Death on a Shetland Isle

by Marsali Taylor

  ‘They think very highly of her. Good-looking, a good manner with the customers, efficient, an excellent organiser. “I can’t find anything without her,” was the way her boss put it. Nothing known about her private life, but he didn’t think she had a boyfriend. She’s the only woman in the firm, so there wouldn’t be girly confidences.’

  She checked her notes. ‘This weekend. She was quiet all Friday morning, and a bit pale, then she said she was starting a migraine, and went home early. She was expected back this morning, but she hadn’t turned up when I spoke to them, and she hadn’t phoned in either. That was at 09.05. He seemed surprised – said it wasn’t like her. I told them to ask her to phone us when she came in.’

  ‘When did she go home on Friday?’

  ‘Three o’clock, sir. The ferry left at seven. It’s only two and a half hours from Edinburgh to Aberdeen, and plenty of trains. She was a foot passenger, without a cabin. She didn’t have a return journey booked, and she wasn’t on last night’s ferry, or at least not under her own name.’

  ‘She’s used her name pretty openly so far,’ Sergeant Peterson said. ‘If she’d had an alias she’d have used it throughout.’

  ‘She was expected back,’ Gavin said. ‘Let’s think about what might have been planned. She was to isolate Ms Eastley and kill her while Oliver established his alibi on board. If she was to be back at work on Monday, then she expected to be on Sunday’s boat, leaving at …?’

  ‘19.00, sir.’

  ‘She could have got off Fetlar on the 11.30, if she’d been quick, or the 16.00. Struck up a conversation with someone on board and hitched a lift across Yell, even on to Lerwick.’ He looked across the room at another officer. ‘Ewan, you talked to the ferry crew.’

  The officer he was asking shook his head. ‘They were confident they knew about everyone on all of yesterday’s crossings, sir. I’ve got a list. There were visitors for the tournament, a couple of local cars and some teenagers returning from a wild night out in Baltasound. I showed them her picture, and they were definite they hadn’t seen her. They’ll look out for her today.’

  ‘So there’s a good chance she’s still on the island,’ Sergeant Peterson said.

  ‘Why would she book the böd, if she was planning to leave yesterday?’ one officer asked.

  ‘Good question,’ Gavin said. He nodded to the officer who was writing on the whiteboard. She scrawled WHY next to the photo of the böd. ‘In case whatever she was doing to Laura took longer that they’d expected, and missed her the ferry?’

  ‘In which case,’ Sergeant Peterson added, ‘no doubt she’ll phone in this morning to say her migraine hadn’t quite gone, but she’d be in tomorrow.’

  ‘OK,’ Gavin said, ‘that all hangs together as a potential scheme. Let’s look at Eastley. Twenty-nine, charming, single, still living with his sister, failed attempts at college, working in a fairly basic capacity in the family firm, and apparently contented with that, saving his excitement for … something that put him so much in debt that his sister got both shares of the family home.’

  ‘Horses and online poker,’ another officer said. ‘Visits to a casino. He’s not exactly known to the Edinburgh police, but they weren’t totally surprised I was asking about him.’

  ‘So,’ Gavin said, drawing a line on the whiteboard, ‘we have Eastley needing money. We have a link between Eastley and Reynolds, which is either a casual attraction that they enjoy when they meet, but which doesn’t go any further, or something that’s being so carefully covered up that not even their friends know they’re an item. Yes, the Register House is a priority. A hidden legal connection between them would be interesting.’ He paused to look through his notes. ‘Let’s move on to the death of Daniel Christie. Freya?’

  ‘Initial feedback from the ship says he was seen leaving the hall by a Valter Bengtsson, who put the time around 21.20. That checks with the band’s timing of the dances. Several people noticed that he was fiddling with his phone, “texting”, one of the teenagers said, and then he put the phone away and went out. The implication being that he received a text that told him to come to the Haltadans. So his phone would have told us something, if it had been left with him.’ She looked at another officer. ‘How are you getting on with the providers?’

  ‘Vodafone, ma’am.’ The officer looked pleased with himself. ‘Good news, sir. There are a number of phone calls to Oliver and Laura’s house.’

  ‘Good work,’ Gavin said. He nodded down at Sergeant Peterson. ‘Another thing to ask Mr Eastley about. And the last call he received?’

  ‘He received a text at 21.13, from an unregistered pay-as-you-go. It was the first communication he’d received from that number, but he’d tried to call it four times through the afternoon.’

  ‘A single-use phone.’ Gavin brooded for a moment. ‘But he knew the number, had it stored in his phone … which would have given us the name. That’s why his phone had to go. We might be incredibly lucky and get fingerprints from his jacket pocket.’ He indicated a blown-up print of Daniel’s face. I turned my head away, but couldn’t shut out his voice. ‘Obviously we have to wait for forensics, but it seems clear he was shot, and I’d have said he died where he was found. Someone he knew came up to him and shot him at point-blank range. It was a small-calibre weapon, and given we heard a pistol shot earlier, it seems reasonable to posit for the moment that he was shot with a pistol. Ms Lynch.’ I jumped, and turned my head back to him. ‘Would it be fair to say that it would be possible for a trainee to bring a gun on board the Sørlandet?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We don’t search trainees’ baggage. However if it was a trainee from outwith Norway, they’d have had to smuggle it into Norway, unless they bought it there.’

  Sergeant Peterson began tapping into her laptop and scanned the page quickly. ‘Gun ownership is strictly regulated in Norway, sir. A course is required for a permit, usually for hunting. A non-resident wouldn’t be able to obtain a gun legally there.’

  Gavin looked down at her. ‘How about on the Shetland ferry, NorthLink? Is the baggage scanned?’

  She shook her head. ‘We meet the ferry with the drugs dogs, but there’s no X-ray machine.’

  Gavin was thinking as I had. If Oliver couldn’t have brought the pistol, then Anna must have.

  Gavin wound up his summary there, and I was just about to make myself a cup of tea when there was a stir among the officers, and one hurried forward. ‘A call from Edinburgh, sir. An accountant who says he’s also a family friend of Ms Eastley has come into their station. They’ve got him connected and ready to talk to you.’

  There was a flurry of clicking, then one of the computer-gazing officers stood up, gesturing Gavin towards his chair. ‘Put him on,’ Gavin said. He leant forward so that his head was visible in the box in one corner of the screen. ‘Let’s hear what he has to say.’

  I oozed into the back row of bystanders. Nobody was bothering about me; they were all staring at the screen.

  There was a clunk or two, and then the screen opened in a Skype mode, and a suited man in his fifties looked out at us. He was visibly corporate: suit, tie, haircut, a distinguished member of a reliable firm. ‘Graham Lynwood, chief accountant with the Edinburgh firm Stuart and Riccard.’

  Gavin responded in kind. ‘DI Gavin Macrae, of Police Scotland. I believe, sir, you have information for us.’

  Mr Lynwood nodded and leant forward, his face filling the screen. There were anxious lines under his eyes, and a drawn look to his mouth. ‘Is there any news of Laura?’

  ‘Nothing yet, sir.’

  ‘I’ve known her all her life.’ His eyes shifted from the screen for a moment, then returned to us. ‘Her mother and I went through university together.’

  ‘Then you’re just the person we want, sir,’ Gavin said. ‘Someone to fill in the family background.’

  Mr Lynwood had an outsider’s view of the family: father a hard-working GP, mother busy in the firm, children thrown together under the care of
a series of au pairs, plenty of money, not much time. Oliver had been his mother’s pride and joy, Laura her father’s girl. She’d been the scholar, the prize-winner; Oliver had been the lightweight who’d flitted from course to course, trouble to trouble, until they’d got him a job in the firm. ‘In spite of that, Laura was always devoted to her brother.’ He smiled. ‘I have this vivid memory of her as a schoolgirl with plaits, on her first day at school, barely up to his shoulder, leading him to the bus stop, as if she was the older one. She always looked after him. I’m sure he got in more trouble than Dave and Alison knew about, and she got him out of it.’

  ‘What was her relationship with her parents as an adult?’

  ‘Good.’ He nodded to himself. ‘She and her father stayed close, especially as there was no boyfriend in the picture. He was very proud of her. She took their death hard – not just the shock, but the sudden responsibility too.’

  ‘I believe, sir, the firm was in difficulties due to the recession?’

  ‘Yes, she had that to deal with. Luckily she has Alison’s head for finance. By the end of the financial year they were in a steady position.’ He paused, waved his hand across his face as if waving something away, then took a deep breath. ‘Three weeks back, she phoned me with concerns about the firm’s accounts.’

  A collective shudder ran through the ranked officers in front of me. Gavin didn’t move. ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘She—’ He paused and cleared his throat. ‘Laura was worried that someone had been tinkering with the books. So she asked me to take a private look at them.’

  ‘Without involving the other directors?’ Gavin asked.

  Lynwood shook his head. ‘Irregular, I know, and if it hadn’t been Laura, I wouldn’t have considered it. But you see, I thought – I could see she thought – that Oliver was at the bottom of it.’ He pulled out an immaculately ironed handkerchief and mopped his brow.

  ‘And was there any suggestion in your investigation that her suspicion was correct?’

  He nodded and mopped his brow again. ‘She wanted to know the worst before deciding what action she should take.’

  ‘And what was the worst, sir?’

  Lynwood’s eyes flicked from left to right, and he spread his hands in a Hold off gesture. ‘I hadn’t told her the full figure yet. I didn’t want to spoil her holiday.’

  ‘But you had told her that there was money missing?’

  He nodded. ‘I phoned her two days ago.’

  My instinct was right, then. I remembered Laura’s face as she’d put her phone away, a resigned, unsurprised grief.

  ‘I said that there had been defalcations, starting immediately the audit was over. I said I didn’t have the full amount, but that I feared it might be more than she could afford to repay herself – I knew she’d want to do that, if she could.’

  ‘And her reaction, sir?’

  ‘Well, she was in a public place. We agreed that we’d go into the full amount when she came home.’

  He stopped there, looking as if he hoped nobody would ask any more.

  ‘And do you know the full amount, sir?’

  He took another deep breath and came out with it, eyes screwed up as if it hurt. ‘It came to around two million missing, spread across a large number of accounts.’

  There were indrawn breaths from the officers in front of me, and a low whistle.

  ‘Two million, sir,’ Gavin repeated, his voice matter-of-fact.

  ‘Then I heard, on this morning’s news – they named her as missing – I thought this information might be relevant to your enquiry.’

  ‘Did your investigations lead you to any suggestion of who might be responsible?’

  Lynwood spread his hands, as if to ward off too much precision. ‘The fraud had been cleverly done, but not cleverly enough. There were indications that it would be possible to track some of the transactions back to a particular person.’

  ‘The particular person she suspected?’

  He gave a gloomy nod. ‘We agreed that neither of us would say anything to anyone.’ His brows drew together. ‘I didn’t want Oliver to get round her, to persuade her to agree to a cover-up. I wanted to be there when we confronted him.’

  ‘What will your next step be, sir, if Ms Eastley doesn’t turn up?’

  His head came up again, and his face cleared; this was laid-down procedure. ‘I’ll take what I’ve found to the board of directors. There will need to be a full examination of the books by an outside firm. The directors will then decide what action to take, but I think prosecution will be inevitable.’

  Sergeant Peterson leant forward to the screen. ‘Sergeant Peterson, Mr Lynwood. Can you tell us anything about Laura’s will? Who would benefit in the event of her death?’

  He looked uneasy for a moment. ‘I can, as it happens, because she discussed it with me.’ He paused for a moment, thinking it over. ‘This is, of course, confidential to your investigation.’

  ‘Of course,’ Gavin agreed.

  ‘Her personal assets were left to Oliver. That is, their house – Oliver was still living there, although she owned it – and whatever private savings she had. Her shares in Ryder and Whittingham, well, we had a long talk about that. The firm had been started by her Whittingham great-great-grandfather, and built up by her family, particularly her mother. She didn’t want …’ He paused, sighed, and rephrased. ‘She wanted to ensure its prosperity. She left her shares to be divided equally between the other directors, leaving Oliver with only his current small stake.’

  Sergeant Peterson was scribbling in her notebook. ‘Do you have any idea, sir, if Mr Eastley was aware of the contents of his sister’s will?’

  Lynwood spread his hands. ‘As far as the shares were concerned, probably not. I think he would assume he would inherit from her.’

  Gavin nodded, and bent his head to flip through his notes. ‘Have you ever come across a man called Daniel Christie? Around the same age as Eastley and Ms Eastley.’

  The smooth face frowned. ‘Christie … Christie … it’s a common enough name. Does he work in accounting?’

  ‘Banking, at RBS HQ in Edinburgh.’

  Lynwood’s brow cleared. ‘Daniel Christie. Yes. I’ve come across him. He’s quite a whiz-kid in finance.’

  ‘Do you know if he knew either Laura or Oliver?’

  Lynwood took a moment to think about it. ‘I don’t remember either of them ever mentioning him. But it’s pretty likely, if he went out of a Friday night, the way they all do nowadays, that he and Oliver would have met. Laura’s not a party girl, more likely to go up to Aviemore for skiing, or go and climb a Munro.’

  I tried to imagine Daniel on skis, or halfway up a mountain, and failed. But he could have known Oliver.

  ‘Drives a flashy car,’ Lynwood added. ‘Oliver’s a car enthusiast too – another possible link.’ He paused, frowning, then lifted his head. ‘Party. Yes. Back last Christmas, before Dave and Alison’s death. There was one of those corporate gatherings, and Laura and Oliver were both present. It was given by RBS so it’s highly likely that Daniel was there too.’

  ‘What was the venue, sir?’

  ‘St Andrew Square.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you remember the date?’

  Lynwood swiped at his phone. ‘The 5th of December.’ His head went up. ‘Yes, they did meet. I saw him chatting with Oliver, and then with Laura. She was at her golden girl best then.’ His mouth twisted. ‘It was the last time I saw her happy.’

  Gavin noted that too. ‘Thank you for your help, sir. We’ll follow that up. Now’ – he looked straight at Lynwood – ‘in your judgement, sir, would Mr Eastley be capable of technically carrying out the fraud you found?’

  Lynwood hesitated. ‘It has been carried out, so I must suppose so.’ He paused again, frowning and shaking his head. ‘But I wouldn’t have thought he had the financial brain.’

  ‘How about Mr Christie?’

  Lynwood spread his hands again. ‘Given that I know nothing about his c
haracter or experience, I can’t say, but I would concede that someone in his position at RBS would be technically capable.’ He frowned again. ‘You think he carried out the fraud on Oliver’s computer – on Oliver’s behalf?’

  ‘I thought I’d run the idea past you,’ Gavin said.

  Lynwood shook his head. ‘I can’t comment.’

  The conversation seemed to be winding up. I backed away quietly before anyone noticed me, and lay down on one of the hall benches in a corner, flinging my jumper over my legs and using my knapsack as a pillow. I’d been up before four, and my eyelids were closing. Words echoed in my head. An Edinburgh four-storey New Town house, with a garden behind it … moving upwards towards a million. If Oliver had had enough of the golden sister who outshone him – if he was short of money – then it was a goodly inheritance. A motive for murder. ‘You need a break, Laura. Let’s get away from it all.’ Then he arranged to bring Anna, his secret girlfriend, up to Fetlar to do the killing, while he stayed on board, in full sight. If it hadn’t been for Daniel fretting, we’d never have known about Anna – which brought me back to where Daniel came in, and who’d killed him. The elusive Anna, with her bright eyes, and broad cheekbones, like a Finn woman …

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I woke refreshed an exact twenty minutes later. It was just after eleven, and there was a busy hum of officers working on their computers or moving from table to table to compare notes, but nothing that I could be involved in.

  My brain had woken up too. A whiz-kid in finance. Suppose the actual couple in the case was Daniel and Anna. Forget Oliver; the stumble on the broch stairs could just have been an accident. Imagine instead that Daniel and Anna were the murderous couple with designs on Laura’s wealth. That’s the brains of the pair, Gavin had said, watching Daniel beat Oliver at hnefatafl. He could have homed in on Oliver as someone to exploit: ‘It’s an unusual investment, Oliver, but it’ll bring back rich dividends for someone with the nerve to think outside the box.’ I could see Oliver falling for that line – except that he didn’t have the money to invest. It was all concentrated on Laura, who was nobody’s fool.