Red Bones

Chapter Twenty-six

Perez watched the ferry carry Sandy away from Whalsay on his way to London and thought this must be what his own parents had felt when he was twelve and he was sent off from Fair Isle to stay in the hostel at the Anderson High School in Lerwick: responsible for his loneliness and as if they’d deserted him. All day whenever his phone rang Perez thought it would be Sandy, stranded somewhere, or lost in the city.

He found Berglund still in the Pier House Hotel. He seemed to have taken up residence at the table by the window, turning the place into his office, filling it with his laptop computer and his piles of paper.

‘You’ll have heard about Hattie?’ Perez said.

‘Yes, what a waste! She was such a talented girl. I’ve never been able to understand suicide.’ There was an academic interest in his voice but no real regret.

‘Your knife was found by her body.’

‘Really?’ He looked up sharply from the computer screen. ‘I hadn’t even realized it was lost.’ He gave a shiver of distaste.

‘We’ll need to keep it for forensic examination.’

‘Oh, I don’t want it back. I’d never feel able to use it again.’

‘When did you last see it?’

‘I can’t remember. I certainly had it yesterday morning on site. I suppose I must have left it there. Or I could have dropped it while I was walking with Hattie.’

‘Did you see her pick it up?’

‘Of course not, inspector. I’d have expected her to give it back to me, wouldn’t I?’ He gave a little laugh, as if he could hardly believe the detective’s stupidity.

Perez drove from Symbister to Lindby and the big Clouston house. Jackie was outside, cleaning the windows of the lounge, polishing them with a dry cloth, so vigorously that you’d think she’d make a hole in the glass. She turned round, suddenly aware that she was being watched.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘One storm and they’ll be covered again with salt. But it’s good to get the view, at least for a while. Everyone said Andrew was daft to rebuild his house here, where it’s so exposed, but we wouldn’t like to be lower down. We like the sea all around us and a bit of a view.’

‘I don’t want to disturb you.’

‘You’re not. I was just looking for something to do. A distraction, you know. Another death on the island… It’s hard to take in. I didn’t really know the lassie working in Setter but it’s a shock all the same. Come away inside.’

He expected to see Andrew in his usual chair in the kitchen but it was empty. Jackie saw that he was wondering about her husband. ‘Ronald’s taken him out for a peerie drive. Up to the golf club so he can have a bit of company with his friends, then they might call in at the sailing club or have a drink at the Pier House. He’s not been well the last few days. It gets Andrew down, not being able to get out with the boys on the boat. He was the one who made all the decisions. Now he feels kind of powerless. It’s not a physical thing so much; he just gets frustrated. Anna wanted Ronald to make a start on her garden today, but I said to him, “That can wait. Your father’s more important than planting a few beans and tatties.”’

Perez wondered what Anna had made of that. But he just nodded. ‘Can we go through into the other room? Enjoy the view now the windows are so clean?’

‘Aye,’ she said. ‘Why not? I usually sit in the kitchen, but you go through and I’ll bring the coffee in to you.’

It was a big square room the width of half the house. There was a marble fireplace and the furniture was large and shiny: two sofas covered in grey satin, a highly polished sideboard and a couple of gleaming occasional tables, a gilt-framed mirror on the mantelpiece. The photographs were posed and covered in glass. There was one of Jackie and Andrew’s wedding, Andrew looking very grand in a morning suit, a giant standing next to his little wife. There was a shot of the house when it was first built, Ronald’s official school photos. The room seemed cold and impersonal. Perez wondered how often it was used. He sat on a chair looking out through the long window. He could see the whole of the southern point of the island, from the new bungalow where Anna and Ronald lived, along the boulder beach to Setter where Hattie’s body had been found.

Jackie bustled in with a tray: the best china, milk in a jug and real coffee in a pot, a plate with homemade biscuits. What else did she do besides baking and housework? He thought she must get bored here in the giant show-house. Did looking after her husband take up all her time?

She seemed to guess what he was thinking. ‘When we built the new house, I thought I might take in paying guests. Not so much for the money but because I’d enjoy the company, meeting folks from all over the world. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so big.’

‘Sounds like a good plan. Especially with Anna running the workshops. It would save her having to put people up in the Pier House or in the bungalow.’

‘Aye well, Andrew doesn’t like the idea. Not now. Since the stroke anything out of his usual routine upsets him. He couldn’t face meeting strangers.’ She shook her head, dismissing the dreams she’d had once.

Perez poured coffee, waiting a moment to enjoy the smell. ‘Did you see Hattie James yesterday?’

‘No. I didn’t really know her. We weren’t on visiting terms. Evelyn took it on herself to look after the lasses, but that’s the sort of woman she is. She has to poke her nose in everywhere, especially when money’s involved. She’s not the saint everyone makes her out to be.’

‘How would money be involved?’ He was genuinely curious.

‘They’d surely get a fee for the dig at Setter.’ He sensed there was something more she wanted to say, but she snapped her mouth shut.

Perez left the subject alone. He thought he should defend Sandy’s mother, but really how much did he know about the woman, except that she was hospitable? He found the bickering between the cousins depressing. Suddenly he was back in Fair Isle, at a Sunday-school lesson in the hall, him a child of seven or eight, listening to a gentle, elderly woman talking about a love of money being the root of all evil. ‘The love of money, you see. Not the money itself. It’s when money takes over our lives that things start to go so badly wrong.’ Is that what’s happening here? he thought. It’s not the wealth itself that’s soured relationships between these two families. It’s the bitterness and envy that surrounds it.

‘So the lasses from the dig never came in here?’

‘No. Once we used to have grand parties and invite most of the island. We ’d push back the furniture; someone would start playing music. Grand times. Then the house would be full of young people. Ronald would bring in his friends from the High School and all the boys from the boats would come along with their wives and kiddies. Andrew was a great one with the accordion. There’d be songs and dancing. But Andrew can’t deal with big numbers of visitors these days. He finds it a strain just with the family.’

‘Of course.’ Perez helped himself to more coffee. ‘You must miss the old times.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You’d never guess how much.’

She looked down towards her son’s bungalow. Perez thought her head was full of fiddle music, memories of parties and laughter. Had she expected Anna to take on her role as hostess and party giver? Was she disappointed in the daughter-in-law who seemed more interested in building a business than having a good time?

‘Hattie and her boss went for a walk along the shore here yesterday afternoon,’ he said. ‘You have a great view from the house. Maybe you saw them?’

‘Andrew wasn’t so good yesterday. Sometimes he gets an idea in his head and he can’t let it go. He worries away at it and it drives him crazy. I had to call Ronald in to calm him down.’

‘What was it that troubled him?’

‘It was the accident with Mima. Something about the shooting took him back to when he was young. He’s a good few years older than me and he can remember Mima’s husband. Andrew’s father worked with Jerry Wilson building little inshore boats to go out to Norway on the Shetland Bus. The boats they made were used by the Norwegian resistance and agents in the field. It was a long time ago. Mima’s man died years ago, not so long after the war ended, when I was a very young bairn, so what could he have to do with the accident? But sometimes that’s the way Andrew’s mind works. Things that happened when he was a peerie boy seem more real than what went on yesterday.’

‘So you didn’t get the chance to look at the view of the shore? You won’t have noticed Hattie and Paul Berglund out here?’

She flashed him a smile. ‘Yesterday I didn’t get the chance to go to the toilet without Andrew standing at the bottom of the stairs and asking where I was. Ronald managed to calm him down a bit when he got here. He’s good with his father, more patient than I am.’

‘Perhaps you saw her later, when she was on her own.’

‘No,’ Jackie said. ‘I didn’t see her at all.’

‘But you saw the Fiscal come in this morning? I noticed you with the others.’

‘I saw the crowd gathering when I was upstairs making the bed. I went down to Setter to see what was going on. Pure nosiness. That was the first I heard the girl was dead. I couldn’t stay long. Andrew was in the house on his own.’ She looked up at him. ‘How did the lassie die?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said gently. ‘It’s not something I can discuss.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you can.’ She paused. ‘They’re saying it was suicide.’

‘Really, at this point we don’t know.’

‘What must her parents be going through?’ Jackie said. ‘We ’d do anything to protect our children but we can’t save them from themselves.’ She smiled at him. ‘Do you have children, inspector?’

He shook his head automatically. But surely I do. Cassie feels like my daughter. How would I feel if she was so desperate that she jumped into a hole in the ground and slit her wrists?