but it’ll be about persuading the Trust to buy the house. If the sale goes ahead, they’ll be digging up all over the land, maybe even knocking down Mima’s house to put up some sort of replica. And my father just says, “Fine, go ahead.”’
‘What are you worried about, Sandy? I don’t really see the problem. It’s your parents’ house now. Their decision.’
‘I want to know why he changed his mind.’ It came out as a shout, so loud that Perez thought the neighbours would hear through the wall. ‘He’s not a man to change his mind.’
Perez sat still and waited for the rest.
‘Someone’s put pressure on him,’ Sandy said. His voice was quieter but still intense.
‘Your mother, maybe. She’s a woman used to getting her own way. Nothing sinister in that. You know how excited she is about the history.’
‘Not my mother. She’s all bluster and talk, but he takes the decisions in the house.’
‘What then?’
‘Blackmail,’ Sandy said. ‘I wondered if that could be it. He needs the money to pay someone off.’ He looked at Perez, desperate to be told that it was a crazy idea. He was Sandy Wilson and he got everything wrong.
But Perez didn’t speak for a moment. He was considering the possibility seriously. The scenario he’d dreamed up to explain the Whalsay deaths didn’t involve blackmail, but perhaps it could fit in with the facts. At this point anything was possible.
‘What might Joseph have done that he could be blackmailed? You’re not saying he killed Mima?’
‘No!’ Sandy said immediately. ‘Not that. Not deliberately.’ He paused. ‘I’ve been going over and over it in my head. Wild ideas. Just churning round and round and making no sense at all. I thought the drink would give me some peace from it.’
‘Let’s look at them then. The wild ideas.’
‘My father could have killed Mima by accident. A mistake. Hattie saw him and so he killed her too. You said yourself he was at Setter the night she died.’
‘But he was in his house the whole of the evening of Mima’s death, watching television. Your mother confirmed it.’
‘Of course she did. She’d lie for us all.’
Perez smiled. ‘So she would. What’s the next wild idea?’
‘Could the killer have mistaken Mima for Hattie? They were both small and slight and Mima was wearing Hattie’s coat. Mima was out in the field next to the dig – Hattie would have had more reason to be there.’
‘It’s something I’ve thought about,’ Perez said. ‘But what reason could your father have for killing Hattie?’
‘None at all. He hardly knew her. Another crazy idea.’
‘Pretty crazy.’ But Perez thought Sandy wasn’t doing badly. The ideas the man had come up with had floated around in his head too. ‘Anything else?’
‘Nah,’ Sandy said. ‘That was about as far as I got.’ He gave a self-deprecating grin. ‘Not much of a detective, huh? Maybe I should give up policing and take up crofting after all.’
‘I think perhaps you’re overreacting about the sale of your grandmother’s home. Hardly surprising. You were very fond of her.’
‘Things aren’t right at home,’ Sandy said suddenly. ‘I hate it.’
‘Joseph and Evelyn are under a lot of strain. Things will sort themselves out when this is all over.’
‘Will it ever all be over?’ Sandy was almost sober now, but gloomy. ‘I’m not sure how anyone on Whalsay will cope if we don’t find out what happened.’
‘They’ll cope if they have to,’ Perez said. He thought the islanders had suffered worse than this. The fracturing of a community during the fifteenth century. The huge storm that had killed half the male population of Whalsay at the end of the nineteenth century, when boats out to the fishing had capsized under freak waves. The murder of the young Norwegian from the Shetland Bus during the war. ‘But I want to know. Not for them but for me.’ He looked at Sandy. ‘What are your plans for the rest of the night?’
Sandy shrugged. ‘I was going to stay in town but I’ll only carry on drinking. Maybe I’ll get home.’
‘It’s still early. We’ll get a ferry. I’ll give you a lift back.’ Perez looked at the man. ‘That is if you’re sure you’re OK to go home?’
‘Aye,’ Sandy said. ‘You’re right. I’ve been a fool. My father’s not a murderer.’
Perez was going to say Sandy hadn’t been a fool at all, but that wasn’t what the man wanted to hear.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Sandy stumbled down the road towards Setter. Perez had offered to take him right up to the house, but Sandy thought he’d put his boss out quite enough tonight. He’d already made a fool of himself. It was a dark, damp night, much like the one when he’d found Mima. He ignored the picture of the woman’s body, hardly more than a pile of cloth-covered bones lying in the rain, that forced its way into his head, tried to concentrate instead on avoiding the pot-holes and not falling flat on his face in the mud.
As he rounded the bend in the track he saw there was a light in the house. Had he left it on? He didn’t see that he could have done: it had been early afternoon when he’d gone down the island to the Pier House. And this wasn’t the white glow of the strip light in Mima’s kitchen, with its plastic case greasy and filled with dead flies. This was flickering and red.
Sandy broke into a run and he was already wheezing when he got to the house. He opened the door and the heat hit him, scorching his face. There was thick smoke that stung his eyes and made him choke. He tried to push his brain into gear, to remember the training he’d been given in fighting fire. The blaze had started in the kitchen and still hadn’t taken hold of the rest of the house. It was licking up the paint on the cupboards and the wooden panels under the window were alight. There was a towel on the table and he threw it over the flame on the cupboard, smothering the fire, hitting out the air from it. He filled the washing-up bowl with water and threw it over the flames by the window. There was a hissing, but the wood was still burning. He filled the bowl again. This time the fire was doused. He was left heaving for breath, his heart pounding.
He heard a nose outside. A strange kind of cry, like an animal in pain. He stood at the door and looked out. Anger stopped him feeling frightened. Anger and stupidity.
‘Who is it?’ he yelled. ‘What the fuck are you doing out there?’ He wanted to hit someone, to smash in the face whoever had desecrated his grandmother’s home.
A figure moved out of the shadow of the cowshed. His father stood in front of him. He looked small and old. For the first time Sandy saw how like Mima Joseph was physically. The same small frame and wiry strength.
‘Did you see him?’ Sandy demanded. ‘Did you see who did this?’
Joseph didn’t speak.
‘You stay here,’ Sandy said. ‘The fire hasn’t long started and there wasn’t a car. I might catch him.’
‘It was me.’
Something in his father’s voice stopped Sandy short. He’d started to move down the track, but now he turned back.
‘What are you saying?’ Sandy was still wearing his jacket and felt bulky, huge even, looking out at his father.
‘I set fire to your grandmother’s house.’
They stared at each other. Sandy knew he should make sense of this, but he couldn’t. Even when he was sober as a judge he would never make sense of it. The drizzle had stopped and there was a faint fat moon showing through the mist.
‘I don’t want to go inside,’ Sandy said. ‘Not with the kitchen the way it is.’ He walked round to the back of the house, past the dig to the dyke looking over the loch. The moonlight was reflected on the water. He didn’t look behind him but he knew his father was following. They leaned against the dyke to talk, not looking at each other.
Sandy had questioned suspects in his time. It was a part of the job he enjoyed. When he was taking statements from offenders or witnesses he was the boss, in control. It wasn’t like that for much of his life. Now he
