Cold Earth

Chapter Thirty-Six

Sandy stood outside the office at the Anderson High School, waiting for the secretary to finish answering the phone. He’d never been one for school. He’d made good friends here, but he couldn’t remember much of what he’d been taught. Enough of it had stuck just long enough to enable him to join the police service, but he didn’t think he’d made use of any of the facts he’d forced into his head. He couldn’t see the point of all those years of boredom.

It was coming to the end of the school day. Behind the closed classroom doors there was muffled conversation. Occasionally a teacher would shout for order, but there was no power behind the voice and Sandy could tell that everyone was just waiting for the session to be over. The secretary replaced the phone and came to the desk. She must be nearing retirement, a small bird-like figure with short white hair and big glasses. Sandy thought she hadn’t changed much since he was a pupil.

‘Don’t I know you?’ She looked at him over her glasses.

‘Sandy Wilson.’ He was fourteen again, late for some class. Sheepish and defiant, all at the same time.

‘Of course, one of the wild Whalsay boys!’ She smiled, much as she had done then. ‘And what can I do for you, Sandy Wilson? I hear you’re respectable now. Keeping law and order in our beautiful islands. Who’d have thought it, eh?’

Sandy wasn’t sure how to respond to that and in the end he just gave her a quick smile. ‘I’d like to talk to someone about the Hay brothers. Andy and Michael.’

‘Well, Andy’s left now of course, but most of his teachers are still around. You’re probably best talking to Sally Martin. She taught him English and he was always one of her stars. Michael’s home teacher is Phil Jamieson. I know he’s in the staffroom now. Why don’t you chat to him first and I’ll ask Sally to come in when she’s finished teaching?’

Standing outside the staffroom, he still felt like an impostor, but he’d been here before as an adult. That time there’d been another murder in Ravenswick. It had been winter and Fran Hunter had found the body of a young schoolgirl lying in the snow. Sandy had come to the Anderson High to talk to her friends. After the interview he’d been taken into the staffroom and there’d been the same feeling of unease, of wandering into enemy territory. He tapped at the door. A male voice shouted for him to come in. There was a smell of old coffee and old building.

A middle-aged man was seated in a corner reading a newspaper. Otherwise the room was empty.

‘Mr Jamieson?’

‘Who wants to know?’ He might have been from Shetland originally, but his voice had been weathered by other places and the trace of accent had almost disappeared.

Sandy introduced himself.

‘And how can I help?’

‘I’m part of the team investigating the murders out at Tain. We’re making routine enquiries about all the people who live close to the crime scene. The Hays’ farm is one of the properties nearby.’

‘So you want to know all about Michael?’

Sandy nodded.

‘I can offer you a dreadful cup of coffee before the hordes arrive.’ Jamieson nodded towards a filter machine. ‘I warn you, it’s probably been standing there since break time.’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Wise choice.’ He nodded for Sandy to take a seat next to him. ‘I don’t know what to tell you about Michael. He’s one of those kids who never stand out. Well enough behaved so that he doesn’t irritate. Not particularly bright, but not so stupid that he needs extra help. Steady. Stable. Maybe a little bit boring, but in a school like this there are so many divas that that’s quite refreshing. His future is mapped out for him. He wants to join his father on the farm. His mother would like him to go away to Agricultural College first, to widen his horizons a bit, but Michael doesn’t see the point and neither does his father. He’s got a stubborn streak, so I think he’ll probably get his own way.’

‘He’s got a girlfriend,’ Sandy said.

‘Gemma.’ The teacher smiled. ‘Cast in the same mould. But a little bit more chatty. She did get her way, and left before Highers.’

‘So there were never any concerns about Michael? No sudden outbursts of temper?’

‘Nothing at all like that. What you see is what you get. I suppose the only time I ever saw him lose it was with Andy.’ He looked at Sandy to check the name meant something.

Sandy nodded. ‘The older brother.’

‘Hard to imagine two siblings so unalike. Andy was bright and so full of charm that you couldn’t help like him, even when he was back-chatting big-style.’

‘He must have been a hard act to follow.’

‘Maybe. But Michael never tried to. If anything, I think he found Andy embarrassing. A bit of a show-off. I never felt that Michael wanted to be like him.’

Sandy was startled by the electric bell that shrieked from the corner of the room and marked the end of the school day. He asked his next question quickly. Soon all the other teachers would arrive and he might lose the chance. ‘So what happened when Michael lost his rag with Andy?’

‘I’m not entirely sure what provoked it. Apparently Andy had been goading Michael all day. Something about Gemma and about how they were old and settled before their time. Why don’t you just get married and have done with it? And finally Michael hit back, said at least he had a girlfriend. Andy was all talk and no action. All he did was dream about it. His love life was one big fantasy. And suddenly they were scrapping in the yard like twelve-year-olds, everyone gathered round, watching and cheering them on. You know what it’s like.’

Sandy nodded. He knew. The girls with their high-pitched screaming and the boys yelling, ‘Fight! Fight!’ until a teacher came along to pull the brawlers apart.

‘That’s it, really. Nothing very major, in the scheme of things.’ Jamieson folded his newspaper.

There were footsteps in the corridor. Outside crowds of children ran through the rain towards the gate. Some of them didn’t have coats. Sandy remembered that. How somehow it was uncool to come to school with a big coat.

The staffroom door opened and a group of teachers walked in, chatting and laughing. A young woman in a tiny skirt, thick black tights and long boots approached him, arm outstretched. ‘You must be Sandy. Maggie said you wanted to chat about Andy.’

Sally Martin made him fresh coffee and, once the machine had started to work, the room was nearly empty again. The teachers who had any sort of commute home wanted to be on their way. Sandy could hear them talking about the possibility of another landslide as they left.

‘What about you?’ Sandy took the mug of coffee from her. She looked so young that she could have been a student herself. ‘Do you need to get off?’

‘Oh, I’ve got a flat in Lerwick. I can walk home. Not much fun in this weather, but I’m so new to it that I still enjoy the drama of being out in the storm.’ Her voice was English, quite deep and classy.

‘Is this your first job?’ Sandy thought it must be. It wasn’t just that she looked so young; it was something about the starry-eyed enthusiasm.

‘Yeah. My parents are island freaks and brought me and my brother here when we were children. I’d just finished my postgrad teacher training and saw the post advertised. I didn’t think I had a chance of getting it, but here I am, already in my third year and loving it.’ She looked up at him. ‘Maggie said you were investigating the murders out at Ravenswick.’ She paused and gave a little frown. Something about it made Sandy think she was like an actress, always conscious of her audience. Perhaps because she was so bonny that she was used to people staring at her. ‘I’m sure Andy wouldn’t be involved in anything like that.’

‘It’s just routine enquiries,’ Sandy said. ‘We’re checking all the people who live close to the crime scene. I’m sure you understand.’

‘Of course.’

‘And Maggie said you were the best person to talk to about Andy Hay.’

‘He was the first student I met when I arrived here,’ Sally said. ‘The head got him to show me around. He’d just started the sixth form and had that swagger that kids get because they suddenly feel grown-up. And Andy was funny. He described the other teachers as we walked past their classrooms, summing them up in a couple of lines. The comments weren’t always complimentary, and I knew I shouldn’t be encouraging him, but I couldn’t help laughing.’

‘You taught him?’ Sandy wondered why he’d never had a teacher like Sally Martin.

‘English and theatre studies. He was really very good at both. He had the confidence to be creative, to take risks, if you know what I mean.’

Sandy didn’t, but he nodded his head. He was thinking too that the young man he’d seen at the Hays’ farm hadn’t seemed very confident to him. He wondered what had changed between Andy leaving school and arriving back in Shetland after dropping out of university. Perhaps when he was with other bright kids, he’d realized he wasn’t quite so brainy and that had come as a shock. Sandy had known friends go south and come back happier to be a big fish in a small pool than to flounder in an anonymous city without any support.

‘Did Andy have a girlfriend?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Sally had finished her coffee. She crossed her legs. Sandy tried not to be distracted. ‘He was part of the arty gang that hung out in Mareel and were members of the Youth Theatre there, but I don’t think there was anyone special.’

‘A boyfriend perhaps?’

She paused for a moment. ‘You think he might be gay? I don’t think so. And it wouldn’t have been a big deal, not in the crowd he mixed with. Not in this school at all, really.’

‘Mr Jamieson said there was a fight with his brother and that was something about a girl.’ Sandy wanted to have something to take back to Willow and Jimmy Perez.

‘I heard there was a fight. I didn’t know what it was about. I’m guessing that Michael provoked it. Andy really wasn’t the fighting kind.’ She flashed him a smile, but Sandy could tell she was starting to lose interest. Perhaps she wanted to be home, out of the storm, to start her evening. He wondered if she lived on her own in the flat in Lerwick.

‘Andy had a very public argument with one of the victims,’ he said. ‘Tom Rogerson.’

‘Well, I can guess what that would have been about. Most of the guys in the Youth Theatre would have had a go at Rogerson, given the chance. He was the councillor leading the campaign to cut arts funding by seventy per cent. I don’t see it as a credible motive for murder, though.’ She turned to face him. Her dark hair was cut in a bob and it caught the light as she moved.

‘No.’ Besides, Sandy thought, that wouldn’t explain Alison Teal’s death. It seemed that her acting days were long behind her, and she wouldn’t have had any dealings with island politics.

The teacher’s phone buzzed. She looked at the text, smiled and her fingers moved swiftly over the keypad to send a reply. ‘Oh, lovely! My boyfriend’s finished work early, so he can give me a lift home.’

It seemed the drama of the storm had lost its magic. Sandy had pictured himself walking into town with her, them battling together against the weather, and felt oddly resentful. As if she’d led him on, though he could see that was ridiculous.

‘He’s waiting outside.’ Sally was already on her feet, pulling on her coat. ‘Have you finished? I really don’t think there’s anything else I can help you with.’

‘Yes, I’m sure that’s all for now.’ He thought of asking if he could have a lift, but decided against it. He imagined how awkward it would be, crammed in the back while she and her man chatted about their days. Suddenly he wanted to be in Louisa’s house in Yell, in the quiet room where her mother sat in her chair by the window. Standing at the main door into the school and watching the teacher run across the yard to a waiting car, he thought that Sally Martin was a woman who could really screw up a young man’s mind. He wondered if Andy Hay had some sort romantic crush on her, what she might have done to encourage it, and if that was why he’d ended up back in Shetland.

By the time Sandy got back to the police station his trousers were soaking and the rain had run down the neck of his coat. But he’d remembered the buns and, when he opened the door to the ops room, Jimmy and Willow were there talking as if they were friends again. They gave a little cheer when they saw him, laughed when he hung his coat over the radiator and it started to steam. Willow made a pot of tea and put the cakes onto a plate. Sandy thought that between them they’d soon bring the case to a conclusion. It seemed that all was well with the world.