Red Bones

she snapped her mouth shut.

Perez left the subject alone. He thought he should defend Sandy’s mother, but really how much did he know about the woman, except that she was hospitable? He found the bickering between the cousins depressing. Suddenly he was back in Fair Isle, at a Sunday-school lesson in the hall, him a child of seven or eight, listening to a gentle, elderly woman talking about a love of money being the root of all evil. ‘The love of money, you see. Not the money itself. It’s when money takes over our lives that things start to go so badly wrong.’ Is that what’s happening here? he thought. It’s not the wealth itself that’s soured relationships between these two families. It’s the bitterness and envy that surrounds it.

‘So the lasses from the dig never came in here?’

‘No. Once we used to have grand parties and invite most of the island. We ’d push back the furniture; someone would start playing music. Grand times. Then the house would be full of young people. Ronald would bring in his friends from the High School and all the boys from the boats would come along with their wives and kiddies. Andrew was a great one with the accordion. There’d be songs and dancing. But Andrew can’t deal with big numbers of visitors these days. He finds it a strain just with the family.’

‘Of course.’ Perez helped himself to more coffee. ‘You must miss the old times.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You’d never guess how much.’

She looked down towards her son’s bungalow. Perez thought her head was full of fiddle music, memories of parties and laughter. Had she expected Anna to take on her role as hostess and party giver? Was she disappointed in the daughter-in-law who seemed more interested in building a business than having a good time?

‘Hattie and her boss went for a walk along the shore here yesterday afternoon,’ he said. ‘You have a great view from the house. Maybe you saw them?’

‘Andrew wasn’t so good yesterday. Sometimes he gets an idea in his head and he can’t let it go. He worries away at it and it drives him crazy. I had to call Ronald in to calm him down.’

‘What was it that troubled him?’

‘It was the accident with Mima. Something about the shooting took him back to when he was young. He’s a good few years older than me and he can remember Mima’s husband. Andrew’s father worked with Jerry Wilson building little inshore boats to go out to Norway on the Shetland Bus. The boats they made were used by the Norwegian resistance and agents in the field. It was a long time ago. Mima’s man died years ago, not so long after the war ended, when I was a very young bairn, so what could he have to do with the accident? But sometimes that’s the way Andrew’s mind works. Things that happened when he was a peerie boy seem more real than what went on yesterday.’

‘So you didn’t get the chance to look at the view of the shore? You won’t have noticed Hattie and Paul Berglund out here?’

She flashed him a smile. ‘Yesterday I didn’t get the chance to go to the toilet without Andrew standing at the bottom of the stairs and asking where I was. Ronald managed to calm him down a bit when he got here. He’s good with his father, more patient than I am.’

‘Perhaps you saw her later, when she was on her own.’

‘No,’ Jackie said. ‘I didn’t see her at all.’

‘But you saw the Fiscal come in this morning? I noticed you with the others.’

‘I saw the crowd gathering when I was upstairs making the bed. I went down to Setter to see what was going on. Pure nosiness. That was the first I heard the girl was dead. I couldn’t stay long. Andrew was in the house on his own.’ She looked up at him. ‘How did the lassie die?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said gently. ‘It’s not something I can discuss.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you can.’ She paused. ‘They’re saying it was suicide.’

‘Really, at this point we don’t know.’

‘What must her parents be going through?’ Jackie said. ‘We ’d do anything to protect our children but we can’t save them from themselves.’ She smiled at him. ‘Do you have children, inspector?’

He shook his head automatically. But surely I do. Cassie feels like my daughter. How would I feel if she was so desperate that she jumped into a hole in the ground and slit her wrists?

Chapter Twenty-seven

Sandy was surprised when Perez was at Sumburgh Airport to meet him. He’d left his car there and he could have driven north fine by himself. After a few beers and a meal in the hotel in London he’d slept like a baby until his alarm clock had woken him and in the morning the city hadn’t seemed quite so daunting or closed in.

It helped that he had something physical to bring back to Perez in the form of Hattie’s letters and the SIM card from her mother’s phone. He’d made some notes about the conversation too, but he didn’t trust himself much with words. At least he wasn’t coming back empty-handed.

In the plane he’d looked out for the first sight of Sumburgh Head and landing there he felt relief at being back safely without having messed up in any dramatic way. Then he saw Perez waiting for him in the terminal, leaning against the wall by the car rental desk, and he felt nervous all over again.

‘What’s happened?’ His first thought was that Gwen James had been on the phone to complain about him. Sandy wasn’t sure what he might have done wrong, but that had never stopped him getting into bother. Then he worried about his family.

‘Nothing.’ Perez grinned. ‘I was just curious to hear how you’d got on. I got a lift down from Val Turner. We had a meeting in Lerwick. She’s flying south for a day for a conference.’

‘What did you have to talk to her about?’

‘I wanted to ask her about these bones the girls have been digging up at Setter. Everyone’s assumed that they were hundreds of years old, but we don’t really know that’s the case. If they were more modern we’d look at the recent deaths in quite a different way. Three bodies in the same bit of land. Even the Fiscal would have to accept that was more than a coincidence.’

‘What did Val say? If the body was recent, surely there’d be more than a few bones left.’

‘I suppose so. It doesn’t make sense. It’s probably coincidence. It just seems odd. Both women had a connection with Setter and there’s evidence of another burial there too…’ His voice tailed off and he shrugged. ‘Take no notice. I’m probably making too much of it.’

Sandy thought Perez would never have talked to him like that a few months ago, never have taken him into his confidence. There was a moment of the same sort of panic he’d felt before setting off to London. How could he live up to these new expectations? ‘There were always strange stories about Setter,’ he said tentatively.

‘What sort of stories?’ Perez looked up sharply.

Now Sandy wished he’d kept his mouth shut because he didn’t really know, not the details. He half remembered tales of ghosts and the dead walking at night.

‘Some folk didn’t like to go out there after dark. Old folk. It’s all forgotten now.’

‘Would your mother know the stories?’

Sandy shrugged. Even if she did, she wouldn’t tell you. She’d be frightened of looking foolish. He changed the conversation. ‘So what did Val say about the bones?’

‘She thought they must be ancient. Another theory down the drain. But she’s fast-tracked them for testing and she’ll let me know as soon as she can.’

The airport was quiet and they sat drinking coffee at one of the tables outside the shop.

‘Have you read all the letters?’ Perez was watching an elderly couple in conversation with the guy at the check-in desk. Sandy followed his gaze. They were holding hands. Gross, he thought. At their age they should keep that sort of thing for their own home.

‘No. Only the most recent one.’ Of course, Sandy thought, I should have looked at the letters. Perez would have stayed up all night reading them, worrying at them. He wouldn’t have got pissed on expensive lager in the hotel bar and fallen into a drunken sleep. In the plane on the way home Sandy had read a glossy men’s magazine with a topless model on the cover; he hadn’t really given a thought to the case.