Death on a Longship Read online

  ‘The club’s here, sir, at the top of the voe.’

  ‘Aye, aye.’ He nodded to himself, went over to inspect the whiskies behind the grilled-off bar. ‘Tallisker, Highland Park, Scapa Flow. No’ bad, no’ bad.’

  Sergeant Peterson cleared her throat with barely restrained impatience. ‘Ms Lynch, sir, and Mr Johansen.’

  He turned to look properly at us with disconcertingly wide-open eyes, honest-looking, a clear sea-grey. I stared, incredulous and hurting, unable even to nod.

  This man had Alain’s eyes.

  The inspector nodded to himself again. ‘Now you’ll be the captain of this ship. I’m Detective Inspector Macrae, from Inverness.’ He shook my hand briskly. ‘Cassandra Lynch. No, Cassandre.’ He pronounced it correctly, French-style. ‘The first thing we need is an idea of who the poor lass lying out there is. Can you help us with that?’

  ‘She’s the actor who doubled for Favelle last week.’ I’d leave Ted to fill in more details if it became necessary. ‘Maree Baker.’

  I sensed, rather than saw, the startled look Anders gave me.

  ‘Maree Baker,’ the inspector repeated. ‘Sergeant, go and see what you can find out.’

  ‘M-a-r-e-e,’ I said. Sergeant Peterson wrote it down in her notebook and headed out.

  ‘Thank you for that, Ms Lynch. That lets us get started. Mr Johansen, if you’ll go with my colleague here, Inspector Hutchinson, he’ll take your statement.’

  Anders gave me a look I couldn’t quite read, somewhere between puzzlement and warning, and followed the officer like a man about to walk the plank. DI Macrae opened a regulation black notebook. The writing was in dark blue ink, an untidy hand:age 29, father Dermot Lynch, ex-Sullom Voe, director Shetland Eco-Energy. He watched me read down the page. Mother, Eugénie Delafauve. Opera singer, France.

  Maman. A specialist in the seventeenth-century composer Rameau: Greek costumes, and period instruments presented to small audiences in fancy chateaux.

  Grew up Shetland, sailor. France with mother, ran away.

  It had been a combination of luck and planning. The Tall Ships were doing La Rochelle to Edinburgh, and I’d half-emptied my bank account for a berth as a trainee aboard a Russian barque. I’d got the train to La Rochelle. Sea. Scottish soil. Sanctuary.

  He lifted the notebook, turned a page. ‘You argued that you were sixteen, and independent in Scotland, if not in France. You had a British passport, and the Scottish police failed to persuade you. End of that record.’ He looked back at the notes I couldn’t see, and I braced myself. Alain’s death, on a yacht half way across the Atlantic. But he didn’t comment, simply nodded again, closed the notebook and put it back in his sporran. ‘So here you are, a teenage runaway, in charge of a film company’s Viking longship. Fill in the gap.’

  ‘Jobs,’ I said. ‘In the summer, any sailing I could get. Delivery crew.’ I’d begged and blagged and even slept my way on to yachts and gaffers and sail training ships. ‘In the winter, supermarkets. Waitressing. I worked my way up the RYA courses, and that got me working in sailing schools in the Med. Then I did my first Atlantic crossing.’ We’d been on the way back when Alain had died. If he wasn’t going to talk about it, that suited me fine.

  He gave a nod, as if working on boats was an entirely normal career, then looked back at his paper. ‘Local gossip is you got the job fitting out this longship through your father. Tell me about that.’

  It took serious effort to shrug. ‘Not exactly. I was working in Bergen, and met the directors of the Norwegian firm who were sponsoring the film.’

  Met wasn’t quite accurate. I’d been waitressing in a fairly up-market restaurant in one of the main streets in Bergen. It did silver service for tourists and well-heeled locals. It was a quiet Thursday night, so the three Norwegian businessmen at the table by the stove were getting my full attention, especially when they began talking about Stormfugl.

  I knew about her, of course. She was an exact replica of the largest of boat burials, the Gokstadt ship, and she’d been built three years previously to demonstrate that Leif Erikson could easily have gone to America. He might have; the modern-day Vikings hit bad weather coming up to Shetland, Stormfugl was blown ashore, and the whole project had to be put on hold.

  Shetland. My heart tugged like a hooked fish.

  ‘There is another replica in America, of course,’ the youngest man said. The oldest of the three, in his fifties, with a pointed Drake beard below a lean, pink face, shook his head.

  ‘The American one is a warship, light and fast. Nobody would ever believe a voyage to America in something so shallow. The Stormfugl is deeper-bodied, a trading ship, with a half deck aft, and a small cabin. On top of that, Ted says that Shetland will do for Norway, for Labrador, for Iceland. It will be cheaper, he says, and he will make it look authentic.’

  ‘But what state is this Stormfugl in? How much will it cost to make her seaworthy?’

  Good cue, I thought. ‘Excuse me,’ I said. They gave me that blankly polite look you give a waitress who interrupts an important conversation for bread rolls or more coffee. ‘I can tell you a bit about Stormfugl,’ I continued. ‘She wasn’t damaged when she went ashore, or not badly, it was a good sandy beach she was blown on to, and they re-floated her straight off. She’s only had two winters ashore, uncovered, so the rain will have kept her timbers swollen. You’d need a surveyor’s report, but I’d expect her to be sound.’

  I had their attention now. The younger man gave me a narrow-eyed look.

  ‘What’s your connection with Shetland, Ms …?’

  ‘Ms Lynch,’ I said. If there was a job here, blagging might get me in. ‘I grew up there, and my father lives there still. I know the Shetland waters well. I’m a yacht skipper.’ I gave them a rueful smile, charming enough to interest them, but not so charming that they’d write me off as a dolly-bird. ‘Not in winter, of course. I was one of the crew on the Sea Stallion, the longship that went from Sweden to Dublin a couple of years ago, and that and my Shetland background made me interested enough to follow Stormfugl’s story.’

  ‘Ms Lynch,’ the man with the beard repeated, in a thoughtful way that would have set alarm bells ringing if I’d not been so determined to make them consider me for any job going. His eyes were shrewd, assessing me; I looked straight back.

  ‘I’m a qualified RYA Ocean Yachtmaster. You’ll need a skipper for your longship if you’re going to film aboard, as well as someone to oversee the repairs and fitting out in Shetland. I could do that for you too. I know folk who do that kind of work, reliable ones.’

  There was one of those long pauses, then the oldest one smiled. ‘Ms Lynch, you don’t look much like a skipper right now. Why not clear the table and bring us our coffees for the moment, and, here –’ He felt in his pocket for his wallet, brought out a card. ‘This is my firm, Berg Productions Limited. Come tomorrow at ten, and we can talk about your qualifications.’

  It wasn’t a propitious week, with the silver disk of the moon draining away, but at least the sea was pulsing into the Bergen channel. A flowing tide was a better omen. I was there at ten to ten, with my RYA cards in their see-through wallet, and references from a couple of Caribbean outfits. It was Mr Berg’s office I was shown into, a symphony of pearl grey and ivory. Just the depth of the carpet I waded across told me this was a megabucks outfit, and if I hadn’t been there in front of him I’d have turned tail and run, but faint heart wins no command. I straightened my shoulders inside my best navy jacket and hoped my plait was still neat.

  He motioned me to a seat. ‘Let me tell you more about this project, Ms Lynch. The film is about Gudrid, the first European woman to reach America, the sister-in-law of Leif Erikson, and we are one of the sponsors. Favelle Baker will play Gudrid, and her husband Ted Tarrant is the director.’

  This was big-time stuff. Ted and Favelle were one of Hollywood’s golden couples. She’d been a child star, and Ted Tarrant had been her leading man in her first teen movie. It had been l
ove straight away. They’d got married between movies, made two more together, and then Ted had moved from acting to directing, a series of eco-aware films starring Favelle as a feisty activist taking on big business on behalf of the planet. I’d been particularly impressed by the Greenpeace one, where she’d really slung into the oil companies and fisherman who were making a desert of our seas. The way she’d scrambled over rigs and in and out of high-speed rubber inflatable dinghies had made me feel she was a woman after my own heart.

  Furthermore, Ted Tarrant had been my teenage heart-throb. Before he’d become her romantic lead, he’d done a War of Independence swashbuckler where he’d played John Paul Jones, one of the world’s great seamen. That had sparked off a run of biopics: a supporting athlete in a movie about Roger Bannister, another one about cricket, and one where he was a round-the-world cyclist. The publicity was that he’d done all the stunts himself. It would be amazing to meet him.

  ‘Naturally,’ Mr Berg continued, ‘most of the film will be shot in Norway, but Mr Tarrant is keen to use Shetland as a location for the sailing scenes because Favelle is to do some publicity for your green energy firm there, Shetland Eco-Energy, and as we have links with them too we are happy to co-operate. You will know all about this, I am sure – there have been some objections to their proposed wind farm. Favelle is to publicise the importance of renewable energy.’

  It was the first I’d heard of it. I nodded, with the air of one who regularly talked wind farms at breakfast.

  ‘Hence the need for a longship that is already in Shetland. If the Stormfugl is usable then Mr Tarrant will get the outdoor shots he wants, and we will be saved a good deal of time and money. Now, your brief would be this: you’d recruit the skeleton crew necessary to get the boat fitted out, hire extras for the oarsmen, and be in charge of the sailing while the shooting is going on.’

  A pause, then he looked straight at me. ‘Tell me why you think you could do it.’

  Knowing that I could do it made me confident, and this time fortune favoured the bold, waning moon or waxing. By the end of the interview I’d got my first ship.

  If I’d been alone, I’d have turned a cartwheel on that thick ivory carpet. As it was, I smiled and thanked him, and walked demurely out into the street, only letting my face break into a broad grin when I was safely outside. I wanted to sing, wave, turn a cartwheel. I bought a bottle of bitter lemon from the next supermarket and swigged it straight away, then got out my mobile. Contacts, Anders, select. As it rang I could see him, very serious, green-boiler-suited, a smear of oil on his right cheek, a spanner in his left hand, fumbling the phone’s buttons.

  ‘Goddag?’

  ‘Anders? It’s Cass.’

  He was in his father’s Bildøy workshop, just behind the pontoon where Khalida was moored; clangs and drills reverberated behind him. ‘Yo, Cass.’

  ‘Can you meet me at Khalida this evening, after work? I’ve got a job for you.’

  A single-minded bloke, Anders was. ‘Is it your injectors again?’

  ‘Much more exciting. I’ll tell you when I see you – bye.’

  Mr Berg wanted me to go to Shetland as soon as possible and make him a full report of what needed to be done. I wasn’t going to take a plane when Khalida was waiting in her berth with her sails bent on. The restaurant would have to take three days’ notice. If Anders could make it, and if the forecast held, we’d leave on Wednesday.

  Shetland. Alain. If his ghost was going to haunt me, it would be there.

  I wasn’t going to think about that, nor about my dad, nor about the home I hadn’t seen for fourteen years. I was going back in triumph as the skipper of the Viking ship in a Hollywood film.

  My heart sang all the way to Bildøy. I’d have a command to my name. Never mind that she was a replica longboat that’d been wrecked and abandoned. She was the proof that I could do it. Superyachts in the Med, yachts to be delivered to the Caribbean, skipper of charter ships in Australia and New Zealand, now I’d be eligible for them all.

  There was no sign of Anders at the marina. I unlocked Khalida’s wooden washboards and clambered down the four steps into my little world, this eight-metre-long fibreglass hull, lined to window height with amber wood. My eyes danced at me in the brass-framed mirror. Maman’s moulded French cheekbones, Dad’s stubborn Irish chin. Dad’s curls on Maman’s glossy dark hair. Maman’s smooth skin, weathered to Dad’s brown complexion. The long scar across my left cheek was Alain’s legacy. Only the sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of my nose was my own.

  I’d broken free from Dad wanting me to go back to college and take the qualifications I’d thrown away in France, free from Maman’s wish to make a pretty girl out of me. I’d go back on my own terms.

  All the same, I wished Stormfugl had fetched up in Iceland.

  Chapter Two

  Of course I didn’t say all that to the inspector. ‘Mr Berg was impressed with my qualifications and gave me the job,’ I finished.

  DI Macrae nodded. There was a silence; I could feel his eyes on me. Then he fished a battered tin box out of his sporran, and opened it. Inside was a glinting of hooks and little weights, and a coil of clear nylon line. I watched, incredulous, as he chose a hook and weights, laid them on the table, took out the line, and put the box away again. ‘Tell me about your crew on this Viking boat.’

  His hands were busy on the line, distracting. He lifted his eyes, grey and sharp, waiting for me to reply. I looked away from the deft, brown fingers.

  ‘The engineer is Anders Johansen, who came over from Norway with me.’

  ‘An engine?’ The eyes that were so like Alain’s crinkled in a smile, and I wanted to howl in protest. ‘Not very authentic, surely.’

  Dear Lord, I wasn’t going to be coaxed by a ghost. ‘Inauthentic but safe,’ I replied. ‘The insurance company and I agreed on that.’

  ‘What’s he like, Mr Johansen?’

  ‘He’s not tall, about five foot seven, and compactly built,’ I said. ‘Blond hair, seaman’s beard, blue eyes, very good-looking.’

  ‘A ladies’ man?’ The old-fashioned phrase surprised a choke of laughter out of me. That’s what he’d meant to do; I saw a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. ‘Yes?’

  Anders was my crew, to be protected against all comers. I gave my most annoying French shrug, the one railway officials or hotel clerks use when they’ve lost your booking and can’t be bothered to find it.

  DI Macrae nodded as if I’d spoken. ‘Why did you sign him up?’

  Easy one. ‘He’s a good engineer, and a keen sailor.’

  We’d met when I’d first come to Norway, three years ago. Khalida’s engine had started making knocking noises. I’d tried the basics myself, but had had to concede that it was a professional job, and took it to the Johansen yard. Anders had fixed it, at speed and at a reasonable price, and so thoroughly that it didn’t go wrong again. Most impressive of all, he’d assumed I’d wanted to know what was broken. After that, I’d taken all mechanical problems to him and acted as second mechanic, repaying him with a sail out through the islands and into the North Sea. He’d developed a taste for wind power, much to his father’s disgust, passed his Day Skipper and Yachtmaster Theory qualifications, and was always keen to log up sea-miles for his practical. I hoped he’d jump at the chance of a trip to Shetland.

  I was just giving him up when I felt Khalida rock to steps on the pontoon, and looked out to see him approaching. His fair hair was hidden by a dark cap, and he was still wearing his green boiler suit. He paused by the cockpit. I saw a bulging movement at his right shoulder, then a pink nose whiffling out; the pet rat who accompanied him everywhere. I didn’t mind Rat at all. Apart from his unfortunate way with ship’s biscuits and nesting in the sails, he was far less bother than a dog. I opened the washboards.

  ‘Hi, Anders. What’re you doing, working this late?’

  ‘A fishing boat needed to be finished for tomorrow.’ He gave me a kiss on each cheek, French style. Most women
got to the other side of the room at this point. Rat snuffled my cheek and leapt nimbly on to my shoulder, then swarmed down my front, tail hooked out for balance, and went off to investigate the bilges. He’d come back with his white patches oily, but that was Anders’ problem.

  ‘Now, beautiful Cass, how’s it going?’ A Frenchman might have got away with ‘belle Cassandre’ but it just sounded uncomfortable in Norwegian, like a ship tackling a cross tide. Then the nerd took over. ‘You said it wasn’t the injectors again.’

  ‘I’ve got a job,’ I said. ‘Have you time for a dram, to help me celebrate?’

  ‘I always have time for a dram,’ he said, grinning. He sat down on the couch that ran the length of Khalida’s starboard side, tilting his fair head back against the bookshelf to show off the tanned throat running down to muscular shoulders. Such a waste. I rose, fitted the little table between us, and took out two glasses and the boat’s bottle of whisky.

  ‘Khalida and I are off to Shetland,’ I said. ‘Two hundred miles of sea and sky.’

  ‘Single-handed?’

  ‘Could the yard manage without you?’

  ‘Now that fishing boat’s out of the way. The next job is a wooden yacht, giving her new decks. My father won’t need an engineer for that.’ Now his eyes were sparkling, and the would-be sophisticated banter was put to one side as he rose back to his actual age of twenty-six. ‘Two hundred miles, and there are always Norwegian boats going back and forward. That would leave me only – let me see, seven hundred to go.’

  ‘Could they do without you till mid-June?’

  ‘I’m not so sure about that.’ He grinned again, showing beautifully straight teeth. ‘I couldn’t do without money for a couple of months, Cass. Rat has to eat.’ Then he went back to being florid. I wondered if he lay awake at night thinking up compliments. ‘Not even for you, beautiful Cass. I must visit you at bedtime more often, if you are going to greet me with drink, and your hair loosened.’ I gave him a reproving, big sister look, which turned him practical again. ‘Unless you’re trying to soften me up. What’s this job, then?’