Red Bones - Ann Cleeves [27]
Perez nodded. He’d been brought up on stories of trows too, small malevolent creatures who lived in the islands and ruled their kingdom with magic and decorated their houses with glittering jewels and gold.
Hattie continued: ‘Everyone assumed that it was a croft that had gone out of use before the first Ordnance Survey map. They thought perhaps the present house developed from it. Or that the remains composed some sort of outbuilding. Then I came to Shetland on a working holiday with Sally Walker, one of my lecturers. We took a closer look at the Setter site and thought the house looked more substantial than had been assumed. I was looking for a postgraduate project and it seemed perfect. Sophie’s taking a year out after graduating and agreed to come and help. Sally left on maternity leave and didn’t feel she could continue to supervise me.’
The words came out in a rush. Nerves? Perez wondered. Or is it just passion for her subject? ‘And now Paul Berglund’s in charge?’
‘He’s my supervisor. Yes.’
She doesn’t like the man, Perez thought. Then he saw her face freeze again. No, he thought with surprise. It’s more than that. She’s scared of him.
‘And what have you found?’
‘Well, we’ve still got a long way to go, of course, but we did a geophysical survey and there certainly seems quite a grand building on that site. The excavation we did last season bears that out. I think it could be a merchant’s house. We know that Whalsay was an important trading point within the Hanseatic League. That was a community of ports around the North Sea, a sort of medieval EU. The mystery is that there’s no record of the house, or of the man who lived there. It’s frustrating. It would be wonderful to put a name to the man who built it. We’ve just got a couple of months left here to see if there’s enough evidence to justify funding for a full-scale dig. I suppose the bones might tell us something. They’ve gone for carbon dating, but I’m assuming they’re fifteenth-century. There’s nothing in the context to suggest otherwise.’
‘Sandy told me about the skull.’
‘We found it in a trench outside the walls of the house. We ’ve found other bones there too, presumably from the same individual. It’s strange because you’d expect a body to be buried in a graveyard at that period. I’ve spoken to people at the university. They say it might be the body of a drowned man washed up on the shore. Strangers didn’t always get a proper burial: the superstition was that drowned men belonged to the sea. But Setter’s quite a distance from the shore, and that doesn’t really make sense to me. I’d like to think we’ve found my merchant.’ She looked up at him. ‘I hope we can go on with the work tomorrow. Time’s already running out.’
He didn’t answer directly. ‘Who’s testing the bones?’
‘Val Turner, the Shetland archaeologist, came in when we realized what we’d found. She’s sorted them out, sent them to the lab in Glasgow to date them.’
He supposed it was a coincidence. Two deaths in one place, separated by hundreds of years. Corpses growing from the same garden. Places couldn’t be unlucky, could they? ‘How was Mima when you were with her yesterday?’
‘She seemed in fine form. Didn’t she, Evelyn?’
‘Oh aye. Just the same as usual.’ Evelyn reached across the table and poured more tea.
‘She didn’t object to you digging up her land?’ Perez asked. There wouldn’t be many Shetland landowners who’d be glad of that intrusion.
‘Not at all,’ Hattie said. ‘She was really interested. And interesting. She said when she was growing up in Whalsay there’d been a legend about a big house that had once been at Lindby, built by the son of a fisherman. It’s the sort of folk tale that might have its root in reality.’
‘Aye well.’ Evelyn stood up briskly. ‘You don’t want to believe everything Mima told you. She was a great one for stories. She might have remembered a few snatches