Red Bones

Chapter Forty-one

Anna Clouston walked up the hill towards the hall. She felt oddly liberated without the baby. Lighter and lightheaded. A pool of mist had gathered in the low ground by the loch, so it looked as if the hall was stranded on its own island. Even the landscape seemed different.

When she opened the door she was surprised that Evelyn was the only person there. The trestle tables had been pushed together to run along the long side of the hall and Evelyn was covering them with white cloths, shaking the material out so they flapped like sails. Smaller tables had been set, cafe-style, in the middle of the hall. The speakers would have the best chairs at one end, with a table for their notes, and there was a screen and data projector. The urn was already hissing for tea. Everything was organized and efficient.

Evelyn was wearing an apron, but Anna could tell she’d dressed up for the occasion. She had green dangly earrings, little court shoes with heels.

‘What would you like me to do?’

‘You can fetch me the cups and saucers from the cupboard,’ Evelyn said. Then: ‘Sandy’s picked Gwen James up from Sumburgh. He gave her a tour of the island – showed her the Bod and the dig at Setter, the place where Hattie died. It seems kind of ghoulish but she wanted to see it. She’s in the Pier House now getting ready. He’ll give her a lift up just before we start.’

‘Right.’ Anna couldn’t understand how Gwen James could bear to be here. If anything had happened to her son, if he had been found in a hole in the ground like that, Anna wouldn’t want to be paraded in the hall in front of staring people, all of them strangers. She wouldn’t want to eat meringues and drink weak tea. What sort of mother could this woman be?

She set the cups and saucers out close to the urn, wiping each one with a clean tea towel as she brought it out of the cupboard, just as the island women always did.

‘I’m surprised you’ve not got more helpers,’ she said.

‘Oh, I told Jackie I’d manage. Joseph came along earlier to help shift the furniture.’ Evelyn had moved from the tables and was pinning photos of the dig site up on the walls. One showed Hattie and Sophie both crouched at work. Hattie had looked up at the camera and smiled; Anna couldn’t remember ever having seen her appear so happy. It was a good photo. She wondered who’d taken it. Ronald, maybe. He’d spent a lot of time on the dig the summer before. Evelyn went on: ‘Jackie says Andrew’s agitated again today. She’ll be in as soon as she’s settled him. He won’t be coming. Just as well. We don’t want a scene.’

Anna thought Evelyn preferred it this way: completely in control and in charge. She could understand that.

The door of the hall opened and Anna saw a silhouette framed by the filtered light of the low sun behind him. Another bank of mist had come in from the sea. The figure moved further into the room and she recognized Jimmy Perez. He seemed surprised to see Anna there. She guessed he’d hoped to catch Evelyn on her own and now he was weighing his options and wondering how best to play the situation. Evelyn had her back to the door and hadn’t seen him.

‘Evelyn.’

The woman turned sharply. ‘Oh, Jimmy. You’re early. We’re not starting until seven.’

‘I was hoping to catch you for a word on your own. Perhaps we could go back to Utra for a few minutes.’

Evelyn paused for a beat, seemed to straighten her back. ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible, Jimmy. There’s far too much to do before the other folk turn up.’

‘Really, I think we might be better talking now.’ He paused. ‘We don’t want a scene later.’

That word again, Anna thought. Scene. What is it that they’re scared of? She would have offered to go out so they could talk on their own, but knew that was the last thing Evelyn wanted.

Evelyn seemed to consider. She looked quite calm. ‘Oh, I don’t think we need worry about that, do you, Jimmy? You know I’m the last one to cause a fuss. There’s no hurry. You know I’m not going anywhere.’

Anna had the sense that the conversation had a meaning she didn’t understand. Perez stood for a moment then nodded, he turned and left. Once he’d gone, Evelyn lifted the hem of her apron and wiped her face with it. Her only gesture of weakness. Then she bent and lifted a pile of dinner plates from the cupboard. ‘The cakes can go on here,’ she said. ‘There should be napkins somewhere. We’ll wrap them with clingfilm until the speeches are over.’ She made no reference to the conversation between her and Perez.

In the end, Anna had to admit, the event was a triumph. It struck just the right note. Once Evelyn took off her apron she became a different person – confident, knowledgeable, charming. Even the islanders were impressed. She welcomed the guests into the hall and brought the locals and the incomers together. She walked Gwen James round all the photos and talked about what a delight Hattie had been to have on the island. Such an enthusiast: ‘She made the history seem so real for me. I could see Whalsay through the eyes of the Setter merchant. These were our ancestors but it took an outsider to bring them to life.’ When she introduced the speakers, she spoke fluently and without notes. ‘The untimely deaths of two of our project’s greatest supporters is a tragedy. But we owe it to them to continue the work at Setter and to make it a success.’

Anna thought if Evelyn had lived somewhere else she could have been a great businesswoman. You could see her at the head of a board table, motivating her team.

Jimmy Perez had come back. He had brought a woman with him; she was chic in an arty, bohemian sort of way, small and lively. They made an unusual couple. He was very dark and impassive and she seemed to be moving all the time, interested in everything. After a while of thinking she looked familiar, Anna recognized the woman as Fran Hunter, the artist from Ravenswick. There’d been an article about her in the most recent Shetland Life, and in the arts section of a Sunday broadsheet. That could be me in a few years’ time, Anna thought, and her brain began fizzing with plans for the future. There’ll be features about my spinning and knitting; I’ll call it the Whalsay Collection and take my influences from the Setter Merchant’s House, the design of the coins. I’ll ask Ronald to help me research the costumes and jewellery of the time. Maybe we’ll make enough money that he’ll be able to give up the fishing. We ’ll run it as a family business. Suddenly anything seemed possible.

Perez stood at the back of the hall, furthest from the speakers. All the chairs had been taken but Anna thought that was where he had chosen to be. He wanted to see everything going on in the hall. Sandy Wilson sat with Hattie’s mother near the front. There was no sign of Joseph and that surprised Anna. She’d have thought Evelyn would have dragged him along. Sandy was wearing a suit, the one he’d worn to their wedding, his face was red and he looked uncomfortable. Anna knew Ronald would have hated all this. How grateful he’ll be to me that I’ve given him the excuse to stay at home! She looked forward to describing the evening to him. History was his passion, after all. She knew he’d be interested.

Jackie rushed in right at the last minute, just as Evelyn was about to start speaking. Although the weather was unusually calm, Jackie had a windswept, thrown together look that was quite unlike her. One of her nieces was a hairdresser and always came to do her hair before an evening out, but now it seemed she’d hardly had time to pull a brush through it.

Anna looked at Jackie across the hall and decided there must have been another crisis with Andrew. She reflected that she should be more considerate about her parents-in-law. She shouldn’t make such a fuss when Ronald went up to the big house to help out. She’d been rather a bitch about them.

All these thoughts were running at the back of her head while she was listening to the presentations. She sat with a fixed look of concentration on her face and nobody would have realized her mind was elsewhere. Though perhaps everyone is the same, she thought, and she sneaked a look at the audience and tried to picture the ideas and preoccupations of the individuals who sat in respectful silence. They clapped when each speaker sat down, but perhaps there were other images running like a film in their heads too. We think we know each other so well, but we all have our secrets.

Paul Berglund went first. Anna had never met him. She’d been out giving birth when the skull had been found and Evelyn had never introduced them. He gave a very short speech. Perhaps it was his accent but the words seemed ungracious, almost dismissive.

‘The university has always been delighted to support the Whalsay project, and of course it will continue to do so despite the tragic death of Hattie James.’

Anna had the impression that Evelyn had been expecting more, a promise of definite funding and more PhD students, an altogether grander project. She thought the most likely thing was that the dig would be forgotten, by the university at least.

Val Turner’s lecture was obviously more to Evelyn’s liking. There had been proper preparation, a PowerPoint presentation giving the background to the merchant’s house and an explanation of the importance of the Hanseatic League. The audience seemed to become more engaged when she described the discovery of the skull, the evidence of the shattered ribs, and when she showed off the small, dull coins in their plastic box, supported now by special polyurethane foam. ‘I have no doubt that this will be a major site in Shetland archaeology.’

Anna looked at her watch. She wondered if James had taken the bottle of expressed milk. She’d tried him with some a little earlier in the day and he’d seemed all right with it. More words running alongside all the others in her head: I shouldn’t have left him. He’s so small… Guilt, she thought. Mothers must live with it all the time. I should just get used to it.

Then Jimmy Perez walked to the front of the room. Val Turner introduced him. ‘Now Inspector Perez would like to speak to us about the tragic death of Hattie James.’

There was an excitement in the hall. Even the showing of the skull and the coins hadn’t generated this much interest. Looking at Gwen James’s sculpted, motionless face, Anna thought the woman had known this announcement was coming. She had been expecting it, waiting for it throughout the evening. The police must have warned her. Anna felt her pulse race. She too wanted to know what the police had to say.

Perez stood in front of the table, leaning against it. He pushed himself forward so he was standing upright, almost to attention, and started speaking: ‘I’m in a position now to inform you that we are treating Hattie James’s death as suspicious. She didn’t commit suicide. We believe there was a witness to the murder and we’re close to making an arrest. In the meantime we’d be grateful for continuing support and information from everyone in Whalsay.’ There was a moment of complete silence, then a muted hum of conversation. Anna couldn’t think what Perez’s words might mean. She thought the islanders were wishing Gwen James had stayed away despite her celebrity status. They would have preferred the freedom to gossip.

The evening was coming to an end. When the speeches were over the island women had moved behind the tables to pour tea from large metal pots. The clingfilm had been removed from the plates and now they were almost empty. Perez circulated around the room, talking to the locals. Or rather he was listening to the locals, Anna thought. Whenever she caught a glimpse of him he was silent, his gaze fixed on the speaker’s face.

Now Anna just wanted to get home. Gwen James looked suddenly lost and Sandy, more attentive than Anna had realized he could be, offered to drive her back to the Pier House. Just as he was finding her coat, a couple of men who’d been outside for a smoke came back in.

‘Just take care out there. The fog’s so thick you can hardly see your hand in front of your face. We don’t want you coming off the road.’ And when Sandy opened the door to show Gwen James out, Anna saw they were right. She could see nothing. No lights in the other houses, never mind Shetland mainland in the distance.