Shadows of Death (15 page)

‘Now you can walk your dog safely, can’t you? I suppose you’re delighted.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m appalled. I was afraid of the cat, and Watson was terrified, but it’s an awful thing for someone to do. I know you were fond of him. I’m sorry.’

‘Yes, well, sorry won’t bring him back, will it? He was a fine wee cat. You Americans think you can march into a town and do anything you want, even kill our cats.’

‘But … but, madam – I’m sorry, I don’t know your name …’

‘And I don’t want to know yours!’ She slammed the door before I could protest further.

Watson whined questioningly. He was thoroughly confused. This woman had been so nice before, and now she was treating us badly. He tugged on his leash.

‘Yes, you’re right. Home is the place for us.’

People were abroad this Sunday morning, and I smiled and nodded to those I passed. Nobody smiled or nodded back. In fact, they ignored us.

I’ve lived in England long enough to know that in the small towns, everyone knows everything about everyone else. So it didn’t surprise me a great deal that everyone in Stromness seemed to know who I was. The universal hostility did surprise me, though. I’d never met with that attitude before, anywhere in Britain, and I didn’t care for it one bit.

By the time we got back to the flat, Watson’s tail was between his legs, and if I’d had one it would have been in the same position. ‘We’re not very popular in Stromness just now,’ I told Alan. ‘They seem to think we, or one of us, killed the cat.’

‘I was afraid that might happen. Norquist may not be terribly popular around town, but he’s one of their own. We’re outlanders. After church I’m going to go tell Norquist a thing or two.’

I was actually reluctant to go to church, but fear of being glared at was not, I decided, sufficient excuse to skip it. So I gave Watson an extra good breakfast to make up for earlier unpleasantness, put him out on the patio, and Alan and I walked up the hill.

I was glad I went. I’d been spending a good deal of time lately on an uneasy footing between the present and the distant past, and the past had wrapped me in frightening speculations about primitive religions. The soothing ritual of the Anglican Eucharist was the perfect antidote. The psalm for the day read in part, ‘Had you desired it, I would have offered sacrifice, but you take no delight in burnt offerings. The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.’ The Eucharistic prayer echoed it with, ‘And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice …’ This was our sacrificial mode now, to try to give everything we had, all of ourselves, to God, but in life, not in bloody death. It was all balm to my spirit, and when we left the church, my smiles were genuine, even when they were met with cold stares.

The cat charity shop was open when we passed it, surprisingly on a Sunday, so I asked Alan to wait, and boldly went in. The woman at the counter said, ‘We’re not actually open. I just needed …’ Then she turned around. ‘Oh. It’s you.’

‘It is, and I came in to say I’m sorry about the cat, and I had nothing to do with his death. It was a despicable thing to do.’

The woman gave me a hard look, and finally nodded. ‘I told them I didn’t see how it could possibly be you. How would you have got over there in the middle of the night? And why? And you’re not the sort to kill a cat, not that way, at any rate.’

‘No, I’m not. I have cats of my own, very spoiled, and very precious to me. I won’t pretend I liked this one very much. I wouldn’t have been sorry to hear that he’d stowed away on the ferry and gone to England, or preferably Timbuktu. But I didn’t wish him dead. I just wanted you to know.’

‘I believe you. And if you’ll excuse me …’ She nodded and turned back to her work.

Alan queried me with his eyebrows when I came out of the shop.

‘Not what you’d call a cordial welcome, but I told her I didn’t kill the cat, and she says she believes me. Now, what are we going to do for the rest of the day?’

‘We’re going to find a thumping good Sunday lunch somewhere, and then I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go looking for Norquist to give him a piece of my mind.’

‘Good idea. He certainly needs a piece of sensible mind, since his has gone missing. But you’ll be careful, won’t you, Alan? I do think he’s gone completely off his rocker, and he’s definitely dangerous.’

We saw to Watson’s needs and then drove to Kirkwall for our meal, an excellent one, roast lamb with all the trimmings. Then we strolled around Kirkwall for a bit. I hadn’t seen the cathedral, which is magnificent, though not a cathedral anymore, strictly speaking. A cathedral is the seat of a bishop, and St Magnus’ belongs now to the Church of Scotland, which doesn’t have bishops. Never mind, it’s an impressive building. The ruins of the Earl’s Palace, adjacent to the cathedral, were also interesting.

‘We’ll never have anything like this in America,’ I said sadly. ‘We tear everything down the moment it shows some signs of decrepitude. They tore down my elementary school when it was fifty or sixty years old, and still a perfectly sound – and attractive – building. And then Americans come over here and ooh and aah over the lovely old churches, and the ruins. It’s madness!’

Alan made the appropriate responses. He’s heard that particular rant before. We didn’t linger long after that. Alan was eager to confront Norquist, or at least eager to get it over.

When we got back to the flat, Alan phoned Norquist’s number and got no reply. Frustrated, he tried the numbers he had for Fairweather and Larsen, with the same result. ‘The man must be somewhere! And someone must know where. I’m tempted to get in the car and scour all the Neolithic sites until I find him.’

‘Look, dear, that’s a lot of territory to cover. And Norquist might be almost anywhere. Why don’t you call the police and see if they know anything about him? Even with all the madness in Flotta, they might be keeping an eye on Norquist.’

The office seemed to be short-staffed, as might have been expected. No one there knew anything about Norquist. Would Mr Nesbitt care to leave a message, in case anyone learned anything?

Alan punched the phone off. ‘No, I do not care to leave a message!’ he grumbled to the unhearing phone. ‘I want to find Norquist, and all events are conspiring against me.’ He told me what he had been told.

‘Go over to the police station, then. Your chances of finding someone who knows something are better if you’re on the spot. And if not, you can always wait and fret there instead of here.’

‘Are you trying to get rid of me?’

‘Yes. You’re making me just as antsy as you are. I love you dearly, but I want to try to stop thinking about all this for a while.’

So Alan drove off. I took Watson for his afternoon walk, letting him off the lead for a while, to his delight, and then put my head down for the nap that I indulge in a lot more often than I used to.

I couldn’t sleep, though. I kept seeing a large orange cat lying complacently, defiantly, in the middle of The Street, or confronting Watson, hackles raised, tail bushed. And then a pathetic little corpse, covered in blood, his spirit and defiance, his beauty and life and vitality, all gone. I punched my pillow savagely, wishing I could punch Norquist, or if not him, whoever was responsible for the atrocity.

When I finally dropped off, my dreams were filled with vague images, morphing from one to another in the way of dreams, but all of them somehow terrifying. There was blood, and then just sky and stone, and then I was being pursued, I knew not why or where, but I knew something horrible awaited me if I didn’t get away, and I couldn’t run.

I was able then to wrench myself free of the dream. Watson rose from the rug where he had been sleeping and came to lick my hand.

‘Was I whimpering or something? Did I scare you, poor old boy?’

He woofed happily and tugged gently at my hand. Surely a dog as fine as he deserved a treat, yes?

‘You’re too fat as it is, dog,’ I said in a severe tone that didn’t fool him for a moment. ‘So am I. Let’s see what we can find in the kitchen.’

Another happy woof. ‘Kitchen’ is a word he loves almost as much as he hates ‘bath’.

Alan came in as we were rooting in the fridge for something good. ‘That was quick,’ I said. ‘Or did I sleep a lot longer than I thought?’

Alan sat down heavily and delivered the second bombshell of the day. ‘Larsen and Fairweather turned up at the police station, also looking for Norquist, and Baikie called in while we were all there. No one has seen him. No one has the least idea where he is. He seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.’

T
hat was a stunner. While Watson gnawed at a bone Alan had brought him, and we humans munched on rather hard scones, Alan told me about it.

‘Baikie’s no fool, you know, Dorothy. If I’ve been inclined to underestimate him, I’ve changed my mind. He’s come to all the same conclusions about Norquist that we have, and thought it was time to bring him in for some serious questioning. So he put a man on it yesterday, before returning all his attention to the terrorist business. The chap went first, of course, to the museum. When Norquist wasn’t there the constable started looking at the ancient sites, which was where the man might be expected to be. Of course there are a lot of sites, spread out over quite a few islands. Apparently he kept missing Norquist. Odd, if you think about it, that we kept finding him. Or he’d kept finding us. Really, it did seem almost as if the man was following us. If I’d known the police were trying to find the man … but I didn’t.

‘In any case, when Fairweather found the cat this morning, he thought it was serious enough to call the police. There was little they could do, with almost all the police delegated to Flotta, but informal feelers went out. No one’s seen the man. He didn’t go to church, though he’s a regular at the kirk here in Stromness. In fact, he was booked to be a sidesman or something this morning, and they were surprised when he didn’t turn up.

‘He isn’t at his flat. His car is where he always leaves it. His neighbours haven’t seen him. The constable even went, personally, to talk to the aged mother.’

‘I’ll bet he enjoyed that!’

‘Not a lot. It seems the old lady’s housed in something more akin to a mental institution than a normal care facility. She’s at least as peculiar as her son, and probably has dementia as well. He got almost nothing out of her, but the staff told him they hadn’t seen Norquist in several days, which is unusual. He visits her at least briefly almost every day.’

‘So he’s vanished without a trace. Like Carter’s boat.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Baikie’d like to get some inquiries going, but his staff is fully occupied with matters that, for now, are more important, so he asked if I – if we – would mind making a few phone calls in his stead. There are, plainly, only two ways to leave Orkney, by boat or by plane. We’ll need to go to the airport to check flight manifests, and to the ferry offices as well. Careful records are kept, because of customs and immigration laws.’

‘But there are always private planes and private boats.’

‘And therein lies the rub. They’re subject to the same laws, of course, and the airport authorities and the harbour masters are supposed to keep close tabs on arrivals and departures, but if someone decides to sneak out at dead of night, what can they do?’

‘Except, as you pointed out, night never gets all that dead up here in the middle of summer.’

‘It doesn’t get all that dark, but there’s not much going on at two a.m. Someone would notice activity at the harbour here or in Kirkwall, or the airport, but there are lashings of private boat landings, and a few private airstrips as well. It could be done.’

‘But can Norquist pilot a boat or fly a plane?’

‘I asked that, too, and no one seems to know. He must be able to pilot a boat, or how would he have got to Papa Sanday yesterday? But no one thinks he owns one, and no one can imagine he knows how to fly.’ Alan ran his hand down the back of his head. ‘We’re left with just no leads at all.’

‘Of course,’ I said after a pause, ‘he could be …’

‘He certainly could, and that’s why Baikie is frustrated about not being able to follow up properly. If Norquist is dead, Baikie’s dealing with a crime, a certainty, not a probability.’

‘Unless Norquist killed himself.’

‘Suicide is a crime,’ Alan reminded me. ‘But what he fears, of course, is murder, and two murders in less than a week are unheard of in these parts. He’s a worried man, Dorothy, and so am I.’

‘You think he’s been murdered, too.’

‘I’m afraid I do.’

‘“These are deep waters, Watson,”’ I quoted, and our dog looked up, puzzled. ‘So what’s next? Check with the airports and harbours?’

‘It’s all we can do for now. Shall we split them up?’

‘No, you’d better do them. You can wave your old warrant card in front of them and say you have Baikie’s authorization. They wouldn’t talk to me. No, I said a while back that I was good at talking to people, but what we’ve been doing so far, and what you need to do now, is more formal. Interrogation, almost, instead of just chatting. Let’s use another approach. While you check with points of departure, and keep your good policeman’s nose to the ground, I’ll go around to the shops and the churches and whatever and talk to people. I may turn up nothing at all, but one never knows.’

‘Or you may not get anyone to talk to you. Those were pretty cold shoulders you were being offered this morning after church.’

‘I know. “See how these Christians love one another.” That’s why I stopped to talk to the cat charity lady. I think she’ll spread the word, and the shoulders may begin to thaw. One can only hope. But for now, while you trot hither and yon, I think I’m going to try for a real nap. Otherwise I’ll just sit here and snack and gain ten pounds.’

I had a lovely nap and woke feeling refreshed, which was just as well, because Alan came home somewhat disheartened and in need of some cosseting. He reported that the airport and harbour authorities had been pleasant and cooperative, but could say quite definitely that Norquist had not left Mainland by any commercial carrier, or by any of the private planes and boats that had followed procedures. ‘So that’s the easy bit done,’ he said, accepting a glass of Highland Park without protest. ‘Now there are all the private boats and planes, here and on all the other islands. That would take an army of men to check.’