The Seal King Murders

by Alanna Knight

  As for Inga St Ola, Faro’s imagination had painted a different picture of this once lovely girl changed beyond recognition by the hardships of island life, marriage and childbearing. He was in for a shock. A pleasant one for a change.

  When, on the morning after his arrival, the Scarthbreck gig set him down with Mary to shop in Stromness, it had been raining and the woman calling his name from across the street wore a black shawl over her head.

  He stopped and looked round politely.

  A trilling and once familiar laugh. ‘Is it yourself, Jeremy Faro? Well now, don’t you know me anymore?’ she said, plucking off the shawl and shaking free the abundant tresses he remembered. Luxurious, shining dark hair. Head on one side, her smile provocative, a look he remembered and which often haunted his dreams. Her teeth were still excellent, her complexion radiant and Faro almost staggered back, overwhelmed by her nearness, this unexpected meeting.

  ‘Have I changed so much?’ she pouted, that expression, too, he remembered.

  Recovering his manners, he took her hand, kissed it. ‘No, no, Inga,’ he said softly. ‘That’s the trouble, you haven’t changed at all.’

  Again the trilling laugh. ‘No trouble at all, I assure you.’ And suddenly serious, looking him up and down with an intensity that stripped him naked, she said slowly, ‘But you have, Jeremy. And for the better. Why, you’ve grown up at last.’

  That was too much. ‘What do you expect after ten years away in Edinburgh?’ He heard a note of pride in his voice, and wishing for the first time that he was in uniform to impress her, he added softly, ‘Of course I’m different to the lad you knew. In years, that is. But you – you’re still the same. How on earth, living here …?’ and he left the rest unsaid in a gesture to the grey streets.

  It was her turn to be amused. ‘Luck, I suppose, although most of the folks here about, dead jealous, will blame it all on Baubie Finn.’

  ‘Baubie Finn?’

  ‘Aye, the island witch woman. You must have heard of her, works miracles; or should I say witchcraft? Nothing’s past her.’

  Inga was teasing him as of yore but Jeremy had heard of Baubie Finn: old beyond time, there had always been a Baubie Finn, her name spoken in awe even by so-called God-fearing, respectable Orcadians who went to the kirk each Sunday and said their prayers each night.

  Baubie Finn was dangerous. A seal woman, not to tangle with.

  He shook his head, looked at Inga, longing to touch her. ‘You’re even lovelier than I remember.’

  She liked that. Standing on tiptoe she kissed his cheek. ‘Dear Jeremy, you always knew the right words to say.’ And regarding him quizzically, ‘What are you doing here? Your ma isn’t ill, is she? At least the last time I saw her, she was flourishing as usual, larger than life.’ There was a certain grimness in that statement, a hint that Inga and Mary Faro didn’t see eye to eye, never did and never would.

  Faro sighed. ‘She’s fine, I just decided it was time I visited my native heath.’

  Inga continued to look up at him, and letting her believe that was his sole intention, he gave her a crooked smile. ‘And now, I’m glad I came.’

  He wanted to know about her. Surely time hadn’t stayed still. Nothing stayed still in Inga St Ola’s life. He heard the urgency in his voice as he asked, ‘Are you married?’ Perhaps an affluent marriage to some local worthy was the answer to her unchanged appearance, although such a lady would never wear a black shawl and would dress in the height of fashion.

  She laughed, throwing back her head and pirouetted, showing shapely, long, slim legs, and ankles she was proud of. ‘Do I look married, Jeremy, I ask you? Me, a fisherman’s wife? Could you ever believe that I would be any man’s chattel? Remember my free spirit? Well, it’s still untrammelled, still the same.’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Faro saw a familiar figure, his mother bustling along the street, carrying a basket and heading relentlessly in their direction.

  Inga saw her too. ‘I must away. Be seeing you, Jeremy. At the Kirkwall market, maybe,’ she added casually. And again on tiptoe, she kissed his cheek quite brazenly this time, obviously hoping his mother would see it.

  And Mary Faro did. He knew that by her tight-lipped expression. ‘So you’ve met that woman again.’

  ‘An old friend, Ma, an old friend.’

  Mary searched his face anxiously but in vain for what she most feared, some indication that his feelings for Inga St Ola had been renewed. She had been aware of his infatuation with this older woman before he left the island to join the Edinburgh City Police and could never decide which worried her most. Especially as, soon after his departure, she learnt through island gossip that Inga had also gone away to the mainland. No, she hadn’t said why – not a word to anyone. So Mary was haunted by the possibility that she might have followed Jeremy to Edinburgh.

  Every letter filled her with anxiety – would there be some mention that she dreaded? ‘Inga is here’, or worse, that they were married? There was nothing to justify her fears, however, and when Inga returned a year later saying that she preferred life on the island after all, Mary drew a sigh of relief. This was reinforced when on his brief visits Jeremy had made no mention of that woman.

  Mary was not the only one to be haunted by dreams of Inga. Jeremy, too, was haunted by dreams of a very different nature that night, of Inga and love fulfilled. He awoke to sterner reality. The main reason for his presence – Macfie’s drowned cousin allegedly bearing priceless artefacts to Edinburgh.

  What were they? An essential was to establish what the vague description implied.

  A casual question about the ferry and Mary told him that although the boatman Amos Flett worked from Stromness, he lived just streets away from their old home. A good man, devoted to caring for his invalid brother. ‘Dying of consumption, poor soul.’

  And Kirkwall was the excuse Faro needed to see Inga again. She would be at the market. All that was necessary, the invention of an imaginative selection of reasons for going there alone.

  ‘Could you not wait until my half-day and we’d go together?’ pleaded Mary.

  ‘Time is short, Ma, there’s things I want to do right away. I’d like to see South Ronaldsay again. And we can go to Kirkwall on your half-day, if you like. I’d like that fine.’

  With that plausible excuse for an early morning start, she had to be satisfied. So off he went with the carters heading for the Friday market, accompanied by the usual noisy cattle and livestock.

  His presence was readily accepted and he found an uncomfortable, cramped seat where no one questioned him or showed the slightest curiosity in a man’s private business. Farmers did not question those they considered their betters, and with a natural politeness later on they would describe him thus, ‘He kept himself to himself. He came from yon Scarthbreck – a gentleman, aye, you could tell that by his boots.’

  In Spanish Cove a few more passengers were waiting to scramble for seats, mostly women armed with baskets and produce to sell, others with empty baskets to fill from the Kirkwall market. This brief stop confirmed once more Faro’s first impression that the inappropriately named Spanish Cove resembled an ugly terrace of grey-faced houses lifted bodily from some poor city district and dumped down to perch uneasily above savage rocks and wild seas on a cliff top in Orkney, its inhabitants strangers in an alien environment.

  He gave a hand to an elderly man hampered by a box, its contents obviously fragile. Taking a seat beside him the new passenger thanked him and said, ‘Rare specimens. I gather tiny orchids that grow on the cliffs back there. Taking them to be labelled and identified by a government botanist.’

  Faro learnt that Mr West was a retired schoolteacher. Disposed to be friendly, he said, ‘I am a widower, for many long years. But I am not entirely alone. I have my homing pigeons – I know all their names. They are more than a hobby – very precious companions and I am quite devoted to them.’ He smiled. ‘My pigeons and my plants. Indeed, the very reasons I have no wish to ever l
eave Spanish Cove. It has some of the best botanical specimens on the island. Such an interesting area, the tiny harbour too. I spend hours watching the ships and the local lads practising their diving.’

  ‘Are they looking for the Armada galleon?’ Faro asked.

  ‘If it still exists somewhere down there. They obviously keep hoping for buried treasure. But I hear there are underground caves and that’s the sort of thing lads like to explore.’ He laughed. ‘I expect you were the same when you were a lad.’

  Faro smiled wryly and made no comment, remembering that he had once almost drowned and that Dave Claydon’s body may have drifted into one of the dangerous caves to remain undiscovered until some sea fiercer than usual swept it on to the shore.

  Leaving West and the carters near the market stalls in front of St Magnus Cathedral, he breathed deeply, joyfully. This was always for him a moment to look forward to, a moment of nostalgia fulfilled, back in Kirkwall, where he had grown up. Seeing his childhood home again, the cottage near the rose-red cathedral. His earliest memories were waking to bells on a Sunday morning, listening to the choir practise on still evenings, being one of the Christmas carol singers.

  And there up the hill was his old school. Everything looked the same, the children shouting in the playground, leaping about, could have been himself again, the clock turned back, shedding the passing years, leaving no scars.

  He was glad Ma intended keeping the cottage, having providently let it to a visiting artist for the summer.

  ‘He’s from Paris, very elegant and foreign in his ways. But he speaks good English,’ she added, proud to boast of an illustrious tenant.

  Faro decided that whatever she had said to the contrary, although so impressed by Scarthbreck, she had made up her mind already not to remain as permanent housekeeper if asked, and that once the summer was over, the ‘Big House’ emptied of guests, she would return home.

  He had no difficulty in spotting the ferry boat, the sole occupant a young man staring out to sea. He turned round, wishing Faro a polite good day.

  ‘Is the ferryman around?’ asked Faro.

  The man grinned. ‘That’s me, sir.’

  Faro was taken aback: the name Amos suggested an old salt, rich in experience of all the seasons and the vagaries of tides, but the ferryman was possibly younger than himself, with a mop of dark-red curls, a roguish smile and, quite alarmingly, although the surname was as common as Scarth or Faro in Orkney, or Smith and Brown elsewhere, Amos bore a strong resemblance to Erland, a friend from his schooldays. Fletts were all distantly related and in a small community could trace their origins back to a distant or not-so-distant common ancestor.

  ‘What can I do for you, sir?’ Amos asked. ‘We leave in twenty minutes, sir. Bound for the Hope?’

  Amos was not what Faro had expected but seemed eager to be friendly. He had none of the guarded manner of the island folk in the presence of a stranger. Perhaps it was only the thought of business at last, and Faro had to disappoint him.

  Shaking his head, he said, ‘Not today, I’m up here seeing my ma, but I’d like to have a word with you, seeing as you are not too busy.’

  The lack of a promising customer cast a moment’s gloom over Amos’s face, but he rallied quickly and grinned. ‘Go ahead, sir.’

  So Faro began to explain. ‘It’s about a man who drowned recently. He was cousin to a mate of mine in Edinburgh.’

  If Amos thought this was a peculiar request, he gave no indication. ‘It’s a long way to come for a funeral, sir, all the way from Edinburgh, especially as you’ve just missed it. We laid him to rest three days ago.’

  So his mission was all in vain. Faro didn’t have time to sort out feelings of relief or disappointment as Amos pointed towards the horizon. ‘Washed away out to sea after he drowned. Then, a week ago, his poor body was recovered up the coast.’ He shrugged. ‘No one had expected to see him again. Reckoned he was gone for good. That’s the way of things,’ he added with a melancholy shake of his head.

  ‘Does that happen often?’

  ‘Aye, more than you think. The tides here, they can wash bodies into these caves along the shoreline, to other islands. Never seen again. Sometimes as far as Shetland, or we’ve even been told one turned up in Scandinavia. Not much left to identify after the mountainous seas and the fishes are done with them.’

  Faro never did like fish very much, even from childhood. Perhaps someone had told him that story or it was the legacy of his selkie grandmother.

  ‘You’ll need to tell your mate about it. That you missed the funeral and all.’

  Faro nodded vaguely. He wasn’t sure how to phrase the matter delicately. ‘When he drowned … you were there. How did it happen? His cousin, my mate, you know … could you tell me about it?’

  Amos nodded, gazed away from Faro out to the sea. ‘A terrible night it was. Fog thick as pea soup.’

  ‘Were there other passengers beside Dave Claydon?’

  Amos shook his head and Faro continued, ‘Surely that was odd. Was it because of the weather?’

  ‘No. Wasn’t the ferry like you see here, just my own boat. It was like this. We had finished our trips for the night, the ferry was docked and my mate Rob had cleared off home when this gentleman dashed over, said he’d just missed the Leith boat, would I oblige him – for a small payment that was – to row him out in my boat and catch the ship at the bar. He’d hail them and they’d drop a ladder for him.’

  ‘Sounds a bit illegal,’ said Faro, for whom smugglers came readily to mind.

  Amos laughed. ‘Of course it does, but we all do it. It happens all the time. We get well paid for our trouble, sir. Besides, this gentleman had booked a berth, so they were expecting him.’

  But hardly off a ship’s ladder in the middle of the sea, Faro thought as Amos went on.

  ‘Anyway, off we went. I’m used to obliging in this way, so he had got my name from somewhere, gave me two pounds for my trouble.’

  And that was a lot of easy money, Faro thought, small wonder boatmen were tempted.

  ‘We raced the boat, got to the harbour bar first, then he shouted and someone heard him. Although I couldn’t see the ship, I heard its engines. The fog was so thick, but we heard the ladder clatter down. Got as close as I could, held his luggage till he got a foothold—’

  ‘What was this luggage?’ Faro interrupted.

  Amos shrugged. ‘A stout leather bag he was carrying. Then I handed it back to him.’

  ‘Was it heavy?’

  Amos considered for a moment. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Had you any idea what it contained?’

  Amos gave him a thoughtful look. ‘He didn’t mention the contents, but it might have been books, something like that. Anyway, he must have been halfway up the ladder, out of sight, as I had already turned the boat so I wouldn’t be in the way when the ship started again. Suddenly I heard a cry, a mighty splash and I guessed he had fallen off the ladder.’

  He paused, remembering. ‘Then shouts came from the ship, “Man overboard”, and I could hear voices, devil of a fuss, but one of the crew told me later that the captain said this passenger’s name wasn’t listed. He had no rights to be climbing up a ladder and the member of the crew responsible for putting it down would be prosecuted, as this was totally illegal. Anyway, after a quick scan of the surrounding sea, nigh impossible in that weather, the captain said he had a schedule to keep, tides and so forth, so off they went.

  ‘I only heard about this later. All I saw was the ship above me, sailing away, and there I was circling about, shouting, but after a while I knew my passenger must have drowned. I went back, notified the coastguard. They did what was necessary, a lifeboat was launched, but never a sign nor trace of him. Nothing.’

  ‘The bag he was carrying?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he repeated. ‘As I told you, I handed it up to him, so it must have gone down with him.’

  ‘Did you know who this passenger was?’

  ‘Dave Claydon, the excise of
ficer who would normally board the ship at Kirkwall.’

  Footsteps announced the first of the passengers were heading towards the gangway. Suddenly busy with tickets, there were no further questions Amos could answer.

  Thanking him, Faro went ashore. He had a lot to think about, as none of this story fitted the account he had been given. The accident with the ladder for instance. There were sinister gaps in the boatman’s account too. The ship’s captain would have no wish to be involved and possibly lose his command by the shipping company for being party to an illegal, although fairly regular, practice of boarding.

  As they had talked Faro felt a rapport with the young ferryman, and hearing of his devotion to a much older, invalid brother, this struck a chord of guilt as he remembered Erland Flett, the friend he had never understood and for whose tragic early death he still mourned.

  Later he was to realise that was the reason for the rapport, his need for a friend of his own age and background. Edinburgh was a lonely place. His fellow constables regarded him as a stranger, and being befriended by Macfie had not helped to increase his popularity with the rank and file. Apart from the old superintendent to whom he owed so much, there was no one with whom to share a pot of ale and a good chat in the local howff. The constables had their own cliques and were not eager for his company in their leisure hours. The only true friend he had made was Lizzie.

  Being a policeman had its drawbacks, and although Amos was sure to find out his true identity, he was not anxious to reveal that he was investigating the matter of the drowned excise officer and the missing artefacts bound for Edinburgh. He already knew from his own experience that mention of the police made even the most innocent become guarded and suspicious.