7.1 The Shetland Witch, or, Atropos Wants Her Shears Back

In which Hazel steers the crowds away

Hazel’s phone rang.

‘Did you hear the breakfast news?’ Theresa said without preamble. ‘It had a story about the dig. There’s a crowd up here already. You should get over here.’ She rang off.

Hazel yelped, and jumped up from the kitchen table. ‘Got to go: folk at the dig site.’

‘I thought there were more cars parked out there than usual,’ Maggie said, glancing out of the window. ‘Here’s another one.’

Hazel was into her coat as fast as she could scramble, and belted out of the front door, yelling ‘Thanks for breakfast!’

‘We’ll be along later!’ Maggie called out of the kitchen window, but Hazel had already run over the bridge and was heading up the track.

The tiny parking area had been crammed with what, ten cars and vans? How could she not have heard them arrive? Closing the gate behind her Hazel could see Fintan at the top of the rise, talking to a group in anonymous rain jackets and fleeces, and, oh god, was that a cameraman? She started to run up the hill, and then stopped. Maggie was in her head.

<Give us a ring, can you?>

Hazel got out her phone.

Sometimes, when you were in sight of other people, having a conversation on a phone looked a lot less unusual than mind-speaking, staring into nothing like you were in a trance.

‘Ishabel said to remind you not to look like you’re anxious. And don’t forget the weather.’

‘What?’

Maggie yelled at her. ‘WEATHER. Zeus goes in for weather, right? Thunderbolts as well.’

‘Blast. Got to go.’

Hazel realised that Fintan was about to lead a party of sightseers towards the stone. She ran up to the large group of people and pushed her way politely to the front.

‘Morning Fintan. Before you start, can I have a word?’ she said briskly to him, smiling widely. He blustered a little, but Hazel could sense that he had jumped at seeing her. They turned away from the crowd. 

‘Have you tested the stone site for radioactivity? Or reported the heat?’ she hissed.

‘Er, no,’ he said, and looked startled.

‘The app for the dosimeters will give us the data, and we could use the Geiger counter from Baltasound school.’ She could see that she was well ahead of him already. She continued smoothly, ‘I’d quite like to be certain that we weren’t all irradiated yesterday. In any case, the anomalous heat radiation means we need to close the site to visitors on health and safety grounds, until we can work out why that stone was so hot yesterday. There are too many folk here now to let on to the Hill in any case. We haven’t even got a perimeter path laid out.’

She paused. Was he going to see reason? How long would it take to persuade him? Now he had put on his Deep Thought expression, for the benefit of the crowd.

‘Fintan. Will you tell them, or shall I be Dr Nasty?’

‘But we’ve got BBC Scotland coming this afternoon. Connal Matheson from the Times is coming as well.’

‘The Shetland Times?’

‘No, the English Times. Scotland correspondent. The Shetland Times is here now; Anna in the red jacket, over there.’

‘Blast. OK, I’ll tell these folks to go away. Could you check the radiation readings now?’

Seeing that he agreed, Hazel turned to address the crowd, pitching her voice clearly to carry through the rising wind. She spotted a man in a purple fleece with red hair and tufty eyebrows whom she recognised from a meeting in the Museum – he must be local, there was no way he could have got here from Lerwick already.

Holding their attention, she noted which faces were the authoritative ones, and which could be a nuisance. Anna in the red jacket was recording her.

She explained about the site’s instability, the crumbling cliff, the unprocessed findings, and degradation dangers to the sandy soil under their feet. She talked about anomalous heat being recorded from certain places on the site, and ran through the possible causes: maybe just reflective surfaces, or perhaps there had been a build-up of hot gases which they had now disturbed.

That was good, a bit of stillness: the folk were taking it in.

She carried on, mentioning radioactivity, at which point the journalists leaned forward with their phones and cameras, while the locals drifted quietly backwards. Someone asked a question, and Hazel explained that the newly excavated materials now needed to be tested for radiation and other hazards before any more work could be done. The equipment would be coming in the next day or so.

She could hear a drone buzzing above her and cursed mentally, but she could see with relief that there was a perceptible shuffling backwards now by everyone. They were getting the message.

She talked a bit more about the cliff edge falling: they were definitely moving now.

‘OK, so I hope you can see that we don’t really have a choice, so if you could all just take your photos from where you’re standing now, thank you, that’s great. Good, and could the camera drone be brought down now too? Thank you. Thank you. Aye. See you later. Thank you. Bye.’

And they were going. They were walking back down the track to the cars, chatting and laughing, and some were on their phones. She could see even from here in how they were standing and talking to each other, that they were enjoying the sense of importance in being at the beginning of what might be a news story. One man was taking photos by standing on the roof of one of the modern megaliths; another was walking out to the eastern edge of the promontory, probably hoping to catch a look at the site with his photo lens from the side.

She turned to Fintan. ‘I need to check the site for erosion damage so I’ll just do a wee walk round.’

He was still looking at the dosimeter app on his phone, turned away, left hand in his jeans pocket, looking important, the Excavation Unit Leader checking the data for an important environmental concern.

‘You carry on,’ Hazel thought, as she quartered her way across the Hill, checking for signs of heavy boots tearing down the fragile soil. ‘You do your job. I’ll do mine, and we’ll get those things out before anyone knows they’re there. If Zeus doesn’t show up first.’

Episode 7.2 will follow.

The Shetland Witch © Kate Macdonald 2024.

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