Read Online The Trowie Mound Murders by Marsali Taylor - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Marsali Taylor
Ads: Link
sheâd been brought up here, and I had a vague feeling her mother had been alive and living here too. Anyway, Barbara had lived here with Brian until heâd come to school, then sheâd been offered a council house, because she couldnât bring him to school by boat every day, and it was too far for a five-year-old to walk to the end of the track for the school bus. Brian had been â let me see, two, no, three years older than me. When heâd been in primary seven Iâd been in primary four.
Theyâd come back here in the holidays. I remembered that. It had been after school went back at the end of summer that Brian had come in boasting about the skulls heâd found in the trowie mound, and trying to scare us by thrusting the open-mouthed carrier bag at us. The grandmother had died twelve years ago, just before Iâd left Shetland, in one of the rash of cancers that had afflicted people in Shetland after the first Gulf War, when the wind blew low-grade radiation to us.
Twelve years. I paused and looked down at the house. It still had the traditional tarred roof, black and sticky, needing yearly re-painting, and this one certainly hadnât been left for that long. Brian must be keeping the house up. There would probably be grants from the SIC for re-using an old house site, rather than opening up a new one. Maybe he planned to move back. I tried to think what had happened to him. An electrician was my impression, working south, on the Scottish mainland. Magnie would know.
I was almost at the top of the hill above it, the Hill of Heodale, rather out of breath, and with the grass-covered walls of the trowie mound looming imposingly above me, when I found a dead kitten. I took it to be a baby black rabbit at first, too visible for its own good, then my brain registered the blunt ears and stubby tail. It lay in a hollow of heather, white paws spread in mute protest. A feral one, I supposed, that had strayed from the rest of the litter and been caught by a black-back gull. They were vicious birds. Fifty metres further, I spotted a second one. Perhaps the mother cat had been killed, and hunger had driven them from the nest. They had to be very young, for neither was bigger than my hand. Poor peerie things.
I climbed the last ten metres to the platform and leaned back against the trowie mound to look around. The sun was still warm on my face, and glittered gold on the water. To the west was the sweep of open sea, with Papa Stour crouched just short of the marmalade horizon, and the faint smudge of white that was the Ve skerries, where, in 1930, the men of the trawler Ben Doran had waited, tied in their rigging, for the help that couldnât reach them across two hundred metres of rock-toothed sea. To the north was the hunch of Ronas Hill, made red by the granite gravel and boulders of its wind-blasted arctic tundra. To the south was my own island of Muckle Roe, and behind it stretched the long spine of the Kames, three lines of hills separated by slices of sea. Continue those, and youâd reach Scotlandâs Great Glen. To the east were the green hills to the north of Brae. The old ones would be able to bless all their world.
There was nothing moving on the green of hill, blue of sea, seaweed-rust of shore. There were no red sailing jackets marching up a slope or lying ominously still at the foot of a bank. I stood up and did a long, careful sweep with my spy glasses. No sign.
I leaned back on the trowie mound, biting my lip. Reasons for reassurance: Peter and Sandra Wearmouth were extremely capable adults, and well used to walking rough terrain. They could easily have decided to stay a night ashore. They were on holiday up here, after all, and could please themselves. Their cat could have been left double-rations and a litter tray. All the same âÂ
All the same, the sea wasnât a safe habitat, and every sensible skipper made a plan before setting out. That plan included a
Theyâd come back here in the holidays. I remembered that. It had been after school went back at the end of summer that Brian had come in boasting about the skulls heâd found in the trowie mound, and trying to scare us by thrusting the open-mouthed carrier bag at us. The grandmother had died twelve years ago, just before Iâd left Shetland, in one of the rash of cancers that had afflicted people in Shetland after the first Gulf War, when the wind blew low-grade radiation to us.
Twelve years. I paused and looked down at the house. It still had the traditional tarred roof, black and sticky, needing yearly re-painting, and this one certainly hadnât been left for that long. Brian must be keeping the house up. There would probably be grants from the SIC for re-using an old house site, rather than opening up a new one. Maybe he planned to move back. I tried to think what had happened to him. An electrician was my impression, working south, on the Scottish mainland. Magnie would know.
I was almost at the top of the hill above it, the Hill of Heodale, rather out of breath, and with the grass-covered walls of the trowie mound looming imposingly above me, when I found a dead kitten. I took it to be a baby black rabbit at first, too visible for its own good, then my brain registered the blunt ears and stubby tail. It lay in a hollow of heather, white paws spread in mute protest. A feral one, I supposed, that had strayed from the rest of the litter and been caught by a black-back gull. They were vicious birds. Fifty metres further, I spotted a second one. Perhaps the mother cat had been killed, and hunger had driven them from the nest. They had to be very young, for neither was bigger than my hand. Poor peerie things.
I climbed the last ten metres to the platform and leaned back against the trowie mound to look around. The sun was still warm on my face, and glittered gold on the water. To the west was the sweep of open sea, with Papa Stour crouched just short of the marmalade horizon, and the faint smudge of white that was the Ve skerries, where, in 1930, the men of the trawler Ben Doran had waited, tied in their rigging, for the help that couldnât reach them across two hundred metres of rock-toothed sea. To the north was the hunch of Ronas Hill, made red by the granite gravel and boulders of its wind-blasted arctic tundra. To the south was my own island of Muckle Roe, and behind it stretched the long spine of the Kames, three lines of hills separated by slices of sea. Continue those, and youâd reach Scotlandâs Great Glen. To the east were the green hills to the north of Brae. The old ones would be able to bless all their world.
There was nothing moving on the green of hill, blue of sea, seaweed-rust of shore. There were no red sailing jackets marching up a slope or lying ominously still at the foot of a bank. I stood up and did a long, careful sweep with my spy glasses. No sign.
I leaned back on the trowie mound, biting my lip. Reasons for reassurance: Peter and Sandra Wearmouth were extremely capable adults, and well used to walking rough terrain. They could easily have decided to stay a night ashore. They were on holiday up here, after all, and could please themselves. Their cat could have been left double-rations and a litter tray. All the same âÂ
All the same, the sea wasnât a safe habitat, and every sensible skipper made a plan before setting out. That plan included a
Similar Books
