Cold Earth

Chapter Thirty-Seven

When he arrived back at the police station after speaking to Kathryn Rogerson, Perez found Willow watching the recording of her interview with Jonathan Teal. She was hunched over the desk in a small room, her hair falling over her shoulders. He remembered stroking her neck the evening before, rubbing the tension from it. Without a word he pulled up a chair so that he was sitting beside her. She pressed a button to replay it and her voice filled the space.

All the way back to Lerwick he’d wondered if he should speak to her about the night they’d spent in the house in Ravenswick. Apologize maybe, though she’d not been a passive partner. I’m sorry, that’s not usually the way I behave when I invite a woman into my home. Then he’d thought perhaps it might be the way she did behave, if the opportunity arose. Sex without strings. Nothing wrong with that after all, between consenting adults. Perhaps there was no need for either of them to speak about it and she’d think he was making a fuss about nothing, if he did. He heard Fran’s voice in his head again: Jimmy Perez, you’re probably the nicest guy in the world, but you do worry far too much.

However, and this was the big deal, the cruncher: he wanted the strings. Not some work fling or one-night stand. He’d never seen the attraction in those – he was so arrogant that he felt he deserved better. Or he was too naively romantic. Now he knew that he wanted Willow as part of his life. If he’d been free and without responsibility, he’d have found a way to make it work. He’d sorted out that much, on the drive back from Ravenswick. And what did that say about his commitment to care for Cassie? How could he possibly consider bringing another woman into her life when his stepdaughter was still so young? Fran had entrusted the girl to him. It would seem like the worst kind of betrayal.

He still wasn’t sure how to play it, when he went into the office and found Willow watching Jono Teal again on the screen. She turned and smiled at him.

‘Jimmy Perez, I thought you were avoiding me.’

‘Maybe I have been.’

Suddenly she pressed the button again and Teal was frozen on the screen, his face turned to the camera, his mouth still open. ‘I want you to know that I don’t go to bed with all my colleagues. No pressure, but I just wanted to tell you that I don’t take that sort of thing lightly.’

He looked at Willow carefully, thinking for a moment that she was still teasing him, but she was just waiting for his response. ‘Nor do I,’ he said.

She threw back her head and laughed. ‘Jimmy Perez, don’t you think I don’t know that? You’ve never done anything lightly. You’re the most serious man I’ve ever met.’

‘It’s complicated,’ he said.

‘I know. Guilt and responsibility, and all those grown-up emotions that I probably don’t understand. You need time to sort yourself out.’ Suddenly she was serious herself. ‘I can wait, Jimmy. For a little while at least.’ Then she switched on the screen again, so he could watch the interview from the beginning.

Soon afterwards they moved to the ops room. Sandy came in from the High School, drenched and miserable, but with a bag of cakes bought from the shop in the street. The cakes were almost dry, because he’d been holding them under his coat, and they gave a little cheer when they saw he had not forgotten them.

‘Oh God, I’m so sorry, Sandy,’ Perez said. ‘I should have phoned to arrange to pick you up on my way back from Ravenswick. I just had other stuff on my mind.’

Willow caught his eye and started to giggle. Sandy was hanging his coat on the radiator, so he didn’t notice.

‘Where do we go from here?’ Willow took charge, focused again on the case. ‘From what Alison’s brother told us, it’s clear that we were right: she and Rogerson were organizing sex workers in the islands. I’m guessing they were mostly targeting the guys in the floatels and in the hotel at Sullom, but islanders seem to have signed up as clients too.’

‘Does that mean we’re looking at a killer who wanted to shut down the whole operation?’ Sandy was eating a chocolate brownie and the words were muffled.

‘Did your mother never tell you not to speak with your mouth full?’ But Perez thought the man had a point. ‘So who are we looking at? Some religious nut who hates the idea of prostitution? An aggrieved partner of one of the men using the service?’

‘It seems we have one of those conveniently close to both crime scenes,’ Willow said.

‘Jane Hay?’

Willow nodded. ‘We know that Kevin paid Rogerson. Alison Teal was living practically on his doorstep and there must have been some activity in the place, but he claimed not even to know that Tain was occupied. That suggests to me that he was covering up something. I’d bet he was one of the clients. If Jane found out, that would give her motive for both murders, and there’s nobody with a better opportunity.’

‘I’m not sure.’ Perez thought of the Jane Hay he knew. She’d been a friend of Fran’s. Not a close friend, but Fran would call into the farmhouse for coffee, if she was painting out that way. She’d been Simon Agnew’s friend too, and Perez wondered what Fran would have made of her neighbours’ involvement in the case. Fran had described Jane as calm: You get the sense that she could survive anything with equanimity. That didn’t sound like the sort of woman who would kill two people, however badly her husband had behaved.

Then he remembered what Kathryn had said of her father. ‘Was it something shameful, Jimmy? So shameful that someone would want to kill him?’ Shame worked in all sorts of ways, and maybe there were things in Jane’s past that Rogerson or Teal had discovered. Something she’d kill to keep hidden. Then he thought he was straying into Agnew territory and this was a question for a psychologist, not a cop.

‘What did you get from the High School, Sandy?’ Willow asked. ‘Did any of the teachers mention the boys’ mother?’

‘No, only to say that she has ambitions for Michael to go away to college, but he wants to stay and work on the farm.’ Sandy looked guilty. ‘But I didn’t think to ask about the parents. I was talking to them about the sons. Sorry.’

‘Anything interesting?’

‘Not really. Andy was the bright one. Sparky, arty, a bit cheeky, but with the charm to get away with it. I wondered if he might have fancied his English teacher. She was one of those women who like to be admired. Maybe she only went into teaching because she had a captive audience. You could see she wouldn’t discourage the attention, even from one of her students.’ Sandy paused to slurp his tea.

‘And Michael?’ Perez couldn’t really see where this was going, except to provide a bit more background to the Hay family, but he was even more convinced that the four individuals at the farm should be at the centre of the investigation.

Sandy shrugged. ‘The teacher I spoke to didn’t have much to say about him, except that he was one of those kids who don’t stand out. Not terribly bright, but not needing special help.’ He looked up and grinned. ‘A bit like I was at school, maybe. I don’t get the sense that the brothers were very close. They had one scrap in the playground, in Andy’s last year. Nobody could work out exactly what triggered it, but it seems to have been teasing about a woman that got out of hand.’ He paused. ‘And Sally Martin, Andy’s teacher, shed a bit of light on what that argument in the street could have been about. Apparently Rogerson was leading calls in the council to cut arts funding. All the kids in the Youth Theatre were protesting about it.’

‘No.’ Willow leaned forward. ‘If it had been about that, Andy would have said so. It would be another opportunity to make a political point. That row in the street was more personal.’

‘Could he have found out that Kevin was seeing Rogerson’s women?’ Perez thought there was a link here about children standing up for their irresponsible parents: Kathryn and Tom, Andy and Kevin. ‘It might explain why Andy’s seemed so twitchy. He might think his father is a killer.’

‘Or he might be a killer himself,’ Willow said. ‘He sounds like a young man given to melodrama. Could he have seen murder as revenge for corrupting his father and betraying his mother?’

‘Isn’t that a bit far-fetched?’ It sounded like one of the gothic films Fran had sometimes enjoyed, late on dark winter nights. Besides, Perez wasn’t sure if the young had that kind of concept of sexual morality.

‘Yeah, I know. It’s clutching at straws. We have so much information now, but I haven’t any sort of feel about who’s responsible.’ Willow looked at Perez. ‘What about you, Jimmy? You know this place. What’s the next move?’

‘There’s still some basic policing. Routine stuff. We haven’t found anyone yet who saw Tom Rogerson after he left his car at the airport. He can’t just have vanished into thin air.’ He paused. ‘Apart from that, I think we have to wait.’

‘For the murderer to make a mistake?’

‘Or to attempt to kill again. We know that the Hays have secrets. Even if one of the family isn’t responsible for the deaths, it’s possible that they know who is. Or have their suspicions. So we wait and we watch them.’

Willow nodded to show that made sense to her. ‘Sandy, you have another go at the airport. Local folk will talk to you. How do you see the watching, Jimmy? It’d be hard to hide any surveillance in a place with so few people and so little cover.’

‘I can see their place from my house.’

‘Ah, so it’s just an excuse for staying home and drinking tea all day?’

He held up his hands in mock surrender. ‘Just give me one day,’ he said. ‘Sometimes waiting is the hardest thing.’

She caught his eye. A flash of understanding. ‘One day. If you’re sure that’s all you need.’

He walked her back to the sheriff’s house. The rain had eased a little. From the bar at the bottom of the lane, fiddle music suddenly spilled out through an open door. Wednesday night, when locals came together to share their music. In the summer it would be packed with visitors, but tonight and this early in the evening the musicians would be playing mostly to themselves.

‘Will you come in for a coffee, Jimmy? I’m sure they’d like to see you.’

He looked at his watch. He still had an hour before he had to be home for Duncan to drop off Cassie. ‘Aye, why not?’ He knew he had a decision to make about their future, but he felt very easy in her company. Whatever he decided, they would still manage to work together.

She unlocked the door and walked into a warm house. There were voices in the basement kitchen. They hadn’t been able to see in from outside because the heavy curtains had been drawn.

‘Hi there, I’ve brought Jimmy in. I hope that’s OK.’ Willow walked ahead of him down the stairs.

Rosie was sitting in the chair by the Aga and her husband was making tea. The place smelled different. Milky.

‘Come in!’ the man said. ‘Come in and meet my son.’

Then Perez saw that the dozing Rosie had a baby in her arms.

‘He was born last night,’ John said. ‘You weren’t here, Willow. We left you a note and some stuff for your breakfast. We’ve only just got back from the hospital.’

‘No,’ Willow said. ‘I didn’t get back. Something came up.’ Perez looked at her to see if that was a private joke, but he could tell that she only had eyes for the child, who was pink and wrinkled and wrapped in a yellow blanket. ‘What will you call him?’

‘We don’t know yet.’ Rosie smiled. ‘We thought we’d wait and see what suited.’

‘But as we can’t call him Prune, which is what he most looks like,’ the man went on, ‘we’d better come up with something else.’ He poured water into a teapot. ‘Will you both have a mug? And a dram to wet the baby’s head?’

‘Don’t you want to be on your own?’ Willow was still looking at the baby. ‘Your first night as a family.’

‘Oh, we’ll have years and years of that.’ Rosie lifted herself onto her feet and handed the child to Willow. ‘Here, have a cuddle while I take myself off for a pee. I might be some time.’ She was wearing baggy pyjamas and huge slippers and shuffled away to the stairs. ‘I can’t do anything at speed.’

‘You should have seen her,’ John said. ‘She was so brave.’

Willow took a seat at the table and sat, with the baby on her knee, while the tea was poured into mugs and the whisky into small glasses.