Page 4 of The High Island

Jo nodded, but he registered her disquiet at the prospect of what lay ahead.

Erling decided to nurse the hope that, if they were in fact human remains, then they were old enough not to require an investigation.

He spotted the red digger first, sitting close to the tumbledown croft house that overlooked the bay below. Drawing in behind the three vehicles parked by the main road, one of which was his dad’s, Erling indicated they should get kitted up in boots and waterproofs before heading down the hill on foot.

The original path to the croft was still visible, snaking its way through the heather, and the recent tracks of the digger had made it even more obvious. From here, Scapa Flow was a seething grey, but already in late May that could change in seconds as the clouds scudded past and spring sunshine turned the water bright blue.

He remembered looking downwards at the sandy bay when he’d come camping with Magnus, back in their teenage years. They’d crossed from Houton in Magnus’s peedie motorboat and set up camp in one of the many gun positions left from the Second World War. Anchored below, they’d decided to fish for their evening meal, until the arrival of a group of curious seals had put an end to their plan.

‘You’ve been here before?’ Jo said, catching his look.

‘Way back,’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten that the Mowat croft was around here.’

As they drew near, Tommy came to meet them. By his expression, Erling knew his father was worried by what he’d seen.

‘Thanks for getting here so fast, son. We’d just finished burying Ivor when Hugh got the call from the digger owner, a local guy, name of Ian MacDougal. He’s been hired by a man called Richard Webber Maitland to clear the area for his new eco-house. Apparently Mr Maitland is due here tomorrow with a team of workmen.’

Erling didn’t comment on this information but, nodding to his father, said, ‘Okay, let’s take a look.’

‘You all right to do the video and photos?’ he checked with Jo. When she indicated she was, he told her to start recording on their walk in.

Erling had been present at exhumations on Orkney before. Most recently at Skaill Bay on Mainland, when local forensic archaeologist Professor Colin Nelson, together with visiting forensic scientist Dr Rhona MacLeod, had opened a stone cist expecting to find a Viking corpse, only to discover a much newer set of remains.

On this occasion, however, the unearthing, rather than being done slowly and carefully as at Skaill Bay, had been sudden and violent via a digger’s shovel.

It was, he now registered, sheer luck that the shovel had only dislodged the slatted wooden lid of the makeshift coffin and not engaged with its contents.

Despite this, the impact of what had been revealed wasn’t lost on either himself or Jo. The exhumation of a grave always felt to him, as he knew it did to Colin, like a form of sacrilege, regardless of how long it had been there.

Noting the mummified state of the remains, he was immediately reminded of his conversation with Jo about Betty Corrigall.

The adult lay with face turned towards a childlike figure resting in the crook of the right arm.

‘So the rumours got that part right,’ Jo said, her voice emotional. ‘It is a woman and child.’

‘It certainly looks like that,’ Erling responded, his tone matching hers.

He pulled out his mobile. ‘We need Colin Nelson out here right away,’ he told Jo as the call rang and was then swiftly answered.

Stepping away so the trio of onlookers might not hear, he explained to Colin that he’d been called out to Hoy where a digger had exposed a slatted wooden coffin containing human remains in the peaty hillside above Lyrawa Bay.

‘A wooden coffin, you say. Any indication of the era?’

‘None,’ Erling told him. ‘There appears to be some remnants of clothing, and the bodies look to be mummified, with no other items in the coffin as far as I can see.’

Colin came back immediately. ‘You said bodies. So there’s more than one?’

‘An adult female, I think,’ Erling said, ‘plus possibly a young child.’

Colin’s shock was obvious by the silence that followed Erling’s announcement.

Eventually he came back in. ‘I’m assuming you’ll want the remains transferred back here for a full examination?’

Erling confirmed this. ‘If you can head for Houton,’ he said, ‘I’ll alert the police launch to pick you up from there.’

Ending the call, he checked the sky. The rain, which had accompanied their walk here, had stopped, but judging by the heavy cloud cover, it might not be off for long.

Once he’d made arrangements for the police launch to pick up Colin, he indicated to Jo that they would have to mark out the site, then protect it with a tarpaulin.