“Lara,” Rendall said, appearing from the back. “Call for you. You can take it my office. I’ll show you the way.”
That seemed a bit odd to me, given I have a cell phone, but I followed Rendall down a corridor and into a back room. “There’s no phone call,” he said. “I need your advice. First, that guy you went chasing after. He’s been in here a fair bit. He was asking about you. He’s Orcadian, and…”
“What’s Orcadian?” I said.
“From Orkney. It’s the name of the place that attracted him I’m sure. The Dwarfie Stane is a tomb on the island of Hoy in Orkney. He was also asking about a fellow Orcadian called Trevor Wylie.”
“I thought Trevor was from Glasgow,” I said.
“Not originally. He was born on the Mainland.”
“The Mainland of what?”
“Mainland, Orkney.”
“I’m not sure I know exactly where Orkney is,” I said. “All I know is that wherever it is, Trevor was glad to have left it.”
“Dull as dishwater is what he called it.”
“That doesn’t sound like Trevor.”
“Aye. Perhaps I edited it for your delicate ears. Boring as shite is what he said.”
“That sounds more like it. So where is Orkney?”
“Group of Scottish islands and too small a place for our Trevor. The thing is I told that fellow where to find Trevor. You don’t think…”
“That he killed Trevor? No, I don’t. He looked pretty harmless to me,” I said. “His name is Percy, right?”
“That’s not the name I recall. Arthur, that’s what it was.”
“Are you sure?” I said, but it was a stupid question. Like all good publicans, Rendall didn’t forget a name.
“I’m pretty sure it was Arthur. Do you think I should tell the police?”
“I don’t think it would help,” I said. “Singh, the policeman at the bar, didn’t believe there was anyone by the name of Percy at Trevor’s place, and if you tell him the name is Arthur, he’ll be really skeptical. But you decide. As far as I’m concerned, we never had this conversation.”
“What conversation?” he said. “You’re not worried he was asking who you are?”
“Not really. I’m just as suspicious of him as he is of me.”
“I told him you owned an antique shop down the street. He seemed to be satisfied by that.”
“Okay. It’s not a secret. You wouldn’t happen to know of a place called St. Margaret’s Hope, would you?”
“Indeed, I do. Lovely little town on South Ronaldsay. You should visit Orkney some time.”
“I just might do that,” I said.
My day ended as it began, at the police station with Singh. I arrived there at the same time that Betsy Baldwin, Blair’s ex-wife did. She, too, came to sign a statement and gave me a tight little smile. I’d always liked Betsy and was sorry when she and Blair parted. I didn’t think it looked good for Blair that she was there.
In what I can only describe as a stroke of bad luck, our exit from the station coincided with the arrival of Blair, handcuffed and surrounded by dozens of reporters and cameras. The media was all over this one, in all its gore. Through the chaos, though, Blair saw me. “This is your fault,” he hissed, as the crowd swept past. I noticed he hadn’t called me “babe.”
“I wonder how he knew about my statement,” Betsy sighed. “I didn’t want to give it, not that I had any choice. They knew.”
“Sorry?”
“He blames me for his being pulled in for questioning, but I don’t know how he’d know what I said,” she replied.
“I think he was blaming me,” I said. “He thinks I misled him on something.”
“I’m sure he meant me,” she said. “The police looked into his background and discovered I’d once called them about his violent behavior. He hit me, you know. More than once. That’s why I left him.”
“I had no idea,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s why he didn’t contest the divorce. I agreed to shut up about it, and he paid up big. Now, though, with the police all over this, I didn’t have much of a choice. He has such a temper. There were times when I was afraid he was going to kill me, and for sure he hurt me a lot. Now maybe he has killed someone. I think my statement will be rather damning. I’m sorry he blames me, though. I did love him. Still do.” I left it at that. I knew Blair had meant me, but it seemed a rather silly argument to have with her under the circumstances.
Chapter 3
Before I proceed with the tale, there are one or two facts you should know about Bjarni, germane to the subject at hand. First, Bjarni Haraldsson was a Viking. Please do not misunderstand me. Viking is not an ethnic term, despite the way we use it now. Some say it is derived from vik, the word for a “bay” or “cove.” I don’t agree. I believe it to be what we might call a job description. Ethnically, Bjarni was Norse. The word Viking refers to a specific activity, and that activity when you come right down to it was raiding. In other words, Vikings were pirates, and the term suited Bjarni and his friends rather well. Oh, they’d trade if it suited them. If not they just took what they needed. Every spring, when the weather was good and the sowing done, all able men headed out on raiding parties to see what they could find. Sometimes they went in autumn after the harvest as well. They had the fastest ships on the sea, light, with shallow drafts that allowed them to beach almost anywhere, and they were exceedingly adept sailors and fierce and skilled fighters. They came in fast, looted, burned, raped in increasingly violent attacks and then moved on. No wonder they were feared wherever they went. No wonder prayers rang out from pulpits across Europe asking that the faithful be saved from the Viking scourge.
The second salient point is that Bjarni was a pagan. While Earl Sigurd the Stout had converted to Christianity. Bjarni had not accepted the new faith. Wiser people than I have made the point that Christianity was not a natural fit for a Viking. Their code was different. Men fought together, raided together and their loyalty was to those with whom they fought, and to those who behaved in a way that merited it. Family was extraordinarily important. Blood ties were sacred for the Vikings. If you killed someone’s kin, the victim’s entire family was obliged, and to say nothing of inclined, to kill you. An eye for an eye was really the code of the Viking. Turning the other cheek wasn’t something a proud Viking was too likely to do, and the idea of the meek inheriting the earth would seem merely laughable. Still by Bjarni’s time, Christianity was being accepted all over the Viking world and under some duress in Orkney. Earl Sigurd converted only because Olaf Tryggvason, King of Norway, forced him to be baptized. It was either that or have his head cut off by Olaf. Sigurd had to promise that everyone on Orkney would be baptized. We don’t know whether Bjarni was baptized or not, but we do know that he clung obstinately to his belief in the old gods of northern Europe.
I suppose we would say now that Bjarni was something of a throwback, a relic of some earlier more violent time, when the earls of Orkney and their Norwegian kings dreamt of a Norse-Orcadian dominion throughout what is now the British Isles. Whether they knew it or not, those hopes died with Sigurd in Ireland at the Battle of Clontarf.
At the very least Bjarni was out of touch with his times. The world of a thousand years ago was rapidly changing. The Vikings were gradually settling down. For example, those in Northern France, the people we now know as Normans, were pretty firmly established. Other peoples were doing the same. The Magyars, those marauding horsemen who had terrorized much of Europe, were now settling peacefully in the area we know as Hungary. And monks, now finding it less necessary to protect their treasures from the heathen hordes, were flexing power, both spiritual and political. It was only in Britain that the Vikings still had the power to instill fear, and even there life was changing. While life on Orkney had for well over a hundred years been one last raid after another, and one battle after another, too, even Sigurd’s grandfather, the aptly named Thorfinn Skull-Splitter had managed to die of old age, rather than from his wounds. It was not just the old religion to which Bjarni clung, it was the old ways as well.