by Matt Hilton
“We met on the ferry yesterday,” I admitted. “Once again this afternoon at the archaeological dig at Trowhaem.”
“I saw you at the dig.” Shelly gave me a pointed look that immediately flickered and died. “Can I ask what you were doing there?”
“Trying to help,” I said, sounding as lame as a three-legged horse.
“In what way?”
Broom jumped in. “It was my fault,” he said. “Contrary to what I told Professor Hale, it was my fascination as a writer that took us there.”
Janet scowled at him, then at me. I shrugged, feeling like a liar.
Janet said, “You told me that you wanted to help identify the body.”
“Well…” Broom said. “I did think that I could help identify him. Unfortunately - as you know - that was not the case.”
Shelly grunted. She took out her notebook and flicked through to a specific page. “Professor Hale said that you were interested in how the police could identify a severely disfigured corpse.”
“Research,” he said.
“You seemed to know an awful lot about our procedures already,” Shelly added.
“Research,” Broom repeated. “I’m a writer of horror fiction, Sergeant. Police procedures often feature in my novels. For one, I know that I am not under any obligation to answer your questions, unless you caution me first.”
“If you were under arrest, then I’d caution you,” Shelly said. “I’m not here to arrest you, Mr Broom. I’m here because I thought I could pick your brains for answers to a number of troubling questions regarding these murders. Judging by your earlier conversation with Professor Hale, I was under the assumption that you might have in-depth knowledge concerning this fanciful haugbonde curse.”
“I have researched the curse. Yes.”
Shelly turned to me. This time she managed to hold the look. “And what is your interest in the curse, Mr Bailey?”
Like any seasoned blagger, I shifted uneasily in my chair, shrugged and said, “I dunno.” My unavoidable straying of eyes towards Janet gave the game away.
Shelly looked from me to Janet and I saw the hint of a smile on both women’s faces. “Oh, I see,” she said. Warmth flushed my features.
Then she was the sergeant again. “Since you were there this afternoon, have either of you returned to Trowhaem at any time?”
“No,” both Broom and I said in unison.
“Are either of you licensed to carry firearms?”
“I have a shotgun certificate,” Broom offered. “It was issued in England, however, so I didn’t bring my gun here with me.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of handguns,” Shelly said.
It was a struggle to remain calm. Both of us managed to keep our answers separate this time. “No,” I said.
“Isn’t there a rule governing handguns since the Dunblane tragedy?” Broom asked. “Only persons with special dispensation are allowed to carry handguns.”
“You’re telling me that neither of you have this special dispensation, then?” When neither of us replied, she asked, “So if we conducted gun powder residue tests on you we would find no trace of either of you having fired a gun?”
Janet appeared as shocked as we did at the sergeant’s suggestion.
“Sergeant,” she said. “I agreed to come here with you so that we could ask for help in capturing my attacker, not to implicate them in a crime.”
Shelly sat back. She placed her notebook into a pocket on the front of her protective vest. All the while she nodded slowly. “The person who fired the gun I’m talking about was not your attacker. In fact, off the record, he deserves a medal in my opinion.”
Whether this comment was delivered with the intention of flushing out the egotist in either of us, we didn’t react. Maybe Shelly was truly grateful that someone had made a stand against the murderer and it was her heartfelt feelings that forced the words. Regardless, she waved them down. “Listen, I’m not here to cast blame on anyone. I’m here because, as Professor Hale pointed out, we thought you could help us.”
Throughout the discourse Broom had played mother. He brought over a tray with five steaming mugs. “I just did coffee all round,” he said. “Milk and sugar’s on the tray. Anyone like biscuits?”
“Coffee’s fine,” Shelly said, cutting off any further distractions. To Broom, she said, “Predominantly, I wondered if you have any knowledge concerning ancient Norse custom?”
Broom shrugged. “Not extensive, but I do know quite a bit.”
“What about Norse numerology?”
Broom nodded. “A little. What is it you want to know?”
“If I said the phrase ‘you are four of nine’, what would that mean to you?”
I immediately thought of the hot Borg chick from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Seven of Nine, wasn’t she called? That went to show how knowledgeable I was on numerology, Norse or otherwise.
“Are we talking victims?” Broom asked.
“We can only assume that is the case,” Shelly said. “The man in the grave, the boy, James Stewart…” she paused “Bethany Stewart.”
“And Professor Hale?” Broom said.
“Fortunately not,” Shelly said.
“So the little girl is dead?” I groaned.
Shelly shook her head. Her face looked momentarily blighted.
Bob Harris, not wanting to be left out, said, “We haven’t found the wee lass yet, but things aren’t looking too good.”
Not if the state of the other victims was anything to go by, I thought.
“All I can say,” Broom said to change the subject, “is that the number nine is significant in Norse mythology, but no one knows why.” He paused as if ordering his thoughts. Then, “Odin was hung for nine nights in order to learn nine magic spells. This is represented today by the twelfth card in a tarot deck of a man hanged by one foot from a gibbet. Heimdall had nine mothers, Aegir nine daughters. Hermod was said to have travelled nine nights to find Balder. Njord and Skadi lived nine nights in each other’s homes. Freyr waited nine nights for his bride, Gerd to arrive. Every ninth night eight more rings fell from Odin’s ring, Draupnir - though why eight rings, I don’t know. At Ragnarok, it’s believed that Thor will retreat nine paces from Jormangand before dying.” He stopped, racking his brains for further tidbits stored in his unbelievable vault of useless information. “Ah, yes, then there were the great festivals held for nine days every nine years at Upsalla in Sweden where nine of every living creature - including humans, by the way - were sacrificed.”
I wasn’t the only one staring at him.
“Nine sacrifices?” Shelly asked for us all.
“If you believe what’s written in The Readers’ Digest,” Broom pointed out.
Nine sacrifices. If the unknown man in the grave, the little boy and girl made three, and Janet was designated as the fourth victim, that meant that the killer intended a further five deaths before he would be assuaged. Six, considering his attempt on Janet had failed. The true scale of the horror was suddenly beginning to dawn on me; a half-dozen more brutal attacks I simply could not allow to happen.
“Suddenly you’re the big hero? Who do you think you are, brother? Superman?”
Cash, ever invasive at the best of times, was under these circumstances like tomato ketchup splashed on a gourmet meal. Deliberately ignoring him didn’t mean he wouldn’t badger me further. To my grateful delight, that was all the input he added to the conversation. If I’d held discourse with him in front of these witnesses, likely I’d be doing a quick step to Skelvoe nick with big Bob Harris twisting my arm up my back.
Janet must have been on the same wavelength as I’d been before Cash’s intrusion. “Six more people are going to die.”
“Unless the sicko takes PC Entwhistle into account, plus the student he killed while attempting to abduct Professor Hale,” Bob said.
“Two more people died?” My words were as wretched as I felt. Thankfully, the police didn’t read them as intima
te knowledge of what occurred up at Trowhaem. Aware that my failure to stop the killer had possibly lead to the deaths of other innocent victims made my stomach contents do a nose dive. It’s maybe a good job that Broom hadn’t brought me the promised food and drink, as I’d have likely spewed it all over his kitchen floor.
“Tell me what you know about the Skeklar,” Shelly said, pointedly moving us away from the subject of further death and destruction.
“The Skeklar is a creature particular to the Orkney and Shetland Islands,” Broom said. Perched on his wooden stool, his ankles crossed and a mug of coffee cupped in his hands, he reminded me of the Jackanory storytellers that held a generation of children enthralled back when TV was still innocent and boasted only three channels. Unlike those of the TV presenters, Broom’s tale wasn’t dramatised fiction, he was being deadly earnest. “In the remainder of the British Isles we have our own myths and legends concerning fairies and elves and such, believed to be based upon the Celtic beliefs of our forebears. These islands however pay little homage to Celtic tradition, owing more of their folklore to the tales brought here by the Norse traders who settled here. The Norse has their own pantheon of mythical creatures and demigods, probably the best known of which are trolls.”
“Except here they’re known as trow,” Janet interjected.
“Yes.” Broom nodded. “As in Trowhaem. Literally translated as home of the Trow folk. Unlike the Norse troll, the trow have gone the way of the other indigenous beasts of the islands and have grown short in stature…take for example the Shetland Pony breed.”
Janet shook her head. “My attacker was almost seven feet tall,” she pointed out, “so couldn’t be anything to do with trow, then.”
Broom mimicked her headshake. “The trow are small, I grant you that. Some, known as Peerie trow, are said to be so small that they reside under toadstools and mushrooms. However, there are exceptions to the rule. The haugbonde, or hogboy, is said to appear as an emaciated old man with grey skin, a bald head and spindly limbs.”
“Sounds like Gollum from Lord of the Rings,” I said. Sometimes I wish I could keep my ignorance to myself. Kind of pointed me out as the uneducated one in the room. I waved a hand in apology.
Broom was nonplussed by my less than erudite remark. “Lest you forget, Tolkien was most interested in the myths and fables of the ancient world. It is possible that he had the haugbonde in mind when he came up with his Gollum character.”
“Forget Gollum,” Shelly said. “You were telling us what you know of the Skeklar.”
“I was,” Broom concurred. “The point I was making is that not all trow are tiny sprites. In particular, our friend the Skeklar. He is a grotesque monster said to have twelve heads and twelve tails - similar I suppose to the hydra of Greek mythology.”
“Twelve heads and tails. Not nine, then?” Shelly asked. “Why the inconsistency when everything else usually relates to the number nine?”
Broom could do no more than shrug. “Little is known about the significance of numbers in Norse folklore. The number nine does figure regularly but nobody knows why, as I’ve said. Don’t forget, the Skeklar is an Orkney and Shetland variant of an older myth, so things could have become jumbled along the way. The number twelve is more important to Roman and Christian beliefs, the twelve disciples of Jesus for instance, the twelve months of the year. It’s possible that the Skeklar figure has been influenced and subtly changed over the many generations since the Vikings abandoned the islands.”
“Perhaps,” Shelly said. “But it doesn’t really help us, does it? One thing I do know: it was no twelve-headed beast that killed John Entwhistle.”
Janet shook her head. “How long have you been on Conn, Shelly?”
“Not long,” Shelly admitted.
“But I bet you’ve heard the islanders make mention of trow and Skeklar in the short time you’ve been here?”
“Yes, I have.”
“But not in the context of a twelve-headed monster,” Janet pointed out.
Shelly eyed Broom up and down. “First I’ve heard of it.”
“That’s my point,” Janet said. “There will be people who’ve lived here all their lives who couldn’t describe the Skeklar if you asked them to. They’re familiar with the folk-tales inasmuch as they know it’s some sort of Bogyman, but I’d bet you could ask a hundred people and get a hundred different descriptions.”
What Janet said held validity. That was the fallibility of eyewitness testimony. It’d be difficult to get two people to agree on the description of a real person, never mind a creature out of myth.
“Father Christmas, Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas, Kris Kringle,” Broom put in. “All the same figure, subtly altered over time and the spread of cultures. We can’t even agree on his description, can we?”
“I see where we’re going with this,” Shelly said. “What you’re saying is that the Skeklar we are up against is a modern interpretation of the beast. That he has transformed from this fantastic creature of myth into something that could be believable in the modern era?”
It was a little odd seeing Janet and Broom in agreement.
For my part, I said, “Only one man’s interpretation. The claws, the green eyes, the invulnerability to guns, these are all things we often see in sci-fi and horror movies. Whoever is playing the part of the Skeklar has chosen his own influences and put them all together to form his own idea of what a Skeklar should look like.”
Expecting plaudits for my wisdom, I was disappointed to find all eyes turned on me. Even before Shelly’s words came, I realised my mistake.
“How do you know what the Skeklar looks like?”
Glancing at Broom for support I spluttered out, “I…I must have heard someone mention what it looked like.”
Shelly had no reservations about staring into my eyes now. What happened to her suggestion that the mysterious shooter should be given a medal?
Again Broom came to my rescue. “At the expense of getting into trouble, I must confess that I was listening in to the emergency services on my radio scanner. It was me who told Carter what the Skeklar looks like.”
Shelly frowned. “Our airwave terminals aren’t like the old style radios. They can’t be scanned, Mr Broom.”
“Correct,” Broom said. His whimsical smile was tantamount to scandalous. “But that can’t be said for the radios used by the navy and M.O.D personnel who joined the hunt. They’re still using the UHF band, which, as you know, is easily scanned.”
She wasn’t convinced by our answer. Yet, on the scale of things, it didn’t really matter how I was familiar with a description of the killer. For the sake of her position, she said to Broom, “It is against the law to scan the emergency channels. I could seize your equipment and report you for the offence.”
“You could,” Broom admitted. “But how is that going to help you stop this thing?”
“It isn’t.” Shelly stood up, adjusting her belt. She placed one hand on the hilt of her extendable baton. Bob Harris stood. Like her gargantuan protector, he was silent, watching us with his steady gaze.
Janet peered up at Shelly. “Are we leaving?”
“I have to get back to Trowhaem. There are still lots of things to do.”
Janet’s eyes were on mine as she slowly stood up. Her legs appeared to be giving her some trouble and I wanted to reach forward and help her stand. Probably the after effects of the attack she’d suffered earlier, cramping as unspent adrenalin crystallised in her muscle tissue. She noted my willingness but shook her head. “I’m okay, Carter.”
“I’m…uh…relieved.”
Shelly and Bob moved away towards the step down to the living area, but the sergeant turned back. “Thanks for the coffee, Mr Broom,” she said. Then to me, “Can I ask you one final thing, Mr Bailey?”
“Yes, of course,” I said, wondering what in hell was coming.
“Do you wear contact lenses?”
“No,” I answered, totally confused. “Why do you ask?”
>
She looked deeply into my eyes then, and I squirmed under the scrutiny. “No reason,” she said. Then she turned quickly on her heel and moved away. I’m sure I saw a faint tremor run through her body. For Janet’s benefit, she said, “I’ll be waiting in the car. But we have to be back at Trowhaem soon.”
Broom glanced at Janet and me, then he hurried after the police officers. “I’ll walk you out. There’s something else about the Skeklar I neglected to mention.”
With the three of them gone, I tuned my gaze on Janet. Her face was tilted down, but she was watching me from below her upper lashes, looking both vulnerable and gorgeous.
“Are you really okay, Janet?” Stepping forward I touched her wrists. It was a conciliatory gesture, and I was surprised when she turned over her hands and slipped her fingers into mine. A little buzz of electricity shot the length of my arms, and it had nothing at all to do with my supposed abilities with auric energies or Zone Point Fields.
“I’m fine. Really.” She lifted her gaze to mine. “I wanted to thank you, Carter.”
“For what?”
“For saving my life,” she said softly.
“I didn’t do…”
She lifted a finger to my lips. “Don’t say it. I know otherwise. You were there, Carter. Don’t ask me how it’s possible, but I know you were there to protect me. Just like you said you would.”
Recalling the discussion by the graveside earlier, Broom had told her that we couldn’t protect her if she remained on the island. How had she known that, silently in my own mind, I’d been promising that indeed I would be there to protect her? Was it merely intuition? Or were there facets to this new power of mine that even I was unaware of? Maybe there was more to that Star Child malarkey than met the eye.
Without thinking about the magnitude of my words, I said, “I’ll always be there for you.”
Janet seemed neither surprised nor offended by my forwardness. There was a touch of resignation, yes, but there was also a glimmer of faith. “I know.”
It was one of those moments I’ve heard of but never believed: instant and unequivocal acceptance of love. In perfect synchronicity we leaned in to each other, gently touching lips in a sealing of destinies. It was almost platonic that first kiss. Yet in a way it was the kind of kiss that rocks mountains, topples empires and raises oceans to swamp continents. It left us both sated, shuddering to the core as we separated.
