Cold Earth

Chapter Twenty-One

Perez was on his way to work when his phone went. He’d just dropped Cassie with Maggie, the neighbour who would walk her down to school with her own kids.

‘Jimmy.’ The speaker was breathless, and that and the fact he was using the hands-free set made her voice unrecognizable.

‘Who is this?’ He pulled into a lay-by. The gritter had been down the main road, but here the gravel was still covered with frost and there was ice on the puddles.

The speaker had regained her composure and her voice was clearer. It seemed suddenly very loud. ‘It’s Jane Hay, Jimmy.’

‘Have you heard from Simon Agnew? Has he remembered any more about the woman who visited him at his office in Lerwick?’ Perez had been thinking he should see Agnew again, in the light of their recent discovery about the dead woman’s past.

A pause. It seemed his question had thrown her, or had taken a little while to register. ‘No! It’s nothing like that. You have to come, Jimmy. Much better that you come here and see for yourself than that I waste time telling you on the phone. I’ll meet you by the gate.’ And then the phone went dead. There was nothing for him to do but turn the car round and go back to Ravenswick.

Jane was waiting for him where she’d promised. She was a tall, fair woman, looking bulky now in a jersey and padded jacket. She had her hands in her pockets and was stamping her feet to keep warm. She’d already opened the farm gate for him and he parked in the yard as she swung it closed behind him.

‘What’s this about?’ He didn’t think she was the kind of woman to make a fuss about nothing and he could sense her panic. Her body was rigid. ‘Is it Kevin? One of the boys?’ He looked across to the house and saw the older son, Andy, staring down at them from an upstairs window.

She followed his gaze and hesitated for a moment. ‘No, the family is all fine. Follow me.’

She walked very fast ahead of him across the sheep-cropped grass. The sun was melting the frost in patches, but the air was still very cold. An oil supply ship seemed to be moving very slowly on the horizon. It looked as if it was made of silver. They came to the edge of a shallow cliff that sloped down to a shingle beach, fringed at each end with rock pools. Fran had brought Perez here one summer afternoon. She’d swum in the water, screaming with laughter at the cold, calling him a coward for not following. Later they’d gone back to her house and made love. She’d have done it on the beach, but he’d been too much of a coward for that too.

There were two figures on the beach below him, one lying supine on the shingle, and for a brief moment he thought that his daydream and reality had collided. That Fran was waiting for him there. But the standing figure turned and Perez saw that it was Kevin Hay, dressed in his work overalls with a jacket on the top. Jane was already sliding down the slope and Perez followed. He could smell the seaweed and felt the cold of the rocky path when he put out his hand to steady himself. Every sense seemed very sharp and immediate in the chill, thin air.

When he saw the body, Perez’s first reaction was one of disbelief. Tom Rogerson was in Orkney, not Shetland. So it was impossible that his body could be lying here in Ravenswick.

‘How did you come to find him?’

‘Kevin comes out this way most days to check on the sheep. It was such a fine day I decided to come with him.’ Jane stood close to her husband and held his hand. Perez didn’t have the impression that she was seeking comfort, though. It was more that she was comforting the man.

‘Could he have slipped, do you think?’ Kevin asked. ‘If he’d knocked himself out on the rocks, the temperature was so low last night that the cold would have killed him.’

‘It’ll take a post-mortem to decide cause of death.’ But Perez thought an accident was unlikely. There was a blow to the side of the head, visible even when Rogerson was lying where he’d fallen. Perez thought he’d been hit from the front by one of the round, smooth rocks that lay on the beach above the tideline. They’d check of course, but if the killer had any sense, the rock would have been thrown into the sea immediately after the attack and all trace of blood would have been scoured by the salt water. He was thinking that he needed to call James Grieve. At least in this weather the planes would be running to time and the pathologist would get in on the first available flight. He looked at his phone. No signal.

‘I need to call my colleagues. Is there reception up the bank?’

‘You can use the phone in the house,’ Jane said. ‘I’ll take you back.’

Kevin Hay stood with his back to the body, looking out to sea. He lived closest to the apparent crime scene and had to be considered a possible suspect. Perez couldn’t leave the man in charge of the body. And even though Hay had already had the chance to remove any evidence, Perez was the first officer at the scene and it was his duty to keep it secure now.

‘Jane, I need your help. Could you go back to the house and phone Sandy Wilson? Tell him I need a uniformed officer here as soon as possible, and ask him to contact James Grieve and book him onto the first possible plane. And to pass on the information to DCI Reeves.’ Perez scribbled a number and a couple of names onto a piece of paper and handed it to her. Then he took it back and added another. ‘Tell him we need Vicki to come along too.’

‘Can Kevin come with me? It’s been a shock and he’s frozen.’

‘I’m fine.’ The man was still looking at the sea. ‘I’ll stay here with the inspector until the reinforcements arrive. A dead man’s not much company, eh, Jimmy?’

Perez thought Hay would rather answer his questions than those of his wife.

They stood in silence until Jane climbed away.

‘Did you know Tom Rogerson?’ Perez asked at last. ‘Socially, I mean. Do you have any idea why he’d be wandering around on your land?’

‘None at all. And I knew him to say hello to, if we bumped into each other in the bar of the Ravenswick Hotel, but we didn’t mix in the same social circles. He was one of the Lerwick mafia, one of the decision-makers, the movers and shakers.’ His tone was matter-of-fact. It was hard to tell what he made of all that.

‘Was he a regular in the Ravenswick?’ That might explain the solicitor’s presence here, though the hotel was a couple of miles north along the coast, and even further by road. Besides, the man should have been in Orkney at a fisheries conference.

‘He and his wife came for dinner occasionally. I’ve not seen them lately.’

‘Did you ever see his car at Tain? He drove a Volvo. Black.’

‘No, Jimmy, but like I explained when you asked about the dead woman, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it, even if he was a regular caller. Those sycamores screen Tain from our land. You might see a car from the main road, but not from our house.’

And that was quite true, Perez thought. The sycamores were windblown and stunted, but they’d provided privacy for Tain’s resident. ‘We’ve got a name for her,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘We’ve managed to identify the dead woman. Her name’s Alison Teal.’

Hay showed no reaction.

‘Does the name mean anything to you? She was an actress. At one point in her career, at least.’

Hay shook his head as if the information was of no interest to him. Instead he nodded down at Rogerson’s body. ‘His daughter’s the teacher at the school. Someone should tell her, before news gets out. You know what this place is like. Jane won’t be on the phone gossiping. She’s not like that. But our lad’s at home and she might tell him. You know what kids are like with Facebook.’

‘You’re right,’ Perez said. ‘I’ll go to the school myself as soon as an officer turns up to control things here. And I’ll make sure someone gets to his house to tell Rogerson’s wife.’ He felt trapped here now and wanted to be away, to start asking questions, to think. He strained to hear the sound of a siren in the distance, footsteps on the grass above them. Nothing.

‘He led his wife a merry old dance,’ Hay said suddenly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Everyone knew he had affairs. He didn’t even bother to be discreet. There was something kind of arrogant about that.’ Hay had turned back to the sea. ‘He was an arrogant man altogether, always flashing his money around.’

‘You didn’t like him?’

Hay shrugged again. ‘Like I said, I didn’t really know him.’

Now Perez did hear footsteps and the sound of voices. Jane appeared at the top of the bank with a young officer, who’d only recently joined the service. The man slid awkwardly down to join them. Perez gave him brief instructions about securing the site. ‘You let nobody on the beach, whoever they are. And you stay here, well away from the body.’ Then he scrambled back up the cliff and walked with the Hays back to the house.

Jane offered him coffee, but he asked if he could take a mug into his car to make a few phone calls. ‘The school breaks early for lunch. I’ll aim to arrive about then, so I don’t have to pull Kathryn out of her class and tell her what’s happened in front of the bairns. That should give the school a little while to get in some cover, so she can go home to be with her mother.’

In the kitchen Andy, the dark-haired boy with the piercings who worked in the bar at Mareel, was sitting at the table with a mug of tea. Perez nodded to him. ‘Did your mother tell you what’s happened?’ Just at the edge of his line of vision, Jane was hovering, protective.

‘Aye.’

‘Only we haven’t informed the relatives yet, so please keep the incident to yourself.’

The boy nodded but didn’t speak.

In the car Perez spoke to Sandy Wilson, who’d been on his way to show Rogerson’s photo to the assistant in the Brae Co-op. ‘Even more reason to do it now,’ Perez said.

‘You don’t need me in Ravenswick?’

‘Not yet.’ He paused. ‘When you’ve finished in Brae, go to see Simon Agnew. He’s the chap that set up Befriending Shetland, the counselling service in Lerwick. See if Alison Teal means more to him than Sandy Sechrest. It still seems a weird thing for the woman to do – turn up at the project’s office and then change her mind and wander away again after only a brief conversation. Maybe Agnew had met Alison before, in a professional capacity; she certainly had a troubled childhood.’ Perez remembered Fran’s description of Agnew. He’s just fun, Jimmy. But he’s done such valuable work with families and young people. For a moment Perez had hated the man he’d barely met. A second of pure jealousy. Because he himself would never be described as fun, and he hadn’t been sure that Fran considered his work had any value at all.

At the other end of the phone Sandy coughed, to show he was waiting for further instructions, and Perez continued, ‘Can you get Morag to tell Mavis Rogerson that her man’s dead? No details. Just unexpected death. And see if Mavis knew that Tom was back from Orkney. We need to check if he ever went, of course.’ Another pause. ‘Did you tell Willow what was going on?’

‘Yes. She said she’d stay in the office. Awaiting instructions.’

Perez could imagine her saying that. She’d have a laugh in her voice, mocking him for taking charge again. ‘I’ll speak to her now. I think it might be a good plan for her to come here to talk to the Hay family. I’m too close. We’re neighbours, and it would be useful to get another perspective on them. Two bodies in Ravenswick, both within a good stone’s throw of the Hays’ house. I can’t see that as just a coincidence.’

He got out of the car to take his mug back to the kitchen and in the porch bumped into Andy, who was stooping to put on a pair of Converse sneakers. The boy was tall and seemed pipe-cleaner-thin in skinny black jeans and black sweater.

‘Are you going to work?’

‘No, I’ve got a day off.’ The boy paused. ‘I was coming out to see you. Mum said I should talk to you. About something that happened with Mr Rogerson.’

‘Had you seen him recently? On your land?’

‘No.’

Perez looked at his watch. In a quarter of an hour the kids in the Ravenswick school would be queuing up for their lunch in the dining room that doubled as school hall and gym. When the bell went, he wanted to be there to talk to Kathryn. ‘It can wait then. Another officer will be here soon to talk to you all. You can explain to her what happened with Rogerson.’

The boy nodded and disappeared back into the kitchen. Perez had a minute of doubt and was about to call him back, but the door closed and the moment was gone.