The Orkney Scroll (17 page)

I believed them, not that it helped much. Somehow, de spite the fact he’d lied about his name, and had not been very forthcoming on any subject of interest to me, I’d come to regard him as, if not a friend exactly, someone I was fond of in a rather peculiar way. It’s not everybody who can make a tour of the Neolithic interesting, even for somebody like me, who is inclined to like just about anything about the ancient past. When I’d seen the old house with the man in the wheelchair, I’d really hoped I would find Percy before I left so I could tell him about it. I wasn’t sure what he meant by The Wasteland, the maze, the wounded king, but if he thought salvation lay there, then I wanted to make sure he’d seen what I had.

Everyone was, of course, exceptionally nice to me. My jacket had been splattered with blood, and carried the bloody imprint of Percy’s fingers on the sleeve. The soles of my shoes were caked in both mud and blood. I kept telling everyone I was fine, but I couldn’t stop shivering. I could not understand why they kept the station so cold. They plied me with enough sweet tea to float an ocean liner, but it didn’t help much. They even sent a squad car to Mrs. Brown’s guest house to pick up some clean clothes to replace the ones they had to take as evidence. I have no idea what Mrs. Brown thought of this at the time, but she was more than solicitous later. The police told me I might
get
my clothes back but it wouldn’t be for a while. I said I never wanted to see them again.

I was asked to tell my story of how I’d found him over and over again. I did the best I could. I told them he’d been alive when I got there, and that when I’d gone over to try to help him, he’d grabbed my arm. They asked me if he’d said anything, and I said he had, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what it was. They asked me if I thought he’d named his killer. I said I didn’t think so, that while I couldn’t recall what he’d said, I did remember that I’d thought it was gibberish at the time. They told me to take my time, that it might come back to me, and if and when it did, I was to call.

Various people came and went while I sat there, sipping tea. The couple who had answered their door came in to give and sign a statement. Other than this strange woman splattered with blood yelling and pounding on their door, they had seen and heard nothing. Nobody, when it came right down to it, had seen or heard anything.

They asked me if I knew the victim. I had told them I’d given him a lift a couple of days before when we’d both been visiting Historic Scotland sites, when he’d fallen off his bike and damaged it. I tried to be as honest as possible. I am, after all, virtually living with a policeman. I told them that while we’d spent some time together, I hadn’t known his name. The last part, clearly, was true. I somewhat reluctantly told them that he’d said his nickname was Percy, a little editorializing there on my part, as the word nickname had never come into it, and they solemnly wrote that down. When they asked me why I’d stopped to offer him a lift, I said he looked familiar to me, like someone I knew from home. He wasn’t from home, however. He lived with his mother in an old house in Kirkwall, I was to learn soon enough. They told me they would have to keep my rental car.

While I waited, a never-empty mug of tea in hand, a rather plain woman, sixtyish, in a drab and rather worn brown coat and matching hat, came in. She looked just like Percy, only about twenty-five years older. She had
to
be his mother. She had a handkerchief balled up in one hand and kept dabbing her eyes with it. She had a runny nose and didn’t seem to notice. For a while we sat in the same room, under the watchful eye of a rather stern policewoman.

“My boy has had an accident,” she said after a few minutes of rummaging about in her handbag for another handkerchief.

“I’m so sorry,” I replied.

“He must have fallen off his bicycle and hit his head. I’m sure he’ll be feeling better in the morning.” I believe I winced slightly because the policewoman coughed and then almost imperceptibly shook her head.

“The police have some other idea entirely about what happened to him, but they can’t be right. There has been some mistake. He was always off riding his bicycle. He quit his job, you know. I don’t know why. He was a dreamer, my boy was. Some woman found him.”

I said nothing for a moment. Was it a good idea to tell her I was the one who found him?

“I hope he didn’t suffer,” she said, sniffing. “I hate to think he was in pain.”

I took a deep breath. “I am the person who found him. He didn’t suffer at all.” She got out of her chair and rushed over to grab my arm. Her grip reminded me all too well of Percy’s dying grasp. “Promise me he wasn’t in pain,” she said. “Please.”

“I promise,” I said.

“Did he say anything?”

“I’m sorry I can’t remember.”

“He was a good boy. Odd, but good.”

“That’s exactly the way I think of him,” I said, as the policewoman gently pulled her away from me, and actually gave me a wan smile. She was much nicer looking when she smiled. I found myself thinking of Percy after this exchange with his mother, how he’d tripped over the merchandise in Trevor’s store, the way he always seemed to use bicycle clips whether he needed them or not, and his glasses askew. I thought about how enthused he was about the ancient sites we were visiting together, actually showing some personality as he pointed everything out, despite looking rather rumpled and dirty from his bike accident. Most of all I thought of his salute as he left me in Kirkwall, broken bicycle in his arms, his sleeve torn, his glasses, now held with one of my safety pins, even more crooked than before.

“Glasses,” I said aloud. “We have to find his glasses.” The policewoman now came over to sit with me, obviously thinking I was in as bad shape as Percy’s mother, which in retrospect maybe I was. Not as bad as a mother perhaps, but certainly right up there in the out-of-it category. “He’d lost his glasses.”

“Glasses?” she said.

“Spectacles,” I said. “Whatever you call them here. He wasn’t wearing his glasses when I found him. I lent him a safety pin to hold them together.”

“I’m sure he appreciated it,” she said, patting my hand.

I thought about that, slowly and carefully through the fog in my brain, and realized finally that she thought when I found him dying I’d fixed his glasses. “I mean when he fell off his bike the other day. He broke the arm of his glasses. He couldn’t see without them. I gave him a safety pin to hold them together until he got home.”

She looked at me for a minute, then went into the other room. I hoped it was to tell them about the glasses, because I had this idea that when I was feeling better, I would think this was significant, the fact they weren’t there, that is. A couple of minutes later, she came out, sat down with Percy’s mum and asked her if her son wore glasses.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I hope he hasn’t lost those. He’s always breaking them. I think we have a spare pair at home, though, that he can wear until his good ones turn up.” The policewoman patted her hand, gave me a significant look, a nod, really, as if to acknowledge she now understood what I was saying, and went back to standing at her post. At this point a clergyman arrived, and immediately went to sit with Percy’s mum. She seemed to alternate between knowing her son was dead, and thinking he’d be fine soon, but I think reality was starting to sink in. She cried and cried, and the clergyman patted her arm and murmured comforting thoughts, I’m sure, although I couldn’t hear them. A few minutes later he came over to talk to me. He took my hand in his. “Your hands are like ice,” he said.

“Yes, I don’t know why they don’t put the heat on here,” I said. “At the guest house I’m staying in, it’s always nice and warm.”

“You are very pale,” he added.
Of course I’m pale. I’m always pale. That’s the way I was born.
I know that when I’m not feeling well, which would be now, and when I don’t have any makeup on, which was also probably now, given the rather rudimentary dusting I’d given myself that morning, I scare people. I have always considered that to be their problem, not mine. However, I was sure if they turned on some heat, I’d look and feel better. Instead they called a doctor. He recommended more hot tea with lots of sugar. No alcohol. That was too bad, because I was looking forward to some of Mrs. Brown’s scotch.

The policewoman came over to ask me to go back to talk to the policeman in charge of the investigation. I believe she said his name was Cusiter, although she made it sound as if it had an extra
r
in it, after the
u.
I was having trouble concentrating. As I left I heard the clergyman ask Percy’s mum if there was someone who could come and stay with her that night. “I’ll be all right,” she replied. “My boy will be home soon.”

“Perhaps someone else,” the man said patiently.

“Perhaps my neighbors in St. Margaret’s Hope,” she said. “The Millers.”

“You remember now, Emily, that you moved to Kirkwall when your husband died ten years ago.”

There was a pause. “Yes,” she said. “That’s right. Magnus and I moved to Kirkwall. Magnus will come and get me.” I thought if I could feel anything at all, other than cold, I would find this very sad.

The police may have been very courteous, but they weren’t for letting me take the flight out of Orkney I was booked on. I was asked to remain there until the forensics team arrived from Aberdeen, headquarters of the Northern Constabulary, and had had a chance to do whatever they do. Such expertise, it was explained to me, would have to come outwith Orkney. “Outwith” was not a word I was familiar with, but it sounded rather nice. I told them about Rob, which softened them up considerably, and that I knew that staying as long as necessary was the right thing to do.

Percy’s mum was leaving just about the time I was told someone would drive me to Stromness. A neighbor from Kirkwall had come to take her home. I didn’t ask her about Percy’s granny and her furniture, because I didn’t think of it, and even if I had her grip on reality still seemed a little tenuous, and furthermore it would hardly have been the appropriate time. I’ve wondered since, though, whether it would have made a difference. I suppose had Percy been alive he would have told me it was one of the questions I was supposed to ask.

Detective Cusiter, if that was what his name was, had been good enough to have someone phone the car rental company to explain my situation, and they in turn were nice enough to deliver another car to Mrs. Brown’s place in Stromness shortly after I got there. The man who delivered the car apologized profusely for my inconvenience, which was an unusual word under the circumstances. “Please be assured that you will not be charged for the second car. We are terribly sorry for your loss.” My loss? Loss of the car? Loss of a friend? Loss of my seat on the plane? I told him that was exceptionally decent of the rental agency, and really it was. Everybody was so nice here.

The other residents of the B&B were equally aghast and sympathetic. “Travelers,” one man opined. “No one from Orkney would do such a thing. In the good weather, they come in on the ferry, do their nefarious business, and then take off on the next boat. They’ll never find them.”

“Travelers?” I said.

“You know, gypsies, other criminal elements.”

I thought that was rather unfair, but what did I know? I needed a scotch, and I didn’t care what that doctor said. What I also wanted was for everyone to stop being so nice. I wanted them to take to the streets to protest what had happened to Percy. I wanted them to unleash that Viking blood they kept telling me flowed in their veins, to hunt down the killer, take justice into their own hands, and tear this terrible person to pieces. That’s what I wanted them to do, because I myself was too tired and too cold to do it. I had a large scotch, despite doctor’s orders, left a voice mail for Rob telling him I wouldn’t be home immediately and why, then went straight to bed, and enjoyed a dreamless sleep that left me even more tired than I’d been when I lay down. I still couldn’t remember what Percy had said to me.

The next day, after Mrs. Brown plied me with bacon and eggs and some rather lovely brown bread in the notion that it would help, which indeed it did, I undertook a self-guided tour of the Neolithic in Percy’s honor. I really just wanted to stay in bed, but I had a feeling that if I did so, I’d never get up again. I crawled on all fours or slithered into every chamber cairn I could find. I climbed up Wideford Hill, and down into Wideford Cairn, then Unstan, Cuween, Grain, Mine Howe; any tomb or earth house or whatever I came across, I entered. They were all rather interesting, from the outside just grassy mounds, but with stone entrances, and inside stone chambers, often more than one. I could almost hear Percy telling me about them. I hoped I’d done him proud. I went to a place called the Brough of Birsay which held the remains of a Viking church and homes. It wasn’t old enough for Percy to have recommended it, but the sun was shining as I walked across the causeway usable only at low tide to see the place, and from the vantage point of lighthouse high atop the hill, I looked down a coast of spectacular cliffs disappearing into the mist, and across water that would have stretched without interruption back to my home country. I decided Orkney might have the biggest sky I had seen in a very long time, bigger perhaps than the prairies of home. It was very, very beautiful, breathtakingly so.