Thin Air: (Shetland book 6)

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘So you’ve come to help at last!’ she said. ‘About time too. We’ve nearly finished.’ She was big-boned and blonde. ‘We were just about to have a drink to celebrate clearing up. Apparently that’s traditional too.’

  ‘Is Eleanor here?’

  ‘No! Isn’t she sleeping off her hangover?’ Caroline took the string of bunting from her husband and started to wind it into a ball.

  ‘She didn’t sleep at Sletts last night,’ Polly said. ‘We don’t know where she is. Ian was so worried that he called the police. A couple of officers came from Lerwick and the inspector’s talking to him now. The coastguards are doing a search of the cliffs.’

  Lowrie climbed down the ladder. ‘She’ll surely not have gone far.’ He sounded so matter-of-fact that Polly could tell he thought they were overreacting. City people, so sensitized to crime that they saw it everywhere. Perhaps he was embarrassed that they’d caused this fuss, dragging police officers across two islands and two ferries because a woman had wanted to experience the strange Shetland night alone. But now it was lunchtime and there was still no sign of Eleanor. And she’d sent that weird email.

  ‘She sent me this message,’ Polly tried to keep her voice calm, ‘saying not to bother looking for her. Saying that we’d never see her alive again.’ And at that point she began to cry.

  They took her into Lowrie’s parents’ house and sat her in a tall wooden chair in the kitchen and made her tea. After the sunshine it seemed very dark in the house, all shadow and dust. There was a rack over a Rayburn where dozens of tea towels were folded and hanging to dry. Presumably they’d been used the night before and already washed. The room seemed to Polly to be impossibly cluttered. How could they find anything in the chaos of fading magazines, knitting wool and vegetables? There was a faint smell of sheep and mould. She hated disorder and found it physically repellent. Weren’t they embarrassed to bring guests to a house that was so untidy?

  There was no sign of Lowrie’s parents.

  ‘I know’, she said, ‘that it’s ridiculous, and I’m sure there’s a rational explanation. But Eleanor’s been so fragile lately. Losing the baby and all that talk of haunting and ghosts. When the policeman said you’d all be in the hall, I thought, Of course, she’ll be there. I couldn’t stand being in that house any longer. And then, when you hadn’t seen her, I knew something dreadful must have happened.’

  The room was very warm and she felt that she might fall asleep in the hard chair, and when she woke up all this would be a dream.

  ‘I’ll walk back with you,’ Caroline said. ‘There might be some news.’

  Her voice sounded hard, detached, as if she didn’t care about Eleanor at all. Why wasn’t she more upset? Polly had the idea that Caroline just wanted her out of the house before her in-laws returned. Perhaps a hysterical friend would reflect badly on her. Caroline was an academic, always measured and precise. It also occurred to Polly that Caroline might not believe her story and that she wanted to check out the facts of Eleanor’s disappearance for herself.

  They took a different route back to the holiday cottage. Caroline led the way through the garden where hens scratched behind wire mesh, over a stile and onto short cropped grass. She seemed very at home here.

  ‘Would you ever live in Shetland?’ Polly asked suddenly. ‘Would Lowrie want that?’

  ‘Maybe. If I could think of something to do all day. We’ve talked about it. I wouldn’t want to bring up kids in the city.’ Caroline gave a sudden grin. ‘He has this idea about setting up a business here. Soft fruit grown in polytunnels. High-end jams and preserves.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t mind that? Leaving behind your friends. And everything that goes with being in town. Theatre on your doorstep. Shops and bars and restaurants. Even Lerwick’s miles away.’ Polly found herself distracted from her anxiety by this new Caroline, who wore wellingtons, could negotiate a barbed-wire fence with ease and could contemplate making a home in this barren landscape where the seasons were so extreme.

  ‘Ah, we might have to compromise on the exact location. Unst might be a step too far for me. And I love Grusche and George to pieces, but I wouldn’t want to be next door to the in-laws.’ She paused for a moment and looked back over the croft. ‘Sometimes Grusche treats Lowrie as if he is nine years old and can’t clean his teeth without being reminded.’

  They came to the brow of a low hill and Polly got her bearings. She could see the track to their house and the beach ahead of them. Ian and Perez were still on the sand, but they were heading back to Sletts. There was a view south of cliffs and headlands.

  ‘If Eleanor fell over a cliff,’ she said suddenly, ‘she could lie on the rocks below for days without being found.’

  Ahead of them was a drystone circle with a gap in the side. A skua, which seemed to Polly as big as an eagle, suddenly dived at them straight from the sun. Polly shrieked. She could feel the air of its wing-beat on her face. Caroline gave a little laugh. ‘It’s only protecting its nest. If you put your hand in the air, it’ll aim for that and miss your face.’ She pointed at the stone circle. ‘That’s a planticrub. People used to grow cabbages in there as food for the sheep. I suppose the wall sheltered the plants from the salt wind.’

  She was about to walk on and Polly could see that her friend had made the decision that this would be her home. She was buying into the history and the culture already. But Caroline’s subject was human geography, and Polly thought she’d always be an outsider here, an observer. She’d regard her neighbours with the same amused objectivity as when she was studying migrant workers for her PhD.

  Polly couldn’t imagine life in the city without her friends. Because they’d always been there, she’d never felt the need to build a wider social circle and somehow, at this moment, Marcus didn’t matter. The shock of the diving bird had provoked a panic that was unlike anything she’d experienced in everyday life. At work she was a competent professional, choosing stock for the private subscription library where she worked, advising the historians and students who used it. But here the faintness of the day before had returned. She bent, rested her hands on her knees and felt the blood come back to her head.

  ‘Do you want to rest for a bit?’ Caroline was solicitous, but smug too. She was fit and she could have continued walking for miles. Polly thought again with surprise that the woman had no real concern for Eleanor’s safety. Her head was full of her new husband and her plans for the future.

  They sat with their backs to the wall. The sun had heated the stones and they were out of the wind.

  Polly felt herself falling asleep again and wondered how she could do that when Eleanor still hadn’t been found. She stood up, shaking her limbs to feel more awake, and for the first time looked into the planticrub. No sign that anything had been grown there for years. Cropped grass and a scattering of sheep droppings. And an iPhone with a distinctive pink case, which Polly recognized as Eleanor’s.

  Chapter Five

  Jimmy Perez could sense the tension of the man walking beside him. He seemed rigid, like a robot. Each footstep was heavy and, looking back over the sand, Perez was surprised that their prints weren’t very different, that the ones left by Ian Longstaff were no deeper than his.

  ‘You’ve been married for three years?’ Here on the beach they could be miles away from the tasteful holiday house of Sletts; Perez felt they were contained in a bubble formed by the natural sounds. There was a breeze blowing from Norway and the tide was sucking on a bank of shingle close to the water. A faint heat haze blurred the distant horizon.

  ‘Just over three years. I was doing the sound on one of her shows.’ Ian looked at him. There was a barely contained frustration that was turning into anger. ‘But we’re wasting time here. We should be looking for her.’

  ‘People are looking,’ Perez said. ‘Local people who know the land. We’d just be in the way. Now talk me through everything that’s happened since you arrived in Shetland. You arrived on the ferry from Aberdeen yesterday mor
ning?’

  ‘I wanted to bring my car,’ Ian said, ‘so we decided on the ferry instead of flying. And in the end Marcus brought his too. We didn’t know what it would be like here. Whether there’d be shops. You know . . .’

  ‘Oh, we’re almost civilized these days.’

  Ian stopped walking and grinned, despite himself. ‘Yeah, well. Neither Nell nor me really does country. We weren’t sure what we’d find.’

  ‘Did you stop in Lerwick at all? For shopping? Breakfast?’

  ‘We had breakfast on the boat and decided to head straight north. We’d stocked the boot with enough food and booze to last for months, and Caroline had said she’d sort out milk and bread. I’d looked on the map. Before then I hadn’t realized how far it would be.’

  ‘Two long, skinny islands and two ferries – and that’s after you get to Toft on Shetland mainland,’ Perez said, as if he had all the time in the world.

  ‘It was late morning by the time we arrived. We’d arranged to get into the house early, and Polly made lunch.’ He stopped again and stared at Perez. ‘Do you really want all this stuff?’ Terns screamed overhead.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Eleanor hadn’t slept much on the boat from Aberdeen. She’s like a kid when she’s excited. Hyper. When we’d cleared up lunch she said she wanted to rest before the wedding.’

  ‘Was she really excited?’ Perez asked. ‘Not anxious and depressed?’

  ‘They’ve told you about the baby.’ He stared out towards the water. ‘It was her second miscarriage. She wants a child. Of course she was upset and angry. Eleanor has always got what she wanted.’ He paused. ‘That makes her sound horrible, but things have always come easily to her. Liberal, arty family with enough money to indulge her. She’s bright enough to pass exams without too much effort. Then this happened. Something that couldn’t be put right with money or hard work. It floored her.’

  ‘She spent some time in hospital?’

  ‘Just to please me,’ he said. ‘I felt so helpless. I wanted my wife back. I’m an engineer and I’m used to fixing things if they’re not working properly. I got her into a private place.’

  ‘But she refused to stay there?’ Perez wondered what that must do to a relationship, a husband sending his wife to an institution because she was sad.

  ‘She said she wasn’t ill and it would only take time. She said that I should trust her.’ Ian paused. ‘She was right. On this trip she was much more herself again. Focused on a new project at work. Excited about the trip and about the wedding.’

  ‘And ghosts,’ Perez said.

  ‘That was work. A project about contemporary hauntings. We teased her. She teased us back.’

  ‘So after lunch your wife had a snooze,’ Perez said. ‘What about the rest of you?’

  ‘We went for a walk to get the lie of the land. There’s a footpath that goes south along the cliffs. The weather was lovely and the views were spectacular. There were puffins so close that you could reach out and touch them. Eleanor would have loved that. At one point I wondered if I should go back for her. It seemed a shame that she was missing it.’ Ian frowned.

  ‘But you didn’t go back?’

  ‘No. I decided to let her rest. We knew it would be a late night and we’re booked into the house for a week. Plenty of time for her to explore.’ He started walking again and his words came in breathy bursts. ‘When we got up she was awake and sitting on the deck. Later, after the party, she claimed that was when she’d seen a ghost.’

  ‘Peerie Lizzie?’ Perez kept his voice even. This man wouldn’t like to be mocked. Underneath the steel Perez sensed a fragile ego.

  ‘Yes, a child. A girl in an old-fashioned white dress with ribbons in her hair. Eleanor said that she watched her for a while, then she was worried that there were no parents around and that the girl was getting very close to the water. But when she approached her, the child vanished. That was the story, at least.’

  ‘You didn’t believe it?’ Perez wasn’t sure how this could be relevant. He remembered the kids in fancy dress at the ferry – perhaps Eleanor had seen one of those.

  ‘Eleanor loved practical jokes, taking the piss. I wondered if she was winding us up. But Polly and Marcus took it seriously and started coming up with practical explanations. Polly’s always been a tad earnest – I could never quite see how Eleanor and she were such good friends. Though Nell has always collected admirers – she makes people feel as if they’re special. I just let the whole ghost thing go.’

  ‘You didn’t consider that it might be a sign that Eleanor’s depression had returned?’ Perez had been depressed after Fran’s death and he’d imagined all sorts.

  ‘Hearing voices and seeing things, you mean? Nah, I didn’t think that, though she accused me of believing she was mad, when we were discussing it after the party.’

  ‘And after you returned from the walk you prepared for the dance?’

  ‘Yes, we got there a bit early to help out.’

  ‘Of course,’ Perez said. ‘As friends of the bride and the groom, that would be your role. Tradition.’

  ‘So we were told.’ Ian didn’t sound as if he was much impressed by tradition.

  Perez could picture just how it would have been. They’d be there to set out the bar and greet older friends and family as they arrived, to organize the food. Later there’d be huge pots of tea, the milk already added, trays of home-bakes, and the young people would wait on the other guests. ‘How did Eleanor seem during the party?’

  ‘Well! Lively. She was dancing. The girls had gone to classes in London to learn the steps so they wouldn’t be left out. It was great to see her so happy.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘Afterwards we came back to the house,’ Ian said. ‘It was gone midnight, but we were still buzzing and nobody was ready to go to bed. We opened a couple of bottles of wine, wrapped up well and sat out on the deck.’ There was a silence. Perez waited for him to continue. ‘Eleanor talked about some cousin of Lowrie’s who’d just had a baby. A tiny girl. She’d been there at the party, passed around for all the relatives to admire – her mother the centre of attention.’ Another pause, then a sort of confession. ‘I don’t know if it was the baby Eleanor was jealous of or all the admiration, the fuss.’ Again Perez said nothing.

  Ian seemed to be concentrating, replaying the evening’s events in his head. ‘Then Polly said that she’d seen a child in a white dress on the beach outside the hall. It’s the same beach as here, of course, just further north. And suddenly Eleanor seemed to go weird on us. All theatrical and melodramatic. She accused me of not taking her seriously, of thinking she was mad. Maybe she’d just had too much to drink. The rest of us went to bed and she waited outside. I thought she was making a point. Perhaps she expected me to go out again and apologize, fetch her in.’ He stopped again. ‘But I’m a stubborn bugger. I went to bed. And I’ve never had any trouble sleeping, so I went out like a light. When I got up this morning there was no sign of her.’ For the first time he seemed to lose control. He stopped walking and put his head in his hands.

  Perez waited for a moment. ‘She definitely didn’t sleep with you? Even for a while?’

  He shook his head. ‘She must still have been wearing the clothes she wore to the party. Nothing else is missing. Not even her trainers. She hadn’t taken off her make-up, because her cream and wipes were still packed, and she’d do that even if she was too drunk to stand.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘She’d love this: playing the lead in her own ghost story. Disappearing into nothing.’

  By now they were halfway along the beach and Perez could see the Meoness community hall, where the night before there would have been music and dancing, bunting and flowers, and a big glittering sign with the newly married couple’s name on it. They turned and had almost reached the house when they saw Sandy Wilson, standing on the deck and waving. The sun was so bright behind him that Perez couldn’t make out the expression on his face. It was impossible to tell if this wa
s a wave of celebration or an urgent call for Perez’s presence. Perhaps Eleanor had been found by the search party, with nothing more serious than a broken ankle. Perez hoped so. He would like to meet her. Ian broke into a run.

  On the deck Sandy had been joined by Polly.

  Now Ian was close enough to shout. ‘Where is she? Have you found her?’ Perez sensed the desperation in his voice.

  Sandy didn’t reply.

  The women had left Eleanor’s phone in the planticrub, with Caroline to keep guard of it. At least the spate of US crime shows had made people aware that a possible crime scene shouldn’t be disturbed. Walking along the sheep track on the top of the cliff, Perez tried to work out what the discovery of the phone might mean. Ian had told him that he’d tried to call Eleanor as soon as he’d realized she was missing: ‘Of course I tried to get in touch with her. It was the first thing I thought of. And I’ve been trying ever since. But there was no answer.’

  Why did the woman no longer have her phone? And did this mean that someone other than Eleanor had composed the email to Polly Gilmour? Perez repeated the words in his head. Don’t bother looking for me. You won’t find me alive. He ran through explanations for the message, which grew wilder and more improbable: a killer setting up the scenario that Eleanor had committed suicide; someone playing a tasteless and elaborate joke. One thing was certain. Eleanor was still in Unst, whether she was alive or dead. The ferry boys had already told Sandy that nobody matching her description had left the island that morning.