Orkney Twilight (14 page)

Nils turned to her now, his face lighting up. ‘Would you like to come out on the
Marie-Jean
? A quick trip round the harbour? Yes?’

She hesitated, flicked a sly look at Tom.

‘When?’

‘Now. Why not now? Half an hour out, half an hour back.’

Maybe she shouldn’t. But why not? Anyway, he was interesting to talk to with his knowledge of the sea and his Viking ancestry.

‘I’d love to. We haven’t got anything planned. What about you, Tom? Do you want to come too?’

‘No thanks.’ He stuck his hands in his trouser pockets.

‘Come on. It looks calm. No chance of sinking today.’

He glared at her reproachfully. ‘You go. I’ll just wander around the town.’

‘Okay. Meet you back here in about an hour then.’

Tom sloped off in the direction of the High Street.

She followed Nils, cutting a path across the piers, skipping over ropes, heading to the
Marie-Jean
. Something occurred to her; she halted, called after Tom. ‘Can I borrow your binoculars?’

He dug in his anorak pocket, walked over and reluctantly handed her his bins.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

He didn’t respond. Sulky bugger. She caught up with Nils. He was studying the boat moored behind his: dull grey, enclosed, low in the water, shark-like, predatory with its pointed prow poking her lovely rose-red stern, giving her unwanted attention.

‘I haven’t seen that one here before,’ he said. ‘Cruiser.’

She peered at the neat white letters almost completely concealed underneath its prow. ‘
The
Inquisitor
. That’s a creepy name for a boat. What do you think they are searching for?’

‘Not for fish, that’s for sure. I couldn’t tell you what it is kitted out for though,’ He nodded towards the antennae bristling from the cabin. She stood on tiptoes and tried to peer through the cabin windows.

‘Leave it,’ Nils said warily. ‘None of our business anyway.’

He studied
The Inquisitor
pensively as he clambered aboard his boat.

The
Marie-Jean
pulled away from its mooring, followed by a phalanx of raucous seagulls as they retraced the
St Ola
’s path across the harbour. Nils stood square in the wheelhouse, steering their course. She sat at the stern, watching the receding slipways of Stromness, the wake fanning out behind as they skimmed along between wind and water.

‘How about east to Scapa Flow?’ he asked.

‘No thanks. Too many dead bodies. All those drowned sailors. I’d like to avoid the ghosts.’

‘Hah. It’s not possible to avoid ghosts here. There are strange spirits everywhere on these islands. Drowned sailors all around these shores. We could go west if you like. But there’s another wreck that way. The HMS
Hampshire
. Lord Kitchener’s ship. Lots of bodies there.’

‘Isn’t that the one that hit a mine,’ said Sam, ‘and sank with all its men on board in the First World War?’

‘Well, that’s the official explanation,’ Nils said. ‘Although, of course, there are all sorts of stories about what really happened. Conspiracy theories. Tales about the involvement of Russian agents.’

He was staring at her face. She flushed. Was he getting at something? A nagging anxiety tweaked her stomach. Perhaps she had been rash, accepting a boat trip alone with this stranger.

‘Anyway, I thought his ship went down further round the island,’ she said. ‘Kitchener’s Memorial is up by Marwick Head. Isn’t that quite a long way to go?’

He grinned. He was definitely sizing her up, testing her a bit, but she wasn’t quite sure why. Still not convinced that she was just a tourist perhaps.

‘Just round the Ness then,’ he said. ‘Along by the Battery and back.’

‘Okay. What’s the Battery?’

‘Second World War lookout post. The buildings are used by the scouts these days.’

She hung over the side of the boat, stretched her arm out to see if she could touch the water, felt her centre of gravity slipping, saw a sheer green wall rising above her, panicked, hauled herself back in. Even on the calmest of days, the waters around here seemed treacherous.

‘How do you navigate the sea?’ she asked. ‘Do you have a map?’

‘I don’t need one. I know these waters: the rocks, the sandbars, the smell of the beach, the winds. I have a chart in my head. And when I’m in open water, I can navigate by the sun.’

‘Like a Viking. What happens when the sun isn’t visible?’

‘Then I use the radar,’ he said.

The desolate buildings of the Battery came into view; black slits of concrete sentry posts and bleak windows of wooden huts louring over the water, forever searching for the traces of German submarines. She fished in her pocket for the binoculars, lifted her sight to the citadel above the sentry posts and latched on to the dark outline of a solitary figure breaking the smooth lines of the mound. The sunlight was shining from behind, shadowing his face. But he was still instantly recognizable. Startled, she dropped the bins, let them dangle and twist. She saw him turning towards the sea, focusing in their direction. She ducked, crouching low, pushing herself against the larch planks of the boat’s hull. Squatting in the damp, she wondered why she hadn’t simply waved and shouted hello. That would have been the normal thing to do. And she realized then that it was an instinct, the vanishing act. She just did what she had always done – slipped below the radar, reassured herself that he wouldn’t be able to see her hiding among the ropes, not even with his twenty-twenty vision.

She waited a minute, dared to lift her head slightly, peeked cautiously, up and over the boat’s side. His unmistakable silhouette was still outlined against the sky, the King of the Castle, surveying his surroundings. And then he was off, striding briskly down the hillside in the direction of the Battery, making a beeline for the nearest hut. At the door he hesitated, peered at the frame, checking for some kind of a sign, she assumed. He gave the door a sharp shove with his shoulder, pushed it open. Disappeared inside for just a moment. He reappeared and closed the door carefully as he left. She almost missed the slight hand movement, marking the frame with what – a piece of chalk? – before he was striding briskly back up the slope, vanishing over the far side of the mound.

She remained crouching, clasping her knees, her legs trembling with the tension and the cold. Oh God. Well, at least he was on his own. At least she could console herself with the fact that he wasn’t meeting some woman in a scout hut. Be thankful for small mercies. She let her head flop, staring down at the
Marie-Jean
’s wet planks. She sighed. She knew what he was doing there anyway; it wasn’t difficult to work that one out. Kim Philby and his book of tradecraft tips: dead-letter box. Someone must have left a message for Jim, some kind of instruction perhaps, a location, a pick-up or a drop-off point maybe. And then she sighed again. She hated that moment, the point when the lurching feelings in her stomach surfaced, her suspicions became observable fact and she realized she wasn’t just telling herself stories. It happened quite a lot with Jim. She levered herself upright, searching for her balance in the rocking boat.

Nils was concentrating on the pattern of the waves and the rip tides underneath, steering the boat with his inbuilt compass, more mechanical than man, caught up in his own world, not noticing hers. He glanced over his shoulder. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes, fine thanks.’ She clambered around the ropes and baskets to join him in the cabin.

‘Not seasick?’

‘No. I don’t get seasick.’

He looked at her curiously. ‘You remind me of Marie-Jean.’

Remind. The word was spoken wistfully. As if his wife was in the past. No longer there. A shadow.

‘I don’t know what it is about you,’ Nils continued. ‘Nothing obvious. Not your appearance. Maybe it’s just the sense that there is something slightly unreachable about you, that you are forever wanting to escape. That you like to keep your secrets to yourself.’

She felt her stomach flip again, uncertain whether she was flattered or worried by his interest in her.

‘Everybody likes to keeps their secrets to themselves,’ she said. ‘Otherwise they wouldn’t be secrets.’

‘But some people are no good at keeping secrets. They wear their thoughts and their feelings on their skin. I don’t think that’s you; I guess you keep secrets without thinking about it. I suspect you are very good at keeping secrets.’

‘Not quite as good as I used to be.’

She gazed at the green slopes rising gently from the shore, the neat cottages dotting the hillside and she wondered what it would be like to live there all year round, through the long darkness and storms of winter. She could be happy up here, scraping together an existence, doing a bit of this, a bit of that. Fishing trips with Nils. It seemed more appealing than going to university and trying to work out what sort of career she should have, competing with all the sharp elbows.

‘Time to turn round,’ he said. ‘Catch the tide. We could go further next time.’

She didn’t reply.

‘Where did you say you were staying?’ he asked.

‘Just beyond Tirlsay. In an old croft that belongs to a mate of my dad’s.’

‘What’s it called?’

She hesitated. He smiled.

‘Nethergate,’ she said.

‘Nethergate. That’s the one all by itself halfway up the hill. Right by the roadside.’

She nodded. ‘How do you know it?’

‘I went there with Marie-Jean a few years ago. The old lady who owned it was a friend of her father’s. She died in her sleep. I took Marie-Jean to pay her respects. I remember her body was laid out very peacefully in the room at the end of the cottage.’

‘Oh,’ said Sam. ‘She must have died in the bed I’m sleeping in. That feels a bit odd.’

‘But everybody has to die somewhere, no? It is good that she died in her home.’ Nils concentrated on the sea as he swung the boat round, heading back to Stromness.

The mechanic had done what he said he would: fitted a temporary silencer, reduced the noise and left the car with a burbling at its rear end that probably wasn’t audible from a great distance, but was still loud enough to make people stare when they drove past. Inside the Cortina, on the road out of Stromness, there was an uncomfortable silence. Tom was still grumpy about her sea trip with Nils. She was staring out of the window, trying to work out how much she should tell Tom. A raptor hovered overhead, the sun gilding its tail feathers.

‘Look,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Hawk.’

She was about to tell him it was a kestral when she caught sight of an advancing silver streak, bearing down on them, growing rapidly larger. It decelerated momentarily as it passed, giving Sam just enough time to register a woman with short brunette hair who, even at a distance, was obviously attractive; she had the confident posture of somebody who was used to being admired.

‘Dangerous driving,’ Sam said.

‘It’s a Merc. What do you expect? We’re lucky he didn’t rear-end us. Stockbroker on holiday.’

‘It was a woman.’

‘Was it? That’s interesting. The City: soon it’ll be the only game left in town,’ said Tom.

‘If Thatcher has her way and the pits are closed,’ she joined in, waving her arms around. ‘And the unions are destroyed and our manufacturing base disintegrates, there’ll be nothing left except financial companies and shopping centres.’

‘The service economy. And there goes its outrider in the northern reaches. Tearing up the highway.’

She heard the admiration in his voice and wondered whether he had always been like that, a bit in awe of the money-makers. Maybe she just hadn’t noticed before. The silver glint vanished in the distance, merging with the hills. She peered up, searching for the kestrel again. It had disappeared.

They had already started a game of Trivial Pursuit when Jim returned in the inconspicuous black Renault he had borrowed from Bill. She eyed him suspiciously as he hovered in the doorway, filling out the frame. He was obviously feeling edgy; he couldn’t stand still. He walked over to the table, deposited a newspaper, went to the kitchen to fetch a glass, poured himself a drink from the half-empty whiskey bottle he had left on the mantelpiece, knocked it back, returned to the table, picked up his paper again. She caught sight of a book lying underneath. It was hard to miss with its front-cover photo of a bulging-eyed ivory chess piece biting his shield, staring up maniacally at her. Lewis chessman, a berserker.

She stretched out her hand to pick up the book. Jim moved to intercept, tried to grab it, but she was quicker and swiped it away from his reach. ‘
The Orkneyinga Saga
,’ she read. ‘Is it yours?’

‘Give it back.’

The book felt warm in her hand. She held it up to her face, studied the berserker with his mad eyes. That was Jim. He was like that; wound up, waiting to let rip. Maybe that was what all the Coyles were like.

‘Give it back,’ Jim said again. ‘I’m reading it for the history degree. It’s on the Open University coursebook list.’

‘Let me just have a quick look at it.’

He let his arms slide down to his sides, but his left fist was clenched. She smiled. Liar. He hadn’t brought that book with him; she could guess where he had found it.

‘Liz will be pleased to hear that you are being so studious,’ she said.

‘So you’re reporting on me to your mother.’

She clucked dismissively, sensed Tom turning red, kept her eyes on the book and thumbed through the pages, ignoring Jim’s blazing stare, casually searching for what – pencil jottings, inserts? Nothing. She flicked the pages again, double-checking. Still she couldn’t see anything unusual. She was just being silly after all, imagining spooks and plots where none existed. Taking Philby too seriously. Just because she hadn’t seen the book before didn’t mean he was fabricating. The idea that he might have collected it from the Battery that afternoon, that it might contain some kind of coded message, was just plain ridiculous. She studied the pale, luminous image of the berserker, chewing his shield with frustration, trying to convey some message to her, desperate to share his secret. Unable to speak. A voiceless informer. She gave the book a final flick, spotted a page with a creased corner that had obviously been folded over at some point and then unfolded again. She flipped through to the dog-eared page. Chapter 13, Earl Sigurd’s Sons. She made a mental note of the page number. Thirty-eight.