None but the Dead (13 page)

‘There was a brooch,’ Rhona said.

His eyes lit up. ‘Can I see it?’

Rhona extracted the clear evidence bag from the collection and brought it over.

Sam studied it through the plastic. ‘This is a sweetheart brooch, very popular during war time. RAF personnel gave them to their girlfriends or wives. We’ve a selection in a glass
case out in the main area.’

‘So it’s not likely to identify the wearer?’ Rhona had suspected as much.

He shook his head. ‘Without an inscription, no. If we knew what she looked like, that might jog a memory.’ He observed Rhona thoughtfully. ‘But without the skull, I take it
that’s not possible?’

There was no point in denying it. ‘Height, build and age, even shoe size – but her face, no.’

‘You think that’s why the skull was removed?’ Sam said worriedly.

‘According to DS McNab, the neighbourhood children didn’t take it. He spoke to them today at the school.’

‘Then who did?’

If someone such as Sam couldn’t answer that question, then Rhona doubted she could.

‘DS McNab and PC Tulloch are talking to anyone who might have information regarding the body and the skull at somewhere called Heilsa Fjold. I gather it’s next to the
school.’

‘The Sanday Development Trust run the place. It’s the new community and youth centre. They’ll get plenty folk turning up. Probably more from curiosity than actual
knowledge.’

Rhona’s mobile rang. When she answered it was Erling.

‘The weather is set to worsen again tonight, then ease enough over the following twenty-four hours for you and the excavation material to be transported out.’

‘I can’t go yet,’ Rhona said. ‘I still have the soil under the body to collect.’

‘You’ll send the evidence anyway?’

Rhona agreed. ‘Chrissy can go with it. I’ll manage the rest of the excavation on my own, provided I can replace the camera tripod.’

‘I’ll get a replacement to you as soon as possible.’

‘By boat or plane?’

‘When I come with the police launch, if not before.’

When Rhona rang off she said, ‘That was Erling.’

‘I guessed as much,’ Sam said with a smile. ‘I’ll leave you to it then. I have some paperwork to be getting on with.’

As Sam rose to go, Rhona suddenly remembered.

‘Have you heard of a man from here called James Drever? He’d be ninety by now.’

Sam shot her an incredulous look and put down his mug.

‘Jamie Drever’s alive?’

Rhona didn’t see the point in not telling the truth, but first she wanted to establish that they were talking about the same man.

‘Your James Drever,’ she said. ‘Has he any relatives here on Sanday?’

Sam shook his head. ‘He left during the war and never came back. My mother used to talk about him, and wonder if he’d survived the war.’

‘If I had a photograph of him in his twenties, would you or someone else be able to identify him?’

‘My mother would have, but she’s long dead. Why do you ask?’

Rhona decided to be blunt.

‘We found the recently deceased body of an elderly man called James Drever in a Glasgow flat. We’re trying to trace any relatives he had.’ She told Sam about the newspaper
cutting of Lopness in his wallet and the fact that he’d told his neighbour he’d gathered seaweed as a child, which led them to think that Orkney might have been his home at one point.
‘He was tall and slim and sandy-haired. He got married in Newcastle to a woman called Grace Cummings in 1948.’ She looked at Sam. ‘Does that sound like your James
Drever?’

‘I have no idea, but if you have a photograph from back then, I could see what I can find out.’

‘I’ll arrange with DS McNab to let you see a copy.’

Sam had been unnerved by his conversation with the forensic woman. Having the excavated material here in the heritage centre wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t the
bones and the soil that had upset him.

It was what had happened to him at the mention of the name Drever. Drever was a common Orkney surname, found on most of the islands in the archipelago. Why had he immediately thought that the
man she spoke about was
that
Jamie Drever? And why had that brought such a sense of dread?

He’d found himself trembling in the aftermath of her question, and had been keen to get away from both the woman and the room of evidence. Ever since they’d dug up the bones
he’d had the ill feeling that the past was coming back to haunt them.

A past long buried, like the flowers in the loft of the old schoolhouse.

He shut and locked the door of his tiny office as foreboding overpowered him. He’d experienced such sensations before, particularly in his youth. They’d waned during adolescence and
while Jean was alive had faded away almost entirely. She’d called them his dark fogs, which she’d dispelled with love and laughter.

Sitting there in the gloom, he could taste the horror of the fog as it descended. It was always the same feeling. He knew something bad was about to happen yet he didn’t know what, nor had
he any means to prevent it. Feminine fancies, his father had disparagingly called them, firmly dismissing them. His mother had been more forgiving, but hadn’t encouraged him to speak of them.
Instead she gave him jobs to do, one after the other, so that he had no time to think at all. Eventually he’d given up mentioning them.

The blackness usually lasted a couple of days, then abated. At first he linked them to deaths on the island or accidents that happened to their neighbours, feeling sure as a child that he had
been foretold of the event. The importance this gave him eventually proved too frightening, and he’d worked as hard as his mother to ignore them.

Marriage and teaching had helped. As he’d grown older, the intensity of the feelings had dissipated. Except when Jean had lost the two bairns during pregnancy. He’d felt, no, known
it would happen, although he’d never shared his fears with her on the matter, in case she thought he was the one to jinx the pregnancies.

At the darkest moments of his premonitions, he thought that maybe he had.

He thought of his mother, married to an older widower with a son not much younger than herself. Still young, still pretty. She’d enjoyed the coming of the radar station, welcomed the
change to the grinding routine of running a farm. She’d loved going to the dances and the cinema. Then a baby had come along to spoil her fun, or so she used to joke, as she’d
reminisced about those days when the outside world had come to Sanday.

And Jamie Drever had been a part of that world. A big part.

I owe it to her to find out if the man in Glasgow was Jamie.

If it was, then perhaps he can be brought home and buried here, near her.

The thought comforted Sam a little, but not enough to counter his dark premonition.

Heilsa Fjold
– what language was that?

The name rolled off PC Tulloch’s tongue with ease. McNab, on the other hand, had decided he wouldn’t attempt it, but opted for ‘community centre’ instead.

Still, the place had been a good choice for the interview sessions. Light and airy, coffee and home baking on constant supply. (McNab had been seriously missing his espresso fixes.) A good
internet connection and a constant stream of folk interested in talking to them, or more obviously, keen on finding out what all the fuss was about. After all, uncovering old bones on Sanday was
almost as frequent an occurrence as high winds and rain.

McNab had assembled his materials to help stimulate memory. A map of the exact location of the burial. Photographs of the brooch and what was left of the clothing. A description of what the
victim may have looked like, in dimensions at least.

Most folk already knew that the skull had gone missing and had their own opinions on why, mischief-making by kids being the most prevalent. Teenagers from the school showed a great interest in
the forensics involved and were obviously fans of CSI or other forensic TV programmes. At that point having Rhona there would have been an advantage.

During the first two hours, he and PC Tulloch spoke to about thirty folk. Though the majority wouldn’t have been born when Sanday had been invaded by servicemen, they seemed to know quite
a lot about the island during that time, a tribute he thought to the heritage centre, the school or the work of Derek Muir.

PC Tulloch was, McNab decided, ideal for this job. He put folk at ease, made them feel they were contributing, but most of all, generated the sense that it was a community endeavour to solve
this crime.

Just as with large profile cases on the mainland – when someone went missing the local community was organized to search for them – here on Sanday the community was being marshalled
to help discover the identity of the woman found buried in a school playground.

‘More coffee, Detective Sergeant?’

McNab looked up to find the young woman who’d been keeping them supplied with refreshments all morning. Tall, blonde, pretty, she’d introduced herself earlier, but her name, Hege,
sounded a bit like the name of the centre and he’d therefore not registered it properly. Her voice had a slight accent which he thought initially was the same as PC Tulloch’s, but now
wasn’t so sure.

‘A double espresso this time?’ She smiled at his reaction to her offer. ‘The machine makes them too.’

‘How did you know?’ McNab said.

‘I heard you mention it to Ivan.’

‘Ivan?’

She flushed a little. ‘Sorry, PC Tulloch.’

McNab hadn’t given a moment’s thought to Tulloch’s first name and now here it was. Ivan had vacated his seat and gone to the Gents, although having exited there, now seemed to
be in animated conversation with an elderly man who’d just entered the building via the wheelchair ramp.

‘That’s very kind of you.’ McNab gave her what he hoped was a winning smile. ‘I was getting withdrawal symptoms.’

‘Too much caffeine—’ she began.

‘Is bad for you,’ McNab finished for her.

‘But it also stimulates the brain,’ she offered. ‘How are things going?’

‘I’ve learned a lot about Sanday’s invasion during the war.’

‘It’s an interesting story, but not a true invasion, not like what happened to Norway.’

‘Your country?’ he tried.

She nodded.

‘I thought the accent sounded different from PC Tulloch’s,’ McNab admitted. ‘Are you just visiting or have you moved here?’

‘I’m here for a year.’

McNab didn’t ask her why, as PC Tulloch approached with the elderly gentleman in a wheelchair.

‘This is Mr Cutts, sir. His family used to work on Lopness farm when it was bought over by the government to build the radar station.’

The old man’s expression suggested a grievance about that which hadn’t yet waned.

‘They let the crop die in the fields that year. We weren’t allowed to harvest anything,’ he said.

Up to now, most of the folk offering stories of that time had been positive about the impact of the camp on the island. McNab had a feeling this interview might prove to be a little
different.

Fifteen minutes later, he’d learned that prior to the influx of servicemen, Sanday had been a God-fearing island, Lopness folk had gone to the kirk, relationships led to marriage and
bairns weren’t born out of wedlock.

‘The war changed all that,’ the old man said. ‘They held dances at the camp and sent buses to pick up the local women. There was a cinema showing American movies.’ He
regarded McNab with a rheumy eye. ‘As a young man, I have to say I loved it.’

McNab wondered where all this was leading. He didn’t have long to wait.

‘There was a girl worked on the camp. I don’t know what she did there. Her name was Beth Haddow and she was from somewhere in England. We met at one of the dances, but she
wasn’t interested in me. There was someone else for her, although she was kind enough to a sixteen-year-old ploughboy.’

By his expression he was reliving those times.

‘I asked her to dance with me that night. She did, but she was watching for someone else. I don’t know who. I went outside to the toilet and when I came back she’d
disappeared.’ He paused. ‘I never saw her again. I tried asking about her but they were a secretive lot up there. You could come to the parties and watch the movies, but you
weren’t allowed to ask questions.’

McNab showed him a photograph of the brooch.

‘She was wearing this when she died.’

Mr Cutts picked up the picture and studied it. ‘Sweetheart brooches were very popular back then. I don’t remember her wearing one.’

‘What was she wearing when you last saw her?’

He smiled. ‘I was just a lad. I never paid any attention to what women wore, just dreamed of what was underneath the clothes.’

McNab was warming to Don Cutts as a teenager, and as an octogenarian.

‘Describe Beth for me.’

‘Small, maybe just over five feet tall. Slim with dark hair, cut short. Pretty with very blue, intense eyes. Light on her feet, like a bird.’

‘Could she have left the camp, gone back south?’

‘She could have, but I don’t think she did.’

‘Why?’

‘She was never on the ferry to Kirkwall. They didn’t go as often as they do now and I knew most of the men that ran it. She didn’t leave from Kettletoft.’

‘Maybe the army transferred her out?’

‘She wasn’t in the forces. She was a civilian. When I kept coming back asking about her, they got shirty with me. They were hiding something.’

‘Why would they do that?’

‘There were a lot of secrets between the local folk and camp personnel. Mostly of a personal nature. After all, it was wartime. And bear in mind there were more of them than there were of
us.’

‘Have you a photograph of Beth anywhere?’ McNab asked.

‘No,’ he said sadly. ‘Just a memory of her.’

We have no chance with this
, McNab thought as Mr Cutts wheeled himself away.
It’s too long ago and whoever killed her would likely be dead anyway
.

PC Tulloch presented himself again. ‘How did that go?’

‘Go ask that nice Norwegian lady to make me another espresso.’

McNab settled himself in a seat by the window and checked his mobile. The signal was intermittent everywhere but for a few bright spots, such as here at the hotel and at the
community centre.