The Body in the Bracken Page 11

  ‘There’s snow forecast,’ Inga added.

  ‘I’m trying not to think about it,’ I said. Life aboard Khalida might be difficult under a foot of snow; or (I hoped) it might be warmer, with a layer of snow baffling out the wind.

  ‘We have a spare room,’ Inga offered. I shook my head.

  ‘Thanks, but no, I’ll stick it out. Besides, Cat and your cat would never get on. If it gets really desperate, Reidar would let me sleep in the café.’

  ‘Well, don’t be stuck.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I promised. I crossed the road to the pier car park with them, and while Inga was loading carrier bags into the boot and buckling Peerie Charlie into his seat, I turned to Vaila. ‘Vaila, I was talking to Jeemie the other day, and he was yarning about seeing a njuggle.’

  Her face stayed straight, but the dancing eyes gave her away.

  ‘I wondered if there might be a particularly good time for me to see one.’

  She looked down at the ground, considering. ‘A dry night’s a good time,’ she said at last. ‘Njuggles don’t like getting wet.’

  ‘It was dusk Jeemie saw it.’

  ‘Yea, dusk is good.’ She thought a bit more. ‘Dusk, and a bit of a moon. Not too dark and not too bright.’

  We were at the blackest time now. ‘There’ll be a crescent moon soon. Tuesday, say. Dusk is about half past three, four o clock. Where’s a good place? Are njuggles no’ supposed to like bridges, and mills?’

  She shook her head at that. ‘No’ by the brig. Up by the loch is better.’

  ‘Gonfirth loch, at dusk of Tuesday.’

  ‘I canna promise you’ll see een, mind,’ she said quickly. ‘Njuggles is particular beasts. They dinna aye want to come out.’

  ‘I’ll chance it,’ I said.

  ‘And you mustna photograph him. The flash’d gluff him something awful.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I promised.

  Inga gave us a suspicious glance. ‘What are you twa plotting?’

  ‘I was asking about njuggles,’ I said.

  She gave me a fierce stare. ‘No trouble, Cass. Whatever you’re up to, you’ll no’ drag my bairns into it.’

  ‘This isn’t trouble,’ I assured her. ‘At least, I’m pretty sure it isn’t anything to do with what may be trouble.’

  ‘Njuggles?’

  ‘Jeemie o’ Grobsness saw one by Gonfirth Loch.’

  ‘Oh, him. How many nips had he had at the Pierhead beforehand?’ She turned on Vaila. ‘And since when were you a njuggle expert, young lady?’

  ‘Since the play,’ Vaila retorted. ‘Remember, you brought Peerie Charlie to it, with the playgroup. Kirsty and the Snarraness Njuggle. Izzy did it, our drama teacher, and she took it around the schools. We did all sorts of stuff about Shetland creatures in the school as a project to go with it.’ She threw in a diversion. ‘We did trows an’ all, an’ Finns, an’ selkies. I could tell you about those too, Cass, if you like. Did you ken that the real selkies were mebbe Inuit, come from Greenland?’

  ‘I’d like to ken about Finns,’ I said.

  ‘Another time,’ Inga said, and bundled her brood into the car. She paused by the door. ‘No trouble, Cass.’

  I nodded, and watched them drive off. I was pretty certain that me seeing the njuggle for myself wouldn’t bring trouble. Whatever Vaila was up to, I didn’t believe for a moment she was doing anything dishonest. But I did suspect Jeemie was making use of it.

  It was time I visited ‘The Njuggle’s Nest.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  When Dad deposited me at the marina gate, I gave Magnie a ring. ‘I was wondering if you’d run me over to have a look at Jeemie’s shop.’

  ‘That will I, lass. Will I give him a ring to say we’re coming?’

  ‘No, if you dinna mind a wasted journey if he’s no’ there.’

  ‘I’m doing nothing this afternoon, lass. A peerie drive into the country’ll suit me fine. I’ll be with you in half an hour.’

  I gave Khalida a thorough check over before getting aboard, and another once I was inside. Cat was sleeping in my berth, plumed tail curled over his nose and white paws. He stretched and rose to greet me with his silent miaow. I brushed and fed him, and locked up thoroughly again before heading out to wait on the pontoon. Above me, the sky was mottled with racing clouds, and the voe turned from silver to pewter and back as they scudded over the face of the sun.

  Magnie still had the mustard-coloured Fiesta that he’d driven as long as I’d known him. He cleared his oilskin jacket, a pail, a rushy bag for the whelk ebb, and a thermos flask off the passenger seat for me, and I clambered in. ‘Thanks for this.’

  He gave a ‘no bother’ grunt. We headed off along the road and turned downhill into old Voe: the waterfront, with a mini marina, the old sail loft, now a camping bod, opposite what were once the weaving sheds of Adie & Co. The jumpers Tenzing and Hillary had worn on the top of Everest had come from here. The road narrowed to single track between the buildings, then widened again at the Pierhead restaurant; the proprietor also owned a mussel farm, salmon cages and a fishing boat, so the fish served there was meltingly fresh. Magnie swerved round the grassy bank beyond it, bumped over the little bridge and nodded at the house above it. ‘John Georgeson’s house.’

  It was a traditional two-storey crofthouse, refurbished with double-glazed windows and a glass sunlounge looking out over the voe. A ride-on tractor peeked out from the open garage door, and the garden was a sweep of green lawn.

  Magnie changed down a gear to climb the steep hill. Now there was springy heather on each side of the road, and damp-looking sheep grazing. We came around the last bend and the Loch of Gonfirth lay before us.

  It was about a mile across, a rough heart-shape indented by little headlands, with an island across at the far side, and a jetty by the road. The steep hills gave you an idea of how quickly you’d lose your footing. I had a vague memory that bodies were never recovered. There was a fluorescent ball like a lobster pot marker two hundred metres out. ‘What’s that mooring buoy doing?’

  ‘Floating,’ Magnie said, straight-faced. He pulled into the side of the road to let me look at it: a normal orange buoy, with a ring in the top. ‘Fishermen moor their boats to it.’

  ‘Are there any fish in the loch?’

  ‘Brown troots,’ Magnie said. ‘I’m caught a good few here myself.’

  It was talking about the loch that had got Gavin and I speaking of whisky. I wondered if you could sink a cask of whisky, the way you could sink a lobster pot. The wood that kept liquor in would keep liquid out; maybe. Could Ivor and Jeemie have been in cahoots in some way, with Ivor stealing the missing whisky, and Jeemie hiding it here, then using the njuggle legend to keep people away from the loch?

  Magnie started the car again. ‘So Jeemie was walking along here,’ I said, looking at the barrier between us and the loch, ‘and he’d almost got to the end of the barrier when he heard the njuggle.’

  The car came up the short hill. At this end of the loch, there was only sky above the hills surrounding it, as if it was perched on the height of the world. A bank of wiry moor grass led down to a narrow shingle beach. I craned across Magnie to see if there were any hoofprints in the soft turf, then leaned back, shaking my head. ‘No pony tracks. It would be the only place a real pony could go into the loch. Otherwise it would have to jump the barrier and either land on those large stones or leap straight into the loch.’

  ‘A pony could scrabble down here, right enough.’ Magnie put the car back into gear and drove on, past the miniature loch where the grey-throated divers nested in summer, and around the bend to face out over Swarback’s Minn once more. Already the sun was dipping towards the horizon in a glory of soft apricot light.

  Jeemie had left his car by the peerie loch. The Grobsness turn off was a mile further. It had a sign beside it, a rearing black horse with a weed-festooned mane, holding a shield with the words Njuggle’s Nest, Antiques beneath its raised front hooves. A bend and we were
running parallel to the sea again, above a dizzyingly steep bank, with the Pierhead salmon cages below us, and a glimpse through headlands to Papa Little and out to the wide Atlantic, then the view was closed in by the dark curve of Linga, and the sandy beach below the road, with the roofless walls of the Old Hall above it. The pair of ruined crofthouses had perhaps been a haaf station, for the long stone beach below them would have been perfect for drying fish.

  Jeemie’s house was through a gate and along a gravel track. It was an oddly converted crofthouse, with a front extension and a little jutting afterthought at the ben end, smaller than the main house. The byre been given windows, and the whole thing was glossily whitewashed. There was a duplicate njuggle notice outside, with an arrow pointing to the sky-blue door of the byre. It looked a prosperous outfit, run by someone who understood the importance of show: the paint was gleaming, and even in this depths of winter, when he wouldn’t expect tourist trade, there were scrubbed flagstones on each side of the door, and blue plastic pots with velvety dark pansies flowering in them, and the first fringed spikes of crocus showing. A Berlingo van was parked at the end of the yard, silvery-blue, with the njuggle logo on the side, and a little navy runabout sat beside it. There was an Edwardian brass bell beside the door, with an oval handle dangling from a pull-chain. Magnie gave it a yank. There was a pause, then a twitch of curtains in the house window, a rattle as the door opened, and Jeemie came out.

  He still had that air of auditioning for an Elvis movie, with his dark hair sleeked back and standing in a quiff, but he was dressed in an old brown jumper and shabby breeks. I got the feeling that he wasn’t over-pleased to see us, but he covered that with smarmy bonhomie, unlocked the byre door, and ushered us in.

  The first thing I noticed was the warmth. I recognised the brass polish smell straight away too. I’d cleaned a lot of binnacles and ship’s lanterns in my tall ships days. Then Jeemie moved out of the doorway, and I got a look inside.

  It was a room to give me nightmares. The last rays of the sun slanted across from the windows to dazzle off shelves of brass: plates, kettles, candlesticks, ornaments. The next row of shelving was little china ornaments, gleamingly clean, and arranged by colour: blue and white at waist-level, green above, pinks above that and multi-brights on the top shelf. That was followed by dolls and figurines: replica wax dolls on the bottom shelf, moving up through doll’s house land to china shepherdesses. Next came chinoiserie and oriental, then individual plates standing up on holders, then soft toys. I would never have believed you could cram so much stuff into one ex-byre. He’d spoken of furniture, but there wasn’t much – a couple of chairs with elegant backs, and several little tables, also littered with ornaments. It made me wonder if the fish horse-brass that was Khalida’s only passenger was one ornament too many.

  I suspected Magnie was thinking the same thing. He shook his head in what Jeemie could take as admiration, if he was so minded. ‘Boy, you’re gathered a braw twartree bits and pieces here.’

  I looked round again, and began to see method behind the obvious ordering. ‘It’s mostly peerie stuff, portable – for the tourist market?’

  Jeemie nodded, as if I was a bright pupil. ‘Yea. Folk don’t want to carry great lumps of lem home with them, though I’m had folk up with cars taking bigger stuff, or there’s more and more motor homes passing these days. That plate there, for example.’ He nodded to a green and white ashet as big as Khalida’s little table. ‘That’s as big as I’d go, and that’s more likely to be bought by someone from Shetland, wantin’ something bonny for serving up their Christmas turkey.’ He moved to one of the ‘china’ shelves. ‘Here, see, there’re a few things labelled with ‘Shetland’, but most of it is just bonny peerie things that might take someone’s fancy as a souvenir to take home.’

  I moved to the shelf opposite the door and began to look more closely. This one was china animals: a little dog, a cow, several cats, several birds, a giraffe and zebra. The cheapest (a nauseating cat with smirking whiskers) was £4.25. They were all in good condition, as far as I could tell, with no missing tails or ears. I lifted the cow carefully (£14.50) and looked underneath. Delft, it said, in curly writing. The hand-height giraffe was £37.50, and nothing on earth would have induced me to risk picking it up. ‘Where do you find all these things?’

  Jeemie made an airy gesture with his hands. ‘Here and there. Auctions are good. Harry Hay has job-lots of boxes, you just buy them cheaply and hope there’s treasure trove inside. Charity shops like Aith and Whalsay. Not so much the town ones as there’s all chains now, and anything out of the ordinary gets sent south to specialist auctions.’

  I’d been to the Aith charity shop, whose prices were minimal. If he’d picked up the giraffe there, he’d make around £35 profit.

  ‘House sales, that kind of thing.’ He gave me a swift sideways look and took the wind out of my sails. ‘Ivor Hughson, you ken him, he has a boat in the marina. Well, he used to give me a hint if someone was flitting, when they booked him for the removal, and he’d give the folk my card too, so that they could get me to look over stuff they weren’t wanting to take. If someone would give a pound or two for an auld table you were just going to ball on the bonfire, so much the better.’

  Well, well. It seemed a bit unethical on Ivor’s part to be passing on details of his clients. I wondered if Robert-John knew that was what Ivor’d been up to. Furthermore, I could just see Jeemie assuring some peerie crofter wife who was moving to a sheltered house that the plate she’d always been told was real old china brought back by an ancestor was actually made in Birmingham.

  ‘A course, it’s taken a good few years to build up this much stock. Folk are aye impressed when they walk in.’

  ‘It’s a fair eyeful that greets you,’ I agreed. I wandered past the gold dazzle of brass and the blank-eyed dolls to inspect the books behind the mahogany desk. I hadn’t managed to finish Waverley. I could feel Jeemie’s gaze on my back. That sideways look he’d given me as he’d talked about Ivor had reminded me of something. I puzzled over it as I looked. The authors were alphabetical, with nearly a full shelf of Dickens. I crouched down and found Scott. Then the waft of brass polish brought it back to me; some trainee telling me about how he’d dropped the ship’s compass while he was polishing its brass case, and busily pointing out the small dent on the deck, hoping to divert me from the crack in the compass glass.

  What was Jeemie trying to divert me from? I didn’t see anything untoward about all these shelves of expensive bric-a-brac. There was no Waverley among the gold-bound books, but I found a plain green copy at an affordable £2. I brought it to the counter, which gave me a view into what would have been the feed store. It was filled with TVs and computers; there was a soldering iron and a pair of crimping tongs lying on a workbench in the middle of the tiny space, along with a blow-torch and a row of small files. The metal-working tools reminded me. ‘Did you say you had jewellery too?’

  He gave me a sceptical look, as well he might, for one glance would write me off as a necklace sales potential, but answered readily enough, ‘Oh, yea, I have twartree bits and pieces. There’s not a lot of call for it, but some folk prefer antique to modern.’ He went over to the big desk, unlocked the wide central drawer, and brought out a tray lined with shiny white material and glittering like a magpie’s nest. ‘Last summer there was a fashion for diamanté brooches, the fancier the better, so I had a run on them.’

  I bent over the rings, looking. I’d thought, when Magnie had mentioned them in the bar, that Jeemie had changed the subject out of deference to my feelings, when Magnie had mentioned ‘engagement rings’, but now, although his professional smile was still firmly pinned on, uneasiness came off him like ripples from a boat’s propeller swelling up around you before you put her in gear. He was happy enough about the girl detective looking around the shelves, but not so keen on her checking out the jewellery. I wondered if it was always kept in a locked drawer like this, when everything else was displayed. I�
��d have expected a glass case to show it off; but maybe it was just put away because we were out of season. I scanned along the lines of rings and picked out one at random, a design of two clasped hands in what looked like the original leather-covered box. ‘This looks a good age.’

  ‘Around 1880. A gimmel ring, it’s called. The hands come apart, see.’ His pudgy fingers were surprisingly delicate, sliding the two hands back to reveal a heart-shaped stone. ‘A garnet heart in the centre, and the gold is 18-carat. An expensive item for a Shetland fisherman to give his girl. The box is original too. I’ll try it on eBay in the run-up to St Valentine’s Day. I should get the price from a Shetland descendent in Canada or the US, if I advertise it right.’ He picked out a little brooch. ‘Have you seen one of these before?’

  He set it in my hands, a pair of joined silver hearts. One had a diagonal bar with a name, Mizpah, and a flourish of flowers. The other heart had tiny writing on it: The LORD Watch Between Me & Thee When We Are Absent One From Another. I shook my head.

  ‘A token between sweethearts or a husband and wife. It’s a seaman’s thing. A Mizpah brooch, it’s called, and the writing’s from Genesis. It was thought of as a kind of protection, very popular in Victorian times. This one’s quite early, from about 1850.’ He turned away from the jewellery and reached into the window embrasure. I felt the wave of relief come from him. ‘Now here’s something you’ll like, a real ship’s chronometer, from a tea clipper called the Charlotte Rose …’

  I brooded over it as I made my tea that evening. On the face of it, there was nothing wrong in the set-up: a retired man (he’d been invalided out, he’d told us over a cup of tea in the sun room), who fancied setting up a little business. He’d aye been interested in antiques, his mother had collected china, and it gave him something to do. I could see that the items he had for sale were a mixed bag of junk shop bric-a-brac and (taking his word for it) genuine antiques which he could easily have picked up in charity shops and at displenishment sales, just as he’d said. The bric-a-brac could go to passing trade, and the dearer stuff was more likely to sell on eBay than to passing tourists. The clasped-hand ring had been £725, the Mizpah brooch £545. I opened my lap-top and had a quick look at eBay. A gimmel ring, he’d called it; there were plenty of examples, at that kind of price for the gold ones. There wasn’t a Mizpah brooch, but there were other Mizpah items, and again the prices were similar. It still sounded a lot to me, but then the new sails I craved would set me back over £1500.