A Handful of Ash Read online

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Just down from Nan’s, in the Spanish closs.’

  I nodded.

  ‘I didn’t tell Nan about it, though she’ll find out soon enyough, when the wife that comes to do her shopping comes in. She was that upset about it all that I didn’t want her to think –’ He came to a dead stop, gave me an uncertain look, as if he was checking that I wasn’t laughing at him, then finished, in a rush, ‘She thought she’d seen Auld Clootie.’

  Nate’s words echoed in my head. ‘Auld Clootie – the Devil?’

  ‘Or the ghost of Black Patie – you ken, Earl Patrick, him that built the castle.’

  ‘What did she say she’d seen?’ I asked.

  ‘Well,’ Kevin said. He sat back on his hunkers and prepared to make a story of it. ‘See, we usually have a bowl o’ her own soup, an’ I get a pie to go with it, and we heat that in the oven while we eat the soup. She kens when I’m comin’, so she has it all ready, so we have time for a cup o’ tay afterwards, an a chat. So I kent there was something wrong when I came up the stairs and there was no smell o’ soup. For a moment I thought –’ I saw it in his eyes, the darkened hallway, the long stair, fearing what he’d find at the end. ‘I called out, “Nan!” and she replied, “Is dat dee, boy?”, sounding awful nervous. So I called back, “Yea, Nan, it’s me,” and then I went in. She was in her usual chair, by the fire, wi’ her taatit rug over her knees and her stick by her, but sitting awful huddled, as if she’d been there all morning. So I got the soup on, and the oven, and asked her if she wanted to just eat where she was. Well, that got her up and to the table.’ He laughed and imitated her. “Boy, when I’m no able to eat my meals at a table wi’ the family du’d better book me space in the graveyard.” So we ate the soup and once there was a bit more colour in her face, then I asked her what was wrong. And she said, just like that, “I’m no long for this world, boy, for I’m seen Auld Clootie in the village last night, just as clear as I see you.”

  Kevin paused to take a swig from his water bottle. ‘I said, “What d’you mean, Nan?” and she told me the whole story. Just as she was going to bed, she’d gone across to the window, to see if there was any rain coming up the voe, so that she knew whether to have her window open or shut. Well, she looked across at the castle, and she saw a black creature coming towards the house, “tall, he was,” she said, “and black as the inside of a chimney, with his horns and his tail, and a misshapen hump on his back, and a cloud of evil around him, and the hounds of Hell at his back, and if it wasn’t Auld Clootie then it was the ghost of Black Patie, and it’s no better luck to see him. And there he came, slowly, and looking up and around, I saw his face, as if he was seeking another victim to carry off.” She didn’t want to do anything to attract his attention, so she just stepped backwards and backwards, out of the room, and closed the door behind her, and went into the living room, where the curtains were shut tight, and sat by the fire with her rug. She’d stayed there all night, and all morning, till I came, and I was right worried about how cold she’d gotten, but once she’d had the soup inside her, and a cup o’ tay, her colour cam back.’

  ‘What time does your nan usually go to bed?’

  ‘Half past ten, on the dot.’ He went back into his nan’s voice. ‘“I’m aye gone to bed then, since I was a married wife, and there wouldn’t be half of this carries-on and divorces if aabody else did that same.”’

  I was silent for a moment. His story told, he sat watching me, expecting me to make sense of it. I could make a start. I remembered the way Annette had lain, as if she dropped all of a heap – or had been dropped. ‘Do you think that what she saw was maybe someone carrying poor Annette’s body to where I found it?’

  ‘I wondered that. Would the time be about right?’

  ‘Bang on.’

  ‘Then I’ll call in on me way home and tell her you said that.’

  I smiled. ‘Me saying it’ll cut no ice with anyone as tough as your granny. Tell her about poor Annette, and let her work it out for herself.’

  ‘Oh, no, she approves o’ you,’ Kevin said. ‘I’m telt her all about you being at the college. She used to sail herself, Nan, wi’ her faither, and they won cups at all the regattas, until he got over old and had to give the boat up. She can just see your boat from her cludgie window, and she aye looks to see if you’re home, last thing at night. She says it’s awful fine to see the gold glow o’ candlelight from your window. She misses the old days, you ken, with lamps and candles and fires. She kens fine the hydro is more convenient, but it’s no the same, for her. In fact …’ Suddenly, he blushed scarlet. ‘She said if ever you were passing she’d like fine to meet you, or if I brought you for lunch one day.’

  ‘I’d like fine to meet her,’ I said. ‘And you tell her about Annette. It wasn’t the Devil that did that. He’s no loose in Scalloway yet.’

  I spent the rest of the lesson brooding about that snippet of information. A misshapen person, a tall person with a dead girl on one shoulder, coming from the castle. The inference was clear. It was the castle that Annette had visited at dead of night. Why shouldn’t I go and meet people, if I think they can help me? But what sort of people would be meeting in the ruins of Scalloway Castle so late? I could hear Kevin’s nan’s voice answering: ‘Nobody up to any good, you mark my words.’

  I was heading for the canteen to collect Cat when I heard a burst of laughter from inside the kitchen, that uncertain kind of laughter when someone’s being pleasurably scared. It was yesterday’s three crows, folllowed by Sarah, the kitchen girl, all coming out in a flock, dressed in their leather and grey fantasy wear, with full warpaint. Nate was behind them.

  ‘… claw marks,’ he was saying, ‘on her throat.’ He stretched one hand menacingly towards the short-haired lesser crow, fingers crooked. ‘As if the Devil had gripped her. She’d meddled with what she didn’t understand, and a demon came to get her.’ His hand closed on the girl’s throat. She gave a protesting shriek. ‘And then,’ Nate said, suddenly catching her off balance and hoisting her over one shoulder in a fireman’s life, ‘it carried her soul off, like this!’

  He spun her around, then set her back on her feet, his face serious. ‘I’m telling you, the Devil’s come to Scalloway.’

  Chapter Six

  It was just after four when I left the college. I stepped out into a grey murk, then suddenly there was sunlight from the black sky, magnifying every grass tussock’s shadow, making the fence posts and tall ditch grass into a ragged comb across the road. The light was harsh and yellow, as though before a thunderstorm, the bleached hill grass brightened to pale gold. It could have been a summer evening … then the clouds closed over the sun, leaving a slanted shaft falling on the east hill. The light was dimming already. The tide was halfway in; along the westshore, sandpipers stabbed the dark seaweed with slender, curved beaks.

  I clambered aboard Khalida, mechanically checked her ropes, then went below, closing the washboards after me, and sat down in the corner seat. I’d put the kettle on in a moment. I leant my head against the varnished bulkhead, and closed my eyes – then, before I knew it, the long windows were darkened, and my mobile was ringing. It was Gavin.

  ‘We’re at the marina gate,’ he said. ‘Can you let us in?’

  Us ? I thought. I creaked up and headed along to let them in: Gavin and Sergeant Peterson. I motioned them ahead of me onto Khalida, reached into the locker to turn the gas on, then lit the hanging lantern and put the kettle on the stove before I closed the washboards again.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I fell asleep after college. It’ll soon warm up, with the gas on.’ I motioned Sergeant Peterson towards the corner I’d just left. ‘Sit down.’

  Gavin had a white carrier bag which was filling my cabin with a wonderfully savoury smell. He reached for the anti-slip mat to lay below it. It was strange and familiar to see his green-jacketed arm stretching to the right place, his countryman’s hand laying the mat out and setting the carrier bag on
top. ‘Lemon chicken, as requested, and egg fried rice. Are these the plates to use?’

  ‘Let me give them a dry first.’ They were stored in the fiddled shelf above the cooker, and the top one was always damp with condensation. Gavin sat down in his usual place, without fuss, as if it had just been yesterday that we’d shared a Frankie’s fish supper at Brae. The lamp sparked red lights in his russet hair, and brought shadows under his eyes, as if he was short of sleep. He looked straight at me and smiled.

  ‘Good to see you again, Cass. Let’s eat before we do the official stuff. The sergeant and I have been hard at work all afternoon.’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ I said. I doled out the plates and found eating irons while Sergeant Peterson opened the boxes: lemon chicken, those little orange-brown worms of beef, and something with prawns and dark mushrooms. There were two boxes of rice and one of noodles. Cat’s whiskers twitched. I chopped one slice of my chicken up for him, ladled a generous helping on my own plate, then sat on the engine box to enjoy it.

  One of the things I liked about Gavin was that he didn’t feel the need to fill silence with chatter. We ate to the noise of waves tapping the hull, and bubbles rattling in the kettle until its low hiss turned to a shrill whistle, and I rose to turn it off. ‘Coffee, tea, drinking chocolate?’

  ‘Coffee,’ Gavin said. ‘I don’t expect to be in bed for a good while.’

  ‘For me too,’ Sergeant Peterson said. ‘Thanks.’

  I filled the percolator and set it between them, made myself a drinking chocolate, then sat back on my box, nursing my mug and waiting. Gavin nodded at Sergeant Peterson, and she took her notebook out. ‘Official stuff?’

  ‘Go you,’ I said. Cat jumped up on my lap to wash his whiskers.

  ‘Well,’ Gavin said. ‘Let’s go back to how you found the body. What did you touch, to ascertain that she was dead?’ He was on duty now. His voice lost some of his Highland lingering on the ‘s’, the precision of the final consonants.

  ‘Her hand first,’ I said. ‘I lifted the hand that was stretched out towards the door, to feel the pulse, and there was none, so I laid it down again and tried her neck. I had to loosen her scarf to do that, not much, just enough to slide my fingers in. I was pretty sure she was gone, but I wanted to double check. And then – yes, I felt the scratches on her neck, under my fingers, so I turned her head to the light, to see – when I’d met her, in the morning, I’d noticed the scratches, and I wanted to know if it was her.’

  ‘Did you replace her as you found her?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Did you touch anything else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Her bag, her jacket?’

  ‘No. But I wondered – there was something odd about the way they were lying –’

  ‘Someone with gloved hands had handled the bag, and the purse inside.’

  ‘She wasn’t wearing gloves,’ I said. ‘Not yesterday morning either. It’s not really been cold enough yet – last night was the first time I’ve had mine on.’ I remembered Kate saying the police had asked how much money she should have had in her purse. ‘Was there anything missing?’

  ‘Her mother thought she wouldn’t have had much money on her, and nor she did. Her bag had all the other things you’d expect: tissues, make-up, old bus tickets, a cinema ticket. Nothing unusual. No keys, but the house door isn’t locked, so she wouldn’t need them. We thought, from the way her jacket was lying, that someone had searched her pockets too.’

  ‘But what for? What might she have had that someone else would want?’

  Gavin spread his hands. ‘There was money in her purse, and credit cards, so it wasn’t robbery.’ He paused for emphasis. ‘Except that she’d taken £100 out of her account yesterday, at the Cashline. That money wasn’t in her bag, nor in her room, and we can’t find that she bought anything in town.’

  ‘I asked the obvious places,’ Sergeant Peterson said. ‘Clothes shops, jewellery, hairdresser. Nothing.’

  ‘A hundred pounds,’ I echoed. To me that sounded riches beyond imagination, but I didn’t know what a banker’s daughter considered small change. I paused, stroking Cat. He sat up straighter to let me scratch behind his ears, then curled up, tail over nose. ‘Have you done the post-mortem yet?’

  ‘It’s tomorrow. I can tell you informally that there’s no obvious cause of death.’

  My mouth fell open. ‘None?’

  ‘She wasn’t struck, stabbed, smothered, or poisoned with an irritant poison. There are no external signs of anything that would have caused death. That doesn’t mean she didn’t, say, inhale fumes, or drink a poison that didn’t cause vomiting.’

  Inhale fumes … ‘Did you notice the ash on her hand?’

  He smiled. ‘Noticed, drew a diagram of where, took samples for analysis.’

  ‘Maybe she brewed something over a fire.’ I had a sudden picture of witches standing around a cauldron. ‘Listen, there’s something I found out today.’ I told them what Kenny’s great-granny had seen.

  ‘A tall, misshapen figure coming from the castle,’ Gavin repeated. He looked across at Sergeant Peterson. ‘Investigate that, once we’ve finished here. Door-to-door, focusing on that time. Tomorrow, we’ll look at the castle. Find out about keys, and if anyone’s been in today. Make sure it won’t be visited again until we’ve been in.’ He was talking to her as I’d talk to Anders, the captain giving orders, and I felt a pang of jealousy. Then he turned back to me. ‘Can you describe those scratches you saw yesterday morning?’

  It seemed an odd request, since he’d seen them himself. ‘What I saw –’ I visualised it, standing outside the garden door, with the wind tugging at my hair. ‘It was on the right side of her neck, her left. I didn’t see the other side. It was just a glimpse as she was catching her scarf. There was one long scratch, and several shorter ones. I thought she’d maybe been playing with a cat that had gone for her, then I realised there was like a bruise around them, a darker indentation, like dog’s claws. They have two pointers.’

  Gavin and Sergeant Peterson looked across at each other, a spark of understanding and interest that excluded me. Sergeant Peterson leant forward. ‘How old would you say they were?’

  ‘Not fresh, there was a scab on the scratches. The day before, or earlier than that.’ When had Nate said he’d seen her with scratches round her neck? ‘You should maybe talk to Nate Halcrow. He told me he’d seen the scratches on her neck three or four days ago.’

  ‘Nate Halcrow,’ Gavin repeated. His eyes met Sergeant Peterson’s again, and she nodded. ‘Were they friends? Why was he talking to you about her?’

  ‘He was worried about her. I’m not sure if they were close friends, but they’d acted together in a Hallowe’en play. You’d need to ask him. He’d seen her by the water, one night, and he was worried she might be suicidal.’

  We were caught in a circle of lantern-light now. The long panes of Khalida’s windows let in only the silver gleam of the marina lights. I stood up to draw the curtains across on their elastic, to shut the cold and dark out, keep the warmth in. The gold glow intensified without the silver to dilute it, gleaming on Sergeant Peterson’s fair hair, picking up gold flecks in the varnished wood. She drained the last of her coffee and set the cup on the table. ‘Do you know where he lives?’

  I shook my head. There was a rattle against the window, as if someone was throwing pebbles. I remembered I’d smelled snow earlier. It would be a cold night.

  ‘Number 2,’ she said. ‘The house her hand was stretched towards. If she was carried there, someone wanted us to think she was beseeching him for help, or pointing to him as her murderer. Which would you go for?’

  I shrugged. ‘It could be either.’

  Gavin leaned towards me. ‘Were the clawmarks you describe definitely part of the scratches?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They were at the top of each scratch, as if the claw had dug in, then trailed down her neck.’

  ‘There were new marks on her throat.’ Serg
eant Peterson made an abrupt move, as if she didn’t want him to say this to a suspect. Gavin’s eyes flicked across to her; he nodded. ‘Don’t repeat this, Cass.’ I liked the way his voice lingered on the ‘ss’ of my name. ‘She had marks around her neck, made either just before her death or just after, indented, bruised claw marks.’

  ‘But she wasn’t strangled?’

  Gavin shook his head. ‘Was it light enough for you to see her face – her expression?’

  ‘I could see it very clearly.’ I could see it now. Gavin waited, then, when I didn’t speak, made a gesture with one hand.

  ‘I don’t want to put words into your mouth. By the time I saw her, all the expression was gone. She looked peaceful.’

  I was glad, for Kate and Peter’s sake. ‘She looked – not frightened. No, maybe a little frightened, but more shocked. Not terrified.’ Not as if something horrible had stretched a clawed hand out towards her. ‘More as if –’ The same comparison kept coming back. ‘As if she was a child caught taking sweeties in a shop. Surprise, guilt.’ I spread my hands. ‘I’m sorry, that’s the best I can do.’

  ‘Surprise, or guilt,’ Gavin repeated.

  The words suddenly raised an echo. Claw marks on her throat, as if the Devil had gripped her … ‘Nate knows about the fresh marks,’ I said. ‘He was telling the other kitchen worker and her friends.’ I remembered the shadow behind the frosted glass, the closing door I’d heard. ‘I bet it was him who came out to look, then went back in quickly when he heard me coming. He kept watching.’

  Gavin nodded, as if he’d already worked that out. ‘And left you banging on doors to get a phone book. That’s not the act of a friend.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘Maybe he was the person who searched her bag and pockets. We need to find out what someone was looking for.’ He rose, and brushed a stray grain of rice from his kilt. ‘Make him our first interview tomorrow, Sergeant.’ He turned back to me. ‘Her mobile was in her pocket too. The last call she’d made, at 21.43, was to Nate Halcrow’s house.’