by Lin Anderson
Thankfully, it was found to be intact, with the fuel tanks undamaged by the storm and its aftermath.
As we understand it, the interior suggests it had been internally upgraded to allow its use for adventure cruises, possibly in colder latitudes.
Adventure cruising has become internationally popular of late. It often includes travel to more hostile locations with the possibility to take part in extreme sports.
Our sources tell us that there was a great deal of computer equipment on board the ship which allowed for sophisticated virtual gaming to take place.
Sadly, three bodies have also been located aboard, of two men and one woman who apparently died in suspicious circumstances.
Initial results on the history of MV Orlova suggest it may be a Russian ship abandoned off the Florida coast two years ago, when the registered owners were declared bankrupt. It appears to have been upgraded since then, but by whom?
What we do know is that the Orlova made its way east across the Atlantic Ocean, perhaps still manned or already abandoned, to be driven ashore on the cliffs at Yesnaby in Orkney.
The abandoned ships that litter our oceans are often referred to as ghost ships. A relatively common phenomenon, the most recent was the MV Alta, the derelict 77-metre freighter which was driven onto rocks at Ballyandreen in east Cork, Ireland, during Storm Dennis. It had been derelict since the US Coast Guard rescued the ten-man crew from the vessel in October 2018.
Intriguingly, the story of the MV Orlova is shrouded in more mist than the MV Alta. No one it seems lays claim to the ship either currently or in the recent past.
An initial search throws up a mixture of international companies which no longer exist, together with a number of shell companies around the world, although word is circulating online that the gaming ship has been advertised on the dark web. If that is true, then it suggests what was happening on board needs further investigation.
So, who currently owns the ghost ship MV Orlova? What was she being used for? Who are the three dead people aboard and how or why did they die?
As an investigative reporter who has pursued illegal activities around the world over the last ten years, I fully intend to try to answer these questions.
Once made secure, the MV Orlova will be towed into Scapa Flow, anchoring off Houton Pier, which will allow access for the major crime investigation team expected from Glasgow, assisted by Inspector Erling Flett from Kirkwall police station.
Maybe then we can discover who the victims are, and in what circumstances they lost their lives.
Ava Clouston, Investigative Reporter
Ava read over her article. She had been careful by simply stating that two men and one woman had been found dead in suspicious circumstances. She’d not given away any aspect of their deaths, which, as in any small close-knit community, had quickly become common knowledge. She had made no mention that one guy had been found in the computer room. Nor that the couple found in a mock arena may have been duelling with one another.
What the hell had been going on aboard that ship?
Ava pressed the send button with the same surge of excitement that always surfaced when she began another investigation.
The MV Orlova and its reincarnation from a cargo ship to a pleasure craft, apparently with high-class guest accommodation for up to eight, plus service personnel and crew, suggested a stay on board would not have come cheap.
So what had really been on offer via the Orlova and who was interested in sampling its pleasures? And how did that apparently lead to their deaths?
The story would appear in The Orcadian, of course, but by also sending it to her London editor, David Morris, it would reach numerous international news outlets and channels. David, a keen advocate of her investigative reports over the years, especially those from Afghanistan, would recognize the international interest this one from her home island would generate. A report no doubt would also go out on tonight’s BBC News. The world would soon know of the MV Orlova and be asking what had really happened on board the abandoned ship.
Ava rose from the kitchen table and went to refill her coffee cup. The trip to Yesnaby and the resultant article had taken up most of her day. Also, they hadn’t eaten as yet. Although she’d told Dougie they would set the kye free tonight, she decided that would have to wait now until the morning.
Dougie hadn’t emerged from his music-filled bedroom since she’d arrived home, but she’d been delighted to find that he’d put a casserole in the Aga for their evening meal. Something that smelt delicious.
Maybe it was a peace offering, Ava thought. Or maybe he planned to have the discussion they’d been avoiding since their fallout.
Ava baulked at the thought, mainly because today’s events had convinced her even more that she couldn’t give up her day job and stay on Orkney to run the farm. Not and keep her sanity. Such a thought made her feel even worse, as though she was not only letting Dougie down, she was betraying her much-loved parents too.
Grabbing her jacket, she headed for the barn.
Entering the warmth of the place, and hearing the lowing of the cattle, she found herself swaying again towards staying.
She had always thought that if anything went drastically wrong with her life and work, she could always come back here and be renewed, either temporarily or permanently. She’d imagined the farm, her real home, would be available to her forever. And it would have been, had her parents lived into old age, and Dougie had taken over as planned, married and had children of his own. Dougie would always have welcomed her home, whenever she might want to return.
And she was planning to take all that away from him, and from herself.
The weight of her grief at the loss of her parents bore down on her in that moment. They had been, she now realized, the rock on which she stood. That rock had gone, and if she let herself go, she would flounder, making Dougie even more of an orphan.
Exiting the barn, she found a bright moonlit sky. The wind having dropped, the air was filled with the smell of new grass and all things growing. She breathed it in, saying a silent thank you for a moment of peace.
Looking out over the moonlit waters of Hoy Sound, she spotted the lights of the two newly commissioned tugs, named Thor and Odin, that had towed the ghost ship from Yesnaby. Behind them was the dark shadowy shape that was undoubtedly the MV Orlova, making its way to Houton Bay, where its secrets would hopefully be revealed.
10
The sound of Sean’s saxophone met them at the top of the stairs leading to the cellar bar. He was being accompanied by a pianist, which prompted Rhona to ask if Chrissy was still seeing Danny, the young jazz guitarist who’d recently played with Sean at the club.
Chrissy shrugged. ‘I can’t be doing with a roving musician for a boyfriend. Who knows what they get up to when they’re on the road?’
Rhona tried not to laugh, since there was no one more casual than Chrissy regarding boyfriends. Not since wee Michael’s dad, Sam, had returned to Nigeria had a relationship lasted more than a couple of weeks.
‘Have you heard from Sam recently?’ Rhona ventured.
‘He FaceTimes wee Michael once a week. And we chat for a bit. Just as friends. In fact, he’s getting married soon. Apparently she’s a doctor too. They’re having a big African wedding.’
Chrissy’s tone suggested she was okay about that. After all, Sam had asked her to go back with him to Nigeria and be his bride, but she’d refused. Rhona knew how difficult that decision had been for Chrissy.
They headed for the bar and Chrissy ordered up their usual. Sean, spotting them, raised his saxophone mid-tune to acknowledge their arrival.
‘Does he play for you at home?’ Chrissy said.
‘Only the jazz pieces I like,’ said Rhona. ‘Those that have a recognizable tune,’ she added.
Their conversation shifted to McNab.
‘Rumour has it,’ Chrissy said conspiratorially, ‘that he’s back in touch with Mary Stevenson.’
McNab had
gone to school with Mary, when she was the teenage Mary Grant, a girl from the Highlands who’d moved to Glasgow. Sadly, despite McNab’s adoration, Mary had chosen to marry McNab’s pal, the owner of multiple betting shops in Glasgow, who was now serving a prison sentence for some pretty unsavoury crimes.
‘So he and Ellie aren’t a thing any more?’ Rhona said, a little saddened by that.
Ellie, a biker, had stayed around longer than most of the others. Rhona liked her. She was certainly fit for McNab.
‘She wants an open relationship. McNab doesn’t, apparently. So he broke it off,’ Chrissy said.
The last case they’d all been on together had caused a few personal difficulties, both between herself and Sean, and Ellie and McNab. Sean had made himself scarce shortly after that, heading for gigs in Paris. At the time it looked as though it might be over between them. However, their time spent apart, as always, seemed to do the trick, and they’d fallen back into the same old routine.
‘Maybe she’s fed up being stood up when he heads out on a job?’ Rhona said. ‘Though in the past, McNab wasn’t that keen on exclusivity. On his part, anyway.’
‘Aye, there’s always one rule for the goose and another for the gander,’ Chrissy said. ‘Talking of which, here comes the gander now.’
Rhona followed Chrissy’s gaze to the door, where McNab and Janice were heading towards them.
‘Okay, what’s going on here?’ He looked swiftly from Chrissy to Rhona and back again. ‘My ears were definitely burning on the way down the stairs,’ he said accusingly.
Chrissy guffawed. ‘Who says we were talking about you?’
‘Hope it wasn’t me then?’ Janice said, eyebrows raised.
‘You’re definitely the more interesting half of the crime duo,’ Chrissy said. ‘How’s Paula?’
‘Complaining that I work too much. So I’m taking her out to dinner nearby tonight. Hence my presence here.’ She smiled.
‘What about you?’ Chrissy looked to McNab. ‘You have plans?’
‘Sadly, no. A pint here and a carry-out at home for me. Something that definitely doesn’t smell like fried chicken,’ he said with vigour.
His remark was followed by a short silence, before Chrissy eventually said, ‘There’s no avoiding it, so why not talk about it? Any leads on the victim?’
‘Olivia Newton Mearns—’ McNab halted as a chorus of moans went up. ‘Okay, sorry, but if she was from Glasgow, she would definitely have come from Newton Mearns. However, the owner of the credit cards, Olivia Newton Richardson, who might not actually be our victim,’ he reminded them, ‘apparently lives in North London. Her bank account, according to the Tech guys, is very, very healthy. She’s involved with a business called Go Wild and is a party planner.’
He toasted that with his pint.
‘Some party that turned out to be,’ Chrissy said. ‘Why the hell was she tied up in a tenement flat in the East End of Glasgow?’
‘Exactly,’ Janice said.
‘And the mobile?’ Rhona asked.
‘It looks like the data was deleted remotely,’ Janice told her, ‘before you discovered it and switched it off. So more work to do on that.’
‘Someone is covering their tracks?’ Rhona offered.
‘It looks like it,’ Janice said. ‘First thing is to identify our victim. Find out if she really is Olivia Newton Mearns—’ She halted, a pained look on her face, and pointed an accusing finger at McNab. ‘That’s your fault.’
‘He likes his nicknames, does McNab,’ Chrissy said. ‘He has one for all of us.’
McNab tried to look horrified at such a suggestion, but the three women just laughed.
‘And we have one for you,’ Chrissy said.
McNab looked worried. ‘What is it?’
‘You show us yours and we’ll show you ours,’ Chrissy declared.
‘Okay,’ Janice said, ‘I’m off before this turns into the sort of game we used to play behind the bicycle shed.’
Rhona and Chrissy announced that they were planning to do the same, whereupon McNab made an attempt to persuade them to stay for another drink.
‘I’m off home to see wee Michael, your namesake,’ Chrissy announced.
‘And I’m just off home,’ Rhona said.
‘You’re not staying to talk to Sean?’ McNab asked.
‘I saw him last night,’ Rhona said. ‘You ready to go then?’ she asked Chrissy.
‘You bet.’
They both glanced back when they reached the door to find McNab’s woebegone expression following them out.
‘What did I tell you?’ Chrissy said as they exited. ‘He’s McNab all alone at the moment, which makes a meet-up with Mary all the more likely.’
Rhona didn’t know what to say to that, so said nothing.
Leaving Chrissy at her bus stop, Rhona set off home through the park, which had almost returned to its normal self, the broken branches either gone or else stacked neatly awaiting removal.
When she opened her front door, Tom seemed inordinately pleased to see her, suggesting she’d forgotten to refill his pet feeder. When she discovered she had, Rhona apologized and set things to rights, at which point Tom lost interest in her again.
As for her own evening meal, she ordered in a vegetable curry, hoping the spicy smell and taste would supplant the ones she still carried with her.
Despite her earlier shower at the lab, she had another, sticking every item of clothing into the washing machine and donning a fresh set, convinced the smell was emanating from her pores. Her timing was spot on as the buzzer went shortly after, heralding the arrival of her curry.
At that point Tom decided she was interesting again, but, for the sake of peace in which to eat, Rhona opened the kitchen window and let him out onto the roof. Something that didn’t happen often since the Sin Eater case. And definitely didn’t happen when Sean was about.
Standing at the window, Rhona took solace from the fact that the Virgin Mary was no longer surrounded by water, and order had been restored.
Not so, though, in real life.
After her meal, with Tom back inside and the window shut, Rhona settled by the fire, her laptop on her knee, to read over her report from the locus. Deep in thought, she didn’t register the drill of her mobile at first, then, seeing the name on the screen, answered with a smile.
‘Magnus. You’ve survived Birka’s visit?’
‘I have. What about you?’
‘Still have a roof, although the park was in a state this morning when I headed for work.’ Rhona waited, aware that Magnus had called her for something other than a chat about the weather.
‘I wondered if you’d caught the news about the ship that was washed up at Yesnaby during the storm?’
Rhona listened to Magnus’s tale of the MV Orlova.
‘So it’s a crime scene?’ she said, her interest now truly sparked.
‘Yes. It’s been towed into Scapa Flow. In fact, it’s sitting within view of my dining-room window as we speak. Erling’s expecting an MIT to be sent up, plus of course forensics. He’s planning to ask for you, since you’ve been to Orkney in that capacity before.’
‘Excellent,’ Rhona said. ‘Chrissy will be well chuffed about that.’
‘And you must both stay here, of course. It’ll be handier than being in a hotel in Kirkwall.’
Magnus was barely off the phone before the official call came through. They would be taken by police helicopter to Kirkwall airport first thing, where a police officer would pick them up and take them to Houton Bay and the MV Orlova.
11
On his way home, McNab found himself taking a detour via the tattoo parlour, where it had all begun. Standing in the door of the pub opposite, he let his mind replay the moment he had first encountered Ellie.
When he’d told Mannie, who owned the shop, that he wanted a skull inked over the bullet wound in his back, Mannie had called Ellie in, because apparently inking skulls was a speciality of hers.
McNab
recalled the way the dark-haired girl had looked at him, her exposed flesh a painted tribute to her art. Not skulls, but a fairy tale of colour and imagery. Up to that point he’d only really thought of multiple tattoos as a male thing, but had definitely changed his mind at that moment.
She’d taken him into her cubicle and shown him a selection of possible tattoos. His shirt off by then, she’d studied the scar he wanted to cover. He could feel her wish to know the circumstances in which he’d been shot. So he’d jokingly told her it had been inflicted by an angry woman he’d cheated on, and he was lucky she hadn’t shot a hole through his prick.
Laughing at his fictional story, she assured him that they inked penises too. She’d showed him some samples, and then told him a tale of tattooed testicles, which he’d been horrified by.
The chemistry between them . . . Fuck, he could feel it yet.
It was in her cubicle that they’d first made love, but not on that night. In that moment, McNab had thought that life couldn’t get any better.
So why had he messed it all up?
All the fault of the job, of course. Except that was just a cop-out. He’d let Ellie down far too often. And she wasn’t a girl to be messed with. Something he’d loved about her.
I did warn her what it would be like getting in tow with a detective. I was straight with her about that.
And she was straight with you from the beginning. She said if you were going to get together, that you both had to be honest if you wanted to have sex with someone else.
I couldn’t believe that at the time. I didn’t think I would want that. I didn’t think she would.
That was the arrangement. So Ellie hasn’t changed. You have.
The lights were still on in the shop, which meant someone was definitely there. Plus there was a bike outside, although it wasn’t Ellie’s Harley. Ellie didn’t always bring her bike, especially if she was planning on going for a drink after work. So the likelihood was that it belonged to a customer.
McNab contemplated going in, on the off-chance. But if Ellie was there, what would he say to her? I’ve changed my mind. If you want to screw someone else, that’s fine by me, as long as you continue to screw me.