Orkney Twilight (13 page)

‘Mind you, it’s not just policemen who spread the crap. They don’t work by themselves. It helps if they have a tame hack to help do the dirty work. You’ll soon find out. Reporters trying to fill the pages. Stringing together a few stories they’ve heard from someone down the bar, concocting some old cobblers to fill the columns. Preferably some old cobblers that allows them to plaster a picture of a woman with big tits on the front page.’

She grimaced, conjured up an image of the tabloid spread about Jim’s brother, Ian Coyle; the lurid story with its extra-large photo of the topless Page Three model.

Tom crossed his arms. ‘Maybe some reporters are happy to pump out crap,’ he said. ‘Especially if they work for the tabloids. But most journalists want to get at the facts because their credibility depends on it.’

She wasn’t convinced Tom really knew what he was talking about, but she had to admire his bottle, refusing to be bulldozed by Jim.

‘Serious journalists have standards,’ Tom continued. ‘Codes of professional ethics they have to follow.’

‘Professional ethics my arse,’ said Jim. ‘Only standards most hacks follow are the ones they think will get their name recognized, push up the circulation figures.’ He drained the last of the whiskey before pushing his hands down on the antimacassars and levering himself up from the soft depths of the armchair.

‘Anyway, I’m just going to drive down to Tirlsay. Use the phone; see if I can arrange for the Cortina to be fixed tomorrow and call Bill to see about borrowing a car. See you later.’

They listened to the crunch and splutter of the Cortina pulling away across the courtyard.

Tom scanned the room. ‘Where’s my Cadbury’s Dairy Milk?’

‘Sorry. Was that yours? You could always have a bit of crab.’ She nodded at the dismembered body lying next to them.

He eyed the hacked-off claws suspiciously. ‘I’ll give it a miss.’

She swiped a leg, crunched it, nipped at the shreds of meat inside, picked the strands of white meat from her front-teeth gap with a fingernail while she scoured the shelves.

‘Hey look – there’s a box of Trivial Pursuit. That’s lucky. I can beat you with my superior knowledge of science and nature.’ She stood up to reach for the game. Her movement was accompanied by a sudden scrabbling up on the roof above the fireplace, as if she had disturbed the crow from its post by the chimney.

‘He doesn’t like journalists much, does he?’ said Tom.

No, she thought, he doesn’t. ‘He doesn’t think too much of television scriptwriters either,’ she said. ‘There aren’t many professions he does admire. He always thinks he can do everybody else’s job better than they can.’

Tom gave her a sidelong look. She could sense him lining up more questions. She took out the Trivial Pursuit board, fiddled about with the pieces of coloured plastic, reached for the dice, threw it quickly.

‘Green question, please.’

They left the mechanic staring sorrowfully at the Cortina. Jim said he was going to find Bill and pick up the car. He headed off with his haversack. Sam and Tom ambled into the centre of Stromness, following narrow side passages hemmed in by thick granite walls. They stumbled across the museum by the water’s edge, meandered through its rooms holding a mishmash of stuffed birds, Neolithic pots, telescopes, chronometers from ships of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Tom was drawn to an exhibition about Scapa Flow, the stretch of sheltered water between Mainland and Hoy, used as a harbour by the Vikings and then the British navy in the First and Second World Wars.

Sam examined the photos of old battleships. ‘Scapa Flow is a bit of a watery graveyard.’

An accidental fire had caused an explosion on board HMS
Vanguard
, anchored there in 1917, killing eight hundred and four men. And then in 1939, a German U47 had penetrated the eastern end and torpedoed HMS
Royal Oak
, killing eight hundred and thirty-three men. Tom seemed unmoved by the loss of life, more gripped by the fear of diving below the waves in a U-boat. He said there was no way he could be part of a submarine crew because he was afraid of drowning; he had toppled over the side of a dinghy into the sea when he was four, but fortunately his mum had managed to hoik him out of the water and saved him, and now she regularly recounted the story of seeing his little white face staring up at her pleadingly from below the waves. Sam said that the idea of being in a submarine freaked her out as well.

‘I thought you loved the sea.’

‘Claustrophobia. I can’t go in lifts. The tube is fairly difficult too. The Northern line is the worst. It’s deeper than the others.’

‘What do you think that’s all about, then?’

‘No idea. I think it’s pretty common. All those people standing for hours at bus stops in London; I reckon they are all just there to avoid the tube. There’s no other reason to wait for a bus in London.’

‘Phobias,’ he pressed the tips of his fingers into a steeple, ‘usually have their root in childhood.’

She checked her watch. ‘Let’s go and look at the boats.’

She peered into the oil-filmed water slapping against the quayside, her pale face peered back imploringly, pulling her down, drowning in bleak thoughts about Jim and his shadowy life. And his death. Operation Asgard. The pistol. Uncertain whether she was anxious. Or sad. Resentful perhaps. Angry. A shoal of tiny fish shattered her image, darting this way and that, flashing silver as they twisted.

‘What kind of fish do you think those are?’

Tom wasn’t listening. He had spotted a gang of men, early twenties, joshing, swearing, unloading creels from a string of gently rocking boats. He strolled towards them, hands in pockets. She left him to it, meandered off in the other direction, wandering along the harbour wall, eyeballing the ranks of honking black-backed gulls. She found herself at the top of a slipway, close to a boatshed with its rusty metal sliding door pulled half-open, the gap filled with a curtain of thick black plastic strips. She poked her head through without thinking and almost as quickly pulled it back when she glimpsed yellow oilskins inside. She heard a shout as she sidled away.

‘Come back!’

She wavered, unsure which way to jump. A sinewy arm appeared through the flaps followed by a head of coarse curls, forget-me-not eyes and a fat-lipped smile. He seemed sad, despite the smile.

‘Do you want something?’ he asked. Not aggressively.

‘I was just being nosy.’

‘Yes. That’s okay to be nosy. Come in, take a look around.’

He spoke with an offbeat grammar, the hint of a foreign accent. He held the curtain aside to reveal a gloomy interior. She hesitated, caught between wariness and curiosity. He smiled again. What the hell.

She breathed in the whiff of old fish and diesel as he waved his hand proudly around: plastic crates neatly stacked, blue polypropylene ropes coiled in a corner and an array of dirty engine parts spread out on an oily floorsheet, like a schoolchild’s frog dissection. She suddenly felt a bit coy, grinned inanely.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

‘A bit of repair work.’

She guessed now he was Scandinavian with his near-perfect English.

‘A boat engine?’

‘Part of a trawler.’

‘You are a fisherman,’ she suggested.

‘Very good. Almost correct. In fact I am the skipper of a trawler. I’m not going out again until the beginning of next week, so I’m just taking some time to make sure everything is in order. And you are…’

‘Sam. I’m on holiday here.’

‘Nils.’ He wiped his hand on his oilskins and then gripped her hand, shook it, his flesh warm and firm.

‘So, Sam. What do you think?’ He nodded at his domain.

‘It’s great, very neat.’ Searching for appropriate compliments. ‘It must be hard work being a fisherman, though. Sorry, I mean it must be hard work being a skipper.’

‘Of course. Hard work, yes. But I enjoy it. It’s my vocation. It’s what I was born to do.’

She kinked her head to one side. ‘Are there many fishermen in Stromness?’

‘Not as many as there used to be. There are a few offshore trawlers based here, like mine, after the whitefish. And then there are the smaller fishing boats that put out the creels around the coast and catch the crabs.’

‘Do you catch a lot of fish?’

‘Nobody catches huge amounts of fish here these days. Fish are nearly as rare as mermaids in these waters. I catch more than most, though. Fish that is, not mermaids.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Because I am Norwegian.’

She couldn’t quite tell whether he was being serious or not.

‘What difference does being Norwegian make?’

Grief, she was picking up bad habits from Tom. Still, he seemed happy enough to answer her questions.

‘Norwegians are born to the sea.’ He flourished his hand dramatically. ‘It is in my genes, seafaring. I can read the flow of the tides, the pulse of the currents and I know where to find the fish. That is why I always land the biggest catch in Stromness. Because I am a skilled skipper.’

She tugged her earring, smiled, bemused by his boasting.

‘I lead the way to the fish grounds. Wherever I go, the other boats come behind and they get the fish I haven’t managed to catch.’

‘That’s probably why you catch the most. Because if the others come behind you, they have to make do with your leftovers.’

She hunched her shoulders awkwardly, realizing too late that her comment was too critical, not the kind of thing she should say to somebody she had only just met. He smiled. He obviously didn’t mind her odd mix of shyness and directness.

‘Well, maybe you are correct. But I don’t ask them to follow me. They could go elsewhere, find other places to trawl. It is their choice to come behind. That’s part of the skill of being a good skipper, leading the pack, knowing how to do a bit of magic: change fish into money.’

He stepped towards her, stood so close she could smell the salt on his skin and see the dark hairs lying flat on the back of his hand.

‘Are you really a tourist?’ he asked.

‘Yes. What else would I be?’

He assessed her in a way that made her turn pink. ‘You ask a lot of questions for a tourist. And you say some sharp things. Are you a tax inspector perhaps?’

She laughed nervously, assuming he was joking. Then she wondered whether there was an edgy undertone to his voice. ‘Course not,’ she said.

‘A researcher?’

‘No, I’m not a researcher. What would I be researching anyway?’

‘Scotland’s declining fishing industry perhaps. There are plenty of researchers hanging round Stromness these days. I let one of them come on a couple of trips with me last year as an extra pair of hands. I thought he was very nice. Funny. Interesting to talk to. But he unsettled the crew a bit with all his odd questions; they began to think he was bringing us bad luck. So I’ve steered clear of researchers since then.’

‘Well, I’m not a researcher. I’m just a nosy tourist.’

‘That’s okay then.’ He wiped his brow, an exaggerated swipe with the back of his hand and, as he did so, he revealed a pattern on the underside of his forearm; a ray-haloed red-and-orange sun inked on to his skin.

‘I like your tattoo.’ Her cheeks reddened again as she said it.

‘It’s a Viking symbol. A blessing from Thor, patron saint of sailors. It’s an ancient protection against the perils of the oceans. If you can see the sun then you are safe, you can find your way home.’

‘I’ve got a tattoo too.’ The words came out before she could stop herself. She hadn’t told anyone else about the tattoo and here she was revealing her secret to a total stranger. She had planned it with Becky for months; they had wasted hours agonizing over what image they would have needled into their skin. Becky had come up with her own design, the Hebrew words
tikkun olam
, combined with various carefully crafted abstract patterns which, she had explained, symbolized her Russian-Jewish ancestry as well as her liberal humanist beliefs.
Tikkun olam
: repairing the world. Making it a better place. Sam had tried to follow suit and had come up with a variation on a swirly Celtic design, but had failed to find anything that even halfway matched the cachet of
tikkun olam
. The Wednesday after her birthday dinner they had gone up to London on the train to get it done. Dennis Cockell’s on the Finchley Road. As soon as she stepped inside though, and saw all the photos of tattooed body parts everywhere, she realized she couldn’t live with the ersatz Celtic guff. It really wasn’t her, she’d never been to Glasgow, she didn’t feel even remotely Scottish. In an indecisive flap, she scanned the pictures on the wall and chose the first image that caught her eye.

‘What do you have a tattoo of then?’ Nils asked. He took a step closer.

‘A bird.’

‘What kind?’

‘Swallow.’

‘Hah. A quick flyer. Let me see.’ He moved his arm towards her playfully. She stepped back defensively, dodged his outstretched hand, glanced over her shoulder to check the position of her nearest exit and saw Tom’s head poking through the plastic strips. She wasn’t entirely relieved to see him.

‘I thought I heard your voice,’ he said. ‘I wondered where you had gone.’

She smiled half-heartedly, introduced Nils. Tom turned his back on her and proceeded to interrogate Nils about the finances of deep-sea trawling: crew numbers, costs, prices, profits. She cringed inwardly, fearing Tom’s questioning would rile Nils, make him suspect they really were from the Inland Revenue, trying to nose out any undeclared income. She jumped in and asked Nils to show them his boat.

He pointed across the harbour. ‘The trawler is over there, the large one moored near the ice tower.’

It loomed out of the water like Noah’s ark, square and top-heavy. Ugly. He must have gauged her reaction.

‘I have another one just there.’ He pointed to a smaller boat that was tied up to the quayside; a boat-in-a-bottle boat with its red clinker sides, white wheelhouse and a cloud of seagulls hopping around its bows.

‘Oh, that’s really pretty,’ she said.

‘The
Marie-Jean
. Named after my wife. Her father owned the boat. She was his only child. He died shortly after we were married. Marie-Jean inherited it and she gave it to me. It’s the kind of fishing I like best – inshore, lines. Small-scale. But it’s not really possible to make a living like that.’