The Trowie Mound Murders Page 7

  ‘Sandra,’ Anders said. ‘It was not tall enough for Peter.’

  ‘But muffled up in sailing gear it’s hard to tell,’ I said. ‘The jacket looked wrong, as if she was wearing Peter’s. And why go like that in the middle of the night?’

  ‘Tides,’ Anders said promptly.

  I tried to think that one through. The water glinted black two-thirds of the way down the dinghy slip, meaning it was two hours to low water here, two hours to high water Dover. ‘Yes, they’d do Papa Sound at that,’ I conceded, ‘but they’ll have the full force of the tide against them from halfway to Sumburgh.’ I couldn’t remember the Muckle Flugga tides off-hand, but they’d just come from north-over, so I couldn’t see why they’d go back that way.

  Anders shook his head. ‘I don’t know. There’s probably some simple reason.’

  ‘Probably,’ I agreed, with equal lack of conviction.

  We stood a moment longer, listening to the engine sound in the distance. I was about to turn the gas tap and suggest a cup of tea when the note changed. The faint echo of the engine cut to idle, then was switched off. There was a long moment of silence, and then another engine noise: ‘The Bénéteau,’ Anders breathed. I didn’t ask if he was sure, just as he wouldn’t ask me why I’d confidently identified Genniveve as a Rustler. Each to his own.

  Whatever the meeting was, it didn’t take long. The Bénéteau’s engine idled for less than five minutes, then we heard it go into gear and purr off, out towards the open sea, I guessed, for we’d have heard it for longer if it had gone south to Aith or eastwards to Voe. After it had gone, the silence closed in again. We stood there listening under the neon-white lights of the marina, but there was nothing. Genniveve’s engine didn’t start again, nor was there the rattle of sails being raised, or the sharp whirr of a jib being sheeted in on the winch. Only the masthead light burned steadily, visible at two miles, as per Col Regs.

  I didn’t understand it. Sandra and Madge had certainly behaved as if they’d never met, and there’d been no mention, in that chat in the cabin, of ‘I see the Bénéteau’s got in here before us. We were moored next to her in Cullivoe …’ as would have been natural. So why were they leaving like that in the middle of the night, for a secret rendezvous? Perhaps Peter was service, as I’d thought; perhaps Genniveve’s visit here was cover for a meeting with equally undercover colleagues. Magnie had insisted David and Madge were service too – Customs officers, maybe. My do-gooding might have mucked up all sorts of Secret Service planning.

  The distant masthead light went out. Genniveve must have been further west than I’d thought. I tried to make out the shape of the hills in the darkness. If she’d turned into the Rona, it wouldn’t take long for her to reach the open sea: half an hour.

  ‘That’s her, then,’ Anders said. His voice rang out slightly too loudly above the slapping waves.

  ‘Cup of tea?’ I said.

  He shook his head, and was just bending down to swing back into the forepeak when he froze, and straightened again.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  He shrugged it away. ‘I am being affected by your Shetland ghost stories.’

  Now I heard it too, in the dimness under these summer stars, with the misshapen circle of moon shining cold on the black water. A cold shiver tingled up my spine. Faintly, far out in the water, a baby was wailing desolately.

  3

  Gotta taka gamla mana ro.

  (Proverb in the ancient Norn language: take the advice of those older than you.)

  Chapter Seven

  Thursday 2 August

  Tide times for Brae:

  Low Water 03.41 0.3m

  High Water 10.06 2.1m

  Low Water 15.52 0.5m

  High Water 22.11 2.3m

  Moon full

  ‘Did you hear anything odd last night?’ I asked Magnie when he came to join me in the rescue boat.

  He shook his head. ‘I’m suffering that much from insomnia the doctor’s had to give me sleeping tablets.’

  ‘Insomnia?’ I repeated, surprised.

  Magnie went red. ‘See, I’m given up the drink.’

  Now I really had nothing to say. Magnie, on the wagon? ‘What, given it up totally?’

  ‘Altogether. See, lass, I canna forget that woman that died, the film wife. She died because I was too drunk to look to her.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘She’s on my conscience yet. That was the drink that made me do that.’ He took a deep breath, and became as intimate as an older Shetland man goes. ‘I dinna want to be that kind o’ a person – the sort to leave a body in trouble. So it’s never going to happen again.’

  ‘And are you managing – to give it up, I mean?’

  ‘That very next day, after you told me what I’d done, I took all the drink that was in the house, and poured it down the drain. I’m no’ touched a drop since, and I won’t either.’

  He’d been one of the last of the whaling men, Magnie. He’d endured cold and thirst in South Georgia, and even the rum rations running out on one trip. If he put his mind to something, it would be done.

  ‘I don’t much like the sleeping tablets, though,’ he added. ‘I’m thinking I would maybe take up a hobby, you ken, something to do in the nights.’

  ‘Jigsaws.’

  ‘Na, na. Fiddly things for women, they are, and besides, I don’t want fifteen years taken off my eyesight. And don’t you suggest patience neither. The only cards I play is five hundred.’ Five hundred was the Shetland version of bridge, and the boating club was one of the venues for the winter ‘500 nights’. ‘No, I’m had an idee. I thought I might make a model o’ the Oceanic, the liner that went ashore on Foula. You mind, me faither was one of the rescue team when she went ashore, and I helped with the dive in the seventies. I’m even got some copper wire from her.’ He glanced down at the marina and changed the subject. ‘So when did the yacht leave?’

  ‘In the middle of the night,’ I said, and told him the story. He rubbed his bristly chin and considered. ‘They’d come from the north, so south’s more likely, and she’d make six knots. Seven hours to Scalloway. Let’s get these bairns going, then we can do some investigating.’

  I gathered the bairns up for the pre-sail briefing. We noted that the tide was coming in, and was going to be a high one, then checked out the wind, still more east than south, and between 2 and 3, with the occasional gust that set white horses tumbling on the blue water.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘what problems might that cause?’

  ‘Getting out,’ Alex offered, with a look at the entrance, flowing in like a river with tide and wind behind it. I gave my pal Inga’s lass, Vaila, an old-fashioned look when she suggested the best way round that was for the rescue boat to tow them out, although it might come to that. We did a bit of slick tacking practice on shore, then hovered in the rescue boat as they fought their way out into the voe and began going round their triangle.

  ‘Not bad,’ Magnie commented. ‘Nobody on the rocks – that’s progress. You get them started, lass, while I do a bit o’ phoning.’

  I organised my bairns into pairs for tacking round each other, and listened while I did it. Magnie was talking to someone called Joanie, and there was a good deal of chasing up news before he got round to asking about the yacht, and a bit more news after, ending with a ‘See dee, boy’ before he ended the call and shook his head at me. ‘They didn’t end up in Scalloway, and there’s no strange yachts moored up in Burra or Trondra. Well, let me think. They coulda gone straight west, to Foula.’

  He made another phone call. ‘No sign o’ them there either. I wonder now –’ He frowned and called again. ‘Robbie, boy, it’s Magnie here. I’ll no’ keep you. I was joost wondering if you’d seen a green yacht going past your way, heading sooth … sail or motor, could be either, a dark green hull, and a fair height o’ mast … thirty-five foot … no, no, dir naething wrang. Thanks ta dee, boy.’

  He put the phone back in his pocket and shook hi
s head. ‘She didna go soothwards, that’s for certain. If Robbie o’ the Heights didna see her, she wasna there.’

  Eight hours, forty-eight miles; they could be anchored up in Ronas Voe, to the north, or in Cullivoe, in Yell, the next island up from mainland – except that another couple of phone calls established that they weren’t. Nor had they been seen passing through Yell Sound towards Lerwick; nobody had seen a dark green yacht anywhere. Among boat-watchers like Shetlanders, that was nothing short of remarkable.

  We left it there, to focus on the bairns, but I didn’t like it. That baby wailing in the night had set up an uneasiness that lingered still. There was no reason why Peter and Sandra shouldn’t go in the middle of the night like that. There’d been no sign of a stranger fumbling with unfamiliar ropes, or having difficulty starting the engine, and I couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t Sandra who’d called ‘Bye’ as Genniveve had left the marina. The stealthiness of the footsteps on the pontoon, the quietness of their casting off, could be consideration for our sleep.

  I didn’t want to bother the local police. My suspicions were all too vague, and, besides, if it was a big international operation, making a noise in Lerwick might scupper it entirely. However, there was another policeman I knew, from the Inverness CID, and I thought he’d listen to me. His name was DI Gavin Macrae, and he’d been up here just over a month ago, investigating the murder Magnie had just talked about, the death of the film wife. For a time I’d figured as chief suspect, but in spite of that we’d taken to each other, or agreed on a truce, at least. I’d accepted he had a job to do, and he’d accepted my past. Me, Cass, the selkie wife. He’d listened to the story of Alain’s death and still liked me afterwards.

  It was his face I’d seen in my dream.

  I thought about it for the rest of the morning. For a start, it was such a trivial thing to bother a busy DI with. For another, I didn’t want him to think I was finding an excuse to make contact. I could wait until we met at the trial, ask him then –

  And Peter and Sandra?

  We seafarers needed to look out for each other. I’d been alone and scared out at sea, with nobody knowing when and where I’d make land. I’d been in frightening situations on land, with only Khalida tied at a pier to tell anyone I’d ever existed. When you have the freedom of the sea road, it’s easy to disappear. In case there was something wrong, I would do for them what I hoped someone would never need to do for me. Once I was alone in Khalida, at lunchtime, I scrolled down my contacts list and found Gavin Macrae. Ignoring the thumping of my heart and my suddenly dry mouth, I pressed the green button.

  He answered on the third ring. ‘Cass?’

  He must be alone; the Highland lilt in his soft voice that ebbed and flowed like the tide, depending on whether he was in the policeman’s world or his own, was as pronounced as it had been when we’d been out in Khalida together. He’d said my name like this then, with the ‘a’ clear, the ‘ss’ soft and lingering. I couldn’t read anything other than polite efficiency in his tone.

  ‘Hello,’ I said briskly. ‘Listen, I’m sorry to bother you. There’s something here I’m a bit concerned about.’

  ‘What trouble have you sailed into?’ There was a smile in his voice.

  ‘None,’ I retorted. ‘Magnie and I are being good as gold, teaching sailing to the bairns here. No, I’m worried someone else is in trouble.’

  I told him the whole story, and he listened patiently. It was the first thing I’d noticed about him, the way he sat there as if he had all the time in the world, particularly, he’d told me later, if the suspect he was questioning was eager to get away. If he was extra doubtful about them, as he had been about me, he tied sea-trout flies. ‘Nobody ever watches their words when they’re being distracted by my fingers.’ I could see him now as he’d sat then, grey eyes intent on the invisible line and glinting hooks. His brown hands were deft, made for work, not beauty.

  There was a long pause when I’d finished. ‘So,’ he summed up, ‘the couple went, their yacht’s now gone too, but into thin air. Why do you think it wasn’t Sandra who took her out?’

  ‘It was the jacket,’ I said. ‘It was the right sort, scarlet Musto, but it didn’t fit her – I saw the sleeve flopping over her hand, and the body seemed long in proportion to her.’

  I was glad he took my word for it, instead of making a crack about my fashion sense. ‘Might she have picked up her husband’s?’

  ‘She might,’ I agreed, ‘but I don’t think she would have. You just don’t, aboard a boat. You look for your own, because otherwise you’re risking accidents by over-long sleeves flopping about, or not being able to reach something vital because it’s too tight under the arms. It’s just more comfortable, even for silly things, like your own hood adjusted to fit you. I’d never put on someone else’s jacket if my own was aboard. And then, if they’d just come from – wherever they’d been – they’d each have been wearing their own, surely.’

  ‘Who do you think it was?’

  ‘I wondered if it might have been Madge,’ I said, ‘the woman from the motorboat. The height was right, and she was plump, too plump to fit Sandra’s jacket. If she had to look like Sandra, she’d have had to take Peter’s jacket.’

  ‘Then she met up with the motorboat, and …?’

  ‘I suppose Peter and Sandra got back aboard from the motorboat – or put her back on to it – and they all headed off to sea. Genniveve could easily have gone straight to Orkney or Faroe, without stopping anywhere in Shetland.’

  ‘What would you like me to do?’

  ‘I want to be reassured that they’re okay,’ I said. ‘I know each little thing could have a separate explanation, but I have an uneasy feeling about all of them together.’

  ‘Well, for a start,’ he said, ‘I’ll find out if Wearmouth really was ex-service, and check what he was doing in Shetland, in case it was official rather than holiday. I can check up on the boat, too, I expect. I don’t suppose you noticed if she was on the small ships’ register?’

  ‘She was,’ I said. Like Khalida, Genniveve had her number carved into the bulkhead, and stuck on the outside of the hatch. ‘SSR90 – something. Another three figures.’ I heard him scribble it down.

  ‘Give me as full a description as you can.’

  ‘Rustler 36, dark green with wooden trim, green sail covers and dodgers with her name, Genniveve, a Navik wind vane, and a grey dinghy on the coachroof,’ I said promptly. He laughed aloud.

  ‘The people, Cass, the people.’

  I did my best, and added the cat for good measure.

  ‘Now the motorboat that they seemed to be meeting.’

  I obliged.

  ‘Good. I’ll text or phone you the minute I have any news.’

  I wasn’t going to prolong the call with chat. ‘Thanks,’ I said. I snicked the phone off, relieved, and picked my lifejacket up, ready to get back to the bairns before I could start getting maudlin. All the same, his image stayed with me: not tall, topping my five foot two by maybe half a head, but there was a compact, durable strength about him. I could easily imagine him hefting a ram into a pen, or shoving a boat down a beach. His hair was dark red, the colour of a stag’s ruff in autumn, his eyes the grey of the sea on a clouded day, and he had a nose that looked as if it had been broken, and mended squint – damn it, I wasn’t going to fall for a policeman.

  I stamped on myself wondering if he’d come up to investigate, and went to gather up my bairns from their post-lunch game of throwing jellyfish at each other.

  I’d just swung onto the pontoon when I became aware of an engine roar from the voe, a motor boat approaching at speed. The racket was familiar. It was my least favourite marina people, Kevin and Geri, who owned a dark blue Apreamare 9 m. In theory it was a gentlemen’s motor cruiser, but in practice this one was shabby outside and in, filled with plastic buckets of fish, creels, and tangled with orange nylon line. The engine noise made Anders shudder.

  I was biased against them right from
our first meeting. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting up with whales from time to time, from the brief escort of a blue whale’s vast, curved back off Nova Scotia, to a swarm of pilot whales all around me off Shetland, and while I wouldn’t go for the ‘mystic sages of the world’ stuff, I’ve counted it a privilege every time to meet the ocean’s biggest denizens going peacefully about their lives. When Kevin announced that he’d just gone across to Faroe specially to take part in the whale kill there it didn’t make me feel I was going to like him; but then, I’m not sure I’d have liked him anyway. He was a fair Shetlander, with sleek, fine hair drooping over narrow-set eyes that darted here and there, as if taking notes, thick red lips, and a general air of thinking he was the cat’s pyjamas. I’d taken against Geri straight away too. She was one of these ice blondes, with hair polished to a glassy sheen, and upright as a herring-gull on a pole. She had sea-gull eyes too, that cold, narrow look that measures up the distance between the exhausted sheep and its new-born lamb before swooping for the kill. If there was any softness in her, it was well-disguised. Myself, I wouldn’t voluntarily have gone nearer her than sixty paces.

  Besides, as Anders and I had learned over the three weeks since they’d got their boat launched, they were just noisy, the sort of people who have to have their radio blaring, and who fire up a barbecue that wafts smoke downwind on everyone else. Kevin and his pal Jimmie went out on night fishing trips, and since the only engine speed they knew was full, they’d wake us up returning. There’d be the engine roar, then the wash, shaking Khalida up against the sides of the berth, no matter how tightly we’d tied her up. Their engine leaked diesel which lay in a rainbow sheen over the water and crept in a scum-brown smear up Khalida’s sides, and no doubt did nothing for the terns and sea-scallops either.

  I couldn’t be bothered being polite today. They could sort their own lines out. I slid back below and waited. There was a throaty roar as the big motorboat backed into its berth, water churning all round it. Khalida rocked, then steadied as the motorboat cut its engine. Kevin got out to tie the bow lines while Geri fished for the aft ones with a boathook, then Kevin went back on board. I expected him to switch the engine off, but it kept throbbing. Maybe they’d be going back out again, you never knew your luck. The music blared, one of those groups with a thump, thump, thump beat. Rat twitched his whiskers in disdain and disappeared back into his nest; rustling noises suggested he was re-making it. Cat slid into my sleeping bag.