White Nights

his own way.

‘You see why I believed it could be suicide,’ Perez said. ‘Yet I was never quite convinced.’

‘Were you convinced that the guy had really lost his memory?’

Perez considered. Taylor waited. He wanted to shout, It’s a simple question, man. How long does it take to come up with an answer? He could feel the tension of waiting constricting his breathing.

‘No,’ Perez said at last. ‘I never really was.’ And that was good enough for Taylor. Perez might irritate the shit out of him, but he was the best judge of character Taylor knew. He watched men like David Attenborough watched animals.

‘Why pretend?’

This time the answer came more quickly. ‘I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it since I found the body. Maybe he wanted to spoil the opening of the exhibition. But why would a stranger from England want to do that? What could he have against Bella Sinclair or Fran Hunter?’

Taylor recognized the name. ‘Isn’t that the same woman who found Catherine Ross?’

‘Aye.’ There was a small flutter of the eyelids. ‘That’s why I was there. She’s become a sort of friend.’

Anyone else and Taylor would have taken the piss. What sort of friend would that be, then? The sort you sleep with? But he didn’t want to offend Perez. No way could he work here without the man on his side.

Perez changed the subject. ‘It’s possible that the victim tried to stop the opening from happening at all. Someone went round Lerwick giving out flyers which said it had been cancelled. He was wearing a mask like a clown.’

‘But neither of the artists recognized him?’

A silence. ‘So they say.’ Another pause. ‘The flyer said the opening had been cancelled because of a death in the family. Almost as if he’d been predicting his own murder.’

Lerwick wasn’t as grey as Taylor had remembered, but the last time he’d been here had been midwinter. Today the sun was shining and the people weren’t huddled into heavy coats. The light was reflected from the water. Moored in the harbour was a boat kitted out like a theatre. It had a red tarpaulin banner slung over the side advertising the most recent production.

He nodded towards it. ‘That’s new.’

‘No,’ Perez said. ‘It’s been coming for as long as I can remember, but it’s only here in the summer. It travels around the islands. The visitors like it.’

‘God,’ Taylor said. ‘I’m starving.’ He’d had a horrible bun on the plane and it seemed ages ago.

They bought fish and chips and ate from greasy paper looking over the water. Taylor recalled it wasn’t far from here to where Perez lived.

‘You still in the same place?’

Perez nodded.

‘You haven’t moved in with the gorgeous Ms Hunter yet then?’ He knew it was none of his business but he couldn’t help himself. Curiosity, a vital character trait for a cop. He knew he was a tiny bit jealous too.

Perez finished the last of his chips. ‘It’s not like that.’

Taylor was going to ask what it was like, but the business of the dead stranger was more important.

‘Who do you think killed the victim? Someone local?’

‘There are people in Biddista who have things to hide,’ Perez said at last. ‘But it doesn’t have to be murder.’

Taylor nodded. He understood that. The police turn up at the door and there’s always something to feel guilty about. Speeding. Defrauding the taxman. Having it off with the wife’s best friend. The detective picks up the guilt. It’s easy to believe that it’s to do with the current case.

Perez shook out the chip paper and a couple of herring gulls came squawking at his feet. ‘I need to make a call,’ he said. ‘Meant to do it earlier. Kenny Thomson, the guy who found the body, left a message for me.’

He walked a few feet away from Taylor and stood to his back to him, so he couldn’t hear the conversation. He wasn’t sure he’d have understood it anyway. When Perez lapsed into dialect he could have been talking another bloody language. He remembered how he’d felt when his mother had left them and moved to north Wales. There’d been an access order which his father had kicked off about. The arrangement hadn’t lasted long but for nearly a year Taylor had been sent to spend a weekend with her every month. Walking into a shop, everyone staring, everyone speaking a language he couldn’t understand. He knew they’d been talking about him. And about his mother setting up home with the respectable chapel man. Leading him astray. Hussey. A word stolen from the English.

Perez had switched off the phone and was waiting for Taylor to ask about the call.

‘Well?’ Taylor asked.

‘He wants another look at the body. Imagination going into overdrive if you ask me. He thinks it could be his brother.’ Perez paused, corrected himself. He always liked to get things right. ‘No, he doesn’t think it could be him. Wants to check that it isn’t.’

‘Wouldn’t he know his own brother?’

‘He left to go travelling. Hasn’t been back in years. And Kenny didn’t get a brilliant view. Only side on, and then there was the mask covering the face. Like I said, it’s just a matter of ruling him out. It’s obviously been bothering him.’

‘I thought you said the victim was English.’

Perez shrugged. ‘People’s voices change. They put on an act.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘That he can come and have a look this afternoon, before the body goes south on the ferry for the postmortem.’

Taylor felt a thrill of excitement. This was his first chance to engage with the case. He’d never been a hands- off manager.

‘I’ll be there too,’ he said. ‘You don’t mind?’

Perez didn’t answer. He knew it wasn’t really a question.

Chapter Seventeen

Kenny Thomson arrived at the undertakers’ before they were ready to let him see the body. There were two men to greet him: Jimmy Perez, who always reminded him of that summer he’d spent on Fair Isle, and the big Englishman he’d seen get out of the car at the jetty.

They sat in a dark little waiting room. In one corner there was a bowl of silk flowers. There was a heavy, kind of floral smell in the air. It couldn’t come from the silk, of course, and he wondered what was making it.

He was thinking about that when Perez introduced the English detective, so he still wasn’t sure of his name and what his rank was.

‘What’s all this about then, Kenny?’ Perez said. He had a quiet, hesitant way of talking, thoughtful, as if he was weighing every word before he spoke.

‘It’s probably nothing,’ Kenny said. ‘But I thought, Better to check. Better than lying awake at night wondering.’

‘Tell us a bit about Lawrence,’ Perez said. ‘Just while we’re waiting.’

And Kenny found himself talking about Lawrence, the older brother who was bigger and stronger than him, who left Kenny in his shadow. ‘He was the sort of man who’d walk into a room and everyone would start smiling,’ he said. ‘When he went I missed him. Everyone in Biddista missed him.’

‘Why did he go? Was it for work?’

Then Kenny saw that they didn’t want to know that Lawrence lit up the room when he walked in. What they wanted was facts and dates. But he had more than that to tell them.

‘He had work here,’ he said. ‘Plenty of work. He wasn’t so interested in the croft. He didn’t really have the