None but the Dead (20 page)

‘I went outside and someone jumped me in the mist, and tipped me over the wall into the water.’

‘Any idea who?’

‘None.’

The stubborn set to his mouth suggested that even if he had, he wasn’t planning on telling her.

‘Well, if someone has a grudge, it’s just as well you’re heading home today.’

‘Oh no I’m not,’ McNab said.

‘But I thought . . .’

‘Not without finding the bastard who tried to kill me.’

‘Is that not Ivan’s job?’ she tried.

‘Some bastard punched me,’ he rubbed the back of his head, ‘then tried to drown me. Big mistake. And not one for smiling PC Tulloch to remedy.’

‘DI Flett may not agree.’

‘He’s back in Kirkwall, I’m here.’ He changed the subject. ‘What about your plans?’

‘I have some forensic work to finish, then I’m heading back to Glasgow.’

McNab glanced at the window. ‘You only get off this island if there’s no mist and no wind.’

‘That’s by plane. If it’s misty the ferry still goes,’ she challenged him.

‘Godforsaken place.’

‘I like it.’

‘But you were brought up in Skye, which explains everything.’

Rhona left him there, plotting his revenge, and went to check the tide clock. It seemed low tide was at ten this morning. She got dressed in her outer gear and walking boots and headed out. The
mist hadn’t completely dispersed, but it had definitely thinned, probably aided by a faint breeze that stirred the grass.

Rhona had said nothing to McNab about her suspicions that someone had been in the cottage in her absence. He was already fizzing about the attack on him, plus Mike Jones’s confession,
which he’d muttered on about during his third cup of coffee. He had serious concerns about Inga Sinclair visiting the schoolhouse and had made that pretty plain.

Rhona wondered if the attack on McNab had had something to do with him sticking up for Mike in the pub. By rights it should have been her who’d taken the fallout. After all, she’d
insisted on buying him a drink, even though she’d put it on McNab’s tab.

Reaching the flagstone tower, she stopped, determined now to check if anyone had trekked through the longer grass from the shore. Eventually she found a flattened track to the east of the tower
which led down to the beach. Whoever had walked up from there had crossed a patch of seaweed, dried and crusted on top, but gooey and green beneath. Nearer the water were the marks of a
boat’s keel in the sand.

So she
had
had a visitor. The question was who?

She was well aware folk called in unannounced all the time on Sanday, as they did on Skye. If the door was left unlocked, you might find your visitor inside awaiting your return.

But my door was locked, although it wouldn’t be hard to find the key.

She made up her mind to broach the subject with Derek. It was he who knew the owner of the cottage and had organized their stay there. He would probably know if she were likely to get an
unannounced visitor who came by boat.

Rhona checked her watch, conscious of the time. In Derek’s estimate she should allow a couple of hours for her trip to Start Island, paying attention to the tidal clock. She had no wish to
get stranded there in the mist or the dark. Had the day been clearer she would have liked to check out the entire island including the lighthouse, but the main reason for her visit had to come
first.

Derek had been right. The distance was deceptive, even more so with the lingering mist. The track ran to the north of the spit of land that stretched towards the causeway, keeping close to and a
little above the shore. In parts, the double track had been so eroded by the sea that it had become single, with no chance of even a Land Rover negotiating the narrow passage between the field wall
on the right-hand side and jagged rocks on the left.

Strange droppings underfoot caused her to stop for a closer look. Definitely not from sheep, they were black and fairly sizable. At a guess she would have said a big cat, but since the path was
littered with the droppings, that would require a veritable pack of them, which of course was nonsense. Eventually she decided they’d most likely been deposited there by geese.

According to a leaflet she’d picked up at the heritage centre, the burgeoning wild geese population was a growing problem for farmers on Sanday – large flocks of the birds landing to
strip the fields bare, ruining the crops. By the abundance of droppings, she could appreciate the problem.

At the end of the track the sand dwindled into shingle covered with rotting seaweed, both crusted and fresh. Rhona took a seat on a larger stone and removed her walking boots and socks, tying
the laces to sling about her shoulders. She’d already decided to tackle the sandy crossing. Although the water was deeper there, it looked far less treacherous than the seaweed-strewn rocks
amid the broken concrete of the former causeway.

I should have put on my wetsuit and swum across.

She’d brought the wetsuit with her in the hope that she might manage a little wild swimming from Sanday’s famous white beaches. That hadn’t been possible up to now, and since
she was headed back later today, unlikely.

Maybe I’ll come back to Sanday under different circumstances.

Reaching the water’s edge, she braced herself and stepped in. It was certainly cold but not as freezing as some Highland rivers she’d swum in, particularly when they were running
with melted snow. Beneath the clear water, the white sand was rippled in glorious patterns, with fronds of bright green seaweed spread out like fans.

The water at its deepest was past her knees. She realized the northern side of the causeway would fill rapidly as the tide came in, and wading like this would become swiftly impossible. Having
made her way safely across, she donned her socks and boots and set out along the southern shore, ignoring the desire to follow the track to the lighthouse. Out here, the mist roamed the surface in
tendrils, like long grey wisps of hair.

Eventually the shell beach crunched beneath her feet.

She’d completed the collection of her shell samples, and now with time to spare, Rhona didn’t see why she shouldn’t take a look a little further afield. The
mist had fragmented and the distinctive black and white stripes of the lighthouse were clearly visible at least at the upper level.

She initially contemplated heading for the old farm buildings, which weren’t that far from the causeway, then decided instead to venture as far as the earth mound that sat a third of the
way along the southern side.

According to the map, Start Island’s entire shoreline consisted of large slabs of flat rock, apart from the shell beach, which was probably why so many ships had foundered here. The main
track that led to the lighthouse ran along the north coast. On the south side there was no obvious trail and she would just have to pick her way alongside the field walls that marked the division
between farm and shore.

Birds swooped and called about her as she walked. Rhona wasn’t a bird watcher, but it was clear to see and hear that, even in autumn, Sanday was a place to come if you were a twitcher. She
intermittently checked her watch, aware that once the tide began to turn, she had an hour or so to cross the causeway before things got tricky. Added to that, she’d planned to take a look at
the old wartime mortuary before she headed for the ferry.

If I run out of time, I can always delay my departure until tomorrow.

Chrissy hadn’t been in contact yet, but that didn’t concern Rhona. Chrissy’s first task would be to properly log everything taken south, and besides, there was no signal out
here on her mobile to take a call.

Across the stretch of Lopness Bay, she could now make out the distant shapes of the concrete-clad buildings of the radar station, although the two giant masts and the wooden huts that had housed
a thousand personnel had long gone.

As she turned back to face the land, the burial mound emerged from the mist, or at least the summit of it did. Apparently Mount Maesry, or Mount Misery as it had come to be known, was a
chambered cairn like Maeshowe on the Orkney mainland, or Quoyness, further south on Sanday. According to Sam it had been used for potato storage by the lighthouse men back in the twenties until the
entrance had collapsed. It seemed a sacrilegious use of something so beautifully constructed to house the dead.

As she walked across the field, the sky darkened and the first heavy drops of rain met her face. Rhona upped her pace, hoping to find some shelter among the ancient stones.

Sam had barely slept. The fear he’d had for the child had continued to grow overnight, fed by the snippet of conversation he’d overheard through the door.
He’d only met Mike Jones once, when he’d brought the magic flower into the heritage centre. The man had been staying close to home, not mixing much. Most Sanday folk were happy with
that, content to give him time to get used to the place.

The island had many incomers now. It hadn’t been like that during his childhood, when most of the population had been born and raised here, or in the case of his mother, had come from
Westray or the neighbouring North Ronaldsay. He didn’t mind people coming to live on Sanday. Without new blood, the island would have died long ago. They sometimes had false ideas about what
island life was like, and found reality very different. Many couldn’t deal with the weather, or the isolation, and soon gave up.

Derek had been of the opinion that Mike Jones wouldn’t last the winter. Sam thought back to the tall, gangly figure. The man’s inability to meet his eye. His reaction when Sam
explained what the flower stood for.

But is he a danger to the child?

That he couldn’t answer.

Rising before dawn, he prepared breakfast, taking solace in routine tasks. The continued absence of the wind was beginning to bother him. The house seemed too quiet, and the mist that enveloped
the landscape a thick smothering blanket.

Being Saturday, he knew the child wouldn’t be at school, so he could expect a visit from her, usually accompanied by a request that she come to the museum with him. Her mother seemed happy
with such an arrangement, pleased that Inga was interested in the history of the island her family had come from. Sam liked the child’s company, especially at this time of year, when there
were few visitors to the centre.

Thinking of Inga and the school sparked another thought.

While he awaited the child’s arrival, Sam went back to looking through his mother’s things. Ella had been the keeper of the Flett family history. It was she who’d held the
family bible, with all the births, deaths and marriages written inside the back cover. Being from Westray, she hadn’t gone to the school here, but his father had.

Maybe she kept information about the school and his father’s time there.

The thirteen flowers in the attic of the schoolhouse had bothered Sam enough to make him search the archives for any reference to multiple child deaths from pestilence or famine. Sanday had had
its fair share of both, but having thirteen flowers laid together didn’t mean that those they represented had died at the same time. Derek apparently had said as much to Erling and Mike
Jones. The flowers might have been originally kept in local crofts, then moved to the schoolhouse when it was built.

Sam hadn’t paid much attention to Ella’s bits and pieces after her death, feeling he was invading her privacy. Only the legal documents necessary to bury her and manage her estate
had been sought. The tins and boxes that contained her memories, he’d felt were hers, and he hadn’t wanted to intrude.

Going through the contents now, he realized she must have saved every drawing he’d done for her as a child. He pulled out another of these. Not a war plane this time, or a space ship, but
a sketch of the old red-brick mortuary. A shudder went through Sam.

I hated that place. I still do.

It wasn’t only drawings she’d kept. A bundle of his letters from university were there. A couple of postcards from when he’d gone travelling in Europe.

Then it struck him.

There were no childlike drawings done by Eric in Ella’s collection, which was hardly surprising since he’d been a teenager when Ella had married his father, but where were the
letters from him after he’d left Sanday?

Sam hadn’t been born when Eric had left the island, so had no personal memories of his half-brother to call on. Later, his mother had told him that Eric had left to work down south
somewhere, like Jamie, and they’d lost touch.

His father had never mentioned Eric or Jamie, and had frowned if Ella talked about them. Over time, the young Sam had come to understand that something bad had happened between Eric and his
father. Something that must never be talked about.

An old faded school photograph was the final item in the box.

It had no date on it, but it must have been taken before the parish schools had amalgamated and the pupils moved to the central school. He wasn’t even sure that the building the children
stood outside was the local schoolhouse. There were a few such photographs available on the heritage website, but this wasn’t one of them.

Sam searched the line of boys for someone who might possibly be his father. The boys, of different sizes and age, all looked very similar with their blank or startled faces, shocks of ill-cut
hair, short trousers, thick socks and tackety boots. There was no one to his eye who looked like Geordie Flett, but then again, he’d only ever seen his father as a grown man.

Sam ran his eyes over the girls . . . and saw her. Dark hair cut straight just below her ears, a bright-eyed expression. That familiar smile so full of joy and excitement.

With a surge of pleasure Sam realized that he might be looking at an earlier version of Inga, a great-grandparent perhaps, or a long dead great-aunt? He thought how pleased the child would be
when he showed her the picture. She would of course want to know who the girl was. Perhaps her mother might be able to pinpoint who in their family history it might be, and whether it had been
taken at the local school.