The Body in the Bracken

by Marsali Taylor

  Maman spent too much time in the world of ancient Greece to be convinced by that. ‘It was his youngest son, and that was the man who has brought him to ruin.’

  ‘He should declare bankruptcy and start again. That’s the businesslike option.’

  Maman shook her head. ‘He will not do it. It is businesslike, but he is not that sort of a businessman. Now, does that make his father’s motive more plausible or less?’

  ‘More,’ I said. ‘If Ivor Hughson ran off, leaving Robert John in charge, it could all be hushed up quietly. As you said, Dad, he can get out of it himself, and nobody much the wiser.’ Except, of course, the whole community; John Georgeson ought to know that. ‘That is, assuming he can be made to disappear in a way that he never turns up again, and there’s no hue and cry after him. An injection of cash into the firm –’

  ‘Robert-John wouldn’t take it,’ Dad said. ‘I’m certain of that. He feels he’s the family failure.’

  ‘I think that could make Georgeson senior’s motive stronger. His son won’t take his help, so he has to act in some other way.’

  Dad gave me that parental ‘pot calling kettle black’ look. ‘There’s nothing you can do about children who are too stubborn to accept help.’ He turned to Gavin, ganging up on me. ‘Have you noticed a touch of immovability about our Cassie yet?’

  ‘She certainly knows her own mind,’ Gavin agreed.

  I finished my last crunchy chip and stood to clear the plates. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  Maman stood too and brought the fruit bowl over to the centre of the table. ‘A fruit, a yoghurt? Sure, we have cheese too. In the bell, Cass.’

  It was, of course, a proper haul of best French cheese, straight from the market, followed with a crunchy apple from my cousins’ farm. ‘Next time I come up,’ Gavin said, ‘I must bring you one of my mother’s crowdie cakes.’

  ‘You must visit,’ Maman said. ‘Not for investigating. Why do not you and Cassandre come over to France for one of my spring shows? The Poitevin is very pretty then, with the first leaves, and the woods full of primevère –primroses, no, not the ones you have here, primroses on a tall stalk, that smell of butter, and the violets everywhere, and the leaves of peupliers.’ She sketched a tall, thin tree with her hands. ‘They are almost purple, transparent. And sure it is warmer, already like summer here. This cold, brrrr, and the wind that never ceases. I think, Dermot, we are needing a holiday.’

  ‘As soon as this review is over,’ Dad said.

  We drank our coffee through in the sitting room, with its dark-green Chinese carpet and Maman’s grand piano, then I rose. ‘Maman, Dad, thank you, but we’d better get going. Cat’s on his own.’

  ‘I have work too,’ Gavin said.

  We exited in a general shower of thanks and see you on Sunday. I collapsed in the front seat of the car, feeling like I’d been through a mangle. ‘Well done.’

  ‘A pity I’m driving,’ Gavin said. ‘I’d have liked that stiff whisky your dad offered.’ He gave me a sideways smile. ‘I take it that I go swimming if I call you Cassie aboard Khalida.’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘And I can wear my full Highland dress on Sunday?’

  ‘Dagger and all. It’ll be a proper French lunch, so don’t bother about breakfast, and be prepared for it to last at least three hours.’

  ‘Do you wear a pretty dress?’

  ‘The pretty dress.’ I only had one, and he’d already seen it. I wondered if I should be buying another. I might consult Maman on that one. Dresses weren’t my thing.

  The lights were on in Magnie’s cottage, down by the shore. I remembered Magnie’s offer of ‘a special dram’. Someone’s moonshine … ‘If you can keep your policeman hat off, I can get you a dram. Turn right here.’

  Chapter Twenty-three

  We bumped down the gravel track. Magnie’s was a traditional cottage, the same shape as a Viking longhouse, and probably built on the foundations of one. The whitewash was so thick that I could use the gleam from it for navigation on a moonlit night; the door was painted blue each year as he was doing his wooden skiff, and the house was surrounded by sheds which gave a general impression of drunk men holding each other up. For now, the fruit bushes between the white stone paths were bare twigs, and the hens which usually clucked round the door must be shut up in their house at the back. I pushed the door open, stepped over the rubber boots, and gave the traditional greeting: ‘Aye, aye, is anybody home?’

  Magnie was in the kitchen, wearing his at-home gansey, circa 1970, blue pattern and white hoops with the white stained tobacco-colour with peat smoke, and a hole in each elbow. His scarlet slippers were bright against the coco-matting floor. The cream-coloured Rayburn glowed in one corner, with the kettle hissing gently on its black top. His Siamese cat was sitting on the table, very upright, her large ears flicking round at us, sapphire eyes haughty; stripey Tigger took up most of the two-person couch. ‘We’re just done a meal with Maman and Dad,’ I said, ‘and Gavin is needing a dram.’

  ‘Ah,’ Magnie said. He nodded at Gavin. ‘You’re off duty?’

  ‘In so far as a policeman ever is,’ Gavin agreed cautiously. ‘Just a driver’s dram. It wouldn’t look good if the visiting DI failed the breathalyser.’ He sat down beside Tigger, and stretched out a hand to the Siamese, who ignored it. ‘You kept her then.’

  ‘It took a while for her to settle down. Pitched battles, there were, and while Tigger was too much of a gentleman to hurt a lady, she had no qualms about going for him. Now the pair of them can sit in the same room. We’ll see them on the same couch yet, come the February blizzards.’ He reached three glasses down from the dresser and went through into the back porch. ‘I’m given up the drink, but I’ll join you with this one.’ He returned with the half-filled glasses. ‘Lay your lip to that, and tell me what you think.’

  It smelt good, with a hint of the peatiness of my favourite Laphroaig, and the taste was smooth. ‘Nice.’

  Gavin drank, nodded in appreciation, and took another sip. His eyes went up to Magnie’s. ‘That’s very good.’ He took a third sip. ‘I don’t recognise it. Ardmore, maybe, some kind of special edition?’ He took another long inhale. ‘Twelve years old at least.’

  ‘Fifteen,’ I said. Things were falling into place. I looked across at Magnie, and he nodded. Ivor, working in the distillery, and John Georgeson, with his storeroom. John Georgeson’s annoyance at south firms exploiting the Shetland name. ‘Peerie creditors are always the last to get paid, when a firm goes under. All those Shetland folk who’d bought a bottle of whisky would just have lost their money when the receivers moved in. Unless … unless a couple of folk got together, one inside the brewery with lists of who’d ordered what, and access to the labels, and one outside it, with a warehouse to store the barrel the local folk had paid for until the fifteen years were up.’

  I saw Gavin’s face as he digested this, and made him a grimace of apology. I’d never expected to put him in so awkward a position. I’d thought Magnie had got hold of someone’s special home brew, illegal but not related to this case. Now it seemed we had John Georgeson and Ivor Hughson in partnership, and John Georgeson had more to lose if Ivor had threatened to spill the beans. Perhaps his death had been a case of rogues falling out …

  ‘It’s no’ legal,’ Magnie agreed, ‘but it’s no’ theft either.’ He sat down in his armchair on the other side of the Rayburn, and looked straight at Gavin. ‘Those folk had paid for their bottles, and they got them.’

  I could see Gavin considering the legal argument of the firm’s assets, and deciding not to bother. The simple justice appealed to the countryman in him. ‘How did they get them?’

  Magnie rose again and brought through a bottle. Lunna Bridge Whisky, the label said, in blue, with what looked like John Georgeson’s house and bridge drawn below. ‘It just arrived at the door, one day when I was out. No invoice, no note.’

  Gavin settled back on the couch, patted his lap for Tigger, and t
ook another sip. ‘It’s very good. I’ll look out for it when the stuff the receivers got comes on the market.’

  Magnie lifted his glass. ‘Your good health, both of you.’

  As we came out into the cold dark, the sky was thick with clouds, the moon hidden; the wind had freshened from the north. I saw Magnie’s head go up. ‘You might want to make good time back to Scalloway.’

  ‘Snow coming,’ I agreed. I hoped Gavin’s hired car had decent tyres. We’d only got as far as the Co-op when there was a drumming on the car roof, and hail bounced in the headlights: the snow laying a ground for itself. I craned over my shoulder to see our parallel lines of black in the bobbled white. Not deep yet, but there was another half hour between us and Khalida, and then Gavin had to go over the hill to Lerwick. I sat silent, letting him concentrate on the road.

  The houses of Voe slipped by. The dark shoulders of the Lang Kames on each side were ghostly with hail. Then the first flakes swirled across the windscreen, and soon we were enclosed in whirling white. Gavin slowed down to twenty, fifteen. There was another car half a mile ahead of us; by the time we reached where it had been, its black tracks had been swallowed by the snow, leaving only the powdery white.

  Outside the window, the flakes thickened and slid down the glass, leaving it water-clear. Gavin snicked the windscreen wipers to double speed and slowed to a crawl between the white-blotched banks. His brows were creased; he leant forwards, eyes searching for the road ahead. Sandwater, Catfirth, the loch of Girlsta, Wadbister. The flakes thinned. We came at last into Tingwall, between fields iced Christmas cake white. Gavin flicked a look at the narrow valley road, and remained on the main highway. Six miles to go.

  We came around the final bend at last and down the long hill into Scalloway. Snow patched the road and verges, the wind scouring the flakes to create sculpted drifts between bare patches. The heather was tussocked white. Below us, the sandstone-red castle stood out above its pier. Gavin came smoothly along the main street and slid to a halt outside the marina gate. ‘I’ll get back to Lerwick before I’m snowed in here. Good night, beannachd leat.’

  The cold air stung as I got out of the warm car. I slithered along the pontoon, undid the padlock, and swung quickly aboard Khalida. My first thought was to start the engine, then I fed Cat, apologised for leaving him so long (though he seemed to have been happily curled up in my bunk), drew the curtains against the sliding flakes, put on an extra jumper, made a cup of drinking chocolate, and sat down on the couch to consider. By now the cabin was warm from the putting engine, and the glow of the oil lamp flickered on my varnished wood and the books on the shelf above my berth.

  I felt as if I’d learned too much. Jeemie’s trade in stolen goods, and his connection with Ivor; Magnie’s whisky. If Ivor had known Jeemie was receiving stolen goods, he might have threatened to tell the police – but why? And if he was implicated in delivering the whisky to the folk who’d bought it, he couldn’t finger John Georgeson without exposing himself.

  It was after nine, and it had been a long day. I switched my detective head off and began boiling the kettle for my hot water bottle. I was just about to fill it when the marina gate clanged. The pontoon rocked to footsteps silenced by snow. Then there was a sharp crack, like a firework. It sounded so close that for a second I thought something had broken on Khalida’s foredeck. Ripples lapped against her bow, as if the pontoon had moved. Then I realised it was a gunshot. I peeked around the edge of the curtain.

  The swirling snow had stopped. The half-moon shone on whiteness: the slatted pontoon, the boats under their smooth blankets, the shore washed by gleaming water, with a dark line where the salt stopped the snow from lying. The boating club roof was blanketed four inches thick.

  There was nobody between Khalida and the marina gate. I crossed the cabin and looked out of the other side. Darkness had dimmed the bright colours of the New Street houses; above them, each castle turret wore a white cap. Nothing, though I could hear ripples still. I eased the forehatch up and looked out. Two metres away, in the centre of the walkway, a black shape sprawled at the end of a line of footprints.

  He was still moving, arms clutched around his chest, legs clenched in a protective spasm. There was nobody else in sight, just the line of boats between their pontoon fingers, and the only sound was my engine chugging away, and the splurt of water with each piston thrust. I reached back for my phone and jacket, swung out through the foredeck hatch, crossed the guardrails, and lowered myself down onto the walkway. Breathing, blood, consciousness. Movement meant breath. I knelt beside him. The silvery light was too dim to show blood on his dark jacket, but I could feel it wet under my fingers, and he breathed with a horrid bubbling noise that suggested the bullet had gone into a lung. A sucking wound. The air smelled of fireworks. Reassure the casualty. Ask permission. ‘I’m Cass,’ I said, ‘I’ve done first aid training. You’ve been shot. Just lie still. Is it okay to help you?’

  The man groaned and made a tiny nodding movement of the head.

  There was a plastic bag among the stuff in my pocket. ‘I think you’ve been shot in the lung. I’m going to slide this bag over the wound.’ I turned the bag clean-side out and lifted his jacket, gansey, shirt, T-shirt, just enough to slide it in over the wound, then smoothed them down again, and twisted his jacket hem until it was bandage tight. ‘Now you hold that there, while I call for help.’

  Nobody dialled 999 in Shetland; it got you a call centre in Inverness, where you had to spell every name twice. I’d learned the Gilbert Bain Hospital number phoning to ask about Anders, last summer. I punched it and spoke clearly. ‘I need an ambulance fast, to Scalloway, at the marina beside the boating club. A man has been shot in the chest. I think it’s a sucking wound.’

  Bless the woman, she didn’t waste time asking for my name or address, but got on to the cavalry first. I sat with one hand clamping the man’s clasped hands down, keeping the precious air in his lungs, and in less than a minute a paramedic called me back. I told him what I could, and turned back to the man. ‘The ambulance is coming. Hang in there.’

  ‘Cass.’ His voice was so faint that I had to lean over to hear him. He turned his head to me, and the light caught his face, so that I saw him at last: Hubert Inkster. He spoke urgently, with the last of his strength: ‘Bridge. Saw her.’ Then his head rolled away from me, and he jack-knifed into a ball around his shattered chest. I laid my hand on his neck pulse, counting the beats and praying for help to come soon. The ambulance would pass Gavin, picking his way between fans of snow. A gunshot wound; the ambulance might automatically notify the police. I felt horribly vulnerable, knowing there was someone with a gun close at hand. Not very close; only Hubert’s footsteps trailed from the marina gate. I scanned the dark sea wall, the corner of the boating club, the whitened shore, for signs of movement. Nothing. But the person who’d shot him must have seen that he wasn’t dead, heard me calling for help. My scarlet jacket, his black one, made us targets against the snow, but I daren’t move him to safety.

  His pulse was slowing. He needed oxygen in his lungs, warmth, blood, the neon-lit expertise of the hospital. I took off my jacket and laid it over him. ‘Stay awake, Hubert. They’ll be here soon. Hubert, stay awake.’ But he didn’t speak again.

  At last, blue flashing lights reflected off the snow-covered hills that cradled the road to Lerwick; then the lights themselves came around the corner and inched towards me, several sets, an ambulance followed by police cars. They came down the hill past the quarry, and were gone for a long moment in the valley. Behind the fisheries college, an engine started up; a dark car slid along behind the shore wall, sidled between the Shetland Bus shed and Norway House and disappeared into the cluster of streets. At last the blue lights re-appeared, breasting the hill into the village and descending to the little roundabout. I followed the reflection of them as they passed between the houses. They came out at last, splitting the night with their clear brightness, coming steadily along the sea road towards us. />
  ‘The ambulance is here now,’ I said to Hubert. His breathing was slower, slower, as if every centimetre of air burned as it went into his lungs. ‘Hang in there.’ Then, just as I was rising to let them in, the clouds went over the moon again. I heard him draw a horrible, rattling breath in the coldly glimmering dark. ‘Bridge,’ he repeated, and died.

  Wed 8th January

  High Water at Scalloway UT 01.54, 1.4m

  Low Water 07.42, 0.9 m

  High Water 14.05, 1.5m

  Low Water 20.35, 0.7m

  Moonset 00.46

  Sunrise 09.03

  Moonrise 11.05

  Sunset 17.11

  Moon waxing crescent.

  Der lippenings from da gaet, but nane from da grave.

  There are expectations on the path, but none in the grave – death is final.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The first officer at the gate sat me in a police car while the paramedics worked on Hubert. I knew it was useless. He had died there, with my hand on his neck and my jacket spread over him. I was cold with sitting there, my jeans snow-soaked, shivering with shock, and I felt sick. I’d had enough of this police business. In the past year, I’d seen a lifetime’s worth of bodies. I extended my palms for their cotton-wool swabs and tape, then huddled a white cotton blanket around me and listened to the feet tramping on the pontoon. When Gavin opened the car door, I didn’t want to look at him.

  ‘You’re okay?’

  I nodded.

  ‘We’re going to have to search Khalida, in the morning.’ His voice was carefully neutral. ‘The only other footprints on the pontoon are yours. We have to check you don’t have the gun. Can you sleep somewhere else, tonight?’

  I understood. Because of him, I had to be proved innocent. I made my voice as neutral as his. ‘I’ll stay aboard Sule, with Reidar. You’ll need to let me call Cat, and get me some food for him.’