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silver_sunTitle: Northern Lights
Fandoms: Rivers of London, Shetland (BBC TV series)
Characters: Thomas Nightingale, Peter Grant, Sandy Wilson, Jimmy Perez, Alison 'Tosh' McIntosh. No pairings.
Rating: pg-13 or less.
Word Count: estimated final word count 23,000.
Warnings/Spoilers: No warnings apply. Spoilers for Rivers of London - Broken Homes and for Shetland - first two episodes only.
Summary: The theft of three Pictish stone carvings from a museum in London lead Peter and Nightingale to Shetland. The reason for the theft is clear: The stones are storage ancient devices for magical energy. Who took them and why is a lot less so. That Shetland has its own mythology and magics which are far closer to that of Scandinavia than London doesn't help matters.
Between the lack of information, the cold and wet January weather and Nightingale's cold, Peter can't help but wish they were back in London.
Crossover with Shetland. No knowledge of Shetland, which is a police drama set in Shetland, is needed. The story is from Peter's POV, and any information about the three detectives, DI Jimmy Perez, DS Alison 'Tosh' McIntosh and DC Sandy Wilson, who make up the core cast of Shetland will be found out where needed as Peter does.
Set post Broken Homes for Rivers of London and after series one of Shetland.
Why anybody would want to steal a couple of rocks from a museum and then leg it to the far north of Scotland was beyond me. Why they'd choose to do it in January when it was pissing it down with rain and blowing a gale was even more baffling. But they had and that was why I was sitting in what passed for a departure lounge in Aberdeen's ferry terminal.
The three rocks, which were knobbly carved balls of sandstone about the size of a tennis ball, apparently had ritual significance. Which is the go to phrase for archaeologists say when they mean they don't have a clue what they are, but they're not admitting it for anything. I've watched Time Team enough times to know that much. The fact the rocks were rare Pictish carvings wasn't really a good enough reason for us to be heading to the other end of the country looking for them. If it had just been theft we, the Met, would have passed it on to our colleagues north of the border once we realised the rocks had reached Scotland and thought good riddance. Spending time and money looking for something that was worthless to everybody bar a few academics who specialised in Prehistoric Shetland just wasn't how the commissioners rolled when came to allocating the increasingly tight budget.
Unfortunately for us the rocks weren't just rocks. They were magical rocks, which was why we were trying to get to the arse end of nowhere in some of the worse weather I'd ever seen. How did we know they were? Nightingale had once visited the museum in question and felt the vestigia about them. I didn't as how long ago, but I was betting on it being decades as he was kind of vague about it. My first question, as all good coppers and wizards apprentices have to start by asking as many of them possible, was how did the rocks still have vestigia about them so long after they were made?
Nightingale had looked less than happy when he'd admitted that he didn't actually have a good answer, although storage of magic was a distinct possibility. Sort of like pocket sized prehistoric magical batteries, I'd said and then here had been an awkward moment as we thought about the all too recent craptastic events that had happened at the Skygarden. He'd then excused himself without giving me any other information. He'd reappeared half an hour later, looking if not happier then at least determined, and asked me if I had any plans for the weekend. I hadn't occurred to me at that point that saying no would lead to us ending up on a ship in the North Sea. Admittedly at that point neither had Nightingale. He'd been planning on flying up there.
The reason for the quick departure was that it had taken a week since the initial robbery for the case and its lack of information to come our way. So we'd left the Folly with overnight bags and taken a flight from the City of London airport up to Aberdeen. It's had been kind of fun seeing London from the air. I'd not been on a plane that small before either. In fact the only other one I'd been on was when a load of us when we'd been in training at Hendon had gone to Ibiza for three days. I did wonder why we were in such a hurry to get there when we did have the faintest idea why the rocks had been nicked in the first place. Nightingale had then pointed out that flying wasn't much more expensive once you factored in the petrol costs of driving to Aberdeen in the Jag and then parking it at the airport before paying for a flight out to Shetland.
The weather in London hadn't been too bad. Cold, damp and grey, but that was expected at the end of January. Landing in Aberdeen had been an experience that I was keen never to repeat. The little plane had felt like it was being shaken as thoroughly as the rat Toby had cornered round by the bins a couple of days ago. To say I hadn't been looking forward to getting on another tiny plane was an understatement. So I was kind of relieved when it was announced that the flights out to Sumburgh Airport, which was where we'd been due to fly to, were all cancelled for the day.
Something minor like no planes and a near hurricane blowing outside wasn't enough to deter Nightingale. I'm not convinced that anything less than a full scale nuclear war would put him off once he'd decided to do something. So I was stuck minding the bags and wondering whether we were heading back to London or if we were going to stay overnight in Aberdeen and fly out in the morning, while Nightingale pursued what I believed was the very unlikely idea of being able to get tickets for the ferry.
I suspected Seawoll and Stephanopolous would be celebrating the fact that they were getting a few weirdness free days while we were away. At least I hoped they'd be weirdness free as it wasn't like there was anybody else who could deal with it until we got back.
Our mysterious magical rock thief had left London and caught a coach for Aberdeen before getting the ferry five days ago. The biggest problem that we'd got was that was nearly all we had to go on. We did have a grainy CCTV image of our rock thief and the almost certainly fake name he'd used to book his ferry tickets to Shetland under. I mean who goes round with a name like Garva Trolhoulland? I mean unless you were bit part in something like Games of Thrones. We'd drawn a blank about finding out anything else about him. Not registered to vote. Paid his landlord cash in advance. No driving licence. No past convictions and I was willing to bet that there would be no passport either. Trolhoulland, at least under that name, didn't seem to exist.
We'd checked out his flat a few hours before we left the City of London airport, just in case there was something that we could pick up that hadn't found its way onto the HOLMES database, like where he was going to in Shetland, like a hotel reservation or something. As it turned out his flat had been a complete bust. It had been sparsely furnished and everything about it said temporary accommodation. He certainly hadn't looked like he was ever coming back to it. Which was always a worrying when they had access to magical objects which still had power stored in them more than a thousand years after they were made.
The Shetland Constabulary had wanted a reason why a senior officer from the Met was going to be poking around their island. So at the moment our utterly unlikely cover story was that it was some Scottish independence nut who had stolen them because he didn't didn't want the English to have them. I wasn't sure anybody was going to buy it, I sure as hell didn't. There was always the possibly that we were actually partially right and the guy really was a total loon and though he could use magic to make Scotland a separate country again. Which was pretty worrying really, magic and cause they were willing to break the law for sounded like a bad combination.
There wasn't much I could do to further our investigation at the Aberdeen ferry terminal, so to pass the time I looked at the weather forecast, which was awful and the pictures and leaflets that had obviously been provided to stop the passengers dying of boredom while they wait to board their ship. The one about dolphins had been interesting, while the one about famous shipwrecks in the area seemed sort off in bad taste.
I wasn't looking forward to getting on the St Clair, assuming Nightingale could get us tickets. The journey hadn't sounded too bad when I'd been at the Folly. It was only one hundred and twenty-five miles out to Shetland once we'd got to Scotland, that was like going from London to Liverpool. Only London to Liverpool had seventy mile an hour motorways and in the Jag it would have been a sweet drive once we'd left the M25. Aberdeen to Lerwick on the other hand was not a sweet anything. It was twelve hours of rough seas in a ship that had, according to the little bit of information that was under a framed print of the St Clair, once been used for Dover-Calais daytrip crossings. That was before it got too tatty and was relegated to being battered by the worst the North Sea could throw at it.
"We're in luck," Nightingale said with far more enthusiam than I currently had, as he walked briskly over to me. "There was a cancellation for the six o'clock sailing this evening. I've booked us a cabin."
"I wonder why?" I said as I picked up our bags. It wasn't a question, not even close. Everybody else had more sense than to get into a boat while the weather forecast looked like it auditioning for a part in Noah's Arc. I tried to tell myself that the captain of the St Clair, whoever he or she was, knew exactly what they were doing and they wouldn't sail if they thought they couldn't get us all there safely.
"A change of plan?" Nightingale said sounding a little bit irritated. "I don't know why you expect me to know the answer to things like that."
I sighed and picked up the bags. Things had been like this lately, since the Skygarden, snappy and tense. The Folly didn't feel right without Lesley there and Varvara staying for a while hadn't helped. She'd left now. Where to I had no idea, but I trusted Nightingale when he said that she wouldn't be causing us any more problems. It sounded bad, but if he'd wanted to kill her he'd have done it, not invited her back to the Folly for nearly a month. Nightingale might be ruthless about some things, but I still found the idea premeditated murder unlikely.
Sailing wasn't as bad as I had thought it would be. It wasn't great, but it wasn't any worse than the rides at Southend on Sea's pleasure beach. Or at least it wasn't until we'd left the safety of Aberdeen harbour and headed out into open water. It was too dark to see just how high the waves were, but not being able to see them did very little to stop me feeling ill. I don't think I'd ever been travel sick up to that point and I sincerely hoped that I wouldn't ever have to suffer it again it future.
Some of the passengers, who apparently had far stronger stomachs than either of us, were sitting drinking in the bar or eating whatever it was that was on the menu for the evening meal. The smell of food was currently too much to handle and after half heartedly suggesting to Nightingale that maybe food might make us feel better, we beat a hasty retreat to our cabin.
I'm not entirely sure whether our cabin had once started life as a cupboard. It certainly had the right dimensions for it. The cabin was also stiflingly hot and had no windows or as far as I could tell any air conditioning. Everything appeared to be made of off-white plastic and the beds, which were recessed into the wall, had what appeared to be a seatbelt across them. The single fluorescent tube light in the ceiling completed the super budget look. I supposed to should have been grateful it hadn't been designed by Easyjet or it would have been like being inside a orange.
Whoever had designed the beds had done so with the thought that occupants would do anything other that sleep in it, as the lack of space over them actually prevented you from sitting up to read, unless you were about four foot tall. Perhaps those thoughtless designers had been onto something, I decided once I found that lying down helped a bit. I plugged my headphones into my phone and hoped that if I was really lucky I could convince myself that I was in a particularly rocking club.
It wasn't a resounding success, but I wasn't alone in my miserable seasick state. Nightingale was definitely feeling it too. Pale and sweating, he was lying fully dressed on his bunk with his eyes closed, trying like me not to move any more than he had to.
"Peter, are you awake?" I heard hear him say after we had been in the cabin for a couple of hours. Rolling over, I tried not to think about how the room continued to move after I'd stopped. "Unfortunately," I replied.
"I believe I may have made an error in choosing to catch the ferry."
Well duh, was my first thought, which was rapidly replaced with 'wow, he must be feeling rough if he's admitting he got it wrong.' Which of course now meant I was going spend the rest of the journey worrying about him. At least it was a distraction from the fact my stomach seemed determined to lurch in the opposite direction to the way the ship was rolling.
"I could read the case notes," I suggested. Not that I felt like looking at words wobbling about on a page in front of me, but he sounded worse than I felt and that was saying something.
"The sea was much calmer last time I was here," Nightingale said seeming not to have heard me. "Although I was under it at the time so perhaps that had something to do with it.
“In a submarine?” I asked. Then realising how stupid that sounded. I mean how else would he have been under the North Sea? I added, "Was that during the war?”
"Yes. I was to make contact with a group of Norwegian practitioners who'd formed their own resistance cell. It went well and I returned to Britain a month later. Don't look so surprised, Peter. Not everything I do culminates in abject failure."
I didn't think I'd looked surprised at all and I had never thought he was failure, far from it. He'd been incredibly hard on himself since Lesley had so dramatically switched sides. I knew he couldn't understand how he'd missed Lesley progressing with her studies faster than she should have been or how he'd not realised that there was a hint of another master's signare in how she constructed her formae. If I'd wanted to be horrible to him I'd have asked the same thing. How, with all the experience he had, could he have missed it? I didn't want to be horrible to him, he didn't deserve it and I hated to see how much he blamed himself over it. Losing an apprentice had apparently been a really big deal back in the day and I knew he wouldn't be getting over Lesley ditching us in favour of Faceless any sooner than I would.
What he had done was step up my training. As soon as he'd been sure I'd suffered no permanent harm from being tasered, we'd started work on as many offensive and defensive formae as he safely get me to do each day. As a result most of the time I was too knackered at the end of the day to dwell on what had happened with Lesley, which I think was as much part of his plan as making sure I was able to defend myself. We slowed down a bit in the last couple weeks or so, first because I'd had a cold and sneezing while using magic to explode things tends to make the wrong thing go kaboom. Then because he'd caught it from me. I'd still had to practice down on the firing range, while he coughed and sneezed and generally looked like he should have been in bed. He'd mostly shifted by the time we'd left London, which was a good thing, as I'm sure I'd read somewhere that flying with a cold isn't good for you.
Molly had supplied us both with what seemed to be tea with added gravy. I suspect it was the sort of thing people were given in the past to make them get well faster - mainly because nobody wanted to have a nice mug of gravy with breakfast for any longer than necessary. It had certain got rid of my cold and seemed to have mostly worked with Nightingale, although he was still trying to shake the last of the cough. Would sea air be good for that? People always seem to think so, but it could be one of those complete bollocks things like getting a cold if go out with wet hair.
Silence stretched out between us, and after realising I'd left it far to long to say that I actually admired him and was worried about how hard he was taking things, I decide to go for what I thought was safest. "At least we won't be on the boat for too much longer." We'd managed a third of it according to my watch. I could even hope that it was the worse third and it would be better from now on, although that did seem like wishful thinking.
"It will be several hours yet," Nightingale said miserably, one arm now curled around his stomach. "We haven't docked at Orkney yet."
"Maybe once we get to Orkney they'll stop for a while before going back out to sea? The storm might have stopped by then."
"One can hope." Seeming to have given up of trying to sleep Nightingale got up. "I have little love of the sea and even less affinity with ships. This journey is doing little to revise that opinion." He headed unsteadily for the cabin door. "I'm going to see if a little fresh air might be of help."
"Okay," I replied hoping that he didn't want me to come with him. Moving about seemed like a recipe for disaster where holding on to my lunch was concerned.
I must have actually fallen asleep this time as Nightingale all but falling back into the cabin woke me up. He was dripping wet and shivering so badly he could barely open and close the door. He looked absolutely wretched and I had little doubt that going outside had prevented him being sick.
Somehow between us he managed to get out of his wet clothes. I don't think we spoke at all. It was one of those moments where you didn't need a fuss made about it, you just need some help and then for it never to be spoken of again. Ever. Rather like Ravi's stag do. Six years on and we still don't talk about just what happened to the sofa at his Aunt Suki's house.
The St Clair was still rocking when Nightingale finally managed to get into bed, but it wasn't as bad as it had been. An announcement over the tannoy system shortly after that informed us that we were now in Scapaflow and would be docking in Kirkwall in Orkney in around half an hour. Only a hour and a half later than scheduled. Given the conditions I thought that was pretty good going really. We were still docked in Kirkwall when I managed to get back to sleep and it was how I stayed until morning. I'm lucky like that.
Twelve hours turned out to be the time the crossing took in good weather, so it was only after seventeen stomach churning hours that me and Nightingale finally arrived in Lerwick harbour. Nightingale would have told me that it should have said I rather than me, but he still looked green and was swaying on his feet as we waited for the St Clair to dock.
Somehow he'd managed to get up, dressed and had even had shave without any help. I'd skipped that last part as it didn't grow all that fast and I liked my skin still attached. I'd managed a cup of weak tea, but he'd not been able to face it. At least the last couple of hours had been without any dashes for the bathroom for him. Trying to be sick when there's nothing left to get rid of is one of life's truly miserable experiences.
There was no nice terminal building or anything much in Lerwick and the St Clair bobbed wildly as the walkway that had been extended down from the ship to the quayside lifted clear of the ground on the worse swells. Eventually we got off the ship and I decided that regardless of how much it cost or how long I had to wait I was flying back. It didn't look like I'd be getting any arguement of Nightingale about it either.
I’d been expecting Shetland to be like Scotland, only with extra Scottishness, but it looked more those Scandinavian cop shows that seemed to be all the rage at the moment. It was also a hell of a lot colder than I thought it would be. The clock, thermometer and wind gauge thing on the ferry terminal building showed as much, just thirty-four degrees. Or one degree if you like Celsius, as most people seemed to when the temperatures were low. The only reason they did as far as I could tell was so they could say it was zero on a cold day. They would conveniently switch back to Fahrenheit when the temperatures rose again so they could say it was over a hundred when it was hot.
The cold, damp air or maybe last night's soaking had seemed to have kick started Nightingale's cold again, and he was trying not to cough and sneeze on me as he huddled in what looked like a smokers shelter while we waited for our police pick up.
We didn't have to wait long. A slim, white guy in his mid-thirties, his blond hair plastered flat against his head by the rain, hurried over to us. “Are you DCI Nightingale and PC Grant, from the Met?” He held out his hand, to Nightingale, who after a pause to cough and then put back his handkerchief, shook it. “I'm DC Wilson. Although everybody calls Sandy. DCI Perez sent me to make sure you got to the station alright.”
I'd expected to get a PC sent to get us and maybe a squad car if the station was a bit of a walk from the ferry terminal. Not that I was complaining, it was nice to be appreciated.
"Yes, thank you," Nightingale said, sounding relieved. "Quite some whether you seem to have up here."
“It’s not the worse its been,” Sandy said with the cheerfulness of somebody who’s not spent the last seventeen hours feeling like they were inside a washing machine stuck on spin. He shook my hand, before continuing, “Worse one in recent years was back in 2001. Near on forty hours it took them. People were scared it was going to founder and there would have no been safe to take the lifeboats out.”
I’d half expected him to go off on a ‘you soft southerners’ spiel after that, but he looked us over again and took pity on us. “It was a rough night,” he said. “Do you want to go straight to the station or are you going to go to your hotel first? I can’t imagine trying to eat anything on the St Clair would have been a good idea.”
“I’ll notify our Bed and Breakfast from the station,” Nightingale said, muffling a another cough in his handkerchief. "We are already running late."
Sandy looked surprised and if I was honest, so was I. I just hoped they hadn't let our rooms to somebody else when we'd failed to show to last night. Sandy didn't say anything more about it and lead us through the drizzle to his car, a fairly plain little Corsa, was parked. The heater had been running in the car and we all steamed quietly on the short drive up to the station.
Notes:
The St Clair and its channel ferry origins are true. I've been a passenger heading to Shetland as an archaeologist on it a couple of times. (As well as on the other ship that sails the Aberdeen to Lerwick route, the St Sunniva.)
It has been a few years since I last went up there so apologies if they have finally decommissioned them. The off-white plastic rooms and bed seltbelts are also true. I only got a cabin once. the next time i took a sleeping bag as hand luggage and slept on the floor of the ships bar as a good number of the other passengers did. There was talk of a proper ferry terminal being built in Lerwick as opposed to the ships docking at Victoria Quay as they do in this story and did when I last visited there.
Fortunately for me the weather was never as bad at Peter and Nightingale experienced it. The storm Sandy mentions where the 12 hour trip took 40 is from a real news story.
Part two: http://the-silver-sun.livejournal.com/241454.html
Fandoms: Rivers of London, Shetland (BBC TV series)
Characters: Thomas Nightingale, Peter Grant, Sandy Wilson, Jimmy Perez, Alison 'Tosh' McIntosh. No pairings.
Rating: pg-13 or less.
Word Count: estimated final word count 23,000.
Warnings/Spoilers: No warnings apply. Spoilers for Rivers of London - Broken Homes and for Shetland - first two episodes only.
Summary: The theft of three Pictish stone carvings from a museum in London lead Peter and Nightingale to Shetland. The reason for the theft is clear: The stones are storage ancient devices for magical energy. Who took them and why is a lot less so. That Shetland has its own mythology and magics which are far closer to that of Scandinavia than London doesn't help matters.
Between the lack of information, the cold and wet January weather and Nightingale's cold, Peter can't help but wish they were back in London.
Crossover with Shetland. No knowledge of Shetland, which is a police drama set in Shetland, is needed. The story is from Peter's POV, and any information about the three detectives, DI Jimmy Perez, DS Alison 'Tosh' McIntosh and DC Sandy Wilson, who make up the core cast of Shetland will be found out where needed as Peter does.
Set post Broken Homes for Rivers of London and after series one of Shetland.
Why anybody would want to steal a couple of rocks from a museum and then leg it to the far north of Scotland was beyond me. Why they'd choose to do it in January when it was pissing it down with rain and blowing a gale was even more baffling. But they had and that was why I was sitting in what passed for a departure lounge in Aberdeen's ferry terminal.
The three rocks, which were knobbly carved balls of sandstone about the size of a tennis ball, apparently had ritual significance. Which is the go to phrase for archaeologists say when they mean they don't have a clue what they are, but they're not admitting it for anything. I've watched Time Team enough times to know that much. The fact the rocks were rare Pictish carvings wasn't really a good enough reason for us to be heading to the other end of the country looking for them. If it had just been theft we, the Met, would have passed it on to our colleagues north of the border once we realised the rocks had reached Scotland and thought good riddance. Spending time and money looking for something that was worthless to everybody bar a few academics who specialised in Prehistoric Shetland just wasn't how the commissioners rolled when came to allocating the increasingly tight budget.
Unfortunately for us the rocks weren't just rocks. They were magical rocks, which was why we were trying to get to the arse end of nowhere in some of the worse weather I'd ever seen. How did we know they were? Nightingale had once visited the museum in question and felt the vestigia about them. I didn't as how long ago, but I was betting on it being decades as he was kind of vague about it. My first question, as all good coppers and wizards apprentices have to start by asking as many of them possible, was how did the rocks still have vestigia about them so long after they were made?
Nightingale had looked less than happy when he'd admitted that he didn't actually have a good answer, although storage of magic was a distinct possibility. Sort of like pocket sized prehistoric magical batteries, I'd said and then here had been an awkward moment as we thought about the all too recent craptastic events that had happened at the Skygarden. He'd then excused himself without giving me any other information. He'd reappeared half an hour later, looking if not happier then at least determined, and asked me if I had any plans for the weekend. I hadn't occurred to me at that point that saying no would lead to us ending up on a ship in the North Sea. Admittedly at that point neither had Nightingale. He'd been planning on flying up there.
The reason for the quick departure was that it had taken a week since the initial robbery for the case and its lack of information to come our way. So we'd left the Folly with overnight bags and taken a flight from the City of London airport up to Aberdeen. It's had been kind of fun seeing London from the air. I'd not been on a plane that small before either. In fact the only other one I'd been on was when a load of us when we'd been in training at Hendon had gone to Ibiza for three days. I did wonder why we were in such a hurry to get there when we did have the faintest idea why the rocks had been nicked in the first place. Nightingale had then pointed out that flying wasn't much more expensive once you factored in the petrol costs of driving to Aberdeen in the Jag and then parking it at the airport before paying for a flight out to Shetland.
The weather in London hadn't been too bad. Cold, damp and grey, but that was expected at the end of January. Landing in Aberdeen had been an experience that I was keen never to repeat. The little plane had felt like it was being shaken as thoroughly as the rat Toby had cornered round by the bins a couple of days ago. To say I hadn't been looking forward to getting on another tiny plane was an understatement. So I was kind of relieved when it was announced that the flights out to Sumburgh Airport, which was where we'd been due to fly to, were all cancelled for the day.
Something minor like no planes and a near hurricane blowing outside wasn't enough to deter Nightingale. I'm not convinced that anything less than a full scale nuclear war would put him off once he'd decided to do something. So I was stuck minding the bags and wondering whether we were heading back to London or if we were going to stay overnight in Aberdeen and fly out in the morning, while Nightingale pursued what I believed was the very unlikely idea of being able to get tickets for the ferry.
I suspected Seawoll and Stephanopolous would be celebrating the fact that they were getting a few weirdness free days while we were away. At least I hoped they'd be weirdness free as it wasn't like there was anybody else who could deal with it until we got back.
Our mysterious magical rock thief had left London and caught a coach for Aberdeen before getting the ferry five days ago. The biggest problem that we'd got was that was nearly all we had to go on. We did have a grainy CCTV image of our rock thief and the almost certainly fake name he'd used to book his ferry tickets to Shetland under. I mean who goes round with a name like Garva Trolhoulland? I mean unless you were bit part in something like Games of Thrones. We'd drawn a blank about finding out anything else about him. Not registered to vote. Paid his landlord cash in advance. No driving licence. No past convictions and I was willing to bet that there would be no passport either. Trolhoulland, at least under that name, didn't seem to exist.
We'd checked out his flat a few hours before we left the City of London airport, just in case there was something that we could pick up that hadn't found its way onto the HOLMES database, like where he was going to in Shetland, like a hotel reservation or something. As it turned out his flat had been a complete bust. It had been sparsely furnished and everything about it said temporary accommodation. He certainly hadn't looked like he was ever coming back to it. Which was always a worrying when they had access to magical objects which still had power stored in them more than a thousand years after they were made.
The Shetland Constabulary had wanted a reason why a senior officer from the Met was going to be poking around their island. So at the moment our utterly unlikely cover story was that it was some Scottish independence nut who had stolen them because he didn't didn't want the English to have them. I wasn't sure anybody was going to buy it, I sure as hell didn't. There was always the possibly that we were actually partially right and the guy really was a total loon and though he could use magic to make Scotland a separate country again. Which was pretty worrying really, magic and cause they were willing to break the law for sounded like a bad combination.
There wasn't much I could do to further our investigation at the Aberdeen ferry terminal, so to pass the time I looked at the weather forecast, which was awful and the pictures and leaflets that had obviously been provided to stop the passengers dying of boredom while they wait to board their ship. The one about dolphins had been interesting, while the one about famous shipwrecks in the area seemed sort off in bad taste.
I wasn't looking forward to getting on the St Clair, assuming Nightingale could get us tickets. The journey hadn't sounded too bad when I'd been at the Folly. It was only one hundred and twenty-five miles out to Shetland once we'd got to Scotland, that was like going from London to Liverpool. Only London to Liverpool had seventy mile an hour motorways and in the Jag it would have been a sweet drive once we'd left the M25. Aberdeen to Lerwick on the other hand was not a sweet anything. It was twelve hours of rough seas in a ship that had, according to the little bit of information that was under a framed print of the St Clair, once been used for Dover-Calais daytrip crossings. That was before it got too tatty and was relegated to being battered by the worst the North Sea could throw at it.
"We're in luck," Nightingale said with far more enthusiam than I currently had, as he walked briskly over to me. "There was a cancellation for the six o'clock sailing this evening. I've booked us a cabin."
"I wonder why?" I said as I picked up our bags. It wasn't a question, not even close. Everybody else had more sense than to get into a boat while the weather forecast looked like it auditioning for a part in Noah's Arc. I tried to tell myself that the captain of the St Clair, whoever he or she was, knew exactly what they were doing and they wouldn't sail if they thought they couldn't get us all there safely.
"A change of plan?" Nightingale said sounding a little bit irritated. "I don't know why you expect me to know the answer to things like that."
I sighed and picked up the bags. Things had been like this lately, since the Skygarden, snappy and tense. The Folly didn't feel right without Lesley there and Varvara staying for a while hadn't helped. She'd left now. Where to I had no idea, but I trusted Nightingale when he said that she wouldn't be causing us any more problems. It sounded bad, but if he'd wanted to kill her he'd have done it, not invited her back to the Folly for nearly a month. Nightingale might be ruthless about some things, but I still found the idea premeditated murder unlikely.
Sailing wasn't as bad as I had thought it would be. It wasn't great, but it wasn't any worse than the rides at Southend on Sea's pleasure beach. Or at least it wasn't until we'd left the safety of Aberdeen harbour and headed out into open water. It was too dark to see just how high the waves were, but not being able to see them did very little to stop me feeling ill. I don't think I'd ever been travel sick up to that point and I sincerely hoped that I wouldn't ever have to suffer it again it future.
Some of the passengers, who apparently had far stronger stomachs than either of us, were sitting drinking in the bar or eating whatever it was that was on the menu for the evening meal. The smell of food was currently too much to handle and after half heartedly suggesting to Nightingale that maybe food might make us feel better, we beat a hasty retreat to our cabin.
I'm not entirely sure whether our cabin had once started life as a cupboard. It certainly had the right dimensions for it. The cabin was also stiflingly hot and had no windows or as far as I could tell any air conditioning. Everything appeared to be made of off-white plastic and the beds, which were recessed into the wall, had what appeared to be a seatbelt across them. The single fluorescent tube light in the ceiling completed the super budget look. I supposed to should have been grateful it hadn't been designed by Easyjet or it would have been like being inside a orange.
Whoever had designed the beds had done so with the thought that occupants would do anything other that sleep in it, as the lack of space over them actually prevented you from sitting up to read, unless you were about four foot tall. Perhaps those thoughtless designers had been onto something, I decided once I found that lying down helped a bit. I plugged my headphones into my phone and hoped that if I was really lucky I could convince myself that I was in a particularly rocking club.
It wasn't a resounding success, but I wasn't alone in my miserable seasick state. Nightingale was definitely feeling it too. Pale and sweating, he was lying fully dressed on his bunk with his eyes closed, trying like me not to move any more than he had to.
"Peter, are you awake?" I heard hear him say after we had been in the cabin for a couple of hours. Rolling over, I tried not to think about how the room continued to move after I'd stopped. "Unfortunately," I replied.
"I believe I may have made an error in choosing to catch the ferry."
Well duh, was my first thought, which was rapidly replaced with 'wow, he must be feeling rough if he's admitting he got it wrong.' Which of course now meant I was going spend the rest of the journey worrying about him. At least it was a distraction from the fact my stomach seemed determined to lurch in the opposite direction to the way the ship was rolling.
"I could read the case notes," I suggested. Not that I felt like looking at words wobbling about on a page in front of me, but he sounded worse than I felt and that was saying something.
"The sea was much calmer last time I was here," Nightingale said seeming not to have heard me. "Although I was under it at the time so perhaps that had something to do with it.
“In a submarine?” I asked. Then realising how stupid that sounded. I mean how else would he have been under the North Sea? I added, "Was that during the war?”
"Yes. I was to make contact with a group of Norwegian practitioners who'd formed their own resistance cell. It went well and I returned to Britain a month later. Don't look so surprised, Peter. Not everything I do culminates in abject failure."
I didn't think I'd looked surprised at all and I had never thought he was failure, far from it. He'd been incredibly hard on himself since Lesley had so dramatically switched sides. I knew he couldn't understand how he'd missed Lesley progressing with her studies faster than she should have been or how he'd not realised that there was a hint of another master's signare in how she constructed her formae. If I'd wanted to be horrible to him I'd have asked the same thing. How, with all the experience he had, could he have missed it? I didn't want to be horrible to him, he didn't deserve it and I hated to see how much he blamed himself over it. Losing an apprentice had apparently been a really big deal back in the day and I knew he wouldn't be getting over Lesley ditching us in favour of Faceless any sooner than I would.
What he had done was step up my training. As soon as he'd been sure I'd suffered no permanent harm from being tasered, we'd started work on as many offensive and defensive formae as he safely get me to do each day. As a result most of the time I was too knackered at the end of the day to dwell on what had happened with Lesley, which I think was as much part of his plan as making sure I was able to defend myself. We slowed down a bit in the last couple weeks or so, first because I'd had a cold and sneezing while using magic to explode things tends to make the wrong thing go kaboom. Then because he'd caught it from me. I'd still had to practice down on the firing range, while he coughed and sneezed and generally looked like he should have been in bed. He'd mostly shifted by the time we'd left London, which was a good thing, as I'm sure I'd read somewhere that flying with a cold isn't good for you.
Molly had supplied us both with what seemed to be tea with added gravy. I suspect it was the sort of thing people were given in the past to make them get well faster - mainly because nobody wanted to have a nice mug of gravy with breakfast for any longer than necessary. It had certain got rid of my cold and seemed to have mostly worked with Nightingale, although he was still trying to shake the last of the cough. Would sea air be good for that? People always seem to think so, but it could be one of those complete bollocks things like getting a cold if go out with wet hair.
Silence stretched out between us, and after realising I'd left it far to long to say that I actually admired him and was worried about how hard he was taking things, I decide to go for what I thought was safest. "At least we won't be on the boat for too much longer." We'd managed a third of it according to my watch. I could even hope that it was the worse third and it would be better from now on, although that did seem like wishful thinking.
"It will be several hours yet," Nightingale said miserably, one arm now curled around his stomach. "We haven't docked at Orkney yet."
"Maybe once we get to Orkney they'll stop for a while before going back out to sea? The storm might have stopped by then."
"One can hope." Seeming to have given up of trying to sleep Nightingale got up. "I have little love of the sea and even less affinity with ships. This journey is doing little to revise that opinion." He headed unsteadily for the cabin door. "I'm going to see if a little fresh air might be of help."
"Okay," I replied hoping that he didn't want me to come with him. Moving about seemed like a recipe for disaster where holding on to my lunch was concerned.
I must have actually fallen asleep this time as Nightingale all but falling back into the cabin woke me up. He was dripping wet and shivering so badly he could barely open and close the door. He looked absolutely wretched and I had little doubt that going outside had prevented him being sick.
Somehow between us he managed to get out of his wet clothes. I don't think we spoke at all. It was one of those moments where you didn't need a fuss made about it, you just need some help and then for it never to be spoken of again. Ever. Rather like Ravi's stag do. Six years on and we still don't talk about just what happened to the sofa at his Aunt Suki's house.
The St Clair was still rocking when Nightingale finally managed to get into bed, but it wasn't as bad as it had been. An announcement over the tannoy system shortly after that informed us that we were now in Scapaflow and would be docking in Kirkwall in Orkney in around half an hour. Only a hour and a half later than scheduled. Given the conditions I thought that was pretty good going really. We were still docked in Kirkwall when I managed to get back to sleep and it was how I stayed until morning. I'm lucky like that.
Twelve hours turned out to be the time the crossing took in good weather, so it was only after seventeen stomach churning hours that me and Nightingale finally arrived in Lerwick harbour. Nightingale would have told me that it should have said I rather than me, but he still looked green and was swaying on his feet as we waited for the St Clair to dock.
Somehow he'd managed to get up, dressed and had even had shave without any help. I'd skipped that last part as it didn't grow all that fast and I liked my skin still attached. I'd managed a cup of weak tea, but he'd not been able to face it. At least the last couple of hours had been without any dashes for the bathroom for him. Trying to be sick when there's nothing left to get rid of is one of life's truly miserable experiences.
There was no nice terminal building or anything much in Lerwick and the St Clair bobbed wildly as the walkway that had been extended down from the ship to the quayside lifted clear of the ground on the worse swells. Eventually we got off the ship and I decided that regardless of how much it cost or how long I had to wait I was flying back. It didn't look like I'd be getting any arguement of Nightingale about it either.
I’d been expecting Shetland to be like Scotland, only with extra Scottishness, but it looked more those Scandinavian cop shows that seemed to be all the rage at the moment. It was also a hell of a lot colder than I thought it would be. The clock, thermometer and wind gauge thing on the ferry terminal building showed as much, just thirty-four degrees. Or one degree if you like Celsius, as most people seemed to when the temperatures were low. The only reason they did as far as I could tell was so they could say it was zero on a cold day. They would conveniently switch back to Fahrenheit when the temperatures rose again so they could say it was over a hundred when it was hot.
The cold, damp air or maybe last night's soaking had seemed to have kick started Nightingale's cold again, and he was trying not to cough and sneeze on me as he huddled in what looked like a smokers shelter while we waited for our police pick up.
We didn't have to wait long. A slim, white guy in his mid-thirties, his blond hair plastered flat against his head by the rain, hurried over to us. “Are you DCI Nightingale and PC Grant, from the Met?” He held out his hand, to Nightingale, who after a pause to cough and then put back his handkerchief, shook it. “I'm DC Wilson. Although everybody calls Sandy. DCI Perez sent me to make sure you got to the station alright.”
I'd expected to get a PC sent to get us and maybe a squad car if the station was a bit of a walk from the ferry terminal. Not that I was complaining, it was nice to be appreciated.
"Yes, thank you," Nightingale said, sounding relieved. "Quite some whether you seem to have up here."
“It’s not the worse its been,” Sandy said with the cheerfulness of somebody who’s not spent the last seventeen hours feeling like they were inside a washing machine stuck on spin. He shook my hand, before continuing, “Worse one in recent years was back in 2001. Near on forty hours it took them. People were scared it was going to founder and there would have no been safe to take the lifeboats out.”
I’d half expected him to go off on a ‘you soft southerners’ spiel after that, but he looked us over again and took pity on us. “It was a rough night,” he said. “Do you want to go straight to the station or are you going to go to your hotel first? I can’t imagine trying to eat anything on the St Clair would have been a good idea.”
“I’ll notify our Bed and Breakfast from the station,” Nightingale said, muffling a another cough in his handkerchief. "We are already running late."
Sandy looked surprised and if I was honest, so was I. I just hoped they hadn't let our rooms to somebody else when we'd failed to show to last night. Sandy didn't say anything more about it and lead us through the drizzle to his car, a fairly plain little Corsa, was parked. The heater had been running in the car and we all steamed quietly on the short drive up to the station.
Notes:
The St Clair and its channel ferry origins are true. I've been a passenger heading to Shetland as an archaeologist on it a couple of times. (As well as on the other ship that sails the Aberdeen to Lerwick route, the St Sunniva.)
It has been a few years since I last went up there so apologies if they have finally decommissioned them. The off-white plastic rooms and bed seltbelts are also true. I only got a cabin once. the next time i took a sleeping bag as hand luggage and slept on the floor of the ships bar as a good number of the other passengers did. There was talk of a proper ferry terminal being built in Lerwick as opposed to the ships docking at Victoria Quay as they do in this story and did when I last visited there.
Fortunately for me the weather was never as bad at Peter and Nightingale experienced it. The storm Sandy mentions where the 12 hour trip took 40 is from a real news story.
Part two: http://the-silver-sun.livejournal.com/241454.html