Thin Air

Chapter Twenty-Two

On Thursday morning Sandy left Springfield House without talking to Willow. He could see her in the yellow lounge that had become her office and she seemed engrossed in a phone call. He didn’t want to disturb her. He’d already said that he’d finish the interviews of the party guests and would call again on the people who’d been out when they’d done their first round of canvassing. Caroline had given them a list of everyone invited. Her family had left for home in Kent the day after the party, and before Eleanor’s body was found. Willow was talking to them on the phone. Sandy was pleased to leave that to her. He didn’t understand the southern accents.

He found that he’d become obsessed by the child on the beach, the little girl seen by both Eleanor and Polly. He didn’t believe in ghosts, so she must either be real or a figment of the women’s imaginations. And he couldn’t see that both women would have conjured up the same vision from nowhere. Yet the girl wasn’t on the guest list and nobody else had noticed her. Willow said that people often wandered into island events – friends of friends, who hadn’t been formally invited, but who would be made welcome just the same. That was probably true, but Sandy was stubborn and needed to pin this down. And though he would never have admitted it to himself, he wanted something concrete to hand to Jimmy Perez when he returned. He wanted Jimmy to tell him that he’d done well.

Outside he looked anxiously up at the sky. It was grey and there was drizzle, but it was surely clear enough for the planes to get in. Sandy drove carefully out of the courtyard and towards Meoness. The school was tiny, one of those scheduled for closure, and only saved after the community made a fuss. Perhaps because there’d been doubt about its survival it was still in the original stone building that looked more like a kirk than a school. There was a view of the voe and the open sea. When he arrived it was playtime and the children were yelling and chasing in the yard. Less than a dozen of them, and most of them boys. Sandy hesitated outside. It wasn’t just that schools – even peerie schools like this – made him uncomfortable. He knew the teacher. They’d been friends once. She’d been his first teenage crush. She’d gone away south to university and had worked in Edinburgh for a while and he’d heard that she was back. There’d been a piece in The Shetland Times about it, about her giving up her post as deputy head in a big school in the city to take on Meoness primary. Head teacher. Sole teacher.

A woman came out into the playground and rang an old-fashioned hand bell. He recognized her immediately as Louisa Laurence. He hadn’t seen her for ten years, but she hadn’t changed so much. A bit skinnier maybe, her hair shorter and smarter. The children filed inside, giggling and pushing. Sandy thought he’d timed this badly. She’d be busy now. Perhaps he should come back at lunchtime when she might be free to talk. But then he thought he’d look foolish if he just drove away. Someone might have seen him from inside the school and, besides, Jimmy Perez wouldn’t have done that.

He knocked at the classroom door and went in. There was a smell of poster paint, clay and floor polish. They were sitting around tables in rough age groups. The older ones were working from maths sheets. Louisa was squatting with the little ones, helping them build a model from cardboard tubes.

‘Yes.’ She got to her feet. Then she saw him. ‘Sandy Wilson, what are you doing here?’ Her voice was cool. He might have been one of her seven-year-olds misbehaving.

‘I’m working on an investigation into a serious crime,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’ve heard about it.’ He was aware that the older children were listening in.

‘I’m not sure how I can help.’ She had smooth, dark hair and he thought she had more in common now with the English people in Sletts than she did with him. He was pleased that she’d known him at once, though. He’d wondered if she would have forgotten him.

‘Perhaps I should come back later,’ he said, ‘when you’re not so busy.’

‘No need for that.’ She watched a car pull up outside. ‘That’s Mr Rickard. He’s here to take music – that’s one subject I can’t teach, even to the little ones. You remember me, Sandy, always tone-deaf, always told to stand at the back and mime.’ She turned her attention back to him and smiled. ‘If you’re lucky I’ll make you a cup of tea and you can tell me what this is all about.’

She asked the children to finish what they were doing and he looked around the room. As Davy Stout, the ferryman, had said, there was a preponderance of boys. He couldn’t see any girls with long, dark hair. This would be a waste of time and he’d have nothing to tell Perez to make him proud.

They drank tea in a little room that acted as her office.

‘What brought you back?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘My father died last year and my mother’s on her own. Guilt, I suppose.’

‘You had nothing to keep you south?’

‘I don’t have a husband or a family, if that’s what you’re asking.’

He thought she’d always had a sharp tongue. It’d be a brave man who took her on.

‘So what are you doing in Unst, Sandy Wilson? And in my school?’

‘The woman who was killed, she had a thing about Peerie Lizzie.’

‘What sort of thing?’ She took a biscuit from the tin that stood between them and dipped it into her tea. Her teeth were very sharp too.

‘She was a TV producer and she was making a film about ghosts. But maybe she believed in them. She claimed to have seen a dark-haired girl, aged about ten, on the beach by Sletts, the holiday home on the shore. I’m trying to work out what really happened, but I didn’t see any bairns to match that description in your class.’

‘Perhaps she dreamed the whole thing up,’ Louisa said, ‘to make her television show more interesting.’

‘I don’t think so. Another woman saw the lass too. I’d like to find her.’ He thought again. ‘Do you know Vaila Arthur?’

‘She works here part-time as classroom assistant, but she’s on maternity leave.’

‘What do you make of her?’

Louisa smiled. ‘She’s helpful enough. Chatty. Loves the kids.’

‘She claims to have seen Peerie Lizzie.’

‘I know that.’ Another smile. ‘I’ve heard the story many times. It gets a little bit more dramatic every time she tells it.’ Louisa paused. ‘I wouldn’t have her down as the most reliable witness.’ There was another hesitation before she continued, her voice confidential. ‘Grusche Malcolmson was the cook here until she retired. She was an old pal of my mother, so I’ve known her for years. Vaila’s a kind of niece of hers and she drives Grusche crazy with her silliness.’

This was classic Shetland, Sandy thought. Everyone connected one way or another. ‘If you know Grusche and George, maybe you were at Lowrie Malcolmson’s hamefarin’?’

Louisa shook her head. ‘Grusche asked me, and I’d heard all about the wedding. I think she only retired because it was taking up so much of her time. I’m hoping to lure her back as cook. We still haven’t got anyone permanent and she was brilliant. But I live in Yell with my mother and she hates being left alone all night. I’d have missed the last ferry home.’

He saw then how constrained Louisa’s life was. She’d come back to the islands from her responsible job in Edinburgh, leaving behind her friends and her freedom, to care for a mother who made demands on her.

‘So you can’t help me in my ghost-hunting?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Louisa smiled at him. ‘The girl you describe certainly isn’t one of my pupils, but I might have seen her.’

‘When?’

‘Last Saturday. The day of the party.’ She paused. ‘I’d left behind a pile of marking, so I just popped back to Unst to collect it from the school. I had a bit of a wait for the ferry in Yell. It was a lovely day, so I didn’t want to stay in the car. There was a young girl with a woman and they were waiting in the sun too. She had long, dark, curly hair. I didn’t recognize her, but then she could have belonged to anywhere in the North Isles, or she could have been visiting.’

‘Did you speak to her?’

‘No. I’d been speaking to kids all week and I was angry with myself for leaving the paperwork behind. Making conversation with a ten-year-old was the last thing on my mind. My thoughts were running to a big glass of Pinot and a deep bath.’

‘Did you see what they were doing?’

‘I think they were taking photos of the seals that swim around the pier there.’ Louisa was frowning, trying to concentrate. ‘Maybe looking out for otters.’

‘And they came to Unst in the ferry with you?’

‘I think so. But I wasn’t really watching. I was just thinking of getting back to the school and home again as soon as possible.’

In the classroom the children were singing. Scottish folk songs that Sandy had been taught as a bairn. Their voices were sweet. ‘Perhaps I could come and visit you,’ he said. ‘When all this is over. Perhaps I could see you at home. Your mother might remember me. I used to make her laugh.’ He remembered Mavis, Louisa’s mother, as a shopkeeper in Lerwick. Stern on the outside, but given to giggles.

‘So you did, Sandy. But my mother doesn’t laugh much now and she doesn’t remember anyone. Not even me, on her bad days. Dementia. She was older when she got me, if you remember, and the illness came on suddenly soon after my father died. At first I just thought she was grieving for him.’ Louisa turned away.

‘Then I could come to see you?’

The song stopped and there was a moment of silence.

‘Why don’t you do that, Sandy? You could make me laugh. I often need cheering up.’