Cold Earth

Chapter Forty-Seven

All that Perez could think, as he started to run towards the ditch, was that he couldn’t let this happen again. He couldn’t see in detail what was happening on the hill, but he’d recognized the person standing there and he’d picked up Willow’s message explaining that she intended to visit. As he moved, time seemed to be working differently; it warped and stretched. In reality it must only have taken minutes to reach the field where the ditch had been dug, but in his head it took hours. In his head he wasn’t even in the present. He was back in Fair Isle, running to the loch where Fran – his love, the woman he would marry – was dying of a stab wound. He’d seen the knife that killed her as a flash of blue lightning at the same time as he’d caught the glint of a murderer’s spade reflected in a bus’s headlights. He was a crazy Time Lord trying to turn back the clock, to save this woman when he’d failed to save the other. As he forced himself to maintain the pace and his heart thudded with the effort, the same phrase pounded to the rhythm of his footsteps. Oh, please God, not again.

The digger, dressed in dark clothes, was almost invisible, even when headlights swept across the field. The spade gave no reflection, its surface dulled now by the earth. Perez crouched behind a drystone dyke to catch his breath. Just for a moment, because time was flying on, unreliable. In another minute Willow could be dead. He hadn’t been seen, but was close enough to hear the shovel as it sliced through the earth, and the soil landing in the trench below. There was a Maglite torch in his pocket and he held it in his hand, balanced and comforting. He switched it on at the moment that he leapt down from the wall, and the killer was caught in the full beam. Perez had anticipated an attempt to run away, for in the last two days there’d been an increased desperation in the killer’s responses. No matter that there was nowhere to run to – no boats or planes this late in the evening – Perez still expected flight. Instead there was silence and stillness. Simon Agnew threw down his spade and held his hands out wide. A gesture of surrender or resignation, almost that of a charismatic believer giving themselves up to God. Perez was reminded for a second of the third woman in his life, his ex-wife Sarah, who’d been a member of a happy-clappy church. Again time seemed to collide. He knelt on the edge of the ditch.

There were two eyes, blinking as if the torchlight was painful, and a face so muddy that at first he couldn’t tell it was still uncovered. He pushed the torch into the mud at the top of the trench, then slid in beside Willow and pushed the soil away from her neck and body with his hands – careful, like someone moulding a sculpture out of sand, scared that he would hurt her if he used the spade. He glanced back up at Agnew. He hadn’t moved. When Willow’s body was free, Perez put his arm around her neck and lifted her into a sitting position. He found he was murmuring reassurances, the same words he used to Cassie when she had nightmares. He forced himself to stop. Willow wasn’t a child and she’d hate being treated like one. Now at last Agnew dropped his hands to his side, but still he stood motionless.

The next half-hour passed in a blur. Looking back, Perez saw the action as a series of unrelated scenes. Jane Hay taking charge of Simon, despite Perez’s protestations, and pushing him towards Gilsetter. Furious, and showing a courage that would surely keep her family together. Andy at her side, proud and protective. Jane calling back across the ditch, ‘We’ll look after him there, Jimmy, until Sandy arrives.’ So Perez realized he must have phoned Sandy. Or Jane had. Willow fierce and more angry than he’d ever known her, when he suggested calling an ambulance. ‘All I need is a bath and a very large drink.’ A pause. ‘Now!’ Willow stumbling away into the dark, so he’d followed her and wrapped her in his coat and started walking with her up the bank towards his house. Sometimes he was almost carrying her. All the way he was offering a prayer of thanks to a God he’d never quite believed in, even as a child.

He’d worried that he wouldn’t have the strength to get her there, when Kevin Hay arrived in his Land Rover.

‘You need to go back to Gilsetter,’ Perez yelled above the sound of the engine. ‘Jane’s there with the killer.’

‘Don’t worry, Jimmy. The boys are there too, and they’ve locked him into the tractor shed.’ Kevin jumped down from the vehicle and between them the two men lifted Willow inside. ‘You just look after your friend. We’ll deal with all the rest.’

In the house Perez sat Willow in the bath and rinsed away the mud with the hand-held shower. Tender. Grateful that she wasn’t pushing him away. He washed the soil and blood from her hair, using Cassie’s shampoo, then filled the tub with clean water.

‘Shall I leave you to soak?’ He thought she might want to be on her own. He’d prop the door open, so he could hear that she was still conscious.

‘Nah, but bring in the bottle and a couple of glasses.’ A pause and a thin grin that took some effort. ‘I always think it’s wrong to drink on my own.’

Later they sat in front of the fire. She wore his dressing gown and a pair of his thick socks. Her hair was wrapped up in a towel. He could tell she still felt cold. He wanted to hold her tight to him, but since she’d emerged from the bathroom something about her body language, frozen and tight, made him think it wouldn’t be the right thing to do.

‘Shouldn’t you be at the station interviewing Agnew?’ she said. ‘I could stay here, if you’d trust me with Cassie.’

He almost said that she needed someone to be with her, but stopped himself just in time. ‘Nah. It’s about time we gave Sandy some responsibility and they’re sending some of your colleagues in on the first flight from Inverness tomorrow. Besides…’ he lifted his empty glass, ‘… I’m not fit to drive.’ He paused. ‘But you’re a witness. I could talk to you and make a few notes, if you feel up to it. Nothing that would stand up in court of course, but it might help us to jot down a few things while it’s still clear in our memories.’

Willow took a moment to speak and he thought he’d played that all wrong. She wouldn’t want to relive the nightmare so soon and would think he was an insensitive oaf.

‘When did you know it was Simon Agnew?’ she said at last.

‘Not for certain until I saw him standing by the ditch, with the spade in his hand. But I remembered you’d said that Agnew had told Sandy he was speaking in Fair Isle over the weekend. I checked with the Fair Isle Times and he was certainly booked to be there. But he couldn’t have made it. The weather was so bad on Friday and Saturday that neither the plane nor the Good Shepherd would have gone, and there are no planes on Sunday. That was why your phone message made me so anxious. And when Andy Hay told his mother he’d been staying at the manse, it just seemed bizarre that Agnew hadn’t told Jane he’d seen him. She visited this morning. Agnew must have realized that Jane would be worried stupid. Surely he’d have encouraged Andy to go home and talk to his parents, or at least told Jane that the boy was safe. When she went to see Agnew, his door was locked. She thought it was because he was scared, but it was to give him time to hide Andy, if a visitor arrived.’

‘Why did he take the boy in?’

‘I think he supported Andy and encouraged him to confide in him, because it was a way of keeping in touch with the investigation. And Andy needed someone away from the family to talk to. He saw Simon Agnew as a man of the world. Someone who’d understand.’ Perez threw another peat onto the fire. It was as hot as a sauna in the small room already. ‘Agnew pointed us in the direction of the Hay boys, of course. He couldn’t appear too interested in the case himself, and I think it amused him to throw us off-track. He had that sort of arrogance.’ Perez looked at her. ‘But you got to the killer way before I did.’

‘Naturally.’ Willow tried to sound flippant, but didn’t quite manage it. ‘Really I can’t take any credit. Sandy did the legwork. He just has a way of persuading people to talk. He found a witness at the airport who remembered seeing Tom Rogerson take a call just before he cancelled his flight to Orkney. When we checked with the phone company, we found out that the caller was Agnew.’ She held out her glass for more whisky. Perez had stopped drinking, but he tipped a little into her glass. She was suddenly serious. ‘It’s hard to believe all that only happened this afternoon.’

Perez saw that time had gone crazy for Willow too. It must have seemed like hours while she was lying in the drainage ditch, helpless.

She stirred in her chair. ‘Would he have done it? Would he really have buried me alive?’

He waited for a moment before answering. ‘I think he was pleased when I turned up to stop him.’

There was silence. Perez realized that the rain had stopped. He went to the window and saw a thin moon, covered immediately by cloud. When he turned back to the room, Willow was checking her phone. He’d rescued it from her mud-encrusted jacket. She looked up with a smile and began to talk.

‘When I found out that Simon Agnew had been in touch with Rogerson, I went back over the details of the earlier investigation. He was the only person who’d described Alison Teal as depressed and desperate. Every other witness had said the woman was cheerful in the days before her death. She’d bought a bottle of champagne. Whatever we might think of Alison’s business venture with Rogerson, it was doing well. She was making plans for the future. But why would Simon Agnew lie about Alison’s visit to the Befriending Shetland centre in Lerwick? The only reason I could think of was that he was the killer.’

‘That’s a big step to make.’

‘Which is why I wanted to talk to him. I couldn’t believe it. Even when I spoke to Jono and he described Agnew as one of Alison’s rich junkie boyfriends. They ended up in rehab together; Agnew got clean. He already had a first degree in psychology and went on to do a PhD in addiction studies. That’s why he could understand Jane Hay so well. It seemed an odd sort of friendship because they’re from such different backgrounds, but he knew what she needed.’

‘You should have told us what you were doing.’

She paused before answering. ‘I tried to phone you, Jimmy. I thought you might be avoiding my calls.’

The silence lengthened while he struggled to find the right words to apologize or explain. In the end she rescued him and went on with her own explanation.

‘We knew that Alison’s parents were addicts and that she’d had her own problems. One of the articles we read about her disappearance talked about the possibility that she’d gone back into rehab. That suggested she’d tried rehab before. That was when she was knocking around with Simon Agnew. He was much older than her, but rather glamorous then. From a smart family, famous for his exploration and his partying. And maybe she was looking for a father figure. When we were thinking about the murders, we talked a bit about shame as a motivating factor. It occurred to me that Agnew might have a past that he was ashamed of. He was happy to admit to a rackety past as an adventurer. But not as a heroin addict, who’d turned his back on his children and stolen from his wife to feed his habit.’ Willow looked at Perez. ‘Those last details only came through to my phone a few minutes ago. He’d become a psychologist, helping other people with their problems, settled and happy in Shetland. A pillar of the community. He’d be the last person who’d want that past to come back to haunt him.’

‘Did he know that Alison came to Shetland to escape her problems?’

‘I think that was a coincidence. They’d lost touch by the time she ran away from her life as an actress in a popular drama. She must have been a very young woman when he first knew her. And very lovely, of course.’ Willow hesitated. ‘I found the same self-help book in his office as the one we found in Teal’s room. It was probably standard issue at the clinic they both attended.’

Willow was thawing out a little now, engrossed in her story. ‘So Simon becomes respectable and invents a past for himself. An ex-wife who couldn’t cope with his energy and his passions. No kids. He did work as a psychologist in a teaching hospital and briefly as an academic, but he exaggerated his success in those fields. He loved Shetland. People admired him. But then Alison turned up, almost on his doorstep, wanting to take advantage of all the single men in the floatels and the workers’ hotels.’

‘Setting up in business with her old pal Tom Rogerson.’ Perez supposed he should be taking notes, but this was never going to be a formal interview. There would be time for that later.

‘Then Alison and Agnew met up somehow. By chance. Or perhaps Andy Hay mentioned one to the other. Agnew had always got on with the boy.’

‘And Alison saw another business opportunity.’ Perez saw now how neat this was, how it all hung together perfectly.

‘You think she was blackmailing Agnew?’ Willow had finished her whisky, but set her glass on the floor without asking for more.

‘Don’t you?’

‘I think it might have been more subtle than that. More complicated. Alison wanted friendship, some kind of recognition. They’d been lovers, remember. Perhaps Simon Agnew was determined to put his old life behind him. In his mind, the bad stuff never happened. Or at least wasn’t his fault.’

Perez supposed he could understand that. ‘Then Alison turned up at the Befriending Shetland office. An attempt to renew the relationship. Or demand money from him.’ He still believed blackmail was a more plausible motive.

‘And later Simon went to Tain and killed her. Perhaps he’d convinced her that they had a future together. She dressed up for him and cooked him a meal. He was worried that someone had seen Alison coming into his office in Lerwick, so he had to make up an excuse for her being there. Alison was still calling herself Alissandra Sechrest, so Agnew used that name when he described the distraught woman coming in out of the rain.’

‘What about Tom Rogerson?’

‘Simon believed that Alison had talked to Tom about him,’ Willow said. ‘Tom had been in contact with Alison since they’d first met at the Ravenswick Hotel. The note we found in her house was cementing the business partnership and he suggested that she used Sandy Sechrest’s identity to get to the island. Alison Teal’s discovery here, fifteen years ago, was a big deal and Tom worried that the name might be recognized.’

‘So Tom had to die?’ Perez thought Agnew had always been reckless and a risk-taker. He’d gambled that no connection would be found between him and the two victims.

‘Simon had served with Tom on island committees and knew Rogerson would delight in making mischief. Simon phoned him and arranged to meet him. He probably said that he knew something about Alison’s death. That would have intrigued Tom. Worried him. He wouldn’t have wanted his relationship with Alison being general knowledge in the islands. Agnew picked him up at the airport and drove him to the manse, took him for a walk so that they could talk things through. He’s always been one for exercise. He used to swim from the beach where Rogerson’s body was found.’

‘But it wasn’t so healthy for Tom.’ It was Perez’s attempt at flippancy, but he was thinking that Fran had swum from that beach too. He was wondering if she’d ever been there with Agnew.

‘That’s one way of putting it. Agnew left the body there, perhaps hoping that a high tide or a strong gale would take it away. But the weather calmed and Kevin Hay found it.’

‘Agnew would have got away with double murder, if you weren’t such a good detective.’

‘Like I said, that was all down to Sandy working his magic with the witness at the airport.’ Willow unwound the towel around her head and shook her hair loose. ‘I saw Agnew, you know, this evening. He was jogging along the road. I thought he’d be in his car and that I’d have some warning of his return. And of course he left his door unlocked – he wasn’t scared of a killer in the dark. If I hadn’t been so stupid, he would never have caught me.’

‘Would you like coffee?’ Perez wanted Willow to change the subject, not to think beyond the point when Agnew had found her in the office at the manse.

‘I want sleep,’ she said.

‘Use my bed. I’ll stay here on the sofa.’

‘Nah, come in with me.’ A grin that made him see she was stronger than he’d ever be. ‘I won’t make unreasonable demands, Jimmy. I’m not up to that tonight. And no strings. But I could use the company.’

He lay beside her and slept fitfully. She hardly stirred. The next morning he made sure he was up and dressed before Cassie was awake, and he had an excuse prepared for Willow being in his bed.