Thin Air

Chapter Twenty-Six

Perez walked back to Springfield House with David Gordon and wondered what he might say to provide comfort. Certainly nothing about his own experience of bereavement. When Fran had died and people had shared their own stories of grieving he’d wanted to hit them, to scream, I don’t care if someone close to you died. Don’t use my tragedy to wallow in your own. You cannot come close to knowing how I feel. But he had wanted to talk about Fran and to say her name.

‘Where did you and Charles meet?’

David spoke without looking at him, to a background sound of waves breaking on the sand. ‘Quite by chance in a cafe in York. It was the summer and the place was busy with tourists. I was living there, and Charles was performing at the theatre. His television career was already finished by then, but he was still able to pull in the crowds in provincial venues. There was a seat at his table and I asked if I could join him. “Excuse me,” I said. “Don’t I know you?” He was thrilled to be recognized, though honestly I don’t think I’d ever seen him on TV. Later I realized that he looked very like a colleague from Leeds, and that was who he reminded me of. But we talked and there was an attraction even then. He offered to leave a complimentary ticket for me at the theatre for his performance. I thanked him, never really intending to go. Not my thing. Charles always said I was a snob. But I was at the box office an hour beforehand and I knew I’d be devastated if the ticket wasn’t waiting for me.

‘After the show we went for a meal. And I suppose that was it. We’ve been together as a couple ever since. I carried on living and working in York, but Charles stayed with me whenever he wasn’t working. Then he was offered fewer tours and I found teaching increasingly less attractive, so we decided on early retirement and a move north. Charles loved the drama of the grand gesture. And for a man used to life in the city, running off to Unst was pretty dramatic. He was passionate about the house and enjoyed supervising the refurbishment. But when that was complete there was just the everyday tedium of running and maintaining a place the size of Springfield. He was starting to be bored. We’d always planned to leave Shetland in the winters and do some travelling, but the house soaked up all our spare cash and I’m sure he felt trapped here.’

They’d reached the steps that led through the terraced garden. David paused for a moment, not to catch his breath – he was obviously very fit – but to remember. ‘I’ve never told anyone else that story.’ Another pause. ‘But then nobody has ever asked.’ They stopped at the front door. ‘What will happen now?’

‘Willow has already contacted the funeral director in Lerwick,’ Perez said. ‘Charles will go south for post-mortem. You met James Grieve, the pathologist. He’s great at what he does.’ He hesitated. ‘Very respectful.’

‘What do think killed him?’ It came out as a strangled cry of pain.

‘Dr Grieve will help us to know that.’ Perez remembered a conversation with the pathologist, late one night. Another case. They’d had dinner together and shared a bottle of wine. My patients aren’t the dead, Jimmy, but the living relatives. My responsibility is to them. At least there was no mystery about what happened to Fran, he thought. I was there. He had a sudden flashback: the lightning glint of a knife in moonlight. A scream. He thought not knowing how she’d died would have been the worst kind of torture.

Sandy was waiting for them inside. ‘I found rooms for the other guests in a B &B in Yell and booked them onto the ferry. They left five minutes ago.’ His voice was almost a whisper, but David wouldn’t have heard if Sandy had shouted. He was lost in memories of his lover.

‘What should I do?’ David asked. It was as if he was a stranger in his own home. Perez thought the roles had reversed now. The police officers were in charge of the place and David was more like a guest. ‘I want to help.’

‘We’d be really glad of some coffee, if you’re up to making it.’

David looked grateful to have something specific to do and disappeared towards the kitchen. Perez sent Sandy to the beach to relieve Willow. Hillier’s death must be linked to Eleanor Longstaff’s, and he wanted to speak to the group at Sletts before news of the tragedy leaked out. But he knew better than to go without speaking to Willow first. The only time they’d really fallen out on an earlier case was when he followed his own line of investigation. And the previous evening he’d pushed his luck by talking to George without her permission. He stood by the front door and watched Sandy’s progress across the beach, then waited as Willow walked towards him. He saw her as if for the first time, the long, tangled hair and the easy stride, and thought she looked more like a Viking than most Shetlanders. He could imagine her rowing a longboat with the strength of a man. The thought made him smile and the image stayed with him until she reached him.

‘Jimmy, do tell me there’s a reason why you’re looking so happy, because I don’t have a clue where we should go from here.’

He shook his head and could feel himself blushing. ‘I was thinking we should go and talk to the folk at Sletts before the news of Hillier’s death is generally known. I’d like to see their reaction when they hear of it.’

‘Could we get Lowrie and Caroline there too, do you think? They seem to have avoided our questions until now, and we can’t rule them out of Eleanor’s murder just because they were celebrating their marriage on the night of her death.’

‘I could phone them,’ he said. ‘And it might be worth contacting the English people too to warn them that we’re on the way. We don’t want them deciding this is their day for a trip into Lerwick.’

‘You do that, Jimmy. But tell them we’ll be there in an hour. I haven’t had breakfast yet and I don’t work well on an empty stomach.’

When they arrived at the holiday house all the friends were there, taking up the chairs in the living room, so Perez had to drag two garden seats in from the deck. Caroline was sitting on the arm of Lowrie’s chair.

‘This is very mysterious, Inspector.’

He wondered if anything would penetrate her skin of efficient good humour. He couldn’t imagine her ever crying, for example. Had something in her past led to her forming this protective shell or was it a feature of her age and class?

‘There’s been another death.’ They’d all been looking to Perez for an explanation and when Willow spoke they stared at her, surprised. He watched them, but the shock seemed real.

‘Who?’ It was Polly Gilmour, as pale as a ghost herself, Perez thought.

‘A hotelier called Charles Hillier.’

Perez thought he saw the woman flash a glance at Longstaff. ‘You knew him?’ he said.

There was a pause before Polly answered. ‘We had a…’ Another pause. ‘An encounter yesterday.’

‘What happened?’ Willow leaned forward. They were similar in age and she could have been an old friend from university, encouraging gossip.

‘I’d wandered into that derelict house on the way to the hall. Just nosy, I suppose, to see what it looked like inside. And Mr Hillier turned up to ask what I was doing there.’

‘As if it was any business of his!’ Longstaff seemed to have aged since Perez had first met him; to have turned into one of those angry, red-faced middle-aged men with a short fuse and a tendency to fall victim to a heart attack.

‘You were there too, Mr Longstaff?’ Willow again, keeping it calm and cool.

‘I was driving past and I saw them in the house, just shadows in my headlights. A woman’s been murdered here, and it looked as if Hillier was keeping her there against her will. Of course I was going to check that Polly was OK. She should never have been wandering around on her own.’ He looked at Marcus. Accusing: You should be taking better care of your woman.

‘And was Mr Hillier being unreasonable?’ Willow again.

Polly shook her head. ‘He was just being weird. I probably shouldn’t have been there, but I wasn’t doing any harm and he seemed to overreact big-style. Then Ian turned up and things started getting a bit fraught, so we just left.’ She hesitated. ‘Hillier said there was some connection between the house and the ghost that Eleanor claimed to have seen.’ She turned to Lowrie. ‘Did you know anything about that?’

Lowrie shrugged. ‘The croft house was in our family,’ he said. ‘The lass looking after Lizzie Geldard lived there. Then my grandfather built our house on a bit of the land, and later Vaila and her man built their new place next door, and the old house was just left to ruin. It was a shame. I thought Vaila’s husband might renovate and extend the old place, but I suppose it would have cost more in the end than starting from scratch.’ He hesitated. ‘And there’s always been a kind of superstition about the building. Maybe they thought it would be bad luck to tear it down.’

‘Is it ever used?’ Willow asked.

‘Maybe for storage, but probably not even for that now, it’s such a damp old place.’

Perez thought Polly was about to speak again, but she turned towards the window and said nothing.

‘What did you do last night when you got back here?’ Willow asked.

‘I cooked supper,’ Polly said. ‘There was heaps, so we phoned Lowrie and Caroline and asked them to join us. It was good to get together to remember Eleanor. Somehow she seems to have got lost in all this.’

‘And then?’

‘Then the others wanted to go out. I stayed here.’ She paused and smiled at Ian. ‘Ian was worried about me, but I felt quite safe. There are locks on the doors and my mobile has reception. I promised I’d phone if anything worried me. We’ve all been shut in together since Eleanor died and I longed for some time on my own.’

‘Where did the rest of you go?’

‘To the bar at Springfield House.’ Lowrie took up the story. ‘Ian had been round to our place in the afternoon and we’d had a few beers. I thought it might be good for him to have some company. Then after dinner I could see that he wanted to carry on drinking, so I suggested going to the bar. I didn’t like the idea of him being in his room on his own with a bottle of whisky. I mean Polly and Marcus have been fantastic, but being here in Sletts must just remind Ian of Eleanor. There’s sometimes music at Springfield House on a Thursday night, and I thought the noise and the people might help release the tension for a while.’

‘And did it?’ Perez remembered the days after Fran’s death. He’d felt like drinking himself unconscious, but he never had. Too guilty. He hadn’t felt he deserved to escape the pain.

‘Yeah,’ Ian said. ‘But I’ve got a bloody awful hangover this morning.’

‘How long did you stay in the bar?’

Ian shrugged and looked at Caroline. ‘You drove us home. When was that?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Caroline turned to Perez. ‘It was getting light again. Maybe two o’clock.’

‘Were you in the bar with the men?’

‘I stopped for one drink,’ she said. ‘Then I saw that it was going to turn into a session, so I came back to Meoness in our car and told Lowrie to give me a ring when they wanted to be collected.’ She paused. ‘It was obviously going to be a boys’ night out and I had the feeling that I’d be in the way.’

‘You didn’t come back to Sletts to keep Polly company?’ That seemed odd to Perez, if the two women were such good friends.

‘No. I wanted to speak to the solicitor handling the sale of our house. He’s an old friend and I knew he wouldn’t mind me calling late. Now that we’ve made the decision to come north we want to get things moving as soon as possible.’ Caroline hesitated. ‘I’ve already handed in my notice to the university, and Lowrie’s told his employer that he’ll be leaving soon. It’s a little bit scary that we won’t have any real income for a while. We need to be planning our new life.’

Perez had the uncharitable thought that Caroline seemed to be viewing her friend’s death as an interruption to her business plans. ‘Were George and Grusche at home?’

‘Are you asking me to provide an alibi, Inspector?’ The question was sharp and angry.

‘I’m just trying to get a picture of everyone’s movements.’

‘Grusche was at a book group in Baltasound. I’m sure her friends will corroborate her story. George was working outside, I think.’

Perez directed his next question to the men.

‘When you were at Springfield did you see Charles Hillier?’

Lowrie shook his head. ‘The owners hardly ever come into the bar. It’s managed by a local guy, a pal of mine. Ian told me that he’d run up against Charles, but I didn’t think there was any danger that they’d meet there.’

‘Did any of you leave the bar for any length of time?’ The question came from Willow. ‘Of course we’ll be talking to the other drinkers.’

‘By that time I was so pissed I could hardly stand,’ Ian said. ‘I didn’t think much of the local band – the folk thing doesn’t really do it for me – and I might have gone out to escape the music, but I don’t remember anything about it.’

‘I left for about half an hour,’ Marcus said. ‘It would have been around eleven. I phoned Polly. I wanted to make sure she was OK. She said she was fine, just going to bed and not to make too much noise when I came in. Then I phoned my mother. I hadn’t been in touch for a few days and we chatted for quite a time.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘You know mothers.’

‘If you were in the garden at Springfield you’d have had a view down to the shore,’ Perez said. ‘Did you see anything? Hear anything?’

Marcus gave a little laugh. ‘The fog had come in again. It was eerie. There was a foghorn somewhere in the distance. Moaning like the seals we saw earlier in the day. But no, I didn’t see anything.’