Orkney Twilight (24 page)

‘Oh, now I see,’ she said. ‘That was that why you left Tilbury and started the Open University course. You were suspended because Intelligence thought you were a double agent.’

His face clouded. ‘I wasn’t suspended. I took a break from the Force while Intelligence kicked up a fuss about nothing. They were just upset because I did their job better than they did. Fortunately the Commander wasn’t interested in their whinging.’

She exhaled heavily.

‘Will you stop sighing,’ he said. ‘You’re as bad as your mother. It’s like living with Darth bloody Vader.’

‘God, I hope this doesn’t have anything to do with the Russians.’

‘Don’t be daft. Anyway, I’ve moved on. You know I don’t deal with the Russians any more. Thank God. Now they really are serious, the bloody Bolshies. Although—’ He stopped.

‘Although what?’

‘Just thinking,’ he said. ‘You have to be careful with the Russians. Wouldn’t want to end up looking the wrong way down one of their poison-tipped umbrellas. Stay three steps ahead.’

He guffawed. She wasn’t sure why he thought the Russians were so funny, but she joined in too. Then pulled herself together abruptly when she felt him glaring, flashing her a warning signal. She twisted and saw the somnambulant figure looming in the doorway. Tom. She glanced back at Jim, scowling. Looked again at Tom, yawning. Lord. Her adrenalin level crashed. Energy drained away. Wedged between her maverick secret cop of a father and her dozy wannabe hack of a friend. Trapped in a holiday cottage kitchen that was drowning in the rising grey light of a lacklustre dawn.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Tom.

Jim jumped in. ‘It’s Sam and her vivid imagination. She thought she heard someone prowling in the garden. She’s always doing that. Imagining things. I reckon she smokes too much dope. Makes her paranoid. Thinks people are following her.’

He smirked. ‘Anyway, I’ve had a good look around outside and I couldn’t find anybody. So I’m going back to bed. I could do with another couple of hours’ kip. Night. Or should I say morning.’ He retreated to his room and pulled the door shut behind him.

Tom regarded her quizzically.

‘I was sure I heard something,’ she said. ‘Somebody walking around outside. Obviously I was wrong. Must have been the crow. Or the storm.’

‘Storm?’

‘Didn’t you hear it? It was a wild night.’

‘No.’

‘Sleeping Beauty.’

‘Oh well.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I might as well see if I can get a bit more kip as well.’

‘I need a cup of tea.’

‘Too early for me,’ he replied over his shoulder as he padded away.

She waited until he had closed his bedroom door before she tiptoed out into the courtyard. The wind had dropped; a skiff of rain and the dampened notes of a curlew’s song hung in the early morning air. The cat was licking its paws fastidiously in a far corner. She clambered over the low brick wall through the shrubs into the garden. The torrential downpour had flattened the grass, blasted ravines through the soft soil of the rose beds. Her monument, at least, was still standing. Although now she could see that one stone had been moved and was lying on its side outside the ring. The Watcher must have accidentally kicked it. She squinted at the dislodged rock, spotted a glint of orange poking out from underneath. Rubbish. She bent down, nudged it with her hand, letting a centipede scurry away, removed the Sainsbury’s plastic bag. Shook it. A folded piece of paper fluttered out, landed on the damp grass at her feet. The bag had protected it from the worst of the rain; the blue letters of the biro message were smeared but still legible.

‘The pub in Tirlsay. 19:00 tonight; 20
th
June ’84. Come by yourself. I have some information for you.’ The last sentence was underlined twice. She read the message again. It wasn’t addressed to anyone, but it had to be for her. The Watcher knew it was her monument, he had watched her build it that first afternoon at Nethergate; he would have guessed that she would spot the plastic bag under the displaced stone. She read the note a third time, irritated by its directive tone, stuffed it in her back pocket. He had some information for her. About Jim, she assumed. Chickenfeed probably. Or possibly not. What was he playing at anyway, trying to make contact with her? He had to be kidding.

Jim’s head appeared round the door.

‘I’m off. I’ve a few things to sort out. I won’t be back until late.’

‘Right.’

‘What are you going to do? Looks like a miserable day.’ His voice was edgy. Haggard eyes. Hangover from the night before.

‘No plans,’ she said. ‘Play Triv, I suppose.’

‘Zaire.’

‘You what?’

‘Shinkolobwe. It’s in Zaire. Katanga.’

His head disappeared. Why was he telling her that? She was fed up with his stupid stories. His hints and half-truths. The back door creaked open, slammed shut. The Renault pulled out of the courtyard.

She joined Tom in the front room, stared disconsolately out of the window at the mizzle drifting across the bay, blurring the line between sea and sky, joining them in one vast, dreary backdrop.

‘I’ve had enough of Triv,’ Sam said. ‘I want to go out. Let’s go to Stromness. Nils offered me another trip on his boat before we leave.’

Tom stuck his hands in his pockets.

‘The wind has dropped. It would be fine out on the sea today.’

Tom shrugged indifferently.

The sea was still heaving though, thrashed into white-foamed peaks by the fierceness of the storm. The
Marie-Jean
was bobbing up and down at the quayside, tugging at the ropes holding her to the wall. The slipways were strewn with rubbish regurgitated by the agitated ocean: putrefying kelp, plastic bottles, dead starfish with upwards curling arms. Nils was skulking in his boatshed. He smiled wanly when they entered. Sam wondered whether he was embarrassed by the memory of his alcohol-fuelled appearance at Nethergate.

‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘I received a letter from Marie-Jean yesterday. She wants a divorce.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sometimes you just have to let the bleakness wash over you,’ said Nils. ‘There’s nothing else you can do.’

‘Would it cheer you up to take another quick boat trip round the harbour?’ she asked. ‘We could go to Scapa Flow perhaps?’

She knew it didn’t sound quite right. Insufficiently sympathetic to his bad news. Nils shook his head wearily. ‘I’m too tired to take the boat out today.’

She tried to disguise her disappointment.

‘I couldn’t sleep last night,’ he said. ‘It was a bad night for me. Very bad. Probably not a good night for anybody. I doubt anybody had much sleep last night with that storm. The wild hunt on the loose.’

His words caught her interest. ‘The wild hunt?’

‘Odin’s Hunt. The Asgardreia. Didn’t you hear the wind? The racket. When a sudden storm arrives out of nowhere like that, people here say it is Odin hunting with his wild pack; hounds, horses, dead souls, berserkers. And when it passes, you had better hide. Nobody can see the hunt and survive. Not when Odin is out for the kill.’

Tom turned to face the plastic strips of the boatshed door, muttering under his breath about new-age nutcases.

‘I wasn’t expecting it last night.’ Nils continued. ‘It’s more common to hear it pass in midwinter. Strange for the Odin and his ghostly huntsmen to appear in the middle of summer. A bad omen.’

‘Well, it certainly felt like some terrible phantom force was chasing us when the wind was trying to pull the roof off last night,’ Sam said. ‘What does Odin hunt anyway?’

‘His enemies. Traitors. Once the hunt is on the run, it doesn’t stop until the horde has found its quarry. They say the hoot of the owl is the first sign the hunt is stirring – Odin’s horn. And then Odin’s ravens, Hugin and Munin, mark the path, lead the way to the victim.’

His words sparked an unexpected jolt of recognition. In a corner of her mind she heard the crackle of a walkie-talkie. Tilbury. She was seven, up in Jim’s crow’s nest office, high above the mudflats. Jim was speaking into his radio as he retreated to a corner. She was eavesdropping, trying to make sense of his conversation. Attempting to decipher Jim’s cryptic messages. He had used odd names. Foreign names. Hugin, he had said, and he had laughed. Munin here, he had added. And he had laughed some more. She had sort of recognized the words; she must have read them in her book of Norse myths. But it hadn’t made any sense at the time. Nothing had made much sense at the time. Jim and his games. Why was her father using those names when he was speaking to Harry? Why was he talking about fairy tales and legends?

‘So Hugin and Munin were Odin’s pet ravens?’ she asked Nils.

‘Not really pets,’ he said. ‘More like spies.’

She willed her features to remain motionless. Blank.

‘Odin’s ravens fly from his shoulders every day,’ Nils said. ‘They report back on the dead bodies they have found, the souls of the slain. So the story goes.’

She smiled, but inside her gut flipped. It couldn’t have been anything more than one of Jim’s stupid jokes, using the names of Odin’s raven spies when he talked to Harry. Just banter. Jim and his pantomimes. And yet the coincidences, the patterns, jarred and made her anxious. Spooked her. The storm, the events of the night, were like a repeat story, a refraction of the original. Odin’s wild hunt for his enemies. Traitors. Except in this tale, the raven Munin wasn’t at the head of the hunt. Last night he had appeared to be the quarry.

‘There is a verse in the old Norse poems,’ Nils continued. ‘Odin says Munin is the one he worries about most. “Hugin and Munin fly every day over the wide world; I fear for Hugin that he will not come back, yet I tremble more for Munin.”’

‘Why does Odin worry that his ravens won’t come back?’ she asked.

‘I suppose he is afraid they might have been killed. Or lost. I’m not sure. Why else might he worry about his ravens?’

She hunched her shoulders, realized Nils and Tom were both looking at her quizzically now; she was saying odd things, she needed to change the subject. She started prattling. ‘Oh by the way, I think someone has written an anthropological thesis about you,’ she said to Nils. ‘It was all about the expert skipper and the beliefs of the fishing crews in Stromness. It looked really interesting. It must have been written by the researcher you were telling me about; the useless one you took out on your trawler.’

Nils’ bemusement morphed into suspicion, the barometer needle dropped sharply. She shouldn’t have been so jumpy. She had made a tactical error.

‘Somebody has written about me, have they? Who is that, then? Was it Mark Greenaway?’

She went red. ‘I can’t remember the name now.’

‘Mark Greenaway. So he has written his report?’ His accent was more obvious now he was agitated. ‘How did you come to read it?’

She inspected her hands, searching for a convincing answer. Tom smirked, enjoying her embarassment.

‘A friend of my dad’s mentioned it and I was curious. I thought it sounded interesting, so they showed me the summary.’

‘Is he still here? In Orkney? Orphir. He was renting a house in Orphir, near Waulkmill Bay. The old farmhouse. Is he still there?’

‘I’m not sure,’ she said. God, she was useless.

Nils was fuming now. ‘He said he would let me read what he was writing. He said he wouldn’t use any names. Did he use my name? I hope he didn’t include any details. No numbers.’

‘No. No, I don’t think so.’ He was concerned about the Inland Revenue again, she guessed, the possibility of the tax inspectors finding a written record of his fishing activities.

She tried to reassure. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it, though.’

It didn’t work.

‘Why shouldn’t I worry about it? Everybody has a right to privacy. Everybody likes to keep their secrets. Yes? You have your secrets too, Sam. I think.’

Her cheeks were burning. She could sense Tom dissecting her reactions. Nils seemed to calm down, smiled apologetically. Still she edged towards the door, desperate to remove herself now. She had totally messed up the farewell conversation. She had hoped she could keep the friendship going.

‘Anyway, we’re leaving on Friday. So we came to say goodbye. Perhaps I will come back again one day,’ she added.

‘Well, come and visit me if you do.’ He didn’t sound as if he really meant it; his voice was scratchy. He accompanied them into the daylight, stared broodingly across the harbour. She smiled at him one last time and saw the clouds reflected in his eyes.

She put her book down, flicked her wrist. Six-thirty. She cast a cursory glance at the sofa, the spot where she had cowered helplessly in the night, sheltering from the maelstrom that seemed to be following her father. The disturbance that accompanied him everywhere. She looked up at the print on the wall, the ghostly horde. Odin’s hunt. And wondered whether she would ever know the truth about her father or whether the doubts, the nagging questions, would always be there. She stuck her hand in the back pocket of her jeans, played with a corner of the Watcher’s biro-scrawled note. He had some information for her.

‘I’m going for a walk,’ she announced to Tom.

He looked up from his pages. ‘Good idea. I’ll come with you.’

‘No. I need a bit of head-space.’

His face registered offence, then suspicion.

‘I’m sorry. I just need to be on my own for a bit.’

He didn’t respond.

‘Tell you what. I’ll go out now for a walk and I’ll meet you at the pub in Tirlsay at seven-thirty.’

‘Okay. Meet you there.’

‘Synchronize watches.’

‘Six thirty-five.’

‘Check.’

She grabbed her overcoat from the armchair, headed out the door.

She dived into the pub, scanned the room, peering into corners through the fug of smoke. The Watcher wasn’t there. She checked her watch again. Three minutes past seven. She sighed with what – relief? Disappointment? She glanced towards the bar, wondering whether she should buy herself a drink. The portly barman was checking her from underneath bushy eyebrows as he tipped a glass and pulled a pint.

He placed the foam-topped beer on the bar and beckoned her with a pudgy finger. ‘Are you the young lady staying up at Nethergate?’