Read Online Red Bones (Shetland Quartet 3) by Ann Cleeves - Free Book Online Page A

fifteenth-century Shetland, when the islands were still culturally closer to Norway than to Scotland and Whalsay’s loyalties were to the other Hanseatic ports, to Lubeck and Hamburg rather than Edinburgh or London. She saw the sailing ships arriving into Symbister and her husband, the merchant, counting out gold coins to pay his men for the goods he was importing from Europe, and the money he was paying the islanders for their salt fish and dried mutton. In her daydreams it was spring, but the sun was shining and the island was green.
    Did the skull Evelyn had found belong to the merchant or to his wife? They were starting to find more bones in the second trench and perhaps they already had enough evidence to know. There were times in the early morning, as the damp penetrated her body, when she thought the dreams were driving her mad. And it’s not just me , she thought. The dig’s getting to Mima too . Their last conversation had been pretty weird.
    At seven o’clock she began to get dressed, still sitting in her sleeping bag, pulling on the layers of clothes she would need to stay comfortable during the day. On top of the T-shirts she wore the hand-knitted sweater Evelyn had made for her birthday.
    The Bod was one of a string of bothies spread across the islands, places for backpackers to stay. This was an old croft house and it just contained four beds, a table and a camping stove. There was a shelf with some pans, cutlery and crockery, an open peat fire. The Bod had one cold tap and they had baths and washed their clothes at Mima’s house, or more often at Evelyn’s. Evelyn was almost as passionate about the project as Hattie, and often invited them to Utra for dinner. She mothered them. Hattie thought she had her eye on Sophie as a potential daughter-in-law. Sophie was easygoing and pleasant, she ate everything Evelyn put in front of her and she laughed at Sandy’s jokes. Hattie knew Sophie would never marry Sandy – she had wealthy parents and ambitions of her own, which didn’t include being a policeman’s wife in Lerwick – but she might have sex with him for her own amusement. That was the way Sophie was.
    Sophie didn’t wake until Hattie had lit the camping stove and made coffee. Then she stretched extravagantly, blinking in the light of the Tilley lamp. Hattie watched her through the open bedroom door. Sophie always slept naked and now sat quite comfortably, apparently not feeling the cold at all, with her breasts exposed, her long tawny hair falling around her shoulders. Hattie envied her. I was never that comfortable with my body , she thought, not even as a child . Why would any man want to sleep with me ? Sophie, her legs still encased by the sleeping bag, looked like a mermaid or the figurehead of one of the sailing ships that in Hattie’s imagination had brought goods to trade with her merchant husband.
    Hattie would have liked to ask who was in the Pier House the night before. Who did you stay up drinking with? But as usual the words stayed inside her head.
    ‘Is there anything for breakfast?’ Sophie asked. ‘I’m starving.’
    Sophie was always starving. She ate like a horse without putting on weight. A natural athlete, she loped across the island at a pace that left Hattie breathless and panting, and she could work all day without seeming to get tired. Recently she’d been recruited by Anna to take her place in the Whalsay women’s rowing team. Hattie had watched her practising with the group, bending and pulling on the oars, collapsing in laughter at the end of the session. Why can’t I be like that? Hattie thought now. I’m scared of the world and I always have been. I can’t blame Paul Berglund for that. The image of her supervisor slid into her brain, filled it with his size and his strength. She felt a return of the old panic and forced herself to breathe slowly, to retreat to her dreams of the merchant house and her island lover.
    ‘I’m starving,’ Sophie