Too Good to Be True

5 The Village

Anna’s elderly neighbour must have been looking out for Jimmy Perez leaving her house, because he came to his door and shouted across.

‘Everything all right?’

Perhaps everyone in this village was nosy.

‘Yes,’ Jimmy said. ‘I’m surprised the landlord’s not been in to clear the place for the next tenant.’

‘Maybe the doctor and his wife thought it wouldn’t look good if they were too hasty. Perhaps they’re showing the lass a bit of respect at last, even if it’s too late.’

‘Maybe.’ Perez paused. ‘The local police must have asked if you were at home the evening that Anna died?’

‘I’m always at home,’ the man said. ‘Once it gets dark, at least.’

‘You didn’t happen to notice if Anna had a visitor?’ Perez leaned on the little wall that separated the man’s garden from the pavement.

‘The police asked me that too.’

‘And what did you tell them?’ Perez tried to keep his patience.

‘That I didn’t see anyone.’

Perez sensed that the man had more to say. ‘But perhaps you heard a car?’

‘Not a car. I didn’t tell the other policemen because I wasn’t sure and they were in such a rush, but I thought I heard voices through the joining wall. It could have been the television, though Anna didn’t watch much TV. Music was more her thing.’

‘The voices must have been loud for you to have heard them through the wall,’ Perez said.

‘Nah, these houses were put up in a rush just after the war. No sound-proofing at all.’

‘So you could hear what was said?’ Perez found that he was holding his breath, waiting for an answer.

‘Nah, nothing like that. Just a murmur of voices. Nobody was shouting, and like I said, it could just have been the telly.’ The old man stamped his feet to show that he was feeling the cold and disappeared inside.

It was still only mid-morning. It must be playtime at the school, Perez thought, because he could hear the children’s voices again. He didn’t want to go back to the hotel and to Elspeth’s questions, but he felt a need for strong coffee and a chance to think in peace.

On the main street there was a cafe. It must be warm inside because the windows were steamed up and from the pavement he couldn’t see anything at all. He pushed open the door and walked into a small room almost full of women. They had taken over two of the tables and baby buggies were crammed into any spare space. Perez took the one remaining table by the window. The women seemed not to notice him and carried on with their gossip.

A young waitress came to take his order. Perez wiped a patch in the mist on the window so he could see into the street, but it soon steamed up again. He tried to order his thoughts about the Anna Blackwell case but the young mothers’ voices intruded.

‘I feel dreadful,’ one of the women said. ‘I didn’t want to sign that petition to get rid of Miss Blackwell in the first place, but Sarah is chair of governors and she’s always in the school. I thought her reasons for thinking Anna was no good must be real.’

There was a moment of silence. ‘Well, we didn’t know then that Tom and Anna were such…’ There was another pause… ‘friends.’

‘You can see why Sarah would have wanted her out of the village.’

Perez had always thought there was a lot of gossip in Shetland, but he had rarely heard anything there that was quite as toxic as this. He could understand for the first time why Sarah was so upset that she had called for his help. It must be a nightmare to face this malice wherever she went.

The talking continued. ‘Do we know for certain that Tom and Anna were lovers? Gail, you knew Anna better than anyone. Lucy stayed at your house the night it all happened.’

So this was Gail Kerr, the woman from the farm who’d had Anna’s daughter for the sleepover. She was stocky, a bit older than the others, and she didn’t seem to have a baby with her. She was wearing an anorak over a scruffy sweater. The others seemed to have made more of an effort with their appearances. Some were rather glamorous, shiny and made-up. They could have been in a fancy restaurant instead of a scruffy cafe.

‘Well, my brother Sandy saw them walking together through the woods,’ said Gail, resting her elbows on the table. ‘He said they were so wrapped up in each other that a bomb could have dropped and they wouldn’t have noticed.’

The waitress brought Jimmy’s coffee. It was hardly warm and didn’t taste of anything.

‘But you don’t really think he killed her?’ the first woman said. ‘Not Tom! He’s a doctor. A kind man. He looked after my mother when she had cancer and he couldn’t have been more caring.’

‘It’s just too much of a coincidence.’ It was Gail again. ‘Something weird was going on there. If the Kings didn’t kill her, they drove her to suicide.’

Jimmy Perez couldn’t stand any more of their unkindness. He drank his coffee in one go, paid the bill and went outside.

Next to the cafe an estate agents’ office was advertising houses to let. On impulse Perez went inside. A middle-aged woman in a suit looked up from her computer screen.

He showed his ID. ‘Do you manage a property owned by Doctor King?’

‘The house in Woodburn Close? Yes, that’s one of ours.’

‘I’m making inquiries about the most recent tenant,’ he said. ‘Anna Blackwell.’

The estate agent turned round in her chair to give him her full attention. ‘She was the woman who died.’

‘That’s right,’ Perez said. ‘I assume she had to provide a deposit before she moved in? Someone had to vouch for her?’

‘No…’ The woman paused. ‘It was a more informal arrangement.’

‘In what way informal?’

‘I understood that she was a friend of Doctor King’s. He said there was no need for her to pay in advance. He could vouch for her.’

Perez considered this. How had Tom King met the young teacher before she moved to Stonebridge? A thought leapt into his head. Was it possible, even, that he was the father of her child?

‘Do you have a previous address for Miss Blackwell?’

The woman turned back to the keyboard. ‘Yes, we do have that, I think, because we had to send out a contract before she moved in.’ She hit a button and a printer began to whir. She handed a sheet of paper to Perez.

The address was in Berwick, just south of the border, in England.

‘I believe that was her parents’ address,’ the estate agent said. ‘Miss Blackwell had been at university in Edinburgh and had just finished her degree. She suggested the Berwick address would be the best one to use.’

Perez wondered why Anna’s parents hadn’t come forward to take care of their granddaughter, Lucy, after her mother’s death. He’d assumed that there was no close family. It seemed very sad that the grandparents had allowed the little girl to be sent off to be cared for by strangers. Perhaps Anna’s parents were old-fashioned and didn’t approve of a child born out of marriage.

Outside in the street, the village was very quiet – there were no children’s voices. Soon it would be lunchtime and they would be out to play again, Perez thought. Stonebridge seemed sad without them.