The Body in the Bracken Page 6

  I shook my head. He was in his fifties, with dark hair that was starting to recede, leaving a widow’s peak with a plume of white in its centre, and cut in sideburns over the cheeks, Elvis-style. Younger, he might have had something of the King’s good looks: the strong nose and cheekbones, the dark-lashed eyes, the confidence in his ability to charm. He was wearing a dark shirt, with a cowboy thong at the neck, and dark trousers. Unmarried, I deduced, or more likely divorced, and joining the lonely hearts club at the boating club bar when everyone else was awash with in-laws.

  Jeemie slid off his stool and held out his hand. ‘Jeemie Ridland. An’ you’re Cass. I’m heard all about your exploits.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said drily. ‘They’ll have grown arms and legs in the telling.’

  He gave me an uncertain look, smoothed quickly over. ‘I’ll get this, Magnie.’

  ‘No, no, I’m only having the one.’ Solo female sailors didn’t take drink from strangers. I handed Magnie the coins, and turned back to Jeemie. ‘Have you been at Grobsness long?’

  I knew Grobsness of course, though from the sea. It was built after the Viking fashion with the house and byre in one line, and a little porch in the middle, all painted dazzling white. It lay above a west-facing beach of white sand at the very end of an asphalt track off a single-track side road. In summer, the fields around were green; in the low sun of winter, the rigs and foundations of a whole community of croft houses showed up as ghosts on the brown hills.

  ‘Two years noo.’ He launched into a selling spiel. ‘I’m got a peerie antiques business there. I do a bit o’ repair work an’ all – you ken, second-hand TVs and radios and computers and the like. There’s aye folk willing to pick up a second TV for the bairns’ room at a reasonable price, and I trained as an electrical engineer, so I ken how to fix them up for sale. Recycling.’

  ‘Jewellery and all, one of the camping van ladies was saying,’ Magnie added. He gave me a sideways flutter of one eyelid. ‘Boanie rings, she said, for an engagement, maybe.’

  Jeemie must have caught my annoyed expression, for he changed the subject quickly. ‘Oh, whatever folk want to sell. Now I’m kent, folk ask me if they’ve a house clearance, or a flitting. No big gear, just peerie tables, ornaments, china, unless it’s a right antique I can’t bear to pass by.’

  ‘So,’ Magnie took up the conversation again, ‘Jeemie has a fine business out there at Grobsness, and he has a story I thought would be in your line. You mind how you get to Grobsness, you drive out past the Pierhead pub, in Voe, and then up into the hills, and past the Gonfirth loch, then you turn off to the right, to the Grobsness road. Well, up by the loch – on you go, Jeemie, tell Cass about your njuggle.’

  I heard Gavin’s soft voice: one of the best attested kelpie sightings. I drew a bar stool over and encouraged Cat up onto my lap. ‘A njuggle?’

  Jeemie flushed, and made a reluctant face. Maybe he’d not had enough drink to try his story on a sober audience. ‘A young lass like Cass is no wanting to hear me yarning all night,’ he protested to Magnie.

  ‘It sounds a good story,’ I said encouragingly.

  ‘Oh, I dinna ken …’ Jeemie said, in an unconvincing display of modesty, with a sharp sideways glance at me.

  Magnie leaned his elbows on the bar, and took over. ‘Well, lass, the police were after Jeemie. You ken how it is sometimes, maybe a neighbour’s mentioned that you’re driving with a drop ower muckle, or the pub’s had a word … but however it came about, Jeemie got word that the police had taken to hanging about in the old quarry at the Pierhead closing time.’

  Jeemie nodded gloomily. ‘They were after me,’ he confirmed. ‘So, to get around them, I decided to leave the car in the passing place by the peerie loch next to Gonfirth loch, and walk down the hill to the pub, and back up the hill again at closing time. If there was no sign of them I’d take the car from there, and if I spotted them, I’d just walk all the way home.’

  Perfectly reasonable, if the idea of keeping under the limit was dismissed out of hand. It would only be a mile, say, to the loch, or a mile and a half, and another two home, all on good asphalt track. A hour’s walk, with the drink to cushion it, and a bonny one on a summer night, through the green hills, or in winter, with the sky blazing with stars above you, and the mirrie dancers shimmering like a luminous archway.

  Jeemie settled himself more comfortably on the bar counter. ‘So this night I set out from the pub. November, it was, and there shoulda been a full moon, but it was one of these nights of steekit mist, rolling over the hills and filling in along the road, you ken the way.’

  I could imagine it: the white mist thick as smoke on the road, swirling away to reveal the hills rumpled with withered heather, ditches bedraggled with autumn rain, then closing over again to blankness.

  ‘I had me blinkie with me, but it was that thick I could only just see the white line along the side of the road, and only the next ten yards of it at that. The warst o’ it was the silence. The mist seemed to blot aathing out, except me ain footsteps. I could hear me ain hert beating in me breast.’ Jeemie gave me a sheepish look. ‘You ken what it’s like, you stop being sure of where you are, and I was beginning to think I was lost, when the mist cleared enough that I saw the crash barrier of the loch just on me right hand, and I kent where I was again. Then I began to feel gluffed.’ Frightened, he meant. ‘I couldna tell you why, but I began to stride along as if me life depended apo’ it, without looking behind me. I didna want to look, you ken, I thought there might be something ahint me I’d be better no’ to see, though it was like I could feel it breathing down my neck. I just wanted to be in me car and out of there. I could see the water on the other side of the barrier, gleaming like a trap, and I had the feeling that it was unchancy, as if something might come out of it at ony moment.’

  He paused to lift his pint with hands that trembled slightly, and took a long drink. I could imagine him, striding faster and faster along the road, torch in one hand, and the coal-black loch at his side.

  ‘Then I heard something scrabbling on me left hand side, bigger and heavier as a sheep, coming down the hill towards me. I lookit, but there was nowhere for me to hide, unless the mist covered me. I was ready to shite me breeks, I was that faerd. Then I heard hooves like a pony’s, and down it came, galloping across the side of the hill above the far side of the loch, right towards me.’

  His eyes were turned away from us now, seeing it again. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead below the dark peak of hair with its plume of white. ‘Black it was, but shining moony-way in the mist, like the mareel on the sea in summer, and wi’ green weed in its mane, and no white onywye. It was as big as a right Shetland pony, no these miniatures they breed nowadays, but the workhorses we had when I was a bairn. It came up to me, and reared its head, and I saw its face.’ He shuddered, and closed his eyes for a moment. ‘A great big head it had, on a thick neck like a stallion’s, and teeth that snicked white as the mist, and eyes like the bottom of this pint pot. It reared up at me, like it was angry at finding me there, and then it swerved sideways, and I saw the great bush of a tail between its back legs, where the wheel would be.’

  That puzzled me for a moment, until I remembered that the Shetland njuggle had a sort of wheel, hidden by its tail, that propelled it through the waters.

  ‘It went capering across the road, and plunged down the hill between the big loch and the peerie one, and clattered over the stones at the water’s edge. Then I heard splashing, and in it went, not stopping like a live horse would, it just drove straight into the loch and swam out into the mist. Well, I ran for me car, never looking ahead to see if there was any sign of the police further along the road, I’d a welcomed a patrol of policemen right then, peerie bag or no peerie bag. I scrambled in and locked the door behind me, and my hands were shaking that muckle it took me three goes to get the key in the ignition. I got away from there and drove home as if the fiend of hell was after me, and I’m no’ sure that h
e wasna.’

  He finished his pint in a oner, and passed the glass over to Magnie for re-filling. ‘An I’m tried ever since to talk mesel out of what I saw, but I ken exactly what it was, and I’ll no’ be walking by the Loch of Gonfirth on a misty night ever again in me life, na, na, no’ even if it means going home sober. And afore you ask, I had four pints, I counted them up in me head that night, four pints and twa nips. It wasn’t the drink affecting me eyes or me brain.’ He shook his head. ‘It was the njuggle of Gonfirth, and I don’t mind telling you I hope never to meet him again. And as for fishing on the loch, or even setting a net, which I’ll admit I may have done from time to time, I wouldna do that if you paid me a fortune.’ He shuddered. ‘Go on a boat on that loch? Na, na, no’ me.’

  He stopped there, and Magnie didn’t interrupt the silence, one yarning expert paying tribute to another. It’d been well-told, I gave him that. All the same, as I said to Magnie later, once Jeemie had drunk his pint, wished us a good New Year, and headed off to his car, it was all a bit too Hound of the Baskervilles. ‘The mist, and the noise, and the great black animal. All we needed was the baying of the hounds.’

  ‘Lass,’ Magnie said, shocked, ‘you’re no’ going to say there’s no such thing as njuggles.’

  ‘That Njuggleswater on the way to Sumburgh,’ I retorted, ‘the peerie lochan just before the curve into Quarff. It may look deep enough in winter, but when it dries out in summer you can see it was only two feet deep. How could anything possibly live there?’

  ‘Naebody kens how deep Gonfirth Loch is,’ Magnie pointed out.

  ‘Apart from the Ordnance Survey?’

  Magnie gave one of his rare smiles. ‘It’s a good yarn, and you’ll no say you didn’t enjoy it.’

  ‘It was a great yarn, and he telt it brawly well, once you’d got him started.’ My suspicious mind was still turning possibilities over. ‘What’s this antiques place of his called?’

  Magnie gave me a sideways look, conceding a point. ‘He re-named it The Njuggle’s Nest. It’s even got a Facebook page, the man’s a great one for his computers.’

  ‘I can just see the signboard. All the same,’ I conceded, ‘either the man should be on the stage, or something gave him a right gluff up by the Gonfirth Loch.’

  Magnie washed Jeemie’s glass and set it down foursquare in the middle of the counter. His voice was so casual that I went on the alert straight away. ‘Your pal Inga’s oldest lass, she’s into these horses, isn’t she? Why don’t you ask her about njuggles?’

  His grey-green eyes met mine, giving nothing away. He wasn’t going out of his way to help the police, but he thought there was something going on. ‘I’ll maybe do that,’ I said.

  Magnie nodded, put his drying cloth away, leaned his elbows on the bar, and went into interrogation mode. ‘Now, then, lass, how got you on down south over Christmas?’

  Chapter Eight

  Three lots of interrogations , I wanted to grumble to Gavin over the phone later, but I didn’t want to sound like I was pushing him to declare a relationship. When will we meet again? We hadn’t even mentioned that. ‘How’s your murder going?’

  ‘Forensics is still on holiday. Our police doctor says there’s no sign of bullets or a bash on the head. He’s male, aged between thirty-five and fifty, height just under six foot, medium build, an athletic type. Death could have been between three and six months ago. Unless forensics comes up with something, like his DNA being on the police computer, that’s not much to go on. There’s nobody like that reported missing for this area, or for the whole Highlands and Islands … or rather, there is, but we don’t chase up adult men who’ve walked out on their wives.’

  I thought of Julie, coming home to an empty house, and a note on the table. Ivor would fit Gavin’s description, if he’d not come home first.

  ‘All the same,’ Gavin finished, ‘he’s not obviously one of the ones we know about from round here. We’ll start going round dentists on Monday.’

  ‘I was thinking about the clothes. If you’d found him clad, you’d be thinking careless tourist, or climbing accident. So why was it so urgent they had to be removed?’

  ‘According to our doctor, it doubles the speed of decomposition. Whoever left him there didn’t want him recognisable. Our artists will do a face reconstruction, of course, but I’ve never been convinced by the “meet the ancestors” approach. A clothes description would help.’

  ‘But whoever left him there would know you could match his teeth to any name that seemed a possible, from the height and colouring.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  I snuggled myself down more comfortably into my berth. ‘So the person isn’t on any missing list that you have; he’s from elsewhere.’

  ‘That might follow,’ Gavin agreed, cautiously.

  ‘Suppose his clothes would have been an indicator of where to look for him.’ I remembered my thinking as we’d walked downhill from the body. ‘If you’d found a woman in a Musto jacket and a Bergen T-shirt, 5’2”, with black hair in a plait, then notices around the sailing clubs of Norway would have come up with my name inside a week.’

  ‘You wouldn’t necessarily have worn those for a walk up the hill.’

  ‘I would if I’d been on holiday, travelling light. Or a carbine hook in the pocket would have directed you to the climbing clubs.’

  ‘You think the important thing for the perpetrator is that the body should remain unrecognised?’

  ‘Which means that recognition of the body would lead straight to the murderer.’

  ‘A walking partner, a climbing buddy, a fellow sailor.’ The phone rattled as he shook his head and launched into dispirited speech. ‘Kenny’s given me a list of all the cars he remembers, but people often drive down to the head of the loch, so he pays them no attention. Boats come in, more motorboats than yachts, and canoes and kayaks galore. We’re already circulating B&Bs and youth hostels, and you know how many of those there are in the Highlands. A tall, dark man, between thirty-five and fifty, travelling with a companion or companions, sometime between July and September. I’m trying not even to think of the number of names we’re going to be following up. The whole station’s wishing we’d stayed up on the ridge and approached the cave from the other side.’

  I wished it myself. That had been our private moment. I could hear in his voice how much he minded sharing it. Now his whole world knew about me. There’d be jokes at the coffee machine, comments about him hoping for a Shetland case. My whole past, Alain’s death, would be laid bare. I wondered if his Commander had already called him in: “Not the wife for a promising officer.”

  Gavin didn’t seem to be thinking of that. ‘At best we can wait until we’ve got a list of names, then we can bundle them into areas and pass them on to other police forces.’

  ‘Good luck,’ I said, and meant it.

  ‘Without luck,’ he said, ‘this one will lie in an un-named grave. What else have you been up to?’

  ‘Lunch with Maman and Dad,’ I said, and remembered Maman’s request. ‘I don’t suppose you could run a man from here into your police computer? He’s done a runner.’ I explained about Ivor Hughson, and Robert-John’s debts.

  ‘I can, but from the sound of him, finding him won’t solve your man’s problems. He’s probably amassed a new set of debts to add to the old.’

  ‘Dad thought that too. Otherwise, I’ve been yarning,’ I said, and told him Jeemie’s njuggle story.

  ‘Interesting,’ he commented.

  ‘Unless he ought to be in Hollywood,’ I said, ‘he really did see something. The sweat was pouring off his brow as he remembered it.’

  ‘Hound of the Baskervilles,’ Gavin said, just as I’d done. ‘A bit of phosphorescent paint, the misty night, a good susceptible witness, and your legend’s up and running.’

  ‘Gonfirth,’ I retorted, ‘is what you’d call a lochan up in the hills, a mile each direction from the nearest house, and I can’t think of any kind of skulduggery anyone woul
d be up to there, that they’d need a phantom horse to divert attention from.’ I tried to remember what the purpose of the original hound of the Baskervilles was … to terrify Sir Charles to death? Well, if someone had been after Jeemie, they’d failed; he looked healthy enough. ‘I’m not sure he’s that susceptible either. He’s using it as publicity for his antiques shop.’

  ‘I don’t know where Loch Ness would be without the monster.’

  ‘That’s probably libel, in someone who works in Inverness.’

  ‘Slander,’ my policeman replied. ‘I wouldn’t dare write it down. If it’s good, clear peaty water, how about an illicit still? Didn’t Shetland have a distillery that went bust?’

  ‘Way back,’ I said. ‘I can’t remember the ins and outs of it. Lunna Bridge Whisky, something like that?’

  ‘Hang on,’ Gavin said. ‘It’s coming to me.’

  There was a pause, while he teased his memory, and I teased mine: someone had mentioned whisky. Magnie? No. Then it came back: Inga’s brother-in-law, John-Magnus: Ivor was with that whisky firm that went bust. Ivor again.

  ‘It went missing,’ Gavin said. ‘The firm was from Manchester, and they got permission to build a distillery, but while it was being built they did the first distilling on a smaller still, two 195-litre casks.’

  It was ringing a far-distant bell, from the summer before I’d left Shetland. ‘There was a fuss about it. They were calling it Shetland whisky, but the only Shetland ingredient was the water.’ John Georgeson, councillor, had led the denunciations: using Shetland’s name for publicity, no jobs for the locals. That hadn’t been true, if Ivor had been working for them, but it was the kind of thing he would say. ‘And there was an idea too that they’d set up to go bust, you know, a profit-losing scheme, for tax.’

  ‘Now who’s talking slander? It wasn’t a lot of whisky, five hundred standard size bottles, that were pre-sold as collector items, half to locals and half to dealers. Though why anyone would pay fancy prices for something they don’t ever plan to drink beats me.’