Red Bones

Chapter Forty-four

In the police station on the hill Perez sat in the interview room and waited for Ronald Clouston to come in with his lawyer. It was still dark. Perez stood at the narrow window and looked down at the lights of the town. At the end of January, during Up Helly Aa, the guizers would march right past here and there’d be the sound of pipes and chanting men, the pavements packed with watching people, their faces lit by the burning torches. Now everything was quiet.

In the corridor outside he heard murmured voices. The door opened and Ronald Clouston came in with a middle-aged lawyer and Perez’s colleague Morag. The conversation had been between the professionals; Ronald seemed to be sleepwalking. He was quite calm but his eyes were glazed. He stood by the table and would have remained standing if his lawyer hadn’t touched his shoulder and gestured for him to sit down.

Perez switched on the tape recorder, gave the date and the time, listed the people present. Then he sat for a moment. It should be his moment of triumph, but he was only aware of a terrible sadness. The story of Ronald Clouston and the Whalsay murders would be passed on like the tale of the dead medieval merchant, the Shetland Bus and Mima’s infidelity. The real and personal tragedies would be lost in the telling.

‘Why did you kill Mima Wilson?’

No answer.

‘I think it was because your father told you to.’ Perez could have been talking to himself. ‘You always did what your father told you to, didn’t you? Even after he had his stroke, he was really in charge in the big house. You could never stand up to him. He told you to leave university and work on the Cassandra and you did. Do you really have any personality of your own, Ronald? Did your parents decide it was time for you to marry and have a family, so there’d be another generation to go to the fishing?’

I understand that sort of pressure after all. I know the effect that can have on a man.

Ronald looked up, his eyes focused on Perez for the first time. ‘Anna has nothing to do with this. Leave her out of it.’

‘She will have to deal with it though. With having a husband who’s a murderer. Your son will have to deal with it.’ Then, hardly missing a beat. ‘When did you first find out your grandfather was a murderer? Were you still a peerie boy?’

They stared at each other.

Even now and knowing what the man had done, Perez suddenly felt a trickle of pity for him. What is wrong with me?

Ronald began to talk: ‘Father told me when I was taking my Highers. I was planning to go to university. Mother was fine with that but my father was furious. My place was with the family and the boat. “You don’t know what we’ve been through to achieve all this. And now you want to throw it all away.” That was when he told me.’

‘But you still went off to take your degree?’

‘Yes, I still went off. After what he told me I wanted nothing to do with the boat. I thought I’d never go back to Whalsay.’

‘You changed your mind when your father was ill?’

There was another moment of silence.

‘I suppose it was a matter of loyalty,’ Ronald said.

‘And money!’ Perez was surprised by how hard and bitter he sounded. He hardly recognized his own voice. ‘You told me yourself the money was addictive. Did you miss the good life while you were away in the south?’

Ronald said nothing.

Your father welcomed you back,’ Perez went on. ‘The prodigal son!’

Now Ronald spoke. ‘I’ll not discuss my father’s part in all this. He’s an old man and he’s ill. I confess to the murders. He should be left to live his life in peace.’

Perez felt a sudden jolt of fury. No pity now. ‘Really, I think that’s the last thing he deserves.’

Ronald looked away.

Perez took a breath. ‘So, you refuse a discussion. Let me tell you a story then. Let me explain what’s been going on here.’ In his head Perez still had the image of Hattie’s body lying in the trench in the blood, and he wondered how he could sit here having a reasoned conversation with her killer, how he could have felt that moment of pity. Because it’s what I do, he thought. And it’s the only thing I do really well.

He started to speak, directing his words at Ronald as if they were the only people in the room, talking only just loudly enough for the tape machine to pick up his voice. ‘It’s the war. We have three brave Whalsay men working with the Shetland Bus: Jerry Wilson, Cedric Irvine, whose son now runs the Pier House, and your grandfather Andy Clouston. Saving lives. Then along comes a young Norwegian man. Per. He was brave too and deserves the dignity of a name. He’d come to Britain for a special purpose, more an accountant than a soldier, to collect money to finance the work of the resistance.’

Ronald’s eyes widened.

‘How do I know that?’ Perez went on. ‘Because a detective digs into the past. I’m an archaeologist too. I’ve spoken to the Norwegian Embassy and to historians here in Shetland. When Per disappeared he was carrying a fortune in Norwegian currency, sealed up in half a dozen tobacco tins.’ He looked up. ‘It sounds like a child’s tale, doesn’t it? An adventure story or one of the trowie myths. Buried treasure. Unreal. But it was real enough at the time. Until the fortune disappeared and everyone assumed that Per had turned traitor and taken the money with him.

‘But Per was a brave and honest man. Mima was a wild woman even then, and she’d been flirting with the good-looking stranger, who was kind to her, kinder than her husband would ever be. Jerry Wilson found them in bed together, lost his temper and killed the man. And disposed of the body with the help of his friend, who just happened to be a Clouston. Old Andy Clouston, your grandfather. News of the man’s disappearance got out, as it always will in a place like Whalsay, so they put around stories of their own: one of the tales, passed down to Cedric, was that Per had been a traitor.’ Perez paused. He wished he’d thought to bring a bottle of water into the interview room. His throat was dry and he felt light-headed through lack of sleep. He looked up at Ronald, who must have been exhausted too. He could have had no real rest since he started killing.

Perez continued. ‘They’d buried the Norwegian at Setter, in that bit of land where nothing much grew and had only ever been seen as rough grazing. Mima never knew that. She wasn’t even sure the Norwegian was dead. Neither did she know about the money, though I think Jerry held out the promise of wealth in the future. ‘One day we’ll all be rich. Then you’ll have a fine house and fine clothes and you’ll travel the world.’ The plan must have been that when the war was over and the Norwegian was forgotten they’d begin to spend it. But Jerry never got to see his share. He was drowned.’ Perez looked up, forced Ronald to meet his eye. ‘Did Andrew describe how that happened? He was only ten but he was there and he saw it all.’

At last Ronald spoke. ‘They were out in a small boat. There was a freak storm and Jerry was washed overboard. My grandfather had to choose between saving his friend or his son.’ The words came out like a lesson learned at school.

Perez leaned across the table, so his face was close to Ronald’s. ‘But really,’ he said. ‘What really happened?’

Ronald could no longer pretend not to care. ‘They were fighting over the money. Jerry Wilson started it. My grandfather pushed out at him and he fell. My father saw Jerry drown. He was ten years old. He watched him sinking under the waves. But when he started to cry, my grandfather told him not to be a baby. “It was him or us, Andrew. Do you understand that? You’re not to tell a soul. Do you want to see me locked up for murder?”’

‘And suddenly the Cloustons were wealthy,’ Perez said. ‘What was it? A trip to Bergen to buy a new boat? Then another that was a bit bigger. But your grandfather was clever. Everything invested, nothing too sudden or too showy. There were rumours about where the money had come from, but the island put it down to luck and thrift. And the great work he’d done during the war for the navy with the Bus. Then Andrew inherited and perhaps he managed to persuade himself that the family good fortune all came about through hard work. He was better than Joseph Wilson, who went off labouring for Duncan Hunter and spent his weekends scratching a living on the croft. He bought Cassandra and you were set up for life. Until two young women started digging in the ground…’

‘Mima thought it was her Norwegian lover that they’d dug up,’ Ronald said. ‘She thought it was his skull that they’d found.’

And perhaps one of the bones did belong to him, Perez thought. The fourth fragment that didn’t match the others. He rested his head on his hand. ‘Then she remembered the stories Jerry had told her about his hoard of foreign cash and perhaps she went back over the years and thought of the big new boat, one of Cassandra’s predecessors, that the Cloustons had bought in the fifties. Norwegian built. Perhaps she just had questions. And she wanted money too, not for herself, but for Joseph. Evelyn had got into debt and Mima wanted to help the family out. She thought the Wilsons finally deserved their share. Is that how it happened?’

Ronald nodded.

‘For the tape machine please!’ Sharp and brusque, because for an instant Perez had again caught himself feeling some sympathy for the man and had to remind himself how Hattie had looked in that trench.

‘Yes, that was what happened.’

‘But it wasn’t your idea to kill her?’

‘It was the last thing on my mind! I’d just had a son. Do you understand how that feels, to hold your child in your arms, to see your wife giving birth? Nothing mattered more than that…’

‘Are you telling me you killed Mima for the sake of your child?’ Perez’s voice was so cold and hard that Morag, who had known him since they were at school together, stared at him, frightened too. Later in the canteen she would say it was like a stranger speaking.

‘No! Not that!’

‘Then explain, please. Tell me why you killed a defenceless old woman.’

‘She’d gone to the big house to talk to my father…’

‘Was your mother there?’ The interruption came sharp like a slap.

‘She was in the house, but Father sent her out of the kitchen. She didn’t know what the conversation was about. My father told Mima he couldn’t give her money. His capital was all tied up in the Cassandra. And even if he wanted to sell her it wouldn’t be his decision; there were the other share-holders. Mima said that in that case she’d have a word with her grandson.’

‘Meaning Sandy, because he worked for the police?’

Ronald nodded again. This time Perez didn’t ask him to speak for the machine. He had more pressing questions. ‘And Andrew asked you to deal with the matter? To make sure that Mima didn’t cause you any more problems? For the sake of the family.’

Ronald shut his mouth tight and refused to speak.

‘Tell me what happened the night Mima died,’ Perez said. ‘Take me through the events of that evening, please.’

‘The baby had been awake for most of the night,’ Ronald said. His face suddenly seemed very flushed and although it wasn’t hot in the room he’d started to sweat. ‘He had colic and made a sort of high-pitched squeal, like some kind of animal, a piglet maybe. You couldn’t sleep through it even if you tried. Anna was tense. Patient enough with the baby, but shouting at me every chance she had. I decided to go into Lerwick to the library and the supermarket. I thought I’d be better with a break from the bungalow. I got an earlier ferry back than I was expecting and called in to the big house on my way home. My father had had a phone call from Mima. Sandy had come to the island and she’d asked him to visit. Andrew was in a terrible state.’

‘So you offered to sort the matter out for him.’

‘Something had to be done!’ Ronald said, his voice unnaturally loud. ‘My father was making himself ill and scaring my mother. I said I’d go to see Mima, persuade her to be reasonable, offer her something.’ There was a silence. Perez waited for him to continue. Ronald went on, more calmly. ‘Back in the bungalow, I had dinner with Anna. Then she started having a go at me. About my drinking and the baby. I just couldn’t stand it. I had to get out of there. I said I was going after the rabbits.’

‘But you went to Setter.’

‘I was going to shoot rabbits,’ Ronald said. ‘Nothing was planned. But I kept going over and over it in my mind. What would happen if Mima started to rake up the past? So I went to see her.’

Again Perez remained silent. The lawyer stared at the inspector as if she wanted the questions to continue, so the interview would be over more quickly. Her hands fluttered nervously in her lap.

‘It was foggy. I saw the lights on in Setter and I could hear her television even through the closed door. I knocked and waited. She came to answer and I could smell she’d been drinking. Mima always liked a dram. “So Andrew’s sent his bairn to do his dirty work.” That was what she said. Then she pulled on a yellow jacket and pushed past me into the garden. “Come and see where they buried my lover,” she said. “It’ll all come to light once the bones have been tested.” Then she stamped ahead of me round the side of the house and towards the field. It was so easy. She was still talking and I couldn’t bear the sound of complaining any more. I let her walk a distance away from me. She turned to see why I wasn’t following. I lifted up my gun and I shot her.’ He put his head in his hands, almost as if he was covering his ears, and stared into the distance, towards the high window, where it was starting to get light. ‘Once the noise of the shot had faded it was beautifully quiet. No more talking. On the way home I took a couple of rabbits, so I wouldn’t have to explain to Anna why I’d come back empty-handed.’

‘What about Hattie?’ Perez asked. ‘Did she really have to die? And like that?’

‘She guessed, worked it out in the days after Mima died,’ Ronald said. ‘Not all of it, but that the family was involved. She heard Mima talking on the telephone to my father about the bones. And we had to get her off that land. She was obsessed about the dig. While she was alive she would never leave it alone and some time the Norwegian’s body would be found. Then it would all come out. They’d identify him and remember the money, the kroner sealed in the tobacco tins.’

‘And you wouldn’t be the rich Cloustons of Whalsay any more.’

Ronald looked away, and continued to speak. ‘Hattie heard Mima talk to Andrew on the phone. She heard them arguing. It never occurred to her that I had anything to do with the old lady’s murder. I’d been to the university in the south. I’d been civilized by my contact with the academics, I read books and knew about history. She bumped into me after she’d had her meeting with her boss: “Can we talk Ronald? I wanted to let you know that I’ve phoned Inspector Perez. I know your father’s an ill man, but really I think he might have shot Mima. I just wanted to warn you…”’

‘Give me the details, please. How did you kill her?’

‘I walked with her back to Setter. I pretended to be interested. “So you think there might be a more recent body buried here alongside the ancient one?” Then she turned away from me and I hit her on the back of the head with a round smooth stone.’

‘Not hard enough to break the skin,’ Perez said. ‘But it knocked her out. I understand. That gave you the opportunity to fake her suicide. Why did you slit her wrists with Paul Berglund’s knife?’

‘Is that who it belonged to?’ Ronald looked back at the inspector, surprised. ‘I didn’t realize. It was there and it did the job.’

The matter-of-fact words made Perez feel suddenly sick. He leaned forward towards the man again. ‘How could you do it to her?’

Ronald considered, then took the question literally. ‘I’m used to blood. Gutting fish. Killing beasts. The girl was unconscious by then. It had to look like suicide.’ He was struck by a sudden thought. ‘You got Cedric to phone me tonight. And you made up the story of a witness. Anna told me about that when she got home from the party. Cedric was never there at all that afternoon.’

No, Perez thought. But he was involved all the same, in a roundabout way. His father had worked with the Shetland Bus too. It had made sense for them to use Cedric to bait the trap, to say that he wanted his share of the money.

‘Two people were dead,’ he said. ‘We had to make it stop.’

He stood up and looked again out of the window. It was a beautiful morning. There was sunlight on the water.