Inga flushed scarlet. ‘No – no – I mean, the lawyer’ll have told her.’ She thrust her chin forward. ‘And I hope he repeated exactly what I said.’
‘When was all this?’ I asked.
She looked away from me. ‘Two nights ago. The night before she died.’
I’d been wondering what would have taken Favelle out of Busta. Had she come to Inga’s, to ask for Charlie herself? I thought I knew Inga, but now I couldn’t be sure. She might be lying; she might not.
Her face puckered. ‘I can’t believe she’s dead. Cass, do you think that lawyer will tell the police about her trying to adopt Charlie?’
‘Bound to,’ I said.
‘But I sorted him!’ she protested.
I could see she wasn’t convinced, and nor was I. If Favelle had persuaded herself and everyone around her that Charlie would have a much better life with her, if she had managed to steal him and take him back to the States in her private jet, then it could have taken Inga years to get him back.
I’d have killed her myself with a motive like that – and I wasn’t even Charlie’s mother.
Chapter Twelve
I was starving by lunchtime, so I stopped at the Co-op on my way past. It was quiet, with only a couple of cars outside, along with one of those big, square camper vans. I stomped my peat-clatched feet on the mat and went in. The quiet ended there; all four aisles seemed full of children megaphoning ‘Dad, can we get more chocolate spread?’ and ‘Mum, we’re nearly out of crisps.’ Dad was circular, red-faced, and eyeing up the drink behind the tills. Mum had to be the woman with the full trolley. She wore a pale floral sundress and sandals, and was doggedly ignoring the shouts.
Now, I wondered. June was early for camper vans. I sidled up to the woman, shot a look at the shelf past her, and smiled. ‘Sorry, can I just get you to pass me a jar of jam?’
She looked blankly at the shelf. ‘What sort?’
‘Oh – erm – I forgot to ask.’ I gave her another smile. ‘I’m involved with the film boat, you know, the Viking ship down at the pier, and catering said, if I was going to the Co-op, could I get them some jam. Don’t Americans eat odd things, like stripes of peanut butter and strawberry jam?’
‘Here, love, on you go,’ she said, squeezing back to let me pass. Her accent was pure Geordie. I picked two jam-jars off the shelf at random and stood in comparing pose. ‘We saw the film boat as we passed. There were a whole lot up filming on the hill two nights ago an’ all. Parked next to us, they did.’
Bull’s eye.
‘Yeah, they were filming the sunset.’
‘So they said.’ Her eyes went round. ‘One on them was that Ted Tarrant. Eee, he’s good looking, he is. Poor man, losing his wife like that. We ’ad the police round about that an all.’
‘Oh?’ I said, encouragingly.
‘Police asked us, had we seen anyone take the van out, and I said no. Well, I sleep that badly, I’d’ve heard. I did hear them taking out bits of equipment, but the van never moved an inch, and that I’ll swear to.’
‘The cameraman was called Michael,’ said one of her offspring, appearing suddenly beside us. ‘He let me look through his lens. Mam, we need more chocolate spread.’
She put it into the basket without looking at the child. ‘Then there was another one, quieter, an older man, with dark hair too, but much shorter.’
James Green.
‘And later, in a separate car, there was a blond girl fussing over a clipboard, but I don’t know what she had to do with anything. I didn’t mention her to the police – well, they didn’t ask.’
‘Oh,’ I said, surprised. ‘I hadn’t realised Elizabeth was going with them.’
‘She looked the sort who wouldn’t let anyone else do anything without her to keep them right.’ The woman sniffed. ‘Reminded me of my supervisor at work. She arrived just after eleven, in one of those little red Fiestas.’
Did she, indeed?
‘She was looking for them,’ the child added. I gave him a second look. He had a fashionably long mop of brown hair around a thin, white face almost entirely brown with freckles. His blue eyes were sharp and alert.
‘You were in bed,’ his mother said tartly.
I thought of the beds in the roof of that sort of camper van, with a nice little hatch above that someone this skinny could easily slip through. I crouched down to the tinned custards and said softly, ‘Did she find them?’
‘She found Michael,’ he said, ‘because he was right at the top, in the little house. He didn’t know where the others were. He said they were about, on the hill, and she looked around at all the boulders and made a face and went off.’
‘That’s a load of nonsense, our Jimmy,’ the mother said. ‘Go on, go and get some crisps.’
I straightened up. ‘They can be a bit driven when they’re filming,’ I said. ‘I hope they didn’t disturb you, banging about.’
‘No, no, lass, no disturbance. They all arrived just after I’d got the bairns into bed, and I thought there’d be fussing about, but no, the two cameramen just shouldered their gear and Ted Tarrant strode off, and that was them.’ A sudden cackle. ‘Off into the sunset, eh! And the woman, well, she must’ve had the consideration to roll off down the hill, for I never heard her leave, and if she’d started the engine then I would have. She was gone in the morning, I can tell you that.’ She looked disparagingly at the jar of blueberry jam in my hand. ‘That’s not what you want, love. The striped stuff, here, that’s it.’ She plucked a jar from the shelf. Maybe Anders would eat it.
She thumped a last packet of Angel Delight in her trolley, turned to me. ‘You a reporter, are you? Because if you’re going to use what we’ve said –’
‘No,’ I said hastily. ‘I really am from the film lot. I’m actually the skipper of the longship. Cass Lynch.’
She considered me for a moment, eyes grown suddenly shrewd. They flicked from my peat-dust smeared face down to my tanned, practical hands and back up. ‘Playing the coal-man for this scene, love?’
‘Helping my mate raise her peats,’ I said. ‘You know, the turf they burn as fuel. It’s a messy business.’
‘Sooner you as me,’ she agreed. ‘The boys’d love to get a look around that ship. Any chance you could do us a guided tour?’
‘Not today,’ I said, ‘because the police are still all over her, but come down another day, and I’ll show you round.’
I walked back to the boating club thoughtfully, nursing my jar of revolting jam. Well, well. So Elizabeth had seen Favelle off to bed, then headed up to Ronas Hill to spend the night watching the sunset with Ted, only she hadn’t found him. She’d departed quietly, rolling her car down the hill. She’d driven above the marina, she could even have come into it if she’d seen Favelle walking towards it. Furthermore, she hadn’t told the police about that little excursion. That was somewhere between stupid and sinister.
When I got back to the boating club I headed for a long, hot shower, and emerged clean, pink, and smelling of strawberries. Then I moved Khalida back to her berth. I was going to get rid of every last trace of the police intrusion. My first priority was to deal with the grey fingerprint powder. There weren’t that many prints, because I’d polished all the woodwork the day before Favelle had arrived, but they included a few Rat-prints; I hoped that had puzzled them. Half an hour with a wet cloth on the white and Pledge on the wood made my home my own again. Then I went rapidly through the lockers, emptying each and re-stowing the contents.
I’d just finished, and was boiling the kettle for a cup of tea, when I heard Anders’ step on the pontoon. Khalida swayed; he came aboard, moving heavily, as if he’d not had enough sleep. His kitbag was in one hand, and Rat was on his shoulder, a lump under his checked shirt. His face was grey under the tan, and he had dark circles under his eyes. His neat beard was straggly, as if he hadn’t trimmed it for a couple of days.
‘Tea?’ I said.
He nodded, swung his kitbag forrard, and folded himself d
own between the bulkhead and the table, huddling into the corner as if for security. Rat oozed out from his collar, took up his favourite station on the shelf edge, and began washing his whiskers. I put a mug of tea in front of Anders and fished out the ship’s brandy. ‘You look as if you need that.’
‘I do,’ he said with feeling.
I gave myself one too and sat down opposite him. ‘Me too.’
Yes, he’d changed, grown from Loki to Thor, engine hand to chief engineer, and my equal, in his own sphere. I leaned back, reassured. Whatever reason he had for lying, it would be one I’d understand. He would tell me in his own time.
He took a long gulp of tea and looked across at me. ‘Are they going to continue filming, do you think?’
Two seamen, talking together of what needed to be done next. ‘Ted’s hoping to get filming again tomorrow. I spoke to Mr Berg straight after it happened, and again yesterday. He seemed to want that too. I suppose it’ll make loads of money.’
‘Favelle’s last movie.’ He cupped his hand around his mug and drank, then set the mug back on the table, holding on to it still, as if for warmth.
‘So we should finish our contract,’ I said. ‘Then, I suppose, the plan as mapped out. Sell Stormfugl. I wonder if the Heritage Centre will still be interested.’ We’d had a group from Unst, the northernmost island, wondering about making her the centrepiece of their Viking exhibition.
‘They would not be able to afford her now,’ Anders said. ‘The boat Favelle died on.’ The words made a little silence. I hadn’t thought of it, but the minute he said it I knew it was true. No wonder Mr Berg was rubbing his hands. No longer an ex-film prop they’d practically have to give away to save storage fees, but a gruesome relic of the mysterious death of a star. If he put her on eBay he’d get an amazing sum for her. I grimaced.
‘People are strange.’
‘Yes,’ Anders agreed, and fell silent again. I waited. We were partners. He would tell me in his own time. I was reminded, though, of the question I wanted to ask.
‘Anders, have you ever heard anyone speaking, on set, or afterwards, of anonymous letters?’
I could see that he had. ‘Yes, but not before Favelle died. Now, they are all talking about them, and a dangerous stalker. I think it is exciting for them.’ He drew a long breath, set the mug aside. ‘Cass, I need to explain to you. About the cops. I did not mean to get you into trouble. I was nervous – I did not want to fall foul of them, and so I –’ He spread his hands out, palms down. ‘They were asking questions about where I was, and what Favelle was doing here.’
He trailed to a halt.
‘Yes,’ I said, when I saw he wasn’t going to start again. ‘I thought perhaps she was looking for Maree.’
Anders shook his head. His blond hair glinted. ‘No. She was looking for me.’
I stared at him incredulously. ‘For you?’
He reddened. ‘We had – well, it was an assignation.’
I couldn’t believe it. ‘You had an assignation with Favelle, aboard Stormfugl?’ Elegant Favelle, arranging a one-night stand with one of the hired hands in an open cabin aboard a ramshackle Viking longship? That was slumming it with a vengeance.
‘Many women,’ Anders said stiffly, ‘find me attractive, even if you don’t.’
‘I didn’t mean that at all,’ I protested. ‘I meant – well, you know, her and Ted, Hollywood’s golden couple. Then she’s sneaking off to an assignation with you, in Stormfugl’s shack. I just wouldn’t have expected it of her.’
‘Nor I,’ Anders said. ‘It was all very strange.’ He relaxed back against the bulkhead, turning his head away so that the sun slanted down his moulded cheekbone. ‘She always smiled at me, you know, I think she thought I was Charlie’s father, because of the colouring, and us both being on board that first day. Then at lunchtime she began to come on to me, leaning against me and asking questions – how I liked it here, and which room I was in. I told her that I was not in the hotel, that I slept as night watchman aboard the ship. She smiled at me, and said that maybe she would visit me one night.’
I tried to imagine it, and couldn’t.
‘I did not know what to say,’ Anders continued. ‘To make love with Favelle – it is a bit like getting an offer from Garbo. She didn’t seem like a –’ He paused, trying out descriptions in his head. ‘A woman who would sleep with just anyone, for kicks. Yet it wasn’t that she had fallen in love with me. And she smiled and patted my hand, and said no more, as if she’d decided, and so it would happen. I didn’t like that either.’
‘Haven’t you ever had one night stands?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘Not like that. It’s different, Cass, you know it is.’ His fair skin flushed. ‘Sometimes, when you go off in a group, and you become friends, then, at the end of the time, and you know you’re not going to meet again –’
I knew what he was trying to say. You climbed the mast together, and watched the sun rise scarlet above the sea, and when you arrived at your destination, well, perhaps for that last night you might be lovers.
‘You’ve done that too,’ he said, ‘even you, cool, remote Cass who walks by herself.’
Was that how he saw me? ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’ve done it too.’
‘We weren’t friends, Favelle and I. I felt –’ He paused again, remembering. ‘It was almost as if she was acting. A sort of determination. I felt uneasy. Then the rock gave her a fright, so I hoped she would not come to Stormfugl. All the same, I asked you if I might desert my post. I thought I would prefer not to be there, just in case.’
‘In case she came?’
‘In case it was some kind of set-up,’ he said. ‘I was afraid that we’d be disturbed by a photographer from the papers, or the angry husband. I hoped most that after the rock she wouldn’t come.’
‘But she did,’ I said. I asked the big question. ‘Where were you then?’
‘In the club house.’ He leaned forward. ‘I saw you go out. I had another couple of drinks and then I went down to Stormfugl. It was late, eleven o’clock, but of course there was still daylight. I thought that it was too late for her to come, and so I went to bed as usual. I was just starting to sleep when I heard voices from above the marina, a couple walking along the road from Busta Hotel. They were just at the standing stone, up on the hill, and they had paused to talk. The man was trying to persuade the woman to do something, he was speaking like that, you know, low and quickly, not letting her speak much. When she did speak, I recognised Favelle’s voice, and I realised she was trying to get rid of him so that she could come to Stormfugl. All my uneasiness came back. I picked up my sleeping bag and went into the clubhouse, into the men’s lavatories, and laid it down on the bench there. Then I went up into the bar again, and watched. She did not come.’
‘But –’ I began.
‘I watched,’ he repeated. ‘I waited in the bar until Alan closed it. I thought about asking if I could sleep on one of the couches there, but I thought it would be against the insurance, and I was not able to explain why.’ He mimicked himself. ‘Well, you see, I do not wish to sleep with the famous Favelle.’
‘So you did sleep in the men’s toilets,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Then when I saw her, that next morning, dead, I panicked. I thought we could give each other an alibi, if I said we had taken Khalida out together, and I had stayed on board. I realised, after I had said it, that they were interviewing us at the same time, but then I thought if I took it back it would sound very suspicious, so I got out of the way and kept quiet.’
‘They didn’t believe you anyway,’ I said. ‘You’re going to have to go back to them and tell the truth.’
‘It was stupid,’ he repeated gloomily.
‘But what you saw was important,’ I said. ‘Don’t you realise? You probably saw Favelle with the murderer.’
He shook his head doubtfully. ‘She died later. Why should they argue for all those hours?’
‘But it could have been. Who wa
s it, could you hear?’
‘Not to be absolutely certain,’ Anders said. ‘But I think that it was the teacher who has been filming the filmers. Kenneth.’
At that point my mobile rang. It was Dad’s number.
‘Is that you, Cassie? Lass, I don’t know what way up I am.’ It was Jessie Matthewson, in a high old state of agitation. ‘That lass dying on the boat like yon, well, that gave me a rare fright. We were having lunch, Gibbie and I, when it came on the news, and Gibbie, he went as white as a sheet. ‘That’s that Favelle wife died on our boat,’ he said. I thought I was going to have to call the doctor.’
‘It gave me a shock too,’ I said, pointedly.
‘And then we had the police round. I was that glad Gibbie wasn’t working late on the boat last night.’
He’d worked late on the boat very few nights, so I wondered why Jessie was mentioning it. A strange man’s footprints, leading below decks …
‘He wasn’t on board at all that evening?’ I asked.
‘Not he,’ said Jessie, and changed tack. ‘I’m had a phone call from your mother. She’s wanting me to go in and make the house shining clean and put flowers all over. She says she’s giving a press conference in the sitting room, so it’s to look like a room in the Hello book.’
Since Maman regarded all forms of Hello magazine as unspeakably vulgar, I took this to be a sop to Jessie’s frame of reference.
‘I’m done that, and your dad says it’s fine, but I’d’ve liked it fine if you’d been able to pop over and have a look. You ken what men are. They have no eye for a house.’
I wasn’t sure I did, just by virtue of being female. I glanced at my watch. Quarter past four. Yes, I could come over, admire, and just go with Dad all the way to the airport, instead of him picking me up at the marina.
‘I’ll do that, Jessie,’ I said. ‘Do you have plenty of flowers, or should I pop into the Co-op?’
‘Na, na, no need for that, for I have tulips in my own garden, and the last of the Shetland lilies, and the first of the Batchelor Buttons, and enough bluebells to paint the sky.’ Another pause for breath, and I knew that what she really wanted was coming up.
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