Dead Water

Chapter Forty-Six

‘So,’ Sandy said. ‘How did you know that Evie’s father killed Markham and Henderson?’

It was a full day later and they were in Perez’s house in Ravenswick. A fire in the grate and another bottle of Willow Reeves’s Hebridean whisky on the table.

‘I didn’t know,’ Perez said. ‘Not until I saw him there at the pier at Hvidahus.’ But I never trusted him. People who are certain have always scared me. ‘I thought he would do anything to make his daughter happy.’ He paused. Confession wasn’t his style, but he thought they deserved an explanation. ‘It came to me when I drove into Ravenswick one evening and saw Cassie looking out of the window of our friends’ house. She was looking out for me. I thought then that I’d kill to keep her safe.’ He turned away, embarrassed, before continuing. ‘Francis loved Evie. She was more important to him than his son, who wasn’t interested in returning to the islands. She represented the future of Shetland to him. One day she would take over his business, live in his house in Fetlar. He’d become kind of obsessed with her. A danger when you’re a parent. Sometimes you have to let your kids live their own lives. You have to risk them getting hurt. But I thought Francis might be proud to think that he’d killed to save her pain.’

There was a silence in the room.

‘And he had a terrible temper,’ Perez went on. ‘Maria confirmed that, didn’t she, Sandy? I wanted you to ask her about Francis coming to the hotel when he found out that Evie was pregnant. She’d told me that he’d been foaming at the mouth with rage, but that’s the sort of thing people say. I needed to know if it was true.’

‘It was your third question for her,’ Sandy said. ‘Maria said Francis was wild, raving. He hit Peter and gave him a black eye. She’d wanted to make a formal complaint, but Peter wouldn’t hear of it.’

‘Francis couldn’t stand the idea that Henderson’s affair with the Fiscal might be made public,’ Perez said. ‘But he was much more bothered that Markham would tell Evie about it and spoil her wedding than with any notion of public shame. As Francis saw it, the man had already ruined his daughter’s life once. And Markham threatened to tell Evie everything. He thought it would be the right thing to do, that Evie deserved to understand that John wasn’t as perfect as she assumed him to be. The idea of it drove Francis mad. He was delighted that Evie was marrying the man everyone thought they knew: John Henderson, man of religion and the closest thing to a saint there is in the islands. John Henderson who’d nursed his dying wife. Imagine the scandal there’d be if folk found out that he’d been slipping off on Friday nights to have recreational sex with a stuck-up soothmoother. And how would Evie feel about it? Francis thought she’d be so devastated that she’d cancel the wedding. And, without John’s support, she’d never return to Fetlar and take over the family business. It would be the end of his world.’

The peats in the fire shifted and smoked.

‘There had always been rumours that Rhona Laing had a secret lover,’ Perez went on. ‘A dark stranger who arrived by boat and disappeared again before first light. It wasn’t quite like that, but the storytellers almost got it right. And we know that Ms Laing wasn’t squeamish about adultery. She’d had a relationship with Richard Grey after all. Then Agnes died, and the affair with Henderson ended and Markham went off to London, and the Fiscal must have thought it was all over and forgotten.’

‘I don’t understand where Markham came into it in the first place.’ Willow reached out and took a slug of whisky.

‘Markham knew.’ Perez thought Markham hadn’t been the only one in the islands to guess about the affair. But he’d been the only person to exploit the knowledge. ‘It must have been while he was still working at the Shetland Times. He blackmailed John and Rhona. He was a horrible man in those days. I’d guess it was the Fiscal who paid up. That’s how Markham could afford that fancy red car. Everyone thought it was a gift from his parents.’

‘But that was years ago.’ Sandy was drinking beer, not whisky. He’d be the one to drive Willow Reeves back to her hotel at the end of the night. ‘Why couldn’t they all just let things be?’

‘Because Markham was a changed man,’ Willow said. ‘Isn’t that right, Jimmy? He fell in love and got religion all at the same time. A heady mix.’

Perez thought that Markham’s conversion, his determination to be a good man, had led to two murders.

‘I think he really had changed. Or he believed that he had. Maria sent him the cutting from the Shetland Times, which announced Evie’s engagement to John Henderson.’ Perez wondered what would have happened if Markham had never seen the announcement. Perhaps he’d have stood at the font in the smart Hampstead church while the holy water was dribbled over his head, then gone on to marry Annabel Grey and live happily ever after.

He lifted a peat from the bucket by the hearth and threw it onto the fire. ‘Perhaps Markham still felt guilty about extorting money from the Fiscal and about the way he’d treated Evie. And he didn’t want Evie to be hurt again by a man who had betrayed his dying wife. We know that Markham talked about betrayal to Annabel. In any event, Markham came north in an attempt to put things right. To be honest. He planned to tell his parents about Annabel too, I think. He would have done it the night he died. But mostly it was about coming to terms with his past, making himself feel better.’

They sat for a moment in silence. A car with a faulty exhaust was driving down the road towards the jetty. Perez knew the sound – it belonged to his neighbour. The fire smoked a little.

‘That seems very self-centred,’ Willow said. ‘Didn’t he think of the effect that would have on the people involved?’

Perez looked up at her. ‘Probably not,’ he said. ‘Maybe Markham was still a selfish man. And aren’t we all a little self-centred?’

There was another comfortable silence, before Perez continued speaking.

‘On his first night at home, Markham told his mother that he wouldn’t need her cash any more. That wasn’t because he was planning blackmail, or because he was marrying into money. It was to show her that he was different. At last he was starting to grow up. Mark Walsh’s invitation to the Hvidahus action group gave him the excuse he needed to be here, and I think he had decided that the friction over the new energies really might make a decent story. He asked Peter to set up an appointment at Sullom Voe and arranged to meet Reg Gilbert. Vicki Hewitt found Markham’s camera in Francis Watt’s office; it contained pictures of Sullom Voe with the new gas terminal.’ Perez paused. ‘Mark Walsh told Watt that the great Jerry Markham was coming to his meeting. Francis had always supported their opposition group, but that was the last thing he wanted. He’d disagreed with Evie over the scheme in private, but the last thing he wanted was Markham to rubbish it in public. It would have seemed like another assault on his daughter.’

‘There was nothing to rubbish,’ Willow said. ‘The accountants have been over the Power of Water books and can’t find a penny out of place.’

‘But Francis was convinced that the scheme was rotten at its core,’ Perez said. ‘He told me when I visited him on Fetlar that there hadn’t been a development in Shetland that didn’t have corruption at the heart of it. He really believed the project must be based on council fraud, that there’d be a huge scandal and Evie would suffer. If he’d been less paranoid and trusted his daughter’s judgement more, two men might still be alive. It’s one of the saddest aspects to the case.’

‘In the meantime Markham was trying to get in touch with Evie.’ Willow was in her usual place on the sheepskin rug, as comfortable as a cat, long and sleepy.

‘He phoned her and he left messages on her voice-mail,’ Perez said. ‘And perhaps he gave away enough of his concern for her to guess the gist of what he wanted to say. The night of her hen party something had certainly troubled her.’

‘Who did Markham meet in the Bonhoga?’ Sandy asked. He’d finished his beer. Perez could tell that he’d like another, but didn’t want to ask.

‘That was Jessie Watt. Brian, who runs the cafe, thought it might have been Evie, but they look very similar. It was Jessie, dressed up and smart. Markham had already phoned the Watts about Henderson’s affair. The meeting was Jessie’s attempt to persuade him to keep the matter quiet, but he refused. He said Evie should know the sort of man she was about to marry.’

‘So Jessie knew that her husband was a murderer?’

Perez shrugged. ‘She must have been a part of it – of Markham’s murder, at least. The two of them left Fetlar together. The ferry boys said they hadn’t seen the Watts leave the island that day, but Francis took his own boat out. He kept an old van in Vidlin for picking up tools and wood, to use on the mainland. Francis drove Jessie to the Bonhoga, where she had a last attempt to persuade Markham to go south and leave them all alone. Afterwards they followed Markham to Sullom Voe. That must have been a time of decision for them. They could have driven away and caught the ferry home, but Francis wasn’t a man to let him go. By then he was furious and desperate to stop Markham telling Evie about Henderson’s affair and to stop him writing about Power of Water.’

‘Jessie says she tried to persuade him.’ Willow said. She stretched. ‘Stupid, weak woman. She can’t have tried very hard.’

Perez thought that Jessie had spent her life believing that Francis was right. It would be hard to stand up to him about this.

‘So they came back to the Lunna junction to wait for Markham, knowing he’d have to come that way to go home. They won’t have known that he’d arranged to meet Henderson near Scatsta.’

Perez imagined the couple waiting in the tatty white van. There were always vehicles parked at that junction – it was a meeting place for car-shares into town. Nobody would take any notice of them. Perhaps Jessie had prepared a picnic. Something traditional of course: bannocks with reestit mutton, home-bakes. Had the plan just been to scare Markham? To send him on his way? You’ve already broken our girl’s heart once. Now you want to do it all over again. She has a chance for happiness, for a new life with a good man. Or were the elaborate travel arrangements evidence that Francis Watt was already contemplating murder? Perez thought the couple would have spent the waiting time talking about Markham, winding each other up, persuading each other of his wickedness. The tension must have been unbearable as the light faded and the visibility grew poorer.

‘How did they know it was Markham’s car?’ Sandy broke into Perez’s thoughts. ‘The fog would have been so thick by then that they wouldn’t have seen it coming.’

‘But they’d have heard it, wouldn’t they?’ Willow was lying on her side, propped up on one elbow. Her hair had changed colour in the firelight. ‘That engine. There’d be nothing else like that in Shetland. Worth taking a chance on, anyway. Worth starting the van and driving out, causing the oncoming car to swerve into the lay-by. If they’d got the wrong car, they could pretend it was an accident.’

Perez nodded. And again he ran the scene in his head. Markham would have been shocked, and even the new, changed Markham would have been angry. He’d have climbed out of his car shouting and swearing. Anyone would. And Francis Watt, shut off from the real world by the fog, his nerves taut from the waiting and his wife’s endless talking, had lashed out. He’d taken a spade from the back of the truck and hit out.

Perez hadn’t taken part in the interview of Francis Watt. He hadn’t trusted himself to stay calm and professional, but he would have liked to ask how Francis had felt at that point. Had he enjoyed the sensation of power? Was that why he’d decided to kill again?

‘Then what happened?’ It was Sandy again, wanting to move things on. Perhaps he had an appointment in town. A lass to meet, or there were friends waiting for him in a bar, ready to celebrate the end of the case. Perez got to his feet and fetched him a beer from the fridge.

‘They didn’t want to leave Markham there.’ Willow sounded cheerful now. The case was over and she hadn’t screwed up. ‘Soon traffic would be coming back from Lerwick and people would be collecting their cars after work. So they put him in the back of the van. Of course it was Francis’s idea to take him to Aith. The Fiscal’s home territory. An indirect message to the scarlet woman. In the interview Francis told me he thought it would be fitting to set Markham afloat on the water. So they loaded the body into the yoal. He looked in Markham’s briefcase before they pushed the boat into the marina. Of course there was nothing much in there, because there wasn’t much of a story at that point. Just a pile of postcards Markham had picked up from the Bonhoga that morning. Jerry must have posted one to Annabel Grey in Brae when he stopped there for his lunch. Francis took a few of them. Mementos.’

Another indication, Perez thought, that Francis had enjoyed the killing and wanted an object to trigger the memory of it.

‘Late that night they drove Markham’s car to Vatnagarth and then they steamed back to Fetlar,’ Willow said. ‘To make their boats and knit their jerseys and finalize plans for their daughter’s wedding. As if nothing had happened.’

‘But Markham had met John Henderson,’ Perez said. ‘And John suspected that Markham’s murder was connected to the story. The old story of his affair with the Fiscal. I think he’d decided that he had to tell Evie all about it.’

‘Even though she’d probably guessed some of it, guessed at least that Markham was in Shetland to pass on some gossip about Henderson. And she can’t have cared, can she? She went out, got pissed and then decided it didn’t matter. The next day she was behaving just as normal. She loved him and was going to marry him anyway.’ Willow looked up at the men. ‘Such a dreadful waste! What did Markham think he would achieve?’

‘Henderson made the mistake of phoning Francis first,’ Perez said. ‘To warn him that Evie might be too upset to marry him. He’d have thought it was the honourable thing to do. The men were old friends. And perhaps something in Watt’s response to the call made John suspect he was the killer.’

‘So Henderson had to die too.’

‘He did. And perhaps by then Francis saw himself as a kind of avenging angel. He must have convinced himself that this was for the best, that Evie didn’t deserve an adulterer like Henderson after all. This time there was an even more elaborate crime scene. Henderson next to his wife-to-be, with the mask over his head.’

Willow took another drink. ‘A forensic psychiatrist will have a fine time with that!’ She looked into the fire. ‘Jessie had nothing to do with that killing. Francis left home early and was just home by the time you visited them that afternoon, Jimmy. Jessie was working in the fields all day. She didn’t ask where Francis was going in his boat. She didn’t want to know.’

They sat for a moment in silence.

‘In the end I think Watt blamed Rhona Laing for everything,’ Perez went on. ‘She seduced Henderson, not caring that his wife was dying. She began the whole business. In Francis’s head, she’d even turned him into a killer.’

Perez sat back in his chair. ‘I saw Evie this afternoon,’ he said. ‘She’s staying with Jen and Andy Belshaw.’ He thought of the young woman’s fury, her blazing eyes and violent words. Hatred of her parents was helping her through her present grief, but that wouldn’t last.

Perez wanted his visitors to go now. He was tired and needed to be left with his own thoughts and his own memories. The others must have realized that, because suddenly they were on their feet, and the door was open, and the chill night air was in the house.

Sandy went ahead of them, almost running down the bank to the car. Perez decided that he definitely had an appointment with a woman. Willow stood for a moment. ‘I’m away south tomorrow,’ she said. ‘My father’s birthday. I’m off on the first plane, so I’ll not see you.’

‘But you’ll be back?’ There was a moment of panic. He saw how much he would miss her.

‘Oh, I’ll probably be back. You know these cases. Always ends to tie up.’

He thought she would kiss him again as she had in the hotel that night. A dry kiss on his cheek. But she gave a little wave and followed Sandy down the hill. Perez stood in the open door and felt cheated.