Page 112 of The High Island

‘When was this call?’ Erling asked.

‘Just prior to your order to look in the wider area. His coordinates, however, were spot on.’

‘The man’s voice. Was he local?’ Erling asked, thinking of Ethan.

‘No, we thought possibly a Scouser.’

‘Right, let’s take a look.’

The stash was a mix of drugs, packaged mainly as heroin, benzodiazepines and oxycodone, although in all likelihood they were all mixed with nitazenes, a group of lab-made opioids that posed a substantial risk of overdose, hospitalization and death.

And these had all been delivered for distribution here in Orkney.

This, he thought, had led to Eilidh’s death. She’d challenged a pusher and had paid the price. Helen had been adamant that Eilidh had not been a user, so with little to no resistance to such a potent mix, she had died.

Which meant that Eilidh wasn’t a drug casualty, but a murder victim.

55

DIFlett had offered Jo his office to work in. He’d said she would need peace and quiet to finish her translation of Ivor’s notebook, and the incident room couldn’t provide that, but Jo knew that wasn’t the reason she was here.

The boss had read her reaction to Gus, despite her attempts to disguise it. He’d seen how she’d failed to meet Gus’s glance and, worse still, he’d spotted how freaked she’d been when he’d leaned over her to point at the screen.

Even now, her skin crawled at the memory of that moment.

So that was why she was in here, and one of the two reasons she was determined to succeed in what she’d been asked to do. The other reason, of course, was Mackie. She’d checked in already with the constable who’d been posted to the Balfour. He’d assured her all was well, although Mackie was still drifting in and out of consciousness.

‘He’s opened his eyes once or twice, but didn’t say anything when he saw me. Maybe if you’d been here, Sergeant . . .’ he’d added apologetically.

So she had to translate this as quickly as possible, Jo decided.Then the burden of telling us what he found no longer lies with Mackie.

Focusing back on the notebook, she searched among the words for ones she recognized. The first person pronoun, however artistically drawn, was clearly an ‘I’. Also clear were ‘she’ and ‘her’, ‘he’ and ‘him’, ‘they’ and ‘them’. The most used verbs were okay too, but old Orkney terms, which Mackie had dealt with so easily, had proved tricky until she located the online Scots language dictionary and its subset of Orkney words.

Now she was able to translate how Kris first made contact with Ivor, initially by reading about him in the onlineOrcadian. How they’d exchanged letters in the first instance, in which Kris had told Ivor about his mother, Betty, his childhood and her death.She spoke often of Orkney and the High Island, as she called Hoy.The letter she wrote to him before her suicide, which had lain unopened until he was older, had revealed why she’d left Hoy and given a description of the uncle who’d abused her.

Piecing all this together, Jo could understand Ivor’s sorrow and shame at how he’d lost his favourite granddaughter. And the joy at finding his great-grandson.

Everything Ivor had done after that had been designed to give Kris his rightful place in Orkney and to punish those who were, to his mind, betraying the family and Betty’s memory.

The elderly woman who’d spoken to her at the fire station had been right when she’d said that one of Ivor’s sons was Kris’s father. But even then, she had been fearful that her husband might hear what she had to say.

The power of the branch of the family headed by Harald was still at work. Maybe even more so than before. Now Jo understoodmany of Hugh Mowat’s actions. Although they were too late to save his granddaughter’s life.

It was at this point that she spotted something. Something she’d missed as she’d tried to decipher the individual words. Holding the notebook up in front of her, she now saw that Ivor had sometimes used capital letters in the middle of a word.

Her excitement grew as she wrote down each of the six letters. They weren’t in order, but there was no doubt that, when rearranged, they made up the word she’d heard Mackie say three times in the hospital.

Kalfey, Kalfey, Kalfey.

The capital letters were all in the section which centred on Kris, and Ivor’s concern regarding what would happen when his great-grandson arrived in Orkney. His fear for his safety. His distrust of his family, especially the branch headed up by Harald.

If he had prewarned Kris of a likely hostile homecoming, then he’d also told him what to do should that happen.

Ethan had been right about Kalfey being Cava in Old Norse. She would call and tell him, she decided.

It was at this moment the door opened and Gus appeared. Jo rose, that old familiar decision between fight or flight taking hold of her in an instant.

‘Sorry, Sergeant,’ he said with that signature smile. ‘I was hoping to find the boss in here.’