Chapter 43
Jo had wakened as the early light found its way in through the sea-facing window of what she now considered Rhona MacLeod’s room.
She’d slept fitfully at first, imagining herself still battling the waves in her efforts to get the Angel back to shore. In this version of events, Ethan was nowhere to be seen, and she believed him already drowned.
Forcing herself awake, she’d sat up for a while hoping that anchoring herself in the here and now, with Ethan alive and well somewhere nearby, might soothe her obviously tortured brain.
Eventually this had worked and the latter part of the night had produced an easy sleep, until she’d eventually been met with the soft red light of dawn.
She’d come to fully when the message had pinged in from DI Flett.
It had been brief, merely instructing her to ask Magnus for a lift to Mackie’s house, because of an incident overnight in Kirkwall, and that Ivor’s diary was in the porch at Langwell.
Conscious that the incident in Kirkwall likely had something to do with the drugs operation, her thoughts had immediately gone to DS Gowan.
Had she been able to admit her knowledge of Gus, she might well have managed to confide in Erling regarding DS Gowan’s policing methods. Tell him that sending Gus out incognito would make him think he had the right to do anything he thought necessary to win, as he put it.
At this point in her thoughts, there was a soft knock at the door and Magnus’s voice told her that breakfast would be served in fifteen minutes.
Thanking him, she decided that asking for a lift to Mackie’s could wait until then. Also, should it be necessary for Magnus to tow Ethan back to Lyness, she could make her way up the hill to Mackie’s on foot. No doubt, Erling would send a car for her later to return her to Kirkwall.
The delicious scent of food met her as she headed downstairs and she found Ethan at the table with a mug of coffee and a large fry-up, already partially consumed. The broad smile he gave her made her think maybe the Angel had survived her adventure of the previous night.
‘The Angel’s okay?’ she checked.
‘She is. Hence my quick breakfast. With luck I might even make it to work on time. You sleep well?’
She nodded, without mentioning the fact that he’d apparently drowned at least twice in her dreams.
‘Good,’ he said with a smile aimed strictly at her.
Quickly breaking eye contact, Jo chose that moment to address Magnus, asking if he might give her a lift to Auld Mackie’s place as Erling had been called back to Kirkwall.
Reading her expression, Magnus said of course he’d be happy to, without asking what Erling’s swift return to duty was about.
‘Right, what would you like from the various food on offer?’ He gestured to the display of possibilities.
Jo, feeling suddenly very hungry, chose black pudding, haggis and a fried egg.
‘A toasted bannock to go with that?’ Magnus checked.
‘Definitely,’ she accepted with a grin.
When Ethan declared he was off, she offered her thanks and a goodbye, but didn’t follow the men out to the jetty. Ethan’s reaction to her this morning, and in truth during their time alone together, both on the Angel and on Cava, had unsettled her a little.
Ethan was a member of the public whereas she was a police officer, she reminded herself. They’d gone to Cava on a reconnaissance expedition approved by DI Flett. They had then informed the boss what they’d found there. Ethan Howie’s role in the investigation was now at an end.
She gave Mackie a call as soon as she felt he would be up and about, and the speed with which he answered suggested he was as keen as she was to begin deciphering his old friend’s jottings.
As they drew up outside Langwell, Jo thanked Magnus and said she’d walk along to Mackie’s from there, once she’d picked up the diary from the porch. ‘You can’t get a car up his drive anyway,’ she added.
‘You’re right about that,’ Magnus said. ‘Well, good luck deciphering Ivor’s writing. And I hope what it says proves useful when you do.’
She located the notebook easily enough, tucked in an evidence bag behind a coat stand, heavily festooned with waterproofs, and wellie boots below. No brollies, obviously, because such implements were a waste of time in windy Orkney, and also in her homeland of Caithness.
The breeze this morning was moderate to strong and, looking towards Hoy, she noted white horses on Scapa Flow, which made her think about Ethan again, heading back across to Lyness on the Angel Heart.
Casting such thoughts from her mind, she set off along the road to Mackie’s house.
Giving a shout at the open porch door as before, she was rewarded by a call to ‘Come away in, lass’ and found Mackie seated in his big armchair in front of the fire with a small table strategically placed before him.
His eyes lit up as she showed him the evidence bag, explaining that they would need to wear gloves to examine the diary. Looking mightily pleased as he donned his ‘crime scene’ gloves, as he called them, Mackie accepted the battered notebook with a reverent air.
‘How do you want me to do this?’ he said, adjusting his glasses.
‘Take a look at the first page and see if, by scanning the text, it seems legible to you,’ Jo suggested.
She waited while he did as she’d said, watching his expression move from initially keen, then perplexed, to a little hopeful. Finally, with a nod, she heard him mutter, ‘Aye, ah mind this writing fine.’
‘So what does the first entry say?’ she tried.
‘It’s about Stella. See the fancy capital S?
’ He pointed to the first word in the tightly written script.
‘He’s remembering when he first saw her: Stella came to the door and spoke to mither about milk.
I was sent to the byre to fetch her some.
She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my whole life. ’
He repeated this, pointing to each of the words in turn as Jo tried to match what looked like a scribble with Mackie’s interpretation.
And so it began. Mackie examining each entry, interpreting it for Jo, who then wrote it on her tablet.
It became apparent that the entries were dated according to when Ivor remembered them.
Although the first entry was about Stella, they didn’t encounter another entry for her until much later in the journal, detailing his jealousy at Stella getting up with brother Billy at a dance in the village hall.
In between were other memories – an entry for the birth of each of Ivor’s sons, later entries for each of his grandchildren.
Then a whole section on Betty, his obvious favourite.
His thoughts when she’d left suddenly and never returned.
The words were sparse, but there was no doubt as to the depth of his sorrow.
Noting Mackie’s own reaction to this, Jo halted him there and offered to make the old man a cup of tea.
‘Aye, lass. That would be good. Yvanna left things set out for us in the kitchen.’
Making her way there, Jo experienced again what felt like a time warp.
She’d grown used to the sitting room with its peat fire, patterned wallpaper and flagstoned floor.
Entering the kitchen, she had the distinct feeling that Mackie, who had never married, had lived in this house since birth and never changed what he’d known as a boy even into old age.
There was a floral tray set out ready for them, two mugs, a big teapot, a sugar bowl and a biscuit tin, with a note about the milk being in the fridge and that Mackie liked his tea strong.
Glad to find there was an electric kettle, Jo set about following Yvanna’s instructions to the letter.
After which she carried the tray in to set it down on a nearby table.
‘I’m at the bit where he found Kris,’ Mackie looked up from the journal to tell her.
‘Or Kris found him. Ivor got a letter to his home in Hoy from Betty’s boy, he says.
He wrote back and Kris called him on the phone and told him Betty had died when he was nine years old.
Kris gave him his phone number after which they talked together often, but Ivor didn’t tell Hugh or anyone else about it.
Not until he went into the care home, where he confided in Cathy and Elspeth about his great-grandson. ’
‘Have you spotted anything about Kris’s father?’ Jo said as she poured Mackie a mug of strong tea.
The look Mackie threw her was one of dismay and anger. ‘I have. It’s at the end. On the last page. He says he knows who the bastard is.’
Jo set her mug down, her stomach suddenly churning.
‘Did he say who?’
Mackie handed her the journal, opened at the last page. ‘See for yourself.’
There was only one sentence, and it took a moment for Jo to decipher the letters and put them together.
‘Harald?’ she said tentatively.
‘Aye, Harald.’ Mackie’s disgust was obvious. ‘Ivor believed that his middle son, Harald, was Kris’s father.’