White Nights

Chapter Ten

The child ran into her grandmother’s house, leaving the door ajar after her. Her mother wouldn’t be at home. Perez knew that, as he knew all the other things about the family, the information gathered without any effort on his part, over the years. Dawn Williamson was a teacher at Middleton, the nearest primary school. Martin and Aggie looked after the girl between them while she was at work. Dawn was an incomer, so his understanding of her background was a little sketchy. She’d already moved to Shetland, was already teaching in the school when she took up with Martin.

Perez took the carrier bag of food back to Sandy, left it on the harbour wall beside him and crossed the road again before the man discovered his requests hadn’t been exactly met. He stood on the pavement outside Aggie’s house and knocked at the door. He liked Aggie. He’d returned to Shetland just in time to be involved with her husband’s accident. He’d taken a statement from her, had respected her calm, the way she refused to speak badly of the dead man.

Aggie let him in. She recognized him at once.

‘Jimmy Perez, what are you doing in Biddista?’ There was a trace of nervousness in her voice. Wherever you were in the world, a policeman on your doorstep meant trouble. When he didn’t answer, she went on, ‘Well, come away in. You’ll tell me in your own good time.’

He couldn’t think that he’d seen Aggie since her husband’s funeral, but she’d not changed – a trim, slight woman now in her early sixties. Standing at the square table, covered in patterned oilcloth, she was preparing for baking. In front of her stood a set of scales, a china bowl, a bag of flour and another of sugar, three eggs loose on a saucer, a wooden spoon. He could have been in his mother’s kitchen in Fair Isle. She had a mixing bowl of exactly the same pale yellow. Aggie had been greasing a baking tray with a margarine wrapper. Alice had run ahead of him and was sitting on a tall stool drinking juice from a plastic beaker. The clown’s mask had been pushed back from her face but still rested on top of her head.

Aggie wiped her hands on a dishcloth. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘you’ll take a cup of tea while you’re here.’ She pushed the kettle on to the hotplate of the Rayburn. The first trace of surprise at seeing him on the doorstep had disappeared. But then nothing seemed to shock her. She hadn’t been shocked when her husband walked off the dock into the water.

He looked over to the granddaughter and she realized he didn’t want to talk in front of the child.

‘Come away, Alice,’ she said. ‘A lovely day like this, you don’t want to be stuck indoors. There’ll be time enough for that when you start school. Outside with you.’ She opened the kitchen door and chivvied her into a long, narrow garden. They watched her climb on to a wooden swing, still holding the woollen toy in one hand so she had to grasp one of its limbs and the rope together. The rope looked like something you might see on a ship. Like the rope forming the noose around the Englishman’s neck.

‘There’s a dead man in Kenny’s hut,’ Perez said. Again he didn’t think this could be news to her. She’d have seen Sandy sitting on the wall all morning. Surely she’d have gone out to ask him what he was doing there. But if it was old information, she wasn’t letting on.

She’d already started beating the sugar and margarine and looked up sharply.

‘Not Kenny? No, of course, it can’t be Kenny. He walked past the house a little while ago. Fast, as if he didn’t want to speak. Who then?’

‘An Englishman,’ Perez said. ‘A stranger. He was at Bella Sinclair’s party last night, but nobody seemed to know him.’

‘How did he die?’ she asked.

‘We don’t have all the details yet. He’s hanging from one of the rafters.’ He paused. ‘You weren’t there, at Bella’s party.’

Not a question, and she picked up on that. ‘But you were? I’d heard you’d become friendly with Duncan Hunter’s wife.’

‘She’s not his wife any more, Aggie.’ Why had he felt the need to say that? He was annoyed that he’d reacted to the comment. Perhaps it was because she made him think of his mother, and he’d always needed to justify himself to her.

‘Aye well, none of my business anyway.’ She hesitated. ‘Bella asked me to go along, but you ken, Jimmy, it’s not my thing. All sorts of folk I don’t know.’

‘Not my kind of thing either, really.’

‘And I find Bella kind of scary. Even after all these years.’

He smiled. He understood what she meant. He found Bella scary too. ‘You must have grown up together. Here in Biddista.’

‘Aye,’ she said. ‘We all lived in these houses. Willy was in the end one. He never married and his mother had died by the time we were old enough to notice. The Sinclairs were in the middle house. And I lived in here with my mother and father.’

‘So you’re back where you started.’

‘I never really wanted to move away.’

‘Bella just had the one brother?’

‘Alec, Roddy’s father.’

‘What was he like?

‘Oh, he was a quiet man. Not at all like his son. He had cancer, you know. So sad for such a young man. He got very thin in the end. It must have been terrible for Roddy. Maybe that explains why he turned out so wild.’

Perez thought he could see a faint flush on her face and wondered if she had felt something special for Alec Sinclair, but perhaps that was just the heat of the kitchen. ‘Kenny Thomson was at Skoles then too,’ she went on, eager, it seemed, to change the subject. ‘Him and his parents and his brother Lawrence. So nothing much has changed at all. Lawrence moved into Lerwick and then he left Shetland all together.’

‘You haven’t heard of any strangers around? Maybe one of the houses on the way to Middleton has started taking paying guests?’

She shook her head. ‘Not that I’ve heard.’ She cracked one of the eggs against the bowl and used both thumbs to pull the shell apart. ‘It couldn’t have been Peter Wilding? He’s the man who’s taken over Willy’s house. He’s an Englishman.’

‘Martin would have recognized him. He met my stranger last night.’

‘Then I can’t help you.’

‘Have you had any visitors into the shop in the last few days?’

‘A few. A group of young Australians at the beginning of the week wanting cold drinks. And there was a tour bus yesterday. It stopped at the Herring House so folk could have coffee. Most of them walked down here afterwards to stretch their legs, buy postcards and sweeties. But they were all elderly people. How old is your man?’

‘Not that old. Forty. Forty-five.’

‘Not old at all then.’ Another egg went into the bowl. She sifted a spoonful of flour on top, folded it in carefully.

Perez waited until she’d finished before asking, ‘Where did Alice get the clown’s mask?’

‘Why do you need to know, Jimmy? Do you want to get one for Fran Hunter’s lass?’ A faint mischievous smile, hoping to make him react again.

‘No, not that.’ He paused, then thought there was no harm in telling her. Word would get out soon enough.

‘The dead man was wearing something like it.’

She stood quite still, the bowl under one arm, the spoon in her other hand. Perhaps she had the picture in her head of a man she didn’t know, the kiddies’ mask around his head. ‘I didn’t buy that thing for Alice.’

‘Neither did Martin.’

‘It must have been Dawn then. If you like I’ll talk to the child. See if she remembers. If you think it’s important…’

He shrugged. ‘It might help us identify him. There’s not much else to go on.’

He was thinking that he might ask Dawn about the mask. She’d know more about it than Alice. He was intrigued by the coincidence and was tempted to drive to Middleton to talk to her. But he couldn’t justify the time. He wanted an incident room ready and waiting when the Inverness boys got in. He didn’t want them thinking the Shetland team couldn’t handle a serious crime. Last time they were here the thing had dragged on too long. Besides, he didn’t want to make such a big deal of the man and the mask. If he turned up at the school and pulled Dawn out of her class, he’d have rumours spreading throughout the islands. He remembered the last murder they’d had in Shetland, the fear that seemed to freeze the community and change it into a quite different place. This was different. This was a stranger. But he didn’t want that icy panic to take over again.

‘If Alice can’t help, maybe you could mention it to Dawn,’ he said.

‘I will.’

‘And I don’t want news of this getting out just yet. I’d like to inform the relatives first.’ If we can ever find them.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll not tell anyone and I’ll ask Dawn to keep it to herself.’ She spoke with a quiet assumption that her request would be honoured. Perez couldn’t imagine Fran being as compliant with his mother’s wishes. She’d had a successful career before she moved to Shetland. Her confidence had taken a bit of a knock recently, but she still knew her own mind. Fran and my mother, he thought. How will that work?

Aggie set down the mixing bowl and walked with him to the door. He realized for the first time that she was anxious for him to be gone.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Perhaps this is difficult for you. The way Andrew died… I should have realized.’

She gave him a long, hard stare. ‘My husband’s death was an accident. Not like this at all.’

‘Of course.’ He could feel his face become red, turned away quickly and walked out.

Back in the street he heard the distant sound of a foghorn. Here the sun was still shining and he thought at first they were testing it. Sometimes they did that and it always shocked him, hearing the great booming noise in full sunlight. Then out to sea he saw the thick bank of mist. It was just below the horizon but it was rolling closer. Further south it must already have hit the land.

Sandy had strung the tape around the hut. Blue and white. POLICE. DO NOT ENTER. There was a police car parked, blocking off any vehicular access to the jetty. Now Perez could send Sandy back to Lerwick. It was just a matter of saving the scene from any further contamination before the CSI arrived. He wondered if Sandy had thought to tell the doctors that the CSI would need their shoes, and maybe their clothes for comparison. It was his fault; he should have reminded him.

He was halfway along the road when his phone rang. Morag, one of his team. He’d set her to book places on the last plane for the Inverness team.

‘What’s it like there with you?’

‘Sorry?’ Was she being polite? Passing the time of day? Did she have no sense of urgency?

‘I’ve just had Sumburgh on the phone. They’ve got thick fog.’

‘Any chance of it lifting this afternoon?’

‘I’ve just been on to Dave Wheeler.’ Dave was the met. man who lived in Fair Isle. He took all the weather readings for the shipping forecast. ‘Highly unlikely, he says. And the airport say they’re not expecting any more planes in or out today.’

Perez switched off his phone and stood for a moment. The sun was already covered in a milky haze. So the team from Inverness wouldn’t be in today. If the fog stayed down and they had to get the ferry tomorrow evening they wouldn’t arrive until seven o’clock the following morning. He was in charge. It was his investigation. He’d thought it was what he always wanted.

His phone rang again. ‘Jimmy. It’s Roy Taylor here. From Inverness.’

So, not his case at all.

‘This is how I want you to play it until we arrive.’