None but the Dead (12 page)

When Rhona called DI Flett from the schoolhouse landline to report the latest developments, Erling listened in his usual calm manner, before asking, ‘Is Constable Tulloch
with you?’

Rhona had forgotten Ivan.

‘I haven’t seen him this morning.’

‘I understand DS McNab managed to land last night?’

‘He did.’

‘Have him and Tulloch work together. Tulloch’s no detective, but the locals will answer his questions. Hopefully I’ll get out there by tomorrow, although it’s not looking
promising.’ He paused. ‘As for the remaining evidence, I would suggest the safest place to store it would be at the heritage centre, next to the community shop. I’ll ask Derek to
help you transfer it down there.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry this has happened.’

‘In normal circumstances, the evidence would have been off the island and at my lab by now,’ Rhona told him.

Chrissy and McNab appeared as she rang off.

‘What’s up?’ Chrissy said swiftly, seeing her expression.

‘Come and see.’

‘The wee bastards,’ McNab said.

‘You don’t know it was kids,’ Rhona said.

‘Kids or cats,’ McNab thundered.

‘You just have a downer on cats,’ Chrissy said, dropping to her knees beside the mess. ‘And we all know why.’ She studied the reason for his outrage. After a few minutes,
she gave her expert opinion. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks. We’ve lost five maybe six bags. I think the rest’s intact and I have it all logged. What about the
recording?’

‘I took the camera back with me,’ Rhona glanced about, ‘and left the stand over there.’

‘Well, it’s not there now,’ Chrissy said. ‘So even if the weather improves we can’t continue the excavation.’ She looked to Rhona. ‘Someone’s
screwing with us.’

At that point Mike Jones appeared at the door, causing the trio to fall silent.

‘That was PC Tulloch on the phone. He’ll be here shortly.’

McNab observed the four children before him, who ranged between eight and twelve years old. The girl, who seemed most inclined to speak, was the eldest and definitely an
incomer by her accent. The biggest boy regarded her with annoyance, as though he thought he should be the spokesperson. It was like any gang, with a sprinkling of the clever, the not so bright, the
foolhardy and the timid. He had pegged the younger boy with the shock of blond hair to be foolhardy. The talkative girl with the dark hair, the brightest. The younger girl was just plain
terrified.

They had been given an empty office at the school to chat to the group, all of whom lived within a short walking distance of the excavation site. PC Tulloch was apparently known to all of them
– a local boy turned cop. A female teacher was there too, in place of the parents. This wasn’t a formal interview, just a chat about the excavation, and in McNab’s opinion,
Tulloch was doing pretty well.

He’d addressed the kids in the local dialect, switching to English when he realized the older girl was struggling to understand. He knew all their names, where they lived and what their
parents did. He made them laugh. Then he’d asked them about the skull.

At that they’d fallen silent and looked to the girl.

McNab had a sudden memory of a book he’d read in school, or been forced to read, about a group of children born in strange circumstances in an English village. The book had been made into
a film, called
Children of the Damned
. McNab had preferred the book’s title,
The Midwich Cuckoos
. In the story the children had all been born on the same day, at the same hour,
in the same place. And they’d all thought the same thing at the same time, which was, in McNab’s opinion, what was happening now.

Three faces turned to the girl at exactly the same moment and waited for her to speak.

Her bright blue eyes sought his, rather than Tulloch’s, as though she was aware who was really in charge.

‘We didn’t take the skull,’ she told him. ‘We could help you try and find it.’

Of course, the skull wasn’t the only item missing now. McNab acknowledged the girl’s earnest offer and nodded at Tulloch to continue.

None of the group had given any indication that the girl was telling porky pies. McNab had looked for all the fairly recognizable signs, and spotted none. No one shuffled or avoided eye contact,
licked their lips or scratched their nose or looked out of the window.

McNab found himself believing that they hadn’t taken the skull.

Tulloch now spoke about the storm and how wild it had been, encouraging them to tell their own tales of the previous night. Had anyone seen the flashes of lightning? Heard the wind? Been out in
the rain?

They each in turn said they’d been confined indoors, or had slept through it.

Except the girl.

‘I visited a friend,’ she said. ‘Mr Flett.’

‘You went out in the storm?’ Tulloch asked.

‘His house is minutes away. I wanted to make sure he was all right.’

She’s telling the truth
, McNab thought,
but maybe not all of it
.

‘Sam Flett was a teacher here. He’s retired now and runs the heritage centre,’ Tulloch told him in an aside. ‘He’s related to DI Flett.’

The girl interrupted their exchange. ‘Sam was nearly killed in the 1952 hurricane. It reached over 130 miles an hour. He was trying to rescue his favourite hen before the henhouse blew
away.’

She said this in such an earnest fashion, McNab had to smother a smile, then the thought occurred that she’d just successfully averted the line of questioning.

‘What did you and Mr Flett talk about?’ McNab said.

He had nonplussed her. She drew her eyes away from him and refocused on Tulloch.

‘I checked whether he’d had his tea. He doesn’t eat enough since his wife died. He misses her a lot.’

‘And you like to keep him company?’ McNab tried to draw her back to him.

‘I’m new here so he tells me stories about Sanday. Like when the troops were here during the war,’ she added. ‘He knows everything about the place. That’s why he
runs the heritage centre.’

A bell rang and the teacher stood up. It seemed their time together was at an end.

McNab thanked them all, his Glasgow accent jarring in his ears after PC Tulloch’s musical cadences.

When the door closed behind the platoon, Tulloch said, ‘Well, what do you think, sir?’

‘You’re the local. What do you think?’

‘They didn’t take the skull, and they’re trying to find it.’

McNab agreed. ‘My feeling exactly. Inga has them on the job.’

‘Do we stop them, sir?’

‘And how exactly would we do that?’ McNab shook his head. ‘The girl is bright and inquisitive. She might find out something we can’t.’

‘But will she tell us?’

‘If not us, then maybe DI Flett.’ McNab made for the door. ‘Where to next?’

‘The hotel, to see if we can organize a bed for you tonight?’ suggested PC Tulloch.

McNab was very much in favour of that.

‘Rain and gales. Or gales and rain. That’s Sanday weather for you,’ PC Tulloch said cheerfully as he pulled into a passing place to give way to an approaching
car.

Staring out at what he regarded as a bleak landscape, McNab wondered how anyone who lived here could be so cheerful.

‘Are there no trees at all?’ McNab wasn’t a big fan of trees, but even he missed them a bit.

‘There used to be woods at Otterswick. They found the remains of ancient trees buried beneath the sands. They’re marked on an old Admiralty chart from 1858. And there’s an old
poem that mentions them.

McNab hadn’t a clue what Tulloch had said and didn’t ask for an explanation, as a large red-brick building loomed up on the passenger side a few metres from the road.

‘What’s that?’

‘The old mortuary from the Second World War. It’s the only building that wasn’t concrete clad against bombardment – I suppose because the people inside were dead
already.’

As PC Tulloch smiled at his own joke, McNab wondered just how many hours of good humour he would be able to stomach.

He’d been promised a town, which to McNab meant more than a scattering of buildings by a small harbour, even if one of them was a hotel. Catching his perturbed
expression, PC Tulloch offered an explanation.

‘It was busier, when the ferry docked here. Now the roll-on roll-off comes in at Loth on the southern tip of the island.’

He drew up next to a red telephone box that had seen better days and didn’t look as though it functioned at all.

‘The hotel has wireless and a decent mobile signal,’ Tulloch offered by way of compensation.

‘But are they open and do they have a room?’

‘I called ahead. They’re willing to put you up as you’re on police business. The pub opens in the evenings. In fact, there’s live music there tomorrow night.’

McNab wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so didn’t.

They were met at the door by a young man who apparently worked behind the bar. As he led McNab up to view his room, he revealed that he and Ivan had gone to school together. McNab tried to look
on that as a positive, even though he was feeling more the outsider with every moment. Surely he would get good service having been brought here by a friend?

McNab surveyed the room and, in particular, the bed, with surprised pleasure. Tonight he would get a sleep. The only disadvantage seemed to be that the window overlooked the sea, which appeared
to be at war with itself. At that moment a squall hit the window with, he suspected, a mix of salt spray and rain.

According to PC Tulloch, the font of all knowledge, the wind had subsided a little this morning because they were in the eye of the storm. It would, he’d assured McNab, in his usual jovial
manner, get back up to speed tonight.

McNab stood for a moment, enjoying the quiet in the room, deciding that, high winds or not, nothing would keep him awake tonight. Leaving his bag, he locked the door with a good old-fashioned
key, and headed back downstairs, where he found PC Tulloch and his mate in the bar, with its main windows also facing the sea.

Tulloch pointed at a large sign on the wall which explained how to get onto the Wi-Fi connection.

‘It’s best to sit near the window,’ he explained. ‘And Torvaig says do we want some lunch?’

Twenty minutes later, McNab was feeling a whole lot better after consuming a substantial plate of fish and chips. The meal would have reached perfection if accompanied by a pint of beer, but
being on duty, he’d refrained.

‘If there’s no police officer permanently on the island, how do you enforce the drink-driving laws?’

‘The locals enforce them themselves,’ PC Tulloch said. ‘In an emergency someone calls Kirkwall and the police launch comes out.’

‘What about a fight?’

‘We pull them apart and take them home.’

‘Guns?’

‘Plenty of them for shooting geese.’

‘But not people?’

‘No.’

‘Knives?’ McNab was enjoying himself.

‘For gutting fish and skinning rabbits.’

‘So you don’t need the police at all?’

PC Tulloch’s face darkened. ‘There was a murder here in 2010. A man battered another man to death and buried the body in shallow sand at Sty Wick. Nobody here believed the story that
the victim had left the island. They called the police.’

‘So we can expect as much help with this one?’

‘There’s not many folk left who were here in wartime.’

‘Yet somebody removed the skull and tried to destroy the evidence.’

‘It looks like that, sir.’ Tulloch was obviously troubled by the thought.

‘And it’s our job is to find out who, Constable. And why.’

It would take two trips in the Land Rover to transport the soil and bones to the heritage centre. On the arrival of the first load, Sam Flett offered Rhona space in a room used
for newspaper cuttings and recorded material of the war years.

‘I guessed you wouldn’t want it stored in the back shed.’

Rhona thanked him. ‘The centre’s locked up at night?’

He nodded. ‘And I’m here most days, even out of the tourist season. I can give you a key, so you can come and go as necessary.’

‘Hopefully it won’t be here for long.’

When Derek departed to fetch the next load, Sam offered to make them a pot of tea.

‘I have some biscuits too.’

They were seated now, teapot between them, at a table in the centre of the room. On the surrounding shelves were blue folders of cuttings and written recollections of the residents of Sanday
during both the First and the Second World Wars.

‘I was born in forty-four, but I heard plenty later from my mother. Then there were the buildings they left behind, that are still standing. I used to play in them as a kid. All except the
old mortuary.’ He looked straight at her. ‘I hear from Erling that it was a lassie you found and she may have been from back then?’

‘That’s still to be confirmed, but yes, it looks likely.’

‘D’you think she was a local lass?’

‘I don’t know,’ Rhona said honestly. ‘Are you aware of anyone going missing during that time?’

‘No.’ He indicated the shelves of folders. ‘Maybe in some of the local stories of the war years you might find a mention of someone who went missing.’

‘So a long shot?’ Rhona said.

‘Sanday was a different place during the war. Before then, we knew everyone on this island, parish by parish. It wasn’t possible to “go missing”. To leave the island you
had to go by ferry from Kettletoft to Kirkwall. Most folk even knew why you were going. A trip to the dentist took two days. We knew one another’s business. City folk don’t like that
idea, but that’s how it was. And,’ he added, ‘still is, to a certain extent.’

‘So the answer might be here?’ Rhona indicated the shelves.

‘And in talking to those Sanday folk left alive from those times.’

‘How many are there?’

‘Not many. If you’re talking of folk to the north of the island, Don Cutts is probably the one you want to talk to. He’s in a wheelchair now, but still has all his wits about
him. There’s plenty other auld folk on the island, but most of them are incomers, who’ve moved here in the last twenty years or so.’ He paused. ‘Were there any personal
items with the body that might help?’