Death in Shetland Waters

by Marsali Taylor

  Even at its most relaxed, our ship’s world was hierarchical, with the captain at the head of the pyramid. Below him were Johanna, for the engines, Henrik, the chief steward, and Mike, the cheerful and energetic chief officer. Below Mike were the three sailing teams, one for each of the ship’s four-hour watches. They were headed by the first, second and third mates – Agnetha, Nils and I – each commanding a watch leader and two able seamen. Roughly level with the first mate were Sadie, the medical officer, Jenn, the liaison officer, who organised the trainees, and Rolf, the bosun, the singer, a lively, uncomplicated Trondheimer that I’d taken to straight away.

  For this voyage I was mate in charge of the blue watch, on duty from eight to twelve. Mona and Petter, my two ABs, were already lined up for the muster. I’d just joined them when the captain came out around the midships deckhouse with one of the local police officers, Sergeant Hansen. I knew him because he was a cat-lover, and very helpful about what forms and injections Cat needed to prevent him from being impounded as we travelled from place to place.

  Captain Gunnar had one of those faces that was designed for a captain’s table on a thirties luxury liner, with alert eyes under bushy eyebrows, a straight nose and a neatly trimmed white moustache and beard. He’d been the officer of my watch on my first time aboard, fitting in qualifications and voyages between teaching, and he’d risen in rank each time I was back. The beard had appeared at first officer stage, the silver hair at chief officer. He was retiring this year – Henrik was already planning his farewell party – and I couldn’t imagine the ship without him. His demeanour was always grave, but today there was an extra frown between his brows, as if there was something to worry about. Sergeant Hansen was equally serious, the bearer of a storm warning.

  Five to nine. Erik slid out from the aft corridor and into his place beside me, and Agnetha followed him, her fair skin white in the morning sunshine. Rolf came after them, with Nils on his heels and Mike following. Captain Gunnar gave Mike a quick glance from under his brows, and his mouth tightened. Punctuality, in his view, was next to godliness. Mike flushed, and slipped into his place beside the captain. Full house.

  Captain Gunnar gave a last look around, then cleared his throat. ‘Good morning, everyone. Sergeant Hansen has asked us to be especially vigilant today as the ship prepares to leave for Belfast.’ He made a courteous gesture, indicating that Sergeant Hansen should explain.

  The officer reddened, and stepped forward. ‘We’ve had word through contacts that a person known to the police is in Kristiansand, believed to be making his way to the UK. We’d ask you to take the utmost care that he doesn’t come aboard Sørlandet. I know how busy you are, dealing with trainees today, but we’d suggest extra precautions guarding the gangplank, allowing nobody unauthorised aboard, and checking people on and off the ship.’ I felt Nils glance at me. Sergeant Hansen spread his hands. ‘It’s all very vague, I know. He’s far more likely to try the obvious routes, but we didn’t wish to overlook anything. Thank you.’

  He made a stiff little bow, and left, leaving us all looking at each other apprehensively. Known to the police … That shadow I’d felt down in the Fiskbrabaren clouded my mind again. Then Captain Gunnar began to talk about the business of the day, and the arrangements for squeezing in our seventy trainees, the full complement. Many of them belonged to a large group of teenagers funded through the social work department. ‘They’ll have two group leaders with them, and be spread over three watches. You won’t be able to stop them smoking, but make sure they only do it on the benches on each side of the engine house.’ We all nodded; we knew the dangers of fire aboard. ‘You are also to keep a vigilant eye out for drugs, though all these young people should be “clean”.’

  He assigned gangplank duty to the watch leaders, then dismissed us to our tasks. I’d worked up the navigation for leaving Kristiansand the night before, so I busied myself securing the smokers’ benches with rope. I’d just done the port side when Johanna came up her ladder, bringing a warm blast of diesel-scented air with her. Her face was blanched. She stumbled to the bench and dropped onto it, moaning in pain, arms wrapped around her stomach. I leapt to her. ‘Sadie,’ she managed through chattering teeth.

  I ran for the ship’s medical officer. One look at Johanna had Sadie on the phone, talking appendix, and then we had to wait, helpless, watching her fight off waves of pain while the seagulls circled above us and the cars passed uncaring below. It felt like an hour before the yellow and green ambulance came racing down the highway and along Vestre Strandgate, siren screaming, and spun round to the quay. The paramedics jumped out, unhinged their stretcher and carried it up the gangplank. One minute more, and Johanna was strapped on. They trundled her down the gangplank and into the back of the ambulance, the paramedics moving smooth as clockwork. Sadie grabbed her jacket and ran after them. The siren restarted, the lights flashed, and Johanna was on her way to safety, leaving us standing at the rail, watching her go.

  ‘She’s in the right place,’ Agnetha said. ‘They can operate.’

  I nodded. My throat felt tight. An unlucky voyage …

  Captain Gunnar touched my shoulder. ‘Cass, we will need a chief engineer until Belfast. Lars is not experienced enough to take over. Do you think your young friend with the rat could drop everything and come with us?’

  He meant my friend Anders: engineer, Warhammer nerd and owner of Rat, who went everywhere with him. The minute he’d heard I’d got my tall ship at last, Anders had signed up for a trainee berth on one of our weekend shakedown trips, and had naturally gravitated to the engine compartment. By the end of the weekend, he and Johanna’s conversation had become unintelligible to the rest of us, but they seemed to be talking about a serious joint engine dismemberment the next time he was available. I had hopes for that relationship …

  I pulled my phone out, found his number and called it.

  He answered straight away. ‘Cass? I thought you’d be heading for the high seas.’

  ‘We’re trying to,’ I assured him. ‘Anders, Johanna’s just had to be rushed to hospital with appendicitis.’ His breath drew in with a creak like a moan of pain. ‘Don’t worry, she’s going to be fine.’ I crossed my fingers as I said it. ‘Is there any chance you could join us for this trip? Seven days, Kristiansand to Belfast.’

  ‘I would like to, very much,’ he said. I could see him standing there in the workshop at his father’s boatyard, in his green boiler suit, his fair head shining against the oily wood walls, looking around, thinking of what had to be done in the next week. The phone crackled as he moved to look at the wall calendar. ‘Dagslys, then Maria Klara. Listen, give me fifteen minutes. I’ll need to talk to my father. Next week’s a busy one, so I’m not sure if they can manage without me.’

  I looked across at Captain Gunnar. ‘Shall I give him your number, sir, so that he can call you back?’

  The captain held out his hand for my phone. ‘Thank you, Cass.’

  I moved away until they’d finished. Captain Gunnar gave me the phone back, and I went round to secure the starboard bench, lashing it with cord to the iron struts by the deckhouse and wishing Johanna luck with all my strength. I was just winding the tail of the cord away when my mobile buzzed. All set arriving plane mid morning see you aboard keep me posted about Johanna. A.

  My next task was to sort out the man-overboard boat, ready for leaving the dock. A couple of the trainees that had arrived last night were standing beside it at the rails, looking out over the sunny harbour. One was Ellen, a tiny Norwegian lady with china-blue eyes and straight white hair bobbed to frame her face. She was seventy-one this year, she’d told me last night, and had decided that now was the time to do all the things she’d ever wanted to. One of them was going on a tall ship, so here she was, excited as any teenager. The other was a little, fussy man called Olav, who I’d already marked out as the ship’s gossip – there was always one. Beside them was someone who must have come aboard this morning, a dark man who was oddly famili
ar. I stopped for a moment, looking at him. Maybe it was just that he reminded me of my dad, the dark hair with the slight curl in it, the broad shoulders and long, straight back – then he turned, and smiled, and spoke in a voice as Irish as my dad’s. ‘Well, now, if it’s not my little cousin. How are you doing, Cassie, after all these years?’

  He was laughing at me, his eyes as blue as a Siamese cat’s in his lean face. I knew him now: Sean, son of my Auntie Mary, Dad’s younger big sister. We’d always spent Christmas in Dublin with Granny Bridget and Da Patrick, among a huge family gathering, and Sean and his twin, Seamus, had been the closest to me in age, the only ones that still counted as youngsters. They’d led me into quite a bit of trouble over the years.

  ‘Well, well!’ I replied. ‘Sean Lynch, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Oh, going home, young Cassie.’ He gave me a long look, down and up again. ‘Aren’t you the clever one, all dressed up in your uniform. Are you the captain of this ship, now? I’d better mind me Ps and Qs, so I had.’

  ‘Third mate,’ I said. ‘But what on earth are you doing here? I didn’t see you on the trainee list.’

  ‘Oh, I had business in Norway, and a holiday after it, and yesterday I heard about this ship that would take me right back to Ireland, so I thought I’d give it a try. I went down to the office and signed on this very morning. You won’t make me work too hard, now, will you?’

  ‘You’ll have to join in the work of the ship, with everyone else,’ I said. Sean had always had difficulty settling down to the task in hand, whether it was the mountain of dishes to be washed or trying to slip me into a pub for an underage pint. Seamus would work out a system, and Sean would be too impatient to follow it. Still, maybe he’d learnt discipline as he’d got older. ‘What are you working at now?’

  ‘Oh, a bit of this and that. Marketing, mostly.’ It was vague enough to cover a multitude of sins, as Auntie Mary used to say about his explanations for a broken window. He grinned again, the charm turned up to full voltage. ‘You know me, Cassie, never one to settle to a routine piece of work.’

  When Sean turned the charm on was the time to watch him, but I didn’t see any mischief he could get up to on board, and having him standing here, family, stirring all those memories of Christmas, gave me a warm feeling inside. I tucked my arm into his and squeezed it. ‘It’s good to see you.’ I turned to Ellen and smiled. ‘This is my cousin Sean, Ellen. I wasn’t expecting him aboard.’

  ‘I see that.’ She smiled at him, getting his measure straight off, as if she had sons of her own. ‘You’ll have to behave, young man, with your cousin in charge. None of this Irish blarney.’

  ‘You’ll need to give me all the family news,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, they’re all well enough. I’ve managed to escape the noose meself, but Seamus has a little girl, and another one on the way, and our Declan, now, he has five, all boys.’

  Declan was only six years older than me. ‘Five boys!’

  ‘That he has, and a rumbustious tribe they are too, always up to mischief.’

  ‘Particularly when you’re visiting.’

  He gave me a sideways grin. ‘Now, Cassie, we always led you out of trouble again once we’d led you into it. Or Uncle Dermot would have had the hide off us.’

  ‘It was me who talked us out of that row with the buskers.’

  Sean waved a hand. ‘All in the past, Cassie, my love.’ He turned to face me, assessing. ‘And what about you? Are you married now, or do you still have a lonely washing, as Da Patrick used to say, God rest his soul?’

  I waved my hand vaguely. My relationship with Gavin was too new to share, even with family. ‘Still the lonely washing with no man’s shirt in it.’

  ‘No truth in the rumour about a detective inspector in Scotland, then.’

  Families. Dad gossiping, of course. ‘I’m not doing his washing yet,’ I retorted. He nodded, but still with that measuring look, as if he was working something out. He glanced aft over my shoulder, as if he was looking around for something, then shrugged the mood off. ‘Now, what work do you want to set me to?’

  ‘We’ll be giving you an orientation tour once all the youngsters come aboard. For now, just settle yourself in.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll get me bag unpacked, like a good boy, and help out once you’ve got yourselves organised. I’m sleeping on one of the couches in the little cubbyhole at the end, fine and handy for slipping up the steps for a fly fag in the night.’

  ‘The aft steps are crew only,’ I told him austerely, and left him to it.

  It was a moment before I went back to the man-overboard boat. There was an uneasy feeling down my spine. Sean had booked his passage aboard as late as this morning …

  Known to the police. He’d been a wild teenager, with the potential to get mixed up in the wrong crowd, but I didn’t want to believe one of my family had turned out as the sort of person the police warned you against.

  I shook the thought away, and got back to work.

  CHAPTER TWO

  By noon the dock was thick with trainees, each one a little island surrounded by family and baggage. A group of boys laughed and joked together at the foot of the gangplank, eyeing up the masts with reasonably convincing bravado. Looking round I could see our ship was going to be a community of all the nations on this voyage: two African boys and three girls; five boys from the Middle East; a bonny blonde whose face said Danish; three lively Greek boys with a quiet, dark girl listening to them; two sporty-looking Norwegian sisters; and a pair of boys, one very tall, with enough likeness between them to suggest they were brothers. Standing aloof was a girl with a hat like a British woman police officer’s tilted down over her brow, and a brightly coloured Bob Marley jacket. She was looking at the ship with a sulky expression, tilting her mouth downwards; the face I’d seen in the mirror in my teenage years in France. A knot of adults stood slightly apart from the sea of teenagers, kitbags at their feet.

  Past them, in front of the ochre toll house, the chief officer, Mike, was being seen off by his wife, Klaudina. I didn’t know him very well yet, because he had a house here in Kristiansand, so didn’t stay on board while Sørlandet was in port. He was from Cork, and in his early forties. He was tall and dark, that handsomely rugged look like Pierce Brosnan in his James Bond days, and infectiously enthusiastic over everything that went on aboard – I found him great to work under, and he went down a treat with the trainees. His wife was blonde and Swedish, with a pointed nose that reminded me of someone – cartoons of Mrs Thatcher, perhaps. She looked up at the ship and made a little face, then waved him away from her: Off you go to your other woman! her gesture said, with a hint of sharpness, as if she resented the hold the sea had over him.

  I turned back to work. Jenn, our lively Canadian liaison officer, had set up a table amidships, just in front of the mainmast, ready to give out berth numbers, and file passports in the secure box. Mike went forward and welcomed the trainees in English first, then in his Swedish-accented Norwegian. He unhooked the ‘Crew only’ chain. The first of the Greek boys hefted his bag on his shoulder and stepped up the gangplank, to start the hour of chaos that followed the arrival of a new bunch of trainees.

  I joined Erik and my two ABs in a line at the foot of the double stairs which led down to the banjer, the big saloon where the trainees lived. It was surprisingly light given that the windows were a row of portholes. The woodwork was cream, with the settee berths upholstered in a soothing oatmeal colour. The stairs divided the two sides of the space, and under them were rows of lockers. There were tables along each outer side, close enough to use the berths as seats for eating, and square seamen’s chests as seats on the inner side. Each roof beam had hammock hooks screwed into it. The trainees were placed in watches, so that those not on watch wouldn’t be bumped and bothered by those rising. My blue watch was on the starboard side, white was on port, and red took up my cousin Sean’s ‘little cubbyhole’ and the end rows on both sides.

  The first of th
e teenagers down the steps introduced himself straight away: ‘Johan.’ He was in his early twenties, a tall, slim boy with a cockscomb of fair hair above his brow and beautifully moulded cheekbones. If his confidence masked nervousness, it didn’t show. ‘I spent a year aboard Sørlandet two years ago. I can help here, if you wish.’

  Someone who knew the ship that well would be a real asset on the watch. I set him to showing the trainees where their lockers were, and greeted and smiled as the banjer filled and filled. At sea, of course, there would always be a third of the trainees on watch. For now there were people everywhere, hauling out jumpers, jeans and oilskins, and stuffing them into their lockers. Already there were tablets and mobile phones trailing cords from the tabletops to the sockets in the wall. Among it all, Ellen sat quietly on her berth and knitted, pointing out a hammock number every so often, and learning the names of all the young people who would be surrounding her for the next week. Olav watched them all, his little eyes darting from one to the other, making connections between them. The noise was appalling: teenagers shrieking at each other, yelling with laughter and banging the doors of their lockers and the lids of the chests.

  The adults came on last. The first for my blue watch was a man who gave the impression of being a fisherman, broad-shouldered and strong enough to haul the yards round unaided. My hand was lost in his. ‘Jan Ole,’ he rumbled. ‘I do not go aloft.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ I assured him. ‘You’ll be worth your weight in gold on deck.’

  He laughed at that. ‘You are talking a lot of gold.’ His eyes went to the hammock hooks. He reached out to give one an experimental tug, nodded in satisfaction, and headed for his locker.

  ‘Aage,’ the grey-haired man behind him said. ‘I too do not climb masts.’