Cold Earth

Chapter Thirteen

Perez and Willow walked from Fran’s house, the house where Perez now lived with her daughter, to Magnus Tait’s old croft at Hillhead. It wasn’t far and despite the weather they both felt the need for fresh air and exercise. The landslide had started close to the Hillhead boundary, and Magnus’s croft was undamaged. There was traffic below them, headlights sweeping occasionally across the hill like spotlights, but the cars moved slowly through the single-lane stretch of the road and there was little noise. A stony track led up towards Magnus’s house. Perez shone his torch down at the path so that Willow could follow it, but occasionally she missed her footing and he could hear her swearing under her breath.

The house had been whitewashed only a couple of months before Magnus had suffered the stroke, and it gleamed as they approached it, a beacon to aim for through the darkness. Perez had joined the small group of local people who had volunteered to help paint it. Guilt at their previous hostility towards the old man had led to the formation of the work party. Perez thought he would have resented the sudden shift in relationship; he’d have found the visits, the delivery of home-bakes, the offers of help patronizing, but Magnus had enjoyed every minute of the day that the house had been whitewashed. He’d flirted gently with the women and joked with the men. It had been a fine evening and, when the work was done, someone had suggested an impromptu barbecue. Perez hadn’t stayed long. He’d found himself swamped with self-pity; he’d thought suddenly how much Fran would have enjoyed the event. He’d carried Cassie back to their house on his shoulders, and even when he’d got her to bed and sat alone in the late-evening sunshine, he’d fancied he could hear the laughter outside and he felt sorry for himself all over again.

Now the drizzle seeped through his jeans and Perez forced himself back to the present. The last few years he’d lived too much in the past. They’d reached the house. There was the bench made from driftwood where Magnus had sat watching the painters at work, and again in his head Perez was back on that sunny afternoon. Magnus had wanted to help but they’d told him to relax, and he’d done as he was told, just grateful for the company. He’d turned to Perez at one point: ‘It’s as though the old place has woken up after years asleep.’ No bitterness at the years of isolation, only joy for the present.

Now it felt as if the old place was sleeping again. There were no sheep on the in-bye land and the grass was brown and overgrown. No smell of peat smoke or tobacco coming from the house. Willow joined Perez on the flagstone doorstep. ‘Well, is it open?’

He tried the door. There was a simple latch and it opened immediately. The wood was a little warped and it stuck for a moment against the stone floor, but another push and they were inside. Perez felt on the rough wall for a light switch and suddenly the room was illuminated by a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. The place was much as he remembered. The scrubbed table under the window, the Shetland chair with its uneven drawer under the seat, the sheepskin rugs on the stone floor. It felt cold – Magnus had lit a fire every evening, even in the summer – and there was a layer of dust on the furniture.

‘Did you know him well?’ Willow moved to the ledge over the fire. The round-faced clock had stopped. Perez remembered its ticking as a background to the uncomfortable conversations he’d had with the man. The two of them sitting, face-to-face, discussing the disappearance of a child. That had been winter too, but the weather had been unusually still and there’d been snow on the ground.

‘I arrested him once.’

Perhaps something in his voice told her that the idea still disturbed him, or perhaps she knew all about that case, because she didn’t follow it up with a further question.

‘So we’re assuming that Magnus must have had the keys to Tain and we want to know if they’re still here.’ Her voice was brisk and cheerful. He wondered if she’d ever been sad – so sad that nothing in the world outside her head mattered. Then he thought he was being self-indulgent; what his first wife Sarah had called emotionally incontinent. Perhaps Willow was just better at handling grief. She was a stronger and more balanced individual.

‘I think so. He was a very trusting soul. He’d have given up the keys to anyone with a reasonable explanation for wanting them. And of course he’d never met Alissandra Sechrest, so it’d be easy enough for someone to take him in.’ Perez began opening the painted wooden cupboards. Magnus had very few possessions: some pans and pots, a couple of cups, saucers and plates, sufficient cutlery for two people in a handmade wooden box. Perez thought there’d been more clutter when he’d first visited, remnants of the old man’s childhood, his mother’s belongings. Perez remembered that Magnus had donated some items to the jumble stall at the Ravenswick Sunday teas. Perhaps that had been his way of coming to terms with the past. Or maybe he’d just thought they were ugly and gathering dust and he’d wanted shot of them.

‘He’d heard Alissandra Sechrest speak, though,’ Willow said. ‘Anyone coming to see him, to collect the keys, would have had to use an American accent to be convincing.’

Perez shrugged. He thought any accent that wasn’t Shetland would have seemed strange to Magnus. And if the mysterious dark-haired woman had come here, she’d have charmed him. Magnus had remained single all his life, but he’d always had an eye for a pretty woman. ‘Anyone who watches TV from the US would probably have done well enough to fool Magnus.’

Perez moved on round the room. Willow seemed to realize this was more than a routine investigation, that Perez had a personal connection with the place, because she stood quite still and let him continue the search unhindered.

Under the sink was a galvanized bucket, a scrubbing brush, washing powder and pegs. On the other side of the room stood a large Victorian sideboard. Dark wood, engraved with florid flowers and leaves, lush vegetation that would never have grown in the islands. A prized family possession. In the drawers were the records of Magnus’s life, personal and business. Receipts for lambs sent to the slaughterhouse, the details of sales, in a sprawling hand. A savings book showing a balance of £2,500 with the Orkney and Shetland building society. Cheque books going back decades, neatly folded and fastened with elastic bands. Nothing had been removed. The distant relatives from the south who had come to bury the old man had taken the ferry back to Aberdeen on the evening of the landslide, anxious that they might be trapped in the islands by another act of nature. Shetland must have seemed a very hostile place to them. Perez had spoken to them briefly. They’d said they would come back when the weather was better, to sort out the estate. One was a businessman and one a university lecturer, and the only sense they had of the place where their grandparents had been born came from stories and legends.

In the sideboard there were Christmas cards, saved in a shoebox. Minnie Laurenson had obviously sent one each year. The subject matter was always religious and the message, carefully written in black ink, always the same: Season’s greetings from your very good friend. Two single people who were neighbours and friends. Perez wondered if there’d ever been a romantic connection, and thought that even if there had been, Magnus’s mother would probably have discouraged it. Then he came across a handmade card. The image on the front a child’s handprint in green paint, turned by an adult into a fat Christmas tree. Inside the message: To Magnus, merry Christmas from Cassie and Fran. Two kisses, sprawling and drawn by the toddler that Cassie must have been then. Perez put the lid back on the shoebox, shoved it back into the ugly sideboard and moved into the other room.

The bedroom seemed even emptier than the kitchen. In the wardrobe a suit, shiny and threadbare, brought out for funerals and weddings. And for being taken into custody. Perez felt in the pockets, but found nothing. In the drawers there were underclothes grey from age and from washing by hand. In the kitchen it seemed that Willow had wanted to check the sideboard for herself. Perez heard the clunk of the cupboard doors and the opening of the drawers. Perhaps she was curious about what had spooked him. He should have shown her the Christmas card from Fran. How hard would that have been? Look, Cassie must have been very young when she did this. He’d lacked the courage even to do that.

‘Jimmy, there’s a letter from Minnie Laurenson’s solicitor.’

Of course Willow’s search would have been more thorough. She wouldn’t have allowed herself to be distracted by the handwriting of a dead lover. Perez walked slowly back into the kitchen.

She’d put the letter on the kitchen table. It had the Rogerson and Taylor printed letterhead and was dated nine months previously. The wording was formal and rather imperious:

We understand that you have in your possession the keys to Tain, Gulberswick Road, Ravenswick, now the property of our client Ms Alissandra Sechrest. We would be grateful if you could return the fore-mentioned keys to our office at 6 Commercial Street, Lerwick, at your earliest convenience.

‘Would he have taken the keys into the office?’ Willow was standing almost directly under the bare bulb, and her face looked shiny and hard like a plastic doll’s.

‘Oh, I think so. Magnus was a bit scared of anyone in authority. Something like this would have made him nervous. He’d have been on the first bus into town with the keys in his pocket.’

‘So the murdered woman pretending to be Alissandra didn’t get the keys from here.’ Willow moved a little and now it was her hair that caught the light. Perez thought it was like spun sugar, a little burnt, turned into caramel.

‘It seems not.’ But he was distracted. He read the letter again. ‘Doesn’t this seem a bit heavy-handed to you? I mean, why not just phone up Magnus and ask him to drop the keys into the office next time he was in town? They’d know he wouldn’t do any damage to Tain.’

She shrugged. ‘Isn’t that lawyers for you?’

‘Aye, maybe.’

Willow had moved into the bedroom and was searching there. It irritated Perez that she couldn’t trust him to do a good job. But after all, he’d missed the solicitor’s letter, so he was in no position to complain. She came back into the kitchen.

‘Anything?’

She shook her head. ‘It always seems a terrible intrusion, going through a dead person’s belongings. Much worse, somehow, than searching when the owner is around.’

‘So a wasted trip,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to have dragged you up here.’

‘What is it the scientists say? That even negative results are significant. And maybe you’re right about the solicitor’s letter. It’s certainly worth following up with them.’

Perez switched off the light and they stood outside. While they’d been in the house the fine rain had stopped and there were patchy breaks in the clouds, the occasional glimpse of a half-moon. ‘Do you want to come back to mine for a coffee?’

She paused for a moment. When she spoke he couldn’t see her face, but he could hear the smile in her voice. ‘Ah, Jimmy. I don’t think you’re in the mood for company tonight.’

They walked down the hill in silence towards the lights of his house and he wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or sorry.

He saw Willow into her car and waved her away. There’d been no phone reception on the hill, but now his mobile started buzzing with texts and emails. The house seemed empty without Cassie’s chatter. The breakfast dishes were still dirty on the draining board and he washed them, before looking at his phone. He thought there was nothing now that couldn’t wait and he was still reliving the shock of seeing Fran’s handwriting in Magnus’s Christmas card. He had little written by her. Neither of them had been sentimental. There was no shoebox full of cards in this house. All he had was her last shopping list, attached to the fridge by a puffin magnet, and the letter she’d written him in Fair Isle, half-joking and half-serious, bequeathing him her daughter in the event of her death. That was hidden away in a secret place. He’d been tempted to throw it away, but knew he’d have to show it to Cassie when she was old enough.

He made a cup of tea and looked at his phone. A list of routine messages that he’d answer the following day. Suddenly he felt very tired. And then he saw there was a recent voicemail from Sandy. The man was so excited that Perez had to play it twice before he could properly understand it. It seemed Sandy had seen Tom Rogerson in the Scalloway Hotel with a strange woman. Perez thought there was little suspicious in that. Tom had business meetings all the time. Sandy’s last sentence was more interesting: ‘They drove off in separate vehicles, boss. And Tom Rogerson’s car has a Shetland flag sticker on his bumper.’

Perez couldn’t settle. He knew he should go to bed, but he was too wired, and instead he sat by the remains of the fire and played out the events of the evening in his head. The fact that Tom Rogerson had the Shetland flag as a bumper sticker was interesting, but shouldn’t be given too much importance – so did half the local population. Perez worked through the search of Magnus’s house. He’d been distracted from the moment he’d entered the place, by memories of the old man and of Fran. Willow had been too sensitive to criticize or insist that they go through the house more thoroughly. Perez pulled on his boots, went outside and walked back up the bank towards Hillhead.

It was colder than he’d remembered and even brighter; there was almost constant moonlight, covered at times by brown-edged clouds. He found gloves in his pocket and pulled them on as he walked. He didn’t bother with the torch. At the house he forced himself to concentrate on the present, went straight in and switched on the light. He stood in the centre of the room and looked around, forcing himself to consider places they might have missed on the first sweep. Finally he arrived at the Shetland chair. Straight back, low arms, all once made of driftwood pulled from the shore. And beneath the seat a drawer. Croft houses had been small and shared with animals; no space could be wasted. Willow wouldn’t have realized.

He stooped and pulled open the drawer. At first he was disappointed. It seemed empty. Then he saw there was a brown envelope lying flat on the base. It was almost the same size as the drawer, so he’d taken it at first as a paper lining. No writing on the front and not stuck down. So thin that he warned himself it was probably empty. Still wearing his gloves, he slid the content onto the table. A glossy coloured photograph. The head and shoulders of a woman. The shoulders bare, so even though there was only the suggestion of the curve of her breasts, it was mildly titillating. The photo was of the murdered woman, though this was a younger version and must have been taken at least ten years earlier.