and thought I needed soothed down from Scalloway castle walls in the witches shenanigans. However, this time they were on the side of the angels, and due all the co-operation I could manage. I tried for a friendly smile.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Ms Lynch.’ Sergeant Peterson didn’t look unduly surprised. ‘Living on land now?’

  ‘Sheltering from the storm,’ I agreed cordially.

  She nodded, conceding the honours even. ‘I think you know Constable Buchanan.’

  ‘We’ve met.’ I shook his hand. ‘Welcome to Unst. You’ve missed some of the company, but most of them are still here. Come in.’

  I gestured them into the kitchen, like ravens foretelling evil. There was a drawn-breath silence. Bryony put both hands to her cheeks; Maman raised one hand to her throat, as if struggling for breath. Adrien stilled, like a dark-faced heron on the seashore. Only Charles remained unmoved; fifteen years of playing for Maman meant he was impervious to drama.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ Sergeant Peterson began. ‘We’re sorry to disturb you, but we’ve had a report of a possible removal of archaeological material from a site, and we’re doing a house-to-house. Obviously we’re focusing more on strangers to Unst. This is entirely voluntary on your part, but we would appreciate it if you would be willing to let us do a quick search of your baggage.’

  ‘Archaeological material?’ Maman echoed, and Adrien breathed, ‘A treasure hoard?’

  ‘I’m afraid we can’t answer that, sir,’ Sergeant Peterson replied. ‘We’re looking for anything that might have been removed from the earth recently.’

  ‘I was ill all last night.’ Bryony sounded like a petulant teenager. ‘I couldn’t possibly have been out digging at your stupid site.’

  Sergeant Peterson gave her mermaid smile, uninterested in what these humans got worked up about. ‘Then you have nothing to worry about, madam.’ She returned her sea-green gaze to Maman. ‘We won’t be long, Mrs Lynch.’

  I could see the shockwave as she demoted Eugénie Delafauve, international soprano, to Dad’s wife. She had, of course, done it on purpose. Maman rose in her most dignified fashion. ‘Then you may begin with me.’

  Adrien rose too, and Constable Buchanan held his hand up. ‘If you don’t mind, sir. We’d prefer you just stayed here, while we search one bag at a time.’

  To my surprise, Sergeant Peterson turned to me. ‘If you’d like to come as an observer, Ms Lynch, I can leave my colleague downstairs.’ It seemed that I too was on the side of the angels this time. We tramped up the wooden stairs side by side, two steps behind Maman. ‘Do you know what you’re looking for?’ I murmured to her.

  She held up a hand to still me, and waited for the cover-noise of Maman opening her door to murmur, ‘Powder, pills, potions.’ Her green glance slanted sideways at me. ‘DI Macrae phoned me.’

  In her room, Maman had already taken Helen’s jewellery from her dressing table. ‘This is part of my costume, a modern replica. You can see that it was not dug out of the earth.’

  In Sergeant Peterson’s hands it looked like treasure from a sunken wreck. There should have been seaweed twined through it, and fish swimming round. She held it to the light, examining the links. ‘It certainly doesn’t look like it. Is it a replica of something?’

  ‘The headdress of Helen of Troy. It was made in Paris for us, from the Schliemann photographs.’

  ‘Real gold?’

  Maman waved one hand dismissively. ‘Very thin gold. It was not worth the effort, the jeweller said, to make it in cuivre jaune, what is that in English, Cassandre?’

  ‘Brass.’

  ‘Yes, brass. The workmanship was too much bother to make it in brass, so he made it in gold. It is lent for the tour, and of course as publicity for M. Moreau. He is accredited in the programme, with a photograph of the parure, the set, but I have to return it. Unless I wish to buy it, of course, but at the moment I do not think I will wish to be reminded of this tour.’

  ‘Very understandable, Mrs Lynch.’ I saw Sergeant Peterson stamp down the impulse to try the necklace against her throat. ‘It’s been an upsetting tour for you, with that poor girl’s death.’

  Maman’s eyes filled with tears. ‘The poor child. She was so promising a singer. We are all devastated. It was so sudden.’ She shook the tears away, and gestured to the cupboard tucked into the corner. ‘I hung my dresses up, of course, so there is only my underwear.’ The gesture broadened to the lace-trimmed negligée flung over the embroidered hearth-screen. ‘My night clothes.’

  Sergeant Peterson looked into the cupboard. ‘And Mr Lynch joined you here?’

  ‘But of course. He has gone to Cullivoe, to meet some business associate, since he is here in the isles, but he will be back well soon.’ She turned to me. ‘It is to do with his wind farm. Now they have permission, there are other groups who wish also to connect to the interconnector south, when it is built.’

  Sergeant Peterson was already looking at Maman’s row of make-up. ‘That’s all okay,’ I told her. ‘I watched Maman use it this morning.’

  Maman turned swiftly, her eyes narrowed. Her scarlet lips opened, then closed again. I went over to her, put an arm around her waist, and murmured in French. ‘Gavin’s on his way up. Unofficial. He’ll be here soon.’

  I saw her taking that in. ‘Then
Kamilla ...’

  I raised one finger in a shhh gesture. ‘Nobody knows anything. It just doesn’t feel right. The missing treasure is an excuse to look for other things too.’

  She didn’t ask what other things, but transferred her gaze to Sergeant Peterson. ‘Is there anything else you would like to check, lieutenant?’

  Sergeant Peterson swept a last gaze round the room, checked Dad’s suit pockets and nodded. ‘That’s all, thank you, Mrs Lynch.’ She came to the door and gestured at the one beside it. ‘Whose room is this?’

  ‘Bryony and Kamilla.’

  ‘As head of the group, I presume you have no objection to me examining Ms Lange’s baggage? You may, of course, be present if you wish.’

  Maman gestured to the room, hand wide open. ‘I do not object.’

  Sergeant Peterson turned to me. ‘Can I ask you, Ms Lynch, to ask Ms Blake to come up and join us.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, and headed downstairs. Bryony was still hunched as I’d left her, soup unfinished, hands tight around the cup of tea. ‘Your room and Kamilla’s next,’ I said. She gripped the mug then thrust it away from her, mouth tense.

  ‘I don’t have any hidden treasure.’

  ‘It’ll only take five minutes,’ I assured her.

  ‘It’s so unnecessary!’ She glared at the constable. His ears were red, as if she’d been haranguing him while I’d been upstairs. ‘I don’t want that woman rummaging about in my stuff.’

  ‘Bryony,’ Adrien said, ‘there’s no point in making a fuss, unless you really want to refuse, and make them come back with a warrant.’

  ‘I don’t see why I should have to let them search.’

  ‘Why not just get it over with?’ I suggested. ‘Come on, it won’t take long. Besides, Maman’s given permission for them to check Kamilla’s bags, so we need you to tell us which is which.’

  She turned to me, mouth open, as if she’d been struck by a thought. ‘But Kamilla wasn’t here last night.’ Behind the stillness of her face, her eyes were intent, working something out. ‘She couldn’t have stolen any treasure.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘It’s maybe something to do with her having ...’ What euphemisms did trendy people use? ‘Erm, passed so suddenly.’