None but the Dead

by Lin Anderson

  They’d swum off the nearby beaches and cooked fish on an open fire in the dunes. Sam and Jean had left them to their own devices, sensing this was the end of childhood for them both, and that tomorrow would be a different day.

  And it turned out to be true.

  They’d remained friends, though they’d gone their own way in the world. But Magnus had never forgotten the role Sam Flett played in that.

  It had been Sam’s most recent email which had prompted this visit. When it arrived, Magnus had been considering a long weekend at home in Orkney. Sam’s message had made up his mind on that front. The storms of the previous week having abated, he’d reached Kirkwall from Glasgow just as the fog descended, so had no hope of a quick hopper trip to Sanday.

  Until now, he hadn’t talked to Erling about his recent correspondence with Sam, preferring to talk to Sam face to face about it first.

  Sam had been ‘seeing’ things. Darkness and evil that involved a local child. Apparently the unearthing of a collection of muslin flowers in the loft of the old schoolhouse had triggered his angst. The discovery of a body buried in the old playground had served to make things worse.

  ‘I can talk to you. You won’t think I’m going mad,’ he’d told Magnus.

  Magnus had recruited Sam’s help a while back, with a paper he’d been writing on the second sight, asking for local stories and legends that might indicate its presence in Sanday. Sam had been very helpful, sending material from the museum archives and eventually admitting to his own experiences.

  And now the child he was worried about had gone missing.

  Magnus’s call to Erling this morning, indicating his intention to catch the ferry to Sanday to see Sam, had resulted in his presence on the police launch. It was as swift a passage as Magnus could have hoped for, but he sincerely wished that it hadn’t been necessary.

  He had hoped to talk Sam through his fears, help him establish psychological reasons for them. Learn a bit more about the muslin flowers that had so disturbed him.

  Magnus hadn’t thought that any such discussion would involve the disappearance of a child.

  From his own experience with criminal profiling, he was aware that the window of opportunity for finding a child was small. By the time the troops were assembled, half that time had gone.

  Erling was in the cabin with his small group of men. They would be relying on locals to do the majority of the work. They were there to offer support and to investigate behind the scenes. He’d given Magnus a brief résumé of what had happened up to now. When Rhona’s name had come up, Erling had said, ‘I thought you may have known she was on Sanday?’

  ‘I’ve been in Germany,’ Magnus had told him. ‘A lecture tour.’

  ‘Her assistant’s gone back to Glasgow with the remains. Dr MacLeod was intent on following later today.’

  The two men had exchanged a look that indicated Rhona wouldn’t be going anywhere if the child wasn’t found alive.

  ‘And DS McNab?’ Magnus had asked.

  ‘He had a run-in with a local and got pitched over the wall at the Kettletoft Hotel. Torvaig fished him out, soaked, but otherwise unharmed.’

  ‘A bit like the old days?’ Magnus had smiled, remembering the drunken escapades of their youth.

  ‘DS McNab didn’t find anything amusing about it,’ Erling had told him. ‘He saw it more as attempted murder.’

  Now that did worry Magnus.

  ‘He maintained it was linked to the cold case.’ By Erling’s expression, he hadn’t dismissed such a thought.

  ‘What’s happened to Sanday since I was last there?’ had been Magnus’s reply.

  32

  Putting the mobile in a sealed evidence bag had been a good idea. A little moisture had entered in her struggle to negotiate the causeway, but not enough to do damage. The photographs she’d taken at Mount Maesry were good. Or at least the ones taken outside were, including the footprints she’d recorded on the ground leading to the tunnel. Those she’d taken of the central chamber, not as clear.

  ‘But it’s definitely a skull,’ Rhona told the screen.

  Tossing off the duvet, interest taking over from a desire to get warm again, she fetched her laptop and downloaded the images.

  The resultant pictures were better but were they good enough? She would send them through to Chrissy and see what the IT lab made of them. The best solution would be to go back there, clear the tunnel, get inside and take a proper look.

  The more she thought about it the more the idea of the missing skull being secreted there made a kind of sense. The mound was a place to incarcerate the dead, with a great deal more respect than had been afforded to the victim in the playground.

  But who would have done it?

  Many people felt deeply uncomfortable about exhumation. All cultures had their own way of dealing with the dead. Each Orkney island had its own idiosyncrasies, its own history and pattern of beliefs, although they shared a common Scandinavian heritage. Magnus had said that there was also an Inuit influence, because of the intermarriage between Orcadians working for the Hudson Bay Company and the inhabitants of the vast north of Canada.

  Magnus’s hero, the Arctic explorer John Rae, had spent a great deal of time with the Inuits, learning how to survive in their world, and apparently they believed that a person’s soul was contained in their blood. A tricky scenario for forensics to deal with in that part of the world.

  Religion didn’t appear to play a dominant role on Sanday, not the way it did on the western islands of Scotland. But someone hadn’t liked the idea of the bones being exhumed and taken off the island. Or maybe they just didn’t like the idea that the skull might help identify the victim. Either way, the skull she’d seen in the mound would have to be retrieved to check whether it was the missing one.

  Revived now, and keen to make contact with the outside world, Rhona went in search of a possible signal. She’d heard nothing from Derek all day, but then she’d indicated she didn’t require transport until the late ferry. A ferry she wouldn’t be catching now.

  When Derek’s mobile rang out unanswered, she tried McNab.

  ‘Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you for hours,’ he said.

  ‘I got stranded on Start Island,’ she began, but he wasn’t really interested in hearing her story.

  ‘Inga Sinclair’s been missing since nine thirty this morning. We have a search party out looking for her. Sam Flett’s losing his nut over it. As is her mum.’

  Rhona went cold, colder than she’d felt when she’d exited the water at the causeway.

  ‘When was she last seen?’

  ‘Nine thirty, setting out for Sam Flett’s. I’ve searched the paedo’s place. It’s clean and he swears he never saw her.’ There was a short pause. ‘There’s something else.’

  Rhona waited.

  ‘I got another poison-pen letter, by text this time.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Seems the DI’s relative may be keeping something from us.’

  There were no records kept of who had been on the ferry as a foot passenger, not unless they’d paid for the crossing by card. Of course in a small community, somebody usually knew your business, including when you were headed to Kirkwall. There was no evidence to suggest that Sam Flett had taken a trip to the town, or further afield, in the last couple of weeks.

  Yet to McNab, in terrier mode, that thought persisted.

  Elsewhere, Sam Flett would be a suspect. He was the only one who seemed to know anything about Jock Drever, and he was, in McNab’s opinion, holding something back on that front.

  As for the kid. She’d last been seen by her mother heading to Sam’s house. He maintained that she’d never reached his place and that had been accepted without question. Why? In any other child disappearance case, his house would have been the first one to be searched. But, hey, he was related to DI Flett, a pillar of the local community, and therefore completely trustworthy.

  In my experience, you’r
e guilty until proved innocent.

  On the announcement of Inga’s disappearance, the local car hire firm had offered their four vehicles for police use, so they were no longer restricted to Derek’s Land Rover and the car PC Tulloch had brought over.

  The police launch would be arriving soon with DI Flett and two or three of his merry men from Kirkwall, so they would need the extra transport. Professor Magnus Pirie was on his way too. McNab checked his feelings on that front. If he was honest, he could do without Pirie full stop. Yet, he had to admit, they had come to an understanding of sorts during the last case they’d worked on together.

  And here they were together again. Why? Because Pirie was an Orcadian buddy of DI Flett’s or because he had some mystical knowledge of Sanday and so-called magic flowers, or even worse, men who preferred their sexual partners young enough to be their daughters?

  Memories of his own dalliance with Iona followed that thought, so he swiftly moved to the mystery text.

  Ask Sam Flett about the girl. That’s what it had said.

  What girl? The one lying dead this seventy years in a grave next to the schoolhouse? Or the girl with the short dark hair and big eyes who’d told McNab she would find the skull for him?

  I should have told her not to look. Maybe she did discover who took it. Maybe that’s why she’s missing. McNab didn’t want to go down that route, but couldn’t prevent himself.

  He heard a car draw up. It could be good news or bad news. Or it could just be the cavalry.

  ‘There’s no chance she could be on Start Island?’ McNab said. ‘And we’ve been looking in the wrong place?’

  The three men now turned in unison to Rhona.

  They’d convened in the research room of the heritage centre, DI Flett and Magnus coming from Loth and Derek bringing Rhona from the cottage. Asking Derek to wait in Sam’s office, Erling had ushered them in here.

  The search had ended for the night, with no sightings of Inga since she’d said goodbye to her mother that morning. The girl, it seemed, had simply disappeared.

  Rhona had outlined what had happened to her, and that she’d seen a skull in the Maesry Mound. Hence McNab’s question.

  ‘I suppose it’s possible Inga might have gone there,’ Rhona said. ‘But if she did track the skull to the mound, there was no evidence of a child’s footprints around the entrance, only an adult’s.’

  ‘How long before we can get back across?’ McNab demanded.

  ‘Not until the next low tide, unless we go by boat,’ Erling said. ‘And we can’t search the island in the dark anyway.’

  ‘Maybe she got cut off like Rhona?’ McNab said.

  ‘I suspect every local knows about the tide and the causeway,’ Erling said. ‘And the kids will have been warned. That was the case when I used to visit. Sam and Jean were very particular about it.’ He looked to Magnus, who nodded in agreement.

  ‘Derek told me to check the tidal clock in the cottage,’ Rhona said. ‘I thought I’d read the clock correctly but—’

  ‘There’s something else,’ McNab interrupted her.

  Rhona registered McNab’s expression and realized what he was about to reveal.

  ‘I received an anonymous text about Sam Flett.’

  ‘What about Sam?’ Magnus said.

  ‘It said, “Ask Sam Flett about the girl.”’

  When this announcement was greeted by a puzzled silence, he went on, ‘My first response was that it referred to the remains in the playground. Then I thought of Inga.’

  ‘And you have no idea who might have sent it?’ Magnus said.

  ‘No. I can get the Tech department on to it—’

  Erling interrupted him. ‘Has Sam’s place been checked?’

  ‘I searched the schoolhouse …’

  ‘Has Sam Flett’s house been searched, Sergeant?’ Erling repeated.

  ‘I’m not sure it has,’ McNab finally admitted.

  Rhona had never seen Erling angry before. The anger was controlled but it was unmistakable.

  ‘When did Sam turn up at the girl’s house?’

  ‘Ninety minutes or so after Inga left.’

  Erling bristled still further. Rhona sensed that had she and Magnus not been there, McNab would have received a dressing-down.

  Sensing an impasse, Magnus intervened.

  ‘I’m heading to Sam’s. What if McNab goes with me and conducts a search?’

  There had been plenty of time for Sam, should he be guilty of anything, to remove evidence of it. That was something they all knew. Then again the likelihood of Sam Flett harming Inga didn’t seem a possibility to Rhona. She said so.

  ‘Sam’s email to me was troubled,’ Magnus said. ‘He appeared concerned for the girl’s safety. He also mentioned something about the disturbance of muslin flowers in the schoolhouse loft.’

  McNab stood up, ending that discussion. ‘Let’s go.’

  33

  The house was in darkness apart from an outside light which came on at the car’s approach. Rhona saw no sign of Sam’s jeep. It was dark by now, with no evidence of moon or stars. Rain and wind had accompanied them there, not constant, but registering as intermittent squalls. Rhona didn’t like to think of the child anywhere outside on a night like this.

  McNab, the driver, had remained silent throughout the journey as Rhona had got Magnus up to speed on what had brought them here, and what had happened since. Even to Rhona’s own ears, it sounded strange.

  McNab drew up alongside the walled garden to the front of the house and killed the engine. All was quiet.

  ‘Doesn’t look as though he’s in,’ McNab said.

  ‘He was expecting me,’ Magnus told him.

  ‘That was before the kid went missing.’

  ‘Maybe he’s with Inga’s mother?’ Rhona suggested.

  ‘Let’s take a look around,’ McNab said, getting out of the car.

  Magnus looked ready to remonstrate, but Rhona touched his arm. ‘The door’s probably open,’ she suggested. ‘And as you said, he’s expecting you.’

  McNab was already in the porch. Seconds later the hall light came on.

  ‘Sam won’t mind,’ Rhona told Magnus. ‘I’m sure he’ll be glad we checked if he hasn’t done so already.’

  They stood in the small living room that looked very like the interior of the old croft in the grounds of the heritage centre. The fire had been banked up and was smouldering away in Sam’s absence. The open fire wasn’t the only thing in the room that belonged to the past.

  Nothing’s changed in here for decades, Rhona thought. An Orkney chair either side of the fireplace, the box bed, the small items of brass, polished and shining.

  ‘It was his parents’ home,’ Magnus said. ‘He sold his own house and moved here when his mother died. Jean had died a couple of years before and he was on his own.’

  The room was as tidy as it was old-fashioned. If Inga had been here, there was no evidence of it. Nothing untoward, everything in its place. On the table, a book about Orkney during the war sat next to an old floral-patterned tin, possibly pre-war.

  McNab had already deserted them, heading to the downstairs bedroom and bathroom.

  ‘There’s an upstairs too,’ Magnus said. ‘I visited with Erling once. He sometimes stayed here with Sam’s mother.’

  The wooden staircase was steep and narrow, with a platform at the top and a door on either side. Through the right-hand one they found a spare bedroom. Tidy and apparently unoccupied, although the bed was made up. Through the other door was a study. An open laptop sat on a desk below the skylight. One wall was shelved. Running her eyes over the spines, Rhona noted that most of the books related to Orkney and its various islands through the ages.

  ‘His main interest,’ Magnus said.

  When they went back downstairs McNab was in the living room, looking about as though willing something suspicious to appear.

  ‘Anything?’ he said.

  Rhona shook her head.

  ‘We’d better
check the outhouses.’

  Most of the buildings that clustered to the back of the croft house were semi-derelict. In the time it had been a working farm, they would have all been in use. Now, one seemed to be kept for the use of stray cats, which hissed threateningly at McNab as he shone his torch about.

  ‘What is it about you and cats?’ Rhona said in sympathy.

  ‘Your cat likes me.’

  ‘Tom’s the only one.’

  They ploughed their way through all the sheds but in truth it was hardly a proper search in the dark. Old bits of rusty machinery could have hidden more than just a few stray felines.

  Rhona shouted Inga’s name throughout, just in case.

  ‘Do you have a mobile contact for Sam?’ McNab said when they’d reconvened in the living room.

  ‘No. He got in touch by email.’

  ‘Can I see the interchange?’

  They trooped back upstairs. McNab stood back to allow Magnus to take a seat before the laptop. It was obvious that Magnus was uncomfortable about this. Checking through someone’s laptop was like searching through their belongings without a warrant, but by McNab’s expression, he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Rhona guessed that Erling’s reprimand had left its mark.

  Magnus seemed to have come to the same conclusion, because he attempted to do as bid.

  The laptop, like the front door, wasn’t secured. There was no password set for access and the desktop layout was pretty obvious. Magnus had no difficulty in finding Sam’s emails and a search on his own name soon brought up their exchange. The first emails were on the subject of the second sight, followed by Sam’s tale of ‘the souls of dead children being disturbed’ and his subsequent fear for the child.

  There was silence as McNab read them through, disbelief registering on his face.

  ‘I thought the old guy was losing it. Now I’m sure.’

  Magnus looked as though he might remonstrate. Rhona, thinking an argument wasn’t what they needed at this moment, intervened.