A Handful of Ash Read online

  I watched her go. Nate, Rachel. Rachel, Nate. Which of them was Annette’s dead hand pointed towards?

  James had talked of Rachel’s reputation. Folk said she was a witch. Things used to break around her … On the other hand, Nate had been right beside the glass. He could have pushed it, to upset her. I remembered the gloating way he’d spoken to her, the way she’d hurried out, poise shattered. I was beginning to wonder about Nate: Branwell Brontë, the clever one, the talented one, who was going to make his way in the world, but who was now washing dishes in a café. Old Mr Brontë had been a minister too. He hadn’t valued his girls much, from what I remembered of the introductions to the novels. It was their aunt who’d been willing to set them up in their own school. The boy was the one expected to shine. There was still a good bit of that up here; I could think of half a dozen fathers who doted on their girls, but took their boys in their laps on the tractor seat as soon as they were knee-high to a marlinspike, gave them a little staff for helping with the sheep when they were big enough to fit into a boiler suit, and their own boat as soon as they could swim. How would a boy who’d been the centre of his father’s universe take to a little sister who was more successful? Making her believe she was clumsy, haunted, would be a clever way of undermining her. I could just see Nate as a boy, dark eyes wide with innocence. ‘Rachel just lookit at it, then it fell and broke. I’m faered o’ her …’

  Rachel had a fire, and access to peats. I wanted to look at the castle. If I was quick, I’d have time before afternoon class.

  I turned and strode back along the street. The quickest way would have been through New Smiddy Closs, but I didn’t fancy passing the entrance where Annette had lain. Instead I cut up earlier, through Smiddy Close, and past the witch’s garden, a tumble of tussocked grass over steps and a rockery, with the remains of a house below. There was the green smell of moss from a grass-choked gutter. Halfway up the hill was a square of low sycamores around a green. A gossiping of starlings swirled around me as I passed the trees. On the other side was a lime green house with darker facings, t-shaped and running into the hill, so that the low roof on Braehead was only just above my head. The hilltop had a house with a stand of trees clustered around an ornamental well. I paused at the corner by Kevin’s nan’s house to catch my breath and look around me.

  To my right, the castle towered against the grey sky, a turret jutting out on each corner, one on the second storey, one on the first. It was L-shaped, and this was the longest wall, an expanse of red-brown stone. The windows had been renewed, in spite of the Great Hall being open to the sky. The lower halves had wooden shutters, the upper were diamond panes: three windows below, two above, and two slit windows in the corner tower, to light the spiral stair. Within, I saw the flash of a camera. The gate was blue-taped. Police, keep out.

  The new Scalloway museum was opposite me. It was a large, rectangular building. The front corner of the wall was the dark red of Norwegian houses, with a glassed corner where visitors could drink coffee or study records. I was surprised to see Dan and Candy waiting outside. I’d taken it Peter was in Lerwick, at the bank, without looking at the front of the house to see if his car was there. His work at the museum was important, of course, but nobody would have expected him to come in today. Kate needed him more.

  I was just crossing the road towards the taped-up gate when he came out. That blind air of yesterday had gone; he walked briskly to the dogs and snapped them loose. He came along towards me, and stopped, the dogs at his heels. ‘Hello, Cass. How’s Kate doing?’

  He was worried about her, I could see that, but the worry lay over something else. He looked as if a heavy weight had been taken off his shoulders. Yesterday’s frown had gone, and his back was straightened, his eyes clear.

  ‘She stayed in bed,’ I said, ‘and got up for some soup. She was talking of an afternoon in her studio.’ What was he so relieved about? She was really worried about something someone wanted her to do, James had told me. Had Peter suspected she’d been up to something to do with the museum? It wasn’t wrong, exactly … Her father would have keys; was that why she’d gone at night, while he was out, to take something from the museum? I remembered him fishing the keys out of his pocket, and his sudden flash of rage. That boy!

  ‘Good,’ Peter said. ‘I didn’t mean to be so long. I’ll see you tomorrow, Cass.’

  He turned and strode away, the dogs following obediently. I watched him go, thinking. Not wrong, exactly … then she hadn’t been asked to steal anything. Borrow something, perhaps? She could persuade herself that wasn’t wrong, if she was going to return it unharmed. I tried to remember what Magnie has said was in the museum. There was the Oxna bracelet, an elaborate gold chain crafted in Viking times. A young man had found it in the sand, and kept it for a wedding gift for his fiancée. I wondered if Rachel, or Nate, or maybe even both of them working together, had been going to do some sort of exorcism rite with Annette that involved her taking the bracelet. The Shetland Bus items – might they summon one of those men to battle with the long-dead witch?

  The simple answer was straight in front of my eyes when I came past the glass-fibre killer whale to the castle’s grey-painted gate: a notice saying that if the castle was locked, keys were available from the Scalloway Hotel and the museum. Annette hadn’t been working mischief in the museum; the carefree way Peter was striding around the corner proved that. Whatever he suspected, he’d checked, and proved his suspicions groundless. No. She’d simply used his keys to take the key for the castle.

  I was just laying my hand on the castle gate when there was a bustle out of sight around the corner, and then the creak of the heavy castle door. A number of officers in uniform came out, with Gavin dwarfed among them. You could see with one look that he was the officer in charge: there was a space around him, and all their heads were turned to his. I remembered that from the first time I’d seen him, that sense of space, like a sea-eagle in its eyrie, lord of all it surveyed, alert and watching over its domain.

  ‘Impossible to tell,’ he was saying to Sergeant Peterson. ‘SOCO may be able to help, so keep it taped up for now, and take samples.’ He looked up and saw me. ‘Good afternoon, Cass.’

  ‘I’m just being nosy,’ I said, to forestall the question on Sergeant Peterson’s brow. ‘Was this where Annette’s fire was, the one that got her hands covered in peat ash?’

  Gavin began strolling away from the castle, motioning me before him on the red chip path. ‘There’s ash and charred peat in the fireplace of the Great Hall. Unfortunately, a week ago the local school came in medieval costume for a history project. They lit a fire for them, to make the room more cosy, and because the snow’s wet it, we can’t tell if it was from last night. There are no other signs of activity.’

  We came out of the shelter of the castle wall, and the wind swirled into our faces. I turned my collar up against the drifting snowflakes.

  ‘I’d offer you a lift home,’ Gavin said, ‘but it’d come under “waste of police resources”. Sorry.’

  I shrugged. ‘No problem. It’s not far.’

  I paused in front of the Chinese to look back at the castle. It was beginning to make sense now. Annette had believed that she was haunted by a long dead witch, and someone – Rachel? Nate? – had persuaded her to a ritual of exorcism in the hall where Black Patie had condemned the witches. All she had to do was steal the castle keys. Then something had gone wrong. Annette had died. And so, to hide what had been going on, the strongest of the exorcisors had carried her body to the Spanish closs, where I’d found it.

  No, that didn’t work. If Rachel or Nate had been her helper, they wouldn’t have brought her body to their doorstep – unless the hatred between them was so strong that each would risk detection to cast suspicion on the other. Maybe … maybe.

  I’d just come round the corner when three dark figures erupted from the little steps down to the pier. They were all taller than me, and before I could protest I was being hustled sideways into th
e little garden there and pressed against the knobbly mural on the wall.

  Three to one. I’d find out what they wanted before I proceeded to violence. I knew the faces pressed close to mine: the hooded crows who had given Annette such a malevolent look on Wednesday. I didn’t like them any better close to. Three pairs of black-fringed eyes glared at me. I leaned back against the wall, ignoring the stones that stuck out into my back, controlled my breathing and crossed my arms, as if I was entirely at ease. They couldn’t hear my thudding heartbeat. I reminded myself that I was ten years older than them, and didn’t need a daft disguise to give me confidence. I let my eyes travel down them then up again, with what I hoped was an expression of total boredom.

  The leader was the tallest, and from confident tilt of her head, from the malevolence she radiated, I knew she was the one I had to deal with. My eyes were on a level with her white-powdered chin and dark plum lipstick, but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of trying to stand on tiptoe. Her hair was dyed purple, long at the sides, and cut in a ruler-neat fringe two inches above her plucked eyebrows. The combination of white-powdered face and dark line of fringe made it look like she was wearing a mask. She had a long, thin nose and narrow eyes, and mascara made her lashes stick out like the spikes on a sea-scorpion. Her clothes were extraordinary: a grey corset bodice, like a can-can dancer’s, with a short scarlet kilt below it, and a frill of black net petticoat. Below it were fishnet tights and heavily buckled motorcycle boots.

  The other two were just followers. Both were dumpy beside the leader’s mast-slim grace, and even I could see that their uniform of full, short skirts and holed tights didn’t suit them. One wore a black leather jacket and spiked dog collar, the other had a sea-green Victorian bodice, low-cut with a frill of lace, like some vampire’s prospective victim, and a spider drawn on one cheek. I’d have put their ages at just-left-school. I could out-think and out-run either of them.

  I turned my eyes back to the tall one, tilted my chin, gave her back look for look, and spoke in Shetlan. ‘What’s aa’ this aboot?’

  ‘As if you didna ken.’ She had a low voice, like the warning growl of an unfriendly dog, and an accent somewhere between Shetland and the south of England, as if she’d had the first years of school on the south coast, then come up here.

  ‘I dinna ken,’ I asserted, and waited. Dog-collar moved her foot as if to kick me.

  Being 5’2” in the seaports of the world teaches you to react decisively to unwanted attentions. I bent down as fast as if I was tacking my childhood Mirror Osprey in a race, and caught her ankle. I lifted it upwards so that she was caught on one leg, and pushed it hard away from me. She staggered, and had to grab at the wall to save herself from falling. I glared at her, and spoke softly. ‘Don’t try that again.’ I turned back to the tall one. ‘Well?’

  The purple mouth turned down. She gave a snort of contempt, and turned on her followers. ‘Back off. I’ll give the word.’ The narrow eyes came back to me. They were sea-green between the black lashes, and tinged now with curiosity. ‘You really spent aa your life at sea?’

  ‘Since I was sixteen.’

  ‘Been to them places where they practise voodoo an all?’

  ‘Haiti. Yeah.’ The two followers gave me an uneasy look and edged backwards. I didn’t add that the closest I’d come to voodoo was some daft for-tourists show they’d put on for our passengers, all white masks and whirling black rags.

  The tall one thrust her face so close to mine that I could smell the powder. ‘We don’t need your sort around here. We got our own way.’

  ‘I’m not interfering with it,’ I said. I still wasn’t sure what this was about, but decided to chance my arm. ‘Unless you had something to do with Annette’s death.’

  Her eyes narrowed to slits, her breath hissed out. ‘She got what was coming to her. She wasn’t special.’

  ‘She had the power,’ I said. ‘Passed down. She dreamed of how she’d died – before.’ I paused for emphasis. ‘Your leader thought she had the power.’

  I’d struck home. The plum mouth contorted with fury. ‘She deceived him.’ Him. So it was a man we were looking for. The low voice turned sickly sweet. ‘All scared smiles, and “Oh, I’m so worried”.’ The snarl returned, the dog preparing to bite. ‘When all the time she was planning to put a stop to us. I could see that, even though he couldn’t. He had to be protected from her – ’ She broke off, as if she’d said too much.

  ‘Trying to take your place,’ I prompted.

  But she was wary now. ‘I was nowhere near when she died. I had nothing to do with it.’

  I remembered my surmises about what Annette had been doing in the castle. ‘He held the ritual without you there?’ I said, incredulously.

  Her anger flared again. ‘Like I said, she was worming her way in. Thought she knew everything, just from a few dreams.’ She caught at control over herself, and glanced over her shoulder at her followers. ‘Right, you’ve been warned.’ She took a step back from me. Her voice sweetened again. ‘That’s a pretty little cat you have, that follows you everywhere. You wouldn’t want him to fall sick.’ She turned her head to give her followers a gloating smile.

  ‘Like Annette’s dog,’ Spider-Cheek added.

  Cold fury filled me. Dan had been sick. We still think it was food poisoning, Kate had said. He and Candy were friendly dogs, and it would be easy to feed one of them a piece of poisoned meat, when they were loose in the garden. ‘You poisoned him,’ I said.

  Spider-cheek smirked. ‘We don’t need poison. We got more power than that.’

  The leader grew tall. ‘We got power over sickness and health, wind and weather.’ Her eyes said she believed it. ‘You remember that, next time you go out in your boat.’

  ‘So,’ Dog-collar chimed in, ‘if you want to keep your own little familiar, you better do as we say.’

  ‘Like Annette did.’ Spider-cheek made the money gesture again. Was this, I wondered, where her £100 had gone, in paying these grotesques to reverse the spell?

  ‘I don’t have any money,’ I said. ‘You leave my cat alone.’ I jerked my head up, gave the leader glare for glare. ‘Like I said, I’ve been in voodoo places. Two can play that game.’

  There was silence that seemed to stretch out for ever. I wasn’t going to break eye-contact first, not with this woman, and in the end she looked away.

  ‘You keep off our turf,’ she said.

  She didn’t wait for me to reply, but turned on her heel and strode off, her two dumpy followers scuttling after her. Suddenly, I was shaking with reaction. They were a dangerous trio, and I’d been lucky to escape unharmed. He had to be protected from her – I was no closer to the name of the leader, but I knew now who his most devoted follower was. She’d been jealous of Annette, that was obvious, and resented the dreams, the connection to those long-dead women, that made the leader interested in her. The way her anger had flared when I spoke of the ritual suggested that she really had been excluded. As Gavin had suspected, it had been just Annette and the leader … unless this girl had intervened, and caused Annette’s death. I was nowhere near when she died. I had nothing to do with it.

  The classic defence of the guilty. I wondered where she’d been that night.

  Chapter Nine

  The snow showers continued all afternoon, the sky clearing a bit more each time, until by six o’clock the sky was mostly clear, edged with waiting clouds. To the east the moon flared, like a chipped silver penny, and due south Venus blazed alone until the sky had darkened enough to show her company: Orion, with his belt and dagger, the hare nestling at his feet, Taurus with his red eye, and the ghostly cloud of Pleiades.

  I’d hurried to college after meeting the three crows, and just made my class. Annette’s death was yesterday’s story; now my fellow students were full of what they were planning for tomorrow, the Saturday before Hallowe’en.

  ‘I’m going oot guizin,’ Kevin told me, as we crouched together over our engine, contemplat
ing the little pump which came next on the fuel system. ‘Aroond me freends ida toon.’

  I took friends in the Shetland sense of relatives. ‘I didn’t ken you had family in Lerwick.’

  ‘Me auntie and uncle moved there, so I hae a whole hush o’ cousins. Me an me cousin Peter and a couple o’ his pals, we’re goin to put on fause faces and geeng aroond them aa’.’

  ‘What’re you going to dress up as?’

  ‘I’m got an old Up Helly Aa suit of a wizard, that time we did an act about Harry Potter, and Peter’s got a monkey suit, and his pals hae animals an aa’, so we’ll be the wizard Merlin and his performing beasts. We’ll do a peerie act at each hoose afore they try to guess us.’

  ‘Sound fun,’ I said.

  He gave me a sideways look, part curious, part wary. ‘You’ll likely be busy – I’m no’ asking, mind.’

  ‘I will indeed,’ I agreed. His face closed against me. ‘I’m been asked to judge a Hallowe’en party, round at Aith.’

  It wasn’t what he’d expected. He sat back on his hookers, eyes on mine, frowning, as if he didn’t quite believe me. I added convincing detail. ‘It was my pal Magnie, you ken, Magnie o’ Strom up at Muckle Roe, that got me roped in for it. The mother o’ one o’ wir sailing bairns is running it, and he suggested Magnie, and Magnie persuaded the mother I’d do a far better job.’ I went into Magnie broad Shetland. ‘Du kens, women ken far mair aboot costumes as a man at’s spent aa’ his life at sea.’ Kevin gave a reluctant grin. ‘So I got landed wi’it. I’ll sail round tomorrow morning, help wi’ decorating the hall or laying out the fancies, enjoy the party, sail back by moonlight’ and be ready for college on Monday.’

  His eyes went wary again. ‘You’ll be back here for Monday night, then.’

  ‘If the weather’s willing,’ I agreed. ‘Why, is something exciting happening then?’ There was nothing obvious in my mind. Tuesday was the feast of All Saints, so I’d need to get to Mass in Lerwick, and Wednesday would be All Souls. My French cousins would be putting bitter-scented chrysanthemums on Papy and Mamy’s graves, in the shadow of the eleventh-century church whose pillars sprouted almond-eyed warriors and snarling dragons. I liked to go to Mass then if I could, and pray for Alain, the lover whose death I’d caused. Prayers were all I could do to say how sorry I was. They weren’t enough.