Death in Shetland Waters Read online

  DEATH IN SHETLAND WATERS

  Marsali Taylor

  To Captain Sture and all the real crew of the sail-training ship Sørlandet, and to our beautiful ship: long may she grace the seas, and give such pleasure

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  THE CREW OF SØRLANDET

  LANDFALL, KRISTIANSAND

  ONE BELL

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  TWO BELLS

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  THREE BELLS

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  FOUR BELLS

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  FIVE BELLS

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  SIX BELLS

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  SEVEN BELLS

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  EIGHT BELLS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CASTING OFF

  A NOTE ON SHETLAN

  GLOSSARY

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BY MARSALI TAYLOR

  COPYRIGHT

  THE CREW OF SØRLANDET

  Captain Gunnar

  Henrik Mike Johanna

  Chief Steward First Officer Chief Engineer

  Agnetha, First Mate Nils, Second Mate Cass, Third Mate

  Red watch White watch Blue watch

  Each watch has a watch leader and two able seamen (ABs)

  For Cass’s watch, these are: Erik, Watch Leader

  Mona and Petter, ABs

  Each watch has between fifteen and twenty-five trainees. In Cass’s watch, they are: Aage, Anna, Ben, Dimitris, Ellen, Gabriel, Ismail, Jan-Ole, Johan, Ludwig, Maria, Naseem, Nine, Nora, Olav, Samir and Sindre.

  Other officers:

  Sadie, Medical Officer

  Rolf, Bosun

  Jenn, Liaison Officer

  Lars, 2nd Engineer

  James, Steward

  Elmer, Cook

  Laila and Ruth, Galley Girls

  This is far too many suspects for even the most lively crime novel, so just to make things simpler for us all, I can tell you now that none of the trainees committed any murders on board.

  LANDFALL, KRISTIANSAND

  Monday 6th April

  I stood on the dock beside the ochre tollbooth, Cat’s basket in one hand, my kitbag in the other, and admired the world’s oldest full-rigged ship. The morning sun shone on Sørlandet’s swan-white sides, and glinted off the double gold scroll at her prow; her three masts rose tall above the grey slate roofs and squared turrets of the fin-de-siècle tenements. The spider’s web ratlines and delicate tracery of rigging were clear against the blue sky.

  I still hardly believed my luck. There were fewer than a hundred and fifty of these large traditional sailing ships left in the world, and posts aboard were scrambled for, yet here I was, third mate of Sørlandet of Kristiansand, joining my ship. I lifted the ‘Crew only’ sign on the gangplank and went aboard.

  It was a strange feeling to be back. Half of me was going, Oh, wow, home! as I looked around the scrubbed decks. Sørlandet had been my ship. I’d joined her when I was seventeen as a trainee for the summer, with money saved from winter waitressing, and returned for two summers more, until I was competent enough to volunteer as an able seaman. My feet knew every inch of those ladders and ropes up in the air; my hands could feel the shape of her wheel. Until I’d got my own Khalida, she was the nearest thing to permanency in my roving life.

  The other half of me was frozen with terror. After three years of living alone on Khalida, I was about to be cheek by jowl with twenty-plus unknown people …

  Then a tall woman stepped out from behind the white engine house. She was dressed in paint-stained overalls, with a smear of white on her tanned cheek. Her fair hair clustered round her head in untidy curls, like a Renaissance angel; the sea’s colour was reflected in her eyes. She held out her hand, then remembered the paint, withdrew it, and smiled instead. ‘Hey, you must be Cass. I’m Agnetha, first mate. Welcome back aboard.’ She waved her paint-stained hands. ‘Here, I’ll show you your cabin, so you can make yourself at home.’ She called over her shoulder. ‘Erik!’ Her gaze dropped to my hands. ‘Oh, you’re the one bringing a cat.’

  I nodded. ‘Can I let him out?’

  ‘For sure.’

  I opened the basket and Cat stretched up, looked round, then jumped out. He was a beauty, my Cat, getting on for nine months old. He had a thick, smoke-grey coat faintly striped with silver, immaculately white paws and a great plume of a tail. He was used to making himself at home on strange ships. He paused to sniff Agnetha’s outstretched hand, then headed off to explore, sniffing round the deck, eyeing up the aft corridor with wary interest and prodding a paw into the scuppers.

  ‘He’s a beauty,’ Agnetha said. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Just Cat.’

  A lanky, brown-haired Norwegian came out from behind the engine house, paint pot in hand. ‘Hei, Cass. Erik, your watch leader. You’re looking for a berth for your boat, yes?’

  I nodded.

  ‘You sailed over?’ Agnetha asked. ‘From Britain?’

  ‘Technically. Shetland.’

  ‘Ah, Shetland!’ They nodded to each other. ‘You’re practically Norwegian, then,’ Agnetha added.

  ‘Our house is two miles round the corner, at Eidbukta,’ Erik said, ‘and we have a pontoon in front of it. You’re welcome to berth her there.’

  My heart filled with relief. ‘This is amazing. I really appreciate it. I’ll pay you rent, of course.’

  ‘Oh, we can work that out. If you like, I can give you a hand to take her round once we’re off duty.’

  Agnetha picked up a rag and wiped her hands down. ‘Right. I’ll show you your cabin, and you can get settled, then later, Erik and I can help you move your boat before you need to take out a mortgage for the marina fees.’

  Just like that, I was in. Agnetha and I finished painting the midship deckhouse together while Cat explored round the deck, then settled himself on the mahogany berth in my cabin for his mid-morning snooze. We discovered we’d been on several of the same ships, and knew the same people. She and Erik helped me move my Khalida round to his house that evening, and we shared a huge pot of spicy stew with his wife, Micaela, and their two children, before Erik ran Agnetha, Cat and I back to the ship.

  I went out with the crowd the next night, prepared to nurse an extortionately priced pint in a corner, and found Johanna, the chief engineer, making me the centre of attention: ‘Was it really you who skippered the longship for that film with Favelle? Tell us about it!’

  Jonas, Agnetha’s watch leader, had worked at Roskilde, so he’d handled Viking replicas too. We compared experiences, splashed out on another pint each and then rose to head back to the ship. Rolf, the bosun, flung an arm around Agnetha’s shoulders as we came out into the cool air. ‘Let’s start with an easy one.’

  ‘You need to learn Rolf’s songs,’ Agnetha said, laughing, and launched straight in, in the middle of the street. ‘What shall we do with a drunken sailor …’

  In those first days, Agnetha, Johanna and I became mates. We were the highest-ranking women aboard, and we recognised in each other a burning passion for the sea. Johanna was a rare woman in the mechanic
s’ world, and Agnetha was determined to be the first female captain of a tall ship. We shared cooking until the galley girls came aboard, went shopping for the official navy cargo breeks, and sat together on the second platform of the mast, legs dangling, swapping confidences as we looked out over Kristiansand. I tried to explain my tug between my lover, Gavin, and the sea, particularly as our beautiful ship was about to become an academy. From the end of August, we’d be heading for America to take on a shipment of older teenagers who would combine studying for their exams with life aboard. The ship’s crew was rejoicing at this financial security – tall ships gobbled money – but I’d be on the other side of the world for two years, and my heart went cold at the thought. Gavin and I had just found each other. We’d arranged to meet in two weeks, in the fjords, then again in Belfast at the end of June. I dreaded that our tentative love would stretch to breaking point across the Atlantic.

  ‘If it’s right, you’ll manage,’ Agnetha said. ‘What’s for you won’t pass you by, my granny would have said.’ Her fair skin flushed. She looked away from me, out into the darkening sky. ‘I have someone, but it’s all complicated. Don’t let’s worry about it! Now, what was that new song of Rolf’s …?’

  ONE BELL

  Casting off: Kristiansand

  CHAPTER ONE

  Thursday 25th June

  At this hour, Kristiansand’s old fish market was quiet, with the water reflecting the curved bridge leading across to the cafe and mirroring the wooden houses and dark red fish market. The ochre fishwife statue gleamed in the sun; the windows around her were closed, with no lights showing behind. The only sound was a sparrow cheeping as it checked out crumbs left by yesterday’s tourists. Cat’s plumed tail twitched gently; he began to creep forward, but his striped grey was too light against the tarred wood, and the sparrow grabbed its crumb and flew off before he was in pouncing range.

  I was sitting on the middle row of decking steps to the water, the wood warm under me, idly watching an Aquador motorboat nosing its way into the dock. It was just after eight, and there was a whole-crew muster at nine, to brace us for our next wave of trainees swarming aboard in a whirl of kitbags and excited chatter. Right now the Sørlandet was ringing with the sound of iron hitting copper as Rolf hammered new beading on the upper serving hatch in the main cabin area, and stuffy with the smell of paint as Agnetha followed him with the best cream emulsion. It had made me feel slightly sick, so I’d grabbed Cat’s lead, clipped it onto his harness and headed out into the peace of the Fiskbrabaren basin.

  The motorboat paused by the steps to let off a dark, thick-set man, then purred away to the right, towards the concert hall. I called Cat away from his contemplation of the sparrows and followed it, through the dark passageway and out into the sunshine again, where curves of light rippled from the water onto the curved wooden overhang of the concert hall.

  It was a beautiful morning, the herald of a perfect summer’s day. Feather-white cumulus drifted in the summer-blue sky. Kristiansand’s west bay lay in a curve of low hills, dark green with trees, the red roof of one of the larger hotels shining out against them and the light catching the long white span of bridge that crossed the fjord. Below it, the sea danced blue in the soft northerly wind. I paused for a moment to look out towards the open water. We’d have a good passage out into the North Sea, and, if the forecast was accurate, going up the coast first should let us get the sails up.

  I turned away without looking and bumped straight into the man who’d come from the motorboat, my face ramming into his tobacco-smelling dark cloth jacket. There was one of those moments where we both moved the wrong way, and I found myself blocking his path. Suddenly I was conscious of the chill under this dark passageway, and how there was nobody else in sight. Cat felt like a target on his lead; I scooped him up, away from the dark workman’s boots.

  ‘Unnskyld,’ I apologised, and got a grunt in return as he pushed past me. I stared after him, taken aback by the discourtesy. Not Norwegian; Eastern bloc, I’d have said, Russian, maybe, with those flared nostrils and bull head. He had the shoulders of a man you wouldn’t want to tackle on a dark night, and a convict haircut. There was a tattoo on his hand. An ugly customer, I thought, and wondered what he was doing lurking around the pristine tourist tables of the Fiskbrabaren.

  He’d taken the brightness from the day. Cat miaowed indignantly and wriggled in my arms. I set him down and we went the long way back to the ship, with Cat scampering on the grass and leaping over the small herd of Shetland pony statues by the marina. Once he’d had a good run I put his lead back on and we walked sedately to the dock, where I unbuckled his harness. He trotted ahead of me up the gangplank, tail held high. I needn’t have worried about how he’d take to life on a tall ship; he’d made himself at home as if he’d been born aboard. When it was cold and wet outside, he stayed in my cabin, or charged about the long below-decks tunnels running the length of the ship. On bonny days, he would strut across the main deck, pausing to let himself be admired by trainees. Now, since we were in port, he went straight up the stairs to the aft deck, where he could sit on a bench in the sun and survey everything that was going on below him. This, his pose said, was his ship, which made him the highest-ranking cat in the dock.

  I wasn’t finding it so easy. Of course it was amazing to be back aboard, to be part of a tall ship again. I enjoyed the company of my fellow sailors, the life that was absorbed in the needs of the ship. My heart soared at being at sea again. It was just that I hadn’t reckoned on the difference between being an able-seaman volunteer and being third mate (navigation). My image in my cabin mirror filled me with pride and disbelief: this tidy ship’s officer in the navy shirt with two gold chevrons on the shoulder, her dark curly hair tucked into a French plait. Only my eyes, blue in my tanned face, and the scar that bisected my right cheek, were my own. The rest belonged to the persona I had taken on: Cass Lynch, officer of the Sørlandet. Cass Lynch, officer, didn’t climb masts, stand lookout or haul on ropes; she stayed aloof on the aft deck and told the helmsman what course to steer. She ate at the captain’s table, cut off from the sounds of laughter that echoed from the other ranks’ mess at the end of the corridor …

  ‘Cass!’ A voice broke into my reverie. I stifled a sigh and turned to face Nils, the second mate, my immediate superior and the only person on board I had difficulty liking.

  Nils Karlsson was Swedish, and a stickler. He was in his mid thirties and had trained at the Royal Swedish Naval College. His light hair was still Navy-short, and he had toffee-brown eyes, a nose which jutted downwards like a heron’s beak and a downturned mouth. I wasn’t sure whether the disapproval was personal, or just that he worked on the principle of the office boy kicking the cat. Mercifully he was in charge of the white watch, so I only saw him at handover times, when he’d tell me our new course with unnecessary emphasis and point out the bits of my navigation that he’d reworked in the log. Naturally the ship’s projected course had to be changed to allow for the difference between where you’d hoped to be and where you’d actually got to, but he’d change the compass heading by one degree, when you’d be lucky if the most competent trainee could steer within three degrees either way … I pre-gritted my teeth and turned to face him. ‘Hei, Nils.’

  ‘The gangplank has been left unguarded,’ he said. ‘It’s your watch, no?’

  Well, no, actually, we were all just mucking in to get the ship ready, and official watches wouldn’t start until after we set sail, but it wasn’t worth arguing with Nils about. ‘Yes,’ I agreed. Besides, we were all laid-back about the gangplank when in our home port. Erik had been on guard when I left, but I wasn’t going to drop him in it.

  ‘Was it guarded when you left the ship?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a word with the member of my team who was on guard.’

  We glared at each other for five seconds. He had that schoolteacher’s trick of staring at a spot just past my left ear, but I knew he was getting the full impact
of my unspoken, And I’m not going to tell you who.

  I unhooked the ‘Crew only’ chain on the gangplank and came on board. Nils had just stalked off when Erik hurried up, taking long strides over the wooden deck. He was dressed for duty in cargo breeks and a navy jumper. The breeze had tousled his light brown hair. ‘Hey, Cass. Sorry to get you into trouble with our Nils. I got called away.’ He grinned round at the deserted dock. ‘If we find fifty refugee stowaways in the sail locker, you can blame me.’ His tone was slightly rough, as if something was worrying him, and his chest rose and fell quickly.

  I gave a dismissive wave. ‘Why on earth would anyone who’d made it to Norway want to go to Britain?’

  He laughed at that, but there was a forced note in his voice which made me uneasy. I’d need to keep an eye on him, maybe have a chat later if he still seemed ill at ease. In some ways I felt I knew him quite well, because of mooring Khalida at his pontoon, but that physical closeness meant that I tried to keep more of a distance between us, so that he and Micaela didn’t feel I was living in their pockets. I hoped all was well at home.

  I put my peg back in the hole marked with my name – the ship’s system to see at a glance who was aboard – then headed to my cabin.

  The officers lived along the corridor that led backwards through the last third of the ship, under the aft deck. It was like a country house, with a shining wooden floor, white v-lining and framed black-and-white photographs of Sørlandet. The captain’s rooms and the chief engineer’s were first – the two people you might need to rouse in an emergency – then the sick bay. My cabin was next, then the chief officer’s, then Agnetha’s with her door closed. I paused outside it, wondering if I should knock and check she hadn’t slept in, but a closed door generally meant ‘no entry unless in an emergency’. As I paused beside it, I heard the murmur of voices. Complicated, she’d said. I backtracked into my own cabin, dropped Cat’s harness on the bed, checked my hair was tidy and my shoulder seams straight, and headed out to the main deck.