Death on a Shetland Isle

by Marsali Taylor

  Oliver’s comments about stowing away had unsettled me. Oliver, the king, the golden son. I tried to think of ways of circumventing the system. Getting on without being given a ticket … no, I didn’t see how you could do that. Jonas was bang in front of the gangplank, handing them out, and although it was possible to climb aboard at other places, you couldn’t do it without being noticed. You’d have to get aboard, plus ticket, then find a way of getting the ticket off without you. If you came on board with a group, you could get them to bring the ticket off, shoving them at the gangplank officer in a fistful – but of course that meant accomplices. To come on board alone, and stay there … You could drop the ticket on the ground just as a lot of people were coming off, then nip back up the gangplank. When it was picked up, the officer would assume it had come from the crowd. I started watching groups more carefully, but there were few groups of potential stowaways, just family groups. You could … you could … I ran out of ideas, shook my head, and returned to standing to attention. My back was beginning to feel as if it had gone solid. Not much longer.

  The snail-horned bus returned at 12.30. The bus door opened and the trainees piled out, chattering enthusiastically to each other. Oliver’s stowaway could have waited for this moment and slipped in among the crew members. I scanned the pier quickly, and saw nobody hanging about, ready to slip. My experiences on our Belfast voyage had made me paranoid; or I’d been thinking too much about that Eynhallow story, with the extra people who went missing …

  12.40. The trainees who had stayed in Lerwick were straggling back aboard now, carrying bags blazoned with The Shetland Fudge Company, Jamieson’s of Shetland or The Shetland Times Bookshop, and chatting to each other about what they’d seen in their morning. Listening in, the two older men had gone to see the boat hall in the museum, with Shetland model boats suspended from the ceiling so that you could admire the boat shape, and then headed for the Marlex to try the local beer. Fireman Berg had joined them there. The teacher had several bags of all-over jumpers and gloves for friends, which she was showing to the wife of the couple. The family had been to the Up Helly Aa exhibition. There was no sign yet of Laura – and then I saw her crossing the car park, striding as if she was worried she was late, with a bookshop carrier bag in one hand, and a knitwear one in the other.

  Agnetha came over to us. ‘Many still to come off?’

  Jonas glanced at his list. ‘Four. A family party – those ones up there, trying the wheel for size.’

  ‘I’ll clear them for you,’ I said.

  I went up and chatted to the family for a few minutes, then explained that we were preparing for sea, and if they weren’t planning to sail to Fetlar today, they might want to go back ashore. The father, a burly fisherman in an all-over jumper with an anchor and cable pattern, laughed at that. ‘Lass, dinna tempt me. A voyage aboard would be a rare treat.’ He lifted up the younger boy. ‘Come on, now, Robbie, boy, we need to leave. Thanks to you, lass.’

  I watched them head off down the gangplank. At the far end of the pier, beside the old LHD building, Oliver was lounging towards the boat with long, unhurried strides that suggested he was permanently late and didn’t care. Daniel was walking beside him, but as they came in view of the ship, he turned away with a wave of the hand and crossed the road to the Spinning Wheel, ducking his head away from the ship as if he didn’t want them to be seen together. I saw Gavin give them a quick glance as he crossed the pier to come aboard.

  ‘Good museum?’ I asked.

  ‘It was very interesting. I didn’t see the half of it – I got stuck in the crofting life part, and never got upstairs at all.’ His hand touched mine. ‘Next time.’

  I turned my hand to cling to his for a moment. ‘Yes, a proper visit, together.’

  He nodded. ‘Muster?’

  ‘Any moment,’ I agreed.

  Daniel had come aboard now, scurrying across the gangplank, and five minutes after him, on the dot of five to one, my friend Magnie came across the pier with his rolling seaman’s stride. He knew all the stories about Fetlar and enjoyed nothing so much as a new audience, so I’d suggested to Agnetha, and she’d suggested to the captain, that he would be a good guide to have on board.

  He’d dressed for the part. He had his best seaman’s cap on his red-fair curls, and his ruddy cheeks were shining with a recent shave. He was wearing the last all-over gansey his late mother had knitted for him, horizontal stripes of stars and anchors in shades of blue with dazzlingly white bands between them, along with black cloth breeks instead of jeans, and his funeral shoes, polished to a mirror gloss. He greeted me with a raised hand and explained to Jonas, ‘Magnie Williamson. Cass aksed me aboard to tell your trainees a bit aboot Shetland.’

  Jonas waved him through, and went up to Agnetha. ‘That’s all the visitors off.’ He checked the pegboard and stowed it away. ‘Everyone on board now.’

  ‘Call the trainees up on deck.’

  Jonas disappeared down into the banjer. Gradually the trainees straggled upwards and formed into their lines, with Gavin at the end of my watch, sock ribbons and kilt fluttering in the breeze. The watch leaders checked the numbers, and Nils got Jonas to ring eight bells. Now we were back under ship discipline, and all on duty for making the ship ready for sea: securing loose items, hauling the hawsers back on board and retrieving the fenders as our ship moved away from her berth.

  The pilot steered us out of the north mouth. We came past the old stone walls that kept water from town, past the glass block of Mareel and the brown sails of the museum, cradled behind Hay’s Dock, where ships had left for the whaling each spring; past the cargo ferry and the new pier with the fishing boats moored up. The seals came out to swarm around us as we passed the fish factory, huge grey selkies with long snouts like pointer dogs. Once we’d passed the Skibby Baas we were into open sea, with the two skerries of the Brethren and Green Holm before us and the messy bulk of the Rova Head landfill site well astern.

  Magnie was on duty already, leaning against the port rail, with Laura and the Danish couple beside him. ‘That rock there, off the point, that’s called the Unicorn Baa, after a ship that struck on it. She was chasing the Earl of Bothwell after the Battle of Carberry Hill, where Mary, Queen of Scots was defeated.’

  Beside me, Gavin nodded. We’d stood back to let the trainees take the rail, shoulder against shoulder, with the mainmast ropes warm on our backs. ‘He ended up a prisoner in Denmark,’ he murmured. His manner was back to normal. ‘The mummy they display almost certainly isn’t his.’

  ‘More late-night shifts watching the History channel?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not these days. That stuck in my mind from years ago.’

  It would be a fine passage. It was still a bonny day, with only a rim of sun-whitened clouds on the horizon, and a southerly force 5 sweeping us upwards. Nils began setting the sails as soon as we passed the Green Holm. Fetlar was fifty miles from Lerwick, seven hours at seven knots. I’d have liked to go inside Whalsay, to give our trainees a look at the ‘Bonny Isle’, but the tides didn’t fit, so we headed on a straight line outside it. The green land slipped past us, Catfirth, Linganess and Dury Voe, with the cloud shadows chasing each other over the hills.

  By the start of my watch the clouds had thickened, and the glimpses of sun were gone, although the day was still bright. There was a white fret on the wave backs, and catspaws swept dark over the sea surface. Whalsay became clearer, with the former laird’s house, now converted to the island’s junior high school, prominent on the hill. The white superstructures of Shetland’s pelagic fishing fleet towered above the breakwater. The marina was filled with smaller shellfish boats that kept the fishermen busy in the eleven months their big boats weren’t at sea.

  Magnie pointed across the harbour at the little stone house on a rock above it. ‘That, now,’ he said. ‘Have a look through my spyglass. That’s an interesting place. In medieval times Shetland was part of what they called the Hanseatic League, and that was one of th
e trading stations.’

  I listened with half an ear as he explained the historic trading links between the Baltic, Norway, Shetland and Scotland, and compared them to the way the big fishing boats operated now, selling their catch electronically as soon as it was in the hold, and taking it to the buyer in Norway, Shetland or Ireland to be processed. The Whalsay folk had seen us coming, of course, and a number of little boats buzzed out from the marina and bounced across the water to circle us, cameras flashing. We forged steadily on between them, with Fetlar ahead. We were making good time; we’d have the anchor dropped by sunset. Beside me, three bells rang: 17.30.

  Alain came up beside me then, dressed for duty, cap level on his unruly curls. ‘The old boy’s a great talker, though it took me a while to understand his accent.’

  ‘He’s westside,’ I said, and thought, You grew up with a far stronger, in Yell.

  ‘Anything here I should know about, once I take over?’

  ‘That’s Fetlar, the green island dead ahead. We’re making for Houbie, in the Wick of Tresta.’

  I was just smoothing out the Fetlar chart to show him when there was a ringing from below us. Laura’s head went up, then she fished in her pocket for her mobile. She looked at the display, glanced around, then came aft to the cubbyhole between the engine deckhouse and the aft deck, and leant her shoulder against the white-painted wall there. We heard the snicks of the phone, then her voice floated up to us. ‘Hey. It’s Laura … yes, off Shetland … It’s great, I’m really enjoying it.’ Her voice changed from chatty to businesslike. ‘So?’

  There was a long silence. I imagined her nodding, below us. ‘Yes … what kind of figure are we looking at? … I understand, of course, but sizeable? … OK, yes, when I get back will be fine. We’ll need to take this to the board in any case, and they’ll want full details.’

  On deck, Oliver was looking around as if he was wondering where she’d gone. Alain gave me a quick, bright glance, raising his brows. I shook my head at him and bent back over the chart, trying not to listen.

  ‘Yes …’ Uncertainty snagged through her voice now. ‘Could you tell – was there any indication of who’s responsible?’ There was silence again, then her voice, flattened with defeat. ‘Yes. Yes. No, I won’t talk to him yet. Let’s save it all till we get back to Edinburgh … Thanks, Graham. If you want to have a look in your diary …’ There was another pause. ‘Yes, we get back on the 8th. The 10th would do fine. 09.30. I’ll book that with my secretary once the office is open, all directors to attend, an urgent and confidential matter … yes, thanks.’ She sighed. ‘Well, thank you, Graham. See you on the 10th.’

  I heard a snick as she put the phone away; just in time, for Oliver came striding over. ‘Lols, I was wondering where you’d got to.’ His easy laugh floated up to us. ‘You’re not supposed to be thinking about business all this trip.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ she said. ‘Just answering a text.’

  ‘No phones while on duty,’ he teased, and drew her back to the centre of the deck. I caught a glimpse of her face, tilting upward to us as he pulled her away. Not shocked, exactly, more the thoughtfulness of someone who’d had a suspicion confirmed. Someone who was setting the wheels in motion.

  I gave Alain a sideways glance. He was watching them, frowning. ‘I wonder what all that was about?’

  ‘Business,’ I said, ‘and none of ours.’

  ‘Sizeable, she said. Someone monkeying with the accounts.’

  I won’t talk to him yet … It was jumping to conclusions that she meant Oliver the golden. She could just mean she wouldn’t phone the person. But the impression that it had been Oliver they’d been talking about stayed with me. Was there any indication of who’s responsible? She’d asked that like someone who knew the answer.

  ‘None of our business,’ I repeated, and turned back to my chart.

  18.30, twenty nautical miles to go. I looked across the ship: at the trainees relaxing on deck, leaning over the rail watching the green land to port, or the sea horizon to starboard. Laura had moved to beside Magnie. He was telling her one of his Finn stories, about an ancestor who’d been on board ship with a Finn man. The ancestor had been worried about his wife, who was expecting their first child, and the Finn man had offered to send his spirit out to see how she was. The end of the tale floated up to me.

  ‘The Finn man went as cold and still as if he was dead, and they were faered to wake him. But by and by the colour came back to his face, and he sat up, and said that yes, all was well, she’d had a baby boy. And there in his hand, to prove he’d been in the house, was the very silver teaspoon me grandfather’s grandfather had telt him was on the mantelpiece. And the baby was called John Cast Anderson, after the Finn man, that was his name, Cast, and there’s been a baby in every generation o’ wir family since with that middle name.’

  Several hnefatafl games were in full swing amidships, on a variety of boards. There were two more like Geir’s, with the little moulded warriors and cloth board; another was a chess board with twists of paper as pieces, and one was a board drawn in chalk on the deck, with white and grey beach pebbles moving towards each other.

  ‘It looks fun, that,’ Alain said, and swung down to Laura. His gestures showed he was suggesting a game; she demurred, then capitulated, and he headed for the officers’ area and came back with a chess set and a piece of chalk. When Laura pointed out that there still weren’t enough men, he fished in the box and added several draughts counters. They settled down to their game.

  Beside them, Oliver had one of the new boards, and was playing Daniel with a frown of concentration over a jutted underlip. By the number of little brown warriors standing beside of the board, he was losing. Even as I watched, Daniel leant over, slid a piece across the board, and scooped another up.

  I checked our course, then leant back over my rail. Gavin came up beside me, a mug in each hand. ‘Officer Lynch’s white chocolate.’ I sipped it gratefully. The creamy sugar taste of it was far too sweet for normal use, but out at sea it hit the spot nicely. Gavin had tea; I caught the brown smell of it before the white chocolate drowned everything else. He nodded over his mug at Daniel, whose king was now safely in the corner, though not yet with his sheltering guards that would finish the game; he was amusing himself by picking off Oliver’s last warriors. ‘If your suspicions are right, that’s the brains of the pair.’ The game ended; Oliver gave a curt nod and went below. Laura leant over to Daniel. She lifted the little king up.

  ‘He’s an awfully bad loser,’ she said, laughing.

  She was doing well herself, I noticed, with a little line of Alain’s black pieces by the chalked edge of their board. I remembered him playing at pool in the students’ union. A win was an excuse to offer the girl a drink, but losing meant he could expect her to soothe his supposedly ruffled feelings. Sometimes he lost on purpose.

  Alain wasn’t my problem any more.

  I was off duty and lounging at the rail beside Gavin as we came straight up towards the Wick of Tresta. We caught a glimpse of Brough Lodge on its headland, a long castle front with a jumble of walls behind, before we came into the bay, held in a curve of grey cliffs grown over with grass and sea daisies. A long sandy beach lay at the bay’s head, with a loch behind it, and a big house in a clump of trees. We dropped anchor opposite the houses of Houbie, close enough to smell the land world: the mown grass, and the sweetness of the flowers that brightened the green parks.

  Magnie let us have a look, then gathered us around him under the silvery glow of the anchor light, switched on, naturally, the second the anchor hit the seabed. ‘Now, folk,’ he began, ‘you’re arrived at Fetlar, the most easterly of the larger Shetland islands – only the Out Skerries are closer to Norroway. The historians tell wis that aa o’ Shetland was settled by Picts come up fae Scotland afore the Vikings came around 800 AD, but the folk o’ Fetlar ken different. This was the island o’ the Finn folk, Laplanders, what we’d call Sami folk, and they were shamans. They could send their
spirits out into a bird, or a fish, and they could see the future, and control the weather, and I’ll tell you mair aboot them in a start.’

  He swept his arm out eastwards. ‘Now, along that direction is Funzie. It’s what they caa’ an ophiolite area, the remains of an ancient ocean crust that was thrust up when three continents collided some four hundred million years ago. There’s a geowall up there, that’ll tell you aa’ aboot it, and that’s a three-mile walk from the pier here. The Loch o’ Funzie is where you’ll see the red-necked phalaropes. You canna mistake them – the women hae a bright red patch at each side o’ their heads, and they go oot enjoying themselves while the men bide hame on the eggs. You might see red-throated divers too. Mind, you mustna disturb the birds – joost watch fae a distance. Mind, too, no’ to go too close to the cliffs. Some are solid, and others might just crumble under you. Keep ahint the wall.’

  My gaze went around the trainees and paused on Oliver. His eyes moved up and flicked across at someone on the other side of the ship – Daniel? I snapped my head around and glimpsed a dark, glossy head, whisking out of sight behind the banjer. Then he turned and said something to Laura, and she nodded. A stray puff of wind carried her reply over. ‘Yes, I’d like to see those birds. But there was an old house too, we saw it as we came in.’

  Magnie heard her and nodded. His other arm went out. ‘The other way is Brough Lodge, the big castle-like hoose that you saw as we cam’ closer.’ He looked at Laura. ‘You canna get inside it noo, lass, but it’s worth a look from the outside. Brough Lodge Trust are gradually doing it up into a knitting centre. It was the former home o’ the Nicolson family. The Interpretative Centre has home movies o’ them in the twenties and thirties, that show the house as it was then. The last Lady Nicolson died in Lerwick in the 1980s.’