White Nights

Chapter Twenty-three

Perez wasn’t sure what to make of the conversation with Roddy Sinclair. He thought in a way it had been like talking to a criminal, one of those old offenders who’ve been questioned so often by the police that they know how to play the game. Roddy spent his life fending off awkward questions from the media. He knew what impression he wanted to give and he stuck to his story. Fran had said she’d met the musician a few times but didn’t feel she really knew him. Perhaps he’d been taken in by the hype too, had lost a sense of his own identity. Perez wished Taylor hadn’t been there at the graveyard. He’d had a sense that there were things the boy had wanted to say, but Taylor’s abrasive style had put him off.

‘I’m going to talk to Edith Thomson,’ Perez said. They were walking down the road now, back towards the jetty and their cars. ‘She’s Kenny’s wife. She wasn’t at the Herring House party, but she was at home that evening. She might have seen something. And she’s known Bella for years.’

‘Isn’t she the one that works in the old folks’ home?’

‘The care centre,’ Perez said. ‘I thought I’d catch her there. Would you like to be in on that?’

‘It’d make more sense if we separated,’ Taylor said. ‘I’ll stay around here, get more of a feel for the place. I might catch up with Martin Williamson.’

Perez sensed panic in the man’s refusal. He thought Taylor would dislike contact with the elderly and infirm. He would prefer not to be reminded of his own mortality. Perez was relieved to have the opportunity to talk to Edith alone. He’d met her a couple of times with Kenny and he’d thought her a proud and dignified woman. She might not respond well to Taylor’s approach either.

The care centre was purpose-built, a low modern box with long windows giving a view down the voe to the sea. A minibus specially adapted with a lift for wheelchairs was parked outside, along with the staff cars. Perez walked inside and was engulfed by a sudden blast of heat and the institutional scent of disinfectant and floor polish. In the background a surprisingly appetizing smell of cooking food. It was only eleven-thirty but tables in the dining room had been set for lunch and a woman in a nylon overall was pouring water into brightly coloured plastic beakers. She looked up briefly and smiled at him. On the other side of the front door, he saw the lounge with the long windows. People sat around the walls in high-backed chairs. Some seemed to be dozing. Three men at a table were playing cards. He thought he recognized Willy Jamieson, who had once lived in Peter Wilding’s house in Biddista, and gave him a wave, but the old man stared back blankly.

‘Can I help you?’

Edith Thomson had come up behind him. She wore black trousers and a blue cotton blouse and seemed to him very neat and professional. He saw that she didn’t know him. The voice was polite but rather distant. He held out his hand.

‘Jimmy Perez. It’s about the murder in Biddista.’

‘Of course. Jimmy.’ Now she could place him she relaxed a little. This wasn’t a work-related visit. He wasn’t a relative or a social worker. ‘Is it definitely murder then?’

‘We’re treating the death as suspicious.’

‘Poor Kenny,’ she said. ‘He was so upset when he found the body. And then he got it into his head that it might be Lawrence.’

She, it seemed, didn’t share her husband’s distress. Perez could tell she would answer his questions briskly and efficiently, but he’d never found the direct approach very helpful. People gave away more if they were allowed space to lead the conversation. It was possible then to get a glimpse of their preoccupations and the subjects they hoped to avoid.

‘This must be an interesting place to work,’ he said. ‘These people have so many stories.’

‘We’re trying to record them. Keep the tapes in the museum. Life here is changing so quickly.’

‘Isn’t that Willy in there? I knew him to say hi to at one time, when he lived in Biddista and worked on the roads, but he seemed not to recognize me.’

‘On his bad days he doesn’t recognize anyone,’ she said. ‘He’s full of stories too, but sometimes they’re just a muddle. We can’t make head or tail of them and he gets so frustrated. He has Alzheimer’s. It developed very quickly. Such a shame. He was always a lively man and even when he first moved into sheltered housing he could manage most things for himself.’

‘Could I talk to him later?’

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘He’d be glad of the company.’

‘I just need to ask you a few questions first.’

‘Of course. Come through to my office. Coffee?’

The office was as neat and efficient as she was. A beech desk with a PC, clear and uncluttered, a tall filing cabinet. On the wall a planner marked with coloured stars. He wondered how she and Kenny got on together. Did he resent her career, the full days away from the croft? She probably earned more than her husband did. Did she try to organize him as she did her staff? There was a filter-coffee machine on a small table in a corner, a Pyrex jug half full keeping hot. She poured him a mug.

‘Tell me about the night the man died,’ he said.

‘I don’t know exactly when that was. Was it just before Kenny found him?’

‘We assume it was the night of the Herring House party. If not that evening it would have been early the next morning.’

‘I have nothing to tell you. I can’t help you. I didn’t go to the party.’ She sat behind her desk, her hands in her lap; not obstructive, interested, but lacking the excitement that most people seemed to feel when they were involved in a murder inquiry.

‘But you have a good view down to the shore from your house. Perhaps you saw someone leaving the party?’

‘I was in the garden,’ she said. ‘Each year I think I’ll get away with growing a great crop of vegetables, then there’s a west wind and the salt ruins them all. But still I’m optimistic and I weed and water. You can’t see the Herring House from there. Later I had some work to catch up with. I have an office in the spare bedroom. If I did all my paperwork while I was here, I’d never have time to spend with our clients. It’s at the back of the house. You can’t see much but the hill from there.’

‘Kenny thought he saw someone running up the track towards the Manse.’

‘Then I’m sure he did. He’s not one for making things up. And he was on the hill. He’d have a good view from there.’

‘Why do you think Lawrence left home so suddenly?’

The sudden change of tack caught her off guard. She frowned slightly. ‘Kenny said the dead man couldn’t be Lawrence.’

‘I know. I’m interested. It seems so dramatic. To leave like that without any warning and never get back in touch.’

‘He was a great one for the drama,’ she said. ‘The grand gesture. Then after a while, I suppose it would be hard to come back. He’d feel so foolish.’

‘Do you have any idea why he went?’

‘Kenny thought it was all about Bella,’ she said, frowning. ‘I suppose that could have been it. But he was never the most stable sort of man. Did you ever meet him?’

Perez shook his head. ‘I don’t think I did. Were Lawrence and Bella having a relationship?’

‘I’m not sure. She was always an attractive woman. A bit wilful, but men seemed not to mind that. Maybe Lawrence had hopes and Bella strung him along. She loved having admirers.’ Edith paused, looked up at Perez with a grin. ‘I think she still does.’

Perez considered. ‘Does Bella have an admirer at the moment?’

Edith shrugged. ‘How would I know? She’s too grand for us now.’

‘You’d have heard though.’ Perez was quite certain about that. Even if Bella didn’t mix socially with the Biddista folk now, she’d be the subject of talk. And if Edith was too proud to gossip, she’d hear the news, from the staff in the care centre, the clients she worked with, from the relatives.

‘There was some gossip about her and that writer. Peter Wilding. He followed her up here, they say. Rented Willy’s old house just to be close to her.’ She looked at him again to gauge his reaction. ‘It seems a creepy kind of thing to do to me. I wouldn’t want a stranger tracking me down.’

‘Do they say what she thought of that?’

‘She liked the fact that he went to all the bother,’ she said. She sat for a moment in silence, thinking. ‘I’m not sure Bella could ever do a real relationship. It would get in the way of the one thing that’s most important to her.’

‘What’s that?’

She gave a brief mischievous smile. ‘Bella Sinclair. Her work. Her reputation.’

‘Where does Roddy fit into that?’

‘He makes her feel good about herself. And he does her reputation no harm at all either.’

‘Do you not like him then?’

‘Is this relevant to your inquiry?’

‘Probably not. But I’m interested in your opinion.’

‘Everything’s come too easy to him,’ she said. ‘Looks, talent, money. I don’t think that’s good for a young boy. He flaunted all he had in front of our kids. But maybe I’m just jealous. Kenny and me, we had to work for everything we have.’

‘Kenny told me Roddy went out with your daughter a couple of times.’

‘Roddy always has to have a woman in tow. Just like Lawrence in that respect. Someone prettier came along and he dropped her. That made me angry.’

‘He lost his father when he was still a child. And his mother too, in a way.’ He’s lonely, Perez thought. He’s portrayed as a golden boy, but he has no real friends.

She considered for a moment. ‘That’s true,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know Alec very well. He’d already left Biddista when I married Kenny. But you’re right. Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on Roddy.’

‘He spent a lot of time in Biddista when his father was ill. He’d have been around the same age as your children. You say he showed off to them. Did they know each other well when they were younger? Even before he took up with your daughter?’

‘Sometimes he came on to the croft to play. I didn’t like my two going to the Manse. I didn’t want them picking up his wild ways and quite often Bella had unsuitable people to stay. Sometimes Willy took all three of them out in his boat.’ She paused. ‘The children all liked Willy. He was a sort of Pied Piper. When he was home they all hung around with him. Like I said, he was full of stories. He never had kids of his own and he enjoyed having them around. He taught most of the children in Biddista to handle a boat. He took Kenny out when he was a lad. And Lawrence was in a boat almost before he could walk.’

Beyond the office door there was the sound of movement, plates banging, the jangle of cutlery.

‘Lunchtime,’ she said. ‘The high spot of the day. Some of our people only come here for the food. Will you eat with us, Jimmy? Have a bowl of soup at least.’

So Perez found himself sat at a table with Willy, a woman with Down’s syndrome called Greta, and Edith. Willy had the look of someone whose clothes had been chosen for him. Despite the heat of the centre he wore a thick jersey over a plaid shirt. He’d shaved that morning but not very well. His hair still had some black in it and was thick and curly.

‘Where are you living now, Willy?’ Perez asked.

Willy looked up at him, his spoon poised, his mouth slightly open.

‘I’m a Biddista man.’

‘But that’s not where you live now,’ Edith said gently. ‘Now you’re staying in the sheltered housing at Middleton.’ She turned to Jimmy. ‘A carer comes in twice a day.’

Willy blinked and raised the spoon to his mouth.

‘Tell me about the old days in Biddista,’ Perez said. ‘You kept a boat there, didn’t you?’

‘The Mary Therese,’ Willy said eagerly, his eyes losing their blank, clouded look. ‘A fine boat. Bigger than anyone else’s in Biddista. Some days I had so much fish I could hardly lift out the box.’

‘Who did you take fishing with you?’

‘They all wanted to come fishing with me. All the lads. Kenny and Lawrence Thomson. Alec Sinclair. The lasses too. Bella Sinclair and Aggie Watt. Though Aggie was a timid little thing, and they were awful cruel the way they teased her. Bella was as strong on the boat as a boy. Nothing frightened her.’ He stared into the distance and Perez thought he was imagining midsummer evenings out on the water. The children laughing and fighting, the family he’d never had.

‘You stayed friendly with them, did you, Willy? As they got older?’

Willy seemed not to hear. He tore a chunk of bread from the roll on his plate and dipped it into the broth.

‘There was Roddy Sinclair too,’ he said. ‘He liked the fishing when he came to stay at the Manse.’

‘That was later,’ Edith said. ‘Roddy was younger than Kenny and Lawrence. They wouldn’t have gone fishing with you together.’

Willy tried to think about that. The soup dripped from his bread on to the front of his jersey. Edith leaned across and wiped it carefully with a paper napkin. Willy shook his head as if trying to clear the pictures in his mind.

‘Did you ever have any English friends, Willy?’ Perez asked.

Willy suddenly gave a wide grin. ‘I liked going out with the Englishmen. They brought a hamper full of food and tins of beer. Sometimes, later, we’d build a fire on the beach to cook the fish and they always had a bottle of whisky. You remember that, Edith, don’t you? The summer when Lawrence and me took the Englishmen fishing?’

‘I remember that Lawrence always liked a drink,’ she said.

Willy grinned again.

‘What were the Englishmen’s names?’ Perez asked.

‘It was a fine time,’ Willy said. ‘A fine time.’ He returned to his meal, suddenly eating with great gusto, and Perez thought he was tasting the fresh fish caught just that day and cooked over the driftwood beach fire.

Perez turned to Edith. He didn’t want to pull Willy back to the present, to the indignity of slopped food and endless games of cards. ‘Do you know who he’s talking about? Were there any regular English visitors to Biddista?’

She shook her head. ‘Willy used to hire out his boat for fishing to the tourists, but I don’t remember anyone regular. Perhaps it was before my time.’

Willy jerked out of his reverie. ‘The Englishman came asking me questions, just the other day,’ he said. ‘But I told him nothing.’

‘Which Englishman would that be?’ Perez asked Edith.

‘There’s a writer called Wilding who comes after the traditional stories,’ she said. ‘Something to do with a book he’s writing. That must be who he means.’

Perez would have liked to spend the afternoon there, sitting in the sun flooding in through the windows, listening to Willy talking about fishing and the Biddista children, but he knew he couldn’t justify it. How would he account for his time to Taylor? Edith got up from the table and walked with him to the door.

‘Come back,’ she said. ‘Any time.’

In the car, his mobile phone suddenly got a signal again. It bleeped and showed a couple of missed calls, both from Sandy. Perez rang him, could hear the buzz of the incident room in the background. Sandy seemed to have his mouth full of food and it was a moment before Perez could make out what he was saying.

‘I’ve tracked down the lad who gave the Englishman a lift. Stuart Leask. He works on the desk at the NorthLink terminal and he’ll be there all afternoon.’