The Trowie Mound Murders (12 page)

‘You remember Gavin Macrae, don't you?' I said.

‘I don't mind us actually meeting,' Magnie said, aimiably enough. ‘What're we done now?'

‘It's Cass's missing yacht,' Gavin said. ‘She's got me intrigued.'

‘Ye, that was an odd thing, right enough,' Magnie said. He turned to me. ‘Olaf o' Scarvataing wasn't giving you grief yesterday, was he? I saw his car as I came along the road, but I hadn't time to stop.'

‘He was being helpful,' I said. ‘Our problem parent,' I added to Gavin. ‘Norman's to keep away from the dinghies, and he whipped a couple of painters for me.'

‘There'll be something in it for him,' Magnie said darkly. ‘He's no' one to be helpful when he doesn't get an advantage from it.'

‘I said I'd help Kirsten out with the lifeboat stall at Voe Show.'

Magnie shook his head. ‘He'd no' be bothered about that. He's like the old fishermen, get the wife to take the kist on her back all the way to Lerwick, while he swaggered along beside her.'

‘A kist?' I repeated. ‘Do you mean the old-fashioned seaman's chest?'

Magnie nodded, grinning. ‘Great, heavy things they were.'

‘Aye,' Gavin said. ‘I mind that was the way in the western isles, as well.'

Now I had two of them baiting me. ‘Are you seriously telling me the wives carried them for their husbands, all the way to Lerwick?'

‘They carried the husbands too, if there was a burn to ford,' Gavin said. ‘To keep their feet dry, for them going to sea.'

‘Piggy-back, I suppose,' I retorted.

‘I suppose so too,' Gavin said gravely.

‘I mind seeing it happen, as a bairn,' Magnie added.

I gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘Come off it, Magnie. In the 1950s?'

‘Well, maybe no',' he conceded. ‘But my faider used to speak of it.' He and Gavin exchanged a look over my head.
Men.
And if Magnie was going to take to match-making, he could just mind his own business.

‘Gavin wants a look at where I last saw the Rustler,' I said, ‘so we'll take the bairns up that way.'

I turned to look down the voe. The wind was still from the south, gusting up to 3, making pronounced waves with white-fretted tops. It was a beautiful sailing day, with enough wind to be fun, yet not so much that they'd have trouble with the spinnakers. The sky would clear; already the mottled clouds were separating out to show the blue behind them. The sheep had got over their panic and were spread out again, white, rust, brown, black dots moving against the dark green heather or lime-green moss patches. It was two hours yet to high tide. The water rippled up the boatclub slip, each new wave pushing a hairsbreadth further.

‘They can get the spinnakers out again. It's a touch more of a dead run than it was, but they can't knock themselves out with the boom in this.'

‘Never say “can't”,' Magnie said. We looked up as we heard the roar of a quad coming along the road. ‘That boy could damage himself in a flat calm.'

The quad swerved into the boating club drive at the last minute, in a splatter of gravel. I was surprised not to see a pillion-rider, then I realised it was Alex himself driving, even though he had to be well short of the legal fourteen.

‘Are you supposed to be driving that thing on the roads?' I asked, as he sauntered over. Given my own record of illegal driving over the summer, I didn't dare look at Gavin.

‘Dad said I could take it,' he said. ‘Norman wasn't around to run me, he'd gone off somewye. Dad wasn't very pleased with him.'

‘Mirrors again,' I said. ‘Let's see how well you remember hoisting the mainsail.'

‘Where are we going today?'

‘Along to Weathersta.'

His eyes lit up. ‘Cool! Did you know it's haunted? There's a baby that cries and cries, because its mother murdered it.' He put a gruesome emphasis on
murdered.
‘She wasn't married, and she killed it by hitting it with a stick until it died, but it screamed and screamed, and the neighbours heard and came and arrested her.'

Yuck! I preferred Magnie's selkie wife who found her skin again, and couldn't help herself. Alex took my silence for disbelief. ‘It's true,' he insisted. His lavender-blue eyes went round and solemn. ‘See, I was over playing with Robbie last night, he lives just at the back of the point, and we were messing about on the shore. We heard it, clear as clear, crying.'

‘What time was this?'

He went pink, deliberated within himself for a moment, then decided I wasn't a parent, so would be safe to tell. ‘Well, see, we should've been in bed, but – well, we'd been to bed, and then I'd climbed out of my window and he'd sneaked out of his back door, and we met up. It was the middle of the night.'

‘What colour was the sky behind this hill?' I asked, pointing eastwards. ‘Black, or grey, or dim blue, or first-light blue?'

He frowned, visualising. ‘Dim blue.'

That meant it had been between one and two in the morning. I could feel Gavin's intent silence behind me. ‘Did you see any boats about?'

He shrugged. ‘But we heard the baby crying, Cass, really we did. Do you suppose, if you saw it, it would be all covered in blood, with a muckle gash in its head, like the dead people in
The Sixth Sense
?'

I didn't have the heart to spoil his fantasies. ‘I suppose it might be.'

‘But then,' Alex said, ‘maybe it's like those light things, you know, Magnie's stories, the closer you get, then it moves. Because when we heard it, we crept over the hill and towards the beach straight away, but then it sounded like it came from the island, Linga.'

‘There were lights up at the trowie mound dastreen,' Magnie said. He gave me a sideways look, to see how seriously I'd take him. ‘Likely another trowie wedding. They minded me o' the old Lea lights, in Aith – do you ken that story? The house called the Lea, well, it had earth lights apo the hill. We used to stop on the way home from dances to watch them. It was a regular thing. They'd just move up the hill, for all the world like someen walking up carrying a lantern. You could only see them from far off, though. The old man that lived there, he never saw them.'

‘Lights?' I said. ‘Alex, you'll notice what you've done wrong with that tiller the first time you try to tack.'

‘Oh, yeah,' he said, and got the helm out over the traveller instead of tangled under it.

‘Moving up and down the hill ida mirkening,' Magnie said. ‘I couldn't sleep, so instead o' taking them tablets, I went for a walk up over the hill.' He slanted a quick, intelligent look at Gavin. He wasn't going to help the police, exactly, but he didn't mind passing on information he thought they should know. ‘I could see them clear as clear.'

Gavin looked at me. ‘The trowie mound, that's the cairn your sailors were going to?'

I nodded. I wondered, I wondered very much, if the inside of the trowie mound might be a good place to store things. Reasonably small, portable things, like paintings, well wrapped up against the damp, and little statues. I'd been concentrating on the cottage, but now I came to think of it, that wasn't such a good hiding place. It was too accessible by land. All you needed for the loot to be discovered was a group of young boys daring each other to break in via a window, or a tramp looking for shelter. The trowie mound, by contrast, was an enclosed space with no obvious break-in points, and it was a stiff climb up the hill, to deter the casual passer-by. To retrieve your hidden objects, all you had to do was moor to the bouy at the cottage and go up the hill. To keep them safe, all you had to do was keep the nosy archeologists away. What had Olaf said?
That Val Turner and her team were keen to put their noses inside, and he wouldn't have them near the place.
You didn't even need to be seen, if you had a fast boat and plenty of fuel. You could arrive at the bouy from Norway, from Faroe, from Iceland, pick up your cargo, and be away again.

Gavin was watching me. He said, ‘My ship, Cass. You focus on your bairns.'

Chapter Thirteen

I focused, gathering them around me for the usual briefing at the whiteboard in the shed: where the wind was coming from, what the tide was doing, how would that affect getting out of the marina, knowing when to tack going upwind. There was the usual confused flurry as they trundled boats to the pontoon and set off, then once the last set of red sails had made it past the wind-shadow of the marina entrance, we led them up the voe. We started towards Busta, went around one of the mooring buoys there, zig-zagged back towards Weathersta, across to Muckle Roe, and back to the near corner of Linga. I steered, Gavin sat upright on the port side, looking forward, hair lifting in the wind, and Magnie settled comfortably on starboard, booted feet stretched across the boat.

We dropped the anchor just off the north end of Linga. I cut our engine, then turned side-saddle on the padded seat. A hundred yards behind us, Alex had his boat nicely balanced, but all the others were either sailing too close to the wind, or miles off it. I leaned over the side of the rescue boat and let the wind carry my voice back to them.

‘Kevin, Ali, you're both pinching. Come off the wind a touch.' They obeyed; I did a thumbs-up. ‘Cheryl, you could go closer.' She looked blankly at me. ‘Push the helm away a bit,' I said, then, as she did the opposite, ‘no, the other way. Away from you.' I gave her a thumbs-up too and leaned back. ‘Wouldn't you think,' I said, ‘that push it away from you would be a simple instruction?'

‘You should use the approved touchy-feely phrasing,' Magnie said. ‘What do they say we should call the helm, the “steering stick”?'

‘Creator Lord,' Gavin said devoutly. ‘What do you call the sail?'

‘I've heard it called the flappy thing,' I said. I was pleased to see Gavin shuddered. ‘I won't do it. Children can learn six new words a day. How can they possibly work their way up to a tall ship if they're talking about steering sticks and flappy things? Peerie Charlie's not three yet, and he could name his way right round
Khalida.
'

Peace descended, temporarily. The water tricked around the stones of the shore; a tirrick dropped into the sea and came back up with a fish glinting in its beak. ‘I should have brought a flask,' Magnie said.

‘What amazes me,' Gavin said, leaning an elbow against the grey rubber side and looking back at Brae, ‘is the prosperity here. All that you've done with your oil money – you've got employment, the best of social care, that school and leisure centre – and the roads! When I compare it to the Highlands, I can't believe they're both Scotland.'

‘That's a matter of debate,' said Magnie.

I intervened hastily, before we could get into the rights and wrongs of Scotland retaining this former Norwegian archipelago. ‘What are the Highlands like, then?'

Gavin's grey eyes, long-lashed and clear as the sea on a winter morning, dimmed like a cloud going over. ‘Tourist country. That's all there is. There's nothing for locals, none of these centres, and the roads are worse than you have to the most remote cottage. And your young folk stay here – ours can't. The land could be worked, but the minute a house comes up for sale the big letting agencies buy it up for a price no local could ever raise, and there's another holiday cottage.' His eyes sparked. ‘Don't get me started. Do you know how much of Scotland is owned abroad?' His chin went up. ‘But the first Act our new Parliament passed was the buy-out act, and I was over in Assynt, no' long ago, they were the first crofters to buy the laird out. Now they've got plans – jobs, houses for local folk, making the moor productive again, and no' just with wind turbines either. They're going to get our way of life back.'

He stopped abruptly, as if this was getting too personal, but I was left wanting to ask more. The wind stirred the kilt on his brown knees, fluttered the little ribbon on each sock, just visible above the green wellingtons. He turned his head and shielded his eyes from the sun with one hand. ‘And where did your boat's lights go out, do you think?'

‘I tried to look and see,' I said, ‘but it's hard to be sure. She could just have gone behind that headland there, on her way to the open sea.'

‘Think to before you assumed that. Where did you think she was as she was meeting the motorboat?'

‘Here,' I said. I jerked my chin towards the circular expanse of water between Linga, the voe of Grobsness, the island of Papa Little, and this side of Muckle Roe. ‘Cole Deep.'

‘How deep is deep?'

‘
Khalida
's echo sounder goes off its scale. Over 90 metres.'

Gavin gave the water a sweeping, speculative look. ‘90 metres. And being this close inshore, nobody'd have nets down. How about darrows?'

He meant a long hand-line with half a dozen hooks at the end; it was a Norse word,
dorrow.
The west coast Scots were descended from Vikings too.

Magnie shook his head. ‘Nae fish to catch in here. You'd go out into the Rona for that.' He was watching Gavin with sceptical interest, as though he was a seaside pier conjurer about to produce a rabbit.

‘So this island, Linga, or that other one – Papa Little, is it? – would be the nearest land?'

‘I suppose so,' I agreed.

Gavin fished out a pair of hand-sized binoculars, the old-fashioned sort with brass rims and brown leather around them. They looked like they'd belonged to his grandfather.
A farm at the head of the loch – 
the spy-glasses conjured it up, a stone-built building at least a century old, with faded curtains, well-worn carpets and three generations' worth of jackets, caps, and walking-sticks in the hall; a comfortable house where you'd feel at home. He turned his head and gave me a rueful smile. ‘I told you, I'm riding a hunch here.'

The first Mirror was approaching us. It tacked with a rattle of sails and halted using the simple method of ramming the rescue boat. Magnie fended it off and held it while Alex and Robbie sorted themselves out.

‘We were first by miles,' Alex said.

‘That was because you weren't pinching,' I said, ‘and you remembered about trim. Well done. Wait for the others, then you can race back, gybing around the bouy off Busta.'

‘The one we came round?'

‘Any of them,' I said.

I went back to watching the approaching Mirrors, ignoring an altercation in the one behind me. Alex had some ploy on that he wanted Robbie to join in, but Robbie was still in trouble after last night's exploit. The next-door neighbour had been out checking sheep, and seen the pair of them, and he'd told Robbie's mum, who'd grounded him for a week. After five minutes the second Mirror thumped against us, quickly followed by the next two and finally the fifth.

‘Okay, guys,' I said. ‘Now you're going to race back, and the race ends at the pontoon, with the boat tied head to wind, and the crew ashore.' I went quickly through spinnaker drill with them, checked they were all set to operate the various bits of kit required, then set them off with the one who'd come last going first, and Alex kept until last, in spite of his protests. After five minutes of flapping and shouting, all the spinnakers were up and we had peace again.

Gavin lowered his glasses and shook his head. ‘Maybe I was wrong.' He gave me a sideways grin. ‘Now I'm going to feel really stupid.' He stood up in the boat and cupped his hands around his mouth. ‘Puss, puss, puss. Puss, puss, puss.'

The call echoed off the rocky beach and around the water, then died into silence. Gavin shrugged, and sat down, but his hands were tense on the binoculars, and his eyes still roving the island.

‘Here, what's that?' Magnie said. His head tilted, listening. For a moment, I thought it was a seagull, then I realised it was what we'd heard last night, that thin, wailing cry of a baby. A tingle crept down my spine. It was coming from the island, just as Alex had said.

‘We heard it last night, and thought it was your ghost baby,' I said. ‘It must have been a seagull after all.'

Gavin lifted his binoculars again. He scanned the island, then gave a grunt of satisfaction. ‘Got him.'

‘That's no seagull, lass,' Magnie said. He turned his whole body, his yellow jacket creaking. ‘I don't know what he's doing here, but – my mercy.' His head stilled; he leant forward. ‘Well, now, there he is.'

Gavin lowered his glasses and nodded.

The wailing cry was getting louder. I saw a flash of dark back like a wet otter slipping between the heather stems towards the shore.

‘What is it?' I said.

‘You'll recognise him in a minute,' Gavin said.

 ‘Don't you worry,' Magnie called to it, ‘we're not going to leave you. Haul the anchor up, Cass, and let's get ashore for him. The Good Man alone kens how he got here but his folk will be glad to get him back.'

The creature had reached the shore now and come right to the water's edge, waiting for us. Now I could see the white front, the chocolate brown paws, the black mask and ears, although it was too far off for me to distinguish the cornflower-blue eyes.

It was Sandra and Peter's Siamese cat.

I lifted the outboard up and paddled the boat to the shallows. Magnie sploshed over to pick the cat up. It stopped its unearthly wailing once it saw we were coming for it, and paced back and forward on the pebble beach instead, eyes fixed on us. I couldn't tell if it looked tired, as if it had swum ashore. Its coat was as immaculate as it had been when we'd met it aboard
Genniveve.
I was certain that whatever Sandra and Peter were involved in, they wouldn't have thrown their cat overboard to drown, or marooned it on this uninhabited island.

It came to Magnie straight away, and he picked it up and sploshed back with it in his arms. He put it on the padded seat while he made a dry nest for it with his jacket in the fish box where we stored the bouy-anchors and rope, then coaxed the cat into it, soothing it with his gnarled hands. He brought out a bottle of water and tipped some into his palm. The cat drank thirstily, then relaxed in the jacket, blue eyes fixed on Magnie. He sat back, shaking his head at me.

‘Now, Cass, ghost babies indeed! You're been listening to too many of my yarns. Haven't you heard a Siamese yowl before?'

‘Never,' I said. So that was why Gavin had asked whether I'd had a pet as a child. I turned to him. ‘Did you guess that, just from what I said about the noise?'

‘A horrid, desolate wailing noise, you said. We had a Siamese when I was a child, and I remembered the minister's wife coming in once.' He leaned forward to let the cat sniff his hand, then scratched it under the ear. ‘She wondered where the baby was.'

‘Ah, they have good voices,' Magnie said. ‘They're talking cats too, you can have a conversation with them just as if they were Christian souls. I'll be glad to look after this one for a day or two, until his folk get back for him.'

If they were alive to come back for him … I'd been thinking in terms of
Genniveve
sailing away, but I saw now that if you were going to scuttle a yacht with a fifteen-metre mast this wasn't a bad place to do it. There was a fish farm with a floating shed behind Linga, and various lobster pots around the shore, but nobody would be dragging for scallops in the deep itself; no fishermen's net would snag on a mast. A boat could sink into the bottom in peace.

I could see that Gavin was following my thoughts. His mouth was grim; he nodded as our eyes met. ‘Put me ashore when you can,' he said, ‘and I'll get things moving.'

I looked at the cat curled in Magnie's jacket. ‘When we came aboard,' I said, ‘he vanished into the locker at first, and only came out once he'd decided it was safe. If it hadn't been Sandra who'd come to take
Genniveve
away, that's what he'd have done, slipped down into his favourite hiding-locker, and stayed there.' Until the intruder had gone … until the water began to come in, and he'd had to take to the cockpit first, and then to the cabin roof, and finally to the sea. The wailing we'd heard had begun after the light had gone out, after the rising water had taken out the boat's electrics. He'd been calling for help, and nobody had come. At last he'd have had to swim for his life to the nearest shore. Most animals can swim, if they have to, and the light breeze would have blown him shorewards. Yes, he could have made those two hundred yards.

‘You'll not be able to have him and yon boy's rat in the same boat,' Magnie said. ‘I'll tak him home wi' me, give him a feed and somewhere to sleep. You'll manage fine without me for the afternoon, a day like this.'

We putted back to the pier, reaching it just ahead of Alex and Robbie. Magnie carried the cat ashore, and headed off in his car with it sitting beside him in the front seat. I hoped it would get on with his other cats.

‘I'll come back later,' Gavin said, ‘or phone to tell you what's happening.'

‘Okay,' I said, and turned back to order the chaos at the pontoon.

We did another beat up the voe, this time with me throwing coloured balls astern for them to pick up as they zig-zagged behind me, then a spinnaker run down to the club again. I couldn't focus, though. I kept glancing over my shoulder at the ruffled steel waters of Cole Deep, and wondering what lay in their depths. Magnie joined me again at lunchtime, and reported that his visitor had eaten ravenously, then fallen foul of his top cat, Tigger. He'd left the Siamese shut in the spare room, exchanging menaces with Tigger through the closed door.

‘But I doubt,' he said, glancing over at Cole Deep, just as I had been all morning, ‘that the pair of them had better get used to each another. Have you heard back from yon kilted policeman yet?'

I shook my head. ‘I think he has to deal with Newcastle as well as Lerwick.'

‘Aye, they were Geordies.'

The past tense echoed in a little silence. I took a deep breath and fished my whistle out from the neck of my lifejacket. ‘Well, what will we get them doing this afternoon?'