Red Bones

Chapter Forty-two

Sandy drove at walking pace down the island towards the Pier House Hotel. He was pleased that the evening in the hall had passed without mishap; everyone had said how well Evelyn had done to arrange it and she’d seemed calmer than he could remember for ages. He hoped she’d be able to stay that way. Now he just had to deliver Gwen James back to her room and perhaps he could relax. He sat bent forward, just concentrating on keeping the grass verge on each side of him and the car on the road. Gwen James was smoking. He’d been watching her throughout the evening, admiring her style, the way she held things together. He supposed she’d had the practice. A politician had to be some sort of actor. Even his mother, who was only a politician in a small way, could put on the act when it was needed. Over the years he’d seen Evelyn put on the smile, use those easy phrases that had no meaning, when she was talking about her Whalsay projects to the important folk from Lerwick. Even when she was tired or depressed, she didn’t lose the smile.

As soon as they’d left the hall, he saw how hard it had been for Gwen. She pulled a cigarette out of the packet with trembling hands and she’d been chain smoking ever since. They hit Symbister suddenly, almost before he realized. An orange streetlight above him and a wall on one side of the road and a pavement on the other. Then they were at the Pier House Hotel and he found himself shaking too. A release of tension after the drive.

He had expected Gwen James to go straight to her room. She’d already eaten and he thought she’d want to be on her own. But it seemed not: ‘God, I need a drink. You will join me, won’t you, Sandy?’

The weather had kept folk in their houses and the lounge was empty of customers. Cedric Irvine sat on a bar stool on the public side of the bar and Jean was standing behind it. Cedric winked at Sandy.

‘Well?’ Sandy asked.

‘All done,’ Cedric said.

Sandy wanted to ask for more details but Gwen James was standing right beside him and Jean had already come up to serve them.

‘A large vodka and tonic,’ the politician said. ‘Sandy?’

He asked for a beer, began to get his wallet out of his pocket.

‘Put it on my room bill, please.’ She took a seat and waited for him to bring the drinks. He wondered if she’d treated Hattie in this bossy kind of way: generous but used to getting what she wanted.

They were on to their second drink when Berglund arrived. He must have walked at least part of the way back from the hall, because there were fine drops of moisture in his hair and on his coat. Sandy thought Berglund would have preferred not to join them, but Gwen was on her feet as soon as she saw the professor walk into the hotel, shouting across to him, offering him a drink. He couldn’t refuse without appearing churlish.

There was an awkward silence after Jean had brought over his whisky. Three people with nothing in common, Sandy thought, except a dead girl. One gave birth to her, one had sex with her and I just thought she was weird.

‘I hoped Sophie might be here,’ Gwen said suddenly. ‘I’d have liked to talk to her. They were friends, weren’t they? I thought she’d come as a mark of respect. I thought she’d want to be here.’

‘We couldn’t trace her,’ Berglund said. ‘Not in time. I’m sorry.’

Gwen got to her feet and said she was desperate for a smoke. She stumbled slightly as she made her way outside. Sandy thought if she carried on like this she’d have a hangover in the morning. They saw her standing in the doorway of the hotel, struggling to light her cigarette.

At the table, another silence, broken by Berglund. Sandy guessed he’d been drinking earlier in the day. Perhaps that was why he’d kept his speech so short in the hall.

‘I did care for her, you know. Hattie. But it’s different for men, isn’t it?’

Sandy thought at one time he’d have agreed with that. But he’d seen how screwed up Hattie had become. He’d read her letters. Now he wasn’t sure it was much of an excuse. He dipped into his beer and tried to come up with a reply.

Berglund continued. ‘I was married and I love my wife and kids, but she was there and so eager. Any man would have done the same, wouldn’t they? It was an ego thing, I guess. She made me feel free again. Attractive.’

Is that why you had to force yourself on her?

But the question remained unspoken because Gwen James was back in the room, standing at the bar, ordering more drinks although their glasses were still full. Sandy knew he’d never have had the courage to ask it anyway. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t sit and watch while two educated English people made fools of themselves and each other. Gwen would thank Berglund for looking after her daughter and supervising the project and Berglund would say what a bright student Hattie was, what a future she’d had ahead of her. How much everyone had liked her. Sandy thought listening to that would make him want to vomit.

Perez had told him to stay in the Pier House with Berglund and Gwen James until they went to bed. ‘I don’t want them wandering around on the island tonight. You can understand that.’ And when Sandy had started to object: ‘This is important, Sandy. You know Mrs James and she trusts you. There’s no one else I can ask.’

But now Sandy had to get away. He had something closer to home to sort out and then he wanted to be in on the action. Besides, if he sat here any longer he’d have more to drink because he couldn’t face Berglund sober. Then he’d end up hitting Berglund or saying something rude to him. These people wouldn’t go out again. Not on a night like this. They wouldn’t find their way to the road. He made his excuses and left. On his way out he bumped into Fran Hunter. Jimmy must have booked a room for her. She gave him a little wave and made her way upstairs.

He found his mother alone in the Utra kitchen. She’d changed out of her smart clothes and was wearing the tatty dressing gown she’d had for as long as he could remember. She was drinking a mug of warm milk. She looked up at him and smiled.

‘Where’s my father?’ he asked.

‘I’ve sent him to bed. He’s not been sleeping well.’

‘I’ve been worried about him.’

‘You shouldn’t be,’ she said. ‘Not any more. We’ve been through a lot in the last few weeks. We ’ll survive this too.’

‘How did it start?’ She didn’t answer immediately. ‘The stealing, Mother. That’s what I’m talking about.’ For the first time in his life Sandy felt he was talking to her as one adult to another.

‘Stealing?’ She seemed shocked. ‘I never saw it as that.’

‘It’s how my boss sees it,’ he said simply. ‘It’s how the courts would see it.’

‘Oh, Sandy,’ she said, and he could tell she was glad of the chance to talk about it at last. ‘It was all too easy.’

‘Tell me about it.’ He’d come to the house angry, prepared to demand answers from her. Now he just wanted to hear what she had to say.

‘Money was always tight,’ she said. ‘You can’t understand what it was like here. The fishing families with their cars and their fancy clothes and their holidays in the sun. And only seeming to work a couple of months a year. And us, struggling to manage on what Joseph could bring in from Duncan Hunter. Jackie Clouston looking at me as if I was a piece of muck on her shoe. I believed I deserved the little bit extra I could make. That was how it started. I was working for this community and earning nothing. They kept everything they made for themselves. It just didn’t seem fair.’

Is that how corruption begins everywhere? Sandy thought. Politicians and businessmen persuade themselves that the extra, the kickbacks, are owed to them for the risks they take and the contribution they make. And he was no better than the rest of them. He’d once let Duncan Hunter off for drink-driving because he thought the man could make trouble for his father.

‘How did you work it?’

‘I just boosted my expenses a little. I applied for Amenity Trust grants for a couple of projects – the community theatre was the first. I set up a bank account in the name of the Island Forum, submitted receipts for expenses and had the cheques made out to the new account. Maybe some of the expenses weren’t entirely project-related, but nobody checked. Nobody realized. It grew from there. I took more chances.’

‘You took more money.’ Sandy felt a pit open in his stomach. His mother had brought him up to be honest. He’d once stolen sweeties from the shop in Symbister and she’d sent him back to own up and apologize.

‘I was working for nothing,’ she cried. Her face was red with the effort of trying to convince herself. ‘I saw it as a wage.’

‘The Trust gave you a small grant to pass on to Anna Clouston to develop her workshops,’ Sandy said. ‘She never saw it.’

‘A loan,’ she said. ‘I planned to pay it back. Besides, she owed me. She took my ideas and my patterns and she wouldn’t even have me as a partner.’

‘How were you going to pay it back, Mother? Why did you never ask me for help? Or Michael? We would have sorted it out for you. You know we’d have worked together to do that.’

She put her face in her hands and didn’t reply.

‘Is that why Dad changed his mind about selling Setter? He saw it as a way for you to clear what you owed?’

‘I had to tell him,’ she said. ‘He knew something was wrong the evening of Mima’s funeral.’

‘But then he couldn’t face it, could he? He couldn’t face anyone else living in Mima’s house. Do you know he tried to set fire to it to claim the insurance? It wasn’t me being thoughtless again.’

‘Aye,’ she said. ‘There are no secrets between us now.’

‘Mima was a countersignatory to the bank account,’ Sandy said. ‘I saw the chequebook in the drawer. She knew you’d been taking the money. You thought she wasn’t interested enough to check.’

‘She had no proof.’

‘But she guessed,’ Sandy said. He thought this was the most difficult interview he’d ever taken part in, but also the easiest. He knew all the people involved so well and he knew how they thought. ‘Did she ask you about it? Is that what you were discussing the afternoon before she died?’

‘She was worried for herself,’ Evelyn said. ‘What folks would say if it came out. “I know what it is to be the subject of gossip. Trust me, Evelyn, you’d not want that. I’d not wish that on anyone.”’

‘And she’d be worried about Dad,’ Sandy said sharply. ‘About what effect this would have on him.’

‘Aye,’ Evelyn said. ‘You’re right, of course. Mima always doted on your father.’

‘Did you go back later and kill her?’ The question that had been tormenting him since he’d first realized things weren’t right between his parents.

She stared at him, horrified. He saw it hadn’t crossed her mind that he might suspect her of the murder. She still thought of herself as a good woman.

‘Did you see Ronald out with his gun and think that would be a good way to stop her talking? An accident in poor weather. If he shot her by mistake, nobody would ever know you’d been stealing. And then did you think you could make it happen like that?’

‘No!’ she cried. ‘No! Sandy, do you really think me capable of that?’

He didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t thought her capable of cheating and theft.

Now, it seemed, she felt the need to explain. ‘I could have married into one of the fishing families,’ she said. ‘Even then they had more money than the crofters. They hadn’t invested in the huge trawlers, but they were well off by island standards.’ She looked up and smiled. ‘You’d not think it now but I was quite a catch in those days. Everyone said what a bonny little thing I was. Andrew Clouston fancied me rotten, but Joseph was always the one for me. From when we were bairns at school, he was the one for me. I didn’t care about his mad witch of a mother or his lack of money.’

‘Should I go up and see my father?’ Sandy asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t do that. Don’t disturb him. I’ve given him a pill and he’s already asleep.’

Suddenly Sandy felt very tired. He got to his feet. He would go to find Perez. It would be a very long night.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Work,’ he said.

Usually she would have been full of questions. Or she would have tried to persuade him that he shouldn’t go out on such a bad night. But she just got up to see him out. They stood for a moment at the door. Awkwardly she reached up and gave him a quick peck on the cheek.

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I should have asked you boys for help.’

It was the first time in his life she’d ever admitted she was wrong.