turn out to be something grander than a croft and maybe we’ve found the proof. Look, let me put it in context…’ She leaned forward. ‘In the fifteenth century Shetland was a strong member of the Hanseatic League, a trading partnership, but there was a problem. The merchants in the islands were mostly German incomers. As the trading policy became more isolationist, the Germans left and there was nobody to take on that role. My thesis is that some of the more important Shetlanders became traders in their own right. There’s evidence that happened in Shetland mainland, but nothing so far here in Whalsay.’
She paused and looked at Perez to check that he was following. He nodded. Her voice was very precise, almost as if she was presenting to an academic audience. Perhaps she didn’t know how to speak to anyone else.
‘The remains of the building at Setter are bigger than you’d expect for a croft, but there could be reasons for that. Perhaps there were extensive outbuildings, a workshop. The foundation stone we’ve found is even, dressed, it’s not the rough boulders you’d expect to make up the wall of a croft, but that hasn’t provided the proof I was looking for. Today though we made a find that would suggest the inhabitants were much wealthier than they’d have been as crofters. This is a big deal. For me at least. I mean it kind of proves my theory. It makes the whole project worthwhile.’ She gave a sudden wide smile that lit up her whole face. ‘It means I can get funding to extend the project. We should be able to do a full-scale dig over a number of years.’
‘So what did you find?’ Sandy managed to drag his attention from Sophie’s body.
‘Silver coins. Half a dozen of them. Beautiful and quite intact. I came across one by chance and the others soon after. It’s likely that the floor would have been made of wood, rather than beaten soil, though of course there’s no trace of that now. We can’t tell how the coins got left there. Maybe they slipped through the cracks in the floor and into the hole in the foundation. Maybe they were hidden there. We might find more.’ Hattie took another breath. ‘Two silver coins of the same age were found during a dig at Wilsness, Dunrossness, in Shetland mainland. In the dunes close to the airport. Those coins confirmed the interpretation of that building as a merchant’s house. I’m hoping that this find will do the same for me.’
‘Where are the coins now?’
‘We’ve taken them to Evelyn. She’s locked them up in a drawer in her desk. Val Turner, the Shetland archaeologist, will come in later and Paul Berglund will be in too.’
The little Glaswegian came out with food for Hattie and Sophie. Perez watched Sophie slice her steak with complete focus. He thought she was like a man. She didn’t like to concentrate on more than one thing at a time. But now she’d started Hattie was happy to continue talking. ‘We’ll get an expert to look at them of course. I mean they could be more modern, but they look like right to me and Sophie thought so too as soon as she saw them. We ’re both familiar with the Wilsness coins. But we do need Paul’s advice about what we should do next.’ She stopped abruptly and forked a tiny piece of lasagne into her mouth, frowned as she chewed.
‘When’s Mr Berglund coming in?’
‘Professor Bergland,’ Hattie corrected him. ‘Tomorrow or perhaps the next day. He’d hardly got home when he got our call. He needs a bit of time to sort things out at home. He’s got a young family.’ Perez thought she seemed subdued. Did she resent her supervisor coming in and taking over her project? Or the fact that he hadn’t left immediately to return to Whalsay?
‘Are these coins worth anything?’ Sandy asked.
‘They’re invaluable.’
‘But if I was to try and sell them on the open market?’
‘You mean money?’ Hattie seemed startled by the question.
‘Aye, money.’ Sandy looked at her as if he was tempted to add,
‘I don’t know. If they were sold at auction to a collector perhaps they would.’
She seemed uncertain; the whole concept of private collection and trading in artefacts was strange to her. Perez felt a rush of sympathy. She seemed too frail and innocent to be living alone here in Whalsay. Sophie the Sloane Ranger was no sort of guardian. How would Hattie survive in the big world outside? He wanted to ask if she kept in touch with her parents. He imagined a protective mother who’d had to find the courage to let her daughter go, but who had sleepless nights about her, who held her breath every time the phone went in case there’d been a disaster. Because somewhere in Hattie’s history there must be illness or tragedy, he thought. No one got that haunted look if they’d had a happy childhood.
Curiosity led him to form a question about her family in his head.
Then he heard Fran’s voice, had a very clear picture of her tipping her head to one side, a half-smile, her nose slightly wrinkled as it was when she meant to tease.
So he said nothing. There was a moment of awkward silence at the table. Sophie picked up a piece of creamy fat which remained on her plate and bit into it with sharp white teeth. She looked around her.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘which of you lovely men would like to buy me another glass of wine? I thought this was supposed to be a party.’
Chapter Eighteen
Outside the Pier House, Hattie and Sophie stood briefly before separating. Hattie had only drunk two halves but felt disengaged and a little woozy. She wasn’t used to eating a big meal at lunchtime.
‘The boys have promised me a look round one of the big ships,’ Sophie said. ‘I’d like to see what it’s like inside and they might not ask again. Don’t suppose you want to come?’
‘Who’s going to be there?’
‘Oh, you know, the usual
Hattie shook her head. The way she was feeling a boat would make her sick, even if it were moored at the harbour. Anyway, she never knew what to say to most of the fishermen with their unintelligible voices and their stories of adventures at sea. Besides, she had other plans.
‘They said I could go out with them sometime,’ Sophie said, looking out towards the Shetland mainland. ‘There’s a spare cabin I could use. It’s got a DVD, everything. Do you think they’d take me for a spin today? The sea’s flat calm.’
She turned back to Hattie, a challenge as well as a question in her look.
‘You should be careful,’ Hattie said. ‘You’ll get a reputation.’
Sophie laughed, her head thrown back, so Hattie could see her long neck, stretched even further, much paler than her face.
‘Do you think I care about that? It’s not as if I want to make my life here.’
‘Shouldn’t you be here when Paul gets in?’ Hattie was thrown by the thought that she might have to deal with Paul on her own. She felt a return of the old panic.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t really want to go.’ Sophie grinned, so Hattie realized the woman had just been winding her up. ‘But don’t expect me back until the morning!’
She grinned again and loped away quite steadily, though she’d had twice as much to drink as Hattie. There was a rip in her jeans and the flesh of her thigh showed through. It reminded Hattie of the fat on the steak Sophie had just eaten. Hattie watched her walking away down towards the harbour. There were times when she hated Sophie for her beauty, her easy way with men, her thoughtlessness. There were times when Hattie wanted to lash out and slap her.
It seemed to Hattie that the walk down the island had a hallucinatory quality. Phrases and ideas came into her mind with no logic or reason.
Living in the south of England, that had never made sense to her in a literal way. Spring was a time of gentle rain and imperceptible growth. Now she thought of the last ewes lambing untended on the hill with the ravens circling above, Mima lying on the sodden ground at Setter. She repeated the phrase under her breath to the beat of her footsteps.
