The Orkney Scroll (6 page)

The first round was on the house. We all had Highland Park Single Malt, Trevor’s favorite. “Here’s to Trevor Wylie,” Rendall Sinclair, the publican said. “He had his faults, but his choice of whisky wasn’t one of them.” It was a good toast, and kept the event from being too maudlin, and soon everyone was sharing their favorite story about Trevor. I decided that, under the circumstances, I wasn’t about to contribute to this, but the tales, tall some of them, were funny, and I found myself warming to Trevor a little once again.

When I thought about it, though, all the stories had one thing in common. Elena was telling a story about how she’d been bested by Trevor in some business dealing or other. “I could have killed him,” she concluded. “Oops! I didn’t mean that.” Everyone assured her they knew that, that it was just an expression.

“Why would anyone want to murder Trevor?” Dan said.

Clive opened his mouth to speak, but I gave him a look that should have turned him to stone. Moira added a jab in the ribs.

“Were you going to say something, Clive?” Dan asked.

“I was just going to suggest we order some snacks,” Clive said. Moira smiled at me.

But that had been the nub of it, surely. Trevor, for all his charm, was always getting the better of people, always taking shortcuts of some kind at other people’s expense, but doing it in such a way we all forgave him. Except for one person, whoever that might be. Trevor had taken his little escapades just one step too far, with someone who was not only immune to his charm, but had a short fuse. Someone like Blair Bazillionaire.

As I listened in a rather subdued fashion to the conversations around me, I thought about Anna Chan’s conviction that Trevor knew what he had, and her comment about his needing time to set up the scam. It occurred to me that I’d been seeing rather more of Trevor in the last couple of months than at any time previously. He’d regularly made dates at the bar for the shopkeeper’s association we’d set up in the neighborhood, and in fact had to all intents and purposes become the leader of the group, which was fine with the rest of us. Dan the bookseller had done it for a while, but he’d closed up shop when one of the big chains had opened up nearby and retired to Florida. After that the group had languished until Trevor had taken an interest. Was there, I wondered, something more to Trevor’s enthusiasm than met the eye? In other words, had he been setting me up for the two months since the second cabinet had arrived? I was losing my edge, charmed by a guy who looked like Sean Connery. Any warm feelings engendered by the wake evaporated.
I should sell my half of the business to Clive,
I thought.
I should follow Dan to Florida.

The Dwarfie Stane was a very pleasant place, rather modern in design despite being named after some ancient tomb, with lots of comfortable chairs and alcoves, and a beautiful granite-topped bar with lots of mirror and chrome to show off the single malts, of which there were many. I had a sense that someone was watching me, and sure enough, sitting facing the bar but watching in the mirror was Detective Singh. I’d heard about police attending the funeral of a murder victim, but not the wake. This did not improve my mood any. This seemed rather tasteless of him to me, but then everything was making me crabby these days, something Clive and Rob had both pointed out to me. I walked right up to the bar, told Rendall I’d like to buy the next round, and then said, “Hello, Detective Singh. Off-duty are we?” He had a glass of something in front of him, but it might well have been soda and a folded newspaper.

“Seen the late edition of the paper?” Singh said. I could tell that Rendall had not only heard, but was interested in the conversation.

“Not yet,” I replied. He unfolded the newspaper to the top of the front page and slid it along the counter toward me. “Axe Murderer at Large,” the headline screamed.

“Only one person other than our small team at the station knew about the axe,” he said.

“Two, including Percy,” I said. “I have told no one.”

“The elusive Percy,” he snorted. “Well, it doesn’t matter now. If it did, you wouldn’t be sitting here swigging single malt. You’d be down at the station with me.”

At this point I just wanted to go home, but I went back to the group, not wanting to seem rude. As I sat there, who should come in but Percy himself. “Percy,” I said, standing up. He turned at the sound of my voice, then sprinted back out the door. It took me a minute to climb over everybody, wedged as I was in the middle of a large sofa, and behind a long table, but as soon as I was able, I, too, was out the door and running down the street in the direction I thought he’d gone. I caught sight of his head a couple of times, but it was soon pretty clear I’d lost him. I made my way back slowly, peering into the shops that were still open, of which there were not many, and going into my own to say good night to Ben, our student. Detective Singh was standing at the door of the Stane when I got back.

“Lose somebody?” he said.

“Percy,” I replied. “The guy who doesn’t exist?”

“Really,” Singh said. It wasn’t a question. He didn’t believe me.

“Yes, really,” I replied.

“How convenient,” he said. “Just when I’m in the neighborhood.”

“Come on! You can’t help but have noticed he ran away when I called his name.”

“Not that I saw,” he said, returning to his seat at the bar. I decided it was time to go home and went to the bar to pay my tab.

“Lara,” Rendall said, appearing from the back. “Call for you. You can take it my office. I’ll show you the way.”

That seemed a bit odd to me, given I have a cell phone, but I followed Rendall down a corridor and into a back room. “There’s no phone call,” he said. “I need your advice. First, that guy you went chasing after. He’s been in here a fair bit. He was asking about you. He’s Orcadian, and…”

“What’s Orcadian?” I said.

“From Orkney. It’s the name of the place that attracted him I’m sure. The Dwarfie Stane is a tomb on the island of Hoy in Orkney. He was also asking about a fellow Orcadian called Trevor Wylie.”

“I thought Trevor was from Glasgow,” I said.

“Not originally. He was born on the Mainland.”

“The Mainland of what?”

“Mainland, Orkney.”

“I’m not sure I know exactly where Orkney is,” I said. “All I know is that wherever it is, Trevor was glad to have left it.”

“Dull as dishwater is what he called it.”

“That doesn’t sound like Trevor.”

“Aye. Perhaps I edited it for your delicate ears. Boring as shite is what he said.”

“That sounds more like it. So where is Orkney?”

“Group of Scottish islands and too small a place for our Trevor. The thing is I told that fellow where to find Trevor. You don’t think…”

“That he killed Trevor? No, I don’t. He looked pretty harmless to me,” I said. “His name is Percy, right?”

“That’s not the name I recall. Arthur, that’s what it was.”

“Are you sure?” I said, but it was a stupid question. Like all good publicans, Rendall didn’t forget a name.

“I’m pretty sure it was Arthur. Do you think I should tell the police?”

“I don’t think it would help,” I said. “Singh, the policeman at the bar, didn’t believe there was anyone by the name of Percy at Trevor’s place, and if you tell him the name is Arthur, he’ll be really skeptical. But you decide. As far as I’m concerned, we never had this conversation.”

“What conversation?” he said. “You’re not worried he was asking who you are?”

“Not really. I’m just as suspicious of him as he is of me.”

“I told him you owned an antique shop down the street. He seemed to be satisfied by that.”

“Okay. It’s not a secret. You wouldn’t happen to know of a place called St. Margaret’s Hope, would you?”

“Indeed, I do. Lovely little town on South Ronaldsay. You should visit Orkney some time.”

“I just might do that,” I said.

My day ended as it began, at the police station with Singh. I arrived there at the same time that Betsy Baldwin, Blair’s ex-wife did. She, too, came to sign a statement and gave me a tight little smile. I’d always liked Betsy and was sorry when she and Blair parted. I didn’t think it looked good for Blair that she was there.

In what I can only describe as a stroke of bad luck, our exit from the station coincided with the arrival of Blair, handcuffed and surrounded by dozens of reporters and cameras. The media was all over this one, in all its gore. Through the chaos, though, Blair saw me. “This is your fault,” he hissed, as the crowd swept past. I noticed he hadn’t called me “babe.”

“I wonder how he knew about my statement,” Betsy sighed. “I didn’t want to give it, not that I had any choice. They knew.”

“Sorry?”

“He blames me for his being pulled in for questioning, but I don’t know how he’d know what I said,” she replied.

“I think he was blaming me,” I said. “He thinks I misled him on something.”

“I’m sure he meant me,” she said. “The police looked into his background and discovered I’d once called them about his violent behavior. He hit me, you know. More than once. That’s why I left him.”

“I had no idea,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s why he didn’t contest the divorce. I agreed to shut up about it, and he paid up big. Now, though, with the police all over this, I didn’t have much of a choice. He has such a temper. There were times when I was afraid he was going to kill me, and for sure he hurt me a lot. Now maybe he has killed someone. I think my statement will be rather damning. I’m sorry he blames me, though. I did love him. Still do.” I left it at that. I knew Blair had meant me, but it seemed a rather silly argument to have with her under the circumstances.

Chapter 3

Before I proceed with the tale, there are one or two facts you should know about Bjarni, germane to the subject at hand. First, Bjarni Haraldsson was a Viking. Please do not misunderstand me. Viking is not an ethnic term, despite the way we use it now. Some say it is derived from
vik,
the word for a “bay” or “cove.” I don’t agree. I believe it to be what we might call a job description. Ethnically, Bjarni was Norse. The word
Viking
refers to a specific activity, and that activity when you come right down to it was raiding. In other words, Vikings were pirates, and the term suited Bjarni and his friends rather well. Oh, they’d trade if it suited them. If not they just took what they needed. Every spring, when the weather was good and the sowing done, all able men headed out on raiding parties to see what they could find. Sometimes they went in autumn after the harvest as well. They had the fastest ships on the sea, light, with shallow drafts that allowed them to beach almost anywhere, and they were exceedingly adept sailors and fierce and skilled fighters. They came in fast, looted, burned, raped in increasingly violent attacks and then moved on. No wonder they were feared wherever they went. No wonder prayers rang out from pulpits across Europe asking that the faithful be saved from the Viking scourge.

The second salient point is that Bjarni was a pagan. While Earl Sigurd the Stout had converted to Christianity. Bjarni had not accepted the new faith. Wiser people than I have made the point that Christianity was not a natural fit for a Viking. Their code was different. Men fought together, raided together and their loyalty was to those with whom they fought, and to those who behaved in a way that merited it. Family was extraordinarily important. Blood ties were sacred for the Vikings. If you killed someone’s kin, the victim’s entire family was obliged, and to say nothing of inclined, to kill you. An eye for an eye was really the code of the Viking. Turning the other cheek wasn’t something a proud Viking was too likely to do, and the idea of the meek inheriting the earth would seem merely laughable. Still by Bjarni’s time, Christianity was being accepted all over the Viking world and under some duress in Orkney. Earl Sigurd converted only because Olaf Tryggvason, King of Norway, forced him to be baptized. It was either that or have his head cut off by Olaf. Sigurd had to promise that everyone on Orkney would be baptized. We don’t know whether Bjarni was baptized or not, but we do know that he clung obstinately to his belief in the old gods of northern Europe.

I suppose we would say now that Bjarni was something of a throwback, a relic of some earlier more violent time, when the earls of Orkney and their Norwegian kings dreamt of a Norse-Orcadian dominion throughout what is now the British Isles. Whether they knew it or not, those hopes died with Sigurd in Ireland at the Battle of Clontarf.

At the very least Bjarni was out of touch with his times. The world of a thousand years ago was rapidly changing. The Vikings were gradually settling down. For example, those in Northern France, the people we now know as Normans, were pretty firmly established. Other peoples were doing the same. The Magyars, those marauding horsemen who had terrorized much of Europe, were now settling peacefully in the area we know as Hungary. And monks, now finding it less necessary to protect their treasures from the heathen hordes, were flexing power, both spiritual and political. It was only in Britain that the Vikings still had the power to instill fear, and even there life was changing. While life on Orkney had for well over a hundred years been one last raid after another, and one battle after another, too, even Sigurd’s grandfather, the aptly named Thorfinn Skull-Splitter had managed to die of old age, rather than from his wounds. It was not just the old religion to which Bjarni clung, it was the old ways as well.

But to continue with his story: those sailing from Orkney usually waited for good conditions in the spring, but Bjarni was not in a position to time his exit to fair weather. He left in February, kissing his wife Frakokk and two sons good-bye, and promising to return. Neither he nor they had any idea what was in store for our Bjarni.

Three events of some significance occurred in rapid succession that night following the wake at the Stane. The first was that while I was dreaming about disembodied heads, Blair was officially charged with the murder of Trevor Wylie. The second was that sometime in the wee hours, perhaps while the police were congratulating themselves on a quick resolution to the murder, McClintoch & Swain suffered another break-in. So, as it turned out, did Scot Free, Trevor’s shop, an event that was to annoy Detective Singh no end.