The Body in the Bracken Read online

  I handed over the ice-cream tub, and followed Charlie. The changing room was seething with mothers and children. I put my towel roll down beside a stunning Filipina lass whose face I vaguely recognised from church. The noise of mothers controlling their offspring and children shrieking in excitement bounced off the white-tiled ceiling. I tugged Charlie’s hand, and mouthed ‘Orlando?’ at him, but he shook his head. ‘We go swimming now.’

  Inga’s swimsuit was rich purple, and rather curvy for my taste, with a cut-out circle at each side of the waist. I helped Peerie Charlie into his trunks and blew his armbands up to blood-stopping point. We ventured together into the pool area, where the noise was mercifully diluted by roof-height. Charlie gave a triumphant yell. ‘See, Dass, shark.’

  It was an inflatable run, stretching from one end of the pool to the other. There was a hump-backed bridge, a flat bit, a ship’s wheel to wriggle through, a fat ladder with cartoon animals on the side, and, at the point where smaller people could get their feet on the bottom, a shark’s head rearing out of the water, its pointed teeth around a flat boat with a treasure chest on it. Charlie charged towards the water, towing me in his wake. ‘You walk beside me.’

  Inga took him to the pool twice a week, so he was scarily confident. The little girl who’d changed beside us seemed to be his best friend; they held hands crossing the wobbling bridge, and fell in together. She seemed a bit uncertain as she came up, and both her mother and I reached for her, but when Charlie bobbed up, pushing his streaming hair out of the way with both hands and laughing, she laughed too. They scrambled back on the water-wheel, with Charlie on the top rung, boasting about how high up he was. My nerves were stretched watching him, as I went from thigh-deep to waist-deep to shoulder-deep in the warm pool beside him, one hand stretched out to grab; up, down again, out to the toddler pool, with waterfall and bubbles, back to the inflatables – I was relieved when at last a bell rang to tell us it was time to head for the changing rooms. I dried him quickly, ignoring his wriggles, and left him to dress himself. I was just ready when Charlie’s little girlfriend emerged, in a party frock of the most traditional sticky-out white, with a velvet sash the exact brown of her eyes. Charlie held his hand out to her as a matter of course and towed her to the door. ‘Shall I take them both?’ I asked her mother.

  ‘Oh, yes, please,’ she said. ‘The tea’s in the community room. Annemarie, I’ll be through in just a minute.’

  Charlie led us back towards reception and into a good-sized room with a laden table in the middle: sausage rolls, sandwiches, mini-burgers and pizza squares, crisps, several sorts of fancies, with Inga’s chocolate tiffin in among them, and, in the centre, a space for the birthday cake. Now at last I spotted what had to be Orlando (wearing five badges saying ‘I am 4’), so I was able to introduce myself, thank his mother for having Charlie, and make Charlie hand over the present and say what fun the swimming had been. Manners satisfied, I stepped back to watch the feeding frenzy.

  ‘Thank you,’ Annemarie’s mother said, appearing at my side in a party frock herself, the fashionable maxi look that draped gracefully over her six-month pregnant bump, and with her long black hair shiningly dried and put up in a bun with loose strands each side of her face. I didn’t need a mirror to know that mine was curling wildly all over my shoulders. ‘It’s bliss to get a shower in peace. I’m Maya Georgeson. I’ve seen you at Mass.’

  ‘I’m Cass.’ There were a dozen Georgeson families, of course, but I remembered Maman’s voice: He has a family, a little girl, and another on the way.

  ‘Oh, yes, I know. You live in the boat down at the marina there. We’re just up on the hill, the new house.’ I hope he did not involve his house in the business too … I turned to face Maya properly. She was show-stoppingly pretty, with perfectly tinted velvety skin, her daughter’s huge eyes in the same oval face, and a gleamingly white smile. She was in her early twenties, too young for the worried lines around her eyes, and the faint crease between mouth-corner and nose. She gave a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. ‘Has big Charlie gone off to sea then?’

  I nodded. ‘Inga had to run him into Lerwick. That inflatable run thing in the pool was amazing.’

  ‘Oh, Charlie loves that. He’s so fearless. Annemarie wouldn’t go on it without him.’

  ‘It’s a wonderful food spread too.’

  ‘We all get together for that. Otherwise a party like this would be so much work. Everyone has their own thing to make.’ She pointed to a sort of cinnamon semolina, cut into squares, that I remembered from parish get-togethers as being very good. ‘This is my speciality.’ She indicated the young woman on her other side, a fair-haired Shetlander with a smiling, rosy face and a baby in her lap. ‘Shona always does the butterfly cakes.’

  ‘My favourite,’ I said. ‘Hi, I’m Cass, temporarily in charge of Peerie Charlie.’

  The young woman laughed. ‘Good luck.’ She rose and set the baby’s feet on the floor. ‘Shall we help them out with the food mountain?’

  ‘Never refuse a meal’ had been the motto of the World War I ambulance girls, and it applied to shipboard life too; you ate while the sea allowed you to. I rose with Maya and Shona, and tried not to be too greedy with the flaky-pastry sausage rolls. It could be midnight before my jambalaya was ready. I was just forbidding myself a fourth when Maya leaned closer to me, in a waft of jasmine scent.

  ‘Your father has been very kind,’ she said, ‘advising Robert-John.’

  ‘Dad’s always glad to be of use.’ I gave her a quick glance from out of the corner of my eye. Was she too hoping I’d help trace Ivor Hughson? ‘But perhaps Ivor’ll come home yet, and take some responsibility.’

  Her dark eyes flashed. ‘I hope not!’ Then she smoothed her face. ‘I’ve taken over the books now, and it won’t be easy, but we’ll get clear.’ Her voice was calm, but her clenching hands bent the coloured paper plate. ‘Ivor returning would only start the muddle all over again. Wherever he is, whoever he’s with, I hope he never comes back here.’ Her eyes met mine and held them. ‘I wouldn’t want a big search to be made for him either.’ Her voice hardened, and her elegant hands came up to curve protectively around the six-month bump as she repeated Gavin’s words: ‘Wherever he is, all he’ll have done is run up more debts. More creditors.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said. She held my gaze for a moment longer, then gave a little nod of satisfaction, and turned to take Annemarie’s plateful of half-eaten sandwiches from her. Charlie came to tug at me with a chocolate-covered hand.

  ‘Birthday cake next.’ He pointed triumphantly down the passage, where a small conflagration was heading towards us. It was shaped like a dinosaur, covered with bilious green icing, and had four sparklers among the four candles. Once we’d sung ‘Happy Birthday’, Orlando’s mother cut it up, and the children fell on it like starving wolves. After that was ‘Pass the Parcel’, with a sweet between each layer, and a little parcel for every child to open at the final layer, instead of just one (they were going to get a shock when they hit real life, I thought ungenerously), and, in a fanfare of party squeakers, we got to four thirty, and my ordeal was over.

  It was pouring when we came out. The neon orange streetlights spotlit a curtain of rain that bounced in puddles at our feet, and the roadside drains gurgled with water. I looked around me with dismay. Charlie’s house was only ten minutes’ walk away, but the water was being blown like a hose towards us, and even with my Helly Hansen and his oilskin jacket, we’d be soaked to the hide by the time we got there. I hesitated in the doorway, scanning the cars in the parking space. If Inga was back from Lerwick, she’d probably think to come and get us.

  ‘Can we give you a lift?’ Maya asked from behind me.

  ‘I was just looking to see if Inga was here.’

  Maya gave the tarmac a quick scan. ‘No, but Robert-John is. We can easily give you a lift if you don’t mind squeezing in the back between the two children.’

  ‘I don’t mind in the least,’ I s
aid. ‘Come on, boy, we’re getting a lift with Annemarie, to save us being drookit, like ducks in a thunderstorm.’

  ‘Ducks!’ Charlie said, and he and Annemarie quacked their way to Robert-John’s car. It was only ten yards, but the water was running off my jacket and my trousers were sodden by the time I’d got them there and into their seats. I squelched into the space between them and leaned forward to talk to the driver.

  ‘Thanks, Robert-John, this is very kind of you.’

  ‘Na, na, we canna leave you to walk in this doonpour.’ His voice was soft, hesitating, as if he could barely manage to string the words together. ‘It’s no’ out of our way at all.’

  It’s a funny thing, heredity. You’d never have taken Robert-John for a brother of Miss Georgeson’s. She’d been dark-haired, high-coloured, and decisive. He was a washed-out, thin creature, with pale skin, pale blue eyes, receding fair hair and eyebrows so light they shone silver in the car park streetlights; Lik a docken grown under a pail, Magnie would say. His hands lay irresolutely on the wheel, and he drooped his shoulders like someone who expected nothing but defeat from the world. It was a good thing he’d married someone as go-ahead and competent as Maya.

  I dropped Charlie off into Inga’s arms, and started to get out myself.

  ‘Na, na,’ Robert-John insisted. ‘You’re no’ walking all the way to the marina in this.’

  A lift from them would save Inga trailing Peerie Charlie out in the car again to put me home. I got her to bring me the clothes I’d shed, and we set off through the blackness, the slashing rain. ‘Thanks to you,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, you’re welcome.’ Maya half-turned her head. ‘You’re not too cold living aboard this time of year?’

  ‘I just keep adding jumpers, and having hot showers.’

  ‘Your dad was saying you’d been involved with that poor body they found down in the Highlands.’ Robert-John paused to let a large truck thunder past on the main road: Georgeson Removals, it said, in curlicue letters, with a red and blue logo. Robert-John didn’t comment. Beside him, Maya lifted her hand, as if to stop him saying any more. ‘Maya’s likely asked you all about it – she’s a great one for these detective stories.’

  ‘I like English murders,’ Maya said. ‘Agatha Christie, Agatha Raisin, Midsomer, all retired army colonels and village ladies spying on each other. I’m too squeamish for real-life crime.’

  ‘It was horrid,’ I said.

  ‘It got a bit of coverage in the Press and Journal,’ Robert-John said. ‘They don’t know who he was, seemingly.’

  ‘I’m sure they’ll find out,’ I said. ‘This modern DNA, and matching teeth, all that.’

  We came past the Co-op, dark in its midwinter holiday, past the Brae Building Centre, with a twinkle-lights Christmas tree set up by its door, between the scatter of houses.

  ‘I wasna clear exactly where it was found, from the report.’ Robert-John turned down the gravel road to the marina.

  ‘One of the remoter lochs.’ I visualised it on the map. ‘The long, crooked one opposite the dent in the bottom of Skye.’

  The pick-up swerved, and the wheels spurted on the gravel, as if he’d pressed the accelerator instead of the brake. I clambered out, and at the marina gate I paused to wave. Maya responded, but Robert-John wasn’t looking at me. He was staring out over the marina, motionless. Maya said something I didn’t catch, her voice sharp. Then the engine roared, the pick-up turned in a splash of puddle, and headed off into the rain-black hills.

  Chapter Eleven

  As I came through the marina gate, a grey shape detached himself from the lee of a blue half-barrel for rinsing fish: Cat, his fur ruffled and his yellow eyes round with alarm. I bent down to stroke him. ‘You and me both, boy. My nerves are shattered. Let’s get indoors.’

  The weather side of me was soaked by the time I’d got half-way along the pontoon. Cat slid indoors. I stripped my wet jacket off under the rain-hood shelter, and laid it flat to dry off, then took off my shoes, socks, and jeans as well. There would be enough condensation in the cabin without adding dripping clothing. By the time I’d done that my legs were goose-bumped under my thermal leggings, and my teeth chattering. I stepped onto the top step and pulled the hatch over me.

  It was dim inside the cabin, with only the marina bollards shining a silver light. I came down the two steps and my foot touched a soft lump that shouldn’t be there: fur. ‘Cat, yuck!’ A dead rabbit; just what I didn’t feel like having to deal with. I stooped to look, and the breath stopped in my throat, for it was Cat, collapsed in the middle of the cabin floor, with the white belly that I wasn’t allowed to touch spread long, the white paws and plumed tail limp, his pink mouth open as if he’d tried to mew a cry for help.

  I didn’t know what to do for a moment. I crouched down beside him. He was too young to have a seizure, and there’d been no sign of injury as he’d dodged along the pontoon before me. I ran a finger down each leg and across his ribs: no blood, no broken bones, as far as I could tell. Poison? There was no feel of froth round the open mouth, no sign of anything stuck in his throat. I had to suspect the most dangerous aspect of any boat, escaped gas, heavier than air, so that it sank down into the bilges and rested there.

  I spat out all the breath in my lungs and picked him up. He was limp in my hands, surprisingly heavy. I retreated up the steps and took a long breath of clear air, then sat down under the sheltering hood, cradling him on my lap, with a hand over his ribs. A rush of relief swept through me as I felt them move. ‘Cat, come on … You can do it, boy.’ Then he gave a great shuddering breath, sneezed several times and began to stir again. His eyes opened. He mewed, and wriggled to be free from this unaccustomed cuddle. I turned my jacket dry side upmost, and made him a nest under the rain-hood. ‘You stay there,’ I told him. ‘Stay, just for now. I’ll make it safe.’

  I went back into the rain, and reached inside the port locker for the gas cylinder cut-off switch. My fingers felt it running parallel to the metal pipe: on. I switched it off, took a deep breath of clean air in the cabin doorway, like a diver, and went in, hand stretching to the cooker. The burner I’d used this morning was in the ‘on’ position. I switched it off, and dived up through the forrard hatch for another breath, then tied the hatch to the mast, so that a great blast of air would sweep through the cabin. Cat was still huddled in my jacket, breathing steadily, sneezing from time to time, but already looking less dopey. ‘Don’t laugh,’ I told him.

  As the butane gas leaked out of the cooker, it had oozed down to the bilges and built up from there, like water rising. While my head was in the cold, wet draught that was filling the forecabin with rain, I’d be safe enough, but I wouldn’t dare strike a match or run the engine until it was all gone. If I’d not had Cat as my miner’s canary, my first act would have been to light the lamp, and Khalida would have blown sky-high. I took the bucket from the hanging locker and made an experimental sweep along the empty cabin floor. The still-empty bucket became heavy. I climbed up the steps and tipped the nothing over the side, and the bucket lightened. I baled emptiness until the bucket stopped increasing in weight. To make absolutely sure, I lifted the floorboards, filled the bilge with water, and baled above it. Then I baled the actual water that had come in the forrard hatch, closed it to a fist-sized slit, wiped off the last drips, and breathed a long sigh of relief. I reckoned we were safe now. I brought the lamp out under the rain-hood to light it, then put the glass chimney over the flame before carrying it back below and hanging it on its hook. Instantly, my cabin came back to life: the gold-grained wood of bulkhead and fiddles that kept my books on their shelves even when Khalida was tipped almost to ninety degrees, the blue curtain looped in front of the heads, the gleam of brass on our little fish mascot, the navy cushions along the couch.

  ‘Safe now, I think.’ I brought Cat back into the cabin and gave him a soothing stroke. He responded with a purr. I gave my blue-with-cold feet a good rub and put all my layers back on. Then I sat down beside my li
ttle table, took Cat on my lap, and considered.

  There was no way I’d have left the gas on like that. I had a distinct memory of having paused in the conversation with Kevin to go out and turn the cut-off switch. It was second-nature; a gas build up could kill a crew overnight, or reduce a boat to flaming rubble the moment a match was struck, so you got completely paranoid about switching the cut-off the minute you put out the gas. Of course I’d have turned it off, and I was sure that I had, still listening while Kevin had been telling me about how they’d had Nan round to his house for Christmas lunch.

  Someone else had come aboard and turned it on. It hadn’t been on for long either; when Cat had met me, he’d had that alarmed air as if he’d just been disturbed, and his fur wasn’t as wet as it would have been if he’d been outside for long. The Georgeson truck had passed us just five minutes before … Maya’s soft voice sounded in my head: You’re not too cold living aboard this time of year? She hadn’t wanted me to investigate Ivor’s disappearance. Robert-John had reacted to the name of Gavin’s loch. Julie had been startled to see me. And the Press and Journal had reported the finding of the skeleton, and the whole place knew I’d been down with Gavin for Christmas. Links, Gavin had said. There was no reason why an absconded husband from Shetland should ever be linked up with a skeleton in the west Highlands, except for the coincidence that it was I who’d found it, and come back to Brae, to the marina where Ivor’s boat was berthed.

  Ivor, who’d left in the early morning, leaving a note on the table, and gone off on the boat. Julie wouldn’t chase him after an exit like that, I was sure; she’d be too proud. Robert-John and Maya were left muddling through the books and trying to get back on their feet. I wondered what would happen to the firm if Ivor could be proved dead.