The Seal King Murders Read online

  That Dave’s body had not been immediately recovered was no mystery to Faro or to anyone who knew the islands. From his earliest years, Faro had an almost daily knowledge of the huge, wild seas around the coast and the wretched misery they brought as they claimed members from almost every crofting and fishing family.

  In terms of human suffering, the precious artefacts that had also disappeared meant little to Faro, who guessed that, instead of remaining sealed in a glass case in Edinburgh’s museum, they were resting at the bottom of the sea alongside the legendary wreck of the Spanish galleon and the remains of many humbler fishing boats lost through the ages.

  Deciding that he had all the information he was ever likely to obtain to satisfy Macfie’s curiosity, Faro concluded that there were no sinister implications and never had been, merely facts blown up in newspaper reports for Jimmy Traill’s readers, who were eager for sensational stories.

  What was much more intriguing for Faro was an earlier mystery, Thora Claydon’s interlude as the seal king’s bride that Lammastide, just after he had left the island ten years ago.

  Where had she been for a year and a day, living out the seal king legend? Certainly common sense told him she could not have survived as a human in his kingdom under the waves. That was illogical nonsense.

  So what was the truth? That was what he determined to find out and put an end for all time to this legend which made girls afraid to walk along the shore at Lammastide. This was the nineteenth century after all, the age of enlightenment, of scientific progress, although regretfully such matters were doomed to move at a very slow pace on his native island.

  As he walked briskly towards the house for the second time that day, he thought about Thora’s disappearance. She’d gone missing near Scarthbreck and the recently excavated Neolithic settlement, the location of which was revealed when a sudden storm removed centuries of sand under which it had lain buried. In an area already notorious for fierce seas, treacherous undercurrents and dangerous caves, the archaeological discovery of this prehistoric dwelling lent it an added reality as they tried to make sense out of the pieces of stone furniture and the occasional cooking pot and hand tools.

  Scant material indeed to build up a picture of what life had once been like for a forgotten people whose history had gone unrecorded and was followed by a settlement of Norse invaders. It was at this same place where, many centuries later, Scarthbreck had arisen, built on a long-lost burial ground. And in more recent history, the unidentified body of a man was found lying near the entrance.

  And Faro wondered if all his answers lay not with Thora Claydon, but within the scene of his mother’s temporary summer employment.

  His second visit to Thora Claydon promised success, but the woman who opened the door was a surprise. Small and pretty still, rather than the older, more harassed woman he had envisaged. Nor was there any evidence of widow’s weeds, although this was not strictly Orcadian tradition, where everyday dress was black – a practical matter, since in large families the infant and elderly mortality rate were both high.

  However, he had to admit that, fragile and bird-boned, her appearance fitted the legend attached to her. It would not have been difficult for a strong puff of Orkney wind to blow her away, much less a lusty seal king to carry her off.

  At the mention of Macfie, she politely invited him in. The house, too, was a surprise. He did not expect luxury from Dave’s income as an excise officer. But there it was all around him, a house whose contents on a miniature scale lacked only the exterior of a well-appointed Edinburgh town house.

  Ceilings were low and windows small but the furnishings were lavish. Handsome paintings adorned the walls, there was silver in plenty and a table set with candelabra and fine china.

  She observed his look of surprise and said, ‘No, I am not expecting visitors. I keep it like this for Dave, in his memory. It was what he liked most, a well-set table in a well-kept home,’ she added smiling sadly.

  And Faro was relieved she had been spared the last gruesome ordeal of his recovery from the sea as she shivered and added, ‘Until last week I still believed that one day he would walk in and explain what happened that dreadful night.’ A sudden change of subject, a wistful, ‘Will you take tea, Mr Faro? Visitors are rare and I have no servants.’

  Nor did this luxury fit in with her work in the bakery, Faro thought, although the scones and bannocks were perhaps evidence that she needed a hobby to take her mind away from a doleful future. Had Dave left her reasonably well off from some independent source? The luxurious home failed to justify earnings as an excise officer and a courier of valuable artefacts.

  As he delivered Macfie’s message, such were his innermost thoughts. She smiled sadly in acknowledgement. ‘I never met any of Dave’s family after we married and I came to live in Kirkwall.’

  None of their conversation fitted Inga’s description of Thora either. There was nothing of the recluse in her attitude, she seemed happy to have a visitor, eager to hear about Edinburgh, full of praise for the wonderful city Dave had always promised they would visit.

  She shook her head and sighed. ‘It never happened and, alas, never will now.’

  ‘I am sure Mr Macfie would make you most welcome,’ Faro said enthusiastically.

  ‘It is so far away,’ she said making it sound like China, her vague nod confirming that this was one invitation she was unlikely to accept. ‘Are you staying long, Mr Faro?’

  Explaining about his mother and Scarthbreck, he sensed a change in her friendly attitude. ‘I know the place, I lived nearby once and I know it well,’ she repeated and then stopped speaking, staring towards the window, seeing scenes long lost.

  ‘That was my girlhood home before I married Dave,’ she added a moment later, almost as if she had no life before Dave. Faro remembered the seal king episode and that her husband’s drowned corpse had been found in the same area.

  ‘Did your family come from there?’ he asked, knowing the answer.

  Her face clouded over for an instant, then she said, ‘We had no family. They died when my sister and I were children. We had distant relatives, cousins on the mainland, but we had never met. So we decided to look after ourselves, decided to stay together, a tiny croft in South Ronaldsay where we managed to survive working for the neighbouring crofts, gutting fish, mending nets, looking after hens and cows.’

  She held out white, long-fingered hands, a deep sigh, seeing them chafed red in winter. Then she smiled, ‘But folk were kind to the poor orphan lasses. They hadn’t much either, and our lives were built on their discards, for which we were always grateful.’

  Faro ventured, ‘Your sister – where is she now?’

  ‘She moved away.’ Without any change in expression, a swift movement indicated that particular subject was closed. ‘Will you take more tea, Mr Faro?’

  Her distress was so visible, he no longer had any wish to bring the subject round to Dave’s last fatal journey. He said, ‘Thank you, but I must go now. I am travelling back with the farmers.’

  ‘A not very comfortable journey.’ Smiling she held out her hand. ‘It has been a pleasure meeting you; my warmest regards to Mr Macfie and please, if you are in Kirkwall again, do come and visit me.’

  He felt that she meant it.

  On the way out, he noticed packing cases which had been concealed from view when the door was opened by her.

  Following his gaze she said, ‘A short trip to the mainland – I need a change of air.’

  He nodded and said daringly, ‘I am sure your sister will be delighted to see you again.’

  Her smile was replaced by a vague nod as she closed the door.

  As her sister had not come to Dave’s funeral, it was confirmation of what Inga had said, that the breach between them after so many years apart must be very deep indeed.

  More cheerfully, he hoped to see Inga on the farmers’ carts and there she was, but with no chance of sitting together, seated between two young lads who were obviously ve
ry taken with her charms, looking constantly into her face, laughing and obviously flirting, which she seemed to be enjoying.

  At Spanish Cove, they lifted her down to the road and Faro leapt off his cart, but apart from calling out that he hoped to see her soon, he had to leap back as the cart prepared to move on without him.

  He looked back at her standing in the road, longing to tell her that he had found Thora Claydon friendly and far removed from the cold, reserved woman she had implied.

  Climbing the hill to Scarthbreck he went over that meeting. Thora had disappeared somewhere near the recent excavations, a shoreline notorious for wild seas and underground caves, where the Neolithic settlement added a sinister touch of reality to ancient legends associated with the area.

  He looked up at the house brooding on the skyline. Thora’s reaction to the mention of Scarthbreck – he was certain it had its place in the scheme of things and that the answers lay not in Kirkwall, but perhaps here just beneath its walls.

  Mary Faro was waiting, an appetising supper laid out on the table. Her reaction to his market-day travels jolted him back to reality.

  ‘Now that you have kept your promise to Mr Macfie, you’ll be able to enjoy your holiday properly.’

  He tried to look pleased, as was expected of him, meanwhile wondering how, with so little time and so much still unknown, he was ever going to manage to fit in another meeting with Inga.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Mary Faro was eager to show him around Scarthbreck. The family were absent and with obvious pride in the importance of her role as housekeeper she led him from room to room. Clear skies and spectacular views from the windows, taking in the excavations and distant islands like humpbacked whales basking in sunlit seas, calculated to add perfection to a magnificent interior, but Faro was not overly impressed.

  In a hushed voice, Mary Faro showed off all the new marvels, but her anxious glances towards her son indicated clearly enough that his reactions were a bitter disappointment. There was no way of explaining, of making her understand, that for him the house also presented a hidden feeling of melancholy and depression. Again he was conscious that although newly built, the house was already haunted. Haunted by the past on which it had been built, by shadows of the Viking war lords, by torture and terror. Shadows seeped through the barely dried paint, and penetrated every corner of those determinedly luxurious indications of wealth.

  It was as if ghosts of that earlier house had been incarcerated in the very walls and moved restlessly behind the velvet curtains. You could imagine them lying in wait, peering from inside elaborate gold-framed portraits, the formidably life-sized images of past generations gazing down from every wall.

  It was not a good feeling and was one Faro knew that he could not convey in words for his mother to understand. Her air of bewilderment indicated that she was clearly disturbed by this lack of enthusiasm, as she added reproachfully, ‘I suppose all this is nothing compared with all those grand Edinburgh houses you’re acquainted with.’

  He shook his head. Nor could he find words of explanation beyond saying that he did not have access as a humble policeman to these mansions of her imagination. Sadly he realised, not for the first time, that it was as if they spoke across a vast precipice, and although the same words were uttered, both interpreted them in a different way.

  ‘No matter,’ she sighed. ‘This will be something to remember when you’re back in yon lodgings.’ She had never seen them but they were always dismissed as gloomy and shabby, which he could not deny. ‘This will be something to tell your friends, how rich folk live in Orkney,’ she added with pride.

  What friends? he wondered. He had so few.

  His mother continued, ‘I expect they think we all live in caves.’

  He laughed. That at least was almost true. But he was glad to return to the servants’ lodge, those impersonal barrack-like rooms, no longer stalked by Scarthbreck’s uneasy wraiths of the past.

  Determined to see Inga again after their brief meeting in Kirkwall, still drawn to her, he sensed that the attraction was mutual. But it was not until he met Baubie Finn that he realised this was the one person with whom he could have walked around Scarthbreck and shared his feelings.

  Perhaps this extra sense, so alien to Mary Faro, was something he had inherited from his long-dead selkie grandmother; an awareness of the thin veil separating past from present, an awareness that city living obliterated – even a city with Edinburgh’s bloody past. It was also a sense that would serve him well in years to come as his career advanced.

  Certain that he had learnt all that was to be found out regarding the drowning of Dave Claydon, satisfied that he had kept his promise to Macfie, he decided he might as well enjoy the rest of his holiday, especially as he firmly decided that it should include Inga St Ola’s fair presence as much as possible.

  He would respond to her invitation and call on her that Sunday afternoon, a time he calculated that she was most likely to be at home. Sunday was a day of rest regardless of one’s religious inclinations, and began for most working folk with church in the morning.

  So Faro followed the general pattern, dutifully accompanying his mother, hoping that Inga might be there. Looking round the congregation, there was no sign of her. Only a little disappointed but not completely surprised, he suspected that Inga worshipped the older pagan gods of Orkney, more akin to those ancient Neolithic dwellers than nineteenth-century Christianity.

  The Scarthbreck servants all walked together the mile to the local church. An uninspiring, gaunt, box-like modern building, the only indication that this was a place of worship a kirkyard, whose slanting tombstones, inscriptions long lost, hinted at earlier occupants of this area within sight of Spanish Cove.

  Mary Faro as housekeeper was in charge of the maids; paying no heed to a more-than-usual amount of giggling and nudging, she was delighted to observe that this was a reaction to the strange young man in their midst, her handsome son. There was one girl in particular that Mary had her eye on: pretty but less flighty than the others, intelligent too, Jenny liked books and was a skilled seamstress.

  Yes, Mary decided, this lass would do very nicely. She had already marked her down on top of a list of those whose qualifications would guarantee a place in her quest for a suitable daughter-in-law.

  Faro found the sermon too long, with a minister who droned on at great length regarding the sins of the flesh to a congregation who huddled like lost sheep in their pews and stared up at him wide-eyed, as if ‘lust’ was a rare word in their vocabulary and they’d like to hear more about its implications.

  On his rare appearances at the kirk in Edinburgh, Faro was prepared to accept such admonitions from the pulpit in the grandeur of St Giles’ Cathedral, surrounded by superb architecture, elegant churchgoers in their Sunday best, splendid hymns and an excellent choir, but lacking such distractions in a chilly, bleak building, he found his mind drifting to more agreeable subjects than original sin.

  He had no doubts, however, that the lady in question who consumed his dreams, namely Inga St Ola, was well versed in that particular topic. As time was short, he hoped that this Sunday afternoon would present an admirable opportunity to see her again and examine her thoughts on that subject, among others.

  Released at last, as he and Mary walked arm in arm through the kirkyard, Faro was aware that the remains of Dave Claydon lay buried in Kirkwall. His observations produced no comment from Mary Faro, whose thoughts were firmly engaged on the more pressing and urgent matter of producing a suitable future daughter-in-law from among her limited candidates.

  When Faro mentioned casually that he would take a stroll towards Stromness, she pointed out that, being several miles distant, it was more in the nature of a day’s excursion. And with Jenny at the forefront of her mind, said that she usually provided the maids’ tea in the afternoon and had hoped he would be present.

  Stubbornly, Faro shook his head. ‘A splendid idea, Ma. But tea parties are not for me. I want to
walk, explore – it’s a fine day and I have so little time.’ A lie, he thought, but a forgivable one if his mother suspected his real intentions.

  ‘What about your Sunday dinner?’ Mary asked. ‘We all eat together in the lodge.’

  Faro laughed. ‘After that huge breakfast? Please spare me, I’m not used to being fed like this.’

  ‘Well, you should be. You are far too thin.’

  Faro shook aside her protests, promised to eat something later and, kissing her briefly outside the church, hurried off down the road, conscious of her anxious frown, but quite unrepentant.

  Inga was at home. She opened the door, her face registering surprise and delight as she greeted him with a kiss of welcome.

  As he responded with hopeful warmth, she said, ‘So good to see you again, Jeremy.’ Taking his arm, she led him inside.

  Low-ceilinged, humbly but comfortably furnished in the traditional way of crofters’ houses on the island, there was an indefinable but unmistakeable ring of home about Inga’s tiny parlour, which was sadly lacking in the newly built servants’ lodge. It brought a sudden nostalgia for his childhood home, with the additional welcome from the peat fire glowing in the hearth.

  The fire was so much a part of island life – its flame tended day and night, even in summer, and only extinguished and relit once a year at Beltane. Its cheerful glow touched a large sideboard, an oak dresser with china gleaming from its shelves, and a sturdy kitchen table. Stools well worn by the passing generations completed the furnishing.

  And his first disappointment. They were not to be alone.

  ‘I have a visitor, Jeremy. Someone I want you to meet.’

  A visitor was the last thing he wanted. Not a suitor, he hoped, gazing round the room that was dominated by the Orkney chair, its high back and wings woven to keep chill draughts at bay.