She stopped the car and switched the lights off, waited for a minute, then began driving again, crawling cautiously along. The car turned onto the single-track road leading to Underhoull and Lund. Below us was a landscape drenched in moonlight: the sea glittering silver; the land dark where it touched the sea; headlands outlined sharply, then gradually becoming lighter away from the water dazzle. ‘They won’t hear our engine in this wind, but they’d see our lights from miles away.’
‘They parked their car in the middle of the road last time,’ I said, ‘ready for a getaway.’
‘We can park there too,’ Sergeant Peterson said. It was interesting to see her brisk confidence in bending the rules now that she was in charge, with Gavin allowed along only by courtesy. We rolled cautiously down the hill towards Lund, past the silver-bleached bulk of the Bordastubble Stone, and came through the first gate, which had been left open. I slid out to ease it shut; sheep grazing three hills away were liable to be drawn irresistibly to an open gate within seconds of it being left. We rolled gently to a halt ten metres short of Lund House, where the devil had set his footprint on the briggistane.
‘Be careful with the doors, in this wind,’ Sergeant Peterson warned Constable Buchanan. ‘They’ll hear a slam.’
We eased ourselves out and began walking down the road. The walls of Lund House towered over us like a fortress, with the moon casting odd shadows through the windows. From this side, in this light, you could almost believe it was still habitable, for the wall seemed smooth and unbroken, and the high gables still held their chimneys up to the sky. Then the front came in sight, a ruin, with the moon shining on a great gap in the wall where an upper window had fallen in. For a moment I thought I saw a head moving in one of the remaining windows, but that was ridiculous, because the walls were an empty shell, with no upper floor. The square porch had a window on each side, and the door to the front was bisected by a ‘Do Not Enter’ notice that danced and thrummed in the wind. I wouldn’t have entered if you paid me. The place had a feel that sent shudders up my spine.
Sergeant Peterson had no such qualms. She slid sideways into the dark shadow in the far angle in the porch, immediately below the window where that shadow head had moved, and beckoned us to follow. I was glad of Gavin’s shoulder against mine. From that darkness, we looked out.
The park with the three unexcavated longhouses was just below us, and to the left. There were three men again, walking in line as they’d done before, working towards us. I couldn’t hear any sound, but the lights of the metal detectors winked in the darkness. The dark bulk of their car was immediately above the park, and the gate between us had been left open.
The wind still howled around us, but here in the angle of porch and wall it was calm. Sergeant Peterson leaned towards us and breathed her instructions. ‘Bob, to the car. Get your card ready to flash at him. The rest of us, spread out around the other three.’
We nodded and followed her out, back to the black shadow of the gable on the moonlit road, sliding across as quickly as possible, and down towards the field. She bent low behind the dyke and we copied her, freezing when she stopped, moving on again. The men were only a hundred metres from us now – fifty. Sergeant Peterson’s hand moved to her pocket, then she split the night with a powerful flashlight that slid across the bleached grass to the dark clothes, the pig-snout goggles, frozen by the light. A heartbeat, then her voice roared out. ‘Police! Stand still! Police!’
Up on the road, there was an answering shout. The car lights blazed; the engine coughed into life, and revved up. Constable Buchanan yelled a warning. In the field, the men began running towards us, and we fanned out to meet them. Sergeant Peterson shone her torch straight in the eyes of the one heading for her, and he ducked his head away from it, stumbled and fell. One down. Gavin had gone for a rugby tackle. Two. The third one paused, as if trying to assess his opponents, then came straight for me, increasing his speed as he ran the last few yards. He cannoned into me with a thud that sent me sprawling, and ran on towards Lund House.
I picked myself up and ran after him. He didn’t even hesitate at the ‘Do Not Enter’ sign, just ducked under it, as if he’d recce’d the ground beforehand, and knew there was a way straight through to the clear road beyond. On my right, the car was moving now, heading straight for me. I dived towards the dark doorway, and felt the wind of its passing. The brakes squealed as it came nose to nose with the police car. There were running feet behind it: Constable Buchanan. He could deal with the driver. I took a deep breath and stepped into the dark of Lund House.
Instantly the wind stopped. The brightness of the moon on the slanting gables and through the empty windows made the shadowed floor pitch-dark, but I knew what it would be like: a foot-twisting surface of fallen stones, enlivened with splintered wood and the occasional dead sheep. I stood in the doorway and waited. Just thirty seconds would restore my night sight. I heard a foot move ahead of me, confidently; the man I was chasing still had his goggles on. That meant that although I couldn’t see him in the darkness, he could see me. There was no sound of anyone coming in after me, and this man was dangerous. Common sense said I should get back out. He couldn’t go far without his transport.
I was just starting to slide one foot backwards when the night erupted in a high-pitched keening that echoed round the house, breathy and insistent, and set the hairs standing on the back of my neck, a banshee wail that started low and rose like an air-raid siren to a noise that made you want to duck away from it and cover your ears. I stumbled backwards out of the dark doorway.
Someone was standing on the headland where the Vikings were buried, a tall someone, made taller by the horned helmet that was outlined against the silver, shifting sea. I could see the mid-thigh tunic, the baggy breeches thonged with leather strips below the knee. One hand held his axe; the other was raised in the air, as if he was signalling to us. There was something familiar about the movement, but I couldn’t think for the shrieking noise in my head. Then at last it stopped, leaving my ears ringing. He swung away from us in a swirl of cloak, headed down the far side of the hill, and was gone.
I spent the next two hours getting a close-up view of police work in action. The noise had startled the driver enough for Constable Buchanan to get handcuffs on him, and by the time the man I’d been following came out through the back door of Lund House, across the field and onto the road at last, Gavin and Sergeant Peterson were waiting for him. We put two in each car, ignoring the driver’s protests that we weren’t insured to drive theirs, and headed through the power-cut dark night for the police HQ at Baltasound.
Britain’s Most Northerly Police Station turned out to look like a council house with a long extension ending in a blue-doored garage. It was on the road, facing what had once been the RAF houses, in the days when Unst had been an air base of strategic importance in the Cold War – distance to Russia: not far at all, over the top of the globe – Sergeant Peterson parked the police car with its nose to the garage, Constable Buchanan came in behind her, and we invited our captives to join us inside. There would, the Sergeant insisted, be just enough chairs for everyone.
She was wrong. The tiny office had a chair at the desk and two armchairs, and the kitchenette yielded only one more. Still, that gave the visitors one each, while we stood over them in approved jackboot-of-the-state fashion – though when I say we, I was banished to the kitchen, for reasons of Data Protection. Still, I heard most of it.
They gave their names and addresses, and proved them by producing drivers’ licenses. They insisted they had the landlord’s permission, we could phone him to check, and Sergeant Peterson, smiling sweetly, took them at their word. His comments on being woken at that hour for a pack of lies almost blew her across the room. After that they kept quiet when asked if they were looking for buried items, and what they intended to do with any they found. They refused to give their own account of why they were innocently walking the parks of Lund in a gale, at midnight, and they ended the si
lence by asking to contact their lawyer.
Best of all, the station had its own back-up generator, so I was able to boil kettles and make tea. I envisaged the Hydro men working away on swaying poles in this wind, and wished them luck. It wasn’t likely Belmont would get its electricity back before morning.
While Sergeant Peterson was getting silences, Constable Buchanan was filling out forms, one for each item found. It involved finding serial numbers, and each form was seven pages long, so it looked set to take him a fair bit of the night. As well as the night-goggles and the impressively sophisticated metal detectors, there were several pocket items of black metal whose purpose I couldn’t even guess. I took one of the night-goggles out into the garden, and was well impressed. Everything was in shades of grey, of course, but it was amazing the detail you could see.
Gavin came out behind me, and slipped his arm around my waist. ‘No, I can’t lose one pair en route.’
‘Pity, they’re really good. Have a look.’
Gavin tried them on, and took an experimental walk round the garden. ‘Top of the range. A thousand pounds worth, at the least.’ He returned them to the table, reluctantly. ‘Anyway,I think we’re almost finished here. We’ll put them to their lodgings, then Freya’ll run us back to Belmont.’
I looked at my watch. Nearly half past two. ‘It’ll be light over the sea in another couple of hours.’
‘You can stay awake if you like.’ Gavin yawned. ‘I won’t make any promises.’
The yawn was infectious. We ganted our way back into the station, into the car, and I dozed on his shoulder for the ten-minute run. Sergeant Peterson took us right to the house this time, and we slipped around the back, the way my intruder had come. Glancing up at the house, I stopped, and caught Gavin’s arm.
‘What?’ he breathed, looking up.
I shook my head and began walking again. ‘I’m seeing shadows everywhere. I thought I saw someone moving about on the stair, but it’s the middle of the night, and there’s not a light anywhere.’
‘We’d better check,’ Gavin said.
We crept into the house and listened. All was still: a house and its occupants sleeping. We slipped out again.
‘I’d quite like to know,’ Gavin said, as we negotiated round the maze garden, ‘who the fellow on the headland was. And how he made that noise.’
‘The Viking ghost. Was the noise him?’ I opened the pavilion door cautiously, in case someone was waiting to jump out at us. ‘I thought it was something horrible in Lund House – apart from the bloke, I mean.’
We clumped up the stairs together. The grey blur that was Cat stood up on the mattress to greet us. ‘I’m pretty sure it was coming from the headland,’ Gavin said. ‘I was imagining something on a string – did you see the way he was moving one arm?’
Now he said it, I knew what the action had reminded me of: a cadet swinging the lead, the circular movement to get a bit of speed on the pendulum before throwing it. ‘Of course. And I thought at the time that the noise wound up to full strength, like an air-raid siren, but then it was echoing all around me, and there was no chance to think about anything at all.’ I scrambled out of my clothes and dived back into bed. There was a last residual warmth where Cat had been, curled neatly on the hot water bottle. I tucked my feet into it, and cuddled the rest of me into Gavin. ‘I don’t suppose,’ he murmured into the darkness, one hand sliding down my back, ‘that dozing in the car has woken you up again?’
The wind had subsided to a muffled roar. The sky was creamy-grey, with the first dazzle of light breaking through the clouds: 07.00. Gavin was still asleep, turned on his side away from me, his breathing soft and even. I curled into the curve of his back, one arm round his chest, and his hand came up to clasp mine. I’d forgotten how good this felt, to wake with the warmth of another person beside me. We’d been good together, too, once the first awkwardness was over ... now I felt properly his girlfriend. We could work this out.
I lay for a good half hour curled in his warmth and contemplated yesterday, getting Khalida safe from the storm. I must go over to Cullivoe today and check that she was okay. We could maybe have a quick look on our way to Lerwick. Gavin’s hired car was at Toft, of course, on the mainland, but if we got a lift with Dad and Maman, they’d maybe do a detour. We’d see them onto the ferry. After that, well, they would still be roughly within Gavin’s orbit until the tour ended, which would give time for the results on Kamilla’s death to come through. It could still be that her allergy had killed her ... which brought me back to puzzling about Bryony. That aggrieved note in her voice as she’d said, I didn’t know she had an allergy bothered me. I frowned, snuggled closer to Gavin, and set myself to think it through. Suppose she hadn’t known. Suppose she’d set up the seafood and dosed everyone with senna for another purpose altogether ... but what? How could putting the company out of action possibly benefit her?
Then it came to me with such dazzling brilliance that I gave a jerk that woke Gavin. He made a sleepy protest. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s just that I had an idea.’ I waited to see if he was an instantly awake person, like me, or one who a needed a cup of tea to function.
He rolled over to face me, grey eyes alert. ‘Go on.’
‘Bryony,’ I said. ‘It’s Magnie’s Agatha Christie idea. Poison everyone mildly, and give one person an extra dose. It’s like she said: Kamilla was no better than her, just blonde and luckier.’
‘But you said she couldn’t sing Kamilla’s part.’
‘She couldn’t. But, if she’d practised it, she could sing Maman’s.’ I left a moment’s silence for him to consider this. ‘And she did practise it too. I heard her, when I arrived. She was singing Aricia’s aria; I heard it through the window. That’s what’s been vaguely bothering me. Maman and Dad slept at the front. I thought it didn’t sound like Maman because of the window muffling it, but it was because it was Bryony. If I hadn’t been here, who’d be the obvious fellow-woman to take Maman cups of tea in bed as she was recovering from the effects of the senna pods, which everyone took for the effects of the seafood?’ My voice was growing sharp with anger. I wanted to wake Bryony up, and shake her till her teeth rattled. ‘These things are uncertain, so nobody would be surprised if Maman took longer to recover. And since Bryony’s an item with Per, maybe she counted on persuading him to let her stand in for Maman. The performance at Mareel would have been a try-out for her, and then on Monday she’d have sung Aricia in Edinburgh, in front of all the critics. The bit-parter steps forward as a star.’
Gavin considered this, nodding. ‘Except that your mother would have gone on whatever.’
‘Not if she’d have sung badly.’ I was certain about that. ‘Singers aren’t like actors, who go on whatever. She’d never have risked her reputation in front of critics. No wonder Bryony didn’t want to say anything in front of me! Can Sergeant Peterson give her a very uncomfortable hour of grilling?’
Gavin was following his own line of thought. ‘So,’ he said, ‘with that cleared away, we’re left with two possibilities: one, that Kamilla’s death really was just due to her allergy, or two, that somebody who knew about her allergy overheard Bryony ordering seafood, and decided to use that as cover for her death.’ He frowned. ‘Someone who didn’t know that any sudden death sparks off a medical investigation for the cause of it.’
‘Oh, any opera singer for that one,’ I said. ‘They live in their own world –you have no idea. I wouldn’t bet Maman could tell you who the First Minister was.’
‘Your mother knew about it, because Kamilla told her. Adrien did, as her ex-lover. Per did, as leader of the company. I can’t see why she should have told Caleb. It might have come up in casual conversation.’
‘I thought he was avoiding her, didn’t you?’
‘I got that impression, but didn’t Bryony suggest that was cover, because of Adrien?’
‘I’m not taking Bryony’s word for anything,’ I said waspishly. ‘Fournier ... I don’t suppose it was possi
ble there was something between them? If he knew Adrien, he could have met Kamilla through him.’
‘I’ve got someone investigating that already. Charles?’
‘If Maman knew her, so might he, but ...’ I visualised quiet, balding Charles at his keyboard in the corner. ‘Do you think she’d ever have noticed him?’
‘Oh, not as a lover, but she might have confided in him.’
I was just about to reply to that when there was a series of piercing screams from the house. We both leapt up. I grabbed my jeans and a jumper, Gavin swung his kilt around him and buckled it in one smooth movement, and we ran across the cold grass and in through the front door.
Nae teeth to bite, yet I’ll gnaw tae da bane,
Me face ever wi’ dee, when du’s aa alane,
Plump du up dy pillow, I’ll gee dee no rest,
If eence du lats me tak a hold i dy breast.
...envy.
Sunday, 29th March – Palm Sunday
Tide Times at Mid Yell, BST and at Lerwick
High Water06.59, 1.8m; 07.20, 1.6m
Low Water13.31, 1.0m; 14.06, 0.8m
High Water19.55, 1.7m; 20.18, 1.6m
Low Water02.00, 1.2m; 02.23, 0.9m
Sunrise06.41
Moonrise12.05
Sunset19.36
Moonset03.36
Waxing quarter moon
I’m neider maet nor drink
for fantin’ man
I’m neider frock nor hat
for bonny lady;
yet yowsed wi’ care
I can be aa these things,
an’ foolish man and his vain wife
seek me abune aa idder.
Chapter Nineteen
Ghosts of the Vikings Page 20