Thin Air

Chapter Twenty-Four

The fog came and went all afternoon. There was no wind later in the day, but the mist seemed to thin occasionally as if by magic and then, for no apparent reason, returned and was as thick as ever. Polly and Marcus took a trip into Lerwick as Willow had suggested. At first Marcus hadn’t been keen.

‘We don’t have a lot of time. By the time we get there we’ll have to come back. Why don’t we wait until we have a full day to explore?’

But Polly thought she’d go completely mad if she didn’t leave the island. ‘I’d like to look at the museum,’ she said, ‘have a dig around in the archives. We have time enough for that.’

He’d smiled then. ‘Isn’t that a sort of busman’s holiday?’ But he’d gone online to look at timetables and book ferries very quickly and they left almost at once. She thought that he was always happier when he was moving. He talked about settling down and finding a job that would keep him in the country for more than a month at a time, but she thought he’d soon get restless. They’d asked Ian if he’d like to join them, but he refused and Polly sensed that he was pleased to see them drive away. In the house on the beach they were like rats crammed together in a cage.

Lerwick felt like a big town after Unst. The boat to Aberdeen was moored at the ferry terminal. It looked huge, a reminder of the mainland, real-scale cities and real-scale transport. Polly looked at Marcus, wondering if he’d had the same thought as she’d had: they could just drive aboard and escape completely. But he seemed not even to notice it and had his eyes on streets and road signs, and was triumphant when he brought her straight to the new buildings of the arts centre and the museum looking out over the water.

‘What will you do?’ She knew that the museum would bore him. He was only interested in the exotic present.

‘I’ll explore the town. Meet you in the cafe back here for tea? Then I suppose we’ll have to get back.’

‘We could book into a hotel for a night.’ The thought of returning to Unst and the house by the shore already made her feel panicky. She imagined a solid town house in Lerwick, a meal in a good restaurant, then frivolous television in their room. Something to banish thoughts of Eleanor.

He looked at her and she could see that he found the idea appealing too. For a moment she thought he might agree to the plan. ‘Perhaps we’d better not,’ he said at last. ‘We don’t want the police to think we’re being difficult.’

In the main body of the museum there was a small display about Elizabeth Geldard and an oil painting of the girl, sitting at a window, with her hands on her lap looking very demure. She wore winter clothes, a knitted cardigan and a hat, and it was only the long hair that made Polly think of the girl she’d seen on the beach. This child looked rather staid and dull, and Polly couldn’t imagine her twirling on her toes or skipping across the sand. There was no mention of the acquisition of the work, whether it had been a donation or been purchased. A small display board explained the legend of Peerie Lizzie, but Polly learned nothing new from it, except that a song about the girl had been written by Marty Thomson, a local musician.

From the car she’d phoned the archivist, Simon Barr. He’d heard of the Sentiman Library, shared her fascination with folk tales and agreed to see her at once. She found him upstairs in a big, open-plan office, with a view of the Hay’s Dock. She decided this constant presence of water was adding to her unease. She’d never learned to swim and as a child she’d had nightmares about drowning. She hadn’t thought about the dream for years, but since Eleanor’s death it had recurred, just as she was waking, so it stayed with her all day. Now she pictured the sea eating away at the islands, nibbling them piece by piece until there was no land left and the water overwhelmed her. She sat with her back to the window facing Barr’s desk.

‘So you want to know about our Peerie Lizzie,’ he said. ‘Of course it’s quite a recent legend, as these things go. My grandmother worked at Springfield House when she was a girl, though she’s been dead for many years now.’

‘Did she tell you what happened the day Elizabeth was drowned?’

‘She told me her version of the story, but I couldn’t say how much was true and how much she’d made up over the years. She was full of tales and, like a lot of old people, she mixed up the fact and the fiction in her mind, I think.’

‘Did she believe in the ghost?’ Polly found that she was holding her breath.

‘Oh, she claimed to have seen her. She spent all her life in Unst. Before its present owners took it on, Springfield House was empty for years and local folk treated the land as their own, taking their children to picnic in the gardens. According to my grandmother, Lizzie appeared to her when she was picking raspberries there one summer. It was late in the evening and she was on her own. The child was dressed in white and seemed to walk towards her in the walled garden; then she disappeared although the gate was shut.’ He paused and grinned. ‘But don’t believe a word of it. As I told you, my grandmother loved making up stories.’

‘What did she tell you about the child’s death?’

‘She said everyone blamed Sarah Malcolmson, but it wasn’t really her fault. She’d been given the day off to help her mother with a new baby, and she was only there when Elizabeth ran down to the shore because she’d stopped to chat to the lad who worked in the gardens on her way home. If anyone was responsible for the accident it was Lizzie’s mother, Roberta.’

‘Are there any reports into the accident?’

‘Nothing unbiased. Gilbert Geldard was a landowner and a gentleman. The authorities were always going to accept his version of events. David Gordon, one of the owners of Springfield, has put together a pamphlet about the story for his guests. You’re very welcome to look at The Shetland Times account of the tragedy, and I can let you have a copy of David’s paper. He’s a historian, so it’s well put together.’

He’d told her all she’d wanted to know, but still she lingered in his office. It was new and light, but the atmosphere reminded her of her shared office in the Sentiman. She felt safe here, and all the horror of their stay in Unst was left behind. Of course there was no ghost. The stories were like the ones she worked with – you could trace them back to an original source, made more elaborate over the years. Soon they would return to London, and she would go back to work and everything would be well. She stood and took her leave.

She found Marcus in the museum cafe drinking tea and eating home-made cake. He caught a glimpse of her across the room and waved and smiled as if he’d been away on one of his trips.

‘What did you make of Lerwick?’

‘It was fun,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows each other. Which is comforting, but a bit scary. You wouldn’t get away with anything here.’ He reached into his pocket and brought out a pair of hand-knitted Fair Isle gloves. ‘A present.’

She leaned across the table to kiss him.

Back in Unst they stopped twice on their way to Sletts. Once to look at the famous bus shelter, decorated like a piece of installation art, and once for Marcus to take photographs of seals hauled up onto the rocks. Perhaps because of the mist the animals seemed unafraid and allowed them to come very close before sliding into the still water. They groaned like people in pain and the noise echoed around the bay. They reminded Polly of fat, glistening slugs, grey and blotchy, and she wondered why people were so fond of them.

‘There’s a folk tale about the seals,’ she said. ‘Selkies. They steal the souls of women.’

‘Do you think one of them could be Eleanor? Perhaps that sly-looking one with the long eyelashes.’

She looked at Marcus, horrified. She’d never thought he could be so hard-hearted.

‘Sorry.’ He put his arm around her. ‘That was crass. But all this is so bizarre, isn’t it? I’m having problems taking it seriously. If I stay here much longer I think I might go mad. Having that couple of hours away made me realize how stressful it’s been. That house with the water on one side of it and the hill on the other. Ian so screwed up.’

She thought that she might be mad already. ‘Do you want to leave?’

‘I think we should stick it out until Saturday,’ he said. ‘That was the deal, wasn’t it? After that you have to be back at work, and so do I. We leave Ian to it then. If he wants to stay, that’s fine, but he’s on his own.’

She nodded, relieved because she had something to look forward to, an escape back to London. She realized that it had been the open-ended nature of their confinement that had become such a problem for her. ‘What do you think Ian will do?’ She thought his determination to see the investigation through to the end had become a kind of obsession. Perhaps he believed he’d lose his sense of Eleanor if he moved away from the islands.

‘He’ll come too, won’t he?’ Marcus said. ‘He’ll see that no good will come of his staying here. I think he’s someone who needs to work. He’ll be better off in London with his colleagues. We just remind him of Nell.’

Polly wasn’t so sure. Ian had always been stubborn. As Marcus drove back along the track to Sletts she looked into the windows of the houses. It had become a habit now, this searching for the child in the white dress. But the visibility was so poor that there was nothing but shadow.

It seemed that Ian had decided to escape from Sletts too, because when they got back the house was empty and his car was gone. Polly switched on the lamps in an attempt to cheer up the room, but the sulphur light bounced back from the fog, only adding to the sense of isolation. She peered through the window into the gloom. ‘We could be the only people alive in the whole world.’

Marcus was back on his laptop, engrossed in answering a new bunch of emails from customers and didn’t seem to hear her. She tried to read, but found it impossible to concentrate and stood behind Marcus and began to stroke his neck. She hadn’t liked the idea of making love when Ian was around, but at last they had the house to themselves. Marcus turned and smiled at her in a distracted way and continued to tap on the keyboard. He was lying back in one chair, his feet on the rungs of another, completely relaxed, and she had the impulse to shake him.

‘I might go out for a walk,’ she said at last. ‘I can’t settle to anything.’ She hoped to provoke the same reaction as she had when she’d gone out alone before. Don’t be stupid, there’s a killer out there. Wait until I’ve finished this and I’ll come out with you.

But he just looked up briefly from the screen. ‘OK. Take care.’ It was as if he was so wrapped up in his work that he’d forgotten about Eleanor’s death altogether and seemed to have no sense of danger.

It was the first time Marcus had made her angry. Previously he’d always been so solicitous and she couldn’t see what could be so important on the screen. There was a brief flash of jealousy as she even wondered if there was an email from another woman that was holding his attention; perhaps that was why he seemed so engrossed, the reason for the self-satisfied smile. She picked up her jacket and went outside. There was a chill that she hadn’t been expecting and she was tempted to return immediately into the warm. But she could be stubborn too and instead she walked back down the track towards the old croft house. The garden was overgrown, but the grass on the way to the front door had been trampled. There was no other sign of life. No smoke from the chimney this time. No face at the window. She knocked. The paint on the door was peeling and came off in blue specks on her fist. No answer. The door wasn’t locked – there might have been a bolt inside, but there wasn’t a hole for the key. She pushed it and was surprised at how easily it opened.

‘Hello!’ But she knew nobody could be living here. From the faint light coming from the open door she saw that the place wasn’t habitable. Ahead of her was what had once been a tiny scullery. A bench with an enamel bowl standing on it. To the right the room where she’d imagined having seen the girl dancing in the candlelight. A beaten-earth floor. In one corner a small stove. She opened it and saw that there were blocks of peat inside, but the stove was cold and she couldn’t decide if any of it had been burned. She walked to the window and thought that perhaps the dust had been disturbed on the sill and there was a drop of candle wax.

Looking in at her was a face. Pale and blurred by the dirt on the glass and the gloom of the fog. She screamed. The face disappeared, there were footsteps on the scullery floor and a man appeared in the doorway.

‘What are you doing here?’ He was middle-aged and his grey hair was too long and stuck up at the front, giving him a faintly clownish appearance. Something about the silhouette he presented, the angular body and that ridiculous hair were familiar.

‘I was just looking,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought the house was derelict.’ Apology and politeness had always been her default positions.

‘Oh, nobody lives here.’ She realized now that he was English. He stepped further into the room and she backed away from him. ‘Who are you?’ he said. It was hard to tell whether he was angry or amused. The voice was flat.

‘My name’s Polly Gilmour. I’m staying at Sletts. My partner will be looking for me, if I don’t go back soon.’ She hoped that was true, but remembered Marcus as she’d last seen him, determined to be normal, to communicate with the outside world, and she wasn’t sure if he would be bothered to come after her. She found that she was shaking.

‘So you’re one of Eleanor Longstaff’s friends?’

‘Yes.’

He looked her up and down as if she were a sort of biological specimen, then gave a sly smile. ‘I think I’ve seen you around.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Charles Hillier. I run Springfield House. The detectives are staying there.’ He seemed about to say more, but suddenly headlights lit up the room.

‘That’ll be Ian,’ she said. ‘Eleanor’s husband. I should go. It’s my turn to make supper.’ The inanity struck her as crazy. She’d imagined seeing a ghost in this house and now some strange man had her penned inside it and she was talking about cooking a meal. She judged the distance between them and darted past him into the scullery. But he shut the front door with his foot and stood with his back to it, blocking her way again. She was trembling and found it impossible to think clearly at all. It felt like the worst sort of nightmare. With the front door shut, the small room was almost dark.

Suddenly someone was banging on the living-room window with the flat of his hand. ‘Polly, is that you?’ It was Ian. He must have caught sight of her in his headlights and stopped his car.

‘Yes, I’m here.’ She was surprised at how strongly the words came out: now she sounded defiant rather than scared. Hillier moved away from the door as Ian Longstaff came in. The three of them stood very close together in the tiny room. There was the smell of damp, but something else. Alcohol. Polly thought Ian must have taken off to a bar somewhere and had been sitting nursing pints and brooding. She wondered if Lowrie had been with him and, if so, how the man could have been so stupid as to let him drive back.

‘Who are you?’ Ian glared at the older man. Polly thought he looked like a gorilla picking a fight with another male for supremacy of the troop. Eleanor had always called him, with amused affection, her alpha male.

Hillier barked back his name. ‘I own Springfield House hotel. Your friend here was trespassing.’

‘So you own this place too, do you?’ Polly could tell that Ian longed for a fight and realized he’d wanted to hit someone ever since he’d been told that Eleanor was dead.

‘I know the owner.’

‘And that gives you the right to throw your weight about, does it? To intimidate women?’ Ian was bristling with aggression, so now she was almost more frightened of him than of Hillier.

‘I’m not intimidated,’ she said. ‘It was a misunderstanding. Let’s go.’ She squeezed past the older man and out of the front door, pulling Ian after her by the sleeve of his jacket. He resisted for a moment, then the fight seemed to leave him altogether and he followed her.

Hillier stood in the doorway watching them. He was still smiling and called after them. ‘Do you know who lived in this place?’

Curiosity got the better of her. Ian was walking back to his car, but she paused for a moment. ‘Who?’

‘Sarah Malcolmson,’ Hillier said. ‘The girl who was blamed for Peerie Lizzie’s death. This was her family’s house.’