Marielle tacked sharply, and Alain went from the up side of the boat to being tilted downwards. I saw him stagger and regain his balance, then the jib I’d released so abruptly flapped over like a striking wing, pressing him against the guard rail and tipping him towards the sea.
‘The jib knocked him off the boat. He fired again as he went over. I found the hole in the mainsail later. It was that that convinced the Ballantrae police that it really was self-defence – that and this.’ I touched my cheek again, feeling the shallow, uneven indentation. ‘He went straight down. I was watching. Once I’d done it, I hoped that maybe the shock of the cold water would bring him back to himself. I swung Marielle round straight away, but I couldn’t find him. His head never surfaced. I put a danbuoy down. Three hours, I waited and circled. I tried to get another ship on the radio. The Sea Princess that had just passed us must have heard me, I called them by name, but they didn’t respond. They had a schedule to keep. Nobody replied.’ I swallowed, met his eyes directly. ‘In the end, I knew he had gone, and I just had to sail on.’
A thousand miles of ocean, reliving the scene over and over again. I’d sailed alone through the day and night and day again, snatching sleep as I could, warming up tins from the ship’s stores.
‘And you fetched up in Ballantrae. Why Ballantrae? It’s not the obvious port of entry.’
‘A local fishing boat guided me in. I met them coming home, and they gave me a lead in.’ I smiled. ‘I had to ask where I was.’
‘You didn’t know?’ he said, surprised.
I shook my head. ‘It was ten years ago. Do you know how boat electronics have changed in these ten years? We had a VHF radio and the very earliest, most basic GPS. I knew I was seeing the north coast of Ireland, and that was it. I’d done a season doing RYA coaching around Dumfries, so I preferred that as a landfall. And then – well, I was going to have to explain Alain’s death. I wanted to be in Scotland, among my own people.’
‘I phoned PC MacDonald at Ballantrae. He remembered you very well.’
I remembered him too. I hadn’t had to feign distressed exhaustion. He’d persuaded the local B&B to put me up free of charge until I could make some money, and he’d taken my statement like one seaman listening to another. ‘He was kind. He took me to the Procurator Fiscal, to decide whether there was going to be a trial.’
That interview in the Procurator Fiscal’s office had been gruelling. ‘Can you tell us exactly what happened? How do you know what the wind speed was? Who was in charge of the boat at the time?’ They’d gone over Marielle with a fine-meshed net, and a doctor had examined the ragged, healing graze on my cheek. Journalists had waited to waylay me, and they’d written headlines like ‘Lassie’s ocean ordeal’ and ‘No comment from Cassie’ until a new sensation had taken my place.
The Procurator Fiscal had been a little, round-faced man with shrewd, compassionate eyes. He’d taken the decision not to prosecute. He shook my hand as I left, and said, ‘Now, Ms Lynch, you let the memory fade.’
I hadn’t taken the advice.
‘He was kind too, the Procurator Fiscal. He’d have liked it better, though, if I’d been a man. Then it would have been regrettable determination, or acting decisively. Peerie lasses aren’t supposed to keep their heads in that kind of emergency.’
‘Do you mean,’ said DI Macrae solemnly, ‘that it would have been more womanly if you’d let Mouettier shoot you?’I nodded, smiling, and the smile must have put me off balance, for when he added, very gently, ‘But why do you feel so responsible? Why, to you, is it murder?’
I found myself blurting out the answer that I hadn’t managed to articulate even to the Ballantrae priest in confession. ‘I didn’t enjoy the sex. And he wanted us to stay together when we landed.’ The words were awful, but as they came out of my mouth I knew they were true, and turned my head away, miserable and ashamed. The knowledge that once we’d taken sightings, set sails for the afternoon, and had lunch, he’d slide an arm around me in the cockpit, start caressing my back. It was part of the encumbrance of being a couple. I’d kiss him back, and be quiescent, when what I really wanted to do was pull away, insist I was too tired, not interested. I didn’t want his weight on me on the slatted cockpit benches, or forrard on the cold, salt-scurfed fibreglass of the foredeck. I wanted to be my own woman again, free in my narrow berth. That searing pain across my cheek had crystallised all these other discomforts into one focused lance, and I’d kicked the helm over like a Fury who saw the chance of revenge at last. ‘I had that split second of choice, and I let the resentment take over. If I’d have kept talking to him, maybe –’
Maybe his parents in Yell would still have had their son. That had been when I’d really confronted the enormity of what I’d done. PC MacDonald had phoned to ask the local constabulary to break the news, but after that I had to write and explain how it had happened. I’d asked PC MacDonald’s advice for what would comfort them best. ‘That he died quickly,’ he’d said.
I wondered what PC MacDonald had said to DI Macrae about me. I wasn’t going to ask.
He told me. ‘PC MacDonald said the law wouldn’t touch you, but you’d be your own punishment.’ He gave me a long look, pitying. ‘It’s time you moved on.’
I could accept friendship, but I didn’t want his pity.
The breakwater was coming towards us now, the grey rock walls waiting to enclose us again. With this wind, we could sail right into the berth. We negotiated through the entrance, past Stormfugl and into the marina space, then ghosted into the berth. DI Macrae stepped neatly on to the pontoon and then handed me the mooring ropes, brisk again.
‘Thanks for the sail. Now, you have my phone number. When were you thinking to go and talk?’
I glanced at my watch. 12.10. ‘Now, if nobody else needs me.’
‘Let me know immediately if anything turns up.’
I nodded, and meant it as a promise. He gave me a long look. They were not Alain’s eyes any more, but his own, filled with that uncompromising Scots uprightness. It’s time you moved on –
I tied
Khalida up and stowed the sails. I’d meant to go to Magnie’s straight away, but instead I found myself slumping down onto my helming seat, shaking. Surely the grief and guilt ought to be over. Ten years was a long time … it was only yesterday. I could see Alain’s face as the boom went over, that queer, stupid look, and hear the crack I hadn’t noticed at the time. Then I wondered if love lasted as long as guilt, if the years before Maman left felt as vividly yesterday to her and Dad; if ghosts really could rise and walk again.
Chapter Seventeen
It was time to talk to Magnie. I’d leave Maman and Dad to do whatever reconciling they were up to, and leave Maree in Yell. She’d be safe there from film people, if it was one of them; they didn’t have the contacts to find her. A local person, though, that was different. A local person needed only one phone call to whoever they knew in Yell to start the search, and they’d have the information within an hour. Inga or Kenneth, or both working together. I was glad I’d told DI Macrae where to look.
I was just going to cast off again when a gaggle of children in a neon-yellow rowing boat came jostling through the marina entrance. I’d vaguely noticed them earlier, off Busta House. The one on the oars backwatered when he saw me, and shouted, two of the others waved excitedly, and the fourth one yelled, ‘Cass!’ I waved. There was a quick bit of full-volume discussion like seagulls on a roof, which ended in several voices saying ‘Ask her!’
I went down and caught their boat. I knew all the faces from the junior sailing group, although I was shaky on the names now they were mostly dry and clad in jeans and T-shirts instead of wetsuits. The girl was Inga’s oldest lass, Vaila. I knew the oldest of the boys by his Mohican plume of white-dyed hair. Drew was twelve, and mad as a South Sea second mate. He had the makings of a very good sailor if he managed to stay un-drowned. He naturally took on the role of speaker.
‘Cass, we found this thing –’<
br />
‘I found it!’ put in one of the smaller boys. He was freckle-faced with spiky blond hair, either John or Rhys.
‘Ye, John found it. His hook caught on it.’
‘Just along at Busta pier,’ John added. ‘We were fishing off the end, in the skiff.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ I said. It seemed a bit of a coincidence that they should just happen to be there, after last night’s fire, when the beach was swarming with policemen searching the blackened circle.
‘Yeah,’ Drew said, with his cheekiest grin. ‘Well, we were off in the water, not on shore under their feet.’
‘Mam said we weren’t to bother them,’ Vaila added, ‘but we couldn’t see how us just watching from the water could be a bother.’
‘They weren’t doing anything interesting anyway,’ Rhys said. ‘Just picking up burned video tapes and putting them in plastic bags.’
Either they were very close to shore, or – yes, he had a pair of spyglasses hung around his neck.
‘So we went offshore a bit, and got the wands out, and I thought I’d caught a neesik, it was that heavy. Or a huge, huge fish. But it’s just wheels.’
Drew and John fished among the ropes and buoys that littered the bottom of the boat and brought out a tangle of shining metal.
‘But,’ I said, surprised, ‘that’s a folding bicycle.’ I unfolded it and locked the frame. John leapt on it with a whoop of delight, and did a quick circle round the gravel, raising a plume of dust.
‘It works!’
‘That looks new,’ I said, eyeing the chrome of the spokes and the tread of the wide tyres.
‘It is,’ Rhys asserted. ‘It’s no been there long at all.’
‘Finders keepers,’ John said, and did a tighter circuit.
‘John, stop for a minute, will you,’ I said. ‘This could be important.’ The film crew’s joint alibi, the wild party, when nobody had been gone for long enough to walk to Stormfugl and back. But with a bicycle –
‘It’s mine, though,’ John said. ‘I hooked it.’
‘My boat,’ Rhys said.
‘Oh, shut up, you two,’ Drew said. ‘Cass doesn’t want to listen to you sharging at each other. Cass, we found it off of Busta, where all the movie folk are. Do you think,’ he asked, totally failing to keep the uncool excitement out of his voice, ‘it could be something to do with the murder?’
‘I can’t think of any other reason why anyone would throw away a perfectly good folding bike,’ I said. ‘These things aren’t cheap.’ Kenneth had seen a cyclist. ‘I have a vague impression of someone on a bike, just before the turn-off …’ How far off Busta? Would you need a boat to drop it?’
‘Yes,’ John said.
‘No,’ Drew said. There was instant disagreement from the others, but he persevered. ‘We’ve been doing shot-put in the school, and you can throw pretty far if you’re strong in the arm. See, those camera folk, they’re used to lifting heavy weights. And it’d skim too, folded like that. I reckon it could have been thrown.’
‘I don’t suppose you took meids, did you?’ I asked. ‘Bearings on the shore, so you could find the spot again?’
There was another instant babble of disagreement. Eventually they trailed to a halt in a welter of ‘Fifty metres off the pier –’ ‘No, twenty –’ ‘The pier was on our right –’
‘The police will want to know the exact spot.’
Drew’s eyes flared. ‘You really think it might be the murderer’s? Cool!’
‘I really think it might be,’ I said. I flicked open my mobile and found the new number: Gavin Macrae. Gavin – yes, it suited him. He answered straight off.
‘Ms Lynch?’
‘I have some bairns here,’ I said, ‘with a folding bike, brand new, and fished out of the sea off Busta House.’
A pause. ‘Interesting. Are you still at the marina?’
‘Just leaving.’
‘Can you stick with them? I’ll be ten minutes. I don’t suppose there’s much hope of fingerprints, but get them not to touch it any more.’
I relayed the message on, and got a foursome of mutinous faces.
‘It’s mine,’ John said, gripping the handlebars tightly.
‘I’ve not had a shot yet,’ Vaila said, ‘and they’re going to take it off us. Etterscabs.’
‘Whats?’ I asked.
‘Etterscabs. It’s a new Shetland word we learned at the school.’
‘They’ll need to take your fingerprints too,’ I said. ‘To compare.’ They went straight into arguing who had the most interesting whorls while I watched for the police car coming along the road.
Gavin Macrae was good with them. I wondered if he had children of his own. He half-sat on Stormfugl’s side and listened in patience while Drew told their story, with a generous spattering of interjections from the other three. He took possession of the bicycle, and invited them all down to the Brae station (escorted by a parent, naturally; the faces fell a bit at that) to get their prints taken. Then he sent them away with sincere thanks for their help. This could be a vital clue in solving the murder, and they weren’t to mention it to anyone but their parents – no, not even their brothers and sisters.
The faces brightened again. They dictated their names and addresses to Sergeant Peterson and swaggered off to mystify younger siblings. Gavin handed the bicycle over to the Sergeant too, then turned to me.
‘Do you think we could take the oldest one out this afternoon, to see if he can pin-point the spot? We’ll have to try dragging, or put a diver down.’
‘You could ask the sub-aqua club, if there’s no police diver handy,’ I said. ‘The water’s pretty clear there – well, it used to be, though the salmon farms may have changed things. I may have to meet Ted Tarrant to discuss what’s happening next, but the wind-surfing lot can drive the inflatable too, they use it on club nights.’ I eased myself off Stormfugl’s gunwale. ‘I’ll speak to you later.’
It would be bad policy to take the car with them watching me. I’d pushed my luck already today. I headed around to Khalida, flung her ropes ashore, and backed her out of the marina.
Magnie’s house, Strom, was set in its own little bay, sheltered from the western ocean by a cliff headland, and with a proper boat noost, a hacked-away section of grassy bank just the right size to slide a boat into before the winter storms began. The bay was reddish gravel, with a curve of seaweed tide-line like thick black rope ringing the pebbles, and water so clear it looked ankle-deep instead of the several metres you knew it must be when you looked at the drewey lines twisting down and down. We were not far off slack tide. I dropped anchor in three metres depth, launched Khalida ’s dinghy, and rowed ashore.
This was a proper crofthouse, with house, byre, and barn all in one line, just as the Norsemen built theirs. It had a black-tarred roof with two dormer windows, and whitewash so thickly plastered on that it glowed in moonlight. Each door had a fresh coat of blue paint, the colour called ‘regatta’, which happened to be the shade of Magnie’s boat. He had several sheds, acquired through the years: a bus, a large sheep trailer whose wheels had been removed, an accommodation block from the Sullom Voe building camp, and a large green agricultural shed like a giant’s tin can sliced along the middle. Apart from the hens fussing it was beautifully silent, real country silence with a hundred sounds in it: the sea shushing only fifty yards away, the trickle of the burn by the house, and a lark up on the hill. If ever I came ashore to live I hoped it would be in a house like this.
I’d barely opened the door when Magnie came out to greet me. He was in a dark blue boiler suit and tartan slippers, and surprisingly trim for someone who’d just come out of a three-day drinking spree. His yellow hair was still damp, curling a bit as it dried, his cheeks red and shining, and his chin smoothly shaven.
‘Now, Cass, is dis dee? Come in, come in, du’ll tak a cup o’ tay.’
‘I’m no’ holding you back?’ I asked, looking at the tushker propped by the door.
‘Lass, the peats
’ll keep. Come you in aboot.’
I followed him into the kitchen-living room, dominated still by the cream enamel Rayburn that had been cooker, hot water, and heating system combined for most houses in Shetland until the oil came. Magnie went straight to it and shifted the kettle to the hot-plate over the fire end. ‘Now, you’ll take a cup o’ tay.’ He turned to smile at me, weathered face wrinkling. ‘All the neighbour folk got rid of their Rayburns for this oil, and they’re all laughed at me for keeping it and working with the peats, but I’m getting the last laugh now, for the price of this oil’s risen that much that they’re all getting the tushkers out again and speaking o’ converting back.’
‘As bad as that?’ I said, startled.
‘Dip dee doon.’ Obediently, I sat down in one of the low-slung sixties armchairs beside the Rayburn. Its arms were polished from use. A stripy cat jumped up on my knee, turned around, and settled down, purring.
‘This young eens’ll never ken how to begin.’ He gave a cackling laugh, like one of his own hens. ‘I’m offered the school a night class in handling a tushker.’ The kettle boiled; he poured the water into the teapot and sat it back to stew while he buttered a couple of water biscuits and carved slices off the hunk of cheddar with a clasp knife. ‘There now. I’m blyde you cam by, for I was wantin’ a word with you, but have your tay first.’ He poured me a mug of tea so strong you could trot a mouse on it, as Granny Bridget would have said. ‘And what’s all doing with you?’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘nothing much. There’s no filming going on for the moment. The police are swarming aa ower Stormfugl.’
The knife paused. ‘The police? Why, what’s the matter?’
Of course, Magnie’d been dead to the world since Favelle’s murder. I said slowly, ‘A wife died aboard.’
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