Cold Earth

Chapter Sixteen

They arrived late morning at Paul Taylor’s house and it was clearly a bad time to roll up. The solicitor had three young boys and they were fractious and bored, rolling around on the floor fighting.

‘I was just about to take them to the leisure centre.’ Taylor’s voice was English and tense. ‘Let them get rid of some of that energy in the pool. This time of year they seem to be stuck indoors all day.’ He looked out of the window as another shower blew against the glass.

His wife was in the kitchen, slamming pans. A dining table was already laid. Tablecloth and glasses, place settings for seven. ‘My parents came up for Up Helly Aa and decided to spend a little time in the islands. They’re staying in a hotel – for obvious reasons, they find that more civilized – but we’ve invited them to Sunday lunch…’ His voice tailed off again. Perez understood. His first wife, Sarah, had been a great one for family rituals, but always ended up resenting the effort involved.

‘We won’t take long.’ Willow sidestepped a flailing arm from the tangled heap on the floor and sat down on the sofa. This was a modern house in Gulberswick, a village just to the south of Lerwick and a prime commuting location. Large living room and four bedrooms, double garage and utility room. It would have fetched a southern price. ‘Just a few questions.’

Taylor nodded, parted the boys with some difficulty and sent them upstairs. ‘You can use the computer in the office. Fifteen minutes. Then we’ll head out to Clickimin for a bit, before we eat.’

There were whoops of joy as the boys pounded upstairs. Suddenly the room felt unnaturally quiet.

‘Your firm administers Tain, the house in Ravenswick that was wrecked in the landslide.’ Willow leaned forwards, her elbows on her knees. She looked relaxed, but the words were formal. ‘We’re wondering why you didn’t contact the police service when we asked for information about the owner.’

Taylor had taken an armchair with his back to the window. Perez was still standing.

‘I didn’t realize we did look after the property,’ Taylor said. ‘That’s routine stuff, and the girls in the office manage lettings for us.’

‘It formed part of a bequest in a will that you drew up.’ Willow was precise and firm. She could have been a lawyer herself. ‘The deceased was a Minnie Laurenson.’

‘It was that property!’ He seemed shocked.

Willow persisted. ‘You drew up the woman’s will. You must have known where she lived.’

‘No. We’d just moved to Shetland when Miss Laurenson came into the office to discuss her affairs. Now I’d be able to place the house, but then anywhere outside Lerwick was rather a mystery. The will was very straightforward. The house was to go to a niece in the States. Any remaining cash to a medical charity. I remember it so well because Minnie Laurenson was my first client in Shetland.’ He smiled. An attempt to charm Willow. It was a pleasant smile and Perez thought he probably used it often to get his own way.

But Willow refused to be charmed. ‘Last year the house was let out rent-free to Craig Henderson.’

‘Yes, we spoke to Miss Sechrest on the phone. She called us, in fact, and asked our opinion about allowing him to use it. Then she gave instructions for us to let him have the keys.’

‘Did you speak to Miss Sechrest personally?’

‘No, but I was in the main office when Marie, our admin person, took the call, so I was aware of what was said.’

‘You didn’t advise her against allowing a stranger to move into her house?’

Taylor shook his head. ‘He wasn’t quite a stranger. Craig’s family is known to us. We act for them in their business dealings. They have upmarket tourist accommodation. I couldn’t see that there would be a problem, if Ms Sechrest was happy with the arrangement. The house was fully insured.’

‘What happened to the keys when Craig went overseas again?’

‘I’m pretty sure he dropped them back into the office before he left, but as I say, one of the girls in the office would have taken them. There’s a locked cabinet where the keys to the properties that we administer are kept.’

‘So you’d be able to tell us if the Tain keys are still there?’

‘You want me to go to the office to check now?’ He sounded horrified. Upstairs, interest in the computer game seemed to be waning. There was a squawk of pain after what could have been a karate kick. Then a wail: ‘Dad!’

‘You could give us your office keys,’ Willow said, ‘and we could check for ourselves and just drop them through your door later, so we don’t disturb the family while you’re having lunch.’

Taylor hesitated, but only briefly. He took a bunch of keys from a hook in the entrance hall. ‘This is the front door and this one’s the door to reception. The cabinet’s in there, and this one will open it. The hooks inside are all labelled with the names of the property and the client.’

Perez waited for Taylor to take the individual keys from the ring, but instead he dropped the whole bunch into Willow’s waiting hand. She rewarded him with her own huge smile. ‘Thank you so much, Mr Taylor. Now we’ll leave you and your family in peace.’ At the door she hesitated, though. ‘Does the name Alison Teal mean anything to you?’

He was distracted by the kids upstairs and took no time to consider. ‘No. Should it?’ As they left the house he was yelling at the boys to get ready or they wouldn’t have time for a swim. Throughout the whole encounter his wife hadn’t appeared.

The solicitors’ office was on Commercial Street and formed a corner with one of the steep lanes leading up to the library. The street was almost empty and few shops were open. A chill breeze blew down it, occasionally scattering clouds for a moment to lighten the sky before the rain continued. One man stood huddled at the ATM at the bank close by, but he took no notice of them as they let themselves into the building. They walked into a narrow corridor and had to step over Saturday’s post lying on the laminate floor. To the right an unlocked door led to a seating area. This was presumably where clients waited to see the solicitor of their choice. A sliding glass window opened from there into the receptionists’ office: a desk with two computers, a stack of filing cabinets. This office was reached through a door that faced the main entrance. Willow fumbled a few times to find the right key, then she unlocked it and they walked in.

‘Why did Taylor give us access to all the offices?’ Willow stood in the middle of the small room and looked around. ‘Has he got nothing to hide or was it a kind of double bluff? To make us believe he’s not worried about what we might find.’

Perez shrugged. ‘He seemed genuine enough to me. Not a natural-born father, perhaps, but harassed and he just wanted us out of his house.’

The keys to the properties that the firm administered were in a narrow painted wooden cupboard on the interior wall. Inside there was a row of hooks, just as Taylor had described. The one labelled ‘Sechrest/Ravenswick’ held a ring with one Yale and one Chubb. ‘No mention of Tain,’ Willow said. ‘So Taylor might not have connected it with the house destroyed in the slip. He could be telling the truth.’

‘The fact that the keys are here doesn’t mean Alison Teal didn’t use them to get into the house.’ Perez thought they’d become fixated on the small details of the case and that he’d lost the bigger picture. He wanted to escape the office with its heavy furniture and bloated pot-plants. He thought they should have chased down Tom Rogerson in Orkney after all. ‘If Rogerson was helping the woman, he’d just have to make copies.’

‘Of course. But while we’re here, it would be crazy not to have a cheeky look into the offices.’ Willow held the bunch of keys by one finger and wiggled them until they made a jangling noise that jarred on Perez’s nerves. ‘Mr Taylor gave these to us, after all. Of his own free will.’

The partners had offices on the first floor. Taylor’s looked out at the lane and faced the blank side of a large hotel. Even in summer the room must have been perpetually dark. Now they needed the light on, to see it in any detail. The desk was under the window and held a fierce anglepoise lamp and a photograph of three apparently angelic boys in identical hand-knitted jerseys. A second photo was of a woman who must be his wife. She had sharp, fox-like features and looked rather severe.

‘Hard to believe it’s the same family.’ Willow shot Perez a grin. He knew she’d never had much time for conventional relationships. The commune had affected her more than she was willing to let on. Perez thought it was unfair to make a judgement about people they’d only met briefly on a wet Sunday.

Rogerson’s office was at the front of the building and was the grander of the two, with a large desk that looked genuinely old, shelves of impressive textbooks, more shiny pot-plants on the windowsill and framed diplomas on the walls. Also on the wall, a photo of the man shaking Nicola Sturgeon’s hand. Another of Rogerson in a grinning group of men standing next to David Cameron. Willow was ranging around the room and nodded towards the pictures.

‘Keeping his options open,’ she said. ‘Is that the sort of man he is?’

Perez thought about that. ‘He’d always want to be on the winning side.’

‘Ah, that’s not criminal.’ She paused for a beat. ‘Unfortunately.’ She landed up in front of a filing cabinet and tried a number of keys until it opened.

‘Is that entirely legal?’

‘Taylor gave us the keys. He knew we wanted them to pursue our investigation.’

‘He wouldn’t expect us to pry into his clients’ affairs.’ Perez wished he didn’t sound so pompous.

‘You’re quite right, Jimmy, but let me just see if there’s a file for Alison Teal in here. If Rogerson is the man she met in Brae and in Mareel, he must have come across her at some point in the past, to develop the relationship – whatever that relationship was. I can just about imagine Magnus Tait falling for Alison’s charms when she first visited the islands, and being happy with a signed photo, but that doesn’t seem credible for Tom Rogerson.’ Willow looked up. ‘You said Rogerson worked in the south for a while. Would he even have been in Shetland when Ms Teal did her disappearing act?’

‘Oh yes, he’d have been working here then. He came home when Kathryn was still very young, still a baby.’

Willow looked as if she was going to say something, but turned back to the filing cabinet. ‘Nothing on Alison Teal.’

She moved over to join Perez at the desk and started opening the drawers. None of them were locked and they seemed to contain material relating to Rogerson’s council work rather than his legal practice: booklets about health and welfare matters, tourist brochures.

Perez was thinking they were wasting their time here. Under the desk he found a bin that still contained scraps of paper. He pulled out a handwritten note that must have been left for Rogerson’s assistant. Please make sure the client signs this as soon as possible. He flattened it and stepped aside so that Willow could see it properly. ‘What do you think?’

‘I’d need to see the original again, but this writing looks very similar to the letter Sandy found in Tain.’

‘Another connection then,’ Perez said. ‘And a possible suspect.’