A Handful of Ash Read online

  A Handful of Ash

  Marsali Taylor

  Liveaboard skipper and amateur sleuth Cass Lynch is busy at marine college in Scalloway, until one night she finds an acquaintance dead in a doorway, whose hand is smeared with peat ash. Rumours spread of a strange ritual linked to the witches once burned in Shetland’s ancient capital, of horned figures abroad in the night, and townsfolk behaving strangely. At first Cass dismisses these as mere superstition, until there’s a second murder, and she begins to wonder if the devil really does walk in Scalloway …

  Dedication: To my daughter, Marnie.

  Wednesday 19th October

  Low Water Scalloway 03:34 BST 0.5m

  High Water 09:53 2.2m

  Low Water 015:480.5m

  High Water 22.08 2.3m

  Moon: New, 0.3%

  Sunrise 07:51

  Moonrise 08:00, 122 degrees

  Sunset 17:43

  Moonset 18:09, 233 degrees

  wrestin treed (n): a piece of knotted thread used by witches in their spells

  The knotted cord tumbled out from under my pillow. I didn’t register it for a moment. I was tired, after a morning of clearing undergrowth and an afternoon of college lectures on regulations for discharge of hazardous substances at sea. I’d cooked tea on my little stove, dangled a string for Cat, read a book as the autumn sunlight dipped down behind the hill, then gone for a brisk walk to warm me up before bedtime. I’d boiled the kettle, taking it off the gas ring at the first squeak of the whistle, filled my bottle, and slipped it under my pyjamas. I’d drawn the faded navy curtains along Khalida’s long windows, visited the toilet in the boating club, and brushed my teeth on deck. I’d loosened my dark plait so that my hair fell in curls round my shoulders.

  My bunk was the traditional captain’s starboard quarterberth, a long rectangle reaching back under the cockpit. The pillow was tucked under the downie at the open end. I pulled it out, and the cord fell from it like a snake striking.

  I stood for a long moment looking, my heart thumping, while Cat pounced on it, rolling on his back on the wooden floor, and kicking it with his hind legs. It wasn’t any cord I had aboard, but a fine grey twine, with five knots along its length. I stretched my hand down and eased it from Cat’s claws.

  It was about sixty centimetres long, and the knots were simple half-reef knots – or, I amended, looking closer, three were the correct right-over-left and two were half-grannies. I knew what it was: a wrestin treed, the old folk would call it, a witch-token, made by five people, a knot each, and an evil-eye charm muttered as the fingers tied. I found myself looking up at Khalida’s curtained windows as if there were eyes outside, watching to see how I reacted to their malice. One of them had come into my home and slipped this piece of malevolence where it would dissipate its poison into my head.

  If I believed that kind of thing, I told myself. Seven years ago I’d sailed with a Venezuelan who swore by it, and one of the other crew had almost given him a heart attack by slipping a knotted cord under his pillow; but I didn’t believe demons could harm me at the calling of a knotted piece of string. Human malevolence was different. I slipped forward to the forepeak and screwed the catch tight, then came back aft and slid home the bolts that would keep the washboards closed in the wildest of ocean storms. Nobody would come aboard my ship this night.

  I picked up the cord again. I wasn’t sure what to do with the thing. Eventually, I said an ‘Our Father’ before undoing each knot, and a ‘Hail Mary’ as my fingers worked on each one, then a final ‘Glory be’. The cord lay fluid in my hands. I never wasted cord – aboard ship, ropes are cut only in the severest of emergencies – but I wasn’t going to use this one to bind a loose shackle or whip a rope end. I set light to it in the sink, washed the ashes away and went to bed.

  I lay in my narrow berth and considered, chin propped up on my arms, the candle flickering gold beside me, and Cat purring in the crook of my neck. I’d only been in Scalloway for a month and a half. I knew my class at college, of course, and our lecturers, and Kate and Peter, whose garden I was helping clear. I’d chatted to the woman who ran the local shop. I hadn’t yet been to a dance or concert, and I hadn’t had a disagreement with anyone, so who disliked me enough to leave that unpleasant gift? I couldn’t think of a single person, let alone five of them.

  Furthermore, they’d dared to invade my space, my Khalida, my home, my sanctuary. She was my companion on soft nights with the stars hanging above us, my fellow voyager when the wind blew up and she was tilted over until the waves washed her lee window. She was my adventure and my safety. She was my self, now I was marooned ashore, one of a class of pupils in the busy North Atlantic Fisheries College. She reminded me of who I was: Cass, the mast-climber, who’d helmed tall ships in the black velvet of tropical nights. Cass, the planner, the decision-maker.

  Cass Lynch, the captain of her own ship.

  Wednesday 26th October

  High Water Scalloway 05:49 BST 1.4m

  Low Water 011:53 0.7m

  High Water 17:57 1.5m

  Moon waxing gibbous 73% of full

  Moonset 1:31, 253 degrees

  Sunrise 08:09

  Moonrise 15:43, 102 degrees

  Sunset 17:28

  ill (n): moral wickedness, evil; to do ill (v) to do evil, deal harshly with

  ill-viket (adj) : malicious

  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 Twenty-one

  Chapter One

  You’d have heard the door slam over the sea in Faroe. Cat froze at my heels. I hesitated on the other side of the garden wall, my hand on the old-fashioned door knob. If the household was in the middle of one of those daughter/parents rows, they wouldn’t want the gardener waltzing in. Then footsteps clattered down the flagstone path. Cat leapt nimbly into the ditch and skulked among the long, yellowed grass. I stepped back just as the door flung open, and Annette tumbled out.

  Yes, there had been a row. Her cheeks were scarlet, her eyes flashing. The wind caught her scarf as she came out of the walled garden into the sea air, and pulled one end upwards. She grabbed at it, swore, then realised I was standing there. She bit her lip, doubled her scarf with elaborate care, threaded the end through, and pulled it around her neck, grimacing as if it was too tight, then at last stood straight up to face me. Her eyes went first to the long scar running along my cheek, winced away from it and moved up to meet my eyes. ‘Hiya, Cass.’

  ‘Now then,’ I said, traditional Shetland style. Noo den, lass, foo’s du? How are you, what’s wrong? But we weren’t on those terms, and I didn’t want to be nosy.

  She shuffled one foot, as if she wasn’t sure what to say. She was one of those china-doll girls, with a smooth complexion, groomed brows, and perfectly separated eyelashes above velvet-brown eyes. Her lipstick was glossy, a dark plum colour. She was dressed in her usual purple jacket, with a black velvet beret tipped to one side on her blonde hair. Her black skirt trailed lace like the streamers on a jellyfish. It was all too artificial for a windy morning in Scalloway.

  She glanced down at Cat, slipping out of the long grass, his plume of a tail lashing, and her brow cleared. ‘He’s a bonny cat.’
She bent down to him and put out her hand. ‘Here, puss.’ His yellow eyes looked at her with disdain. He didn’t do casual caresses. She said, almost to herself, as if she’d suddenly had an idea, ‘He’s a bonny, healthy cat …’ She moved forward on her hunkers, brought her other hand forward, as if she was about to grab him, and Cat hissed and backed away.

  ‘He doesn’t like being picked up,’ I said.

  She turned her head up with a look I couldn’t read, a mixture of defiance and apology, then stood up. The petulant frown returned. ‘You ran away from home, didn’t you? When you were much younger than me?’

  ‘Sixteen,’ I agreed. I didn’t want to encourage whatever daft ideas she was brewing. ‘It wasn’t thatna good idea. It’s a tough world out there.’

  ‘But you managed.’

  ‘I lived aboard tall ships, with someone else to do the cooking, and no money worries. Bed and board taken care of, at the price of climbing a mast or two daily.’ Whatever else she did, I’d bet my last shackle Annette wouldn’t run away to sea. For a start, nobody made sensible outdoor gear in her favourite Goth black with lacy frills, and her sleek hair wouldn’t last five minutes in the wind.

  She fiddled with her scarf again. As it slipped, I saw there was one deep scratch and several smaller ones on her neck, as though she’d picked up someone’s cat, and it had fought to get away. No, the marks looked too big, too indented, with the shadow of a bruise around each – dog’s claws? They had two pointers, Dan and Candy, a pair of soft lumps. I couldn’t imagine them going for anyone’s throat. She saw me looking and pulled the scarf up to cover the marks. Her cheeks reddened. She looked away from me, and reached into her pocket for gloves, put them on carefully, finger after finger, then sighed. ‘They don’t understand!’ It came out as a suppressed wail. She drew a ragged breath, then continued, ‘They’re suffocating me. Why shouldn’t I go out and meet people, if I want to? If I think they can help me?’

  ‘No reason,’ I agreed. It wasn’t any of my business, but although what I’d heard of the rows with her parents sounded like typical teenage angst, she was eighteen, past the most dramatic stage, and well old enough to be leaving home. ‘Why don’t you get a flat for your gap year, and do what you like?’

  ‘I’d have to get a job first,’ she said.

  From the look on her face, she wasn’t going to do that, not when Daddy was willing to keep her. She must have seen the thought, for she said, defensively, ‘It’s not that easy. My degree’s going to be research-based, so I’m waiting for something in my field, as useful experience.’

  At her age I’d cleared tables and washed dishes while I waited for another ship. She drew an angry breath. ‘Anyway, I think I’m old enough to decide where I can go, and who I can see.’

  And you know perfectly well, I thought to myself, that it’s someone you shouldn’t be seeing … There was something strung up about her, as if she was determined to come to what she knew full well was the wrong decision. She glared as her father’s dark-grey BMW slipped out of Ladysmith Drive and turned left towards Lerwick. Then her face smoothed to uncertain and young. She turned her eyes towards the sea, bit her lip, then looked back at me. Her hand went back up to the scarf. ‘Cass, do you ever feel as if you’ve lived before? Like, you know, another life?’

  ‘Reincarnation?’ I shook my head. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Sometimes.’ She tugged at the scarf again. ‘This – it’s choking me.’

  I wasn’t thirty yet, but she was making me feel like my own grandmother. ‘It’s not any good running away,’ I said. ‘I didn’t run away from. I ran to. I needed the sea. Listen, if you’d like to come and talk, you know where I live?’ I turned and pointed along the shore, towards the marina that jutted out in front of the glass and tiles of the Fisheries college. ‘That’s my boat, Khalida, the little white one with the sails still on. Just give a shout from the marina gate, and I’ll come and open up.’

  She looked relieved, as if she thought I could solve all her problems. ‘I’ll maybe do that.’

  ‘Any time,’ I said. ‘I’m in most evenings.’

  Her eyes went from my face to over my shoulder, and flared in alarm. I turned my head. Three girls of around Annette’s age were coming along the sea road towards us. They were dressed in that steampunk style, leather and flounces mixed together, in shades of grey and black, like a Victorian photograph. The style extended to their make up of spiky eyelashes and black lipstick. I’d seen them hanging around the corner just short of the shop, indistinct through a cloud of tobacco smoke, victims of the recession. Shetland used to have jobs for anyone who was willing to work, but now the council was slashing front-line troops, and people who had jobs as home helps, care-centre workers and office staff were clinging on to them. Furthermore, the first casualty of the Education Department’s rush to save five million pounds had been the secondary department of Scalloway’s Junior High School. Now all the teenagers were taken by bus to the big school in Lerwick, and the small army of cleaners who used to meet the home-going pupils had been made redundant.

  These girls knew Annette. The tallest of them was giving her a hard glare from under her dye-black fringe. Annette looked back, pleading at first, then her eyes hardened and her lips set in a straight line. The tallest girl lifted one hand, and rubbed her thumb against her first two fingers in the universal ‘money’ gesture. The other two sneered.

  Annette’s chin went up. Without saying goodbye, she swung around and set off along the sea front towards the shop, shouldering through them. Her heeled books clacked on the pavement. I watched her go for a moment, then glanced back at the other girls. The tallest girl’s hand fell slowly. Her look would have stopped a seagull in flight. The black, glossy leather, the grey frills of skirt, the poised attention of the turned heads, gave them the look of a trio of hooded crows sizing up a dying sheep. They were an ill-viket trio. If I was Annette, I’d be watching my back.

  I had a garden to clear. I turned away from the sea, and pushed the heavy wooden door open. Cat slid out of the ditch and bounded in ahead of me, plumed tail held high, showing the paler grey underneath. The starving kitten I’d found on the hillside three months ago was now a glossy young cat, slate grey on his back, with darker guard hairs, and pale stripes leading down to a grey-pink belly and neat white paws. At Brae, he’d slept happily on board while I was out, because he’d had my friend Anders’ pet Rat with him. I’d tried leaving him on board alone when I’d first come to Scalloway, but he’d clawed gouges in my woodwork in his efforts to get out. When I left the hatch open for him, he’d bounded along the dock and wriggled under the wire fence to follow me. Now he charged around Kate’s garden with Dan and Candy while we worked; otherwise, he came to college. On classroom days, he curled up in my lap, and when it was an at-sea day, I left him with Nate, who worked in the college café. It was fine and warm in the cupboard off the kitchen, to say nothing of the occasional bit of fish, so I hoped he’d still want to come home to an unheated boat as the temperature dropped.

  Inside the gate, the flagged path stretched up between sycamore trees to the old house, grey stone, and built with that early eighteenth century square look, like a house drawn by a child: steps to central porch, with door in the middle, two windows each side, three on the next floor, a rectangle of tiled roof, a chimney stack trailing smoke at each side. At least, that was how I’d drawn houses; I wondered if my friend Inga’s toddler, Peerie Charlie, drew houses like that, or if his drawings were of modern Shetland houses, made of coloured wood, with triple-insulation picture windows, a small turbine by their side, and solar panels on the roof.

  This house had belonged to the last of the lairds, the Scott family who’d dominated Scalloway life for five centuries. It had been sold after his death to a couple from England, and I’d seen the notice in the shop: ‘Wanted, person for active gardening, through October, hours to be arranged.’

  Naturally, I’d asked my pal Magnie about them. He’d phoned an old whaling crony in
Scalloway, and got all the information. ‘The man’s Peter Otway, and they’re been up here for ten years or so. He’s in his mid-forties. He’s the manager o’ the RBS in Lerwick, and they rented there, then when this big house came on the market, they bought it and moved to Scalloway. The wife’s called Kate. He must be fifteen year younger as what she is. They hae just the one lass. They came up when she was just out o’ the primary school. He’s one o’ these folk who’s involved in aathing. You ken. He’s in the Rotary, and the Masons too, I’ve no doubt, though I wouldna ken meself, and he gengs oot wi’ a squad at Up Helly Aa.’

  The Lerwick Up Helly Aa, the biggest of Shetland’s fire festivals, involved a thousand guizers with flaming torches. It was men only, you needed to have lived in the town for five years, and getting into a squad was strictly by invitation.

  ‘The manager o’ the bank, that’s aristocracy in Lerook.’ Magnie’s voice gave the town name its full blast of country scorn. ‘He’s been right in the heart o’ organising the new museum and all.’ This, as it involved seafaring, was more acceptable.

  ‘The Shetland Bus Museum?’ I’d seen it from the road, a big, red-wood building, but hadn’t yet been inside.

  ‘The Scalloway Museum,’ Magnie emphasised. ‘It has the whole history o’ the place. ‘There’s a prehistoric ard, and a Viking bracelet – well, a replica, the Edinburgh museum took the real one – and stuff about witches, and the herring fishery, as well as the story o’ the Norwegian men.’

  I should have remembered that what a Shetlander doesn’t know about his own history’s not worth knowing. ‘I must go and look,’ I said. The Shetland Bus men were my heroes, young Norwegians in fishing boats who’d run arms and radio parts into occupied Norway, and brought refugees out.

  ‘That you should, lass. They’re done it brawly well. So he was involved wi’ that as well. The wife doesna work, she does painting, bonny peerie pictures o’ flowers, in these bright modern paints.’ Magnie himself had a weakness for the pictures his mother favoured: Victorian prints of a child with ringlets holding a kitten. ‘So she’s decided to get the gairding in order afore the winter sets in? It’s a great, rambling area just filled wi’ trees and brambles.’