Red Bones Page 6

  Hattie, who had been given to obsession since she was a child, found herself haunted by the place. In her imagination she lived there, in fifteenth-century Shetland, when the islands were still culturally closer to Norway than to Scotland and Whalsay’s loyalties were to the other Hanseatic ports, to Lubeck and Hamburg rather than Edinburgh or London. She saw the sailing ships arriving into Symbister and her husband, the merchant, counting out gold coins to pay his men for the goods he was importing from Europe, and the money he was paying the islanders for their salt fish and dried mutton. In her daydreams it was spring, but the sun was shining and the island was green.

  Did the skull Evelyn had found belong to the merchant or to his wife? They were starting to find more bones in the second trench and perhaps they already had enough evidence to know. There were times in the early morning, as the damp penetrated her body, when she thought the dreams were driving her mad. And it’s not just me, she thought. The dig’s getting to Mima too. Their last conversation had been pretty weird.

  At seven o’clock she began to get dressed, still sitting in her sleeping bag, pulling on the layers of clothes she would need to stay comfortable during the day. On top of the T-shirts she wore the hand-knitted sweater Evelyn had made for her birthday.

  The Bod was one of a string of bothies spread across the islands, places for backpackers to stay. This was an old croft house and it just contained four beds, a table and a camping stove. There was a shelf with some pans, cutlery and crockery, an open peat fire. The Bod had one cold tap and they had baths and washed their clothes at Mima’s house, or more often at Evelyn’s. Evelyn was almost as passionate about the project as Hattie, and often invited them to Utra for dinner. She mothered them. Hattie thought she had her eye on Sophie as a potential daughter-in-law. Sophie was easygoing and pleasant, she ate everything Evelyn put in front of her and she laughed at Sandy’s jokes. Hattie knew Sophie would never marry Sandy – she had wealthy parents and ambitions of her own, which didn’t include being a policeman’s wife in Lerwick – but she might have sex with him for her own amusement. That was the way Sophie was.

  Sophie didn’t wake until Hattie had lit the camping stove and made coffee. Then she stretched extravagantly, blinking in the light of the Tilley lamp. Hattie watched her through the open bedroom door. Sophie always slept naked and now sat quite comfortably, apparently not feeling the cold at all, with her breasts exposed, her long tawny hair falling around her shoulders. Hattie envied her. I was never that comfortable with my body, she thought, not even as a child. Why would any man want to sleep with me? Sophie, her legs still encased by the sleeping bag, looked like a mermaid or the figurehead of one of the sailing ships that in Hattie’s imagination had brought goods to trade with her merchant husband.

  Hattie would have liked to ask who was in the Pier House the night before. Who did you stay up drinking with? But as usual the words stayed inside her head.

  ‘Is there anything for breakfast?’ Sophie asked. ‘I’m starving.’

  Sophie was always starving. She ate like a horse without putting on weight. A natural athlete, she loped across the island at a pace that left Hattie breathless and panting, and she could work all day without seeming to get tired. Recently she’d been recruited by Anna to take her place in the Whalsay women’s rowing team. Hattie had watched her practising with the group, bending and pulling on the oars, collapsing in laughter at the end of the session. Why can’t I be like that? Hattie thought now. I’m scared of the world and I always have been. I can’t blame Paul Berglund for that. The image of her supervisor slid into her brain, filled it with his size and his strength. She felt a return of the old panic and forced herself to breathe slowly, to retreat to her dreams of the merchant house and her island lover.

  ‘I’m starving,’ Sophie repeated.

  ‘There’s bread,’ Hattie said. ‘Some of Evelyn’s marmalade.’

  ‘That’ll keep us going until elevenses at Mima’s.’ Sophie stepped out of her sleeping bag. Hattie was embarrassed by the sight of the girl’s naked body, but fascinated too. She couldn’t help looking at it, at the flat belly, the golden pubic hair, the muscular shoulders. She turned away quickly and began to slice bread.

  Usually Sophie was full of chat about what had happened in the bar the night before, the island gossip, news of any overseas trawlers that had put into Symbister during the day, men she fancied, but this morning she seemed subdued and got dressed in silence. She opened the main door of the Bod and looked outside.

  ‘God,’ she said. ‘Do you think this fog will ever clear? It’s getting me down. Don’t you long for sun and a clear blue sky? It’s spring. In the south there’ll be green leaves and primroses.’

  ‘At least it’s not pouring with rain. I left my spare coat at Mima’s last night and the other one is still wet.’ But Hattie found the mist disturbing too. It slid across the island, changing her perspective and challenging her ideas about the landscape and its history.

  She spread marmalade thinly on to a slice of bread, folded it in half and forced herself to eat it. There’d been a stage in her life when food had become a source of conflict between her mother and herself. Her mother had decided Hattie was anorexic, panicked and dragged her off to a specialist clinic. Being Junior Minister for Health made Gwen James sensitive about things like that, sensitive at least about what the press might write if they got the idea that Hattie was unnaturally thin and her mother doing nothing to address the problem. Hattie hadn’t been able to understand the fuss; not eating had been a symptom of her problem, not the root of her illness. Occasionally she got engrossed in her work and forgot to eat. So what? Now she remembered meals as a duty – like taking regular medicine – to keep her mother off her back. She was never hungry and seldom took any pleasure from food, even after a day’s work on the dig when Sophie was ravenous. It astounded her that people could waste time planning what they would cook, that a meal out was considered a treat.

  Sophie had already finished breakfast and was brushing her hair, her one vanity. It hung halfway down her back, the colour of a barley stalk. Now she tied it back into a long loose ponytail at the nape of her neck. ‘We ’d better go,’ she said. ‘I suppose we can’t really be late with the boss on the island.’

  The boss. Their supervisor, Paul Berglund. Another obsession from an earlier period in Hattie’s life. Now she realized the obsession had turned into an unhealthy paranoia. Sophie knew nothing of this; she hadn’t picked up on the antagonism between them. To Sophie, Paul was just ‘the boss’, someone who turned up occasionally to lay down the law about their methods, treated them to a decent meal out in a restaurant in Lerwick if he was in a good mood, signed off their expenses. She couldn’t know that Hattie was counting the days until he left.

  Hattie didn’t think Paul would have allowed her to set up the project if he’d been supervising from the start. But he’d only joined the department the year before. She remembered the meeting at which he’d been introduced to her and Sophie. ‘You’ll have heard of Paul Berglund,’ the head of department said. ‘You couldn’t wish for a better supervisor.’ Paul had shaken Hattie’s hand, said how pleased he was to be working with her and given no sign that they’d met before. His hand had been cold and dry; hers was sweaty. She’d muttered something about feeling unwell, fled the office and thrown up in the nearest ladies’ toilet. Perhaps he expected her to dump the project, find another subject for her PhD.

  But she hadn’t left – the dig on Whalsay had been her idea from the start – and she had made sure that he had no excuse for excluding her. Now the merchant’s house mattered more to her than escaping from him. Her record-keeping was impressive and though she wasn’t as physically strong as Sophie, her fieldwork was deft and thorough. Whenever she was in Paul’s presence she felt tense. She watched him, always aware of the space he took up, of his position in the room.

  ‘Paul Berglund was in the bar after you left,’ Sophie said. They’d left the Bod and were on their way t
o Lindby. They couldn’t see much beyond the field on each side of the track. Sheep were darker shades in the mist.

  ‘Oh.’ Hattie tried to sound unbothered. She didn’t want to hear about him.

  ‘Yeah, he was drinking whisky. I’ve never seen him pissed before. Not that pissed.’

  I have, Hattie thought, and shivered inside her fleece. ‘Anything else happen after I’d gone?’ She wanted to move the discussion away from Berglund.

  ‘Not really. I was chatting to Sandy, but he left before I did. He had to get home to his mammy. I mean, what is he like? He still acts like a fourteen-year-old.’ She shifted the straps of the rucksack on her shoulders. ‘I do see him as a bit of a challenge, though. I’m sure he gets up to all sorts of mischief in Lerwick. It would be fun to see if I can get him to misbehave here, on his mother’s doorstep.’

  Hattie didn’t know what to say about that. She supposed Sophie could look after herself, but in her opinion all games around sex were dangerous. She would be quite pleased though if Sophie and Sandy hooked up with each other for a while.

  They’d reached the dip in the land that led to Setter, the most sheltered spot on the island. The merchant had chosen the land for his grand house well. Hattie wondered if it had the same name then, something similar perhaps which had become corrupted over the years. They always called in on Mima before they started work, both as a courtesy and because she’d put on the kettle and bring them out tea if she knew they were there. The house seemed unusually quiet. Mima liked Radio Two, the chat of Wogan and singing along to the ballads she recognized. Sophie opened the door and called in but there was no answer.

  ‘She’s not there.’ Paul Berglund appeared from the back of the house, squat, short-necked, looking more like a soldier than a professor of archaeology. Hattie couldn’t work out what he could be doing there. He didn’t usually arrive on site so early. And if he’d been drinking the night before, shouldn’t he still be in the hotel nursing a hangover? ‘Come into the house,’ he said as if he owned the place. ‘Sit in the kitchen in the warm.’

  Something awful’s happened, Hattie thought. What’s he done now?

  She held back so Sophie walked into the house first. Usually they would have taken off their boots, but Paul was beckoning them in and they were used to following his instructions. He’d been cutting up an apple with the knife he always carried on site. It lay on the table and Hattie thought again what a cheek it was that he should make himself so at home. In the kitchen the cat wound itself round her legs and almost tripped her up. She picked it up and it hissed.

  ‘Mima’s dead,’ Paul said. His voice was quiet but matter-of-fact. ‘The police were here earlier. They called me at the Pier House Hotel first thing this morning and asked me to meet them. There was a dreadful accident late last night. Some guy out after rabbits hit her by mistake.’ He paused. They were all still standing. ‘I think it would be better for you not to work today, out of respect for the island. Take the day off. I’ll give you a lift into Lerwick if you like. I’m going anyway, to catch the ferry south this evening. I need to get home.’

  ‘Cool,’ Sophie said, then must have realized how that sounded. ‘I mean about the lift into town and the day off. Not Mima. We’ll really miss her. I mean, what a shit thing to happen.’

  Hattie could tell the only thing Sophie would miss was the tea in the morning and the home baking, sitting in front of the Setter fire when it was raining outside. She didn’t care about a dead old lady.

  ‘What about you, Hattie?’ Paul said. ‘Do you want to come too?’

  ‘No, I’ll stay here.’ She must have spoken more sharply than she’d intended because they both stared at her. She’d been wondering about his sudden decision to go south. They’d been expecting him to stay for another week. The undergraduates were still on holiday for Easter. ‘I’ll go to see Evelyn and tell her how sorry we are, ask if there’s anything we can do.’

  And before either of them could stop her she stooped to put the cat on the floor and was out of the house and on her way to Utra. Halfway there she realized her eyes were streaming with tears.

  Chapter Ten

  Perez wasn’t sure what to make of the hysterical girl who turned up at the door of Evelyn Wilson’s house. At first he mistook her for one of the island children; she might have been fifteen or sixteen, certainly not old enough to be a postgraduate student. Even after Evelyn had introduced her and she had calmed down sufficiently to talk more rationally, he still thought of her as a girl. Her voice was breathy, high-pitched. The voice of a well brought-up child.

  She was small and thin. Big dark eyes and very black hair, cut short so the eyes looked even bigger. They were ringed by grey shadows, which made her look exhausted. He wished she wasn’t so sad, caught himself wondering how he could make her feel better, then stopped himself. ‘It’s not your responsibility. It’s a sort of arrogance, thinking you can change the world.’ Fran’s words, spoken with exasperation and affection, repeated often enough that they came into his head in situations like this.

  Hattie leaned against the doorpost to take off her work boots and looked as if she didn’t have the strength to stand upright. Without the boots she seemed even more frail. Perez had the fancy that without them on her feet to anchor her to the floor she might float into the air.

  Evelyn helped the girl to a chair, automatically moved the kettle on to the hotplate. Hattie reached across the table towards Sandy, not quite touching his hand. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I know you were close to your grandmother. She talked about you all the time.’ In her confusion she seemed not to notice Perez.

  ‘You shouldn’t have had to hear like that,’ Evelyn said. ‘One of us should have come to the Bod to tell you. What a shock it must have been! But we’ve all been so busy here and it never crossed my mind. How did you find out?’

  ‘From Paul. He was waiting for us when we got to Setter. He said it was an accident, but I don’t understand.’

  ‘Sandy’s cousin Ronald was out shooting rabbits. He won’t admit it but he must have fired across the Setter land. He couldn’t have thought Mima would be out on a night like that. What other explanation is there?’ Evelyn stood quite still for a moment, then turned to pour water into a brown earthenware teapot which she covered with a striped cosy and put at the back of the Rayburn. She sat at the table next to Hattie. ‘I’m very sorry, my dear, but she was wearing your waterproof. You won’t be able to use it again. We’ll replace it for you.’

  ‘No.’ It seemed to Perez that she hadn’t heard more than the first couple of sentences. She was frozen with shock and couldn’t take in the information. Not all at once. ‘There’s no need for that. Of course not.’ She turned to Evelyn. ‘Are you sure that’s the way it happened? How could Ronald not see the jacket? It’s bright yellow.’

  ‘It was very dark,’ Evelyn said. ‘The mist came down again last night.’

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ she said. She began to cry again.

  Perez found a clean handkerchief in his pocket and handed it over to her. She seemed to see him for the first time and stared, startled. ‘My name’s Jimmy Perez,’ he said, though Evelyn had introduced him when she’d arrived. ‘I work for the police. We have to ask questions, to be satisfied about the accident.’

  Hattie blinked quickly like a camera shutter clicking. Perez had the impression of thoughts and images fizzing in her head. ‘If I hadn’t given Mima the coat,’ she said, ‘perhaps she wouldn’t have gone out.’

  ‘That’s plain stupid,’ Evelyn said. ‘Don’t you dare think like that. We all wonder if there was anything we could have done to prevent it. It’s natural after a tragedy like this but does no good at all.’ She stood up. Perez watched her take an old biscuit tin from a cupboard. When she lifted the lid he smelled cheese scones, another memory of home. She split and buttered them and set them on a plate, poured the tea into mugs.

  ‘Why did you give Mima your coat?’ Perez asked.

  She ha
d just picked up her tea and stared at him over the mug. ‘It was yesterday afternoon,’ she said. ‘It was pouring with rain. We came in drenched to dry out before going back to work. Mima admired my jacket when she took it out to dry. She’d been so kind that I said she could have it. I had a spare in my rucksack.’

  ‘Aye,’ Evelyn said. ‘That’s how it was. I was there. She was so pleased with it. “How fine I’ll look going out in that! The hens won’t know me.” You know how she carried on, Sandy?’

  Sandy nodded. They sat for a moment in silence, then Evelyn became all efficient and businesslike:

  ‘You mustn’t think this will affect the project. Not at all. Everything will carry on just as before. Setter will come to Joseph when everything’s sorted out with the lawyers. We haven’t even thought what we’ll do with the croft just yet, but you can continue with the dig as soon as you like.’

  Perez looked at Sandy. Was Evelyn speaking for the whole Wilson family? But Sandy said nothing.

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t work on the dig today,’ Perez said quietly. ‘Today the Fiscal might need to visit. It’s her decision whether any action needs to be taken and how we should proceed.’

  ‘Will Ronald be charged?’ Hattie asked.

  ‘That’s not a decision for me.’

  ‘The weather’s so bad,’ Sandy said, his first contribution to the discussion, ‘that you wouldn’t want to be working this morning anyway.’