None but the Dead (9 page)

Between the moon and the lighthouse, she found her eyes growing accustomed to the dark, so she switched off her torch. As she crested the final dune, moonlight found a long strip of white sand.
At the water’s edge the sea was an inky black.

Rhona sat down, knees drawn up, and surveyed the scene. Her home island of Skye had some of the best views ever, but she decided what made Orkney special was the feeling of being on the edge of
the world.

The sound of a series of messages pinging in as her mobile found a signal put an end to that train of thought. Rhona checked through them, opening a brief text from Sean saying all was well in
Paris and one from Erling saying he’d be back tomorrow.

As Rhona slipped the mobile into her pocket, it rang, the drill sharp in the silence. She glanced at the screen to find McNab’s name.

‘How goes it, Dr MacLeod?’

‘Okay. We’ll reach the body by tomorrow if the weather holds.’

‘And if it doesn’t?’

‘We stick around until the job’s finished. How was the PM?’

She listened as McNab gave her the details, Dr Sissons’s theory of dehydration ringing true; the story of an intruder who didn’t steal anything, less so.

‘I checked through Jock’s effects again before they went to the lab,’ McNab said. ‘There was something tucked in the back of the wallet. An old newspaper cutting about a
World War Two radar station, Whale Head at Lopness—’ He stopped as Rhona interrupted him.

‘That’s here,’ she said in surprise, ‘on Sanday.’

‘I know. I googled it. His neighbour said Jock talked about gathering seaweed as a boy and that he came from up north somewhere. I wondered if he came from Orkney.’

Rhona asked if he wanted her to run the name past DI Flett. ‘Or maybe the Ranger here, who seems to know everything and everyone about the place. If Jock had a connection with the radar
station that might be a starting point.’

McNab muttered his thanks.

‘You okay?’ Rhona said, sensing something wasn’t quite right.

‘I’m fine, Dr MacLeod, and no, I’m not back on the booze.’

Rhona recalled McNab’s bright blue eyes, the trimmed auburn stubble and his general demeanour at their meeting the day before, and decided he was likely telling the truth. He wasn’t
back on the booze, yet something was bothering him. She knew McNab well enough to know that. She briefly contemplated asking after Freya, but something warned her not to.

They said their goodbyes and Rhona rang off, keen to be back in the warmth of the cottage. Walking back she now noted a scattering of lights signifying the other inhabitants of the far
north-eastern corner of this far northern isle. Looking seawards, there had been nothing but an empty horizon. Looking landwards, Rhona didn’t feel quite so alone.

Rhona slept well, waking only on the alarm call. She’d banked up the stove before bed, as instructed by Derek, and woke to a warm house. Chrissy appeared as Rhona filled
the kettle and informed her that they would have a cooked breakfast before work. Rhona didn’t argue.

‘I’ll make sandwiches for later. Or we could come back here for lunch?’ Chrissy suggested.

‘We’ll work through today. Erling says the weather will worsen later,’ Rhona said. ‘I want the bones bagged by then.’

‘So we’re staying another night?’

‘That depends on the weather, and the availability of the police chopper.’

As Chrissy served up, she gave Rhona a rundown of her conversation with Officer Tulloch.

‘He says the whole island knows about the bones and the flowers in the attic.’

‘What flowers in the attic?’

‘Mike found magic flowers in the attic of the schoolhouse. They’re flowers that have been made from the hem of a dead child’s smock. The magic flower represents the soul of the
child.’ Chrissy gave Rhona a knowing look. ‘I told you there was a Wicker Man feel about all of this.’

Rhona was trying to make sense of how these flowers Chrissy was talking about had anything to do with the body they were excavating.

Seeing her puzzled expression, Chrissy carried on. ‘Mike took one of the flowers to the heritage centre and the guy there, who’s DI Flett’s relative, by the way, warned him to
put it back where he found it. He didn’t and that’s when the digger unearthed the body.’ Chrissy examined Rhona’s dubious expression before adding, ‘I’m just
reporting what’s being said. I’m not agreeing with it.’

‘What did PC Tulloch make of the story?’

‘Ivan says some folk aren’t happy about the excavation. They say the dead should be left in peace.’

‘But if it was a murder victim?’

Chrissy shrugged. ‘They think it’s just an old grave. There’s loads of them on the island. After one storm, they discovered a Viking burial in a sand dune, complete with the
skeletons of three people.’

Rhona rose. ‘I think they’re probably right, but there’s a procedure that has to be followed, and that procedure got you your jolly up here and an opportunity to meet PC
Tulloch.’

The tarp looked undisturbed although a small puddle of water had accumulated, indicating there had been rain overnight. There was no sign of PC Tulloch, and Mike Jones came out
to tell them that the officer had gone home to catch up on some sleep.

‘I just listened to the forecast. High winds and squalls of heavy rain are coming our way, predicted to reach Orkney by mid to late afternoon.’

Rhona was already in the process of kitting up. The light wasn’t ideal but they would have to make a start if they were working against the clock. Mike beat a hasty retreat as she and
Chrissy prepared to release and pull back the tarp. It seemed what lay beneath still gave him the jitters.

Rhona was pleased to find there had been no water seepage into the grave and it looked just as it had done when she’d left the night before. Today’s procedures would follow the same
as yesterday’s. Following the grid, cutting small sections or spits and bagging the soil until the skeleton was fully exposed. Rhona felt a flicker of excitement at the prospect.

The further down they’d dug, the sandier the soil had become. It had taken more than two hours of careful bagging and recording to expose the remains fully. The skeleton
lay on one side, the upper torso on a higher level than the feet, the remains of one shoe dislodged, the other with the sole still encasing the bones of the foot. The clothing had disintegrated,
but where copper had inhibited bacterial degradation such as around buttons and eyelets, fragments were visible. A small metal brooch lay among the ribs.

As Chrissy captured this on camera, Rhona made the call to Kirkwall.

Erling answered immediately.

‘It’s female,’ she told him. ‘And definitely not ancient.’

There was a moment of studied silence before Erling answered.

‘Can you give me any indication of how long she’s been there?’

‘The remains are fully skeletonized, but there are some personal effects which might help decide the timeline. And by the scraps of material that have survived, I’d say the clothes
and shoes were of natural fabrics.’

‘And that means?’

‘We may be looking at fifty years or more.’

‘So a cold case?’

‘A suspicious cold case,’ Rhona said, knowing Erling would be aware that meant the involvement of an MI team.

‘So what happens now?’

‘I’ll process what I can before the bad weather hits and do what’s necessary to preserve the rest until we can get back to it.’

Rhona found Mike standing at the open door as she rang off, the look on his face suggesting he’d been party to her side of the conversation at least.

‘It’s serious?’ he said.

‘It’s suspicious enough to warrant bringing in an MIT,’ Rhona said.

‘What’s that?’ he said worriedly.

‘A major investigation team.’

Mike stepped back a little. ‘More police?’

‘More specialized officers.’

‘But I thought it was an old grave?’

‘It is,’ she assured him. ‘But not so old that we’re not interested.’

The personal items she extracted first. The silver brooch was a small pair of wings, with a crown above and the initials RAF below. There was no engraving on the back to
indicate either giver or receiver.

As she’d told Erling, most of the clothing had gone. Plastic was long living, but natural materials like cotton and wool decayed just as flesh did, apart from areas protected by copper.
From the scraps that remained, she thought a woollen buttoned cardigan had been worn over a cotton dress.

The soles of the shoes, though not complete, had survived reasonably well. At close quarters, Rhona could see a film of what looked like crushed shells coating the underside. Different particle
sizes of sand bound themselves together under pressure, like concrete. That was why getting rid of sand from your shoes was so difficult. This covering wasn’t sand, but shell fragments, the
colours and patterns of which were still visible, indicating that the female in this grave had walked over a shell beach before her death.

Under an increasingly threatening sky, Rhona began to recover the bones. There was no hard and fast rule as to how long it took for bone to decay, but it would be pretty slow
in sand, so she was hopeful they might retrieve most of the skeleton. It was important not to rush the proceedings, despite the sense of urgency the weather was placing on them.

Excavating the areas around the hands and feet first, she bagged the bones of each one before tackling the left limbs, then the right. Vertebrae she bagged together, confident by now that the
bones weren’t fragile. As each bone was retrieved, Chrissy coloured it in on a bone chart.

Eventually Chrissy said, ‘Okay, that’s it, except for the missing skull,’ which, had it still been there, would have been placed in its own box, any mandibles paper-wrapped and
stored separately. But they didn’t have the skull and its absence seemed even more pertinent now.

With a skull we had more chance of putting a face to the victim.

Rhona glanced upwards at the scurrying clouds. They’d been lucky until now, both the rain and the wind had held off, but for how much longer?

‘Have we time to take out the lower layer?’

Even as Chrissy asked this question, Rhona felt the first drop of rain on her face. As though on cue, the wind flicked at the cover on the camera. Rhona was keen to complete the excavation, but
that didn’t look likely now. In fact, they had probably been lucky to get this far.

A stronger gust of wind shook the tripod, deciding her. They couldn’t carry on with the excavation if they weren’t able to record it. They would have to admit defeat, for the
moment.

Climbing out of the grave, Rhona shouted to Chrissy to pull over the tarp as the first of the squalls hit. In anticipation of the deteriorating weather, everything they’d excavated had
already been taken to safety in the shed. It just remained for them to secure the tarp and get the camera under cover.

Ten minutes later, very wet and not a little blown about, they took refuge in Mike’s kitchen.

‘There’s a severe weather warning out,’ he told them. ‘All flights and ferries are cancelled.’

‘Did they say how long it would last?’ Rhona said, accepting the welcome mug of hot coffee Mike offered her.

‘No.’

‘What about the party?’ Chrissy said.

‘Party?’ Mike looked taken aback.

‘Live music at the hotel,’ Chrissy said. ‘Ivan said the weather won’t make any difference.’

‘I don’t normally go to things at the hotel—’ he began, before being interrupted.

‘How long have you been living here?’ Chrissy demanded.

‘Eight months.’

‘No wonder you don’t know anyone.’

‘Chrissy,’ Rhona remonstrated, shooting Mike an apologetic glance.

Mike suddenly smiled, transforming his face. ‘You’re right. I haven’t made a big enough effort.’

‘Everyone will want to talk to you,’ Chrissy told him. ‘With a body buried in your back garden and magic flowers in the attic.’

‘How d’you know about the flowers?’ Mike came back, the smile disappearing as swiftly as it had appeared.

‘Everyone knows, according to Ivan.’

It seemed Chrissy had struck a nerve. Mike rose in what appeared to be a gesture of dismissal. ‘If you don’t mind, I have to get back to work.’

Rhona swiftly thanked him for the coffee and indicated they would head back to the cottage.

‘I take it your shed will withstand the storm?’ she said. ‘Otherwise I should move everything to the cottage, although I’m not sure where we would store it.’

‘No need. The shed’s as robust as this place. I’ll lock the door too,’ Mike assured her.

Rhona’s plan had been to get the evidence off the island and down to the lab as swiftly as possible. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not yet anyway.

The chopper dropped suddenly as though yanked earthwards by an invisible chain. McNab’s stomach fell with it, hitting the floor between his feet. Then just as suddenly it
rose again, filling his stomach with what felt like the frantic beating of a giant seagull’s wings.

‘Fucking hell!’

‘You okay back there, Detective Sergeant?’ Doug Cameron, the pilot, grinned round at him. ‘A little livelier than a squad car, is it not?’

‘You did that on purpose, you bastard.’

‘Didn’t want you falling asleep just as we’re coming in to land.’

McNab forced himself to look out of the window. Already semi-dark, the beams of the chopper picked out where they were headed.

‘That’s the airport?’ he said in disbelief. ‘That field?’

‘You should have landed here when it really was a field. Once we’re down, I need you out and heading for that shed. We want to make it out of here before the storm hits.’

McNab checked his seat belt, as though that would make any difference to staying alive, and gripped the edge of the seat, no longer caring what Cameron and his co-pilot thought of him.

The mad impulse that had brought him here now seemed like something he would have done after downing a bottle of whisky. It appeared caffeine might be proving just as dangerous
on the mad impulse front.

He’d been with the boss when the call from Orkney had come in with news of the body. McNab had listened to the one-sided conversation, heard Rhona’s name mentioned and, picking up
the gist of what had happened, interrupted and offered to go there on the spot as part of the major investigation team. When the call had ended, he’d talked up his chances by throwing in the
story of Jock Drever and his Sanday connection.