A Handful of Ash Read online

  ‘Take another cup with you,’ I said, ‘and a hot water bottle. It’s snowing outside, did you see?’

  She looked up at the window. ‘Snow? But it’s only October.’

  ‘It’ll get mild again after it’s over.’ I hoped so; if it didn’t, I was in for a long, cold winter.

  ‘You don’t want to work in snow.’

  ‘I’m well wrapped up. I’ll do a bit of stick chopping and bonfire trundling.’

  She heard what I didn’t say, that I’d be there until Peter came back, and gave an imitation of her usual smile. ‘Thanks, Cass.’ She lifted the cup, paused. ‘If you hear the phone, ignore it. I’ve had three calls this week already – you know, the Indian voice saying my computer’s interfering with Microsoft’s mainframe. I told him I knew it was rubbish, but he was so persistent. Now I’m not answering.’

  It was the last thing she needed. ‘If they phone again, I’ll sort them,’ I promised.

  I collected the barrow from the shed and set to. The corner we’d worked on yesterday ended in a hedge of monkshood, the Shetland delphinium, hip-tall, the leaves turned autumn red, the hooded flowers intense gentian blue. I could haul these up as vigorously as I liked, they’d still be back next year, but I didn’t want to destroy the bonny patch of colour. Behind them was a clump of hemlock, its creamy frothed heads turning to green seeds. Monkshood and hemlock, witches’ brews … I hacked the lower branches of the sycamores above them, as Kate had done, and found frilled lichen on the stems, and spindly stemmed fungi. In France, the woods would be fruited with mushrooms: scrolled angel trumpets, and those bone-white ones that curved like a baby’s skull among the fallen leaves.

  It didn’t take long to fill the barrow. I wasn’t insured to drive their car, but I packed the white salmon-feed carrier into the back of it, and filled it up with several loads of sticks, ready to be taken to the bonfire pile of pallets, old couches, worn boards, hacked tree branches. The whole village would gather round on the east shore next weekend, with boxes of fireworks, then there’d be tea and bannocks or hot dogs in the hall. Kate was keen to get the undergrowth cleared now so that it would be burned on Guy Fawkes day. After that, my job would be over – but maybe she’d think of something else for me to do, digging borders or planting bulbs.

  I was already worrying about firework night. The noise would echo round Port Arthur and into my fibreglass home, and Cat would hate it. I might ask if we could come up here. Dan and Candy wouldn’t worry about bangs, for Peter often took them up the hill with his shotgun, after rabbits or the wild geese that were overwintering here now. Or, if it was a night for it, we could just sail out to sea and heave-to two miles offshore. I could sleep in the cockpit, with the tiller under my hand …

  The snow kept up all morning, the sky suddenly darkening, then the white flakes falling until the clouds had shed their load, and the sun shone again in a blue sky. The flakes swirled outside the windows, clinging to the glass in blotches and sidling downwards as if seeking a way in. When I went into the kitchen at last, numbed hands tingling in the warmth, the glass was so clean that everything outside seemed clear yet tiny, as if you were looking at it through the wrong end of a pair of spyglasses: the jumble of sheds that had been used by the Shetland Bus, the street of coloured houses, the castle, sand-brown against the whitened hill, with a line of snow along each gable wall.

  I was just leaving when the phone rang. I snatched it up, and waited, Kate’s white face before my eyes. These bloody fraudsters … The Indian voice spoke, with a caricature accent. ‘Is that Mrs Otway?’

  ‘I’m a neighbour,’ I said briskly. ‘There has been a death in the house, and Mrs Otway is extremely distressed, so I would like to to take her number off your list immediately. Don’t call again. Thank you.’

  I put the phone down. No peat fire in the house. I’d brooded about that one as I’d hauled and sawn. It didn’t quite make sense. Annette’d gone out at ten, and not been long away – it hadn’t been eleven when I’d found her. She’d gone – somewhere – lit the fire there, then gone straight out again. An old person, maybe – she’d gone just to light the fire, then left? But the Rayburn argument still applied. An old person wouldn’t want her fire riddled, if it was to stay in all night, and if it wasn’t, then there wouldn’t be any point in lighting it this late. Maybe it had gone out, and had to be cleared. At this point, my memory of peat fires began to get shaky. I took out my mobile and phoned my old schoolfriend, Inga.

  ‘Aye, aye, Cass.’ Inga sounded harassed, and there were clattering noises in the background. I realised she was probably bang in the middle of dealing with children’s lunch.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Bad timing. It was just something I wanted to ask you.’

  ‘I kent you’d get mixed up in this somewye,’ Inga said.

  I glanced upwards, and spoke softly. ‘She’s the lass from the folk I work for.’

  ‘Oh.’ Her voice warmed. ‘I’m vexed to hear that, Cass. It’s always an awful thing when a young een goes like that, but worse still when you ken them.’ She paused, as if listening. I heard Peerie Charlie saying ‘I want a spik wi’ Dass.’

  ‘Joost a quick hello,’ Inga said.

  I knew Charlie would ignore that. I could picture him as if I was there. There were thunks as he clambered up to the window seat and got himself settled, little feet sticking straight out, then heavy breathing.

  ‘Aye aye, Charlie,’ I said. ‘What’s du up to?’

  ‘I speaking to you on the phone,’ Peerie Charlie said. Fair enough.

  ‘I’m speaking to dee an ’aa. Then I’m going to hae my lunch.’

  ‘I eaten mine.’

  ‘You havena,’ Inga said, in the background.

  ‘I nearly eaten mine,’ Charlie amended.

  ‘I’ve got soup. It’s going to be good.’

  There was a pause, then Charlie said, ‘Green spidey going to beat the Iceman.’ Spiderman was his current thing, but I’d lost track of the baddies, as I’d not been over to baby-sit for the last two months. Charlie launched into an account of the latest news, Spidey-wise, punctuated by indignant ‘Mam!’ as Inga tried to get the phone back from him. Eventually she persuaded him to say ‘Bye bye’ on the grounds that pudding was coming.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Did you say you wanted to ken something?’

  ‘Peat fires,’ I said. ‘Why would you want to riddle one out after ten o’ clock at night?’

  Inga considered that in silence for a moment. ‘If you were trying to light it, for overnight warmth, or if it wasna burning properly because it was choked up – you’d riddle it then. I canna see why anyone’d bother, this time of year. It’s no that cold that you’d need it all night. You might as well let it die down and get rid of cold ash in the morning, rather as working with it hot. Hot ash flies aawye, much worse as cold.’

  ‘An old person, maybe, with no other source of heat?’

  Inga snorted. ‘There’s naebody like that these days. If their family hasna made sure they’re got central heating or at least an electric back-up, their social worker or home help’s sorted it. Na, lass, can’t help you. Unless,’ she added cheerfully, ‘she was a witch welcoming home a vampire, or some other night creature. You never ken, in Scalloway.’

  She went off to feed Peerie Charlie his yoghurt-from-a-straw. I could hear Kate moving in the bathroom, as if she was dressing. There was still no sign of Peter, so I supposed he was gone for the day. I set the kettle on the hotplate again, and opened a tin of tomato soup, best invalid food.

  ‘Oh, yes, just what I was wanting,’ Kate said, when she came down, dressed like herself again, though her face was still white and drawn above her bright scarf. ‘Now you go, Cass, you have college. I’ll spend the afternoon in my shed.’

  ‘I’ve left you a carload of branches,’ I warned her. ‘But we’re almost at the bottom layer of sycamores now, just ten yards from the lowest wall.’

  ‘We’ll make it before bonfire night,’ she agreed. S
he managed a smile that was more like her own. ‘Thank you, Cass.’

  I scrunched off along the sea road. A vampire, or some night creature … I’d been remarkably slow in the uptake. Kevin’s nan had seen the misshapen creature coming from the castle, and what better place to hold some strange exorcism rite than Black Patie’s Great Hall, where the witches had been condemned? I remembered the image I’d had of witches crouching over a cauldron. Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn – Was that how Annette had got the ash on her hands, making the fire for some witches’ brew designed to free her from the presence she believed was within her?

  Chapter Eight

  My soup was even better the second time around. After I’d eaten, I left Cat washing his plaice-smeared whiskers and headed back towards the town. The hailstones crunched under my boots and the wind stung my face. The kerbside snow was turned to ice by the wheels of parking cars.

  Inside the shop, the staff had put on a Hallowe’en spree. There was a bucket with apples for dookin, that game where you had to pick one up from the water with your teeth, or you could put your hand in a bowl of green goo to fish for a prize. The women were all dressed as witches of a Gothic turn, festooned with black lace and those black T-shirts with a snarling ghoul on the front, and wearing black lipstick below their frizzed up hair. There were a couple of workmen in the queue at the till. ‘Have a go at dookin for apples,’ one girl teased, and the younger man reddened and shook his head.

  I was chilled enough without getting my hair wet. I found prunes and an onion, to make a lamb recipe I’d learned from an Arab cook on board the Christian Radich – that would keep for tomorrow, and I could cook it in the flask, which saved my precious gas. We’d have fried kidneys tonight, with the left-over rice from yesterday.

  I was just outside the shop door when it opened again, and a woman in a dark jacket hurried out, clutching two bags in red-gloved hands, and with her hood pulled down so far over her face that she didn’t see me. She bumped into me just as I was turning to avoid her, and dropped one of her bags. We stooped together to retrieve her shopping, in a flurry of apologies, and I realised it was Rachel. I handed over two tins and a packet of fire-lighters.

  ‘Cass?’ She seemed uneasy, shoving the items back into the bag. The firelighters wouldn’t fit, and she hesitated for a moment, then rammed them into her other bag, squeezing them beside a grey fake fur costume. ‘Thanks to you. I wasna looking aboot me.’ She glanced around the pavement at our feet. ‘Hae I gluffed your little cat?’

  Frightened , she meant. ‘He’s sensible.’ I fell in beside her on the narrow pavement. ‘One twitch of the nose out of the cabin, and he decided to stay at home in the – well, I couldn’t call Khalida warm exactly, but at least it’s not snowing in the cabin.’

  ‘Awful, isn’t it no’? And it’s only October. Guid kens what kind o’ winter we’re going to have.’ She seemed as willing to talk as I was. I wondered if she was someone else who thought I was courting with Gavin.

  ‘A fine, green one,’ I promised. ‘We’ll get the cold over early, and have daffodils in January.’

  She turned her head at that and smiled. ‘You’re an optimist.’ She paused to swap hands with her shopping bags, and I took the chance to look at her properly. Yes, the resemblance to Nate was marked, the high, bony nose and sharp cheekbones, the fine, dark hair, though hers was shiny with conditioner, not greasy like Nate’s – but then, she didn’t work in the kitchen all day. She was wearing off-duty clothes, slim, dark jeans and a pine-green jumper with a round collar. With the plain jacket, they gave an impression of school uniform, a prefect from S6. All she needed was the blazer badge. Then I looked at her face, and the impression blurred. There were strain-wrinkles under her eyes, with dark curves beneath them, and lines running down from nostrils to mouth. Her fresh complexion was greyed under the powder. It was natural that she’d have been kept awake by police activity on the night Annette died, but she looked as if she hadn’t slept last night either. Our eyes met, and I just had time to register the fear in hers before she dipped her head away. She took a quick breath, and found a conversation-making tone: ‘How are you finding college?’

  ‘Strange,’ I admitted. ‘Being cheek by jowl with the same people for so long.’

  Her head turned quickly, mouth open. ‘I’d a thought you’d be used to that. You’re gone all over the world on sailing boats.’

  ‘But that’s different. You’re out in the open air, not shut up in a classroom. And most of the people on the tall ships were paying passengers, on board for a week or two, so you knew you only had to stand even the most annoying ones until Friday.’

  ‘What about annoying crew?’

  ‘I summed them up as soon as possible, and put them on another watch.’

  She nodded, smiling. Her breath was coming more evenly now, her college lecturer poise restored. ‘And you’re older than the most o’ the students. Does that mak it harder, or easier?’

  ‘A bit o’ both, I suppose. And my mercy, some of them seem so young. We were told twice that we’d be working on the fuel system yesterday, but my partner still came in asking what we were doing.’ I slanted a look from the corner of my eye, and decided to stick my neck out. ‘That was an awful thing, yesterday, up at your house.’

  ‘Dreadful.’ She swapped her bags round again. The grey fur was trying to slither out. She tucked it back in, gave me a quick, sideways look. ‘I don’t actually live there now, I have a flat over that way – ’ she tilted her chin towards Port Arthur, – ‘– but there was a funeral apo’ Fair Isle, and the south mainland minister had a dose o’ the flu, so Dad said he’d go and take it for him, and I said I’d come and keep Mam company. She doesna keep well, so we don’t like to leave her on her own.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I thought Nate lived wi’ your folk.’

  She ducked her head away from me so that the hood hid her face. ‘Ye.’ Her voice was constricted. ‘But he’s a boy. You ken. Mam prefers Dad or me.’ Was it Nate she had wanted to talk to me about? Her head came up again. Her voice gained confidence. ‘So I checked it was fine wi’ Lawrence and left his tea in the oven. I arrived about six, and made tea for Mam and me, then we just watched a film all evening. One o’ the old ones, Cary Grant with two poisoning aunts at Hallowe’en. I thought it was right stupid, wi’ the actors mugging all over the place, but Mam enjoyed it.’

  Gavin could have asked her for this level of detail, but there was no reason she should give it to me. I nodded and waited.

  ‘Nate came in sometime through it, an stuck his head round the door to say hello.’ We had reached the sea front now, with the benches. She paused, put her bags on a bench for a moment while she did up her jacket, then picked them up again. The wind blew cold from the pebble shoreline. Down at the water’s edge, a scurry of sandpipers dodged the waves. ‘After that we just sat and chatted until it was bedtime – Mam’s bedtime, that was just after ten. I helped her to bed. There’d have been water running, the curtains closed, all that. If poor Annette knocked at our door then, I never heard her.’

  How we re-write the dead, I thought. Poor Annette … Alive, Annette would have looked down on Rachel, with her schoolgirl jersey and her smooth hair pulled back in a bun. So cool, not.

  ‘I sat by Mam’s bed, chatting for a bit. Once she was sleeping I was just about to come home when I heard the folk outside.’ Her tone sounded casual, but I remembered the shadow watching me from behind the window blind. ‘I couldn’t believe it, the police on the doorstep. Then they cleared back a bit, and I saw poor Annette.’ A shudder ran through her. ‘Lying there. It’s awful, isn’t it? That it should happen here, in Shetland, makes it worse somehow … and her poor folk.’

  ‘How about Nate?’ I asked.

  Rachel’s head swung round to me. Was it just the cold that had drawn the colour from her fresh complexion, leaving the wind-sting scarlet of her cheeks like lipstick circles on a china doll? Her eyes were afraid, as if she couldn’t bear to
face the question, though she’d invited it. I realised I was older than her by three or four years, and pressed that advantage. ‘Might he have heard Annette at the door?’ Except that she hadn’t knocked; she’d been dead when she was brought there.

  She didn’t look at me. ‘I don’t know what he’s said to the police.’

  ‘But that doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘You can only say what you saw and heard.’

  ‘I’d have heard the front door opening – I’d have wondered who was coming in so late.’ And you did hear it, I thought to myself.

  ‘But you didn’t look to see who it was,’ I murmured.

  Panic flared in her again. ‘I would never look at Nate’s visitors,’ she said vehemently, then she turned to me. She flushed again, staring at me with those startled eyes, and catching her underlip with her teeth. She looked each side of us, as if afraid of being overheard, then gripped her shopping tighter. ‘That’s why I wanted to talk to you – to warn you.’ She took a step closer. ‘I heard Nate talking about you. If he invites you to his group on Hallowe’en, you don’t want to go. You really don’t. It’s no’ your kind o’ thing.’ She ducked her head away from me, stepped back. ‘I have to go. Lawrence doesna like if I’m late.’ Her eyes pleaded. ‘Dinna tell him I spoke to you. Please.’

  I put a hand on her arm, holding her back. ‘Rachel, do you have a peat fire?’

  The colour drained from her face. For a moment, I thought she was going to faint. Then she shook her head so violently that the hood fell back from her face. ‘Mam’s all electric.’

  ‘Who are the firelighters for?’

  Her breathing was ragged. My face was so close to hers that I could feel the warmth of it on my cheek. Her eyes fell to her shopping bag, with the red and black corner of the box of firelighters protruding from the grey fur. She shook her arm free. ‘Lawrence likes a real fire.’ Then she turned and scurried off along the Port Arthur road, clutching the bags to her like a shield.