None but the Dead (15 page)

It seemed Sanday folk had taken advantage of this and built a lucrative, albeit backbreaking industry, reaching its peak in the late forties.

So there was a shell-sand beach close to the RAF camp.

Distinguishing between types of sand was tricky unless the grains were of different sizes. Shell sand was easier as it was often possible to identify species, or at least
genera
, of
marine molluscs from fragments, as long as they weren’t too small.

Of course, which molluscs were present seventy years ago and which were present now might have changed, but if Start beach was the only shell beach on Sanday, then that’s the beach the
victim had walked on prior to her death. A beach which was close to the former RAF camp.

On the journey back to the cottage, she questioned Derek about the shell sand without stating exactly why.

‘The company that exported it built a rough concrete causeway to transport the shells via a lorry, but high tides and rough weather kept breaking it up. You could take a look yourself,
when the wind drops.’

‘And it’s going to?’

‘Without a doubt. Check the tide clock on the kitchen wall of the cottage. Assume a couple of hours to get out to the island, take a look round, and come back again. Aim for the centre of
that time zone to be low tide.’ He checked his rear mirror, then drew into a passing place to let the local minibus with its complement of passengers pass.

‘The eastern side of the causeway is treacherous underfoot, rocky and slippery with seaweed. The western side is sandy and can be waded easily at low tide, but the water rises there more
quickly. I prefer a barefoot crossing on the sand myself. Don’t leave it too late to come back,’ he warned. ‘The island is bigger than it looks from here. It was home to a fully
functioning farm back then. The buildings are still there, plus a row of cottages for workers.’

They were approaching the schoolhouse now. Rhona asked to be let out there and she would walk the final leg.

‘I’d like to check the excavation site,’ she said.

‘Don’t get blown away,’ were Derek’s parting words.

Rhona quickly sought the leeward side of the building. As she turned the corner, she noted the outside light come on as the door opened and a small figure emerged. It was a little girl, dressed
in a waterproof jacket and wellington boots. Then the back door banged shut.

In moments, the figure had disappeared into the rain and wind.

Rhona approached the grave and checked the cover to find it secure; then, curious about Mike’s visitor, she knocked at the kitchen door. He didn’t answer at first, so she tried
again. Eventually his tall figure appeared on the other side of the glass and, seeing her there, opened up.

‘Is there something wrong?’ he said, looking worried.

‘No, I was just checking the cover was secure.’ Rhona expected him to invite her in. When he didn’t, she said, ‘May I come in for a moment?’

As though he’d just remembered his manners, he apologized and ushered her inside.

‘Your assistant’s checked a few times today already,’ he said.

‘I’m glad Chrissy’s on the job.’

They stood there awkwardly, with Rhona realizing he desperately wanted her to leave. Mike Jones had never been at ease with the presence of an investigative team on his property, but it seemed
the incident in the shed had served to make matters worse.

‘The evidence is safe now?’ he enquired.

‘We hope so.’

‘Did you locate your tripod?’

‘No, but DS Flett’s bringing a replacement tomorrow.’

His face fell. ‘I thought you’d finished the excavation.’

‘The soil below the body has still to be collected.’

‘Why?’

‘It may contain evidence,’ she explained.

They stood a further few moments before she decided to come right to the point. ‘I see you’ve made contact with one of the local children.’

His face went white, red, then white again. ‘What?’ he said stupidly.

‘The girl who was visiting when I arrived.’

She realized he would have denied the child’s existence, but the certainty of her announcement gave him nowhere to go.

‘She was only here minutes,’ he rushed on. ‘She asked for permission to search for the skull around the house. I told her you’d done that already.’

‘DS McNab spoke to some of the local children at school today. They’re keen to help.’ She smiled, hoping to ease his obvious discomfort. ‘Maybe those are the kids
you’ve been hearing around the place.’

He didn’t respond to this, his mouth now set in a stubborn line. Rhona decided to take the hint.

‘DS Flett says the weather will improve by tomorrow night, so I should finish up the next day, all being well.’

‘And then you’ll go?’ He looked relieved.

‘My work will be over, but not DS McNab’s.’

He looked frightened by that. McNab had that effect on people, the innocent and the guilty alike. Rhona bade Mike goodnight and was shown the door.

As she battled her way along the path to the cottage, she continued to wonder about Mike Jones. Everyone had secrets, things about them they didn’t want others to know. Herself included.
Having the police on your doorstep was an unnerving business. Sometimes those responsible for a crime sought to put themselves in the spotlight, craving the attention, while acting the
innocent.

Mike Jones was the opposite of that. Every moment the investigation team was there was apparently torture. And his reaction to the children was odd. If he’d been a teacher, why did he seem
so afraid of kids?

When he’d moved back into the family croft house, Sam had changed virtually nothing. The house sat in a time warp and he liked it that way, particularly now he was alone.
When Jean died, he’d given up the house they’d shared, and come back here. Why he wasn’t sure, except that it felt right to be where his life had begun.

And his and Jean’s house had become the home of a young couple, who now had two children to play in the garden and on the beach beyond, where Erling had played as a youngster during the
long summer holidays twenty years before.

Because he’d never thrown out any of his mother’s belongings, except her clothes, Sam was certain he would eventually locate what he sought.

It took him some time to unearth the photograph, but find it he eventually did. The box contained an assortment of black-and-white photos, mostly of people he had no recollection of.

His mother had enjoyed taking the box out of a winter’s night and rifling through its contents, telling him the names of those pictured and events that had been captured. It had seemed to
a younger Sam that the whole world was in that box. A world of stories of Sanday, Westray and Kirkwall, and even on occasion further afield, especially the pictures featuring people from the camp,
some in their uniforms.

A young Sam had been impressed by those uniforms, even though, by the time he was old enough to admire them, the camp had been disbanded and the excitement it had brought departed with it.

He’d often thought as he played soldier or pilot among the empty buildings that he too would like to join the forces and wear a smart uniform and see the world. He had certainly left the
island for a time. Secondary school in Kirkwall during the week, then off to university, then back to teach another set of young Sanday residents.

That, he decided, had been adventure enough for him. So he had never got to wear a uniform, although he’d worn a teacher’s gown for a while before it stopped being a requirement,
like the tawse had stopped being used to administer punishment in the classroom.

Sam drew his fleeting memories together and focussed on the photograph.

His father and stepbrother Eric stood at the back. His mother sat on a chair in front of them with no sign of Sam, the late baby – yet.

Sam checked the back of the photograph and found his father’s neat spidery writing with a date, 17 June 1944. His half-brother, Eric, had been a strapping seventeen-year-old in the
photograph. And beside him on the far left was another figure, someone near Eric in age, but tall and thin, where Eric was broad-shouldered and sturdy.

‘Jamie Drever,’ he said.

Snatches of conversation came back to him. Not from when he was young, but when his mother had been fading. Her body frail, yet her eyes still burning with life. She’d always been like
that, glowing with life. His father, older by nearly twenty years, had been the taciturn one. Sam had often seen his father steal a glance at his Ella, as he called her, as though he couldn’t
believe his good fortune to have married her.

There were plenty of times they’d argued, mostly about his mother’s ‘fanciful ideas’ as his father called them. Fanciful ideas about new curtains or her attempts to
cultivate a small flower garden which had to have a wall of flat stones built round it to give shelter to the few things that would grow there.

Red hot pokers and red poppies with dark blue stamens. And prickly wild rose bushes, much loved by the blackbirds that sheltered in them, singing their hearts out. To an Orkney farmer, fertile
land was for growing crops and grazing beef cattle. What flowers grew naturally were to be found in the machair, the grassy plains that lined the shore.

Despite this, his father and Jamie, who’d worked on the croft with them, had built the wall for her garden.

She would sit in it, tucked in a sheltered corner, catching the sun on her face, watching the birds flit in and out of the bushes. As he’d grown older Sam had realized that Eric had the
same disposition as his father. Taciturn, hard-working. Sam, everyone said, took after his mother. Sensitive, bookish. He was predicted to go to university and become something other than a farmer,
which turned out to be true.

Sam had no lingering memory of Jamie or his big brother Eric. It was in his mother’s latter days that she’d spoken of him, and often. Then Sam had come to know the affection
she’d had for the tall lanky lad, who’d spent so much time at their house.

Looking at the photograph reminded Sam of other memories, ones that weren’t as pleasant. As the dementia had taken hold, his mother had grown confused, vividly reliving times when
she’d been unhappy, worried or upset. And during those times, Eric’s name had kept occurring.

She’d gone back too, in her mind, to when the camp had dominated this part of the island. When she’d stopped going to the dances because of her pregnancy, but when his half-brother
had spent a great deal of time going there, much to the annoyance of their father.

There had been a girl involved. That much Sam had deciphered. A girl from the camp. Trying to recall the confused ramblings of a woman who spent more time in the past than the present, Sam had
gathered that his father had disapproved, and that there might have been some rivalry between Eric and Jamie for the girl’s affections, which had resulted in a fight, after which Jamie was
banished from the house.

Sam had no idea if his recollections were true, or whether he was reinterpreting his mother’s ramblings in the wake of what had happened recently. But one thing he was sure of. Eric had
been a man who enjoyed a fight, and who liked to get what he wanted.

As Sam shut the tin, a glint of something metal below the photographs caught his eye. Tipping the contents onto the fireside rug, he discovered it was a sweetheart brooch similar to the one Dr
MacLeod had shown him, with the RAF insignia.

Who had that belonged to?

His mother had never mentioned it, nor shown it to him, even when she’d been reminiscing about the war.

Everyone who knows what happened is dead.

What was the point in raking up the past like the body in the schoolyard, and the flowers in the attic? None but the dead were left to tell the tale.

Sam put the brooch back and shut the lid.

He would show the photograph to the policeman. Compare it with the one he had. If the man they’d found in Glasgow was Jamie Drever, he would arrange to have him brought home to Sanday.
That was the best he could do.

If the wind howled all night long, McNab didn’t hear it, and when he opened his eyes, he found a different Sanday, quiet and apparently calm.

Rising, he found himself whistling as he headed for the shower, which surprised him. Emerging ten minutes later, he caught the scent of bacon being cooked below, and his mouth started to water
in anticipation. At that moment he experienced a brief but almost fond thought of PC Tulloch, who’d found him such good digs.

Heading downstairs, he followed Torvaig’s instructions from last night and made for the kitchen, where he found his breakfast ready at the agreed time.

‘Have a seat, Sergeant,’ Tor gestured to the big kitchen table. ‘I take it you’ll have a bit of everything on offer?’

McNab indicated that he would, and with pleasure.

‘I can’t do you an espresso, but I can make the coffee strong?’

‘News travels fast around here.’

‘Strangers are like a book. Folk are keen to turn the pages. Find out their story.’

‘And that doesn’t take long?’

‘It depends on the stranger.’

Tor placed a heaped plate in front of McNab and a pot of strong coffee.

‘Enjoy. Oh, I almost forgot, this came for you.’ He handed McNab an envelope with ‘For the policeman’ written on the front.

McNab turned it over, to find it sealed.

‘How did this arrive?’

‘I found it on the front mat when I came into work,’ Tor told him.

McNab tore the envelope open to find a single sheet of paper inside, with the words ‘Ask Mike Jones why he’s here’ written on it.

McNab put it back in the envelope.

‘A lead?’ Tor looked interested.

‘Maybe,’ McNab said, and proceeded to attack his plate of food.

After breakfast, he decided to wait outside for the arrival of PC Tulloch. After all, as Tor had intimated, this might be the only day he would experience Sanday without a galeforce wind
blowing.

The previous evening, while McNab had enjoyed his pint, Tor had told him how, back in the day, the pub windows were directly over the water. ‘Unfortunately drunk folk had a habit of
falling out of them, so the new owners moved the bar back a bit and built the wall. If they fall out now, it’s only a few feet.’