Thin Air

Chapter Eighteen

Perez stood on the pavement and felt the heat reflect from it. After his meeting with the team from Bright Star Productions, he couldn’t face seeing Eleanor’s mother that evening. He’d had an early start and the travel and the encounter with Fran’s parents had left him restless and lacking in concentration. He knew that his decision to keep custody of Cassie was purely selfish – she was all he had left of the woman he’d adored – but it had been Fran’s wish and, no matter what her parents thought, there was no way he would change his mind. He found himself walking through the streets until he came to a quiet coffee shop. It was eight at night and he marvelled that the place was still open. A couple of students with laptops sat at the tables. He ordered tea and a toasted sandwich and perched on a high stool at a counter near the window and watched the passers-by. He phoned Eleanor’s mother.

‘Yes?’ An imperious voice, but one that sounded old and exhausted.

He asked if he might visit her the next morning.

‘I suppose so, but I’m not sure what good it will do. My daughter wasn’t killed in London, after all.’

‘But you might have some questions for me,’ Perez said. ‘We could have a conversation about Eleanor.’

There was a pause. He imagined her sipping from a glass by her side. Perhaps he even heard the faint sound of her pouring more wine. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’d like that.’

‘What time would you like me to come?’

‘Whenever you like. I won’t be at work. They’ve forced me to take compassionate leave, though I think I’d be better off there.’ She paused. ‘Not too early, though. I’ve never done early mornings.’

‘Eleven o’clock?’

‘Fine. Whatever.’ The teenage slang sounded strange coming from her. She’d lost interest in the conversation now, he thought.

‘I’ll see you then.’ But he thought she might have cut off the conversation before he’d even finished speaking.

Willow Reeves answered her mobile so quickly that he wasn’t ready to speak to her and he wasn’t quite sure what to say.

‘Jimmy? Are you there?’ Amused rather than irritated by his failure to speak, when he’d been the one to make the call. ‘Do you have anything useful?’

‘It sounds as if Eleanor’s company wasn’t doing as well as her friends led us to believe. Maybe this ghost show was just about keeping it solvent. It might be worth getting the forensic accountants to check out the figures.’

‘I can certainly organize that.’ Her voice was suddenly very clear. He could imagine her in the next room.

‘Eleanor had made contact with a couple who’d claimed to see Peerie Lizzie,’ he said. ‘They’re called Arthur, and they live in Unst.’ A pause. ‘The address is Meoness.’

‘Well, there’s a coincidence.’

He wasn’t sure how to react to that. ‘The house is called Spindrift.’

‘I’ve seen the name somewhere.’ He could sense her excitement down the line. ‘The new bungalow on the way to Sletts. They’ve carved the name on a bit of driftwood and stuck it on the front wall of the garden. I’ll go and talk to them tomorrow and see if Eleanor visited. Maybe she was there on the night she died, sitting up waiting for the spirit to appear.’

He could tell she was being flippant and didn’t bother answering.

‘Jimmy?’

‘Yes.’

‘We’re all missing you. Come back soon.’

Again he wasn’t sure what to say. He switched off his phone, climbed down from the stool and continued walking until he reached his hotel.

He woke early and, instead of going straight to see Eleanor’s mother, headed instead to Hampstead and the Folklore Society library, where Polly Gilmour worked. It was an ordinary house in a leafy street, standing out from the others only because it was shabbier. When he pushed open the door, a bell rang and a middle-aged woman with long grey hair fluttered down the stairs to greet him. She wore a long skirt and a silk tunic and many silk scarves.

‘Can I help you? If it’s anything terribly esoteric I’m afraid you’ll have to come back later. Our fabulous librarian is away on holiday.’

He explained who he was.

‘Poor Polly! She was so looking forward to her trip north with her friends.’ The woman wrung her hands. She was shrouded in so much fabric that there seemed to be no real substance to her.

‘How had she seemed in the last few weeks?’ Now that he was here Perez wasn’t sure what he had expected from the visit. Perhaps only to feel that he understood Polly Gilmour a little better.

‘Well, excited of course. Being a bridesmaid at the wedding in Kent and then going to Shetland for the party. And having a new man in her life. There were times when we’d given up hope of her ever finding someone. And Marcus does seem such a nice chap.’

‘Did you ever meet Eleanor Longstaff?’ He’d already turned for the door when the question occurred to him.

‘Oh yes, a few times. They were almost like sisters.’

‘When was the last time you saw her?’

‘She came to meet Polly the day before they set off for Shetland together. Last-minute plans, I suppose. Polly was in a meeting, and I made Eleanor tea in the members’ room while she waited. Her phone rang, so I hustled her into the staffroom. We’re still rather old-fashioned here about mobile phones, and the members detest them.’ She hesitated. ‘Of course I wasn’t eavesdropping, but Eleanor was very angry and even from the office I couldn’t help hearing.’

‘What exactly did Eleanor say?’ Perez appeared to be taking no more than a polite interest.

‘Of course I can’t be certain of the exact words, though I do pride myself on my memory.’

‘If you could just do the best you can.’ He smiled.

The woman smiled back, obviously charmed. ‘The gist was: “How can you expect me to go away with you, with this hanging over us. Just sort it out!”’

Perez nodded, as though to compliment her memory. ‘That’s very helpful. You have no idea who was on the other end of the line?’

The woman shook her head. ‘I assume that it was her husband, but from the office of course I couldn’t hear anything from the other end of the line.’

‘Of course.’ Perez thought they’d be able to trace the call from Eleanor’s mobile records, though that would take time. ‘Have you ever met Mr Longstaff?’ It was hard to imagine the dour man in this whimsical place, but perhaps he’d come along to a social event with Eleanor.

The woman shook her head. ‘Just the lovely Eleanor. We’ll all miss her.’

Perez left the building. Walking down the quiet street, he was still not sure what he’d achieved by the visit.

Eleanor’s mother lived in an apartment in a large white terrace in Pimlico. Ringing the bell, which was an old-fashioned pull, Perez felt momentarily overwhelmed. It came to him that there might be another door, a tradesmen’s entrance, and perhaps he would be expected to use that; he even wondered if he might be greeted by a housekeeper. But when the door was opened, it was by a woman who could only be Eleanor’s mother. The hair was a different colour – it had been immaculately cut and dyed various shades of dark blonde to make it look almost natural – but there were the same nose and cheekbones as he’d seen in Eleanor’s photo on Polly Gilmour’s computer.

She led him into a wide hallway. The walls had been painted a deep green and there were pictures everywhere. The art was unfamiliar. Some looked like prints of cave paintings, scratched images of animals and birds. Primitive, but also amazingly lifelike. There were photos of strange dwellings growing out of a hillside, a collage made from scraps of woven cloth and two large abstract oils. He would have liked to spend more time with them, but she’d already moved on and had settled on the windowsill in a room that seemed half-sitting room and half-study. There was a desk and the walls were hidden by bookshelves. In one corner an armchair was covered with a batik throw and next to it stood a coffee table made from animal hide. There was a glass on the table and Perez thought that she’d been sitting here when he’d phoned the night before. Now she was framed by the window, so she looked like a piece of art herself. The background was a small courtyard garden, where the sun had been trapped by a brick wall. In the corner stood a tree covered in pink blooms in a pot.

She pointed him to a chair on the other side of the desk, but didn’t offer him tea or coffee. To a Shetlander that seemed so odd that for a moment Perez was unsure how to proceed.

‘Well,’ she said with a touch of impatience, ‘I suppose that you have questions.’ The voice threw him too. It was the voice of the old-fashioned upper classes, of the Queen’s Speech on Christmas Day and 1950s radio recordings. Over the phone the cut-glass accent had been less pronounced.

‘I’d like you to tell me about your daughter,’ he said.

That obviously wasn’t what she’d been expecting. ‘Can you be more specific?’

‘No.’ He paused. ‘You’ll know what’s important about her. And what might have led to her murder.’

A moment of silence. From the window behind her he began to hear faint sounds. The distant hum of traffic. A blackbird’s song.

‘She was always a headstrong girl,’ the woman said at last. ‘People said she took after me. Bright, of course.’ As if that went without saying.

‘An only child?’

‘My husband left me soon after Eleanor was born,’ she said. ‘He was a child himself and couldn’t bear the fact that he no longer got my full attention. I had other male partners to share my life, but nobody with whom I’d have contemplated parenthood.’

‘And now?’ But Perez thought he already knew the answer. This flat was Cilla’s territory. Nobody else stayed here.

There was a brief pause. ‘There are occasional distractions, but now I live alone and I’m grateful for that. I’ve discovered that I’m too selfish to share my home.’

‘Did Eleanor keep in touch with her father? Had they met lately?’ Perez wondered if this might have been the man in the restaurant seen by Caroline Lawson.

‘I doubt it. Oriental art is his subject and he travels a lot. He’s seldom in London and he has a new young family of his own. By his third wife.’ The last phrase was spat out like venom.

‘But you never discouraged contact?’

Cilla shrugged. ‘If I had, Eleanor would have taken no notice. As I’ve told you, she was headstrong. I think she had Richard’s email address and they might have met occasionally when he was in town, but she never discussed him with me.’

‘What did you make of her marriage?’

‘Ian Longstaff wasn’t the sort of man I would have expected her to marry, but he seemed to make her happy. She claimed that he did.’ Cilla Montgomery smoothed her skirt. ‘Of course he couldn’t give her children, and that was a disappointment.’

Perez wondered how a man could be held responsible for a miscarriage in late pregnancy, but didn’t respond. Cilla continued, ‘I thought she made too much of it. These things happen, and men expect women to get on with it. A child isn’t everything.’

‘There was some tension within the marriage?’

‘She never said that.’

‘But you felt it?’

Another silence. Somewhere in the distance a car alarm had been triggered. The wailing drilled into Perez’s brain and then stopped as suddenly as it had started.

‘Not tension exactly. She could have lived with tension. Eleanor enjoyed excitement and challenge. Like me she was most scared of being bored. Even the drama of the miscarriages had its element of satisfaction for her, guaranteeing that she would be the centre of attention at least for a while.’ Cilla turned briefly to look out of the window to the courtyard beyond. ‘Ian began as a challenge. His background and skills were very different from my daughter’s. She found his solidness and his working-class family interesting, almost exotic. And he stood up to her in arguments. But, as time went on, he loved her too much and gave into her too easily. Not his fault. How can you fight with a woman who has just lost a baby? I think she began to despise him just for those qualities that another person might admire: gentleness, compassion, loyalty.’ She paused again and gave a strange little laugh that jarred on Perez’s nerves in the way that the car alarm had done. ‘I’m not painting a very flattering picture of my daughter, am I, Inspector? But I understood her because she was so much like me.’

‘Do you think she was having an affair?’ Perez wondered that this mother could be so dispassionate and clear-eyed about a daughter who had died so recently. If anything happened to Cassie, he’d be howling at the moon and incapable of carrying on a rational discussion.

‘She never mentioned anything of the sort to me, but I wouldn’t be surprised.’

‘When did you last see Eleanor?’

There was another brief pause. ‘The day before she set off to Shetland,’ Cilla said. ‘She phoned me at work and asked if I might be free for lunch.’

‘Where do you work?’

‘The British Museum. I’m an art historian. My speciality is Africa.’ There was a sudden spark of passion and for a moment he thought that her work was the most important thing in her life. ‘I arranged to meet Eleanor in a Turkish restaurant not far from the museum. It was rather a nuisance actually, because I was in the middle of putting together a proposal for an exhibition. But Eleanor seldom asked to meet up, so I reorganized my day.’

‘And was there something specific that she wanted to talk about?’ Perez was suddenly tense. Perhaps he was catching the mood from the small woman, who was still leaning against the windowsill. The light from the garden behind her meant that her features were indistinct, but he sensed a stress in her too. Maybe she was deciding how much she should confide.

‘Perhaps.’ She leaned forward and wiped sudden and unexpected tears from her eyes. He saw for the first time how tired and sad she was, the lines between her mouth and her nose, the sagging jawline. It occurred to him that her choice of seat was a habitual vanity; she presented a younger face looking into the room. She straightened, dry-eyed once more. ‘It was an odd encounter. Usually Eleanor was very direct, but that day she was…’ she paused to find the right word, ‘elliptical. As if she wanted me to guess what was going on. It was clear that she was troubled about something. I could see that she was excited about her work. She was ambitious from a young age and work has always been important. But her mood was strained too. I should have asked her what was wrong, but I chose not to. It seems terribly petty now, but we were always competitive and I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing that I was curious about her life.’

‘Can you remember exactly what she said?’ Perez struggled to imagine the conversation between the two women. They’d be seated across the table from each other picking at plates of spicy food. A glass of wine each perhaps. And they’d be batting words back and forth, a peculiar game of verbal ping-pong. Eleanor must have wanted something from the meeting. She’d be busy, if it was the day before she set off for Shetland. What had been so important that she’d insisted on seeing her mother for lunch?

Cilla frowned. ‘She said that she was setting off on a great adventure and asked if I planned anything similar myself. Clearly she wanted me to ask what she meant, but I pretended not to understand. I told her that Shetland was a long way north, but it was hardly a journey of a lifetime. After all she’s used to foreign travel. I used to take her with me on field trips.’

‘And what do you think she meant?’

‘Well, not a long drive and an overnight ferry,’ Cilla said. ‘Clearly the adventure she spoke of was more metaphorical than geographical.’

Perez thought there was nothing clear about the communication between the mother and daughter. Their relationship seemed to involve a strange game of second-guessing and pretence. ‘Could you be more specific?’

‘It might have been a new man, I suppose,’ the woman said. ‘That would be the most prosaic explanation. Or a spiritual journey. She was very lit up. Perhaps she’d even started to believe in her ghosts. Or it could just have been her work. In the end that was always what meant most to her.’ She stood up. ‘We said goodbye on the pavement and she hugged me. She was always very touchy-feely with her friends, but never with me, so I was taken aback by that. Then she walked away. I nearly called her back. I had the words in my head. What was that all about, Nell? What did you really want from me? But then I thought about my project at the museum and how I was already behind schedule. I stood for a moment and watched her climb into a cab. And then I went back to work.’

They looked at each other. Perez got to his feet too. He knew that was what was expected of him. ‘What time did she leave you?’

‘I’m not sure. About two-thirty.’

So what had Eleanor done between having lunch with her mother and meeting Polly in the library in Hampstead? Had she gone back to the office?

Cilla was looking at him impatiently, but he stood his ground.

‘Did Eleanor get in touch when she was in Shetland?’

‘Just a text on the Saturday afternoon to say they’d arrived safely and that it was a beautiful place.’ The woman had walked into the hall full of images. ‘I texted her back and told her to have a lovely time. Put an “x” on the bottom, with one of those ridiculous smiley faces.’ She turned to see that Perez was following her. ‘I’m glad I did that at least. I hope she knew how much I cared for her.’

‘Do you have any questions for me?’ he asked, remembering his promise when he’d phoned the night before.

Her hand was on the door handle and she was frozen for a moment. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I do.’

Again he was shocked. Most relatives wanted to know if their relatives had suffered. He walked down the street expecting her to call him back to ask the question that was obviously in her head. But when he turned to look, the door was already shut. As at her last meeting with her daughter, she was too proud to change her mind.