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  DEATH ON A LONGSHIP

  MARSALI TAYLOR

  When she wangles the job of skippering a Viking longship for a film, Cass Lynch thinks her big break has finally arrived – even though it means returning home to the Shetland Islands, which she ran away from as a teenager. Then the ‘accidents’ begin – and when a dead woman turns up on the boat’s deck, Cass realises that she, her family and her past are under suspicion from the disturbingly shrewd Detective Inspector Macrae. Cass must call on all her local knowledge, the wisdom she didn’t realise she’d gained from sailing and her glamorous, French opera singer mother to clear them all of suspicion – and to catch the killer before Cass becomes the next victim.

  Dedication

  I would like to dedicate this book with affection and thanks, to all the ‘boaty folk’ of Aith and Brae who have encouraged me in my passion for sailing.

  In Aith, there’s the Regatta Committee: Jim and the Moncrieff boys, Wilbert and the Clark boys, John Robert Hay, Trevor, Ian, and Robbie Anderson, Peerie Ollie, David Nicholson, and the late Jamie o’ Roadside. Thank you for letting me mess about in committee boats and guard boats, and for cheering me over the finish line. Thank you, Jim, Victor, and Pattibelle for some cracking sails. Thank you to John, George, and John for fishing me out at Vementry; thank you to the lifeboat crew, particularly Kevin and Luke – I hope never to call you. Lastly thank you, Gunner Cheyne for bringing the cannon to the pier to welcome Karima S home.

  In Brae, there are my fellow dinghy sailing instructors, Joe, Hughie (owner of the Standing Stone), John, Ewan, Ian, Richard, and Graham. There are the cruising sailors, including Drew, Frank, Hamish, Charlie, Peter, Willie, and Scott, who’ve shown me new horizons. Most of all, thank you to Joe and Cynara for some truly memorable expeditions.

  I hope you all enjoy this tale of improbable mayhem in our home waters.

  In this book, a number of people use their native dialect, Shetlan or Shetlandic. There is more information about this Norse/Scots tongue, and a glossary, on pages 315-321.

  Sunday, 8th June.

  Brae, Shetland.

  High Water at Brae, 00.48, 2.0;

  Low Water 07.09, 0.3;

  HW 13.37, 1.8;

  LW 19.20, 0.8.

  Moon waxing gibbous.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter One

  She was my longship. She floated beside the boating club pontoon like a ghost from Shetland’s past, her red and ochre striped sail furled on her heavy yard half-way up the wooden mast, her painted shields mirrored on the early-morning calm water.

  Okay, she belonged to Berg Productions Ltd., but I was her skipper. Stormfugl, Stormbird. She was seventy-five feet long, with a carved head snarling in a circle of teeth, a writhed tail, and a triangular log cabin on a half-deck in the stern. Gulls were wheeling around her, bickering among themselves, as if one of them had dropped a fish.

  I started Khalida’s engine and put-putted across the bay towards the marina. I wasn’t keen on gulls dismembering fish all over my clean decks. I’d hosed them yesterday, after filming. The cameramen, lighting operators, make-up, costume, best boys, grips, and all the hundred people that seemed to be needed for even a simple shot had squelched the path from road to shore into dusty gravel. This had clung to the sheepskin boots of my Viking oarsmen, and the shore had added a generous helping of sand-laden algae. I didn’t intend to start the day re-scrubbing them. I’d fire the gulls’ fish overboard, and let them squabble about it on the water.

  It was amazing, too, that Anders hadn’t heard them. Even someone who slept like the dead, as he did, must surely be woken by them perching on the cabin ridgepole to stretch their necks at each other. I’d have thought he’d have been out to clear them by now.

  As we entered the marina I realised that there was a white bundle lying on Stormfugl’s deck under the circle of snatching gulls. I turned Khalida in a sharp curve and brought her up on the other side of the pontoon. Damn the way Norwegians went for cheap British drink. He’d obviously gone out and got blootered, staggered home and fallen, injured himself –

  It wasn’t Anders.

  I looked at the body lying on the half-deck, one hand stretched towards the prow and felt my newly won promotion to skipper slipping away. It was Maree Baker, one of the film lot, the stand-in for the star.

  I was ashamed of myself for thinking first of me, but I couldn’t help Maree now. She lay sprawled on the larch planks like a marionette washed up by the tide, the manicured nails still gleaming like shells in the bloody mess the gulls had made of the exposed hands. There was mottled dirt on her cream silk trouser suit. The red-gold hair falling across her face was stirring just a little in the breeze, as if at any moment she’d shake it out of her eyes and leap up. I looked again at the back of her head, tilted up towards me, and saw the pool of blood spreading out from below her stand-in wig. The gulls had left footprints in it, and across the deck. I’m not squeamish about blood, but I felt sick then. I yelled at the three that had only gone as far as the pier, orange eyes watching me, then looked back at Maree. I didn’t want to touch her, but I had to. I was the ship’s Master under God; captain, minister, doctor. I curved my hand around the chilling neck and laid two fingers over the vein. There was no flutter of pulse.

  I withdrew my hand and reached into my back pocket for my mobile. 999. No, here in Shetland, 999 would probably get me some Inverness call centre three hundred miles away, where I’d have to spell out every name twice. I wanted Lerwick. I dived into the boating club for a phone book, and found the number. There were two rings, then a voice.

  ‘Northern Constabulary, Sergeant Peterson, can I help you?’

  I took a deep breath and wished I was at sea, where the procedure was laid down. Mayday three times, this is yacht name three times. ‘I’d like to report what looks like a fatal accident,’ I said. ‘On board the longship Stormfugl, moored at Delting Boating Club.’

  ‘The film boat,’ she replied, briskly confident even at this hour of the morning. ‘Your name, madam?’

  ‘I’m Cass Lynch, the skipper of the boat.’

  ‘Remain with the body, please. We’ll get a doctor to you as soon as possible. Have you any idea of the casualty’s identity?’

  ID was Ted’s problem. ‘She’s lying face down. I didn’t want to turn her over.’

  ‘We’ll be with you in about half an hour. Until then, please ensure that nobody goes near the body. And don’t call anyone. We’ll do that.’

  ‘I’ll stay with the body,’ I said, but made no other promises.

  I picked up a stone and scattered the gulls with one vicious throw.

  Anders should have been on board; it was his night on watch. I went slowly up to the cabin, almost afraid to look inside, but it was empty. My breath came out in a rush. Not even his gear was there: his scarlet sleeping bag, the backpack he used as a washbag, and his thermos. There was only the lilo we used to soften the larch planks, inflated and waiting.

  I didn’t have time to worry about him now. On shore, I had to answer to the production company. Was Mr Berg Productions Ltd. a captain who’d want to be called at the very first
sign of trouble, or one who’d bawl you out if you didn’t let him sleep until his life-raft was launched? I slotted his shrewd eyes into my mental line of skippers, and decided the former. I didn’t see how even the film world could cover up Maree’s death. I wanted to break it myself, in my best Norwegian.

  He wasn’t happy. ‘This was not to do with the filming? What was she doing aboard the longship at night?’

  I side-stepped that one. ‘I have called the police. They will arrive soon.’

  ‘This will hold up the filming.’

  ‘Perhaps not by much,’ I said.

  ‘And your night watchman. Anders. Where was he?’

  A good question. ‘He does not seem to be aboard.’

  He pounced on that. ‘You think he is involved in this outrage?’

  I hadn’t thought of it as an outrage. She’d stumbled and tripped, hit her head with a whack. Head injuries killed. Alain. The boom coming over, lifting with a creak then suddenly swinging, lethal … I swallowed the memory away.

  ‘I have every confidence that he is not involved.’ Anders had been my choice as engineer.

  ‘I know his father,’ Mr Berg said. He would, of course, through the Norwegian businessmen old boys’ network. ‘Thank you for keeping me informed. Phone later in the day, as this affair develops.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  I didn’t hesitate about phoning Ted, the film’s director, because I knew he and his director of photography were spending the night on Ronas Hill, filming the sun dipping into the sea and rising again. They wanted the shot for the poster, the western rim of the ocean with Favelle’s face superimposed. I heard two rings, then his voice.

  ‘Cass?’

  ‘Ted, there’s been an accident here, on board Stormfugl. Maree’s dead.’

  ‘I’ll come over right now. Have you told the police?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And Mr Berg.’ I paused. ‘I didn’t give a name.’

  ‘Thanks, Cass. See you soon.’

  When I’d opened up my phone the screen had said 1 New Message. Sender unknown. It was the phone call I’d ignored last night. I looked at it now, and found a message from a dead woman. ‘Must talk will come down to boat. Maree.’

  A wave of guilt flooded over me. I should have answered the phone instead of telling the world to go away. Maree had come to find me in the half-dark, had tripped and fallen. It wouldn’t have happened if I’d been here. Hers was the second death I’d caused.

  I’d just pocketed my phone when a car scrunched down the gravel below the boating club. The brisk, elderly man who got out had been my doctor when I was a child. He felt her pulse, and shook his head. ‘Dead. What happened, Cass?’

  ‘I wasn’t here,’ I said. ‘I presume she tripped and fell.’

  ‘Was it you who moved her?’

  ‘No,’ I said, surprised. ‘I just felt for a pulse at her neck.’

  He gave me a sideways look, eyes lifting, falling again. ‘The police will need to see her as she is.’

  I could feel my heart beat in the silence. ‘Didn’t she trip and fall?’

  He didn’t answer, and I could see it for myself. She might have tripped on the gangplank ridges, but she’d have had her hands to save herself from coming a real cropper, and it hadn’t been a metal boom with the strength of a Force 5 gybe coming over to crack her unprotected skull, but a stationary wooden deck. It should have meant a bump, a black eye, a bleeding nose, not death.

  Death meant questioning and suspicion. ‘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?’

  We were all in even deeper trouble than I’d thought.

  We heard the first police car then, its engine echoing across the water as it charged north up the dual carriageway, slowed to come through the township of Brae, and speeded up again for the westward straight along to the boating club. Soon the whole pier was swarming with officers cordoning off the area with blue and white tape. It seemed, though, that they weren’t to touch anything until the forensic team and the Inverness detective arrived.

  I was taken aside by Sergeant Peterson. She was younger than I’d expected, with blonde hair sleeked back in a ponytail and the eyes of a mermaid, ice-green and indifferent to human follies. She took my mobile off me – ‘Just a precaution, madam,’ – then escorted me upstairs in the boating club and made me a cup of tea. ‘The inspector will want to question you, madam. It may be a bit of a wait, I’m afraid.’

  ‘That’s my boat beside the longship,’ I said. ‘I could wait there.’

  She shook her head. ‘We’d be grateful if you’d wait here, madam.’

  She went out to join the white-coated men erecting a tent around poor Maree, and left me to more waiting, which gave me time to think about the implications.

  At least I understood now what Maree was doing on board Stormfugl in the middle of the night. She’d come along the pontoons to where Khalida was usually berthed, seen the empty space and known I’d gone out for a sail. She wouldn’t have hung around openly on the quayside, but gone into Stormfugl’s cabin to wait, out of sight, discreet to the end., until someone had come on board and killed her. Anders was missing, but why should Anders want to harm Maree?

  Why should anyone want to harm Maree?

  In the end, I took one of the first-aid blankets, lay down on the settee by the window, said a prayer for Maree, and closed my eyes. I didn’t sleep deeply, though; I must have surfaced every ten minutes, realising each time with a shock that she was dead. Cars came and went, and the people outside talked on their radios. At tide-turn I woke to Ted’s voice protesting, and a murmur answering, and looked out. His white limo was parked at the entrance to the marina, the driver’s door left open. He was trying to talk his way through a phalanx of police officers. I could read their lips. ‘Not until the detective inspector arrives. Sorry, sir. Identification can wait. Very sorry, sir, those are our orders. If you’d like to come inside and wait, sir.’

  They led him out of my sight into the club. I heard chairs scraping on the other side of the partition wall.

  At last there was more movement within the boating club, a sudden rush of voices, Anders replying, startled and defensive, footsteps on the stairs, then the door opened, and an officer escorted Anders in.

  He’d obviously just come out of the shower. His silver-gilt hair was darkened and combed, his tanned face shining above the neat beard. His eyes met mine, alarmed, then he looked past me, out of the window. His round eyes widened as they took in the cars, the ticker-tape, the officers, and then his whole face sagged as he saw the body sprawled on the deck. He spoke in rapid Norwegian. ‘Cass, what’s happening?’

  The officer cut in. ‘No talking, if you please, sir. Just sit down. I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you to wait here until the officers from Inverness arrive. Would you like a coffee?’

  Anders nodded and joined me on the window seat, lowering himself like an old man. His eyes met mine again, filled with dread, then returned to our ship. I was left trying to make sense of that. Where had he been, that he hadn’t come back via the boating club drive with full grandstand view of the proceedings? Answer: the only place he wouldn’t have seen what was going on was in the windowless downstairs of the boating club itself.

  For some reason he seemed to have slept in the showers.

  Outside, the sea had slid away from the concrete launching slip, then begun to sidle back. At last there was a bustle and stir downstairs. The officer looked up. ‘That’s the Inverness officers arrived. Not much longer now.’

  We looked below us at the two people who got out of the car. One was Sergeant Peterson, getting her impressions in first. The man was older, mid-thirties, and what I noticed most about him was his air of alertness, like a sea-eagle on its eyrie, high on a cliff but seeing every bird that flew past below, every fish that came to the surface. This man stood by the foot of the gangplank, just looking, and the busy scene suddenly focused around his
stillness. He must have stood there for a good ten minutes, immobile in the middle of the bustle around him, just looking. Behind him, two local officers exchanged dismissive shrugs. I smiled to myself. They’d learn; there’d be no skylarking on this man’s watch.

  He moved at last, coming out from the other side of the police car, and I realised the other reason for the dismissive shrugs. He was wearing a kilt. Shetlanders were more Viking than Scots, so the kilt up here was imported for weddings only and associated with fancy socks, ornamental daggers, and white-fringed sporrans, all considered very sissy by the Shetland male whose native dress was the boiler suit and rubber boots.

  At last he turned back towards the clubhouse. A camera began flashing, and four spaceman-suited figures came forward, a white ring closing around Maree’s still form. Sergeant Peterson spoke to the inspector again; he glanced up towards the club house windows, then strolled towards the lower door. I heard light, even footsteps on the stairs, and in he came.

  He wasn’t particularly tall, five foot seven or eight, and compactly built, with strength behind the slightness. Tanned – no, weathered, the complexion of a man who preferred outdoors to in. He had russet hair, cut long enough to rumple around his ears, and it stood up on the top of his head, as if he had a habit of running his hand through it. His nose was slightly skafe, as if he had fallen out of too many trees in his youth. His kilt wasn’t wedding-fancy, but a workmanlike affair in one of the sober green tartans, with a plain leather sporran. I’d have betted there was a clasp knife in there, wooden-handled and notched with use. The top button of his shirt was undone because it was missing, and the elbows of his green tweed jacket were bagged. If he hadn’t been a policeman, I’d have taken to him: a reliable watch-leader.

  He paused two steps in to give a long, slow look round the room, as if he was comparing it with his local and noting things to be copied when he got home. He spotted the map of Busta Voe linoed onto the floor, and walked round it gravely. ‘We’re here, are we no’?’ His accent was pure Highland, that shushing, lilting note with a downward turn on the question that you only hear west of Inverness. One brown hand pointed. Sergeant Peterson stepped forward.