Red Bones (Shetland Quartet 3)

though it was reddish-brown, the colour of clay. Bone, she saw now. As an undergraduate she’d expected old bone to be white or cream or grey and had been surprised at the richness of the colour. A large piece of bone, round, she thought, though only a fraction had been uncovered.
    She was disappointed, but tried not to show it. Beginners were thrilled by their first finds. In the Shetland digs they were always finding shards of bone, sheep mostly; once there was a horse, the skeleton almost entirely preserved.
    She began to explain this to Evelyn, to tell her what they could learn about the settlement from the animal remains.
    ‘We can’t just dig an object out,’ she said. ‘We have to keep it in context, to continue to trowel, layer by layer. This’ll be good practice. I’ll leave you to it and come back later.’ She thought how awkward she would feel to be digging while someone was staring over her shoulder. Besides, she had her own work to do.
    Later they went into the house for a break. Mima made sandwiches for them and then came out herself to see what was happening. When Evelyn went back to work on the practice trench, the older woman stood watching. Mima was wearing black Crimplene trousers and wellingtons that flapped around her knees. She’d thrown a threadbare grey fleece over her shoulders. Hattie thought she looked like a hooded crow, standing there watching her daughter-in-law work. A hooded crow ready to snatch at a fragment of food.
    ‘Well, Evelyn, what do you look like?’ Mima said. ‘On your hands and knees like some sort of beast. In this light you could be one of Joseph’s pigs, grubbing around in the soil there. You be careful or he’ll be slitting your throat and eating you as bacon.’ She laughed so loud that she coughed and spluttered.
    Evelyn said nothing. She knelt up and glared. Hattie felt sorry for her. She’d never known Mima be so cruel. Hattie jumped into the trench beside Evelyn. The bone was protruding from the earth now, largely uncovered. Hattie took her own trowel from her jeans pocket. With intense concentration she stripped away more of the soil, then took a brush. The shape of the bone became more defined: there was a pleasing curve, a sculptured hollow.
    ‘ Pars orbitalis ,’ she said. Shock and excitement made her forget her earlier resolve not to show off, to keep her language simple so Evelyn would understand.
    Evelyn looked at her.
    ‘The frontal orbit,’ Hattie said. ‘This is part of a human skull.’
    ‘Oh no,’ Mima said. Hattie looked up at her and saw that her face was white. ‘That cannot be right. No, no, that cannot be.’
    She turned and scurried back to the house.

 
Chapter Five
     
    Sandy Wilson crossed the field unsteadily. It was a few weeks after Hattie had found the skull, one of those thick black nights that often came in the spring. Not cold, but the island covered by low cloud and a dense, relentless drizzle that hid the moon and stars and even the lit windows of the house behind him. He didn’t have a torch, but he didn’t need one. He’d grown up here. If you lived on an island six miles long and two and a half miles wide, by the time you were ten you knew every inch of it. And that internal map stayed with you even after you’d left. Sandy lived in town now, in Lerwick, but he reckoned if he was dropped blindfold anywhere on Whalsay he’d be able to tell you where he was after a few minutes, just by the way the land lay under his feet and the touch of the nearest dyke on his hand.
    He knew he’d had too much to drink, but congratulated himself on leaving the Pier House Hotel when he did. His mother would be waiting up for him. Another couple of drinks and he’d be steaming. Then he’d get the old lecture about self-restraint and about Michael, his brother, who’d given up the booze altogether. Sandy thought maybe he’d call in to his grandmother’s house on the way and she’d make him a cup of strong black coffee so he’d be quite sober when he got home. She’d phoned him earlier in the week and told him to call at Setter next time he was home. Mima never minded seeing him a wee bit worse for wear. She’d given him his first dram, one morning when he was on his way to the big school. It was a chilly sort of day and she’d said the whisky would keep out the cold. He’d spluttered and choked like it was the worst kind of medicine, but he’d developed a taste for it since. He thought Mima had had a taste for