Shadows of Death (13 page)

‘We didn’t learn a lot about Carter’s murder, did we?’

‘Except the bit about the boat. That’s very interesting. It’s almost certain that Baikie knows about her, but of course he’s not going to be able to do anything about a search, at least for the present. I noticed you didn’t mention that we’re the principal investigators for the nonce.’

‘No. They’ll probably figure it out soon enough, but meanwhile it’s useful to be a little less visible. Unfortunately we don’t have the resources to go scouring the islands for the
Vanderbilt
.’

‘No, and even if we did, there are such a lot of islands, and some of them have sea caves where a boat could be hidden with ease. And of course the easiest way to hide a boat—’

‘—is to scuttle it,’ I finished, nodding. ‘But I can’t work out why someone would hide this one. Seems like it would be less conspicuous just to leave her wherever Carter usually berthed her.’

‘But if Carter’s murderer went to Papa Sanday in the
Vanderbilt
, with Carter, and then came back after he’d done the deed, he might be afraid he’d left damning evidence behind. In fact, he probably would have. Hair, fibres from his clothing, even fingerprints if he was really careless. My guess is that they won’t find the boat, because by now she’s at the bottom of the sea.’

‘But Alan! It’s not that easy to scuttle a boat, not out in deep water, unless you have some way to get away safely. And I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to try to swim in these waters. They’re deep and they’re bitterly cold, and I’ll bet there are currents.’

‘The
Vanderbilt
probably had a dinghy. Anyone who knew how to pilot a boat that size would know how to launch a dinghy.’

‘Maybe, but I’m still not convinced. I think as soon as they have time to search, they’ll find the
Vanderbilt
someplace, and when they do, they’ll be able to nab the murderer.’

‘If this fine theory I’ve spun will hold water.’ Alan began to clear the table. ‘I hope you haven’t planned anything for dinner. I couldn’t eat a thing.’

‘There’s leftover curry, if you change your mind. We may not have learned a lot about the murder, though I do think the boat business is important, but we learned a lot about Larsen, don’t you think?’

‘For a stolid Calvinist, he certainly has a turn of fancy. Was that bit about your feelings of … er … empathy with the ancients genuine, or were you just trying to get his reactions?’

‘Oh, no, it’s entirely genuine. I hadn’t mentioned it to you because I knew you’d think I’d gone off my rocker, but it’s real. You know I’ve always believed in atmosphere, and been sensitive to it, and there’s an atmosphere in Orkney that’s almost tangible. It isn’t spooky, or at least I don’t find it so. For me, it’s just the conviction that those ancient people never really left, that they’re still here somehow. I can’t get closer to it than that, but I have to admit I can sympathize with poor old Norquist in his love for the antiquities. To hold in one’s hand a pitcher that a woman used for water four or five thousand years ago is to confirm a connection with her and her way of life. It will be really sad if he loses his job and they hire someone efficient who treats the artefacts like numbers in a catalogue. Here, you dry.’

We ended up finishing the curry for supper, after all, and turned on the gas logs in the sitting room fireplace while we sat and read and talked. It had turned very chilly indeed, and the warmth was welcome, although the fire itself was a poor substitute for a real wood fire. Tidier, yes. Safer, undoubtedly. But I wanted the scent, and the crackle, of wood, and the lovely glowing embers as the fire died. ‘I like real things,’ I commented, and Alan nodded with full understanding.

We went to bed early. I still had the remnants of my cold and thought rest was a good idea. Once I was settled, though, nice and warm and cosy, next to Alan’s comforting presence, I couldn’t seem to get to sleep.

What
was
the source of the feelings of awe I’d experienced ever since I saw the first standing stones? Was awe even the right word? Was there a word in the language to describe those sensations?

I think of myself as a sensible, down-to-earth woman, not prone to hearing things going bump in the night. My religion is middle-of-the-road Christianity. I’m not a mystic, but neither do I pooh-pooh the Biblical miracles. Not all events have a practical, scientific explanation. I have a tendency to believe in ghosts, at least in the medieval churches and homes of England. But I think spiritualism is a gigantic scam, and I’ve never gone in for astrology or palmistry or the Tarot. In fact, psychically speaking, I’m dead boring.

And yet here I was mooning on about atmospheres and other-worldly, or at least other-timely, presences. Was I going off my nut? Alan thought Norquist was at least part-way round the bend. Was it catching?

I turned over and scrunched myself deeper into the pillow to try to shut out the voice that was saying, quite firmly,
But they’re real, those feelings. There truly is something uncanny about this place.

I liked real things, I’d told Alan, and it was true. Real fires and real flowers and good, honest, real food, not something out of packages with twenty unpronounceable additives. The sky here was real. The sea was undeniably real, and sometimes dangerous. The sheep and cattle were real. Duncan Andersen was certainly all too real. You could smell him coming.

But, the standing stones were real, too. They had really stood there for millennia. The other monuments I hadn’t seen yet were real, like the Ring of Brodgar. Alan had told me about that and I’d seen pictures. A henge far bigger than Stonehenge, and far older, it had been built by those people who lived in Skara Brae, or High Sanday, or the other ancient dwellings dotted all over Orkney. For what purpose? Why had those people gone to great trouble to shape those huge, thin stones and stand them up so securely that many of them stood to this day? An astronomical calendar? A place for religious celebrations? A place, possibly, for sacrifices? Even human ones?

Probably not. Probably not. I thought I remembered reading that the idea of human sacrifices at Stonehenge had been pretty well discounted by the experts. Sacrifice possibly, but of birds or other animals, most likely.

But suppose the experts were wrong? Could it be that the spirits of men and women who had died in agony were crying out for pity, or for revenge? Was that what I was feeling?

The door to the bedroom creaked a little, and my heart was in my mouth before I realized that Watson had found it insecurely latched, and had decided our bed would be the best place to sleep. He gave a joyous spring and landed squarely on my stomach.

So much for thoughts of hobgoblins. Watson was unmistakably real, and very solid. I gave him an ineffectual shove, sighed, and moved into the small space left to me.

I slept.

In the morning I remembered enough of my late-night musings to ask Alan, ‘Could we go see the Ring of Brodgar today? And maybe Skara Brae? I’d like to take a breather from murder, maybe clear my head.’

‘Why not? It’s a fine day, even warm. And the two sites are quite close together. How are you feeling?’

‘I think I’m well. And what do you mean by warm?’ I’ve learned that weather terms have entirely different meanings to the Brits.

‘Warm. Ten, at least.’

‘
Ten!
’ I yelped. ‘Oh, Celsius. Right. That’s about fifty Fahrenheit. Fifty, my dearly beloved Englishman, is not warm for late June.’

‘It is for Orkney, my pampered Yank. Put on your snowsuit, and we’ll be off.’

It was, in fact, quite nice in the sun. I thought I might be almost too warm later, but I had no intention of saying so.

The hills were beautiful in the sunshine, and the grazing animals looked sleek and contented. ‘Quite a contrast to Papa Sanday,’ I commented.

‘Yes, this is rich land and supports the livestock generously. Orkney is famous for its beef. There are fields of barley, too.’

‘Which goes straight to the distillery, right?’

‘Right. Now, just coming up round this next bend, if I remember correctly … there!’

I despair at even trying to describe the Ring. Don’t think Stonehenge. Those stones are massive, and rough, either because they were terribly hard to shape or because the weather hasn’t been kind to them over the years. Many of them have lintels, making pairs of stones into doorways. Stonehenge is undeniably impressive – but this!

There are no lintels at the Ring. The stone, I learned later from the guidebook, fractures naturally into slender slabs with parallel sides and a consistent angle at the ends, so it would have been possible to flatten them for lintels only with incredible effort. The ancient builders chose not to do that, but left them in their natural state, pointing, it seems, to the sky.

Twenty-seven stones stand alone, aloof, in a circle over three hundred feet in diameter. They are widely spaced, so the sky forms as much a part of the Ring as the stones. Thirty or so more used to be there, so the circle would have been more complete when it was new, but it’s hard to imagine that it could have had more dignity, more sheer impact.

There it stands on its hill, silhouetted against the sky, a monument to … to what?

‘It was a temple,’ I said in a whisper. Somehow I felt compelled to whisper.

‘That’s one theory, at least.’ Alan was speaking quietly, too. So were the other tourists.

‘It’s more than a theory. It
was
a temple. It still is.’

‘You “just know”?’

‘Yes.’ I made no attempt to explain, or defend myself. I did know, beyond doubt. This had been a place of worship, and the spirits, or the gods, or the echoes of the worship, were still here.

At some point we had left the car. I didn’t remember getting out, but there we were, standing on the hill, the wind soughing through the Ring. I took Alan’s arm.

‘All right, love?’

‘Just a little lightheaded. Who wouldn’t be?’

He looked at me with concern.

‘Alan, I’m fine,’ I said with some impatience. ‘Just overwhelmed by this place. You didn’t
tell
me it was like this!’

‘It’s a bit like what you always say about the Grand Canyon, love. One can’t describe it in any meaningful way. Even pictures don’t convey the magnificence. A person must experience it to understand.’

I nodded. I didn’t want to talk. I wanted to walk, and look, and listen to the wind moaning among the stones, and let the centuries seep into me.

We walked around together, Alan now and then consulting the guide book he’d bought somewhere and quoting something from it. I wished he wouldn’t. I love my husband dearly, but I wanted him to shut up and let me just be. After a while, and another worried glance or two, he saw that I wasn’t paying attention and was silent.

Suddenly, though, I wanted information. ‘Alan,’ I said urgently, ‘did they ever make sacrifices here?’

‘I don’t think so.’
He leafed through the booklet. ‘It says quite definitely that there was never human sacrifice, but it doesn’t mention animal sacrifices, either yea or nay. The gist of it is, I suppose, that they don’t really know. It’s like so much else. They have to rely on educated guesswork. Why? You aren’t … er … getting any strange vibes, are you?’

‘No terrifying ones, at any rate. But sacrifices to the gods are such an important part of most ancient religions, I wondered. Even the ancient Hebrews. Abraham thought he was going to have to sacrifice his son.’

‘But it didn’t turn out that way.’

‘No. There was the ram in the thicket. But the ram died, didn’t he? Oh, I
wish
we could know what these people believed, what rites they practised! I’d like to be able to imagine this place in use as it was meant to be used. It would be strange, even perhaps repugnant, but I’d like to know.’

‘I think it’s a good thing that tomorrow is Sunday. We can go practice our own rites, and exorcise the demons.’

A crowd of tourists arrived, with some noisy children who seemed not to feel the atmosphere of the place. The spell was broken. I smiled at Alan. ‘Let’s go see Skara Brae.’

The ancient village is just a few miles down the road from the Ring. We had to enter through a visitors’ centre and pay for tickets, which seemed a little odd until I considered how much it must cost to keep these places in repair. Medieval cathedrals cost hundreds of thousands of pounds every year to keep up. How much more so a set of structures dating from around 3000 BC?

Walking up to the village, I was captivated by a series of stone markers comprising a timeline. ‘Look at this, Alan! “Skara Brae, 3100 BC. Pyramids of Giza, 2500 BC. Stonehenge 2100 BC.” This place is a thousand years older than Stonehenge!’

Behind me, a dry, petulant voice interrupted. ‘They’re wrong about that date, you know.’

I turned around to see the last man I expected, or wanted, just then. I smiled, of course, and nodded. ‘Mr Norquist. How nice.’

‘They’ve got that date wrong,’ he persisted. ‘I’ve told them and told them, but they won’t change it. They’re at least a hundred years off.’

I feigned interest. ‘Is that right? Well, I don’t suppose it makes a lot of difference when you’re dealing with thousands of years.’

Norquist bristled. ‘It makes a difference to
Them
!’ He pointed in the direction of the village ahead. ‘Five or six generations! Would you want your family history distorted that badly?’

‘Well, no, I guess I wouldn’t.’ I exchanged glances with Alan, whose raised eyebrows and rolled eyes conveyed:
See what I mean?
Humour the man
. ‘But you see, it must have cost a lot to have these stones carved. I imagine they can’t afford to change them.’

‘They can afford it now! The Friends could pay for it. I intend to keep on making myself heard until they do something about it. We mustn’t offend
Them
. Excuse me.’

He bustled off, back toward the visitors’ centre.

Alan and I looked at each other. ‘He really is just a little—’ I said.

‘More than a little, I’d say. Dorothy, I hope …’

I laughed. ‘Don’t worry, love! I don’t believe they’re still here, or not that way. Their influence, yes. But I don’t see them hovering in wrath and casting a spell on us because we got a date wrong. And how does he think he knows, anyway? A hundred years is nothing in archaeological time!’