Page 1 of The High Island

The walk from the ferry had been worth it, she decided, looking out towards the small island they called Cava, a name she’d only associated until now with partying with her pals.

When Kris had suggested they go to Orkney for a few days, she’d immediately agreed, because up to that point he’d spoken only rarely of where his family had come from. Plus any questions she posed as to why his mum had left Orkney had resulted in a shrug and a dismissive smile.

No matter, she thought,I’m here now.

Looking down, Lyrawa Bay appeared almost magical, with its blue water rippling over golden sand. Taking a photograph, she immediately knew that this moment, the light and those colours could never be recaptured, except perhaps in her imagination.

The rolling fields of the other islands she could see from her vantage point were all spring green, including the largest one, which Kris called Mainland. Not so the northern part of Hoy, where she stood. The highest and least fertile island in the seventy-strong archipelago, this part was mostly rock, peat and heather with a thin strip of green along the shoreline facing Scapa Flow.

Crossing this morning on the ferry from Houton, she’d imagined Hoy as a dark, brooding giant moodily observing her approach. Especially now that she knew Hoy was Kris’s home island.

Turning from the bay, she set off up the hill behind, which led, the guidebook said, to the grave of Betty Corrigall. In 1770 Betty had had a brief romance with a whaler. Sadly, when she told him she was pregnant, he’d deserted her, never to be seen again. Distraught and cast out by her community, Betty had hanged herself.

Laid to rest in an unmarked grave on the peaty hillside, her remains, preserved in her wooden coffin, had been first discovered in the 1930s by peat workers. Reburied, she’d been unearthed again bySecond World War soldiers stationed on the island, who’d called her the Lady of Hoy.

Becoming something of a folk hero, with songs written about her, Betty had eventually been given a proper burial on the hill above Lyrawa Bay.

As the white headstone and picket fence came into sight, Rachael registered that her upbeat mood, when looking down on the golden sands and blue water, had dissipated, replaced by what felt like an ominous shadow.

Shaken by this, she found herself barely able to glance at the words on the grave, ‘Here lies Betty Corrigall’, before she turned to hurry back the way she had come as the earlier expanse of blue sky was replaced by scudding grey clouds and the sharp touch of rain.

It was at this point she spotted activity on the hill below, next to what looked like the ruins of a stone building. A red digger had appeared and was now working there.

Pausing for a moment to watch, she remembered that Kris had said the old Mowat house stood above Lyrawa Bay. Might that be the remains of his family’s original home?

If so, something was definitely going on there. Deciding on impulse, she took some photos with her mobile, intent on showing them to Kris later when they met up after the funeral he hadn’t wanted her to attend.

1

DIErling Flett wasn’t surprised to discover St Magnus Cathedral full of folk here to lay Hoy veteran Ivor Mowat to rest. Born in 1929, Ivor had been just ten years old when theRoyal Oakhad been torpedoed by a German submarine in Scapa Flow and had seen it go down. Across Scapa on Mainland Orkney, Erling’s grandfather Sandy had watched it too.

Sandy and Ivor had been best pals, despite the stretch of water between them, spending most weekends on each other’s family farms.

‘They were like twins, separated at birth,’ Erling’s father, Tommy, had once told him. ‘Although they resembled one another not at all, apart from a fierce love of the water and boats. My father built his own boat and used it to cross back and forth to Lyrawa Bay to see Ivor. Until he met my mother, that is. She feared the water and feared for him when he went out on it. So your grandfather gave up the boat and took the ferry to please her.’

Sitting beside his father now, Erling could hear his grandfather Sandy’s voice clearly in his head, telling stories of his youth when he and Ivor would camp out near the Nissen hut sites on Hoy.

This stream of memories was now interrupted by his father’s voice, saying in an undertone, ‘The Mowats are all here and that doesn’t bode well.’

Erling glanced at his father’s worried face. ‘Bode well for what?’ he said.

‘The wake at the Kirkwall Hotel,’ Tommy said. ‘Are you going?’

‘I wasn’t planning to,’ Erling told him. ‘I need to get back to work.’

‘If you’re seen to be there, it might prevent a fight,’ Tommy said as the congregation rose to sing the final hymn. ‘But tempers are running high at Lyrawa.’

‘About what?’ Erling said under his breath.

At this his father gave him a look he remembered well. ‘I can’t imagine how you, a detective inspector, don’t know about the land feud on Hoy, not to mention that eco-house being built on the old Mowat croft above the bay.’

Before Erling could respond to this, the voices around him rose in a loud rendition of ‘Abide with Me’ as the coffin was lifted and carried up the aisle by six brawny male members of the family.

‘That’s Hugh and Albert, the two eldest, in front, then Harald and Cameron,’ Tommy said quietly. ‘The final two I assume are younger members of the family.’

As the faces passed him by, Erling tried to gauge the mood of the pall-bearers, noting what he thought were thunderous looks being traded across the coffin and also in the direction of a young male a couple of rows behind.

‘I told you,’ Tommy whispered beside him.