The Body in the Bracken

by Marsali Taylor

  ‘Did you ever do anything more about Ivor’s yacht?’ I asked Kevin, once we were ensconced beside ‘our’ engine. He shook his head.

  ‘No’ yet, but there’re twartree of us who’d fancy a yacht like that, so we’re thinking to join together, maybe. Right now it’s hard to get anyone to think of anything but the Fire Festival. We’re all in the same squad, so I’m mentioning it as we practise.’

  The Lerwick Up Helly Aa was Shetland’s best known fire festival, but there was a smaller version of the Viking-inspired procession in every district. Scalloway’s was held on the second Friday in January. The procession and galley burning was followed by a long night of drinking, feasting, and dancing in various venues through the village. The ‘squad’ that Kevin belonged to was one of the groups of guizers who made up the procession, and they’d come round the venues to entertain the revellers. Kevin’s squad’s act must be pretty racy, judging by the way his cheeks had reddened.

  ‘I’ve got a ticket for the boating club.’

  The scarlet reached his neck. ‘You’ll mind it’s just a fun, and no’ take offence. I wouldna like you to be vexed.’

  That intrigued me, but it wasn’t done to ask, so we went back to taking our engine apart. We’d graduated from the fuel system to the pistons and cylinder head. Naturally, Khalida’s Volvo had only one piston, and while it still clanked up and down I was leaving the cylinder head strictly alone. Still, you never knew when the knowledge might come in useful.

  It was a good day when we came outside: not too cold, with the wind blowing softly from the west, then falling altogether to give a puff from the north, and backing west again. The lenticular clouds had lengthened to ominous lines of black, filling half of the sky, and every so often a stronger gust rattled the halyards as I drank my soup at Khalida’s little table. I was just rising to head for the café when my mobile rang: Gavin.

  ‘The skeleton was Hughson. Our dentist says there’s no question about it. I’m booked on the 17.30 this evening. I’ll have to spend a bit of time liaising when I arrive, but can I come round after that?’

  My heart gave a nervous jump. He wouldn’t expect to stay on board Khalida, of course not – It will work out, Maman had said. ‘What sort of time?’

  He’d heard my hesitation. ‘Not too late, or the Glenorchy landlady will lock me out. Nine o’clock?’

  ‘Yea. Will you have eaten?’

  ‘I hope so! Surely Lerwick can run to a visit to the chippy, between files. See you later.’

  By half past eight, I was like a cat on hot bricks. I would read a page of engine manual, look out of the window for a car drawing up at the marina gate, sit again for two minutes. Get a grip, Cass, I told myself. You’re not doing this for any man. I went along the pontoon to unlock the gate, then began a drawing of all the pieces that made up an engine. He’d be here when he arrived.

  The rattle at the gate alerted me. Should I stay at the table, showing I wasn’t waiting for him, or come out and meet him? Damn it, he’d rumble me whatever I did. I compromised with putting the kettle on, so that when his steps came along the pontoon I was ready to open the washboards and come up on deck. ‘Welcome back.’

  He came past me and went below, hung his heavy jacket up on the rail. I followed him and put the washboards back. Now we were enclosed in this little space. He sat down aft of the table, with room enough for me to sit beside him, if I wished, and considered my drawing. ‘A two-cylinder Yanmar?’

  ‘I thought you only had outboards on your boat.’

  ‘We have a generator in the byre, for power cuts. Kenny and I have a division-of-labour agreement: he does the animals, I do the machines, which don’t mind waiting for police work to finish. One of my summer jobs is servicing it, but so far I’ve managed to avoid taking the cylinder head off.’

  ‘Worth avoiding,’ I agreed. I set the mugs between us and sat down on the other side of the table. Now we could look at each other directly. His grey eyes were smiling at me, crinkling the tanned skin at their corners. I looked down at my mug, suddenly shy.

  ‘Your Lerwick police are on the ball,’ he said briskly. ‘They had all the official stuff about everyone involved on the table, backed by a sheaf of gossip notes and passenger information for the days we’re interested in, from both ferries and planes.’

  ‘What days?’

  ‘We started with the assumption that the goodbye note was genuine. He left Shetland under his own steam, went to the loch, and was killed there. His car was booked on the Saturday night boat, with him as accompanying driver, and there’s no return journey.’

  ‘But why would he go back to the loch?’

  ‘He did have one far-off link with it. He was a member of the university climbing club, and our loch was one of their camp-out spots; his favourite, according to a fellow-member who’s now a lecturer there. If there had been someone important to him, he might have taken her there.’ Donna said something about them going there … Gavin was quick. ‘You’ve thought of something.’

  ‘I can’t tell you about it yet. It was someone I met, but I’ve told them they need to come to you, and I hope they will.’

  ‘I’ve already talked to the folk who run the new marina in Mallaig. They have so many visiting yachts that of course they can’t remember all of them, especially four months later, but the young man who took the lines remembered Ivor’s face, when I sent him a photo, and he described the pretty girl that came off the bus to join him for the weekend.’

  ‘I did my best to persuade her that it will make far more stir if you have to look for her.’

  ‘Give her my number, and she can phone me directly without having to appear at the police station.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’

  Gavin nodded, satisfied. ‘Second possibility, he was killed at home and brought to our loch. Maybe he even described it to his killer as “a remote wilderness, if you got lost there nobody would find you”. The killer hoped he wouldn’t be found at all, or, if he was, that he wouldn’t be identified. It was the worst of luck for them that you should have found the body.’

  ‘Providence, Reidar reckons.’

  ‘“For nothing is hidden that will not be revealed.” If that’s how it was, then someone bundled him into the boot of his own car and brought him to the head of the loch on the day of the Gathering, to transport to where we found him.’

  ‘By quad,’ I agreed.

  Gavin smiled. ‘It’s such a help to the police, you being an island. Flights and ferries leave a trail. If Hughson was killed in the early hours of Saturday morning, then anyone who was off the island on a Friday ferry or flight is automatically excluded. Equally, if his body was disposed of on the day of the Gathering, Thursday the twenty-second, then anyone who was here on Shetland from after the boat left on Wednesday is out of that part of it.’ He took out his notebook. ‘His wife Julie first. She flew back from Inverness on the Sunday. She’d booked into the Inverness Youth Hostel for two nights, paying in advance, and there’s nothing to prove or disprove that, six months ago. She could have sailed home with Ivor, killed him here and taken his body back, and she could just have returned to the loch, dumped the body, and driven the car to Inverness in time for her flight. The timing’s tight, but possible – except that so far his car hasn’t turned up in Inverness. And of course it was the weekend – we were all about. She couldn’t have transported the body without one of us seeing her.’

  ‘What about the Thursday, the Gathering day?’

  He shook his head. ‘In college all week, teaching, in front of twenty students. Next, Hubert Inkster. He was on the ferry as he said, that Sunday, from Orkney. He has no alibi at all for his time in Scotland, so he could have met Ivor in Inverness, sailed home with him, killed him, returned with the car and body, come back to Shetland via Orkney, and gone back down on the Wednesday to dispose of the body. He only works part-time, and Thursday is one of his crofting days. We don’t accept alibis from sheep.’

  ‘It’s all so
complicated,’ I complained. ‘Jumping on this ferry to get home, on that one with Ivor’s car, back home, back on the Gathering day to dispose of the body, back home again. What about Robert-John Georgeson?’

  ‘His business partner.’ He drank the last of his tea and rose to wash the mug. ‘How am I doing for time? Twenty to ten.’ He had an old-fashioned round wrist-watch. He sat down again, but on the edge of the seat, as if to remind himself that he had a waiting landlady in his B&B. ‘Robert-John. At that point, he was worried sick about money. As soon as Hughson went off on holiday he got rid of the firm’s secretary, to save money, and did the paperwork himself. From mid-August till mid-September, when his wife took over the books, the paper trail is … scanty.’

  ‘Non-existent?’

  ‘No, no, there are at least a dozen invoices which look as though his wife found them in a pocket, smoothed them out, and put them in the system. Where the rest are, goodness knows. Robert-John himself thinks he was doing a house move that weekend, someone going to Dundee, and bringing another houseful back, but that could have been the following weekend, in which case he was at home in the week that interests us. Lerwick are following those up.’

  ‘What did Maya say?’

  ‘His wife would have said whatever would have given him an alibi, except that I carefully didn’t tell her what that was. Her own alibi for Friday night was the child being in bed. I don’t think she’d have left her.’

  I jerked my head round to him, surprised. ‘You think she might have killed Ivor Hughson?’

  ‘As far as motivation goes, she’s the strongest. Her whole world is her husband, her children, her house, and Hughson threatened all that. Robert-John says he didn’t tell her about the difficulties until Hughson didn’t return from his holiday, but she’s an intelligent woman. She knew fine that he was worried. One look in his papers would have told her the whole story.’

  ‘And,’ I added thoughtfully, ‘Robert-John and Maya knew when Ivor was due home. He was going to meet Robert-John on Sunday evening.’

  ‘There’s no reason why Robert-John should have told the rest of the Georgeson clan – particularly if he was keeping his difficulties quiet.’

  ‘Robert-John has a croft,’ I said. ‘He could ride a quad.’

  ‘There’s a better form of transport for bodies in the Highlands. We use it all the time.’ He smiled. ‘Think four legs.’

  The penny clanked home. ‘Ponies?’

  ‘Transport without sails, oars, or a motor.’ I didn’t try to resist the charm of Gavin’s smile any more, but laughed ruefully back at him. ‘Our ponies are used to strangers, and easy to catch. More importantly, you couldn’t dump something dead on the back of just any horse, horses are very sensitive about blood and death, but these ones are used for the stalking, and trained to carry a dead stag. You don’t need to go looking for bridles or saddles, just bring a halter and a rope to secure your body.’

  I could have kicked myself. ‘No wonder you were so interested in the contents of Mr Georgeson’s warehouse. Mr Georgeson junior may not ride any more, but he could lead one of your horses.’

  ‘Yes, anyone who’s taken part in one of those re-enactments is well able to handle a horse.’ He added, kindly, ‘Don’t feel too bad about not thinking of horses as transport. They’re not that good on water.’

  ‘Unless it’s a njuggle.’ I imagined Donna catching a pony, dragging the heavy body onto its back, and leading it through the hills. The Little Folk were tricksier than their innocent faces suggested, and she’d helped her brother with the Co-op horses. ‘If it was tied to a fence, say, would your pony stand patiently while someone levered a body over its back?’

  ‘Yes. Well, provided they didn’t take too long about it. It wouldn’t be an easy job. You’d have to lift the body until it was over the pony’s back, then tie the dangling arms and legs together under the pony’s belly.’

  ‘Definitely someone who was used to horses. You wouldn’t catch me fooling about among those hooves.’ Clydesdales had great hairy feet the size of tea-plates. If Donna was used to those, she wouldn’t be daunted by Gavin’s quiet garrons.

  ‘As for Hughson’s car, I expect to find it in Aberdeen somewhere, parked in a quiet street, if it’s not in the records of cars towed away.’ He stretched and rose. ‘I’m staying in the odour of sanctity.’

  ‘The Glenorchy Hotel?’

  ‘It was built as a convent for Anglican nuns. Have a look at the gable end the next time you pass. You can still see the shape of the chapel windows. Mrs Howarth said the actual windows are in the Episcopalian church. I must go and look.’

  ‘Oh, yes, St Magnus.’ I’d never been inside it, but our congregation and theirs got together for dances and quiz nights, so I knew a few of the people. I rose too, and came behind him up the steps into the orange-lit night. The cold wind sluiced my skin, after the warmth of the cabin. ‘I didn’t know there had ever been a convent in Shetland, apart from the nuns on Fetlar.’

  ‘There were Catholic nuns too, in a place called the White Rest. It was a seasonal hostel and first-aid post combined for Irish fisher girls in the twenties.’ Gavin swung over the guard rail and dropped lightly onto the pontoon. ‘Founded by an artist’s model turned suffragette. Shall I bring round a Chinese tomorrow, work permitting?’

  ‘Wouldn’t say no.’ Now I was faced with more calculations; whether I waved goodbye here or walked with him to the marina gate, as if I was expecting a kiss. Oh, but I would have to, to lock it behind him. I caught up my jacket and joined him on the wooden walkway. We swung along in silence, side by side, as we’d walked along the pebble shore of the loch. It wasn’t cold enough for our breath to smoke, but I was conscious of the sound of his breathing, soft as the water rippling under our feet.

  ‘I was wondering,’ Gavin said, as we reached the gate, ‘if we could do an excursion to this njuggle loch of yours. I’d like to look at the terrain for myself.’

  ‘I think I might even be able to do better than that.’ I grinned in the darkness. ‘I might have set up an encounter with the njuggle, at sunset tomorrow, if it’s fine. Njuggles don’t like rain.’

  ‘Ah, insider information.’

  ‘If you picked me up here at three, say?’

  He snicked his car lock open. ‘It’ll have to depend on how I get on. I’ll phone you. I could combine it with an interview with your antiques dealer.’ He swung himself inside, turned the key, and wound down the window. ‘If you don’t mind sitting in the car while I do that.’

  ‘Sherlock always took Watson into the villain’s lair.’

  He shook his head. ‘He didn’t take Mycroft. Good night.’

  I watched his lights dwindle along the shore road. Mycroft … Holmes’s brilliant elder brother, a quirky original thinker who pursued his own investigations and acted as a consultant when Holmes was stuck. An independent force to be reckoned with. I liked Gavin thinking of me like that.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Tuesday 7th January

  It had been a bonny day, what my Irish granny would have called a soft day, the sky clouded, but with glints of sun coming through to light up the hills and turn the wind-scoured water to polished pewter. I didn’t trust it though; there was a bank of low, yellow cloud to the west, which built and built, until by midday the sky was covered, and the faint tinny smell in the air as I walked to Khalida for lunch meant snow. I had my soup, threw silver paper for Cat to retrieve until he got fed up, and settled in my berth for the afternoon, then put on my jacket and did a rigging inspection while I waited for Gavin. I hadn’t noticed what he was driving, but it turned out to be a small red Fiesta from Bolt’s Car Hire, with the warning sticker on the back window, for the benefit of natives. It had that ‘new car’ smell, and the plastic dashboard was spotlessly black.

  It was strange to be sitting side-by-side like this. Going to Midnight Mass, we’d taken his car rather than the farm Land Rover, and his mother had sat in the front, while Kenny and I dozed behi
nd. Last summer, Gavin had driven me back to Voe from Lerwick, up the long Kames, but we’d been on more formal terms then. Now I found myself suddenly shy, shut with him in this enclosed space. His profile was remote, a policeman’s face; his brown hands on the steering wheel were square countryman’s hands, made for use, not beauty, yet delicate as a seabird hovering with the wind when he was tying intricate knots in near-invisible nylon fishing line, or winding thread around wool and feathers. Then he turned his head to smile, and the illusion of distance was gone. The silence became easy again.

  ‘We’ve found Hughson’s car. It was left in an Aberdeen sidestreet, not too far from the train station.’

  ‘So he did mean to do a runner after all.’

  ‘That’s what we’re meant to think, a second line of defence if anyone ever looked for him. The car was booked on the ferry on Saturday the seventeenth, with him as sole driver.’

  ‘If the car was in Aberdeen, does that mean both Julie and Hubert are out of it? Neither of them would have had time to drive it there then come back for the Inverness flight, for Julie, or the ferry in Orkney, for Hubert.’

  ‘Julie wouldn’t have; Hubert might. I’m not eliminating them, but I spent the day on the Georgeson clan. John Georgeson was at home all the weekend Ivor died; alibi, his wife. However the Lerwick officer got a look at John Georgeson’s last year’s diary, and he was at a council meeting on the Thursday of the Gathering. The secretary even produced the minutes of it. He couldn’t have disposed of the body – though that doesn’t mean one of the sons didn’t do it for him.’

  ‘Or the daughter.’

  ‘Children know their teachers. Do you think she would have?’