The Trowie Mound Murders Read Online Free PDF Page A

Madge said, smiling.
    â€˜They’re up to something,’ Magnie stated, when Anders had returned, with the dreamy air of a man who’d seen a vision, and we were all safely ensconced in Khalida ’s much smaller cabin, with the candle in the lantern sending flickering shadows round the varnished wooden walls. She had a traditional layout, my little home, with a blue-cushioned seat along the starboard side, running from the wooden bulkhead forrard to the quarterberth aft, and the cooker, sink, and chart table on port. Past the bulkhead was the heads, which we didn’t use in the marina, with a hatch amidships, and a hanging locker opposite it, to starboard, and past that again, with a curtain for privacy, was the v-shaped forepeak berth where Anders and Rat slept. The settee was interrupted by a prop-legged table. Anders sat behind it, his fair head tilted against the bulkhead, with Rat balanced beside him on the wooden fiddle that kept our books in place at sea. Magnie sat opposite and I was on my usual place on the steps that doubled as the engine cover.
    â€˜You over-did the country bumpkin act a touch,’ I said. ‘No fisherman would be surprised by AIS, they’ve had it for years.’
    â€˜They didna ken I was a fisherman,’ Magnie said. ‘And,’ he repeated stubbornly, ‘they’re up to something. I doot they’re police.’
    â€˜Police?’ I echoed.
    Anders looked alarmed. ‘Why would the police be here?’
    â€˜Service. Something like that,’ Magnie insisted. I looked at him doubtfully. ‘That boat was just too fancy,’ he said, ‘and they just didna fit it. I dinna ken for south folk, of course, but there was something no’ right. She was over young to be old riggit.’
    I considered that one. ‘The apron?’
    â€˜What age would you say she was, now? Forty-five?’
    â€˜Around there,’ I agreed.
    â€˜Well, now, I’m no’ seen a pinny like that on a body under sixty, no’ for years, nor face-powder like that either. She was pretty spry too.’
    â€˜Forty-five’s not exactly rheumatism age,’ I said.
    â€˜She still moved like a younger body,’ Magnie insisted. ‘If you went by the way she pranced up and down that ladder wi’ a tray in her hands, well, you’d have guessed she was thirty.’
    â€˜Maybe she goes to the gym,’ I said.
    â€˜If she went to the gym she’d no’ have all that ply on her.’
    â€˜Yes,’ I agreed. ‘She was plump. They both were.’
    â€˜It was the robberies,’ Anders said suddenly. ‘Before that, they were just asking questions, the way people do, on boats. Below, too, the man kept talking about them.’
    â€˜Too many questions,’ I said.
    â€˜Not too many for passing in harbour,’ Anders said. ‘That is different. As crew on a ship, yes, it would be far too many, for people you will be living with for a month.’
    I nodded. Privacy was jealously guarded with seven of you in a forty-foot yacht.
    â€˜I thought that too,’ Magnie said. ‘Finding out whaur you grew up, Cass.’
    â€˜They were odd about Norway,’ I said, ‘as if they were checking up on you too.’
    â€˜But when David came to the robbery, he was watching you. He was suspicious, especially when you yawned.’
    â€˜I’ve been on the water all day,’ I protested. ‘Fresh air and all that.’
    â€˜If one of these head things has turned up in Faroe,’ Magnie said, ‘well, maybe they’re suspicious of private yachts that could go between Scotland and there.’
    I looked across at Anders, leaning back in his corner, with Rat drowsing under his chin, and the lantern casting amber shadows on his hair, then down at my own paint-stained jeans. ‘Do we look like people who’d know a Leonardo from a lighthouse?’
    â€˜We’d know the