White Nights

Chapter Thirty-seven

When Perez arrived at the house in Ravenswick it was half-past midnight, but Fran was still up. She’d said that she would be. There’d been a brief guarded phone call with Taylor listening in. He was on the hill and his mobile reception was dreadful, so her words kept breaking up.

‘I need to talk to you,’ she’d said. ‘It doesn’t matter how late it is. I’ve been to see Bella. It’s important.’

She would have told him over the phone what was troubling her, but Perez didn’t want that. He was focused now on the climbers sifting through debris and he didn’t want to prolong the conversation. Taylor was critical enough as it was. He was right: Perez should have organized a more thorough search of the cliff and the cave when Roddy’s body was found. This wasn’t the time for a personal conversation.

When he got to her place, she was sitting at the table reading. The house was quiet. No music. He watched her through the window, one side of her face caught in the glow of a table lamp. She must have heard his car as a background noise in her head, but she continued to read, frowning with concentration, her attention held by the words on the page. She only turned when he tapped at the door and walked in. Then she stood up and put her arms around his neck and pulled him to her.

‘You’re cold,’ she said. ‘The water’s hot if you want a bath.’

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t talk earlier.’ On the way back he’d wondered what she could want to talk about. It sounded ominous. ‘We need to talk.’ Sarah had said that when she’d told him she was leaving him. It had come as a complete shock. Perhaps he should have seen it coming, but it had never occurred to him. He’d known she was sad, but had thought it was the miscarriage. She would need time to get over that. He needed time himself to come to terms with it. He hadn’t realized he was the problem.

‘It’s about the case,’ Fran said now. ‘I think it could be important.’

He felt relief, followed by irritation. He’d hoped he could forget the case for the night.

‘I went to see Bella. She thinks she knew Jeremy Booth after all.’

‘She recognized the name?’

‘Perhaps that was partly it. I think it’s more that she’s been hiding in the past. Escaping from Roddy’s death by living in her memories. She remembered seeing him. Her memory will be very visual, and although he’d changed a lot something about his face came back to her.’

‘Where did she know him from?’

‘Shetland. Biddista. One summer she seems to have run a sort of artists’ commune in the Manse. He turned up and stayed. I don’t think she can remember how she came to invite him, only that he was there. And that he was an actor with a fondness for practical jokes.’

‘When was that?’

‘About fifteen years ago. That was what she said, but she was very vague about the details.’

‘Why would he have wanted to spoil the opening of her exhibition after all this time? Does she know?’

‘He’d told her he was in love with her, apparently! But she hadn’t heard from him since then. She said she didn’t recognize him on the night of the exhibition.’

‘Are you sure? It seems a bit odd, memories of that summer only coming back to her now.’

‘Bella is a bit odd, don’t you think? Especially now, with Roddy gone. She told me she’d put that summer out of her mind – I suppose because it was when Lawrence left. I’m not sure. I think she’s reliving happier times now – when Roddy was a child – and former glories. All those men besotted with her. It’s an escape from the grief.’

‘But nobody else in Biddista remembers Booth.’

‘It was fifteen years ago. That summer strange people were coming and going to the Manse all the time. I’d have been astonished if anyone had recognized him.’

He was surprised that he didn’t feel more tired. Driving to her house, his mind had been clear, as if the evening was just beginning, as if he’d just finished a normal day’s work. ‘Would you mind if I had a drink?’ he asked.

‘Of course. What would you like? Wine, beer whisky?’

‘White wine please.’ The drink of summer afternoons. He imagined the house party at the Manse all those years ago. Bella’s guests would have been sitting in the garden drinking chilled white wine, talking painting and politics.

‘That wasn’t all Bella said.’ Fran must already have had a bottle of wine open in the fridge. She poured a glass for them both. ‘She thinks Peter Wilding was there that summer too.’

‘Is the woman mad? Playing some sort of crazy game?’

‘Really,’ Fran said, ‘I don’t think so.’

‘It’s so fanciful. Suddenly all these people who seemed unrelated turn out to have been in the same house at the same time. And Bella, who claimed not to know them, remembers as if by magic.’

‘I know,’ Fran said. ‘But I do understand what she’s saying. She’s been so caught up in the present that she’s had no reason to revisit those days. You know how self-absorbed she is. I understand what it’s like when I’m working. The art is all I think about really, even when I’m reading a story to Cassie, even when I’m spending time with you, it’s at the back of my mind. You’re the same when you’re working on a big case. She had no reason to think about the past. Now her memories of those times have become very clear. It’s her way of blocking out what happened to Roddy.’

‘It still seems preposterous to me.’ Perez drank some wine. ‘Like a kids’ game. Or Up Helly Aa after the parade. The guisers all wearing masks and running from one hall to another. I’m never part of the squad, so I bump into people and can’t quite recognize them, though I know they’re familiar. That’s how I feel now; I’m losing track about what’s real and what’s pretend.’

‘I know,’ she said again.

‘Am I talking rubbish?’

‘I think I know what you mean.’ She paused. ‘There’s a photograph. That might help pin things down. And masks figure there too.’ She laid a faded colour photograph on the table and turned the lamp so it was fully lit.

‘They’re dressed up for a dinner party,’ she said. ‘Fancy dress too, in a way. The masks must be significant, mustn’t they?’

Certainly that, Perez thought, but I’m not quite sure how. He’d thought he was inching towards a solution. Had he been wrong?

‘That’s Wilding,’ Perez said, pointing to the dark man. ‘He’s hardly changed. How can she not have recognized him?’

‘It was a long time ago, in a different context. But he must have remembered being here. Why didn’t he say something to Bella when he asked to rent the house from her? That seems most odd to me.’

‘And there’s Bella. She always wore red in those days. It was her sort of trademark.’

‘You knew her then?’

‘Knew of her, certainly. She was a local celebrity even in those days.’

‘Bella thinks that’s Booth.’ Fran pointed to a figure on the back row. With his long hair and beard, his rather thin face, he looked like a Renaissance representation of Jesus. The Last Supper, Perez thought.

‘Who are the others?’

‘I don’t know. She didn’t say and I didn’t ask. Lawrence isn’t there, though. She expected him to come. She thought he would propose to her that night, but he didn’t turn up. Isn’t it sad?’

‘It is if it’s true.’

‘You don’t believe her?’

‘I’ve told you, I don’t know who or what to believe.’ He drank more wine, a good mouthful, not a sip. ‘I should tell Taylor.’

‘Won’t he be asleep?’

‘I don’t think he ever sleeps.’ He took another drink. ‘Could I ask him over? We won’t disturb you.’

She didn’t hesitate. ‘Of course.’

And Taylor did pick up his mobile after the second ring, and his voice was as strong as it always was, the accent deepened somehow over the phone. Perez explained as best he could, realizing that he was stuttering slightly. ‘There’s a photo,’ he said. ‘It’s interesting. It would wait until the morning but you’d be welcome to come over if you like. You know where Fran lives.’

A moment of hesitation. Perez was preparing himself for a rebuff. Then Taylor’s voice came again, stronger than ever. ‘I’ll be there. Half an hour.’ Another pause. ‘Thanks.’

Fran took herself to bed before Taylor arrived. She set out a plate of food for them – cheese and oatcakes and a tin with home-made biscuits.

‘There’s no need for that.’ Perez reached out and touched her hand.

‘I think I’ve been in Shetland long enough to know how to behave with visitors.’

He heard her move around the bedroom, pictured her taking off clothes, pulling out the long earrings, reaching behind her head to unclip her bead necklace. Then she stood at the door in a long white cotton nightdress he’d never seen before.

‘I’ll be asleep before you come in,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

‘My fault. I shouldn’t have asked Taylor.’

He thought this was a crazy way to begin a relationship. They floated into each other’s lives when they were too exhausted to make sense. Ghosts passing in the white nights. Sarah would never have put up with it. She’d wanted more of his attention and his energy. Fran, surely, would tire of his preoccupation with work in the end. But then, as she’d explained, she had her own obsession too, with her art.

He most have dozed off because he didn’t hear Taylor’s car, only a tap at the door. Outside, the darkest of the night had passed. The grey light in the east showed the black silhouette of Raven’s Head. He filled a kettle and made coffee. They started talking in whispers. Perez set Bella’s photograph on the table.

‘See the masks,’ he said.

Taylor frowned. ‘So that was significant. A message?’

‘Perhaps. But who from? Booth, who wore it to hand out his flyers? Or the murderer?’

They considered this for a moment in silence, reached no conclusion.

‘Is that Jeremy Booth, do you think?’ Perez asked. ‘It looks like him to me and Bella seemed sure. I’d already checked dates with the management of the theatre ship and that was the summer he was here. I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to prove how they met unless she tells us. Perhaps she went to the show. They cater for a family audience. Roddy wasn’t staying with her then but she spent a lot of time with him. It’s the sort of thing a doting aunt would do, take her nephew to the theatre for a treat. And I can imagine her sweeping all the cast back with her to Biddista. For dinner or a few days at the end of the run.’ He thought of Lucy, the young actress. He could see that they would want to celebrate the end of a show. All those nerves. All that excitement. ‘And she told Fran that she hired the masks from the theatre company. Another connection.’

‘We can show the photo to the theatre management,’ Taylor said. ‘Perhaps they can identify the other people there. We can chase that up, confirm Booth’s presence.’

‘That’s definitely Wilding.’ Perez pointed to the dark-haired man. ‘He hasn’t changed as much as Booth.’

‘So Bella Sinclair’s been lying?’

Perez shrugged. ‘Or she’d genuinely forgotten. She didn’t have to tell Fran about that summer. Why would she if she has things to hide?’

‘He would remember though,’ Taylor said. ‘I can go along with Bella forgetting a house guest who turned up briefly with a load of other people. But to travel to Shetland and spend days in the company of an artist you admire… No way did that just slip out of Wilding’s mind.’

His voice rose. Perez imagined Cassie stumbling into the room, woken by the noise.

They continued the conversation outside, the food on the white bench between them, fresh mugs of coffee at their feet. It was still chill and they sat huddled in their coats.

‘So what happened that summer?’ Taylor demanded. ‘Why have two people died?’

‘There was a murder.’ Perez was quite certain about that. ‘The bones at the bottom of the Pit. It would be good if we could date them. Any chance, do you think?’

‘Not sure. We should get an ID eventually. A DNA match from a relative maybe. And the teeth will help.’

‘Oh I think I know who it was,’ Perez said. ‘Lawrence Thomson disappeared that summer. He told Bella he was leaving the islands, but he’s never been heard of since. If you listen to Kenny you’d think his big brother was a saint, but he had a record of fighting.’ He’d checked that too.

‘What are you thinking? Too much drink and a brawl that got out of hand and they tipped the body down the Pit? Then they all agreed to keep quiet about it?’

‘Perhaps.’ Perez could see that might have happened. It would be a heady mix. An unusually warm summer. The excitement of new and exotic strangers in the community. All the men showing off for Bella. The tribal hostility between incomer and outsider. Then a pact of silence.

‘So what’s changed? They’d got away with it. Even if those bones had been found now, people would have thought they’d been washed in from the sea. Some old dead sailor. Without the other deaths we wouldn’t have given them a thought.’

‘Perhaps someone got greedy,’ Perez said.

‘Blackmail?’

‘Maybe.’

‘I can see Jeremy Booth trying it on. He was a bit of a chancer. But again, why now? He’d always had money problems, but I’ve had a look at the company figures. It was solvent. Just. He’d recently found his daughter again. Why risk all that? And I can’t believe Roddy Sinclair was short of a few bob. He’d not need to resort to blackmail.’

‘Perhaps Wilding coming back triggered the series of events,’ Perez said. ‘His arrival’s the one thing that’s changed in Biddista recently.’

‘You’re right. And he was at the opening of the exhibition at the Herring House, when Booth played his stunt.’ He paused. ‘What was that about anyway? A warning? A threat? Did the flyer he was handing around talking about a death in the family refer to the poor sod we found in the pit? Only Lawrence wasn’t family, was he?’

‘Not quite.’ Perez paused. ‘Roddy’s father died later that summer. He was Bella’s brother. It would be a death in the family. But he had cancer. We know there was nothing suspicious about his death. We’ve seen where the body was buried in the graveyard just up the coast from the Herring House. My father was a kind of relative and went off Fair Isle to the funeral.’ He’d only just remembered that. His father in his black suit, flying out with Loganair. Some memories did stay hidden and it just took a trigger to resurrect them. He felt more at ease with Taylor than he had since he’d collected him from the plane in Sumburgh. Perhaps that’s why he said, out of the blue, ‘I was quite glad to see him go for a few days. It gave us a bit of peace. Strange how things were always calmer at home when he wasn’t around.’

‘My dad was an awkward old sod too.’ There was a moment of silence, of shared experience.

‘So what do we do now?’ Taylor stood up. It was four in the morning, yet Perez could see he was eager to be thumping on doors, shouting down phone lines, making things happen. But despite the flash of energy, it was obvious the man was so tired he could hardly stand.

‘We sleep,’ Perez said. ‘You can’t drive back to the hotel. Stay on the sofa. Fran won’t mind.’ He’d built a few bridges this evening. He and Fran understood each other better too. ‘Later we’ll talk to Wilding, find out why he lied to us.’

‘You talk to Wilding,’ Taylor said. ‘We don’t want to go in too heavy. That’s what you’re good at, making people believe you’re a friend. People like you.’

Not Wilding, Perez thought. He doesn’t like me. But he nodded. He was glad of the chance to talk to Wilding alone.