Thin Air

Chapter Twenty-Three

Shetland seemed grey and gloomy when they got out of the plane. And cold, as if the summer was already over. Perez dropped Cassie at school and watched for a moment from the corridor as she took her place in the classroom. She caught sight of him waiting and waved impatiently to send him on his way.

Driving through Shetland mainland to get the ferry to the North Isles, he wondered what the young people from Eleanor’s company Bright Star would make of the space and the distances. The chill weather. Willow had said that she’d wait for him to arrive before talking to Charles and David, before asking the men why they hadn’t mentioned that Eleanor had been in touch with them. She was looking out for him at Springfield House and then led him to the yellow lounge that they’d used as an interview room.

‘It sounds as if you had a useful trip south.’ She smiled, looking up from her laptop for a moment.

‘I’m glad to be back.’

‘What was Eleanor’s mother like?’

He thought about that for such a long time that he saw she was wondering if he’d ever answer. ‘Very elegant,’ he said at last. ‘Sophisticated. But not a happy woman even before Eleanor died, I think. They didn’t have an easy relationship. And she couldn’t throw much light on the investigation. Eleanor had lunch with her just before the trip north, and Cilla thought she was different. Unsettled. But there’s nothing concrete. Nothing helpful.’ He hesitated again. ‘Anything to report here?’

‘The techies have blown up the images that were on the two scraps of paper Vicki found at the scene.’ Willow clicked on her laptop and turned it so that he could see the screen. ‘They were definitely photographs, but it’s difficult to make out anything helpful from such small pieces.’

Perez stared at them. One of them was of a corner of a building. Wood and glass. Contemporary. It must be in the background of the shot to contain even that much detail in such a small fragment of photograph. He wondered if it was familiar, but the perspective was strange and he couldn’t quite make it fit anywhere he knew. The other was a slice of a face. An eyebrow and a strand of dark hair. ‘Is that Eleanor?’

Willow looked up from the computer. ‘I wondered that. So the killer ripped up a photo of his victim just before or after the murder? What does that tell us?’

Perez shook his head. ‘Not much, except that the murderer knew Eleanor well enough to have a picture of her, but I think we’d already worked that out.’

Willow nodded. She seemed distracted and he saw that her attention had already moved elsewhere. ‘What do we do about David and Charles?’

He paused again and wondered if he’d been this indecisive before Fran had died. ‘If Eleanor had been in touch with them, why wouldn’t they tell us?’

‘Just keeping their heads down, do you think? People have all sorts of reasons for not wanting to get involved in a police investigation. Even these days a gay couple might not want to draw attention to themselves.’ She stood up. ‘Sandy’s done a check and neither of them has a record. Not even a traffic offence. Let’s just talk to them, shall we?’ He thought everything seemed very simple and straightforward to her.

They found David in the kitchen garden at the back of the house. It was surrounded by a high dry-stone wall and entry was through an arched wooden gate. Inside only part of the ground had been cultivated, the vegetables there planted in straight rows. The rest was overgrown, almost a meadow, and at the far end a lean-to greenhouse had its glass missing and the metal frame was rusting away. David was digging potatoes. He wore wellingtons and a checked shirt. They watched as he sifted the potatoes with his fork, shaking the sandy soil from them before sliding them into a bucket. He must have sensed Perez and Willow behind him, because he stuck the fork into the ground and turned.

‘Tatties for tonight’s supper,’ he said. ‘We should have our own broad beans soon too.’

‘It’s well sheltered here.’ Perez couldn’t think what else to say.

‘We have to grow all we can. The transport costs are outrageous, and folk don’t realize why everything imported is so pricey. The house seemed very reasonable when we bought it, but we hadn’t factored in that all the repairs would be more expensive than they’d be in the south. And there’s almost full employment here, with everything that’s happening with the oil and gas. It’s hard to get good men to do the work.’ It was the longest speech he’d ever made. Perez saw that worry about the business was always with him.

‘It’s hard coming into the islands from outside,’ he said. ‘You have to start from the beginning making contacts.’

‘I feel responsible.’ It sounded like a confession. ‘This was always my dream, not Charles’s. If things don’t work financially either, I’m not sure how we’ll manage, whether we’ll survive.’ He was talking about his relationship with the other man and not just about the hotel.

‘We need to talk to you.’ Willow was brisk, businesslike. It was as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘Charles too. When’s a good time?’

‘I’ll be in for tea in ten minutes.’ The man seemed puzzled by the request, but quite relaxed. ‘I haven’t seen Charles since lunchtime, but he’ll be there too.’ He bent again to return to his task.

When they went to the kitchen later he was washing his hands under the tap, scrubbing his nails. The potatoes were in a colander on the bench and Charles was pouring boiling water into a teapot. For the first time Perez noticed how big Charles’s hands were, very long and flexible. When he set down the kettle he waved them about, fingers together, so that they reminded Perez of a seal’s flippers cutting through the water.

‘To what do we owe the pleasure?’ He was one of those men who hide their anxiety with joviality and bad jokes. ‘You’ll have a cup of tea?’ Again waving the hands first towards the chairs at the table, then to the mugs.

Perez remained standing. But Willow nodded and sat down at the table. ‘Eleanor Longstaff phoned you,’ he said. ‘A couple of weeks ago. About Peerie Lizzie. The Geldards owned this house.’

David looked blank. ‘I didn’t talk to anyone.’ He was drying his hands on a paper towel and threw it into the bin.

Perez was watching Charles.

‘What about you, Mr Hillier? Did you talk to her?’

There was a moment’s silence. Charlie poured tea and went to the fridge for milk, which he tipped from the carton into a jug. This seemed to take a long time. At last he was back, facing them again. ‘I spoke to someone,’ he said. ‘I can’t remember her name. I suppose it could have been the poor woman who died.’ He sat down and his big hands settled flat on the table in front of him.

Perez caught Willow’s eye. ‘When was this?’ His voice was very quiet.

‘About a month ago.’ He looked up. ‘You must realize, Jimmy, that we get a lot of enquiries.’

‘But this was a television production company. A chance for some publicity. For you and for your business. That would have been a bit exciting, I’d have thought. You’d have remembered that, maybe researched the company on the Internet to see what they’d done before.’ Talked to your partner?

‘I told you, Jimmy, my days in show business are long over.’ Charles gave a rueful smile.

‘But you’d be glad of some media exposure for the hotel. David was telling me how difficult it is to make a decent living up here. And I understood that Eleanor was offering a performance fee.’

Charles lifted the hands, a gesture of incomprehension, and looked at David. ‘Really, I don’t remember anything of that sort.’ The explanation more for his partner than for the detectives.

‘So what exactly did Eleanor want from you?’ Perez asked.

‘Information, Jimmy. Nothing more than that. She wanted me to tell her the story of poor Peerie Lizzie. David had done the research. We’d put it all into a little brochure for any of the guests who might be interested. There was a child called Elizabeth, only child of Gilbert and Roberta Geldard. She was born in 1920 and died just ten years later. She was playing out in the garden under the care of a local woman, one of the Malcolmsons. Elizabeth slipped away from her minder to go to the voe and she must have wandered out onto the sand. Then the fog came down and the tide came in and she was drowned. They found her body the following day, washed up onto the shore. She was lying on her back with her hands by her side and she seemed quite perfect, although the story is that she’d been in the water all night.’

‘There was no possibility that it was foul play?’ Perez directed the question to David, who seemed a more reliable source of information.

‘I found no suggestion of that at the time,’ David said. ‘I looked up the report of the death in The Shetland Times. The implication was that the young nursemaid should have been more careful, but nobody was ever charged. I tried to trace her – the nursemaid, I mean – but she died in 1993. I hadn’t really expected to find her alive.’

‘This was quite a project for you,’ Willow said. ‘Time-consuming when you have so much other work in the hotel.’

‘History’s always been a passion. I loved doing it. And, as you said, I thought the ghost story might bring in punters. We charge more than the other B &Bs on the island. We need to give our guests something extra.’

Willow turned to Charles. ‘How did you leave things with Mrs Longstaff? You passed on David’s research. Anything else?’

‘She said that she’d be in Unst in a few weeks’ time and might get in touch then.’

‘And did she?’

‘Of course not.’ His voice had become shrill and high-pitched and he turned towards Perez as though he considered him to be more sympathetic. ‘I would have told you, Jimmy. I would have realized how important that would be.’

Willow left it at that, but Perez didn’t quite believe him. The hoteliers disappeared from the room, Charles seeming relieved to be let off the hook.

‘Well?’ Willow had finished her tea and had her elbows on the table. ‘What now?’

‘I think I could do with a bit of a walk to clear my head after all my travels.’

Willow looked at him quizzically and he thought she didn’t quite believe him either.

He left her sitting in the kitchen and walked out of the main gate and down towards the voe, imagining a ten-year-old child escaping down this path many years before. This was a precious child conceived in middle age. Spoilt perhaps, doted on, used to getting her own way. The nursemaid would have had problems containing her. Lizzie must have played here before surely, and she would know the shore and the tides. This wasn’t a stranger from the south come to visit relatives in the big house. But if the fog came down suddenly, as it could in the islands, it wasn’t impossible that she lost all sense of direction. Even if the nursemaid followed her down to the beach and shouted for her, sound could be distorted by the mist. Then voices seemed to swirl in all directions, just like the fog itself. It wasn’t the death of the girl that had sparked questions in Perez’s mind, though, but the condition in which she’d been found. She was lying on her back with her hands by her side and she seemed quite perfect. Almost posed, he thought. Just like Eleanor. And a body that had been in the water, even for one night, wouldn’t look like that. Sea creatures would have nibbled at it; she’d be bloated and covered in weed and sand. Of course it could just be a story. Like the story of the ghost. The idea of a perfect body might have been a fiction created to provide comfort for the grieving parents. Besides, he wasn’t here to solve a case that was nearly a hundred years old.

He walked back to the house and found himself sitting in his car. Here he paused for a moment. He should find Willow and tell her what he was doing. She’d be angry if he just drove off without telling her what was in his mind. That would be bad manners. But he started the car anyway and drove up the single-track road to Meoness. Outside George Malcolmson’s croft he paused again and thought that he was being distracted and should concentrate on the present investigation. Then he opened the car door and went to the house. Grusche was in the kitchen ironing. In the laundry basket were clothes that obviously belonged to her son and daughter-in-law.

‘Are you looking for Lowrie and Caroline, Jimmy? They’re away south to Vidlin. They’ve put in an offer on a house there and want to measure up some of the rooms.’ Her eyes were shining.

‘So they’re coming home?’

‘Isn’t it exciting? I couldn’t let myself believe that they might come back here.’

‘It was George I was after.’

She looked up sharply, but didn’t ask what he might want with her husband. ‘He’s out on the croft somewhere. This time of year he can’t bear to be inside. It’s like a disease for him. A sort of claustrophobia. Maybe it was all that time he spent in the lighthouse. On a rock station you’d be cooped inside for most of your shift. Having to get on with the other men. Sometimes I think it’s given him strange notions about things, made him almost compulsive.’

‘In what way?’

‘Oh, nothing harmful, Jimmy. Nothing that would lead to murder. He always sits in the same chair, uses the same knife and fork and gets put out if I give someone his mug. If we go into town he has to check three times that the hens have been shut away. In the lighthouse everything was routine. Perhaps there’s a thin line between that and ritual. Superstition. It gets worse as he gets older. Sometimes I think I should get him to see a doctor.’

Perez didn’t know what to say and Grusche seemed not to expect an answer. He just nodded at her and went outside.

George was working in his vegetable garden just like David. Like everyone in the islands with a bit of land at this time of year. He was hoeing between lines of plants, his movements easy and regular and seeming to take no effort.

‘Aye-aye.’ He stopped and rested the hoe against the fence.

‘I don’t want to disturb you.’

‘You’re not doing that, Jimmy. I was ready for a rest.’

‘These stories of Peerie Lizzie. It was your niece who was supposed to have seen her.’

‘Vaila,’ he said. ‘She was last in the line when they were handing out the common sense. Not a bit of malice in her, but she was always kind of daft, even as a bairn.’

‘You don’t believe in the ghost then.’

He didn’t answer for a moment. ‘I was brought up to go to the kirk every Sunday,’ he said, ‘but I’m not sure I believe in miracles, either. Only in what I can see with my own eyes.’ But he turned away as he was speaking. Perez remembered what Grusche had said about his superstition and wasn’t sure that he was telling the truth.

‘You’ll have been brought up with stories of Peerie Lizzie too,’ Perez said. ‘Was it one of your relatives who was supposed to have been minding the girl when she wandered off to the shore? I was told she was a Malcolmson.’

‘She was my Aunt Sarah, my father’s older sister.’ He paused. ‘She was only a girl herself when Elizabeth Geldard was drowned. Fifteen years old, taken into the big house to mind the child.’

‘Did she talk about what had happened?’

‘She left the islands soon after the accident,’ George said. ‘When she came back she was an old woman, very frail, and that part of her life was forgotten. There’d always been folk who claimed to see Peerie Lizzie, but by the time she came home nobody realized that she’d been involved.’

‘Why did she leave?’ Perez thought that sudden accidental death couldn’t have been so uncommon in those days in the islands. Not sufficiently rare to force a young girl to flee.

‘The Geldards blamed her,’ George said. ‘And they had money and influence. It would have been hard for her to stay. She went to work for a family in Inverness and married a boy down there. The relationship didn’t last very long, but it seems that she had a child nobody had known about. A woman turned up to her funeral, claiming that my Aunt Sarah was her mother. You can imagine the gossip it caused here.’ He gave a sudden grin. ‘Every woman in the family wanted to invite her into their home to get the full story, but she was very dignified. She drove straight back to Lerwick and got the last plane south. We never heard from her again.’

He took up his hoe and began to push it between the seedlings.

But Perez followed him along the strip of grass left between the beds. ‘Did Eleanor Longstaff contact you about all this? She’d been doing some research into Peerie Lizzie.’

‘She never talked to me about it.’

‘Lowrie then? She might have asked him. As they were such old friends.’

‘If she did, he never mentioned it. You’d need to talk to him about it.’ And George walked away to show that the subject was closed.