A Shetland Winter Mystery

Book 10: The Shetland Sailing Mysteries

by Marsali Taylor

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery

Synopsis

Marsali Taylor returns with the tenth nail-biting mystery in her much-loved Shetland Sailing Mystery series.

'This series is a must-read for anyone who loves the sea, or islands, or joyous, intricate story-telling.' ANN CLEEVES

It's the dark nights in the run up to Christmas, and sailing sleuth Cass Lynch's first night on dry land is disturbed by strange noises outside her isolated cottage. Tiny footprints in the moonlit snow trail from her front door before mysteriously disappearing. Soon Cass learns others were visited by the same tiny feet in the night.

It looks like ingenious local teenagers playing tricks - but what happens when festive games turn deadly?

Cass soon finds out as a schoolboy disappears, leaving only a trail of footprints into the middle of a snowy field. She's determined to investigate, but uncovering the truth will also put her in danger . . .

Nail-biting and unputdownable, A Shetland Winter Mystery is the latest instalment in the much-loved Shetland Sailing Mystery series by Marsali Taylor. Perfect for fans of Ann Cleeves, Elly Griffiths and J M Dalgliesh.

(P) 2021 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Release date: December 9, 2021

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 352

Sample

trow: The trows were Shetland’s ‘little people’, who lived in mounds in the hill, and could only come out after dark. They liked bright colours, feasting and music (there are tales of human fiddlers being kidnapped and taken underground for a trowie wedding), and were known for working mischief about the croft; sometimes their actions were more sinister, like substituting a baby of their own for a human child (Old Norse, troll)

There was the sound of children giggling, stifled quickly as if they were up to mischief; a group of trainees planning some devilment. Kitten growled and jumped down from the bed. Whoever was on watch would deal with it, I thought, hunching into the bedcovers, and the thought jerked me awake. I wasn’t in my cabin aboard Sørlandet but in Gavin’s cottage in Shetland. Our nearest neighbour was a mile away over the hill, and they didn’t have children.

I eased my nose out from under the downie and listened. Cat stirred and sat up. Nothing; silence, that dead silence after snow had fallen. There had been the first few flakes as Gavin had driven me back from the airport, followed by a rattle of haily puckles that had covered the ground in white; a good base for snow to lie on. I tilted my head up to look out of the window. Yes, more had fallen while I’d slept. The low hill of Papa Little was blue-white in the moonlight, and the stars sparkled with cold light.

I reached for my watch and pressed the button to light up the face. Half past eleven. Naturally the youngsters of the ship’s watch would be up at that hour, but I wasn’t on board ship now. All good land children were tucked up in their beds, sleeping peacefully, or illicitly playing on their computers or texting their friends. They weren’t wandering round a cottage miles from anywhere.

I was thoroughly awake now. Sørlandet had spent the last two months exploring the eastern seaboard of the States, and my body clock was telling me it was six in the evening. I’d had a short nap to refresh me, and now I could get up and party. Beside me, Gavin was curved over on his side, back towards me, his breathing deep and even.

I slid out of bed and padded over to the window. The sliver of crescent moon had gone down, but the clear sky gave a pale light over the snowy hills and stars gleamed in the depths of the coal-black water. There was no sign of movement anywhere, yet I had this sense of something stirring in the darkness. Kitten looked downwards from the sill, growled again, then jumped down and trotted downstairs. I heard the clack of the catflap.

Whatever it was, I supposed I’d better investigate. Maybe the ponies in the field behind the house had broken into the garden. I lifted up my bundle of clothes from the chair, and was tiptoeing out of the bedroom when I heard a car start up, way in the distance. I wouldn’t have heard it at all if I hadn’t been awake, if the back skylight hadn’t been open, if it hadn’t been such a still night. I reached the window just as the sound died away, and thought I saw a brief flash of headlights move across the starry sky. The silence closed in again.

I went slowly downstairs, not switching the light on. The ground shifted disconcertingly under me, as if the land had become fluid. It would take a couple of days before my balance adjusted. Freezing lino under my feet, the air icy on my skin. I scrambled into my clothes and hauled on my boots, then eased the back door open.

People had been here. Several sets of footprints came down from the end of the garden, between the vegetable beds, spread out a bit as if they were looking at the house, and then joined again to come right to the briggistanes. One set came right up to the door and ended in a scuffle by the catflap: tiny bare feet, shorter than my hand. There were no prints going back.

A cold shudder went down my spine. While we’d been lying asleep upstairs, someone had come into our house.

It should have made it less scary that Gavin was sleeping so peacefully, but somehow it made it worse. I felt like I was the only human awake while something sinister was stirring in the darkness.

I didn’t want to show a light just yet. I reached for the blinkie by the door and held it in my hand as I leapt over the doorstep, landing clear of the footprints. After they’d looked, after one had gone in and not come out, the others had set off around the house. There were several sets of footprints; the moon made sharp shadows of them. I made a print of my own for comparison. Yes, even the largest of them was no bigger than my size four. Child-sized. Little-people sized.

Suddenly I remembered the date: the sixteenth of December. It was Tulya’s E’en, the day when the trows started their Yule patrol around the houses. A long-forgotten primary-school project surfaced in my mind. Trows didn’t come near human houses normally, but in the dark days of midwinter they could come out and work mischief around the crofts. The old folk sained their houses against them with straw crosses and holy water, to keep them from stealing gear, animals or children. They’d make a plait with a hair from every animal in the byre, and hang it above the byre door, and they’d go round the outhouses with a burning peat on a shovel. The school jannie had done that bit, and we’d followed with our straw crosses. We’d hung the thin braid of all our hair above the classroom door, and on the last day of term we’d baked sun biscuits, pointed all around and with a hole in the middle to thread a ribbon through. The boys had eaten theirs, but my best friend Inga and I had saved ours to hang on our Christmas trees.

There was a snick behind me. I jumped, heart pounding, and spun around to find Cat had come out of the catflap behind me and was sniffing at the tracks. I began to walk round the house, listening intently and pausing at the corner, as if I expected something to leap out at me. Nothing. Cat was going on ahead, plumed tail upright. Kitten pounced out at him from around the corner, and there was a scuffle which ended in them both charging across the snow, tails fluffed out. I found I’d been holding my breath, and let it out. There was nothing strange about when the cats were acting normally. All the same, I didn’t want to follow the prints round the corner, where the house’s deep shadow jutted out on the white snow.

‘Everything okay?’ Gavin asked from behind me. I jerked round, heart pounding. He was dressed in kilt and jumper, auburn hair tousled. He reached for his jacket then jumped over the doorstep to join me, kilt pleats flying. ‘Hobbits?’ He bent down, looking at the footprints closely. ‘Four of them.’

‘Not hobbits,’ I said. ‘Trows. It’s the sixteenth. St Tulya’s E’en.’

Gavin began strolling along the line of prints. ‘Is she in the Roman Calendar of Saints?’

‘I think it’s a he,’ I said. ‘It’s a corruption of St Thorlak. He was Icelandic.’

‘Oh yes?’ Gavin linked his arm through mine and we went on together, following the line of little footprints around the corner of the house. The snow had come from this direction and piled up against the wall of the house, so the prints were deeper here, clearer.

‘Three of them here,’ Gavin said. ‘The other one went through the catflap.’ He sounded remarkably unworried about it. ‘One’s lagging a bit, see, trudging footprints, as if it’s carrying something heavy.’

‘Hawkeye Macrae,’ I said, impressed.

‘Have I never told you I spent my teenage summers helping my grandfather stalk deer?’ The next corner brought us to the front of the house, facing the sea. The kelp at the water’s edge was glazed over with ice, and the rocks of the dyke below the house had snow sticking to the face of each stone, with the crevices between making a black crazy-paving pattern. ‘Here we are.’ He stopped at the sit-ootery door, facing out over the sound. ‘He went in through the catflap and came out again here.’

I looked at the prints on the windowsill, neatly together, facing out from the house, and the pair of footprints, deeper and together, where it had jumped down.

‘Four again,’ Gavin said. ‘All together. One of the bigger ones dragging the little one by the hand. He’s getting a bit tired.’

‘Past even a trow’s bedtime. Or since trows are nocturnal maybe he was complaining about it being too early.’

‘A tidy trow. He locked the window behind him.’

I looked at the window. It was one of those old-fashioned ones with a holed shaft that fitted over pins along the inner sill. The shaft was lying snugly in its place, and I didn’t see how you could do that from outside.

‘So,’ Gavin said, starting to move again, ‘what has your improbable saint got to do with an invasion of trows in the night?’

‘They live underground, but when the nights are at their darkest, then they can come out from their trowie mounds and wander among the houses. The dark nights start at Tulya’s E’en.’

‘Ah,’ Gavin said, entirely unruffled. His breath smoked in the cold air. ‘Well, let’s see where they wandered to.’

We followed the tracks along the front of the house, along the byre joined to it and around the corner. Back on the landwards side of the house, the tracks curved upwards to rejoin the trail leading down to the garden. The ponies were awake, standing above the rocky knowe at the far side of their park, heads turned to watch us. One gave a friendly whicker, and they both moved over towards us, manes damp and back fur spiked with snow.

‘Care to tell us what’s going on?’ Gavin asked them, and fished out a packet of polo mints from his pocket, which they crunched with relish and a bit of head-nodding.

We paused at the foot of the slope and looked. The only marks in the icing-smooth snow were that double track and the neat hooves and dragging tailmarks of the ponies leading from their usual sleeping place behind the garden wall to the knowe where the tracks ended.

We went on upwards, the cats bounding around us.

The rocky mound was waist-high, an outcrop of boulders that had once been a Neolithic tomb, long since robbed of usable stones; a trowie hadd, the sort of place where trows were supposed to live in underground burrows. The tracks of feet came out of a dark gap between two larger stones, and went back in there.

We walked right around the mound, just to be sure. There were no other footprints, just a few sheep tracks and the stampled place where the ponies had stood. The only footprints in that smooth snow around the circumference of the mound were our own.

jookerie-packerie: trickery, mischevious behaviour (Old Scots joukerie: deceit, trickery + pauk(erie): a trick)

Gavin was up before me. I woke to the rattle of the kitchen Rayburn being riddled, followed by the clank of an ashbucket and the crackling of flames in kindling. I hauled on jeans and jumper and went downstairs. He was picking up the cats’ plates now, dressed for work, in his everyday green kilt and leather sporran, and a rather baggy green jumper over his shirt and tie. The overhead light glinted on his russet hair, the colour of a stag’s ruff. He lifted his head and smiled as I came in, grey eyes warm with welcome. ‘It’s good to have you home.’

I went over to put my arms round his waist, feeling the strength of his back muscles under my hand. ‘It’s good to be together again.’

Impatient with this delay to his breakfast, Cat stretched up against my leg with his soundless meow, and Kitten leapt onto the worktop.

Cat was a spectacularly beautiful long-haired grey with fainter silver stripes and as plumed a tail as any squirrel. Kitten had grown in the last couple of months, but she was still going to be a small cat, and (as she was well aware) a very pretty one. She was a tortoiseshell, with a coat the colours of several different spice jars shaken together over a worktop. Like Cat, she had neat white paws and a white bib, and her tail ended in a pale apricot tip. She was already spoiled rotten; even my redoubtable Maman had failed to resist such an avalanche of cuteness. I set her bowl of kitten food pointedly down in front of her, then called Cat to the other side of the kitchen for his. Her little head was butting his out of the way in seconds. I lifted his to the work surface and put her back to her own. ‘I’ll catch you some fish later,’ I promised.

‘Yes, you need to try the boat under power,’ Gavin said. ‘I’m pleased with it. It’s fine for a day’s fishing.’ His sea-grey eyes smiled at me. ‘You’ll be heading up to Brae?’

‘To check on Khalida,’ I agreed. Khalida was my own yacht, an Offshore 8m, and had been my home until this new venture of living ashore with Gavin.

We went together to the door and stood for a moment, looking out. I’d forgotten how beautiful Shetland was under snow, how strange, a world turned monochrome, with the hills white against the grey sky. Several centimetres had fallen, enough to smooth over the rough heather of the hill as if it had been iced. Above us, the blue peat smoke scented the air.

The little footprints from last night were crisped into the clean snow. Now it was half-light I could see them better. They were bare feet, the toes clearly marked, with the big toe out of proportion, and a fuzziness about the outline.

‘Tulya’s E’en,’ Gavin said. ‘So today must be St Tulya’s Day?’

‘It ought to be.’ I frowned. ‘Except that I think it’s Sow Day, the day the pig was killed ready for the Yule feast. I’ve a vague memory of not quite getting it at school either. It didn’t make sense. You had Halloween, then All Saints, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so Tulya’s E’en then Sow Day didn’t work for me.’

‘I wonder whether they stayed up late, and came with parental help, or sneaked out in the middle of the night and were brought here by a complicit sibling.’

His Highland accent made music of the phrase. I tucked my hand into his. ‘I love your vocabulary.’ I tried to imitate the lilt, and lingering ‘s’ sounds. ‘Complicit siblings.’

‘An ingenious lot, the local bairns.’

‘Definitely,’ I said. ‘I like the furry feet. Cut-out soles on the bottom of socks, would you say?’

‘I hope there was a layer of wadding too. Even the hardiest trow would be getting chilblains in this frost. I wonder if we’re the only ones they’ve visited?’ He looked at the ponies, and smiled, then turned back towards the house. ‘Now, mo chridhe, breakfast, then I must go. A million forms are waiting for me. I’ll be back for lunch, then we’ll have the whole weekend.’ His arm closed round my shoulders again. ‘I didn’t feel I could go completely rearranging the schedules just to suit me. I’m still feeling my way.’

‘Can’t be helped,’ I said. ‘Besides, I’m feeling jet-lagged, from flying over the Atlantic instead of sailing it, in a civilised fashion. And the floor’s rocking about as if it was water.’

‘I got meat in for a stew, and we can have an early night.’

He served up the porridge and we ate, with Kitten installed on Gavin’s kilted lap, and Cat condescending to sit by my chair, then I left Gavin to get ready and sauntered to the gate, ready to wave him off. Cat came bounding after me, tail high. Kitten followed him in a series of leaps, then picked her way disdainfully along the path, belly arched against the cold snow.

We had four weeks. The entire crew had; we’d left our beautiful ship in Bermuda and flown back for Christmas, leaving another crew to fill her with people escaping a northern winter. This, I reflected, would be Gavin’s and my second Christmas together. Last year had been at his home in the Highlands, while we were still tentatively finding our way to a relationship, with Midnight Mass in Gaelic. This year we’d be here, in the cottage. Maman and Dad were coming over. We could have all the things I remembered from my childhood: a crib, and a tree, and stems of holly along the tops of the pictures.

At my feet, Cat froze, whiskers twitching. He turned his head to the hill, obviously hearing something; then a black 4x4 scrunched over the crown of the hill and began making its cautious way down the road to the house. It was too early for Maman, wanting to tell me what she’d organised for Christmas, and Dad’s driving was more confident. Visitors, at this hour?

Cat had decided he didn’t like the look of them; he slid, belly low, into the shelter of the sycamore trees that bounded the back yaird. Kitten dithered for a moment, then followed him. I waited at the gate to see what they wanted.

The car ignored the turning space where Gavin’s Land Rover was parked, and came right down to me. It stopped in the middle of the track, and the driver switched the engine off. It had tinted windows which stopped me from looking into it, and the sudden silence was sinister. It seemed to last for ever; then the doors opened together, as if the movement had been rehearsed, and a man got out from each side of the cab.

They were an implausible, frightening pair of apparitions in the middle of the snowy hills. A pair of goons, I’d have said, if it had been a gangster movie. Muscle-men. They were like twins, tall and broad-shouldered, shaven-headed, wearing identical black suits and reflective dark glasses, so that all I saw was myself in their eyes: dark curls, eyes big above French cheekbones, scar on one cheek, mouth slightly open in surprise.

The near one took one step, the far one three, so that they were standing right on the other side of the gate, much closer than I liked. I refused to let my feet move backwards.

‘We’ve come to talk to you,’ the first one said, in an unmistakably cod New York tough-guy accent.

‘Just talk,’ the other one chimed in. ‘We can see you’re going to be sensible.’

If they hadn’t been so intimidating I’d have wanted to laugh at them. Even as one of them moved to block the first rays of the sun from my face part of me was wondering if this was a welcome-home wind-up from my friends at the boating club, members of Ronas Drama Group having fun being gangsters. I kept my face calm, and tried not to let the flimsiness of the gate between us, the way they towered over me and the confident menace in their voices frighten me. ‘What are you wanting me to be sensible about?’ I was pleased to hear my voice made it sound quite ordinary.

They looked at each other and shook their heads, then turned back towards me. ‘Lady, you know better than that,’ the first one said. ‘We think you should retract your testimony.’

‘Plenty of other witnesses,’ his doppelganger corroborated. ‘There’s no need for you to stick your neck out.’

‘Especially when sticking your neck out’s liable to get your head chopped off.’

Now I really didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. I’d managed so far to avoid being a trial witness in any of the cases I’d been involved in, but maybe one where my testimony was crucial was coming up, and I’d been subpoena’d.

They were too close for me to be able to look at them both at once, and that was disconcerting too. I went for the one who’d driven the car and looked my reflection straight in the eyes. ‘I really don’t understand what you’re talking about.’

He sneered and looked at his mate. ‘She really doesn’t understand what we’re talking about.’

‘Short memory,’ the other one responded, shaking his head.

The driver turned his attention back to me. ‘I don’t need to mention names. Just forget the testimony. Don’t turn up in court.’

‘You won’t lose by it,’ his twin rumbled. His head tilted towards the house. ‘You could pay for a new roof, maybe.’

‘Or a new car.’ The other one smirked up at Gavin’s Land Rover. The cheerful cross-talk when they were still leaning over me was somehow more sinister than the threats.

Then both heads shifted together and stilled. They were looking over my shoulder. Gavin’s voice came from behind me: ‘Everything all right, Cass?’

The heads turned to each other, then to me. ‘Cass?’ said the passenger.

Gavin joined me at the gate, neat and trim as if he’d spent an hour dressing. He spoke in a brisk, matter-of-fact voice. ‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’

‘Sorry to disturb you,’ said the driver. ‘Case of mistaken identity. We’ll be on our way.’

I kept quiet. They were going, that was the main thing. If there was a confrontation Gavin would come off worse.

The goons nodded and turned away. The driver took the car cautiously down to the jetty, did a six-try turn and revved up to take the hill at speed. The black 4x4 snarled past us, jolted to the brow of the hill and was gone. Only the noise of the engine still hung in the air, gradually diminishing.

‘Well,’ Gavin said, ‘what was that about?’ He fished out his phone and tapped the car’s number plate into it.

I shook my head. ‘They said they wanted me to retract my testimony.’

‘Testimony for what?’

I quoted the driver. ‘I don’t need to mention names. Just forget the testimony. Don’t turn up in court.’

‘As a witness.’ Gavin frowned, thinking. ‘You haven’t mentioned a subpoena letter.’

‘I haven’t had one. Then the other one said I wouldn’t lose by it.’

‘Threats and bribery.’

‘But I think it really might have been a case of mistaken identity. The way they reacted when you said my name – they turned to each other, then looked at me, and repeated it.’

‘If they were relying on Google satellite to find you – or whoever – they’d have lost it coming out of Aith,’ Gavin agreed. ‘I’ll try and get an owner for the car.’ He made a face. ‘Ah well, it’s been an interesting day so far. See you later, mo chridhe. Have fun in the boat.’

trigg: neat, orderly (Old Norse, trygg: faithful, secure)

I went back into the kitchen and looked around. My heart sank. It didn’t feel like home: the gleaming new work surfaces, the pine table and matching chairs, the gingham curtains. I washed the porridge dishes and pan, but needed to open cupboard after cupboard before I found where they lived. I caught myself longing for my Khalida’s wooden walls and faded navy cushions, for lockers where I knew exactly where to find what I needed, and straightened myself up. I was glad to be back with Gavin, but being with him meant living on land. I’d soon feel at home here.

It was no good hanging around making myself gloomy. My Khalida was securely tied up in the marina up at Brae, but Gavin had bought a small motorboat of indeterminate race, a fibreglass 15-footer with a little wheelhouse and an electric motor, which I hadn’t had a chance to try out yet. I went into the spare room for my old overalls, and that almost set me off again, for one bed was piled with Khalida’s cushions, her curtains, the books from her shelf in a box, and the other had the plastic boxes with my spare clothes. I picked up one cushion and hugged it to me, breathing in the smell of damp and diesel fumes, then put it down quickly. Enough. I pulled on a jumper and my old sailing overalls and left the room, closing the door firmly behind me.

I’d barely scrunched halfway down the gravel track to the pier when the catflap at the house rattled twice, the sound travelling clearly through the still air, and Cat and Kitten came charging after me. They were aboard the motorboat before I was, leaping neatly from jetty to thwart, where they sat and looked pointedly at the roll-up canvas that covered her doorway. I clambered after them and fitted the battery to the outboard, then rolled the canvas up for the cats. I wasn’t surprised to see a two-cat-size wooden box with pre-arranged blanket secured on the floor, and Cat’s lifejacket lying ready. No doubt they’d been happy to join Gavin on fishing expeditions, especially if some of the catch came their way. Kitten headed straight for the box; Cat stayed on the thwart, shaking the snow from his paws disdainfully. I cleared both cockpit seats with my gloved hands, chucking the snow overboard, and was just unclipping the mooring lines when I spotted four unken birds bobbing along the opposite shoreline, chestnut, with a darker head and white throat. Gavin would know what they were.

I put Cat’s lifevest on, then rowed out from the jetty. The oars dipped with a satisfying swirl; the water rattled along the motorboat’s sides. Once I was far enough out I lowered the outboard shaft into the water, put the kill cord from the magnetic key round my wrist and pressed the button.

The engine came to life with a gentle throbbing noise that would be inaudible twenty metres away. The otter patrolling the point lifted its head, stared for a moment, then went back to its fishing; the strange ducks ignored me. ‘Well!’ I thought, impressed. I suspected there would be drawbacks to this new technology, but at the moment I couldn’t see any. No juggling with flammable petrol, no yanking at recalcitrant cords, no noise waking everyone for miles – what was not to like? I pulled the telescopic handle to a comfortable length for sitting in the lee of the cabin bulkhead and opened up. The throb speeded up, but the motor sound was easily drowned by the crunch as the boat bounced off the waves in Cole Deep. The computer panel told me I was going at six knots, better than my old Volvo Penta would achieve with Khalida.

It took me less than twenty minutes to get to Brae. By that time my nose and cheeks were frozen, and I was glad of my scarf and gloves. Hot chocolate aboard Khalida, I promised myself as I curved around the end of the marina and slowed to a potter, looking for a space.

Naturally my friend Magnie had spotted me coming out of Houbansetter and up the voe. As I came through the marina entrance his mustard-yellow Fiat came crunching down the boating club drive, turned with a skidding of gravel and led the way along to the far pontoon, where most of the sailing boats were moored. They looked strange and small without their masts, those 32- and 35-footers who spent their summers heading for Norway, Faroe or Orkney. My 26-foot Khalida was tucked in neatly between the two largest. By the time I’d reached the pontoon, Magnie was at the end of it, waving me around to the far side of it. ‘Third berth down, lass, you can go in there.’

He was as trigg as if he was going visiting. His reddish fair hair had been combed with water; his ruddy cheeks were freshly shaved. Instead of a boiler suit and yellow boots, he was wearing cloth trousers and his second-best gansey, the one with stripes of brown pattern on a white ground, knitted two winters before she died by his late mother. He had to be well through his seventies now, for he was already retired when he’d first been my sailing teacher twenty years ago, but his movements on the pontoon were as sure and spry as a teenager’s. He caught the bow as I nosed into the berth, and reached across for the clip, looking approvingly at the spliced rope. ‘Your man’s been busy while you were away.’

‘A neat job,’ I agreed. ‘Come and have a cuppa aboard Khalida and tell me all the news.’

I felt a pang to the heart at the sight of my Khalida, bare and empty without her cushions, the forepeak curtain, or the books on their shelf. Her varnish was dulled by the cold, and the little horsebrass fish had lost its brightness. Magnie’s hand clapped my shoulder. ‘Perk up, lass. Come spring she’ll be like herself, and in the meantime just think how much sounder you’ll sleep without worrying about what’s happening to your mast in every winter gale.’ He gave my face a shrewd look. ‘Put you that kettle on, and let me tell you all about the trowie visits here in Brae. Man, this bairns have fairly got the place in an uproar.’

He settled himself down on a thwart while I boiled the kettle. Cat investiga. . .