Dead Water

Chapter Thirteen

The first regatta of the season was at St Ninian’s Isle. They’d borrowed the yoal from the Weisdale team because their boat had been taken away for forensic examination. Rhona Laing wasn’t sure where it would be now, or even if it was still in Shetland. She imagined scientists at the university at Aberdeen examining it, scraping tiny pieces of wood from the seats where Jerry Markham’s body had lain. But she didn’t like to ask too many questions about this investigation. She was already involved because she’d found the dead man. Now, she saw, it was best to keep a professional distance.

It was fine rowing weather, without too much of a breeze to cause a swell on the water. Later in the season they’d pick up a good speed, but today they wouldn’t have the rhythm, the instinctive sense of pulling together that came after months of practice. It was mild for spring and there was no sign of rain. Down on the beach someone had already got a barbecue going and there was the smell of charcoal and charred meat. Cans of lager appeared from open car boots. Children were running along the tideline. St Ninian’s was the view that appeared on all the tourist postcards. Not a real island at all, but a geological oddity, a tombolo, attached to Shetland mainland by a spit of sand. The sand was white and fine and the water very clear and blue. An image of paradise for the visitors.

A hoard of Pictish treasure had been found there and, though the originals were in Edinburgh, replicas were on show at the museum in Lerwick. Occasionally Rhona went to look at the brooches, the feasting bowls and the ornamental weapons, when she was in the museum for lunch and found herself lusting after the originals with an intensity that took her breath away. She longed to drink wine from the bowl and to feel the old silver against her lips, to pin a jewelled brooch onto a plain black dress and know that it had last been worn hundreds of years before.

Liz, the crofter from Bixter, had towed the yoal and the trailer behind her old Land Rover. It had been launched earlier and tied to a temporary pontoon. The team stood looking at it. A different boat. How would they cope with that? All around the talk was of the murder. ‘Fancy you finding the body!’ Liz said. ‘What chance would there be of that? A strange kind of coincidence.’

The Fiscal was about to protest that of course it was a coincidence, what else could it be? She felt suddenly scared and flushed. But Liz continued before she could speak. ‘I mean, you’re the Procurator Fiscal. It’s your job to supervise a murder investigation. It’s like someone’s saying, “Here’s the body, get on with the job.”’

And Rhona laughed at the idea with the others, and rolled up her jeans ready for the start. Theirs was the last race of the day. In the yoal she pulled on her gloves and started to row. She loved the sensation of skimming over the water, losing herself in the task of rowing and the strange clarity of the light. No space for thought. That smell of salt and tar and damp wood. They finished halfway down the field. If it had been any other race, Rhona would have been disappointed by that, but today it seemed unimportant. It had been enough to escape her anxieties for a while. The other competitors commiserated. It was hardly surprising, they said, when the team had to get used to a borrowed yoal. The Aith vets had been cheered across the finishing line by a sympathetic crowd.

Rhona had helped the others load the boat onto the trailer and was about to drive home when she saw the detective from Inverness among the crowd. The inspector had bought a veggie-burger from the barbecue and was drinking black tea from a paper cup. She could have been a tourist come to watch a local event, or a relative up from the south. Relaxed and informal, she fitted in.

She’s dangerous, the Fiscal thought suddenly. That woman could ruin my life here. Rhona left the rest of the team and walked over the sand to Willow. Her feet were still bare and sandy from pulling the yoal out of the water, and her clothes were damp from the splashes from the oars. She felt at a disadvantage.

‘Are you here to see me, Inspector?’

‘I called at your house.’ Willow threw a scrap of bannock to a herring gull. ‘Your neighbour told me you’d be here. The first race of the season.’

‘Would it not have waited until tomorrow in the office? Or is there some development in the investigation so urgent that you think I should know at once.’ Rhona was pleased that she kept her voice professional, but not hostile.

‘This isn’t a matter for you as Fiscal.’ The detective tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Could we talk somewhere more private?’

‘Not here,’ Rhona said sharply. ‘Not like this. I’m cold and I need to shower and change. You can come back to my house later.’

‘No need for that,’ Willow said easily. ‘Let me just walk up to the cars with you and we can chat there. I’m sure it’s something that can be cleared up in a matter of minutes.’

It was impossible for Rhona to refuse, so she dusted the sand from her feet and put on her shoes, pulled on a sweater and followed Willow up to the car park. They sat in Willow’s hire car. Rhona thought it would be unbearable to have the inspector in her own vehicle. It would be like spilling milk on the floor; you’d never get rid of the taint. Down on the beach people were clearing up, collecting stray bits of rubbish in black sacks. The sun was already low and they threw long shadows.

‘This really isn’t very convenient, Inspector. I have a busy day tomorrow and I’d like to get home.’ The tone she was after was brisk and businesslike, but she suspected that there was an undernote of anxiety and that the detective would have picked up on it.

‘We’ve discovered a little more about Jerry Markham’s whereabouts on the day of his death.’ Willow stretched suddenly and her body seemed to fill the small and tinny hire car.

‘Yes?’ The Fiscal’s curiosity was genuine enough.

‘He had a meeting with the press officer in Sullom Voe in the afternoon. He claimed that he was researching a piece on new energies, on the gas that’s being brought ashore at the terminal. But also wave and wind power. Shetland as the powerhouse of the UK.’

‘I suppose that makes sense,’ Rhona said. ‘There’s been a lot of interest in the development of the technologies. The islands are full of the energy-company people. It seems almost impossible to get a hotel room at the moment.’

She might not have spoken. Willow continued. ‘Markham was seen earlier that day at around eleven a.m. in the art gallery at Weisdale.’

‘The Bonhoga,’ the Fiscal said.

Willow turned to her. ‘You know it?’

‘Of course I know it! Everyone in Shetland knows it. They might not like the art, but they go for the good coffee and the home baking.’

‘Did you fancy coffee and cakes on Friday morning?’

The question was sudden and for a moment Rhona was thrown. ‘Of course not. I was working. Why would I drive from Lerwick in the middle of a working day?’

‘To meet Jerry Markham perhaps.’

There was a moment of silence. By now the car park looking down at the beach was deserted. The bonfire on the sand was still smoking, but nobody was there.

‘I’m sorry. What are you suggesting?’ Occasionally, when she was a practising lawyer in Edinburgh, her reputation had been called into question in court. She’d used the same tone of incredulous outrage then.

‘We have a description of the woman Markham met,’ Willow said. ‘Middle-aged, well groomed, slim.’

‘That could apply to a thousand women in the islands.’

‘Perhaps,’ the inspector said, though it was clear from her voice that she doubted it. ‘But not to a thousand women linked to our investigation.’

She leaned forward and Rhona could see the earnest face, the prematurely lined eyes. Even as she was considering her answer, the Fiscal thought that Willow Reeves clearly never used moisturizer.

‘You do see why I had to ask you?’ Willow went on. ‘If I ignored that sort of connection I’d be failing in my duty as an investigating officer. I can’t be seen to be giving you preferential treatment.’

For a moment Rhona was taken in by the gentle voice. Perhaps, after all, Willow Reeves was just going through the motions. But it came to her again that this woman was dangerous.

‘I didn’t leave my office on Friday morning,’ she said.

‘And other people will have been around. They’ll confirm that. So now I’ve asked my questions and I can look elsewhere.’ Willow nodded in approval. Rhona hesitated. The woman’s words hadn’t been phrased as a question, but clearly an answer was expected. ‘My assistant took a day’s leave on Friday,’ she said. ‘I had a meeting at lunchtime and I was in court in the afternoon, but before twelve-thirty I was on my own. I didn’t drive to Weisdale or meet Jerry Markham in the coffee shop at the Bonhoga, but I can’t prove it.’

Willow nodded and again there was a silence, broken only by the gulls calling outside. ‘Do you have any enemies?’

‘I wasn’t killed by a blow to the head, Inspector. Shouldn’t you be looking for the people who wanted Markham dead, rather than for those who dislike me?’

Willow threw back her head and laughed. The sound was surprisingly infectious and Rhona found herself smiling.

‘I tend to make things complicated,’ the detective said. ‘Always have done. It’s a failing – comes up at every appraisal I have – but humour me. This case is odd. Markham wasn’t killed in Aith, but someone took the risk of sticking him in the yoal and floating him out to sea. It was a foggy day – everyone tells me that. All the same, it was a crazy thing to do. In the islands the fog can clear as suddenly as it arrives, and then everyone in the village, a crofter on the hill with his sheep, kids on the beach, a woman hanging out her washing would see the killer trying to lift a fully grown man into your boat. And, even with the fog, there was a chance that the killer would be disturbed. Dog-walkers, fishermen, they don’t care about the weather. So why do it? And why there?’

‘You think it was a message for me?’ Rhona kept her voice impassive and wondered if she should encourage this line of enquiry or dismiss it immediately as ridiculous.

‘I know – daft, isn’t it? But like I said, humour me. Is there anyone who hates you that much? An offender who thought you’d treated him unfairly maybe?’

‘This is Shetland, Inspector, not Glasgow. We don’t much go in for revenge killings here. A man who’s lost his licence for six months for drunk-driving is unlikely to go to the trouble of committing murder because he feels aggrieved.’ Rhona found herself relaxing; she’d almost begun to enjoy this exchange.

‘Anything more personal then?’ Willow was staring ahead of her and it was hard for Rhona to tell if the question was to be taken seriously.

‘A jilted lover, you mean? Something of that kind?’ Best, she decided, to treat it as a joke.

Willow turned slowly to face her. ‘Perhaps. Why not? You’ve had no stalkers? Odd phone calls?’

‘No, Inspector, nothing of that sort. As I said before, this is Shetland. It would be extremely hard to get away with that sort of behaviour here and not be found out.’

Rhona thought Willow was forming an answer, but she didn’t speak for a while and, when she did, it was to say that she wouldn’t need to keep the Fiscal any longer. Rhona opened the car door and climbed out. Her shoulder muscles were already stiff after the day’s activity. There was no longer any warmth in the sun and she felt chilled and achy, as if she might be coming down with a fever. Willow swung her long legs out of the car and stood up to say goodbye.

‘Thank you for your time,’ she said. ‘Get off home.’

Rhona drove off, feeling as if she’d been dismissed and that the woman from Uist was very much in charge.