Norwegian’s body would be found. Then it would all come out. They’d identify him and remember the money, the kroner sealed in the tobacco tins.’
‘And you wouldn’t be the rich Cloustons of Whalsay any more.’
Ronald looked away, and continued to speak. ‘Hattie heard Mima talk to Andrew on the phone. She heard them arguing. It never occurred to her that I had anything to do with the old lady’s murder. I’d been to the university in the south. I’d been civilized by my contact with the academics, I read books and knew about history. She bumped into me after she’d had her meeting with her boss: “Can we talk Ronald? I wanted to let you know that I’ve phoned Inspector Perez. I know your father’s an ill man, but really I think he might have shot Mima. I just wanted to warn you…”’
‘Give me the details, please. How did you kill her?’
‘I walked with her back to Setter. I pretended to be interested. “So you think there might be a more recent body buried here alongside the ancient one?” Then she turned away from me and I hit her on the back of the head with a round smooth stone.’
‘Not hard enough to break the skin,’ Perez said. ‘But it knocked her out. I understand. That gave you the opportunity to fake her suicide. Why did you slit her wrists with Paul Berglund’s knife?’
‘Is that who it belonged to?’ Ronald looked back at the inspector, surprised. ‘I didn’t realize. It was there and it did the job.’
The matter-of-fact words made Perez feel suddenly sick. He leaned forward towards the man again. ‘How could you do it to her?’
Ronald considered, then took the question literally. ‘I’m used to blood. Gutting fish. Killing beasts. The girl was unconscious by then. It had to look like suicide.’ He was struck by a sudden thought. ‘You got Cedric to phone me tonight. And you made up the story of a witness. Anna told me about that when she got home from the party. Cedric was never there at all that afternoon.’
‘Two people were dead,’ he said. ‘We had to make it stop.’
He stood up and looked again out of the window. It was a beautiful morning. There was sunlight on the water.
Chapter Forty-five
That evening they met up at Fran’s house in Ravens-wick. She’d cooked a meal and when it was over they sat around the table in the kitchen, drinking wine and talking. The dishes had been cleared but there was still a plate of cheese and a bowl of red grapes, like a still-life study, in front of them. It was late because Fran had wanted to get Cassie to bed first. Perez could tell that Sandy was nervous. This wasn’t the sort of social event he usually went in for. He drank less than they did, although Perez had already suggested he could get a taxi back to town. He didn’t want to make a fool of himself. All the same he was pleased to have been invited. Perez could tell that.
‘How’s Anna?’ Fran asked as soon as Sandy came in. He had stayed the night in Whalsay, taking statements.
‘In shock, of course. She’s going south to stay with her parents until she’s come to terms with what’s happened. She talks about coming back to Shetland but I don’t think she ever will. She tried very hard to fit in, but she was never really cut out to be a Shetland wife.’
‘What about me?’ Fran asked with a little laugh. ‘Am I cut out to be a Shetland wife?’
Perez knew what she was doing. Sandy had believed Ronald to be his friend. He still saw the Whalsay deaths as a personal betrayal. Fran was trying to lighten the mood. There was no more to her question than that.
‘Oh, you!’ Sandy said. ‘You’d fit in fine wherever you lived.’
‘Will Andrew and Jackie be charged?’ Fran reached out for a grape, cut another wedge of cheese.
‘Not Jackie,’ Perez said. ‘If she guessed that Ronald was involved in some way, she didn’t really know. And we’ve no evidence to suggest that she understood where the original source of wealth came from.’
‘If we go back far enough all the rich families in the UK got their money in a dubious fashion,’ Fran said. ‘The spoils of war, off the backs of the poor.’
Perez smiled but said nothing. After a few drinks she often believed herself to be a champion of the people.
Sandy shifted in his chair. ‘But surely we should have enough to charge Andrew? We know he was involved. He tried to focus our attention away from Setter by telling me they threw the Norwegian’s body into the sea. If we exhume Per’s body, get the forensic accountants to look at Andrew’s business records over the years, we should have enough to satisfy the Fiscal.’
Perez realized that Sandy was more comfortable believing Andrew to be a murderer than he was thinking of Ronald in that way. Sandy had been deceived by his old friend and they’d both been taken in by Ronald’s fine acting.
‘Aye,’ Perez said. ‘Maybe.’ He knew how long the investigation would take and he doubted whether Andrew would still be alive at the end of it. Maybe living in the giant house on the hill, with a heartbroken wife who’d lost her son to prison and her grandchild to his relatives in the south, would be punishment enough.
He looked down towards the lighthouse at Raven Head. It was very clear tonight. He thought there might be a frost, the last cold spell before the summer. Suddenly he remembered Paul Berglund. He turned to Sandy, smiling. ‘Berglund’s grandmother is Swedish, not Norwegian. Not any relation to Mima’s lover. A horrible man, but not a murderer.’
‘So I was wrong again,’ Sandy said. He seemed more relaxed, more himself. Perez saw that his glass was empty. He tipped some wine into it and poured himself another glass too. It seemed hours since he’d slept and it was only caffeine and alcohol that were keeping him going.
‘Bones in the land,’ Sandy said, half asleep now. ‘Skeletons in a cupboard.’ They sat for a moment in silence, then Sandy got out his mobile to call a taxi and Fran stood up to make coffee.
When they went outside to see Sandy off Perez gasped with the cold. There was a moon and the sea was silver. The beam from the lighthouse on Raven Head swept across the fields between the beach and Fran’s house. It was hypnotic, he felt he could stand here for hours just watching it. He forced himself to look up at the sky instead. There were no streetlights here and the stars were clear and sharp. Fran stood in front of him and he put her arms around his waist. Even through his thick jacket he could feel her body pressed against his.
Sandy’s taxi drove off, but still they stood there.
‘My friends in the city can never understand what this is like,’ Fran said. ‘I explain: no light pollution, no sound, but they can’t conceive it.’
‘You’ll have to invite them up and show them.’
She turned towards him. At first her face was in shadow, then she tipped up her head so the moonlight caught her eyes.
‘I was thinking,’ she said, ‘that we could ask them to the wedding.’
Acknowledgements
Whalsay is a real island and one of the friendliest places I know. It doesn’t have a community called Lindby and all the people and places described there – including the camping bod where the students live – are fictitious. Symbister exists – it’s where the ferry arrives – but it doesn’t have a Pier House Hotel.
Lots of people helped with the writing of this book, but despite the collective expertise there are probably mistakes; they’re all mine. I’m grateful to Anna Williams and Helen Savage for their advice on archaeology, and to Cathy Batt and her colleagues at the University of Bradford for talking me through the Shetland excavations and
