Red Bones

Trust. We need the money right enough, and I think they would give us a decent price. The coins the lasses found would give the place an even greater value, don’t you think?’

‘Don’t you listen to a word I say, woman? Setter is not for sale.’ It came out as a cry. Not so loud but much louder than he usually spoke, the words passionate and bitter. The sound was so shocking that the room fell silent. Even the knitting stopped. Looking around the room, Sandy saw Michael in the door, frozen and horrified.

Sandy didn’t know what to do. Occasionally his father teased his mother about her projects and her meddling into other folks’ business but he never raised his voice to her. Sandy hated what was going on in his family. For the first time he began to think he would find it hard to forgive Ronald for killing Mima. He hoped Perez was right and someone else was responsible. Someone he would feel it was OK to hate.

In the end it was his mother who put things right. She set down her knitting and went up to his father and put her arms around his shoulder. ‘Oh my dear boy,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

Over Joseph’s head she motioned to her sons to leave them alone. Sandy thought his father was crying.

Embarrassed, Sandy and Michael stood in the kitchen. Sandy longed to get out of the house. ‘You’ve not been into Setter since you got back,’ he said. ‘Would you like to come? See the old place?’

‘Aye. Why not? Amelia’s asleep on our bed. She finds this sort of family occasion exhausting.’

Sandy bit his tongue. Another sign of his greater maturity.

They walked to Setter despite the wind, which made it feel like winter again, and the sudden showers of rain. Sandy felt more awake than he had all day. The range was still alight in the kitchen. Sandy brought in peat from the pile outside and set it beside the Rayburn to dry for later. Without thinking he poured a dram for both of them.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Mother tells me you don’t drink any more.’

Michael smiled. ‘Oh, don’t believe everything she tells you. I make an exception for special occasions.’

‘It seems so strange in here without Mima, don’t you think so?’

‘When I was growing up,’ Michael said, ‘there was one time when I believed Mima was a trowie wife. Did you ever hear those stories?’

Sandy shook his head. The trows were part of Shetland folklore, but he’d never believed in them, even when he was a peerie boy.

‘Maybe it was before you started school. It was one of those crazes that start suddenly then disappear. They said she was a trowie wife and she’d put a spell on her husband and made him die. For a couple of weeks I wouldn’t come here on my own. Then the kids had something else to talk about and I forgot all about it. Until now.’

‘Are you saying it was a trow killed Mima?’

Michael laughed out loud. ‘A trow named Ronald? I think he’s kind of large, don’t you?’

Sandy was tempted to tell Michael that maybe Ronald wasn’t the culprit but things between the men seemed easy now and he didn’t want to spoil that.

‘Mother’s right about Setter,’ Michael said. ‘Father should sell it.’

‘He’ll never do that.’

‘I don’t think he’ll have any choice,’ Michael said. ‘How much do you think he makes from the crofting? I doubt Duncan Hunter gave him a pension plan and he’s not getting any younger.’

‘They manage OK.’

‘Do they? I don’t understand how.’

They sat for a while in silence. Sandy offered Michael another dram but he shook his head. ‘I should get back and see how Amelia’s getting on.’

Sandy would have liked to ask about Amelia. What possessed you to take up with a woman like that? But what good would it do? They were married with a bairn. Michael would have to make the best of it. ‘Will you find your way back?’ Michael laughed again. ‘Oh, I think I’ll manage.’ The first thing Sandy did when he was on his own was to change out of his suit. Then he began to think of what Michael had said about their parents’ income and the implications of it. It kept him up late into the night. Once he got up to make coffee, but the rest of the time he sat in Mima’s chair, thinking. He would have liked to discuss his thoughts with Perez. Perez would likely reassure him that he wasn’t on the right track at all. He was Sandy Wilson and he always got things wrong. But Perez must have thought Sandy would want to be on his own on the evening of his grandmother’s funeral and he never turned up.

Chapter Thirty-one

Perez woke the next morning to the sound of his phone ringing. Again his first thought was of Fran and Cassie and their safety in London. The voice was English and female, and at first he didn’t recognize it. Suddenly he lost control of his imagination; gothic images of spilled blood and smashed limbs flashed into his head. The woman was a nurse in accident and emergency, he thought. Or a cop, specially trained to break bad news.

‘Inspector Perez, I’m sorry to call you so early.’

He struggled to sit upright in the bed and to clear the nightmare pictures from his mind.

‘This is Gwen James, inspector. You asked me to contact you if Hattie had been in touch with the psychiatric nurse who looked after her when she was ill at university.’

At last he felt he had a grip on the conversation. ‘And had she?’

‘Not recently, I’m afraid, but the nurse thought you’d find it interesting to talk to him. He didn’t feel he could discuss Hattie’s case with me.’ Her voice was tight, clipped. Perez thought she’d had a battle over that. She’d demanded information and the nurse had stood up to her. A brave man.

She waited impatiently while he found paper and pencil to write down the man’s number. The bedroom was cold. He’d found it stuffy and airless after his discussion with Berglund the night before and had switched the heating off. Shivering, he got back into bed to complete the call. Despite her apparent impatience, in the end Gwen was reluctant to end the conversation.

‘Did you find Hattie’s letters useful, inspector?’

‘Thank you. Very. We will get them back to you as soon as we can.’

‘When you have news about the circumstances of Hattie’s death, you will tell me?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course.’ He switched off the phone before she could ask any more questions.

It was too early to contact the nurse. He’d wait at least until nine o’clock. In the dining room Jean was just laying the tables for breakfast. ‘Could you not sleep?’ she said as she snipped the top from a carton of juice and poured it into a jug. He wondered when she had the chance to rest. She was still behind the bar when the last customer left at night and the place always looked clean in the morning. ‘Cedric is still in his bed. He stayed up last night drinking to Mima. He was always very fond of her.’

‘Did he ever go to visit her at Setter?’

‘Aye, every Thursday afternoon. To talk over old times, he said. To flirt, more like. Mima was a dreadful old flirt.’ She hurried away to make his coffee.

Cedric appeared just as Perez was finishing the meal. He looked bleary-eyed and grey.

‘Paul Berglund didn’t go out on the early ferry, did he?’ Perez asked. He supposed he’d finished with the academic, for the moment at least, but he didn’t want the man slinking away without his knowing.

‘No, he’ll be down later, I’m sure. He doesn’t usually get up so early.’

‘Did Mima have a good send-off?’

‘I suppose she did. I didn’t stay long at Utra. All those people sitting round saying fine things about her. They had little enough good to say about her when she was alive. I came back here to have a few drams to her memory in peace. I’ll miss her.’ Cedric looked up at Perez. The flesh around his eyes was soft and creased like folded suede. ‘It seems a strange thing, two bodies on an island this size. What are you doing here, Jimmy? What’s going on?’

Three bodies, Perez thought. There are the bones they found on Setter too.

‘I’m working for the Fiscal, enquiring on her behalf into the sudden death of Hattie James.’

‘Aye, right.’