Cold Earth

Chapter Nineteen

They all caught up over tea and sandwiches in the basement kitchen of the guest house where Willow was staying. Rosie set the refreshments on the table, said she was going to put her feet up and left them to their discussions.

Even Vicki Hewitt was there, and Willow turned to her first.

‘Anything new from the scene?’

Vicki shook her head. ‘I’ve pretty well finished looking at the debris caught up behind the wall. Nothing’s jumped out at me as being significant. I’ll send it south as soon as I can, and I’ll start inside the house tomorrow.’

‘But Sandy, it seems, has had a very productive morning.’

Willow had already read the Independent article, but she’d asked Sandy to print out more copies and he passed them round the table.

‘So this is an interview Alison Teal gave to the journalist Camilla White a little while after her disappearance fifteen years ago.’ He looked serious, like a schoolboy asked to speak in front of the class.

Perez interrupted. ‘Is it exactly fifteen years?’

‘Aye, almost to the day. She arrived in Shetland on the last day of January.’

‘So maybe she saw it as an anniversary trip. Could that be the reason for the champagne?’

‘Rather than because she was feeling desperate again, you mean?’ Willow thought either explanation would work. ‘Let’s not get bogged down with speculation just now. Carry on, Sandy.’

‘It’s clear from the article that Alison met at least two people while she was here: Magnus Tait and a lawyer who’s almost certainly Tom Rogerson. Nobody else is mentioned specifically, but it’s possible that she came across other islanders.’

‘Yeah, that’s certainly suggested.’ Willow nodded for him to continue.

‘Alison mentions a number of family members too, and talks a bit about her troubled childhood. So now we know she has a brother called Jonathan who went into the army, that her mother’s maiden surname was Black and her first name Susie, and that Alison’s grandparents lived in Cromer. The article says that Susie and her partner were addicts and handed the children over to Alison’s paternal grandparents to be cared for. It seems likely that social services were involved, and they too will have records.’

‘Tell us then, Sandy. How many of them have you tracked down?’

This was Vicki, teasing, but Sandy took the question seriously. ‘Jonathan Teal was the easiest to find. He left the army five years ago as a corporal with the paratroopers. He’s serving time in Wormwood Scrubs for armed robbery. He and a friend held up a family shop in Norwich. Nobody was hurt, but Teal was the person waving a gun around.’

‘Which is very interesting and perhaps adds something to our understanding of the family,’ Willow said, ‘but it means that he couldn’t have been in Shetland strangling his sister.’

‘Norfolk Police are trying to trace the grandparents and parents.’ Sandy looked at his notes. ‘It’s probable that at least one of the grandparents has died, but they’re checking all that out. The parents both have records for drug-related offences, but they seem to have dropped out of the system not long after Alison’s first jaunt to Shetland.’

‘So they got clean,’ Perez said.

‘Or they got clever.’ Willow wondered if there was some significance in the timing of all this, but she couldn’t work out what it might be.

‘And then,’ Sandy said, ‘I spoke to Alison’s agent. A woman called Genevieve Winter.’

‘Impressive name.’

‘She’s a very impressive woman.’ Willow jumped in at this point. ‘She spoke to Sandy first, but she claimed not to understand him, so I phoned her back later.’

‘She got me flustered.’ Sandy was turning red. ‘I tried knapping, honestly, but she still didn’t seem to get what I was saying.’

‘Probably because she didn’t stop talking long enough to listen.’

‘Knapping?’ Vicki raised an eyebrow.

‘Losing the accent, for the benefit of soothmoothers,’ Perez said. ‘They expect us to understand Geordie or cockney, but they won’t make the effort to understand us.’

‘And this was a particularly arrogant woman.’ Willow pulled a face. ‘But in the end I did shut her up long enough to give her the news that Alison was dead. She had no contact details for a next of kin, but she was able to tell me something about Alison’s recent career. Such as it was.’

‘How did she respond to the news of Alison’s death?’ Perez poured more tea from the huge pot.

‘Honestly? I don’t think she was very bothered. Alison had stopped making her much money years ago. And Ms Winter made it very clear that her business as an agent was all about making money.’ Willow paused and then tried to order her thoughts, to sum up the last years of Alison’s life. ‘Dolly the housemaid – the character Alison played in the costume drama – was killed off very soon after Alison went to Shetland. Alison had got the reputation of being unreliable, and as Ms Winter told me: “Darling, there’s nothing worse for a young actor. Directors hate it.” She got some work immediately after that: a small part in a soap, a panto the following Christmas, some reality show on Channel Five, but about seven years ago the parts dried up altogether. Genevieve still put Alison in for auditions, but recently she’d stopped even doing that.’

‘So that could explain her trip to Shetland,’ Sandy said. ‘If the lack of work had brought on another bout of depression. I haven’t managed to get her medical records yet, or speak to social services. Because it’s a Sunday, nobody’s working.’

‘It would be useful to know if she’d been working in any capacity at all recently.’ Willow thought it sounded as if Alison’s life had stopped completely, several years ago.

‘I think she must have been.’ Sandy again. Tentative. ‘The clothes in the house at Tain all looked pretty classy. She couldn’t have bought them if she was on benefit.’

‘Good point, Sandy. All the witnesses who’ve seen her in Shetland describe her as well dressed. And according to Jimmy, she gave Simon Agnew the impression that she was normally confident and in control. That doesn’t sound like an unemployed actor. And she’d be unlikely to be splashing her money around on champagne if she was skint. Even if there was a special offer at the Co-op.’

They sat for a moment in silence. The breeze had dropped and outside it was quite still and silent.

‘Do we know if Alison had a partner?’ Perez said. ‘Or even if she’d married?’

‘You’re hoping she had some romance in her life?’ Sometimes, Willow thought, Perez was the soppiest man in the world. ‘I did ask Genevieve. She said she couldn’t imagine Alison settling down. “She was always rather a wild child, darling. There was usually some poor bloke in tow. Or, rather, some rich bloke. She went in for sugar daddies. But commitment very definitely wasn’t her thing.”’

There was a moment of silence.

‘So where do we go from here?’ Willow looked at them, spread out around the table, surrounded by empty plates and scraps of food. They were like a family, she thought, with herself and Perez as the parents and Vicki and Sandy as the kids. It felt a responsibility.

‘The first priority is to speak to Tom Rogerson,’ Perez said. ‘He misled us about knowing Alison, he had access to the keys at Tain and his car fits the description of the vehicle that collected her from Brae.’

‘What time does his plane get in from Orkney tomorrow?’

‘He’s booked on the early evening flight.’

‘Should we meet that?’ Willow thought again that she and Perez were like grown-ups, this time taking decisions that were beyond the responsibility of the kids. ‘Or let him get home and visit him there later?’

Perez took a while to consider. He never rushed a decision. ‘Maybe it would be safest to meet the flight. I’d hate to lose him. If Taylor tells him we’ve been to the office, he might be jumpy.’

‘Hard to lose a suspect in Shetland.’

‘Maybe.’ He gave her one of his slow smiles. ‘But there are lots of islands. Lots of places to hide. I’d be more worried that he might destroy evidence that we could use later. He could be keeping stuff at home.’

‘Where his wife could find it? If we think Tom was having an affair with Alison Teal, would that be likely?’

Another pause. ‘Mavis, his wife, strikes me as a woman who would prefer not to know what her husband gets up to. I don’t think she’d go sneaking through his things.’

Willow ran through the evidence they had against Rogerson. There was nothing concrete. Nothing at all that they could present to a court. ‘I’d love to find a definite connection between him and Alison Teal.’

Perez pulled a plastic evidence bag from his pocket. Inside was the note he’d retrieved from the bin in the solicitor’s office. ‘I thought we’d get this off to a handwriting expert, along with a page from Magnus Tait’s notebook, and see if we can find a match with the letter Sandy found in Tain. Rogerson’s writing looks like a match to me.’

‘You think Tom was her lover?’ Willow couldn’t quite see how that played out now. ‘But according to the article, Tom recognized Alison in the hotel and the next day she flew back to London. She doesn’t talk about seeing him again.’

Perez shrugged. ‘People lie. And they make up good stories to cover their tracks.’

Another silence. Sandy and Vicki were listening, but they made no attempt to interrupt. Willow spoke next.

‘Do you think it’s safe to let Rogerson come back on his own from Orkney? There’s nothing to stop him getting a flight south.’

‘I don’t think he’ll run away from Shetland,’ Perez said. ‘He’s got too much to lose here. He likes the power and authority of being a councillor. Rogerson’s a classic big fish in a small pool. I think that’s why he came home in the first place.’

‘So we wait for him at the airport?’

‘I think so.’ Perez had already thought this through. ‘His car’s there. I checked. So nobody will be coming to collect him. Let’s make it informal.’

‘And what do you have planned for us for the rest of the day, Inspector?’ Sometimes she couldn’t help reminding him that she was supposed to be heading up the investigation.

He grinned. ‘Well, that would be your decision of course, Ma’am.’

‘But?’

‘We carry on the great work that Sandy started. We need more information about Alison Teal – her recent work record and details about her mental health. Any problems with addiction.’

Sandy raised a hand, breaking into the conversation, a reminder that the two senior officers weren’t alone in the room. ‘Could she have been dealing? That might explain the money. She’d have the contacts through her parents.’

‘Not very likely, surely.’ That was Perez. Willow wondered if he was still wedded to the idea of the woman he’d romanticized, when they knew nothing about her. He didn’t want her to be a high-end drugs dealer.

‘I’m not sure,’ Willow said. ‘We certainly can’t rule anything out. That’s an interesting possibility, Sandy. And you know drugs come into the islands, Jimmy. All those single young men on the rigs and in the floatels. A ready market.’

Perez nodded, but she could tell he still wasn’t convinced.

‘Anything else urgent for the morning?’

‘I’m going to dig out a photo of Rogerson,’ he said. ‘The Shetland Times will have dozens. He’s on the front page most weeks. Sandy, you can take it up to Brae and show the lad in the Co-op, see if he recognizes him as the man with Alison in Mareel. It’s a while ago, but you said he had a good visual memory. It would be something else to face Rogerson with, when we see him tomorrow evening.’

The men left then and Vicki went up to her room to pack. She planned to take the first flight out in the morning. Willow collected together the plates and mugs and stacked them by the dishwasher, then started up the stairs. On the first landing a door was open. It led into a small room looking over the garden. The room was decorated in yellow and white and there was a white cot, with a mobile of the moon and the stars hanging over it.