The Body in the Bracken Read online

  ‘They do it with wine too.’

  ‘The firm went bust, but because it was an asset, the casks were kept, maturing away, until the fifteen years were up. The receivers opened them last summer, and one was whisky right enough, but the other one had only water inside.’

  I considered that for a moment. ‘Had there only ever been water, or had someone swapped it round?’

  ‘They couldn’t tell. There was nothing to prove it was the same cask that had been filled with whisky a decade ago. They’re handmade, with numbers, but the record of the numbers couldn’t be found, and there’s been no sign of Lunna Bridge Whisky for sale.’

  ‘This Ivor Hughson, that’s done a runner,’ I said, ‘he worked for the company.’

  Gavin went silent. ‘Interesting timing,’ he said at last. ‘The other cask was valued at £10,000. Of course that went to the big creditors. As usual the small people got nothing. I’ll tug the grapevine, but don’t get too hopeful.’ He gave a huge yawn. ‘I had to be up at the crack of dawn. Oidhche mhath, beannachd leat.’

  Good sleep, blessings. ‘Night night tae dee,’ I replied.

  Thursday 2nd January

  Low Water at Brae UT 02.32, 0.6m,

  High Water 08.45, 1.8m

  Low Water 15.01, 0.6m

  High Water 21.23, 1.8m

  Moonrise 08.25

  Sunrise 09.15

  Sunset 15.02

  Moonset 15.59

  New moon.

  You canna judge da deepness o’ da grief bi da length o’ da crepe veil.

  You can’t judge what people feel by their outward show.

  Chapter Nine

  My breath smoked cold in the air, and the cabin floor was icy to my bare feet. I got dressed fast and headed for a hot shower in the boating club, pulling up my hood against the cold easterly wind. I re-dressed in full cold-weather gear (two layers of thermals under my jeans and best gansey, and polar-expedition style socks) before heading out to assess the day properly. The wind had risen again, pushing the tide into the marina entrance and slapping the waves up the boating club slip – a high tide with the black moon, one of the highest of the year, almost touching the road width of tarmac between the slip and the clubhouse.

  I tightened my halyards and did the automatic walk round all split-pins and shackles, to check nothing had worked loose overnight, then went for a wander along the pontoon. A winter marina was a strange place; there were gaps in the row of berths like missing teeth, and the yachts looked diminished without their masts. You couldn’t believe these little cockleshells had spent the summer going to Orkney, Scotland, Bergen, Iceland. Over on shore, a couple of yachts were laid up, landed whales trailing slim keels, and the forest of masts was stacked into a holder, like tree trunks waiting to be cut up.

  Of course my feet took me to Ivor Hughson’s yacht. I was becoming intrigued. To just drop everything and run, like that … I’d done it at sixteen, the easiest age, but in your late thirties, to leave a wife, a business, and just get on the ferry with only what would fit in your car, was harder to understand. Unless, of course, he was involved in some dangerously shady business over the missing whisky, I thought, with vague ideas of 1920s prohibition gangsters. £10,000 didn’t seem enough to do a runner for. We don’t chase up adult men who’ve walked out on their wives, Gavin had said. I wondered if Ivor was relieved now, wherever he was, or regretful at having burnt his boats so thoroughly. On one of the tall ships I’d crewed on, the Astrid, there’d been a man who’d put the past behind him as if it had never been. His accent suggested he’d been brought up in the south of England, but when asked where he came from, he replied that he’d been travelling for years, and he never mentioned anything further back than the start of that voyage: not boats he had sailed in, friends he’d made, nor storms he’d experienced. He simply lived in now. Haunted by guilt over my lover Alain’s death in the Atlantic, I’d envied him, yet I’d wondered how much effort it took, and what memories he was suppressing.

  Looking at Ivor’s boat, I could see it had been a sailor who’d stowed her away for the winter. The eye-catching green and white dodgers had been taken off, the blocks that the control ropes ran through were neatly tucked out of the way, the rudder was lashed amidships, and all spare lengths of rope had been removed. The smoked-glass windows kept my prying gaze out. I tried to remember more about Ivor Hughson, but I’d never paid him much attention. Tricksy, my instinct had said. A charmer who expected the world to bow down for him. A chancer who had cut his losses and left someone else to pick up the pieces.

  I turned away from his boat and went back to Khalida. My next term at the North Atlantic Fisheries College would begin soon enough, and one of the items on the syllabus was ‘lights and daymarks’. I was pretty good on aids to navigation, but the Med resorts hadn’t been frequented by mine-sweepers, tugs towing hazardous material, or anything else an unkind examiner might decide to show us. It wouldn’t hurt to begin my revision.

  I was just doing settling down with a pack of RYA cards when there was a hail from the marina gate. I peered through the cabin window. It was Kevin Irvine, one of my classmates at the North Atlantic Fisheries College in Scalloway. He was a quiet soul with sandy hair and a sprinkling of freckles. I scrambled out of my hatch just as he was beginning to turn away. ‘Come in. What’s all doing with you?’

  He went slightly pink. ‘Well, I was thinking … I heard this boat might be coming up for sale, and I was wondering if you could maybe have a look at it for me.’ My eyes went straight to Ivor Hughson’s boat, behind him on the pontoon. He turned his head towards it. ‘Ivor’s boat – that’s it, is it no’, the white one over there?’

  ‘That one,’ I agreed. ‘Is it for sale after all, then?’

  He nodded. ‘I heard it might be, so I phoned Julie, and she’s coming down at half ten to let me have a look over it, but I thought if you were here you could maybe tell me more.’

  ‘I can tell you a bit,’ I agreed cautiously, ‘but you’d have to get a proper survey done. The Malakoff would ken a marine surveyor. What do you want it for?’

  ‘Well, I thought I’d maybe just have a bit of fun with her at first, try the racing and that, and then go further afield. I aye fancied cruising the fjords of Norway in me own boat.’

  ‘She’s a competitive racing boat, and her sails are all new. I wouldn’t fancy being caught in a real tearer of a North Sea gale in her, but she’d do the fjords fine. Just remember to make a list of the buoys, and cross each off as you pass it.’ His finances were none of my business, but I didn’t think he had this kind of money. ‘She’ll be looking at around twenty-five grand for starting negotiations.’

  Kevin gave me a sideways grin. ‘Yeah, I think I could maybe be a time-waster. I just wanted to get a look at the likely o’ her.’

  I glanced at my watch; just before ten. ‘Come and get a cup of tea, and tell me the news with you from over Christmas.’

  We had just finished our tea when the pontoon gate creaked. One o’ those career women, Harald’s wife had said. Julie Hughson wore smartly cut black trousers over glossy boots, and a donkey-brown suede jacket with wide fur lapels, nipped in at the waist. Her hair was dark brown, cut in that curve-around-the-face style. Her cherry-red scarf matched her gloves, and a navy clipboard was tucked under one arm.

  We scrambled out of Khalida and went along the pontoon to meet her. I didn’t recognise her face at first. I’d never seen her in the bar, waiting for the race to be over, or behind the barbecue at club functions, or dancing with Ivor at the prize-giving. Then I realised there was something familiar after all, but I was visualising her in a T-shirt, with her hair scraped back and damp. In another moment I placed her as one of a rowing crew. Her face was tanned. I’ve just been keeping an eye on the boat for Julie while she’s away, Hubert had said. Maybe she couldn’t bear the Christmas round without Ivor, the sideways glances or the silent sympathy. In her place, I’d have high-tailed it to the Canaries too.

  Close to
, the business impression persisted. Her skin was smoothed with foundation, her brows perfectly plucked, her lips glossily red. Though her smile was receptionist-friendly, her dark eyes gave nothing away: whether she was raging at her husband having done a moonlight, and was selling his boat by way of revenge, or mortified at him leaving Robert-John in the lurch and making reparation, it didn’t show. She could have been a professional saleswoman from a yacht broker’s, instead of the default owner selling her husband’s pride and joy. I made a mental note to tell Kevin to check her title thoroughly.

  She took off her gloves, and held out one hand to Kevin. ‘Julie Hughson.’ Her nails were manicured and French polished, the tips gleaming white. Then she held out her hand to me, raising her brows in a question.

  ‘Cass Lynch,’ I said. ‘I live aboard Khalida there.’

  Her face didn’t change, but her hand jerked in mine. I got a feeling of startled wariness, as if she hadn’t expected Kevin to bring an expert with him. ‘Of course. You were the one teaching the bairns. I saw the pink sails in the voe when I visited me mam.’

  ‘I enjoyed doing it,’ I said.

  ‘I ken nothing about boats, so you’ll have to excuse me floundering at questions, but come aboard and look.’

  She might know nothing, but she went into her spiel as if giving a PowerPoint presentation. ‘It’s a Kirie Feeling, built in 1993, with only one owner before us. Ivor bought her four years ago for £22,000, and she’s been extensively refurbished since. She’s 32 foot overall, with a waterline length of 27 foot.’ She gestured us into the wide cockpit. ‘This is all teak, the benches and floor. There’s a sail locker here, and the engine controls on this side – an 18 horse-power Volvo, top speed 6.5 knots. It’s been regularly maintained, with a service record. There’s a complete sail wardrobe, all new from Kemp Sails last summer, except for the spinnaker, which was original, but had had very little use.’ She fumbled with lifting out the washboards. Below, the boat was laid out in the conventional modern 32-footer fashion: a saloon with a U-shape settee that could convert to a double berth on one side, a single settee on the other, a forepeak with double berth, and an aft cabin just big enough to swing a cat, if you were given to such barbarous practices. The upholstery was in cloud-blue plastic, functional and pleasant. There was a nicely enclosed galley on one side, a chart table with seat on the other. The heads (with shower) was small but functional, and there were a couple of hanging lockers. The cabin was lined with cherry wood, and had a good ‘ship’ feel.

  The main drawback to her, from my point of view, was the lift-up centreboard. My Khalida had a solid keel with a heavy bulb at the bottom, to keep her upright in a sudden gale. Still, centreboarders these days were made so that if the hoist failed, the centreboard fell down. Her grab rails suggested she was intended for serious sailing, and Ivor had taken her to the Western Isles and back.

  There were no signs of that passage now. The berth cushions were bare of sleeping bag, clothes, lifejackets. The chart table and bookshelf were empty, and some of the electronics had been taken away. Julie saw me looking at an empty bracket. ‘I was told I’d get more for the plotter and the AIS set if I sold them separately on eBay, so I took them out just before Christmas.’

  ‘Good advice,’ I agreed. You couldn’t stick an extra five thousand on a yacht price to cover the gadgetry. The multi-function wireless screen for boat speed and direction, depth, and log was still there, and another screen for the wind instruments. They’d cost at least a thousand. I made my voice matter-of-fact. ‘The last trip she did was to the Western Isles, wasn’t it? What sort of weather did you have, and how did she cope with it?’

  ‘It was as much the west of Scotland.’ Her voice was equally businesslike. ‘Down to Skye first, Uig, in the north, and round the western side, Dunvegan, the Talisker factory, Loch Eishort and then to Mallaig. Do you know the area?’

  I nodded. ‘I’ve just come back from there.’

  Her face didn’t move, but her body jerked back from me. Her voice continued, silk-smooth. ‘I came back with him up the Caledonian Canal.’ The white nail-tips glinted as she made a deprecating gesture with one hand. ‘I’m sorry not to be able to give more detail. My husband seemed very pleased with how the long passage had gone.’ She said ‘my husband’ just as she might have said ‘my mechanic’. ‘He’d had some rough weather coming down.’ She gestured towards where the mainsheet would have been, had the mast been up. ‘A pulley on the rope at the stern broke, and he bought a new one.’

  ‘What sort of weather did you have?’

  ‘Oh, good, I suppose.’ Her smile was impersonal as a doll’s. ‘Though you sailors seem to have a totally different scale of weather from us land folk. While I was on board there were some nice sunbathing days, and no midges on the water, of course. There was one loch with fierce downdraughts, because of the height of the hills.’ She faltered and her cheeks flushed, as if that brought up a memory she’d tried to suppress, but her lipstick-red mouth continued steadily. ‘That was a bit too exciting for me, but there never seemed to be any worry about whether the boat could cope.’ She closed the subject with a bright smile. ‘Like I said, I’m not a sailor.’

  I made sure that Kevin saw all the relevant bits, and had a test raise and lower of the centreboard, then I swung myself out of the cabin and left them to talk business. It seemed strange to me that Kevin should waste his time going over a boat he couldn’t afford, but maybe he hoped to beat Julie down, if she was keen to be rid of the boat. I’d hear all about it once college started.

  Chapter Ten

  At midday the sky was leaden, the sea slate purple. The roads were darkened with rain, the rugosa stems in the gardens black, when I walked along to the Co-op to get something for lunch and tea.

  The Brae Co-op was small but efficient, especially in the matter of cut-price vegetables. I got a leek, carrots, and parsnips for soup, and then began to think about tea. I hadn’t had jambalaya for a while, and it was easily made on my gas ring: a bit of frying, to blend the onion, chorizo, pepper, potato, and rice, then it could simmer all afternoon in the wide-necked flask. A shaft of sunlight as I walked back with my bag lit the flowering currant bushes pale red, and highlighted the pale green buds already visible on the stems. One of the houses had Delft blue hyacinths with glossy green leaves in pots on the windowsill. Now the New Year was past, we could look towards spring.

  I’d gone only twenty yards when my phone rang: Inga. ‘Cass, are you particularly busy?’

  ‘No,’ I said, and waited.

  ‘I have to get Charlie off to the boat, and I’ve just realised it’s Peerie Charlie’s friend Orlando’s birthday party. He’s been looking forward to it for ages, but because it’s in the swimming pool, I can’t just drop him off and leave him, someone would need to stay with him.’

  A toddlers’ birthday party in a swimming pool sounded my idea of hell, but I didn’t want Peerie Charlie to miss something that he’d been looking forward to. ‘No problem,’ I said. ‘I’m just leaving the Co-op. Shall I come straight to you?’

  ‘That would be great. You and Charlie could have lunch together. It starts at half past two. I can’t believe I forgot it. My swimsuit should fit you okay.’

  ‘Be with you in five minutes,’ I said. Swimming with a toddler … a pack of toddlers … heaven help me. And what sort of name was Orlando? The child must have soothmoother parents, who didn’t realise he’d be tormented to death once he got to school among the traditional Johns, Kevins, and Garys.

  I started stifling as soon as I stepped into Inga’s house, and had to nip into the lavatory to shed a layer before I could join Peerie Charlie for spaghetti rings on toast in the kitchen.

  ‘Now you behave, boy,’ Inga said, hauling her jacket on. ‘Do what Cass says, and come out of the pool when she tells you.’ She handed me a towel roll and clean Charlie clothes, and intercepted his speculative look at me with the ease of long practice. ‘Or you’ll miss the birthday cake.’ She reached into
the fridge for an ice-cream tub. ‘That’s fancies, for the feast.’ A package wrapped in green and blue dinosaur paper followed. ‘Present. Charlie, did you finish colouring in your card?’

  ‘I finished.’ Charlie raced over to his drawing corner and returned waving a dinosaur shape with green crayon scribbles over it. Inga found an envelope, inserted the card, wrote ‘Orlando’, stuck it to the parcel, and handed them over. The organisation needed to run a family made a tall ship seem child’s play.

  Big Charlie ruffled his son’s hair. ‘See you in twartree weeks, peeriebreeks.’

  ‘Come and wave at the door,’ I said. We both waved fervently as the car tore off in a spurt of gravel, then returned to the kitchen, where the spaghetti rings were glueing themselves to the pan bottom. I divided them onto toast. Charlie climbed into his chair and tackled his share with determination, if not enthusiasm. ‘I eat all this,’ he said, ‘then birthday cake.’ He gave it an ineffectual hack with his child-handled knife. ‘Not crusts though.’

  I conceded the crusts and allowed a yoghurt in a tube. At quarter past two, I gave his orange-stained face and hands a final wash, and we set off along the road towards the leisure centre. The light was already dimming, and the sun had spread an afterglow over the fields, making them the yellowed colour of old film. The rain had stopped, but there was enough wind for Peerie Charlie to hold my hand as an anchor. As we walked, he babbled about a shark in the pool, specially for birthdays. I could see an alarming number of cars disgorging parents and bairns into the leisure centre car park. It was going to be a noisy afternoon.

  The North Mainland leisure centre, like Shetland’s other country leisure centres, had been built to provide facilities for the school beside it during the day, and for the community in the evenings and weekends. The warm air and chlorine smell hit me as soon as we went in. There was a white-uniformed lass in the passage. ‘Aye, aye, Charlie,’ she said. ‘Orlando’s party’s in the pool.’