My clinic on Yell overran and there was a queue for the return ferry. When I finally arrived home, several hours later, Dana Tulloch's sports car was parked in my yard. I'd totally forgotten she was coming. I glanced at my watch. If she'd been on time, I'd kept her waiting for nearly three hours. Damn! After rudeness of that magnitude, I was going to have to be nice. I got out of the car just as she climbed out of hers.
'I'm so sorry,' I said, 'I should have phoned. Have you been here all this time?'
'Course not,' she said. 'When you didn't arrive at six I started making phone calls. I came back about ten minutes ago.'
I was starving and desperate for a coffee but didn't think I could keep her waiting any longer. She followed me inside and we went straight to the cellar, accessed via eight stone steps leading down from the kitchen.
'Good lord,' she said, as we reached the bottom and I turned on the solitary and completely inadequate light bulb. 'You'd never dream all this was beneath your house, would you?' She pulled a torch out of her bag and walked forward, shining it all around.
Our cellar is probably the single most interesting feature of our property. It's older than the house, for a start. In places it shows the remains of fire damage so we can only surmise that the original house was destroyed some time ago. It's also much larger than the house, indicating the previous building to have been considerably grander than our own. Divided into low rooms, accessible by stone archways, it looks like a smaller version of the cavernous wine cellars you see beneath French chateaux. I led Dana into the biggest room and stopped just in front of the north-facing wall.
'A fireplace?' she said. 'In a cellar?'
It had puzzled us too, but there it was. A fully functional fireplace with stone grate and chimney flue leading up to our chimney stack on the roof. A stone lintel had been fixed into the wall above the hearth and it was on this that the runes had been carved. Five symbols. None of which I recognized.
'All different,' she said, more to herself than to me. With a small digital camera she took several photographs.
'Did you phone my father-in-law?' I asked.
She shook her head. 'Haven't needed to yet,' she replied. 'Found a book.'
She finished her photographs and looked towards the stone arch- way that led to the rest of the cellars.
'Mind if I look around?' she asked.
'Be my guest,' I said. 'Mind if I go and get something to eat?'
She shook her head and turned away. I made for the steps. On the second one, I called after her.
'Oh, Sergeant, if you find anything… organic, don't tell me about it tonight. I'm all done in!'
She didn't reply. I already suspected she found me childish.
When she appeared ten minutes later, I was tucking into a micro- waved portion of pasta with cream and ham. I pointed to the chair opposite mine. 'I made you a cup of tea.' Guessing she hadn't eaten either, I'd put some local shortbread on the table. I wanted her to tell me about the runes.
She glanced at the biscuits, then at her watch; looked uncertain for a second and then sat down. She picked up the tea, cradling it with one hand, and then gulped down a piece of shortbread in two bites. I continued eating, silently. The tactics worked; she spoke first.
'What do you know about the history of this property?'
I shrugged. 'Very little. My husband handled the purchase. I really wasn't that interested.'
'When does he get home?'
I shrugged again. 'I never really know these days.'
Her face clouded over.
'We can phone him,' I added, in a belated attempt to seem helpful.
She shook her head. 'I'd like to bring a team down here tomorrow, though. It can't be coincidence that similar runes appear both in your house and on a body found on your property.'
'Guess not,' I agreed, not sure where she was going but definitely not liking the implications. 'You mean she was probably killed in the house? Maybe the cellar?'
Now it was her turn to shrug. 'We do need to find out who owned this house before you.'
'I thought Duncan brought the deeds over to the station this morning.'
'He did. But they don't tell us much. Some sort of church or religious building used to be here but it was derelict for years before it was demolished to make way for this house. There were trustees named on the document but, so far, most of them seem to be dead.'
'Dead?'
She shook her head. 'Old age, nothing significant.'
I finished my supper. I was no longer starving but hardly satisfied; it hadn't exactly been a relaxing meal. I stood up and took the plate and cutlery to the dishwasher.
'So what about the runes?' I asked.
She looked at me, bit on another piece of shortbread, seemed to make up her mind. She leaned down and pulled her camera, a notebook and a small, blue leather-bound book from her bag. There was a runic script printed in gold ink on the front of the book and, although she'd laid it upside-down, I could read the title, Runes and Viking Script. The print was too small for me to make out the name of the author.
'You say your husband's father is into all this?' she asked.
I nodded. 'Very much so. I doubt there are many people who know more about the history of these islands than he does.'
She turned the book round for me. On the inside front cover were pictured twenty-five runes: each a simple, mainly angular symbol. They all had descriptive names, like Disruption, Standstill, Gate- way, but when Richard, my father-in-law, had referred to them, he'd used their Viking names.
'I don't get it,' she said. 'There are only twenty-five. Each one appears to have a distinct meaning of its own. How can it form any sort of alphabet and make words? There just aren't enough characters.'
I started to flip through the book. 'I think it works a bit like the Chinese alphabet,' I said. 'Each character has a principal meaning but also several sub-meanings. And when you use two or more together, each one impacts slightly upon the others to create a meaning unique to that combination: a bit like a word. Does that make any sort of sense?'
'Yes,' she said. 'But I think there are over two thousand Chinese characters.'
'Maybe the Vikings didn't talk much.'
She opened her notebook and turned it to face me. The page I was looking at had a reproduction of the three runes we'd seen in the morgue the day before. 'So what we have here,' she went on, 'are the runes for Separation, Breakthrough and Constraint, inscribed on the body of our victim. What's that all about then?'
I looked from her notes to the textbook. On the next page the runes were reproduced again, this time with their Viking names. The fish-like symbol was called Othila, meaning Separation; the kite-bow was Dagaz, meaning Breakthrough, and the diagonal, sword-like rune was Nauthiz, meaning Constraint. I looked up at her. She was watching me carefully.
'What about the sub-meanings?' I asked.
'Go ahead,' she encouraged.
On the page opposite, lesser meanings for each rune were listed. Othila also meant Property or Inherited Possessions, Native Land and Home; Dagaz meant Day, God's Light, Prosperity and Fruitfulness; Nauthiz meant Need, Necessity, Cause of Human Sorrow, Lessons, Hardship.
'Separation of significant internal organ from rest of body?' I suggested, not entirely seriously. She gave me an encouraging nod. I looked down at the book. 'Breakthrough… umm, breaking through the chest wall to reach the heart? Constraint… well, she was constrained, wasn't she? The bruises around her ankles and wrists… And she certainly suffered hardship…' I tailed off and looked at Dana.
'Seem good enough to you?' she asked.
I shook my head. 'No,' I said. 'Seems like bollocks.'
'Like meaningless doodles?' she suggested.
'Much more elegant way of putting it,' I agreed. 'What about the ones downstairs?'
She pressed a button on her camera and pulled up the photo- graph she'd taken just ten minutes ago. There were five symbols inscribed along the lintel.