Night Falls, Still Missing

by Helen Callaghan

  Of course it was. Because you weren’t invited, realised Fiona, with a lightning strike of insight, followed by the bite of pity.

  After weeks spent elbow-deep in mud and bitching together about the rest of the team, and probably about me too, you thought that she’d bring you along with us. You thought that you two were friends. All this talk about arrangements did was prove to you that Madison only thought you were colleagues.

  Something told Fiona that sullen, furious, undermined Becky didn’t have many friends of her own. She fetched and she carried, but nobody took her seriously, not even Iris, her PhD supervisor. These plans, this excited anticipation of Fiona’s visit, would have thrown all this into sharp relief for her.

  Would she be angry enough at Madison over it to hurt her?

  Fiona stole a glance at Becky, who was affecting to retie her bootlaces, her lips still compressed and pale.

  Surely not, thought Fiona, horrified. But …

  ‘She didn’t do any of that for her brother,’ said Becky. ‘When he came …’

  ‘Becky?’ sang out Iris’s clear voice from the dig site. ‘Can we borrow you for a moment?’

  Becky huffed out an aggrieved sigh and rolled to her feet. ‘Her Majesty calls,’ she muttered, forcing her hands back into her gloves. ‘I should be glad she’s actually here for once, I suppose.’ She peered at Fiona over the top of her glasses, and her expression was suddenly unreadable, flinty. ‘Are you going to help out or not?’

  ‘No,’ Fiona said, and felt a tiny measure of satisfaction in doing so. She put her hands in her pockets. ‘I need to head back before the causeway gets any worse.’

  ‘You could get the boat back with us later.’

  ‘No. I’m frightened of boats. I don’t like being on the sea.’

  Becky narrowed her eyes at her, as if this was a ruse so Fiona could shirk some hard work, and with a little snort, turned and hurried back to the tent, nearly colliding with Callum, who had emerged from it to look for her.

  He turned back – but not before he had paused for a moment, his eyes seeking out Fiona, settling on her, and then moving back into the tent after Becky.

  33

  A965, Orkney, January 2020

  It took Fiona a long time to get over her conversation with Becky.

  Madison had been excited, she thought, as she drove towards Kirkwall. Madison had been making plans for them both. And now Madison was gone and Fiona knew, deep in her heart, that she was never coming back. All the doors had closed behind her now. She was left alone in the room with the worst news in the world.

  But she found she couldn’t cry.

  She needed to find out why.

  Why would anyone kill Madison?

  And suddenly Fiona was confronted with every phone call, every drunken wine bar therapy session, every night sat in the car next to her while she lurked, trying to catch her inamorato coming out of another woman’s house.

  Above her the sky was a fleece of shining white clouds, breaking apart every so often to reveal a tantalising blue, as she pulled into the police station. Her lip curled. It was beautiful, and it was wrong and ugly and obscene that today should be beautiful, with Madison at the bottom of the sea and the waves crashing so hard above her nobody could reach her.

  By the time Fiona appeared in the station, approaching the glass windows separating the staff from visitors, the box containing Madison’s laptop in her arms, her eyes were red and wet but she did not weep.

  ‘I’m here to see …’

  ‘Of course, just a minute,’ said the woman at the desk, who’d clearly been expecting her. Behind her DI Gillespie hove into view.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said. He seemed reservedly compassionate and yet just a little suspicious of her. ‘One moment while I get this now …’ He vanished towards the back, while the woman at the desk watched her closely through spectacles low on her nose.

  He reappeared beside her, at the interrogation room door, with a small plastic bag about the size of a postcard dangling from his fingers. Within it, something glinted gold.

  ‘If you’d just follow me this way, Dr Grey.’

  When had she become Dr Grey to him? she wondered, as he led her into the interrogation room. It was oddly jarring, and she felt uncomfortable as well as wretched as she took the seat he offered her.

  ‘This came,’ she said. Her voice sounded thin and scratched to her own ears. ‘I thought it was for me. It’s Mads’ laptop.’

  ‘It came to you? Where from?’

  ‘Some computer repairs place. It was delivered to Langmire this morning. I found it after you left. In the shed. There was a card …’ She swallowed. ‘You should probably take it.’

  He glanced at it. ‘You opened it?’

  She shrugged. ‘I thought it was books. From work.’

  He lifted the box out of her hands, put it on the empty chair next to him. She noticed he was careful not to touch it unduly.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘How are you doing?’

  Fiona opened her mouth to speak, shut it again. She didn’t know how she was doing. There were a thousand questions she could ask, but none of them were going to change anything. Her best friend was gone and she had been supposed to be helping her, which she’d failed at, and had spent the last few days hating her, and suspecting her of all kinds of treachery.

  And all that while, she’d been most likely trapped in a car, dead.

  ‘I … I don’t …’

  Her words tailed off. She had nothing to say.

  ‘I’m very sorry. I’m sure this is very distressing and I won’t keep you long.’ He seemed relieved to drop the discussion of feelings, to cut to the chase, and he punched the buttons on the recording device. Something about his rough red face suggested to her that the processing of Gillespie’s feelings had a distinctly liquid character.

  ‘I’d like to ask you about an object that might have a bearing on the investigation, if I may.’

  Fiona could not conceal her surprise. She had not been expecting this. ‘An object?’

  ‘Yes, can you identify it as Madison’s?’

  ‘Um … yes, if it will help,’ she said, but at the same time, a sudden terror was at work in her. Was she going to be shown bloodstained clothing, broken possessions, some evidence of cruelty or suffering?

  ‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ he said, as though he had guessed her feelings. ‘Are you all right with this being taped?’

  Fiona shrugged. ‘Yes, of course.’

  He nodded, pressed some buttons that clicked loudly.

  ‘This is Detective Inspector Mark Gillespie interviewing Dr Fiona Grey in Kirkwall Police Station in regards to evidence sample number MG/YE01/01 … So, Dr Grey, I just need you to look at something and see if you can tell us anything about it. All right?’

  She nodded slowly, intimidated by the machine, by these proceedings. ‘Yes. If it will help.’

  ‘It will be enormously helpful, yes, thank you.’ He picked up the small packet, and without opening it, passed it across the scarred table surface to her. ‘Do you recognise this at all?’ He turned to the machine. ‘I am now showing Dr Grey the evidence.’

  It was a gold pendant, and Fiona frowned, disappointed and yet also relieved. She had never seen it before. For her own part, she could tell in an instant that it was the sort of thing Madison, who rarely wore necklaces, would have passed over.

  She shook her head at him.

  ‘No. Sorry.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She was aware of herself then, appearing to have barely glanced at it, to be dismissing it. She turned her attention back to it, wanting to appear cooperative.

  It was a figurine of a woman with wings and a sword, strung on a yellow chain. Its long hair was tied in a knot at the top and it was through this that the thong had been threaded.

  She bent to it again, and something about it struck her.

  The pendant itself was roughly the size of a small lipstick, but gleamed with a
dull but undeniable lustre, a warm yellow that she recognised from things she’d analysed in the lab.

  Her heart quickened. Could it be?

  ‘Can I pick it up?’ she asked.

  ‘You can,’ he said, looking a little uncomfortable. ‘But I would have to ask you not to open the bag.’

  ‘Oh, sure.’ She lifted it into her palm, feeling its weight. Oh yes. Oh, you beauty …

  ‘You know, I think this is gold,’ she said, peering at it. ‘I mean, pure gold. You don’t often see a lump that size of it out in the wild, especially in modern jewel … oh. Oh my. It has hammer marks. On the base. This was handmade.’ She glanced up at him. ‘Where did you find this?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, I don’t think it’s jewellery – well, not jewellery Madison owned and wore, ’cos it’s not the kind of thing she liked, but … I wouldn’t like to say too much without a proper analysis, so don’t hold me to this, but this might be an archaeological find.’

  She had been so engaged in studying it – the lines of its hair, the tiny places where it had been worn smooth, as though it had been handled, thousands and thousands of times before it had been lost or buried, so that when she looked up and saw Gillespie’s face intent upon her, she nearly dropped the packet. His eyes were alight.

  She had said something remarkable, it seemed.

  ‘An archaeological find?’ he repeated.

  ‘Um, well, obviously I could be wrong, but yes.’

  ‘And what makes you say that?’

  Fiona felt herself flushing under the pressure of his attention. ‘I … first of all, even more than the style, which could be a modern reproduction of an ancient piece, but we’ll get back to that … I guess it’s the weight and condition. The way it’s scratched in some places and smooth in others – see here? Pure gold is a soft metal, and very hard to keep pristine. Modern gold, like, say, in your …’ She had looked to his hands, as she often did when having this speech, but his fingers were bare. ‘Gold in wedding rings tends to be mixed with copper alloys to keep it harder. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to wear them all the time without scratching them.

  ‘Ancient gold on the whole tends to be purer, around the twenty-four-carat mark. You can dint it with your teeth.’ She held the packet towards him, pointing out these features with her thumbnail. ‘But it’s the colour that’s the giveaway. Pure gold just looks a certain way – the shade can change, but the lustre … Every culture in the world that has exposure to it has valued it as a high-status commodity.

  ‘Gold’s not like silver – it doesn’t react with anything, so when you find gold objects it’s always astonishing, breath-taking – they mostly look just as beautiful as the day they were made, hundreds or thousands of years ago. It’s like – it’s a direct encounter with the ancient past, because it looks to us just as it would have looked to them.’

  He didn’t answer her straight away, simply watching her, before remarking: ‘I understand you know a lot about this, Dr Grey …’

  ‘Oh, I suppose so. Ancient metallurgy is my specialty. Mostly steel, weapons in the main.’

  ‘So have you seen something like this before?’

  She turned the packet over in her hands, trying to see through the reflective glaze of the plastic, a building excitement in her. ‘Personally? No. But I’m pretty sure it’s early medieval Norse, at least in style. I think it’s a goddess – no, scratch that.’ Realisation blossomed within her. ‘It’s a Valkyrie.’

  ‘A Valkyrie?’

  ‘Yeah. You know? Like The Ride of the Valkyries? The opera? By Wagner?’

  ‘Let’s assume I’m not an archaeologist or an opera buff.’ He was terse. ‘Explain it to me, for the purposes of the tape.’

  ‘Oh, right. Of course. Well, a Valkyrie is a female mythological figure.’ She leaned forward, warming to her theme. ‘To the pre-Christian Norse, the highest honour you could have was to die bravely with a sword in your hand. Valkyries were sent by Odin to choose the best from the dead on the battlefield and give them a lift to Valhalla, one of the Viking heavens. When they arrived, they would spend eternity fighting during the day and then feasting and drinking at night. Valkyries would serve the warriors their mead – they’re dream girls, if you like, a fantasy figure to both men and women.’

  ‘And you think that’s what this is meant to be? A Valkyrie?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. She’s got a sword and shield, and wings. The style is early medieval Norse, and I’m betting that if you’re showing it to me you found it here on Orkney, where there is a lot of Norse archaeology.’ She glanced up at him again, searching for clues, but his face had frozen.

  ‘And if it is a Valkyrie,’ she continued, ‘it’s quite a unique piece. There aren’t that many Valkyrie pendants, and they are usually made of silver and very rarely in gold.’ She squinted at it. ‘I’ve never seen one like this in gold, actually. It’s amazingly detailed. But again, I’d need my lab to make anything of it, or tell you if it’s genuine.’

  ‘So you think this has come from an archaeological dig? Here in Orkney?’

  ‘I’ve no way of proving that just by looking at it, I’m afraid,’ she said, hearing the note of apology in her words. ‘Especially since it looks like it’s been cleaned.’

  ‘Cleaned?’

  ‘Yes, I mean, a find like this wouldn’t be processed on site, usually. They’d ship this off to a specialist, probably someone at the British Museum, or the National Museum of Scotland in this case, and they’d do the cleaning, the analysis, you know. It looks like treasure, so you’d have to notify the coroner as well …’ She thought for a long moment.

  ‘I don’t know where this came from. Certainly the chain is modern. You can see how thin and cheap the links are, even though the metal is harder. That said, it’s not scratched the gold, so it must have been put on very recently. It could have come from the dig. You’d have to ask to see their finds records.’

  She nudged it with her finger through the plastic, while the tiny woman regarded her with blank, saucer-like eyes. ‘I mean, on the weight of the gold alone, this is probably worth thousands of pounds. When you factor in what a rare and unusual find it is …’

  She trailed off, the implications of it all becoming clearer and clearer. If this had been brought in with links to Madison, then she might have been up to something much more obviously shady than cheating on Caspar with Jack.

  They said Iris Barclay had a magic touch for finding rich, important sites. The ship grave at Helly Holm had already yielded an impressive little coin hoard, according to Jack. Who knew what else might turn up?

  Could Madison have stolen this and been in the process of selling it?

  Could she have been killed over it? Could there have been a rendezvous somewhere, and whoever it was had decided it was cheaper to murder Madison than pay her?

  Would Madison really do something so immoral, so stupid? Fiona wanted to dismiss the idea, but still, burning like a hot coal in her memory, was Madison telling her that Dom Tate had anonymously contacted Rachel, her old boss in the London unit, and accused Madison of selling artefacts on the black market. Then Iris telling her the exact same thing, only a couple of nights ago.

  She dropped her hands to her lap.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Gillespie. ‘But this is all conjecture. Without being able to analyse it properly, I couldn’t say much more.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘You have been more than helpful, Dr Grey.’ He rose to his feet, switching off the tape. His face was grave, thoughtful. ‘More than helpful, indeed.’

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  She couldn’t face returning to her car, decided to go into town, sit somewhere where there were people. Everything felt very quiet, as though a bomb had gone off in her head.

  She wandered past the grey stone buildings, allowing herself to feel a little lost. Eventually she found herself in a busy coffee shop on the high street, the front part g
iven over to knitted garments and gourmet foods with romantic names like ‘traditional tablet’ and ‘beremeal flour’. She ordered a pot of tea from a busy teenage girl with lilac hair. Around her was a cacophony of foreign voices, as tourists and Orcadians alike crowded around the tables, their voices high, excited, sharing gossip and news.

  Her loneliness was sudden and crushing.

  Had Madison stolen a find?

  And, in her taped testimony in the police station, had Fiona dropped her in it?

  But the police must think Madison had had the necklace. Fiona had been asked to come in and identify whether it was hers. If only they would tell her where they had found it! In the drowned car, in the cottage, on the site?

  The only person she could think to discuss these allegations with was possibly at the bottom of the sea.

  ‘Oh, Madison,’ she murmured aloud, causing the old ladies on the next table to turn and glance curiously at her. ‘You silly, silly mare. What on earth have you done now?’

  And then her phone rang.

  34

  Judith Glue Café, High Street, Kirkwall, January 2020

  ‘Hello?’ Fiona hadn’t recognised the number.

  ‘Hello?’

  The voice was male, peremptory, and sounded as though whoever it was, Fiona had called him rather than the other way around, perhaps at three o’clock in the morning, and woken him out of bed.

  Even in the warmth and bustle of this Kirkwall café, she felt a sharp pang of melancholy, of dread.

  ‘Hello?’ she asked again. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Who do you think it is?’ he answered.

  Her heart sank.

  ‘Hugo.’ She swallowed. His sister is missing. Try to make allowances. ‘When did you arrive?’

  ‘What difference does that make?’

  ‘No difference,’ said Fiona, scratching her cheek in discomfort. ‘I was just asking.’

  ‘Well, I suppose we better meet,’ he said, as though Fiona had strong-armed him into this concession. ‘I’m staying at the Lynnewood. When can you get over here?’