I wondered, though, if Favelle’s letter had been bad news. When she came out to join us for lunch she seemed preoccupied, and when Ted called us all back to work she insisted on finishing all of her special still mineral water before coming down to the beach. Only Anders got the famous smile. She seemed to have taken a shine to him today, perhaps because of his resemblance to Peerie Charlie. I wondered if he would call her ‘beautiful Favelle.’ I should have dared him.
Gibbie was the death’s head at the feast. Anders was sticking close to him, and Favelle was glued to Anders. Gibbie’s mouth turned down as if there was a bad smell under his nose, and when Favelle laid her delicate hand on Anders’ arm, and stood on tiptoe to murmur in his ear, he started as if he’d been stung. Then he eyed the pair of them up as if he was calculating something, and his sour mouth stretched into what, for him, could pass as a smile. If he’d been younger I’d have expected him to whip out a mobile phone, take a photo, and send it to the tabloids, but rumours about Favelle and a handsome Norwegian wouldn’t stop the film going ahead.
I turned away from Gibbie and found myself face-to-face with Elizabeth.
‘Hi, Cass. That went fine. Ted’s so pleased – it’s going to be one of the key images of the film.’ Enthusiasm lit her voice for a moment. ‘It was real swell, watching the boat come in. I felt like I’d gone back in time. Have you seen the rushes?’
‘Not yet,’ I said.
‘The film’s sent south for developing, but they send Ted a video copy. You should ask him to let you see it.’
‘I’ll do that,’ I said.
Her gaze drifted over my shoulder again, then sharpened to flint. I didn’t need to look behind me to know what she was seeing; Favelle smiling up at Anders. Her eyes came back to mine and her top lip fell again, hiding the pointed teeth. She gave a cold smile, then glided to Ted’s side, gestured with her clipboard.
‘Ted, for the afternoon shots –’
The afternoon was close-ups of the arrival. Peerie Charlie wasn’t the star he’d been the day before; he was naggy and out-of-sorts, and Inga was correspondingly tight-lipped. He consented to a couple of shots of being swung off Stormfugl, but Favelle seemed to be tiring, for the second time she came near to dropping him, and her movement aboard the boat was clumsier, the long velvet skirt tangling on the ends of oars and between the lines of rigging. We were all relieved when they’d done the disembarkation bit. Viking belts were surreptitiously loosened, and an illicit half-bottle began doing the rounds. I kept an eye on it, even though we’d be returning under engine with life jackets on. I didn’t want drunken accidents.
After that, Elizabeth’s neat plans went awry. Stomping up a hill towards an uninteresting pile of stones wasn’t Charlie’s idea of an afternoon at the beach. He did it once for the rehearsal, then flatly refused to leave the sand, and when Favelle tried to pick him up he screamed blue murder. I was still in costume, so I offered to keep him on the shore, in shot, so that the audience knew he hadn’t been forgotten. Charlie cheered up so fast at the suggestion that Ted agreed rapidly, over-ruling the historical expert. I promised not to use any plastic spades or buckets, and took him down to the beach. I wasn’t Favelle-beautiful, but I could make a mean sandcastle with a moat and a drawbridge, and towers for him to stamp on. He was soon his sunny-tempered self again.
Because of that, Ted changed the script. Rather than a known ally, the owner of the house became an unknown quantity. Ted strode ahead, hand on the pommel of his sword, and Favelle leant on the film captain’s arm for the steep bits as they made their way up the hill. They went up once as rehearsal, had a cigarette break, then Ted led them all down again for a final address to the troops, swapped them around a bit, and told the cameras to roll.
I was keeping an eye on Gibbie and the boat, ignoring what was going on behind me. Suddenly, there was a bang and a shout, ‘Clear set! Clear set!’ It was Ted’s voice, loud and urgent. There was a rumbling sound and a series of thuds, a scream from Favelle, several male yells, and Inga shouting ‘Cass!’ all on top of each other. I rose, turning and catching Charlie’s hand in one movement and felt my breath snag within me.
A great squared stone was tumbling from the old house and down the hill towards us, gathering speed as it came, bouncing on the uneven ground. It seemed to move in slow motion. I saw the knot of actors scatter away from it, Anders lifting and swinging Favelle in her long dress. It gave an extra heavy thud as it passed where they’d been and continued down to us.
I was moving in slow motion too, catching Charlie up in my arms and scrambling desperately out of the way, the sand sucking at my reindeer boots. Inga was screaming and running towards me, arms outstretched, but she was too far away, and the great boulder was gathering speed, just as they do on the movies, only film boulders were papier-mâché, and this was bone-crushing granite.
It was almost on us. I flung myself forward, shoulder down to take the impact, Charlie still in my arms, and rolled with him crooked there. The ground trembled under us, and the sand scraped beneath my cheek. I drew my feet up just in time, felt a numbing blow and a stab of pain as my air-flailing right foot was knocked sideways, then it was gone beyond us, straight down the beach towards Stormfugl, heavy enough to smash in even her solid stem post with its high, blind head.
I lifted my head, fighting for breath. Three of my Vikings were leaping out of Stormfugl, ready to shove her back, but they were too late, the stone was pounding across the sand with heavy thuds, slowing as it went. It was going straight for her.
At the last minute it hit a boulder buried under the sand of the beach. The sharp click of stone meeting stone echoed, and the falling boulder checked and cartwheeled again, but with a slight slant which gathered to a swerve. It splashed into the water not a yard past Stormfugl’s dragon head and lay still. The noise echoed around the cliff wall, and when the last whisper of it had died into silence the world was suddenly empty. I stood Charlie upright and levered myself to my knees, resisting the temptation to clutch him to me.
‘Noise,’ he said. ‘Splash.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘splash.’ My voice didn’t sound like my own, and my hands were trembling. He looked at me and burst into tears.
Inga came flurrying over and scooped him into her arms. ‘Baby, it’s all right, it’s all right. Nobody’s hurt.’
It had been close though, and at tea-break the whisper ran through the cast: sabotage.
‘There was a flash,’ Anders told me, ‘and a bang, like a firework, and Ted said that was what it had been. The rock was on the old house, on the top of one wall, balanced on other rocks, and when the firework went off it tilted that last degree, and it fell.’
‘A firework,’ I repeated. I glanced down at my ankle, swathed now in a carrier-bag of ice cubes from the bar. I’d been lucky. Only the very edge of the boulder had knocked it aside as it passed. I’d have a bonny bruise for a while, and it would be stiff tomorrow, but there was no real injury.
‘I saw it go. There was the flash, and then Ted shouted, and it toppled like death coming towards us. I pulled Favelle out of the way, and then I saw it was heading straight for you and Charlie –’ His face was white under the tan. ‘I could not look away – but you moved so fast.’
‘So did you,’ I said. ‘Sailor’s reactions.’ My hand was cold on the polystyrene mug of tea. ‘So whoever set the firework could have lit it and got out of the way, to look innocent.’
Anders nodded. ‘I have been trying to remember who was up there. The cameramen, of course, and Elizabeth with her clipboard, and that man from the local film club, the one who asked if he might take pictures of a real film crew in action.’
‘Kenneth,’ I said. ‘Inga’s pal. Gibbie was on the boat.’
‘Lunch break, though,’ Anders pointed out. ‘We were all milling about. Several of the men went up to the ruin to pee.’
Men. I made a face, but refrained from comment. ‘It could have been anyone.’
‘Not any of
the actors,’ Anders said. ‘You wouldn’t set up a boulder that size, and know it was going to fall, and then walk towards it.’
‘If you were waiting for it, though, and were prepared to jump.’
Anders shook his head. ‘I would not do it.’ He leaned in to me, so that his beard was tickling my cheek. ‘You hear of people who stalk film stars. Favelle’s very famous, she might attract such a one.’
‘It wasn’t a very good attempt.’
‘No, but if we had been closer …’ Anders looked blankly ahead. ‘I think that is what Ted thought. He said something to Elizabeth about letters and I thought she had perhaps been threatened. Favelle did not hear.’
‘She took it very well,’ I said. I’d expected major hysterics.
‘Ted told her it had been an accident. She did not believe him, she gave him a cold, angry look, but she did not want to quarrel in front of everyone. That marriage will not last long, I think.’
‘It’s lasted a good time already,’ I said, surprised.
Anders made a face. ‘There is trouble.’ He changed the subject. ‘Cass, I was wondering whether we need to keep watching all night. It is not comfortable, and I have found these filming days tiring.’
‘Knackering,’ I agreed.
He shot a quick look forrard to where Gibbie was watching with an air of gloomy disapproval as the Vikings passed their bottle round, and lowered his voice. ‘There has been no sign of him at night.’
‘No,’ I agreed, ‘but I don’t trust him. He could easily have set that firework. He could have made sure he was the last to leave the old house, lit it, and gone off, all innocent. Only another four days, Anders.’
He opened his mouth as if he was going to keep arguing, looked at me and shook his head. ‘I can see that you are very tired too. Aye, aye, skipper.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
We took our back-to-shore pint down to Stormfugl. The film lot had already colonised the bar, and faces were redder, voices higher, than in previous days. Kenneth Manson, Inga’s pal, ‘that man from the local film club who asked if he might take pictures of a real film crew in action’, lifted his pint and followed us.
I barely knew him, as there wasn’t room for any extra bodies aboard Stormfugl. He had been in the inflatable, his height marking him out, and he’d been one of the phalanx of camera-operators filming today. He reminded me of a heron, tall, gangly, and hunch-shouldered, with grey-black hair that stuck out behind, and bulbous pale eyes with red corners, as if he had hay-fever. He was in his mid-thirties. Peerie Charlie ran rings around him, so goodness knows how he coped with twenty-plus obstreperous teenagers.
Inga had waxed suspiciously lyrical about the hard time he’d had with his ex-wife. ‘She had an affair with one of the other teachers, meeting in the school, can you believe it? She took him to the cleaners, he’s never got over it.’ Michael had been equally expansive about him one evening, when he’d had enough pints to drop the doomed cavalier image and reveal himself as a rather bolshie character with a chip on his shoulder about amateurs.
‘You set up a film set anywhere and you’re over-run with them. Bloody tourists with hand-sized videos. Now Ted gives permission for a human spider to get under my feet. PR, he says. All right for him, down there acting. It’s me left trying to keep him out of shot. I’ve warned him. Stay twenty yards behind the direction the lens is pointing, or I’ll break both your legs.’
Kenneth’s legs had remained unbroken, so he must have taken the warning. Now he followed us aboard Stormfugl, and sat down on one of the rowing benches.
‘What happened up there?’ I asked bluntly.
‘It was strange.’ He had one of those voices that sounded as if he was talking through a bamboo tube. ‘I’ve been thinking about it. It must have been someone involved in the film, you know.’
Anders nodded. ‘I have been thinking the same thing.’
‘I don’t see why,’ I objected. ‘Everyone knows where the filming’s going on. All the rowers, for a start. Any of them could have told their wives and families, who could have told the entire neighbourhood.’
‘There was a road block,’ Kenneth said. ‘A road block.’ He had that annoying teacher’s habit of repeating everything. ‘You came round by sea, so you didn’t see it. You didn’t get stopped.’ He sat up straighter, dipped a finger in his pint. ‘Look, here’s the island of Muckle Roe, right, with the bridge just past Busta, on the mainland.’ I refrained from saying that I’d spent a good deal of time looking at the much clearer Admiralty chart. He drew a line out around. ‘You came round this way, round the outside of the island and into the Hams, at the back. We drove from Busta, over the bridge’ – more damp-finger indicating – ‘and that’s where the road block was. All but local people were stopped from going across. Another of the film folk was left at the end of the tarred road, to ask walkers not to disturb us. The only people with access were the film folk.’
‘And nobody could have come by boat either,’ Anders said thoughtfully. ‘The motor launch that brought Ted and Favelle stayed out of sight at the bay entrance to stop anyone from spoiling their nice shot of a Viking longship in eight-whatever AD.’
‘CE,’ Kenneth corrected automatically.
‘There were of course you and your companions of the film club,’ Anders retaliated. ‘Why would we want to harm Favelle?’ Kenneth said defensively.
‘Why do you think it was Favelle who was meant to be harmed?’ Anders countered.
Kenneth floundered. ‘Well, I naturally – of course it could just have been sabotage of the film, but who would want to do that?’
‘Someone who had a spite against Ted or Favelle,’ Anders said, watching him. ‘That would be someone in their own crew or entourage, I suppose. Someone who disapproved of films and film actors. That’s more likely to be an outsider.’ His voice was smoothly guileless. ‘Maybe someone who disapproved of the wind farm, and wanted to stop Favelle doing the publicity for it.’
Kenneth’s reedy voice shot up even higher. ‘That’s a ridiculous suggestion. Why should the wind farm objectors have anything to do with it? They’re sensible people, not thugs or vandals. That’s a smear by the developers.’ He gave me a sideways look. ‘Shetland Eco-Energy.’
‘No,’ Anders said, ‘it was my own idea.’
‘Well, I think it’s ridiculous,’ Kenneth said, and huffed off, leaving his pint behind. Anders picked it up.
‘Well, well,’ I said. ‘Did you know he was a wind farm objector, or was that guesswork?’
‘He was trying to press pamphlets about it on Favelle yesterday,’ Anders said. He lifted the pint. ‘It’s a good thing this film’s nearly finished. They are all edgy as hell along at Busta. Did you hear they saw the ghost last night?’
‘Really?’ I said. ‘Who saw her?’
‘One of the make-up girls. Suzanne. She got up to go to the lavatory, and walked straight in to her.’
‘Literally?’
‘No, not through her in best story-tradition. It was a little woman, in old-fashioned dress, with a white, white face and shadows under her eyes, who sidled past her, then vanished. Suzanne screamed to awaken the whole house, then went into a fit of hysterics. So this morning they are all talking of the film being jinxed.’
‘And the rock is part of that.’
You are worried, no?’
‘Yes,’ I admitted.
‘Then I will finish this up in the club,’ Anders said, and slid towards the gangplank. ‘Please don’t scrub too much hot water over my poor engine.’
I made a face at him, and he went off laughing.
Chapter Eight
Skippers evolve their own way of coping with worry (the skipper madness rate is legendary). One, on a tall ship I crewed on, organised mast-climbing practice. Another used to pipe all hands and do a massive sail-shifting rope-coiling exercise. He thought we didn’t notice that at the end of it the sails were generally set exactly as they had been. Me, I scrubbed decks. There was so
mething very soothing about the froosh, froosh of the scrubbing brush, the hosing afterwards, playing the gush of seawater into every corner and seeing the particles of dirt chase each other around in a circle, run for the scuppers, and leap overboard.
It didn’t work this time, though. There were too many people acting unreasonably for motives I couldn’t even begin to fathom. I wanted to talk it through with somebody. Dad sprang to mind, even if it meant I had to have Maree too. He was used to handling a construction site filled with people. It was only eight o’clock. I told Anders I was going, washed the clothes I’d worn for scrubbing the decks, and hung them up on the pushpit while he gathered his night-watch gear together, then I fired up Khalida’s engine and headed off.
The mist was reaching the near hills as I chugged along, a blind grey fungus creeping over the crest of the hill then pouring itself down into the valley, stifling the hill beneath. Sailors don’t like fog. Even knowing the moon had turned didn’t cheer me much. Maybe this film had been doomed from the start.
I tethered Khalida at the pier and trudged up the hill. I’d been right; I would get Maree too, her Fiesta was parked in front of the garage. Oh well. I was almost at the house when there was a smash from inside, as if somebody had thrown a plate, followed by shouting. I couldn’t distinguish words, but Maree was angrily pushing some advantage, and must have been in the right, for Dad was getting louder in a blustering push-the-blame away fashion.
It wasn’t the time to pay a social call. I was just about to slink off when the door slammed open and Maree stormed out, her coat flying behind her, and her eyes blazing. Dad was following, put a hand on her arm. She threw it off. ‘This is what I get for taking up with someone old enough to be my father!’ she spat, stumbled into the car, revved it up and spun off in a scattering of gravel.
Dad made a half-run after the car, then turned back, shoulders slumped. I gave it a couple of minutes, took a deep breath and followed him into the house.
It had been a mug, not a plate. It lay as jagged shards in a pool of coffee on the kitchen floor. I called ‘Hello,’ and went on through.
Death on a Longship Page 10