Thin Air: (Shetland book 6)

by Ann Cleeves

  Lowrie’s new bride was sitting on the grass outside the crub, but scrambled to her feet when she saw him approach. She looked to Perez very English, strong and healthy, with curly fair hair and good white teeth. He could imagine her running up a hockey field and cheering her team on. And when she spoke there was a no-nonsense tone to the voice.

  ‘Is Polly OK? I didn’t want to send her off on her own, but I thought someone should stay here. Scare off the sheep. And any stray walkers.’ If she was upset about Eleanor’s disappearance there was no sign of it. But perhaps not showing emotion was part of her character too.

  ‘Polly’s with Marcus.’ Perez paused. Marcus had been comforting the woman as if she were a child, offering to wrap her in a rug, to make her herbal tea. ‘She’s distressed of course, but she seems fine.’ He looked over the wall. ‘You’re sure that belonged to Eleanor?’

  ‘I haven’t touched it to look at the call records,’ she said, ‘but it’s certainly the same model and colour.’

  He put on gloves and reached over the wall to retrieve the phone. It came to him suddenly that he was treating this as a potential murder scene and that he had no expectation of Eleanor being found alive. If the phone had lain here for most of the night in a heavy dew there’d be little chance of fingerprints, though, and any of her friends could have touched it over the previous few days. The battery was low, but there was sufficient signal to see the email to Polly in the Sent box and the record of missed calls from Ian. There’d been no other calls or emails sent or received since.

  He looked at the woman, who stood watching him impassively. ‘I suppose you don’t have any idea what might have happened to her?’

  Caroline stared at him, considering the words before saying them. He thought that was how she would always be and, before she had a chance to answer, another question came into his head.

  ‘What do you do for a living?’

  ‘I’m an academic. Human geography. UCL.’

  ‘So are we all part of your study?’

  She gave a little laugh. ‘It would be interesting research. The effect of isolation on island communities under stress. Though I’m sure it’s been done before.’

  ‘And perhaps you’re too close to the subject to be objective.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Objectivity – that’s a whole new area of research in its own right.’

  ‘Are you sufficiently objective to tell me what happened to your friend in the early hours of this morning?’

  There was another brief pause and then she did reply. ‘I think Eleanor might have been trying to run away from her husband.’

  Chapter Six

  Caroline Lawson took Perez back to her parents-in-law’s house. She, it seemed, had not changed her name with marriage. The name-change business wasn’t something he and Fran had ever spoken about, but he supposed that if his fiancée had lived and they’d had the wedding they’d been planning, she would have kept her own name. She was an artist with a growing reputation and it would have been crazy to lose that. Except that Hunter wasn’t the name she’d been born with, but the name of her ex-husband Duncan, who was Cassie’s father. They were part of a complicated modern family. Perez wasn’t sure what he would have made of Fran using Duncan’s name when she was married to him, then thought that he would have gone along with it for Cassie’s sake.

  The door was unlocked, but the house was empty. There was a note on the table in the kitchen: We’ve joined the search party to look for Eleanor. Caroline moved the kettle to the hot plate of the Rayburn to make tea.

  ‘You seem very at home here in Shetland,’ Perez said.

  ‘I love it.’ A pause. ‘Lowrie wants to move back. I might be persuaded.’

  ‘Could you find work?’

  ‘Not in my field. But I’ve always wanted to make time to write my research up into a book.’

  ‘So,’ Perez said. ‘Tell me about Eleanor.’

  The kettle whistled and Caroline made the tea, then sat down at the table opposite him, shifting a pile of Shetland Times to make room for the mug. Perez had grown up in such a kitchen as this. A working space with a wax cloth on the table, a place for baking and knitting and filling in subsidy forms. Not for showing off to the neighbours. A cat wandered through and sat on the windowsill in the sun.

  ‘Four of us met at Durham University,’ she said. ‘Lowrie was in a different college at Durham, but Polly, Eleanor and I were freshers together and in the same hall of residence. On the same corridor, sharing a kitchen, excited and scared shitless, all at the same time. You know . . .’

  Perez nodded, but what could he know of life in a smart English university? The nearest he could come to it was being sent from Fair Isle at the age of eleven to board at the Anderson High in Lerwick. Then Duncan Hunter had been his ally and protector, but he couldn’t imagine being friends with the man now. They rubbed along together because of their responsibility for Cassie.

  Caroline continued to speak. ‘We shared a flat in the second year and a house in the third. One night at a party Eleanor named us the Three MsKeteers – she was going through a feminist phase – and that stuck. I was going out with Lowrie then, but I carried on living with the girls and he was a kind of permanent fixture. We were all very close.’

  ‘And you kept in touch even after you left university?’ Perez had never made those sorts of close friendships. He wasn’t the kind of policeman who used colleagues as a surrogate family.

  ‘When we graduated the three of us were based in London. Polly started her postgrad training – she’s a librarian – and I was doing my PhD. Eleanor found work as a runner with ITV. So we just went on living together, sharing a grotty flat. Lowrie got a job in Edinburgh, but he came down when he could. We were poor as church mice. It wasn’t very different from being students.’ She gave a little smile. ‘Though Nell was subsidized big-style by her mother and, when she got fed up with slumming it, she’d go home for a weekend of comfort. Lowrie was earning, so I got treated to nights out when he came to stay. I suppose it was really only Polly who found it tough going financially. Not that it stopped the rest of us moaning.’

  Perez listened and tried to picture these three young women in their flat in London at the beginning of their careers. He said nothing to hurry on the story. He was more use here than he would be out helping the search team.

  ‘We did well in our own fields,’ Caroline continued. ‘Moved out of the slummy flat. Lowrie got a promotion to London and he and I set up home together. Eleanor was a rising star in ITV. Polly qualified and got a job first in a local-authority library, then in the Sentiman, where she still works. That’s a weird place in Hampstead. It keeps the records of the UK Folklore Society, tales of morris men and legends of the Green Man. You know the sort of thing.’

  Perez thought he had no idea. ‘And ghosts?’

  Caroline looked at him sharply. ‘I don’t know anything about that. You’d have to ask Polly.’ She paused before continuing her story. ‘For a while she and Nell shared an apartment, but then Ian Longstaff swept Eleanor off her feet and into his house in South London and Polly found a nice little flat of her own not far away.’ She paused. ‘I suppose we grew up.’

  ‘But you were still friends?’

  ‘Yeah, when we moved out of our shared home we made a pact that we’d meet up at least once a month. We kept to it at first and then it became more difficult to find a time when we were all free. I have students to supervise and, since she set up in her own business, Eleanor is abroad a lot. Even when she’s home Ian seems to demand all her time. I suppose only Polly has the diligence and determination to make the commitment work. She’s the one to email the rest of us, negotiating times and places to meet. And since Marcus came on the scene even she’s been less organized.’ Caroline paused. ‘That’s why I was pleased that everyone agreed to make the trek north for the hamefarin’. It was a chance for the three of us to spend some time together away from London.’

  ‘Why do you think Eleanor
would want to run away from her husband?’ It was where the conversation had started. Perez wasn’t frustrated by the time it had taken to get back to the question. He had a much better sense now of these women as successful, professional friends.

  For the first time Caroline seemed unsure of herself. ‘I have no evidence.’

  ‘Sometimes I have to pursue an investigation without evidence,’ Perez said. ‘The purpose of my work is to obtain it, but it’s not where we start from.’

  ‘It seems disloyal speculating like this.’ She frowned.

  Perez said nothing.

  ‘For the past six months Eleanor has been very low. More unhappy than I’ve ever known her.’

  ‘She’d lost a child,’ Perez said gently. This woman with her strong bones and her clear thinking might not understand how that would feel. He didn’t see Caroline as the most imaginative of women. Or the most maternal.

  ‘Yes, and Ian hasn’t been any support to her. He stuck her in a private psychiatric place so that she wouldn’t be a nuisance and then he started lecturing her to sort herself out. He lost patience with her.’ She paused again. ‘I think Eleanor might have found comfort elsewhere.’ The words sounded oddly prim, and Perez again had a sense of the schoolgirl she had once been.

  ‘Another man?’

  ‘I think so.’ Now Caroline sounded wretched, as if she regretted having started this conversation. ‘But, as I said, I have no real evidence. And Nell didn’t discuss it.’ She paused again. Through the window they saw a very elderly man walk down the road outside. He was dressed in his Sunday best – black trousers, polished shoes and all-over knitted jersey – and was bent over a walking stick. Caroline waited until he’d disappeared from sight before she started talking. ‘I saw her one evening with a guy in a restaurant. I was walking past and although they weren’t sitting in the window I saw her quite clearly. She stood to pick up the scarf that had fallen from her chair. The man had his back to me, so I saw nothing of him except the back of his head. Eleanor reached out and touched his hand on the table. There was a look on her face . . . I don’t know how to describe it. Mixed up. Guilty perhaps.’

  ‘Did she see you?’ Perez tried to picture the scene in the restaurant and thought that Caroline was making too much of it. Eleanor could have been reassuring a young colleague about a problem at work. A touch of the hand could be a gesture of friendship. It didn’t have to be intimate.

  ‘No,’ Caroline said. ‘It was a few months ago. She had her second miscarriage just before Christmas, and this was March or April. Late enough for it to be dark outside. One of those drizzly days that feel more like midwinter. She hadn’t long sprung herself from the hospital. She wouldn’t have seen me.’

  ‘Did you discuss it with her?’

  ‘Yes.’ Caroline paused. ‘She lied. You must have been mistaken, Caro. I was in Brussels that week. I wasn’t even in London. Her voice all brittle and tense. I let it go. But I wasn’t mistaken. It was definitely her.’ She looked up at Perez. ‘That was when I knew this new man must be important, you see. If the dinner was just a work meeting, or even if she was having a fling or a one-night stand, she’d tell me and swear me to secrecy. But she lied and she’d never done that to me before.’ There was another pause. ‘Since then Eleanor seems to have been trying to avoid me. I think she’s met up on her own with Polly a couple of times, but I’ve only seen her when other people have been around.’

  ‘If Eleanor were planning to leave her husband,’ Perez said, ‘I don’t quite understand why she would wait until she was in Shetland to do it. It’s so much more inconvenient here.’

  Caroline gave a tight smile. ‘Eleanor’s never planned to do anything in her life. It would have come to her in the middle of a dance; or maybe when she saw Lowrie and me together she realized that her life with Ian was impossible. That she couldn’t stand it any longer. Then she would have walked away. Without thinking through the consequences. Have you tried the guest houses in Unst? If she hasn’t left on the ferry, she might be fast asleep on a comfortable bed. Eleanor has always liked her comfort.’

  ‘Without taking her toothbrush or her moisturizer?’

  For the first time Caroline looked a little shaken. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t sound so much like the Nell I know.’ She reached for the pot in the middle of the table and poured out more tea.

  Outside there was a noise. The bark of a dog and running footsteps. A man crashed through the door into the kitchen. He was wheezing from running and his face was red. He bent double and tried to catch his breath to speak. Caroline stood up and stroked the hair from his forehead. She could have been comforting an anxious child.

  ‘We’ve found her! I need to tell the police.’ Then he noticed Perez, sitting in the shadow. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘He is the police.’ Caroline’s voice was impatient. ‘You’ve found Nell? Where is she? Is she OK?’

  Lowrie Malcolmson straightened. He ignored his new wife’s questions and directed his words to Perez. ‘Eleanor’s dead,’ he said. ‘You need to come with me.’ Then he put his arms round Caroline’s shoulders and pulled her to him. ‘I’m so sorry.’ Perez saw that he was crying. ‘I know how much she meant to you, and this shouldn’t happen to anyone. I’m so very sorry.’

  Caroline wanted to go with them, but Perez told her to stay where she was. ‘If this is a suspicious death we need the locus contaminated as little as possible.’

  She nodded, as if she could see that made sense. ‘Can I go to Sletts to tell the others?’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t tell anyone yet. Not until we have something specific to say.’

  She nodded again.

  ‘Are you OK here on your own? Should I get someone to be with you?’

  ‘No,’ she said, and he thought again how strong she was. She could be an island woman from a previous generation, doing all the work on the croft and bringing up a family while her man was at sea; coping alone with the news that he’d been drowned in a storm. ‘Lowrie’s parents will be back soon. I’ll be fine.’

  Eleanor’s body lay on the headland south of Sletts. A murderer would have taken the most direct way from the scene, so Perez took a circuitous route to avoid further contamination. He thought the English people would probably have walked within a hundred yards of here during their exploration of the cliffs the day before. Just away from the marked footpath was a standing stone formed from granite. At its base a small peaty lochan. The stone was reflected in the water, with the colour of the sky and a small white cloud. But the reflection was disturbed by the shape that lay in the shallow pool. Eleanor Longstaff was on her back. Her feet were bare and Perez saw that the toenails were painted. She still wore the bridesmaid’s dress of the night before: full-length cream silk, which seemed to move when a breeze blew across the surface of the water. Her eyes were open wide and stared at the huge sky.

  Chapter Seven

  Sandy Wilson was still waiting in the holiday house when the call came through from Jimmy Perez. He was hungry and wondering what they might do about lunch. And he was uncomfortable. These people had turned Sletts into a little piece of London, with their ground coffee and their English voices, the fancy food on the cupboard shelves. He was the Shetlander and yet he felt like a stranger. He went outside to take the call.

  ‘Meet us there, will you, Sandy, once you’ve found someone to sit in with the witnesses?’ Then a list of directions that Sandy jotted on the back of his hand, because he remembered nothing when he was flustered. ‘And while you’re waiting for someone to relieve you, see if you can track down James Grieve and Vicki Hewitt. This is a suspicious death and we want the pathologist and crime scene manager here. I know it’s Sunday, but work your charm, eh? It’d be great if we could get them in today. If not, first thing in the morning.’

  ‘What should I tell the folk in the house?’

  ‘Tell Eleanor’s man that she’s dead. He deserves that. He can decide whether or not to tell the rest of them. If Mary Lomax
is back on the island, get her to sit in with them.’ Mary was the North Isles community police officer, middle-aged, motherly and perfect for the job. She’d grown up in Glasgow, but had taken to island life immediately. Apart from the accent, you’d have her down as a native Shetlander.

  Sandy phoned Mary. She said she was back in Unst and that she’d be at Sletts in half an hour. Then he turned his mobile to silent and hesitated, rehearsing in his mind the words that he would use to tell the Englishman with his square face and his hard eyes that his wife was dead. When he walked through the door they all stared at him and his mouth went dry.

  ‘Could I have a word outside, please, Mr Longstaff?’ Speaking slowly so the man would understand his accent. Knapping.

  He expected questions, a refusal to comply, but Longstaff stood up and followed him onto the deck. As they left the house the other couple continued to stare at him in silence.

  ‘They’ve found her.’ It wasn’t a question. Sandy nodded. ‘Is she dead?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  Sandy was about to offer his condolences, say those words that always sounded false to him, even though he meant them, but Longstaff interrupted. ‘I knew she must be. She wouldn’t have gone like that. Not all night without a word. She’d know that I’d be worried. It’s been a difficult time, but we loved each other. In a way that other people can’t understand.’ He looked up. ‘Can I see her?’

  ‘I’m sure that can be arranged,’ Sandy said. ‘But maybe just not yet.’