White Nights

In the main bedroom there were signs that he’d left very quickly. One of the drawers was open and clothes spilled out. The bed was unmade, though she thought that didn’t mean much. She’d never yet met a man who made a bed when he got up. It was hard to judge how much he’d packed. She looked in the wardrobe. His favourite black linen jacket, the one he thought made him look cool, even when it was crumpled and grubby, was missing. The small suitcase he used when he went for overnight trips to check on a performance was there, propped against the wall in a corner. She didn’t see a bigger bag. Did that mean he’d been planning to be away for longer all the time? That he hadn’t told her because he thought she’d refuse to take charge while he was swanning off on holiday? Too right, she thought. What sort of mug do you think I am?

Perhaps she should phone the Arts Council officer who was supervising her placement. Drop Jeremy Booth right in the shit. But she knew she wouldn’t do it. She’d developed an affection for the man. He made her laugh. But when he finally got home, he’d owe her. She’d stand over him in his office and dictate the report she wanted, wait until he’d signed it and post it off herself.

The small bedroom was at the back of the cottage. It had a view of the yard and the dustbin, then to the river and the bigger houses beyond, their trees and gardens. It was set up like an office with a desk and PC, a filing cabinet and bookcase. On the wall was a cork pin-board. It had notes about rehearsals, things-to-do lists, scraps of reviews cut from small regional newspapers, a few faded photos which looked as if they’d travelled with him.

One was of a youngish man. She thought it must be of Jeremy, though it was hard to tell. The man in the photograph had hair and a beard. He was wearing a jersey and jeans. She couldn’t imagine Jeremy looking so casual. But the features were the same, the long straight nose, the fine cheekbones. He was sitting on an upturned boat on a beach. The second photograph was of an older man, wearing navy overalls. He had crinkly grey hair and he was beaming into the camera. He stood between a small boy and a pretty young woman with a serious face. Then the same woman with a man a little older, who stood with his arm around her shoulder.

On the way downstairs, Martha was shocked by the sound of the phone ringing. She found it on the living- room wall, picked it up before the answerphone cut in.

‘Hello. Jeremy Booth’s phone.’

There was a silence.

‘Hello?’

‘Is Jeremy there?’ A young woman’s voice.

‘No, I’m sorry, he’s away at the moment.’

The phone went dead.

Chapter Fourteen

When Jimmy Perez woke the next morning it was still to thick fog. His house was in Lerwick, close to the pier. It backed on to the sea and the outside walls were green to the high-tide mark. The fog made the light different. There was no reflection from the water; it was like waking in winter. His first thought was of Fran and the second was of the investigation.

He’d wanted to visit Fran the night before, but it had been late by the time he’d finished work. He’d phoned to explain, had been too eager in his apologies, he realized now, had assumed too much. Perhaps she’d had no expectations of a visit. She was from the south, sophisticated. There, they would do things differently. He looked at the clock by the bed. Seven: she would be awake now. Her daughter was an early riser. Fran had laughed about that, said she had fond memories of life before motherhood, long lie-ins with the Sunday papers, coffee and croissants which left crumbs in the bed. The memories of his youth had been very different. His parents had always found work for him on the Fair Isle croft. He thought it would be good to lie in with Fran on the Sunday mornings when Cassie was with her father. He would like to take her breakfast in bed.

He put the kettle on for coffee and went into the shower. Back in the kitchen, which was as narrow as a ship’s galley, he switched on the radio. A blast of music from SIBC, then a five-minute news slot and the first report of the stranger’s death.

‘A tourist was found dead in suspicious circumstances yesterday in Biddista. The police are anxious to identify him.’ Then a brief description and a request that anyone who might recognize the dead man should phone the incident room.

It struck him that the tone would be very different if the dead man were a Shetlander. The fact that he was described immediately as a tourist took any sense of panic from the news. It was as if the reporter was describing an incident that had occurred elsewhere. A visitor’s death was almost a source of entertainment.

While he made coffee and stuck two slices of bread into the toaster he listened for the weather forecast. The fog should clear around midday. Perhaps Taylor and his team from Inverness would get in after all today on the plane. Taylor would be pleased. Thirteen hours on the ferry would be purgatory to him. He would be like a tiger caged for transport. Perez imagined him, lying straight and stiff on the bunk in the dark cabin, trying to relax and to sleep. When they’d worked together previously he’d thought Taylor the most restless man he’d ever met.

As he left home, he saw that the cruise ship was still moored at the dock. Usually the huge liners spent very little time in Lerwick. The passengers disembarked, caught the complimentary bus to the town centre, had a trip round the tourist and information centre, the Shetland Times bookshop and the gift shops, then went back to the luxury of the ship. Sometimes he would bump into a group of them in Commercial Street. Most were from the United States. They stared around them at the tiny shops, the passing people. He felt like an animal in a zoo.

In his office he phoned the harbourmaster. When was the Island Belle due to sail? Could Patrick arrange a visit for him before she left?

‘You’ll have to be quick. She’s scheduled to leave on the midday tide.’

‘I’ll go now,’ Perez said. ‘As soon as you can fix it.’

He drove down to Morrison’s Dock, parked facing the water and was distracted for a moment by a seal lifting its soft face out of the water. When he was a boy he’d used the Fair Isle seals for target practice with his father’s shotgun until his mother had found out.

‘What harm did they ever do to you?’

‘William says they take fish and that’s why the catch is so poor now.’ William was an older lad, at that time the fount of all wisdom and knowledge.

‘Nonsense. The catch is so poor because we’ve been over-fishing the North Sea for years.’ His mother, who had been a member of Greenpeace when she was a student, still had theories about the environment that his father found dangerous and extreme.

To be honest, Jimmy had been glad of an excuse not to shoot the seals any more. He’d hated the slick of blood which floated on the water when he’d hit the target. Sometimes he’d tried to miss, but William’s ridicule had been hard to face too.

Patrick must have warned the cruise ship that he was coming because it seemed they were expecting him. He was shown at once into the purser’s office. After The Good Shepherd, the mail boat which ran from Grutness to Fair Isle, the NorthLink ferries had seemed enormous. But this was monstrous, a towering white skyscraper of a ship, taller than any of the buildings in Lerwick. The purser was a lowland Scot. It seemed Shetland wasn’t his favourite stop on the tour.

‘You’ll have heard that a tourist was killed yesterday in Biddista?’ Perez asked him.

‘No.’ Implying, Why would I care?

‘Have any of your passengers explored the island that far west?’

‘Look, inspector, we don’t usually spend this long in Lerwick. It’s a bit of a dead loss. They come expecting something scenic and it’s not exactly pretty, is it? Grey little houses. We do the seabird tour and the silverworks then everyone heaves a sigh of relief and we’re off to Orkney. St Magnus’ Cathedral – now that is a building worth taking a photo of. And the Highland Park distillery.’ The thought of malt whisky seemed to cheer him immediately.

Perez had an urge to defend Shetland, to say it had a beauty of its own, that there were visitors who loved the low horizons and big skies, the huge bare hills, but he could tell that the purser would never be a convert. ‘Why