Death on a Longship Read online

  ‘It’s a paid job, for a film company.’ He brightened. ‘How d’you fancy fitting an engine into a Viking longship?’

  His eyes lit up with more genuine enthusiasm than he’d managed for me. ‘What size of ship, Cass, what size of engine, and is it for main power or auxiliary? How fast does it need to go?’

  ‘She’s seventy-five feet long, and we don’t need a turbo charger,’ I said. ‘It’s for a range of fifteen miles at six or seven knots. It should be an easily driven hull.’ He made a face, unimpressed. ‘For all that, though, it needs to have enough power to get us out of trouble.’ Rat reappeared from the bilges. I lifted him off the floor before he left little oily footprints everywhere and set him on the table to inspect the dregs in Anders’ glass, whiskers twitching thoughtfully.

  Anders took the glass from him and considered, his eyes resting thoughtfully on Khalida’s little two-ring burner. Rat hitched himself up to the shelf and began washing his whiskers. ‘We might have just what you need. There’s a boat replacing its engine in the yard right now – the old one is good still, and it could be brought over by fishing boat.’

  ‘Is that a yes?’

  ‘And Rat can come too, of course?’

  ‘He’s completely your responsibility,’ I said. ‘No stealing the ship’s biscuits, no sleeping in the spinnaker bag, no falling overboard, and you explain him to the Customs if we see any.’

  Anders lifted his glass. ‘To the Viking longship’s beautiful skipper. I accept your job, with pleasure.’

  We shook hands on it. His palm was sticky with grease. He gave me a belated apologetic look, and wiped it on his overalls. ‘When do we leave?’

  ‘As soon as the wind’s right. As soon as we can. We’ve got a lot to do if we’re to fit out a half-derelict longship before mid-May.’

  He rose. ‘I’ll warn my father he’ll have to do without me until then. I’ll be ready to go from the day after tomorrow – no, not Sunday. On Monday.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  He raised a hand and shuffled away.

  We set off a week later. I’d spent the time checking every inch of Khalida’s rig and stocking up with stores for the voyage. Anders arrived the night before, just after I’d got back from an evening God-speed Mass in St Paul’s. We had a bacon-and-egg supper together, and a perfunctory game of Scrabble in the burnished glow of the oil lamp. An erratic player, Anders; sometimes he’d plonk down the obvious, sometimes he’d brood for several turns, working towards some coup worth a zillion points. That was the nerd coming out. I wondered what he was like as a chess player. After that they both withdrew to the forepeak, behind their curtain, and made themselves at home. It was strange to have someone else aboard like that. I lay awake for a while, listening to his breathing and Rat’s scufflings, then willed myself to sleep.

  We motored out of the Bergen channel on the first of the ebb tide, then set our course almost due west, aiming for the centre of Shetland. Khalida could do five knots, making it a thirty-hour journey. For the daylight hours we kept two-hour watches, one of us above in the cold, the other below keeping warm and passing up hot cups of tea or coffee. The last grey slush of snow in the streets of Bergen was left behind, and the neon-lit clatter of the restaurant. I had Khalida’s tiller under my hand once more, the wind against my face, the smell of salt filling my nostrils, and the great saucer of pale-blue sea around me under the winter-fretted sky, and my heart sang to the murmur of the water.

  We passed our first oil rig just after six, as the sun sank down below the horizon in a glow of peach and pale rose. Anders took midnight till four while I slept, then I took over. Rat stayed to keep me company for a bit, like a plush neck-warmer, then whiffled his way back to his sawdust nest in the forepeak. The stars dazzled around the ribbon of the Milky Way, the sails were ghostly above me, and the waves surged below Khalida’s forefoot and broke gleaming-white at her beam. We sailed into the darkness until at last the first pale glow appeared on the bowl of sea behind us, and as it grew lighter I began to see a faint mistiness on the horizon, which thickened to a shape like the longship we were going to sail. From here Shetland seemed one island, over a hundred miles long, curving up at the south to the high cliffs of Sumburgh Head, and rising again to Hermaness at the north, with the snow-cone of Ronas Hill in the middle. When Anders came up with a breakfast cup of tea I set him to identifying lighthouses and checking our heading on my rather primitive GPS, while I double-checked the tides. Yell Sound at mid-tide was no place for a small yacht, but it was our quickest way through to the west side.

  ‘We’re just about right,’ Anders reported. ‘This course will take us exactly in, and we’re thirty miles off. Six hours.’

  ‘Slack tide three o’clock,’ I said. ‘Bang on.’

  Anders took over the steering, and I made us a bacon roll each, with an extra rasher for Rat, then went back down for another snatch of sleep. The water flowed at my ear like a lullaby, but for once I wasn’t soothed. Alain had been a Shetlander too, half-French, just like me. His father taught French in Mid Yell Junior High, and his mother was a born-and-bred Shetlander with a croft in the south of Yell. I’d written to them, and I should have visited, but I hadn’t known what I could say. I still didn’t know. Perhaps I could just stay around Brae, not go near the isles, and slide off before they even knew I was there.

  Yeah, right.

  When I woke, we were in Shetland waters. I made us a cup of soup and a sandwich each, then came up to look. We’d passed the Out Skerries now and the point of Henga Ness was off our starboard bow. The low heather hills were weathered chocolate brown, with camouflage patches of fawn grass. Lower still, the line of cottages followed the shore, each one set facing the sea in a vertical strip of field. The more recent road ran above the houses, down to the shop, and ended in a forecourt and petrol pump for the changed way of getting around. The shore glistened olive-brown with kelp thrown up in the March gales.

  We motored through Yell Sound at still water, dodged the high-speed ferries, and began the long run up the length of North Roe towards the top of Mainland. Now we were giving a cautious distance to spray-black cliffs, topped with fields of stones thrown up by the winter storms, and with pairs of kittiwakes white against grassy ledges slicing along the knobbled volcanic rock. Once we’d rounded the last cliff, topped by the Eshaness Light, we were nearly home; only eight miles to go, diagonally across St Magnus Bay.

  Below, Anders was twiddling the radio. A hiss of static resolved itself into a solo fiddle tune, one of the traditional airs with an aching melancholy that pulled me straight back into the world I’d been torn away from when Dad had accepted that job in the Gulf and I’d been sent to Maman. Oh, I could talk to my new French classmates, because Maman had always insisted I spoke French to her, but I didn’t have anything to say to them. They were land people, and I was plunged in among them like the selkie wife who’d lived as a seal among currents, suddenly married to an earthling and having to talk of supermarket prices and new sofas with the other wives. I’d made an effort at first; there’d been several nice-looking boys in the school that I’d pretended to fancy, and I’d gone shopping with the girls for short skirts and vest tops, but they’d known I was just pretending. They couldn’t understand that I was heartsick for the tide flowing past in jagged waves, the sucking noise of the breakers on the shore, the tell-tales fluttering white on Osprey’s red jib.

  When the fiddle tune ended and the announcer’s voice began – Mary Blance of Radio Shetland – a great wave of homesickness swept over me and the shore that curved away from us blurred. I blinked the tears away before Anders could see them, and flicked on my mobile phone.

  ‘Does the marina guide give a number for Brae?’

  I punched it in as Anders read it out. A Shetland voice answered, Magnie, who’d been one of my instructors when I’d been learning to sail. I found myself smiling and going automatically into my native tongue.

  ‘Magnie, is dis dee? It’s Cass, Cass Lyn
ch, you mind me? I’m on my way home. Can you find a corner o’ dis new marina for a peerie yacht that’s come ower fae Norroway?’

  He gave a great roar of laughter. ‘Cass, well, for the love of mercy. Norroway, at this season? Yea, yea, we’ll find you a berth. Where are you?’

  ‘Comin’ round towards Muckle Roe. We’ll be wi’ you in twa hours.’

  ‘I’ll be waitin’ wi’ the lines,’ he promised.

  I laid down the phone to find Anders staring. ‘Is this Shetland dialect? You sounded as if you were speaking English with a Norwegian accent.’

  ‘Just about what it is,’ I agreed.

  ‘And what is “peerie”? I do not know this one.’

  ‘Small. A little boat.’ I unhooked the autopilot and set Khalida’s nose for the channel past Vementry Isle. Now I was in home waters, but I didn’t look up at the house I’d grown up in. That was enough memories raised. Khalida slid on past the island, and into the inlet that led to Brae, a two-mile-long inverted ‘U’ with a cluster of grey roofs at its end. I could have sailed up to the Boating Club blindfold. Magnie was standing there on the end of the dinghy pontoon, resplendent in an eye-catching Shetland gansey of the old-fashioned seaman’s type, a dull blue background with alternate vertical stripes of cable pattern and anchors in white. We paused to drop the mainsail and roll the jib away, then turned into the marina entrance and slipped into the berth he indicated.

  ‘Welcome home, lass,’ Magnie said, once we’d tied the last rope. ‘How are you doing? Here’s a swack young man you’ve brought wi’ you.’

  I introduced Anders, pointedly saying he was a friend who was crewing for me, and tried to put the kettle on, but Magnie was having none of it. He had a half bottle of Grouse in his pocket. ‘We need to toast you comin’ home at last.’

  The three of us squeezed into Khalida’s cabin. Magnie looked more tired, drawn about the face. I’d never thought much about ages when he’d been teaching us to sail; he was one of the adults, which simply put him in the ancient bracket. Now I guessed early sixties. His eyes were set in pouched eyelids, his cheeks as rosy as ever, but less round, his curly fair hair more tousled, but he still had his own air of cheery good humour, a man who was never too hurried to stop and have a yarn.

  ‘Here’s your good health.’

  He drained his half-glass of whisky straight off and poured himself another. My whisky burned as it went down. I leaned back against Khalida’s wooden shelf and let my breath out in a long sigh.

  ‘So, you’re come across to take over the Viking boat,’ Magnie said.

  I should have known better than to be surprised. Magnie showed rather yellow teeth in a broad grin. ‘You’re no’ forgotten me brother David works to the salmon farms at West Burrafirth, where the boat’s stored?’

  ‘Ah,’ I said.

  ‘I’m been expecting you this three days. I didna ken you were coming by boat, but I shoulda thought o’ it.’ He nudged Anders in the ribs. ‘Never went on the land when she could go by sea, our Cass. Now, you’ll be wanting a key to the clubhouse.’ He fished in his pocket and handed me a key with a wooden label marked “MARINA 1”. ‘You’ll see a few changes there. We had this inter-island games, oh, twa-three year ago, with money flowing like water to upgrade our facilities. You could hold a dance in the changing rooms now.’

  ‘Hot showers?’ I said.

  ‘Yea, yea. Underfloor heating, even. Now, I’ll leave you to settle in. You’ll maybe come along me later and tell me all the news wi’ you.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ I promised.

  He swung himself over the guard rail and paused on the pontoon arm, his face reddening. He spoke with self-conscious formality. ‘I was sorry to read about your man’s death. That was a bad thing, a bad thing.’

  There was no condemnation in his face or his voice; these things happened at sea. Suddenly I realised I needn’t worry here about someone putting my name together with that old report in Yachting Monthly or the screaming headlines in the tabloids. The Shetland Times would have written a simple report, and everyone in Shetland would have read it. I couldn’t evade or pretend it had been someone else. For a moment the thought was terrifying, then liberating, as though I’d pulled clear of a tide race and was sailing free.

  Magnie nodded at me, raised a hand to Anders, and headed back along the pontoon to his car.

  ‘You don’t have drink-driving laws here in Shetland, no?’ Anders said, watching it pull slowly up the gravel slope by the clubhouse.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘We just don’t have many policemen.’

  Chapter Three

  Over DI Macrae’s shoulder, I could see the pier was swarming with police officials. I hoped Magnie would lie low till he’d pass the breathalyser. The inspector was entirely unruffled by my silences. He finished tying his line and lifted it up to let the hook dangle, scrutinising the knots against the light, then changed tack. ‘I believe you don’t get on well with your father, is that right?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘I’ve just not been in Shetland recently. We speak regularly on the phone.’ The bills would prove that: twenty minutes a fortnight, or so.

  ‘You get on well with him, then.’ I didn’t reply. He made a loop around his finger, and drew it tight. ‘I’m sure you were hoping to see a bit of him while you were here, make up for the lost years.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But not to stay at his house? It must have been pretty cold afloat in spring.’

  I gave the French shrug again. ‘Khalida is my home.’

  We’d spent the next couple of days settling in. Anders was very impressed with Brae’s facilities; as the nearest town to the huge oil terminal of Sullom Voe, it had benefited even more than most. The original village of Brae could still be seen running along the ‘U’ of the shore: a number of small cottages, the stone-built manse and the kirk beside it, a large house that was now a B&B, the old school transformed into the community hall, and the former pier, shop, and post office, converted into houses. Behind the road that swooped around them were Norwegian-style wooden houses, council-owned, and a number of new houses; then, sprawling back to the hills, the little boxes that had earned Brae the name of ‘Toytown’. There was a population of over a thousand now, and no shortage of things for them to do.

  The Boating Club itself had originally been built for the men of the camp, and donated to the village. It stood slightly out of the main village, past the curve of the U. Back in the centre was the leisure centre, with its 16-metre swimming pool, fitness suite, gym, and squash court. The school was beside it. Brae children could go all the way from nursery to university applications under one roof. Up above the school were the care centre for the elderly and the astro-turf football pitch, handily beside the Mid Brae Inn. There was a fire station and police sub-office. There were even Britain’s most northerly takeaways: Frankie’s fish and chip shop and the Indian restaurant. I resolved to sample both while I was here.

  For those who preferred to cook their own, there were the garage shop and the local community-owned Co-op. I headed along to the garage for Shetland specialities like flaky water biscuits to be eaten with spread-on Lurpak and cheese, thick Voe oatcakes, and clove rock. The girl behind the till was new, but she turned out to be the peerie sister of a lass I’d been at school with, and the manageress remembered me fine. Then I called at the Brae Building Centre, which sold every tool and DIY aid known to man or even woman, and the owner greeted me as he’d done all through my sailing career, as if I’d never been away: ‘Well, now, Cass, is it that time of year already?’

  I laughed and nodded. ‘Next thing you know, the shalders’ll be back.’

  “Shalder” was the Shetland name for oystercatcher, a large dinner-suited wading bird with an orange beak. I used to know it was time to get the varnish out when I heard their ‘peep, peep, peep’ down at the shore.

  ‘Lass, they’re back already,’ Neil said. ‘They come in February now, the ones that bother to go at all.
It’s this global warming. We hae geese overwintering an aa, and a fair mess they make o’ the parks. Folk’ll be getting the shotguns out, and having goose for their Christmas dinner.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ I said. ‘I’d better stay a bit longer, then.’

  ‘That’s your own boat that you brought over? Norroway, was it? You’ll no’ be after paint and varnish this time.’

  ‘Not for my boat,’ I agreed. I had no doubt at all he’d already been down to the marina for a good look at her. ‘I’m going to need gallons of everything for the longship, though. Can we do a deal for a bulk order?’

  ‘I think we likely can,’ he said, and prepared to haggle.

  After that, I went back twenty yards to the other Brae garage, where I’d helped out on Saturdays as a youngster. Bus transport in Shetland was only any use if you worked nine till five in Lerwick. I needed to buy a car. Hiring wasn’t an option, because for that you need to produce a driving licence. I could drive reasonably well at a sensible speed; that would have to do.

  ‘It only needs to last me three months,’ I told Angus, and he produced a white ZX that he’d got as part-exchange from someone upgrading to a Berlingo.

  ‘They’re very popular in Shetland, you can get six bales of hay or a dozen bags of peats in the back. I don’t know how many sheep, nobody’s mentioned that.’

  Naturally, the first thing Anders and I did once we had wheels was to inspect Stormfugl. She was bigger than I remembered, made of dark wood with a high, blind-headed prow, not the traditional long-nosed dragon, but a sinister head with an inner circle of a screaming, open-toothed mouth. She was much deeper than the Sea Stallion, her sides ten feet high as she sat on the ground, and there was a good deal of water sloshing about in her bottom; we let it out in a long, muddy stream and spent the next hour trying to shove a pen-knife into her timbers. All sound. She’d need new rudder hangings, and we’d go over the rigging, but there were no expensive repairs. I phoned the good news to Mr Berg and left Anders to organise his engine while I calculated quantities of anachronistic paint and varnish and talked to the chiefs of the nearest rowing clubs: Eid, Delting, and Northmavine.