The Trowie Mound Murders (10 page)

Furthermore, he looked to be in a furious temper, black brows drawn so hard that they met above his nose, mouth hardened to a thin line. His hand was clenched around something. I couldn't see what – a rectangle of metal. Then he glanced over his shoulder and saw me. There was a flare of surprise, then his face lightened. He smiled, and took three steps towards me. His boiler suit reeked of sheep and Jeyes fluid, but as he moved I got a whiff of wood smoke too, as if he'd been working with a bonfire.

‘Hiya, Brian,' I said.

‘Hey, cool Cass. Good to see you again. You've had a few adventures since we shared a classroom.'

Since the adventures included Alain's death and last month's shenanigans with the film crew, I suspected he was being malicious. Living south had smoothed some of the Shetland from his voice, but I'd no doubt it returned during the holidays. It was a smooth enough voice to listen to, resonant in his chest.

‘So have you, no doubt,' I replied. ‘You're working south, aren't you?'

‘Yeah, I'm an electrician. So much for old Taity chucking me out of the techy class.'

‘Someone said you were working with security systems in stately homes,' I said.
My ship, Cass …

He grinned. It made him look more like a pirate than ever. A gold ring glinted in one ear. ‘Amazing places. Not right posh stately homes, du kens, more the kind o' houses that's belonged to one laird's family for twa or three hundred years. Just lived in. The kind o' house that money can't buy. They even make me wish I'd listened to more history at the school.' His mouth thinned again. ‘Me wife hates them. She likes everything modern.' He cast a dark look at the curtained windows and his hand clenched on the metal rectangle. Then he focused on me again. ‘So, Cass, what're you doing here? Never say me midder's roped you in for stewarding her fancy work at the show.'

‘Not yet,' I said. ‘I heard she was looking for a cleaner.'

His reaction was the same as Inga's. ‘Cleaning houses? You're no' lived in a house for ten years.'

‘You seen the brass aboard a tall ship?' I retorted.

‘I'll warn Mam no' to let you sluice down the kitchen floor.' His hand clenched on the metal object again, then turned it over, and this time I got a chance to see what it was. ‘See you, Cass.'

He strode off up the garden path. I turned away and headed for the Co-op.

The object he'd been clutching as if he was about to throw it in someone's face was the rectangular innards of an ordinary, old-fashioned mortice lock.

Chapter Eleven

I struggled against the impulse to phone Gavin with those snippets of information all the way back to the main road. An icon hanging on a wall wasn't enough to link Brian with the missing art works. He could have had a suffragette great aunt who'd gone to Russia with Dr Inglis's Women's Hospital unit, or (more likely) a great-grandfather who'd been a seaman in the Baltic.

All the same, he was working south, with a security firm, which all linked in a bit too neatly. Who would know better how to circumvent security than the man who installed it? I wondered if the police had worked that one out too, and sent Sergeant Peterson to check it out. If that was the case, there was definitely no need for me to be phoning any other policeman. Stick to your own ship, Cass, where you belong.

And just what was Cerys up to at the old cottage, and how did Anders come into it? I tried to remember what he'd said when I'd mentioned the old cottage, and he'd got so uptight. Something about me being too young – 
If you were to spread lies about me,
Cerys had said. The answer was pretty obvious, I supposed, as obvious as Cerys herself  – and I rather suspected she'd have to be really obvious to get Anders into bed, unless she'd lured him with promises of an engine. He could do a good line in courtly phrases, but they never came out quite right, and I'd never actually seen him with a girl. We had an amiable relationship going, and I was sorry to think he'd got entangled with someone as fake-looking as Cerys.

But it was none of my business.

I went into the Co-op on the way past. They didn't have kitten food, but I got a piece of haddock for just now, and some stir-fry vegetables for tea. I'd try dropping a line from the inflatable tomorrow, and see if I could get some whitefish instead of the ubiquitous mackerel.

Anders was already on board, sitting back in the cockpit with his feet up and Rat curled around his neck. His skin was pale under the tan, and there was a grease smear down his cheek.

‘Hi,' I said. ‘Good day?'

He shrugged, making Rat wobble like a dinghy on a swell. ‘We had to get the engine out of an old wooden fishing boat, and start installing a new one. It meant a lot of heavy lifting – the hatch was a size too awkward to use the hoist properly.' He looked at the bags I'd swung over the guard rail. ‘Is that tea?'

‘I got some stuff,' I said.

‘Good. I was just wondering if I should be going along to the garage for some meat.'

‘Can you wait five minutes?'

He nodded, and I sat down on the opposite side of the rail from him.
Very domesticated
. There was a scrabbling from behind the washboards, and an indignant mew.

‘I was unsure that you wanted the kitten to come up into the cockpit yet,' Anders said.

‘He has to learn not to fall overboard sometime,' I said. I raised the washboard and Cat swarmed out. I lifted him onto my knee and stroked his bony back. He purred obligingly, but was too interested in this new environment to settle. He whiffled his way around the cockpit floor, poking a paw into each drain, clambered up onto the tiller and swung from it, and finally jumped onto the seats and swarmed his way onto the side deck, to peer with interest down into the dark water.

‘Don't try it,' I said, retrieving him, then, to Anders, ‘I have a job. Twenty-eight quid a week, for four hours.'

‘That is good. What have you to do?'

‘Clean an ornament-infested house,' I said with feeling. Anders laughed. ‘The woman who owns it is the woman from the cottage round under the trowie mound,' I added. I was tempted to say something about Cerys, but anything she and Anders might be up to was none of my business, and I hoped I wouldn't be seeing much of her.

He flushed red at the mention of the cottage and went straight into Neanderthal mode. ‘I do not think you need to go out to work. I am earning a good wage now.'

I stared at him, aghast. ‘But –'

‘I have enough to keep us both, if the money you got from the film has run out.'

‘It's not that,' I protested. ‘I can't have you paying for all our food. That's not fair.'

‘I do not think they are the sort of people you should associate with,' Anders said. I could see generations of black-clad Lutheran ancestors lining up at his back. ‘They are not good company.'

‘I won't be keeping company with Cerys,' I said, forgetting my resolution not to mention her. ‘I'll be cleaning her mother-in-law's house.' I jutted my chin at him. ‘And I've never lived on anyone else's money, and I'm not starting now.'

‘You are going to take money from your father for your college course.'

This was a sore point which I preferred not to think about. ‘If I can earn a bit more now, maybe I won't need to.'

Anders sighed. ‘Cass, I would rather not explain, but I think you should not go to this woman, and you should definitely not go near that cottage, whoever asks you. It is not a good place.' He shook his head. ‘And now I have told you not to, of course you will go.'

‘I'm not that stupid,' I said.

‘Think of it as a pub you have been warned against, in a strange port,' Anders said.

‘Can't you just tell me why not?'

The tide of crimson rose up from his neck again. ‘I would rather not. But I wish you would let me use the money I have earned to keep us both.' He shrugged, and retrieved Cat from where he was making his way along the side-deck, then gazed at me, blue eyes earnest. ‘Please, Cass.'

I didn't quite get why it mattered so much to him, but I could see that it did. For these three months he'd been my friend, my companion, who rarely asked anything of me. I wished that he wasn't asking this, but I couldn't see how to say no.

‘I've said that I'll do it, so I'll have to go for this week, then I'll say I'm just too tired after a day on the water. Will that do?'

He nodded. ‘Thank you, Cass.'

We didn't talk of Cerys or the cottage any more. After tea, Anders went off to conduct his next bit of interplanetary war, the green-baize roll of painted figures under his arm. I fed Cat his haddock, then took him and Rat across to the shed to play in a half-rigged Mirror while I messed about with boat repairs. Although the Pico hulls were pretty indestructible, their fixings weren't, and we had several boats whose bow-ring was gone, leaving a small hole for water to ooze into the hollow shell. I took out the bungs at the aft end, and propped the boats up to drain. They sailed badly enough without adding several litres of interior water. I glued in new bow-rings, then began searching for decent bits of rope to use as painters, to replace the tatty string the current painters had become. I was just on my knees fishing out a likely piece from underneath an ancient Wayfarer when a pick-up rumbled down the gravel drive, booming eighties rock for a three-mile radius. Rat and Cat froze, then dived under the folded red sail. The shed darkened, there was a door slam, and I heard footsteps behind me.

It was Olaf Johnston, looming out of the bright evening. As his broad shoulders filled the doorway, the light blanked out, turning him into a dark, menacing shape. I'd always been a bit wary of him at school; he and Brian were too swaggering, too almost-leaving full of themselves. I wriggled out backwards, feeling caught at a disadvantage, and turned to face him as I rose. ‘Hi.'

He came closer in to me than I liked, not a hand's length away, and he'd grown taller than I remembered, so that my head barely reached his shoulders, and I had to tilt my head back to look at him. He was looking me up and down like a killer whale eyeing up a plump seal. I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of making me retreat.

‘Noo dan,' he replied in a tone that was on the neutral side of friendly. ‘Is this you fixing up the bairns' dinghies?'

‘Just a few odd repairs,' I said. I lifted the rope to show him. It was an old halyard, gritty with cement dust from the floor, but sound enough. ‘I don't ken what the bairns do to their painters. Use them for chewing gum, I think.'

He smiled at that, a sideways smile which made him look like a Viking planning a raid on a rich monastry. Norman hadn't got his colouring from his dad; Olaf was the traditional Norse-descent variety of Shetland man, tall and broad-shouldered, with a ruddy outdoor complexion and a bushy head of hair coloured somewhere between fair and red. His eyes were the same narrowed grey-green as Norman's, though, and he had the same hooked nose. He reeked of Lynx, and was wearing an all-over Fair Isle like Magnie's, hoops of blue pattern on a white ground. He and Brian had always worn all-overs to school, in spite of them being well out of fashion by then, and totally impractical in the sauna-heat classrooms, and they'd both spoken the broadest possible dialect. It was part of their hard-crofter image. His jeans looked straight from the wash, and he was wearing black shoes rather than rubber boots or trainers. That was reassuring; he looked more like someone on his way to an evening class or a five-hundred night than someone who was going to give me grief about being mean to his bairns.

He took the rope from me and began coiling it. ‘That's a fine piece, should do you several painters. Alex is fairly enjoying the classes.'

‘He's a natural,' I said. ‘I can't remember you sailing when we were at school, but he's definitely got it in the blood.'

Olaf shook his head. ‘Me late father was the one for sailing. I crewed in our Shetland model for a bit, before the class collapsed here at Brae, but I'm no' done much since, just crewing for Peter o' Wast Point. That was a fine race the other night. We thought we'd caught you until you got the spinnaker up.'

‘I enjoy working the kite,' I agreed. He handed me the rope back, and I took it out into the evening sunshine, slanting down between the yacht masts and catching the dust on the water lapping at the top of the slip. A boat length was plenty for a painter. I measured it against the nearest Pico; yes, I'd get three from it. All the time I was waiting to hear what Olaf had come about. The silence stretched uneasily out as I laid the rope in a triple line along the tarmac.

He broke it at last. ‘I'll tell you what I'm come about. I was wondering if you were free on Saturday, you ken, Voe Show day.'

It was the last thing I'd expected. The local agricultural show was a big day out, with competitions for every kind of farm and domestic animal, garden flowers and produce, knitting, photography, and craft work, as well as a griddle frying fish and minute steak, and teas, sandwiches, and fancies in the hall. Anders and I were planning to be there, along with everyone else in the show catchment area.

‘I was certainly thinking to go,' I said.

‘Kirsten's working with the Lifeboat stall,' Olaf said. It took me a moment to remember that Kirsten was his wife, the dark woman who'd refused communion. ‘You ken, it's in aid of the Aith Lifeboat, and I thought you might be willing to spell her for a bit, if you were going to be there. It's a long day, she'll have to set the stall up for nine o'clock, so that folk have something to look at while the judging's going on, and then it doesn't close till four in the afternoon. She'd be blyde of a hand, and I thought, well, I was coming down the marina anyway, and it would be worth trying to see if you'd maybe help, with your interest in boats.'

They are not good people for you to associate with.
It wasn't done to wonder about other people's sins, but I wondered now why Kirsten had refused communion, yet still gone up for a blessing. What had she on her conscience? Whatever it was, I'd have betted my last anchor rope on Olaf having coerced her into it.
It would have been divorce if she'd no' been religious …

 ‘That would be no bother,' I said. ‘I don't know if I'd manage the whole day, but I could easy give a hand for a couple of hours. When would she like me there for?'

‘Oh, now, I forgot to ask that.' His voice made it a dead give-away. He saw me hearing that, and covered smoothly. ‘I'll get her to come down and arrange that – or do you have a mobile?'

‘I do,' I said, ‘but I can never remember the number offhand.' I wasn't going to give my number to Norman's family.
I ken how you got that scar – 
‘I'll be seeing Alex tomorrow. Just tell Kirsten to tell him what time she wants me.'

‘That's fine of you,' he said. ‘I'll tell Kirsten that.' He indicated the rope I'd laid out with one broad hand. ‘Are you going to cut that? I have some whipping twine in the pick-up. I'll gie you a hand.'

‘Thanks,' I said.

We settled together on the bench outside the changing rooms. All the time I was conscious of his eyes on me. W hatever he had come to say, it wasn't said yet. I cut the rope in three and swittled it in the sea, so that it smelt of salt rather than of dust, then we whipped the ends. ‘It's a few years since we shared a techy bench at the school,' Olaf said.

His tone made me uneasy all over again. We'd never been mates, and we'd never shared a workbench.

‘You were a bit older than I was,' I said. ‘You were left by the time I got to woodwork stage.' I'd enjoyed technical; it gave me a chance to make bits for the boat. I wouldn't have enjoyed it with Olaf and Brian swaggering about the classroom.

‘I mind you fine,' Olaf said. ‘Cool Cass, that's what we called you between ourselves, Brian and I.' He gave an abrupt laugh that seemed to have nothing to do with merriment. ‘We got Inga screaming wi' that trick wi' the bones from the trowie mound, but no' you. You didna turn a hair.'

‘I'd seen plenty of sheep skulls out on the hill,' I said.

He grinned, like a Viking about to throw his favourite enemy to the wolfhounds.

‘Well, now, I don't know that I'd say for sure it was human bones. Brian said he'd got them from the trowie mound, right enough, but who's to say whether he did?' The broad-nailed fingers stilled on the piece of rope. ‘He was aye a bit odd about that place. When he was peerie it was his secret hide-out. He wasna keen on sharing it wi' me, even. He took me inside just the once, then rustled me out quick, before I had the chance to get a right look.'