‘Is there anything you can tell me, Cedric? Anything I need to know about Mima Wilson and Setter? Anything strange been happening there?’
‘Not these days, Jimmy. Not for sixty years at least.’
‘What happened sixty years ago?’
‘These are old men’s tales. You don’t have time for these.’
‘Try me.’
Cedric paused, then he seemed to make up his mind to speak.
‘Three men from Whalsay were involved in the Shetland Bus.’ He looked at Perez to check the inspector knew what he was talking about. ‘You know it was mostly the Scalloway men that kept the boats repaired and in good order to put to sea. But when Howarth, the naval officer in charge, decided the Norwegians needed small boats to be dropped off with the agents, so they could make their own way up the fjords, he came to Whalsay to get them made. It was skilled work; the inshore boats had to pass for Norwegian. Men’s lives depended on it. There was young Jerry Wilson, who was just a schoolboy, too young to get called up into the services but the best sailor of his generation. My father, who was called Cedric Irvine like me. And old Andy Clouston, the father of Andrew.’
‘So Mima’s husband, your father and Ronald’s grandfather?’
‘Exactly that. Though Jerry hadn’t married Mima then. They were walking out together but too young to wed.’
Perez said nothing. Cedric would want to tell the story in his own way and Perez had told him he’d have time to listen. He tried not to think of the nurse’s phone number scribbled on the pad in his room or to speculate about what he might have to say.
Cedric began to talk. ‘There have always been tales about Setter. There were odd kind of bumps in the land where the dead lass started digging. Crops never did well there. The bairns thought it was a trowie place and even the grown-ups believed Mima was something of a witch.’ He paused, closed the flaps of skin over his eyes.
‘What did that have to do with the Shetland Bus?’
‘They say there’s a Norwegian man buried there. That was the story I grew up with, though my father always denied it. An agent who’d passed information to the Germans and got some of his people killed.’
‘And the Whalsay men meted out their own form of justice?’
‘That’s what people say. One of the men that died was a close friend of Jerry Wilson. He was in a Whalsay- built boat when he was captured. My father would never speak of it, but there were rumours when I was growing up.’ Only now Cedric opened his eyes very slowly. He paused a moment before continuing. ‘I did hear they found some bones at Setter. The piece of a skull, I heard, and others besides.’
‘Those were old bones,’ Perez said. ‘Older than that.’
‘There you are then,’ Cedric said, suddenly becoming jovial. ‘Like I said, they were all just stories.’
‘How did Jerry Wilson die?’ Perez asked.
‘At sea. A fishing accident. He was taken in a freak storm. Mima was heartbroken. They’d been sweethearts since they were children.’ Cedric paused again. ‘She was wild even as a child. Setter was her house, not Jerry’s. She lived there as a bairn with her grandmother. Her parents both died when she was quite young. Jerry moved in with them when they got married, and when the grandmother passed away they had the place to themselves. It caused some jealousy. Two young people with their own croft. Mima was never liked on the island, especially by the women. She never made any effort to fit in. Things were different then: folk had to work together to make any sort of living. The men went out to the fishing and the women were left to do most of the work on the crofts. Mima was strong and fit – she could cast peat and scythe hay as well as a man – but she was never what they’d call now a team player. If she didn’t feel much like working she’d stay at home in front of the fire.’ Cedric stopped to pour himself a cup of coffee from the pot on Perez’s table.
‘Then when Jerry was drowned and she was single again she was a threat to all the island wives. She was a bonny young girl with her own house and her own land and they were scared their husbands would run off with her. She was still in love with Jerry though – with his memory, at least. She had plenty of offers but she never married again. She enjoyed her independence too much for that.’
‘I’m surprised so many people turned out for her funeral if she wasn’t so well liked.’
‘Oh,’ Cedric said, ‘folk wouldn’t want to miss it. She was a kind of celebrity in her day. And the young ones all liked her. It was her own generation who had the problems.’
‘How did she get on with Evelyn?’
Cedric shot him a sharp look under the hooded lids. ‘Let’s say they never exactly saw eye to eye. After Jerry was drowned Joseph was all Mima had. She used to call him her peerie man. She wasn’t going to take kindly to anyone who stole him away. Mima should have married again. She didn’t have the temperament of a single woman.’
‘Were you one of the ones to propose to her?’
Cedric laughed again. ‘I knew better than to ask her. She’d have thought I was a poor thing after her Jerry. Everyone in Shetland knew he was a handsome man.’
‘Do you think the things that happened all those years ago could have any bearing on Mima’s death?’
‘Of course not,’ Cedric said. ‘How could it?’
Perez looked at him, not sure if he really meant what he said, but Cedric turned away and walked back into the kitchen.
Mark Evans, the psychiatric nurse, said he needed to be sure Perez was who he claimed to be: ‘Mrs James is in the public eye. I don’t want her hassled by a load of reporters. You do understand?’ He had a soft, slow voice and an accent unfamiliar to Perez. Rural. Perez wondered if he’d grown up on a farm; that would give them a point of contact, but he didn’t feel he could ask. Instead he gave the man the number of the police station in Lerwick. ‘They’ll confirm my mobile number.’
Then he waited, looking out over the harbour, for his phone to ring again. After the deserted feeling of the day before, the place was back to normal. There were cars queuing for the ferry and a couple of fishermen were getting a small trawler ready to go out to sea. He supposed Jerry Wilson’s Norwegian friend had sailed a boat of a similar size to Norway.
His phone rang, interrupting daydreams of wartime adventures, grey seas and huge waves. He’d never been physically brave and he didn’t think he’d have had the courage to volunteer for the Shetland Bus.
‘I was so sorry to hear that Hattie’s dead,’ Mark said. ‘I remember her well.’
‘I wondered if she’d been in touch with you recently, but Mrs James said not.’
‘No. She might have contacted another professional though. Her GP should have records. Even when she was ill she was unusually self-aware. I think she’d have realized she needed help. If she was so desperate that she committed suicide.’
Perez picked up an uncertainty in his voice. ‘Were you surprised to hear she’d killed herself?’
‘I was. She was a very intelligent young woman. I thought she’d taken on board the strategies for coping with her depression. And she understood that medication would help her. She never refused to take it. Was there an event that distressed her, something very serious that provoked the suicide attempt?’
‘Not that we know.’ Perez paused. ‘We’ve not ruled out the possibility of other causes of death. I’m looking into the matter for the Procurator Fiscal. I’m grateful that you’ve taken the time to talk to me.’
‘I thought you should know that four years ago Hattie was a victim of a criminal assault,’ Evans said. ‘It might not be relevant, but it seemed important to tell you.’
‘We have no record of that.’ As he spoke Perez hoped that was true. They had checked Hattie’s name against the criminal records. That was standard procedure but if she’d been a victim would that fact have come to light?
‘She never reported the matter to the police,’ Evans said.
‘Why not?’
‘A number of reasons. She’d suffered a severe bout of depression a couple of years earlier. There had been occasions of psychosis. She didn’t think she’d be believed. Perhaps she even felt she was responsible. She wouldn’t even talk to her mother about it.’
