The Orkney Scroll

Chapter 6

Bjarni and Oddi would endure tremendous hardship before they would reach landfall again. Buffeted by waves in the Channel and then fierce storms in the Bay of Biscay, they finally ran aground in Galicia in what is northern Spain. At the turn of the last millennium, Galicia was something of an anomaly, a rather isolated place, surrounded by sea to the north and west, cut off from the rest of Europe by mountains to the east and the armies of Muslim Spain to the south. The cape that juts out into the sea in Galicia is not called Finisterre, the end of the world, for nothing.

Exhausted and hungry, Bjarni and his men tried to steal food, but once again their plans went awry. Galicia had been raided for years by Vikings, and by Saracen pirates from the south, and the landowners were ready for them. Ever the opportunists, however, the Vikings abducted the younger daughter of the landowner whose larder they’d unsuccessfully tried to rob and demanded a great ransom for her safe release. It was a heinous crime, of course, the act of desperate men, and it had unexpected consequences.

While Bjarni was negotiating his price for the return of the young woman, whose name was Goisvintha, Oddi was put in charge of guarding her, which put the two of them, strapping Viking and comely young woman, in constant contact. I suppose the inevitable ensued, first pleas for freedom on her part, words of sympathy on his, then jest, and eventually passion: Oddi and Goisvintha fell in love or at least in lust, and Oddi was not for sending her back to her father, one Theodoric by name, no matter the price, nor was she for returning. Oddi sent his brother back to negotiate a marriage rather than a ransom, and Theodoric reacted as one might expect. No daughter of Theodoric’s was going to marry a Viking pagan. Bjarni told a disappointed Goisvintha and Oddi of her father’s intractability on that subject.

“I’ve come up with a plan,” Oddi told his brother. “We’ll dress one of the thralls in Goisvintha’s clothing, and you’ll exchange him for the money.” Thralls were servants or slaves really and didn’t have much to say about what happened to them. “In the dark, Theodoric won’t notice until it’s too late. The rest of us will wait for you at the boat, and we’ll all be on our way, including Goisvintha. as soon as you and the money arrive.”

What Bjarni thought of this plan, we’ll never know, but apparently he agreed to it. Theodoric, perhaps knowing his daughter’s nature very well, or being at least as crafty as Oddi, was not fooled at all, and what Bjarni got for the thrall in woman’s clothing was a sack of sand. Bjarni made a run for the boat, Theodoric and his fellow landowners hot on his trail. What ensued was a rout, one in which Bjarni’s only boat was destroyed and the other Vikings killed. Only Bjarni, Oddi, and his Goisvintha, and the poet Svein were able to escape into the night. But they were not free for long.

* * *

Maya Alexander was on her knees weeding in her garden when I found her, her long ash blond hair tied in a pony-tail, in jeans and a sweatshirt. She was being helped by a rather muscular man in army fatigues, with short-cropped hair and dark eyes, the kind of man you notice partly because he’s good-looking, but also because he’s a bit intimidating. It had been quite easy to find her. I just followed the road across the Churchill Barriers, causeways that linked a small chain of islands, and then turned on to the road to Hoxa. Then I simply stopped at the largest house I’d seen since I’d arrived.

Maya looked genuinely pleased to see me, even if my name eluded her. “It’s… I’m sorry, I’m just so bad with names. You’re the antique dealer from Toronto and your name is?”

“Lara McClintoch,” I said. “This is very presumptuous of me to just show up, but Lester described your home very well, and I knew it had to be yours the minute I saw it. It is as spectacular as he said it is. I won’t stay. I just wanted to say hello.” Lester had likened the Alexanders’ Orkney residence to a palace, but it wasn’t really. It was, however, a very fine three-story stone house with acres of land around it, a tree-lined drive, and a wonderful view across Hoxa to the sea.

“But I invited you,” she said. “I may have had too much champagne that evening, but I remember that very well. Please come in. I’ll just wash my hands. Drever, this is Lara McClintoch. Lara, this is Drever Clark, who looks after the place for us. Drever, you’ll have to carry on without me.” Drever nodded in my general direction and then went back to his work.

Soon we were comfortably ensconced in a sunroom, filled with plants and flowers, and white wicker furniture. The view from this side of the house was also fine, but marred by a rather decrepit-looking structure, this one a real castle of sorts, but terribly run down, with a garden that hadn’t been tended in years. There was some kind of hedge that was completely out of control, and weeds everywhere, and a barn way out back that looked about to fall down. Maya found me looking at it as she brought in a tray of tea and shortbreads. She’d changed into a cashmere sweater and leggings. “Awful, isn’t it?” she said. “I don’t know what to do. I cannot understand why anyone would take so little care of a place like that. I want to run out and fix up that garden every time I look at it. The worst part of it is the dogs. I don’t know if the neighbors were breeding them or what, but they were big and vicious, at least I think so, and they kept running all over our property, and there’s this man who lives there who just hangs around. There’s something the matter with him. He’s not quite right, if you see what I’m saying. The concept of private property seems to be meaningless to him. He just wanders over here whenever he feels like it.

“Robert tells me to relax, to live and let live, you know, be an accommodating neighbor. He says he’ll buy the property at some point, and tear that ghastly medieval thing down. The owner won’t sell right now, but Robert says he’s elderly, his wife died very recently, and he has been unwell himself for years, some World War Two injury apparently. He will have to leave eventually, one way or the other. I just grit my teeth and pretend it’s not there. Heaven knows what it’s doing to the value of our property, but I guess we don’t want to sell. I don’t anyway.”

“Everything around here is so pretty,” I said. “It does rather stand out. Most of the houses are beautifully kept up. Orkney seems to be such a nice, orderly place, with really pleasant people.” As I spoke a cyclist hove into view and just as quickly disappeared. I was reasonably sure it was Percy, but there was nothing I could do about that at this very moment.

“It is pretty, and everyone is genuinely nice. I love it here. I wish I had friends, that’s all. People are very pleasant, but they don’t really warm to outsiders. I tried throwing a party when we first came here, but the only people who would come were tourists like me.”

“Maybe they were afraid they’d have to reciprocate. Your home is a little overwhelming, you have to admit.”

“Maybe,” she said. “I remain convinced they’ll get used to me eventually. But you’re here now and I’m so glad.”

The property itself was beautifully landscaped, taking real advantage of the rolling terrain. “Is that a golf course I’m looking at?” I said pointing out the side window.

“Sort of. It’s a driving range, and there’s a putting green down by the water. Robert is nuts about golf. I complained about being a golf widow, so he put this in so he could play here part of the time. Ridiculous I know. Drever spends more than half his time working on it, I swear. I don’t know what Robert was thinking.”

I laughed. “If he can afford it, why not?”

“He can afford it,” she said. “I can also tell you he loses most of his balls in the sea.”

We talked for a while, small talk really. Maya struck me as a little bit sad in some way, as if life hadn’t quite turned put the way she wanted it to. Most of us would kill to have a beautiful home in Orkney, another in Glasgow, and, apparently, a condo in Spain. This place in Orkney was her favorite she said. She’d stay all year long if she could, but her husband’s business dealings prohibited that.

Maya kept bringing the conversation back to my antique shop, which was fine with me. I knew she was working her way around to asking me about Trevor, just as I was interested in finding out where she and her husband acquired their furniture and if Trevor had played a role. That opportunity came for both of us when she gave me a tour of her house. We were in the master bedroom, which was completely white, or rather ivory, not what I would have chosen in this northern climate which seemed to me to cry out for something warmer, but striking just the same. I knew what it had been modeled on, right down to the last detail: the bedroom Charles Rennie Mackintosh had designed at 78 Southpark Avenue, now reassembled and part of the Hunterian Art Gallery of the University of Glasgow. I knew that because I’d seen it.

“Lovely Mackintosh reproduction,” I said. “Fabulous workmanship. Where did you get this made?”

“Isn’t it real?”

“Some of it is, but the bed is a reproduction for sure. It’s a queen for one thing. The real bed was smaller.”

“I wish I knew more about it,” she said. “I should, I know, because Robert is so keen on it. This was Robert’s home long before I moved in. He and his first wife lived here. You would have to ask him. I would have liked to change it, not because it isn’t attractive, but you know, when you follow another woman into a home you’d prefer to, um, erase all traces of the previous relationship. But I can’t. I have been able to change a lot, but not the bedroom, wouldn’t you know, nor Robert’s dressing room and study next door. He’s not here, so we can take a peek at that, too, if you like.”

“I would,” I said. We went down a short corridor, and into a rather dark room, its large window covered with heavy drapes. It was filled with dark furniture, pleasantly masculine, and lined with photos of Robert at important moments of his life. In one or two he was in military uniform, not surprising given his comments about his past as an army captain at the fund-raiser, in others he was with various important people including a couple of British prime ministers, a wedding photo in which both he and Maya looked very fetching, and a photograph of a woman I didn’t know. I noticed Maya’s eyes were fixed on that photo.

“Was your husband in the military for long?” I asked, trying to get her to stop looking at the photo.

“Several years,” she said. “I think he was planning to be a career soldier, but he got interested in business, and certainly he has been very successful. I don’t think he has any regrets about leaving the military, although he does talk about it a great deal. He was in a lot of the hotspots, Croatia and places like that, so I guess there was a lot of male bonding. Some of his men still drop by to see him from time to time. That’s how we found Drever. Drever served in the army and was posted with peacekeepers in Afghanistan. He left the forces when he came back, did odd jobs for a while before Robert offered him the job here. He is not what you would call a natural at gardening or anything, but he’s willing, and it’s good to have someone here all the time. There’s a very nice little apartment in the house and he lives there. He tends to the place when we’re in Glasgow. I guess what I’m saying is that while Robert’s army career is over, it’s still very much a part of him.”

“What business is Robert in?” I said.

“Lots of things,” she said. “He invested in a few businesses with a couple of his army buddies, light manufacturing, textiles and so on, and now I guess he makes most of his money on his investments. I don’t really know, to tell you the truth.”

“It’s a very attractive man’s room, but I like your white wicker in the sunroom better,” I said.

“Me, too,” she said. “That room I got to decorate exactly the way I like it.”

“I think the pieces in this room are genuine, unlike the bedroom,” I said. “Did you know that Trevor Wylie was killed over a piece of reproduction furniture?”

“Trevor Wylie,” she said. “You know I thought that name was familiar when you mentioned it in Glasgow, but I can’t recall who he is, or was. I must have confused him with someone else. Or maybe I did meet him somewhere else. You did mention he was killed, I recall.”

“I’m afraid so. He was a Toronto antique dealer, but born here in Orkney, I understand.”

“Really? Maybe that’s why the name is familiar. My husband can’t recall the name at all, so if we did meet, it can’t have made much of an impression. I expect I’m just confused. I’m having trouble with names these days. I believe it’s common with women my age.”

“It does seem to be,” I said, and we both laughed.

“Robert thinks I must have read about him, about the murder, and just assumed I knew him. Do I recall your saying he was killed over a reproduction?”

“Yes. Apparently he sold a fake Mackintosh writing cabinet to the wrong guy. That man has been charged with Trevor’s murder. I guess he figured it out and wasn’t happy.”

She thought about that for a minute. “Did you not say you were looking for a Mackintosh writing cabinet?”

“I am.”

“Why?”

“Because I have a client who wants one.” I justified the lie by telling myself that if I found one I could almost certainly sell it. “I’d prefer it to be the real thing, but now that I see the reproductions here, I have to say I’m impressed. No wonder Trevor could pass one off as real if there is workmanship as good as this around here. At least I assume it’s around here, given you have several pieces.”

“I really don’t know. It was here when I got here. Robert hasn’t let me change a thing in this room either. I think he wants it to remain exactly the same forever.”

Actually, I didn’t think that was true. Indentations in the carpet of Robert’s room indicated to me that the furniture had been rearranged at some point in the not too distant past. Maybe Maya knew that, and maybe she didn’t. Maybe she didn’t get into this inner sanctum often, a wild guess on my part that was confirmed when Maya looked out the window and quickly led me from the room. A minute or two later, we heard the front door open. “I’m back, darling,” Robert called out.

“I’m upstairs,” Maya replied. “With a guest.” By the time Robert found us we were sitting in Maya’s dressing room cum den looking at photographs of their condo in Spain.

“You remember Lara McClintoch,” Maya said. “I invited her to visit and here she is. She was just driving down the road and she saw me working in the garden.”

“Wonderful! I saw a mystery car in the driveway, and wondered who was visiting. Will you stay for dinner? Maya would love to have company here, as would I.” He was speaking to me but he was looking at Maya.

“Please do,” Maya said.

“I’d love to, but I am meeting a friend for dinner.” What I meant was that I was planning to do what I’d done unsuccessfully the previous evening after dropping Percy off, which is to say to comb the restaurants of Kirkwall looking for Willow. She was a tourist. She had to eat somewhere.

“Some other time, then,” Robert said.

“Lara is wondering where you got the reproductions in the bedroom,” Maya said. “I couldn’t help her.” Robert turned his full attention to me.

“I think I told you I was looking for a Mackintosh writing cabinet for a customer,” I said. “Which I am, so if you hear of one, and you don’t want it for yourself, of course, I’d love to know about it. But I was just blown away by the reproductions in the master bedroom. It is such a gorgeous room. I do carry some reproductions, plainly marked as such, of course, and given most people can’t afford their own Mackintosh and he’s so popular now, I thought that might be a good line for our shop. Can you tell me who made it for you? It must have been custom work.”

“It was, but I don’t think I can recall, if indeed I ever knew,” Robert said. “I’ve had it for at least fifteen years, got it when I first bought this place. We, I, hired a designer who found it for us.” Maya winced slightly at the “us” and “we” that didn’t include her.

“Local?”

“The designer? No. Edinburgh, I think. It was Bev, that is to say my first wife, who arranged it all.” He took a deep breath. “Sorry, darling.”

“Please, Robert, it’s quite all right. I’m not at all upset about it.” She was, of course, lying.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m the one who is upsetting everyone. I’ve obviously said something quite inappropriate.”

“Please! How could you know?” Robert said. “My first wife died. Drugs. It’s why we support the drop-in center in Glasgow. Maya has been very understanding. I’m sure she has charities she’d like to support, too, but really, I feel responsible in a way for what happened. I didn’t see, I didn’t comprehend what was happening to her. I should have known, but I didn’t and she died of a massive overdose of cocaine. Bev was a wonderful person until she was caught in the grips of that monster. I’m fortunate to have been able to rebuild my life, thanks to Maya. Maya and Bev were friends, and Maya was a rock when Bev died. I don’t know what I would have done without her.” The understanding Maya rested her hand on her husband’s forearm and gave me a beseeching glance. I didn’t know what she was pleading for: my understanding, my sympathy, my hasty exit?

“I’d like to help you, I really would,” Robert said. “We share a passion for Mackintosh, after all. But I can’t recall much about it, I’m afraid. We, I, did bring in a lot of furniture from our home just outside of London, and we purchased furnishings in both England and Glasgow, and presumably here, too. But sorry, I just can’t recall if the craftsman was here or somewhere else. It just wasn’t my bailiwick, you understand, the decorating. I just paid the bills. Now really, can we persuade you to stay for dinner?”

“I’m afraid not,” I said, feeling like a complete jerk. I had lots more questions, like was there any chance the furniture had been made locally, but even I, compulsive seeker for information that would justify my petty existence, could not bring myself to ask them. I could hardly wait to drag my hopelessly shallow self out of their lives. “I must be going. Thank you, though, and thank you for tea, Maya. It was a real pleasure talking to you.”

“It was for me, too. I hope you’ll come again,” she said, and I think she meant it. She stood at the door waving to me as I left, a woman with a ghost looking over her shoulder, a woman who slept with her husband in a bed chosen by her predecessor. My Rob had been a widower when I met him, but he’d been that way for quite a long time. I knew he’d married his high school sweetheart over their parents’ objections, he being Catholic, she a Baptist, and I knew she had died long before the bloom was off the rose where their relationship was concerned. Still, while I might have worried about his ex-girlfriends, particularly one young and perky paragon of virtue by the name of Barbara who immediately preceded me, and I might fret about being a suitable stepmother to Rob’s daughter, Jennifer, I didn’t think for a minute I was sleeping with a ghost. For that I was suddenly exceptionally grateful. I resolved to call Rob that very night to tell him so.

But first I was going back to Kirkwall. Even then I took a little detour, to look at the house I’d seen from the sun-room windows. It was an interesting contrast to that of the Alexanders. Both were that typical gray stone, very large and imposing. There the similarity ended. Where one was in remarkably good nick, to use the British expression, with manicured lawns and exquisitely designed gardens, including the putting green, fresh paint on every wood surface, not a twig out of place, the other, while possibly even grander at one time, almost castlelike with a tower on one end, was a mess. What might once have been a kitchen garden was now all weeds and plants gone to seed. The gate was hanging by a thread, the front porch used for storage, and there was a dry and cracked fountain that would have been at the center of what might have been a geometric garden of some sort. Out back, visible in the distance was a rather dilapidated barn.

As I watched, fortunately from some distance, a van pulled into the driveway, and a man got out. He went around to the back, and pulled something out, which it took me a minute at this distance to realize was a wheelchair. An older man was assisted into it and rolled up the driveway to the house. After a few minutes, the first man headed toward the barn, which like the house was in serious disrepair. I looked back at the Alexander house, and noticed that Drever was watching the place, too. The whole scene rather depressed me.

Where the Alexanders’ home looked across a splendid vista of rolling hills and beautifully tilled fields to the blue waters of Scapa Flow, this one looked across windswept terrain to what appeared to me, as I got closer, to be huge chunks of broken concrete on the shore. I drove along to see what this would be, and after parking my little car and walking along a road found myself on a cliff top overlooking the water. I wandered for a while among these concrete structures before I realized I was looking at bunkers. This could only have been a lookout point during two World Wars. It was desolate, attractive only to a military buff, and somehow very sad. I went down the steps into one of the bunkers and looked across the water. Men must have spent hours, days, months watching for German ships and submarines eager to destroy the British fleet in Scapa Flow from this cold, unpleasant spot. I saw no sign of Percy.

Almost equally depressing was the time I spent roaming the streets of Kirkwall for an hour or so. No Willow, and no Percy either, but at least I had another fine seafood dinner. It capped off a spectacularly unsuccessful day.

I’d wandered the streets of St. Margaret’s Hope, a picturesque little village to be sure, and it was soon clear to me that neither the dealer who sold the real writing cabinet, and the craftsman who made the fake one, were in St. Margaret’s Hope. I’d stopped in at the antique store, and had asked at the artists’ cooperative in the harbor area, and while there was some very beautiful work on display, silver jewelry, fabulous knits and pottery, for me there was no joy. I was rapidly coming to the conclusion there had been not one but two fake invoices, one for an antique dealer in Glasgow who didn’t exist, and another for a dealer in St. Margaret’s Hope who didn’t either. I wasn’t sure what that meant exactly, but maybe in some way it was good news. It could mean that this was one enormous scam involving two writing cabinets, which of course was exactly what I wanted to hear.

Finally I went back to Stromness and my lovely little attic room and called Rob. I caught him just as he was leaving for the restaurant where I suppose he saw to it that the Chicken Kiev was placed promptly in front of the Ukrainian gangsters who were counting on him to launder their funds, while Rob and his fellow law enforcement pals were trying to figure out from which revolting activity these funds had come.

“How’s it going?” I asked. “The restaurant business and all?”

“Oh, all right, I guess,” he said. “The joke around here is how good I am at money laundering. I’m making a fortune for the taxpayers. As one of them, you should be grateful.”

“I am. I’d like you to get out of this, though.”

“Not until I reel in the big fish. It’s drugs, you know, that and people smuggling. The substantive crime, that is, the one that is generating all this money they need me to take care of for them. I’d like this to be over, too. I am ceasing to enjoy being a restaurateur. Once this is over, I may never cook again, and I’m sure not doing dishes.”

“I hope you’re not counting on me to do all the cooking and the cleanup, because it’s not going to happen,” I said.

He laughed. “We’ll have to order in and eat off paper plates.”

“Any developments in Blair Bazillionaire’s case?”

“It’s working its way through the system. The big news is that he fired his lawyer.”

“Don’t tell me he’s going to try to defend himself! I know he thinks he’s the best lawyer there is anywhere on the planet, but what is it they say about lawyers who defend themselves?”

“They have fools for clients. Baldwin isn’t a fool whatever else you might say about him. No, he’s retained Desmond Crane.”

“I thought they disliked each other. No, stronger than that, I thought they loathed each other.”

“Maybe some of that was for show in court, part of the performance. Really, though, isn’t that exactly the kind of person you want to have in your corner, the opposing lawyer who gave you the most trouble? I think it’s smart of him. It’s bought him some time, too, which may also have some thing to do with it. Crane has petitioned the court for more time so he can prepare the case. As a result, you will have a longer wait before you’re called as a witness.”

“What would he want to buy time for, given he’s going to spend it in jail? I could understand it if he were still free and wanted to prolong that. I wish I were completely convinced he did it, given I’ll have to testify about both finding the body and the little dustup at his party. On a happier subject, at least I think it is, have I ever mentioned how happy I am not to be sleeping with a ghost?” I told him briefly about the fund-raiser at the Alexanders, and my visit to their home in Hoxa.

He chuckled. “No, you haven’t mentioned it, and I sup pose this is where I’m supposed to confess that I’ve had a few bad moments about your still being in business with your ex. I’m getting over it, though, and I never figured I was sleeping with him.”

“Good,” I said.

“Where are you and these people you’ve met exactly?”

“Orkney. It’s the most wonderful place. I’m quite infatuated. I want us to come here for a real holiday next spring. It has all these Neolithic sites to visit, tombs and houses and there were Vikings here, too. It’s beautiful, and the people are really, really nice.”

“But where is it?”

“Islands off the northeast coast of Scotland.”

“Scotland! This isn’t about the Neolithic, is it? It’s about Mackintosh writing cabinets. Get over it, Lara! Everybody makes a mistake from time to time.”

“I’m trying. I know it wasn’t the first mistake I’ve ever made, nor will it be the last. I’m not naive. I know forgers are getting to be awfully good at their trade, and unfortunately science and technology is helping them. But usually my mistakes do not involve murders for which my client is charged.”

“This isn’t about you, Lara. It’s about a conman by the name of Trevor Wylie who gambled big and lost. And it’s about someone else with a terrible temper, a wife-beater after all, who consorted with violent criminals. Maybe some of it wore off on him.”

“You consort with violent criminals. It hasn’t worn off on you as far as I can tell.”

“Maybe that’s because of you, you and Jennifer. Maybe Blair drove away the person who kept him grounded when he scared away his wife. And by the way, promise me if it ever does start to rub off on me, you’ll smother me in my sleep.”

“Count on it,” I said, and we both laughed.

“Come home,” he said. “I miss you.”

“I think I will,” I replied.

That night I dreamed about a windswept hill and a derelict castle in which lived an old, frail, ill man who sat in his wheelchair near a window, watched over by the ghost of a woman. He sat looking at a cracked and dry fountain that I was trying to reach, but I kept getting lost in the trees which sprang up along the paths created in the geometric garden. Across the burned countryside there was a desolate shore where human skeletons with guns and binoculars sat watching the sea. As I awoke a thought sprang unbidden: the Wasteland, the maze, the wounded king. I’d have to tell Percy about that place next time I saw him. It was difficult to believe salvation lurked in such a pathetic spot, but I suppose one never knew.

I couldn’t get a seat on the plane for Glasgow the next day, so I decided to give my mission just one more try. I was on my way back across the Churchill Barriers to widen my search out from St. Margaret’s Hope when a motorcycle overtook and passed me on one of the causeways. I don’t know motorcycles, so couldn’t swear it was the same one I’d seen in Stromness. However, there were two people on it, the passenger a woman with long dark hair blowing out from under her helmet, and the rider wore what looked to be the same skintight red and blue leather gear. I stayed with them across two more causeways, and the islands in between, and then as they swept past the turnoff for St. Margaret’s Hope. They were going faster than I was actually comfortable driving on these roads, but I tried to keep up with them with some success until I got trapped behind a farm vehicle. With so little traffic, this would have to happen right then! I saw them turn off the road to the left some distance ahead of me, at least I thought I did, and when I came to a road that I thought was more or less in the right place, I turned, too.

I followed a country road signed for something called The Tomb of the Eagles, slowing to look down side roads for any trace of the motorcycle. There was none. When I reached this Tomb of the Eagles, it turned out to be another five-thousand-year-old Neolithic tomb, this one managed by the farmer on whose property it had been found. There was a parking lot with a couple of cars, and a rather jolly exhibit center where family members explained what there was to be seen, but there was no Willow. I listened to the presentation anyway, hearing all about the tomb and how it was named for the eagle bones and talons that had been found in it along with the bones of more than three hundred people, and then walked with three fellow tourists some distance across fields to actually see it. The tomb was another grassy mound, but much smaller than Maeshowe, perched high above the sea. I could see how these tombs were still being found, as Percy had told me, given that they looked like an ordinary part of the natural landscape, a grassy knoll, a pile of earth long since covered over. They would be easy to overlook.

A motorbike with two riders shouldn’t have been easy to either overlook or lose, but I could see no sign of them, and even lay on my back on a dolly and pulled myself into the tomb with the rope provided to make sure they weren’t in there. They weren’t. The others did not recall seeing a motorcycle on their way in. Discouraged, although I’d enjoyed the place, I made my way back to St. Margaret’s Hope and continued my still unsuccessful search for the craftsman who made the reproductions at the Alexanders. Everybody knew the Alexanders’ place, but not much about them. It seemed they kept to themselves.

I had decided it was time to let this ridiculous notion of mine go, a feeling I thought might be quite liberating if I could manage it, and head back to Stromness to pack up my bags so I’d be ready to head home. It was then that once again a motorcycle with two riders roared past me. By the time I had reached my car, it had disappeared down the road that led to Hoxa and the Alexanders’ home. I took the road right to the end, but Willow, if indeed it had been Willow, was long gone. Still, the sun was going down and the sky looked absolutely wonderful, the pink just starting, shot through with brilliant azure and clouds with a touch of purple. I decided to park where I had before and hike up the road to the cliffs above the sea.

I was just standing there breathing in the fresh air, and trying to imprint this view on my memory, when I heard something, I wasn’t sure what, a groan, perhaps. It seemed to be coming from the concrete bunker just a few yards away.

“Hello?” I said. For a moment there was nothing, just the wind, but then I heard it again. It might have been an animal, injured perhaps. I decided I couldn’t just walk away, so I went down the steps leading into the bunker and stepped in. It was damp and cold and rather musty, and it took me a minute or two to adjust to the light. When I did, I saw Percy framed against the opening out to the sea. He was lying on one of the slabs and wasn’t moving. I hurried toward him, stumbling on something, his bicycle, as I went. There was blood everywhere, all of it gushing from a wound in his side. “Percy!” I said. “Can you hear me?” His eyelids fluttered slightly, then opened, but I wasn’t sure he could really see anything. “It’s Lara. I’m going for help.”

“Lara,” he gasped.

I cursed when I realized my cell phone was dead, not that I would know whom to call. “Hold on, Percy,” I said. “I’ll be back very soon.”

As I turned to go he grabbed my arm with astonishing strength and pulled me down toward him. He tried to speak but I could hear nothing and I tried to pull away. “Let me go, Percy. You can tell me later. I’m going to find a doctor.” He was going to bleed to death very soon if I didn’t get help very fast.

“Before he went mad,” Percy said in a kind of gasp, holding my arm in a vicelike grip.

“What did you say?”

“Before he went mad,” Percy repeated, but then his eyes shut. I tried to pull away again, but as I did so more blood, and maybe some of his insides, poured out of the wound. In vain I tried to pry his fingers off my arm.

“Bjarni the Wanderer,” he gasped. There was this kind of gurgling sound in his chest.

“Bjarni the Wanderer? Is that what you said?”

“Hid the chalice…”

“The what?”

“In the tomb of the orcs,” he said, and then Percy died. Or rather, Magnus Budge did.