‘I need to get back to Brae,’ Maree said.
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘There’s something else, though. There’s a suspicion that maybe Dad was so angry with you that he killed her, thinking it was you.’
Her mouth fell open. ‘Dermot? He was lucky I didn’t kill him. Reading that letter in my pocket, and jumping to conclusions, well, I was so mad I wouldn’t have explained even if he’d given me the chance. How dared he think I’d do something like that behind his back?’
‘The thing is,’ I said, sticking to my guns, ‘Maman’s come back.’
She was startled but not desperately upset, I was relieved to see. ‘Like in, come back?’
‘I think so.’
‘Oh.’ She rose again, went back to the window. ‘Oh. Well, gee – You think it’ll work?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted.
Maree sat down. ‘Look, this is a shock. I can’t think – Do the police know who?’
‘They’ve got several suspects,’ I said, ‘and no proof. You have, though, if you still have it.’
She looked at me blankly. ‘Have what?’
‘The letter,’ I said. ‘The letter that Dad threw such a fit about.’
‘Not here, though,’ she said. Behind the blank, shocked look in her eyes I could see her calculating. ‘It’s at Jessie’s house.’
I just hoped our murderer hadn’t known about it. ‘Good,’ I said.
‘But I don’t see –’ she began.
‘It’s the key to the whole thing,’ I said. ‘Our evidence.’ She was still looking puzzled. ‘Because, you see,’ I finished, ‘it wasn’t your letter at all. Was it?’
She shook her head. ‘No. It was Favelle’s.’
Chapter Nineteen
I wanted to take Maree back with me, but she refused, and her determination to play a lone hand chimed in with mine. I was worried all the same. ‘Keep your phone off; don’t give them the chance to talk to you. The local policeman’s looking for you too.’
‘Honey, there’s no mobile reception here anyway.’
‘That worries me,’ I said frankly. Then I had a better idea. I drove back to the main road and phoned Dodie. Did he have a spare room, and could he possibly take a visitor for the night? He did, and they could, and his mam would be delighted to look after her. He’d make sure she got safely on the ferry in the morning.
‘And come straight to Khalida,’ I said. ‘Seven o’clock, while they’re all eating breakfast at Busta.’
‘Check.’ We hugged like conspirators, like sisters, and parted.
I drove back slowly southwards and took the West Sandwick turning. Alain’s family. I should have come before. As I bumped gently along the road into the village, I had misgivings. I pulled into the last parking place and sat there, looking at the old schoolhouse. Someone came out of the back door, a woman with a basket of washing. I watched her stoop and stretch, shaking out each item before pegging it up: a blue shirt, a green shirt, a pair of jeans, one sock, and space left for its neighbour, a grey jumper, back for the second sock. She was tall, with bobbed brown hair; she wasn’t Alain’s mother. Perhaps the family had moved away to another part of Shetland, or back to France.
Ten years. I had no right now to come looking for forgiveness.
The woman hung up the last pair of socks, picked up her basket, and went inside. I turned the car around and drove away.
I spent the ferry journey reading the texts I’d missed. The first was from Maman, saying good morning. One was from Anders: where was I? One was from the Norwegian office: Flying over this pm. Berg. It had been sent at 10 a.m. I presumed he’d pulled strings and got an oil-man flight. The last three were from DI Macrae. The first two were curt and official: please contact at your earliest convenience. The third had a nice touch of worry: Concerned re yr safety. Reply as soon as u get this. Macrae. I sent a terse reply: ‘Perfectly safe. C’. and switched the phone off.
It was after seven by the time I got back to Brae. I headed straight for Busta, with an automatic slow-down as I passed the boating club entrance. Stormfugl was still, the white ants gone. Only a lone figure remained as sentinel. I was glad the police had left a guard, but it meant I wasn’t going to be able to inspect her more closely. Then the dark figure turned, and I saw that it was a man in a business suit. Mr Berg.
I skidded the car to a halt, rearranged my face, and strode on down past the waiting luxury taxi. He turned to watch me coming.
‘Mr Berg.’
‘Ms Lynch. You got my text? Do you know how long it will be before the police will allow the use of the longboat?’
‘DI Macrae gave the impression they were almost finished.’
He grunted. I gestured towards the boating club. ‘Can I offer you a drink?’
‘No. I will go back to Busta Hotel, where I am staying.’ He gave me a long look, the skipper assessing which pieces of cargo had to be jettisoned. ‘There has been a good deal of comment in the Norwegian papers. My fellow directors and I are concerned.’ His briefcase was sitting by the gangplank. He reached down to it now and brought out a cardboard wallet crammed with photocopies of newspaper articles. ‘I will meet with you tomorrow, 10 a.m., at Busta Hotel. We need to minimise the damage. If the film can be finished quickly then that will be your contract ended, and all will be well.’
He handed me the wallet and walked away. I turned it over in my hands as I watched the taxi drive off, then eased open the flap, paused, and closed it again. The wallet was heavy in my hands. I wasn’t going to open this in public. I slipped down into the changing room, heart beating fast, and opened it with trembling fingers.
The strip-lighting blared out on newspaper articles. The top one had a photograph of the press conference, taken from an angle that made it look as if I was sitting on Ted’s lap, and a 3-inch headline: VIKING LOVE TRIANGLE? The text steered short of libel, but the general suggestion was that I was chief suspect. The others weren’t much better, and there were publicity stills of Ted and me conferring on board ship from the ‘making of the movie’ feature. One had me looking narrow-eyed and mean; from the background I knew I was assessing the narrow entrance into the Hams, but I looked like I was plotting half a dozen murders.
I felt like Mr Berg had slapped me in the face. I’d been tried on this mix of rumour and tricked photography, condemned in my absence. The smell of vanilla and coconut soap clogged my breathing.
I shoved the articles back in their wallet and came out into the fresh air. I took a long, deep breath, feeling the cold reach right to the depths of my lungs, and stuck my chin out. Until 10 a.m. tomorrow I was still Stormfugl’s skipper. The papers might have tarnished my name but I was in command right now. I’d hand DI Macrae his murderer, and I’d sort out the sabotage aboard Stormfugl.
I re-parked behind the skip so the car’d be hidden from the police station windows, and walked briskly back to the boating club. The wind had fallen to a silvery fret on the water; the tide had pushed its load of dark seaweed and coffee foam up the beach and retreated, leaving it lying like wave shadows on the pale shingle. It was still light, but the blue of the sky was beginning to darken as I stepped on to the gangplank.
Ghosts everywhere. Stormfugl was greyed with powder. One oar had the rower’s gloves lying by the handle, curved into open hands. In the centre was the blurred chalk outline of how Favelle had lain, one knee drawn up below her, head pillowed on the crook of her elbow, as Gibbie had left her, his reluctant gesture towards what he took for a lass too drunk even to walk straight. He’d been too full of his own prejudices to recognise the famous Favelle.
Now, what had Magnie said? Who should come up from below decks but Gibbie o’ Efstigarth? That figured. In these light nights, if he was going to be longer than it would take to saw a rope nearly through, he’d work where he’d be unobserved.
Below decks. I looked at the half-deck running at shoulder-height from the stern to the mast. The engine was there, but I left that for Anders to go over. He’d kn
ow without needing to start her what had been done, and where. Sugar in the fuel tank was possible. Wood, though, wood was Gibbie’s passion.
The grey haze covered the lower decks too. I peered into the half dark. There were ten rowing benches, spaced so that the rowers could wedge their feet on the ship’s ribs. The oar-holes shone sky-blue in the gloom. I bent double and worked my way along the ship’s sides, drawing my fingers along every smooth piece, every knothole. My back was aching by the time I’d examined every inch of each side, but I was certain he hadn’t spoiled the integrity of the hull. She wasn’t going to sink under her next crew.
I came out into the open area again to straighten out. The rudder fixings were above decks, and the strapping holding the heavy spar that supported the sail. It had to be the mast. I paused to listen before going back under. Sheep crunching along the beach; football cheering from someone’s Sky Sports.
He’d done it very neatly. It took ten minutes of careful feeling around the mast to find the first hole, a centimetre-wide depression neatly plugged with plastic wood. I fiddled the plug out with my pocket-knife. It was only a couple of millimetres deep, yet when I inserted my marlinspike into the hole it disappeared right in. I went around the mast to the other side, and found the exit hole, plugged too.
Now I knew what I was looking for it was easy. There were nearly twenty holes in all, nothing we’d have noticed in daylight, but the minute the wind filled the sails, the whole thing would topple like a felled tree.
At least I had this to take to tomorrow’s meeting.
I still don’t know how the murderer managed to come aboard without my sailor’s sense being conscious of the boat moving to movement on the pontoon. I suppose I was too horrified at my mind’s image of the mast falling forward among my rowers in a tangle of sail and rope. I didn’t even feel the blow. I was just straightening up when my world dissolved into stars.
I staggered, and caught at Stormfugl’s side. Someone moved behind me, passed me. Darkness was closing in on me, but even as I felt my legs give, and my body slump forwards against the wooden planks, I knew that was all wrong. Now was not the time to give way, except that I couldn’t help it, my legs were folding under me, I was crumpled down on the boards between the rowing benches, and all I wanted to do was lay my head down and let the dark take over. There was a crackling sound behind me – no, before me too, it was all round me. I was trying to struggle to my feet while my brain was still registering ‘Fire!’ but my legs wouldn’t thrust under me.
A scarlet light was flickering around me. The fire must have been started in several places, for it was eating its way up the mast and crawling over the dragon tail. The little cabin had a ridge of flame. Smoke from the head was blowing towards me, filling my mouth. If I breathed that in, I’d die. I fumbled one hand up to my neck and pulled the rib of my jersey over my nose. If my legs wouldn’t obey me, I’d haul myself out of here. While I tried again to bunch my legs below me I was working it out. Skipper caught in misbehaviour decides to sabotage boat and take herself with it. They’d bury what charred remains were left, and consider the case closed.
Maree’s evidence wouldn’t be enough to over-ride such a simple solution. I had to live and tell my tale.
I took firm hold of the ladder. Mothers of trapped children could lift a car. This ladder was a cliff to me now, the ratlines of a tall ship. I could do ratlines. Up to the crow’s nest. I clenched my hands around the rough tarred rope. If the flames reached the engine it would explode. Hurry. Lord, help me. I hauled my feet under, then I heard shouting, and cars skidding on the gravel. The running feet were salvation. A dozen hands reached down to me and I was lifted into the air, swinging light and being caught, landing on the wooden jetty with a crumpling of knees; out cold.
When I came to, I thought it was Up Helly Aa, the red flames lighting the sky. Then memory returned and I pulled against the hands that supported me. ‘Stormfugl –’
‘They’re having to tow her out,’ Anders said in my ear. ‘To save the boats in the marina, to save your Khalida.’
Later he told me how the Delting sailors had launched their rescue boats, attached two grapnels to Stormfugl’s dragon prow, and towed her out to sea. I didn’t hear the engines at the time; all I knew from the cage of restraining hands was my ship moving away from me, her dragon head wreathed in fire, the sparks rising up into the midnight air and reflecting in the still water. Her mast fell with a crack, the red and ochre striped mainsail catching and burning in an instant. She blazed like the funeral of some Viking chieftain of a thousand years ago, the flames hissing in the water, and then the fire reached the engine at last. There was a dull ‘boom’ that flung burning timbers up into the air, then the darkness closed in.
I turned round then and saw the crowd on the pier. There were several cameras on tripods: Michael and James, with Ted beside them, as well as the Shetland news team. The police were in the middle of it, of course, with DI Macrae being briskly official. ‘What happened?’
‘Someone hit me,’ I said. ‘I was just examining below decks – examining the mast.’
Stormfugl was gone. There was no point in talking of sabotage now.
He turned my head, shone a torch on it. ‘The skin’s not broken.’
‘Someone hit me,’ I repeated doggedly, ‘and I went down, then I realised she was on fire.’
Sergeant Peterson lifted one of my hands, turned it over, bent her head to smell it, slowly, methodically. She repeated the procedure with the other one. ‘No smell of inflammables, sir. Just smoke.’
I gave her an outraged stare. ‘Somebody else set her on fire, with me aboard.’
‘Have you any idea who?’
I started to shake my head, and thought better of it. ‘No.’
‘Size, bulk? Were you hit with a downwards stroke?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It was someone who moved very smoothly, used to boats. I didn’t feel her rock at all.’
‘How long ago?’
‘I don’t know,’ I repeated. ‘The people who pulled me out, ask them.’
He checked his watch. ‘Sergeant, go over to Busta and get everyone together in the long room. Macdonald, you interviewed Kenneth Manson, didn’t you? Phone and see if he’s in. If he’s not, go over and wait until I call.’ A look around; his gaze fell on two more uniforms. ‘Sergeant, you do the same with Inga Anderson; you, Sergeant, same with Mr and Mrs Lynch. Insist on speaking personally to Mr Lynch.’ He turned back to me. ‘Did you hear how your assailant arrived?’
‘Not by car, I don’t think. I thought there were sheep on the pebbles of the shore – it could have been a walker.’
DI Macrae’s gaze returned to his crew. ‘I want alibis for the last hour, and particular note of anyone who arrives late, or looks breathless. I’ll join you at Busta once the doctor’s seen Ms Lynch.’
I was about to say that I didn’t need a doctor when I realised it was for him, not me. A doctor would see if I’d really been hit, and how hard.
‘Can I sit down?’ I said. Anders walked solicitously with me to the bench overlooking the marina. DI Macrae was talking into his intercom; to the doctor, no doubt. Maree should be at Dodie’s by now, and her phone would work there. I grabbed my own mobile, and got her on the second ring.
‘Developments. Come now, next ferry – to the marina.’
‘Will do.’
With luck, she’d be here in forty minutes, an hour at most – before the gathering at Busta had broken up.
Forensics came first, to take sticky-tape samples from my hands, then the doctor, who didn’t say anything conclusive. ‘None the worse for wear. You’re tough, you sailing types,’ he said cheerfully to me, then went to confer with DI Macrae, low-voiced. I saw him shake his head. DI Macrae gave me a long, dubious look then turned his back, drawing the doctor round so that I couldn’t guess what they were saying. Then DI Macrae came back to me.
‘What are you going to do now?’
I was goin
g to play possum; play ghosts. ‘Have a cup of tea,’ I said, ‘and take an aspirin. Lie down.’
‘Aboard your boat?’
‘Yes.’
He frowned. ‘I’m not entirely happy about you being alone on her. Can you lock her from inside?’
I nodded. Khalida was a sea-going yacht; she could be secured against a storm from inside.
‘Lock yourself in, then.’ He paused, as if he was going to say something else, then turned away. He’d just reached his car when Maman brought Dad’s 4x4 skidding to a halt at the top of the gravel drive. She leapt out and enveloped me in a flood of motherly concern. ‘Cassandre, what happened? We just had a phone call –’
‘I’m fine, Maman. Really I am.’
She didn’t notice the space by the jetty where Stormfugl had been. She hadn’t even seen my first command.
‘Maman,’ I said, ‘I need your help. It’s really important, to get this cleared up.’
She smiled with affectionate condescension, as if I was five again. ‘You are going to stage the final scene, in the library, as in all the best detective stories.’ Then she shook her head. ‘This isn’t a story, Cassandre. Leave it to the police.’
‘They’re getting it all wrong,’ I said. ‘Besides –’ I gestured at the jetty where Stormfugl had been moored over her own reflection. ‘– the murderer knocked me out and burnt my ship, and I’m going to nail the bastard. Will you help me?’
She gave me a long look. I don’t know what she saw, the travesti hero perhaps, Orpheus on his quest, Orestes, but it was something she recognised as an irresistible force. She nodded gravely. ‘What do you want me to do?’
I explained quickly and left her to get the things we’d need for Maree at Jessie’s: lighter clothes, her stand-in wig, and her make-up. I was feeling a bit shaky, but no worse than I’d have felt after a day of sea-sickness.
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