Thin Air: (Shetland book 6)

by Ann Cleeves

  They sat in a living room, which could have been in suburban England: patterned paper on one wall and furniture from IKEA. The woman cleared a pile of baby clothes and a rattle from the leather sofa so that they could sit down. The fog made the room so gloomy that she switched on the light.

  ‘Your baby’s named Vaila? That’s pretty.’ Willow took the offered coffee.

  ‘I’m Vaila too. Named after one of the off-islands. I thought it might be a bit confusing, but Neil liked it, and it’s always been a tradition in Shetland to keep names in the family, so we thought Why not? She can use her middle name if she doesn’t like it when she’s older.’

  Willow looked at Sandy. She’d asked him to begin the interview. He looked panic-stricken for a moment, then cleared his throat.

  ‘You were at the hamefarin’ on Saturday night?’

  The woman stared at him. ‘Don’t I know you? Weren’t you in Anderson High? The year below me. You were a Whalsay boy, and you stayed in the hostel too.’ She paused. ‘Well, I’d never have had you down as becoming a detective.’

  ‘Perhaps you could tell us about the hamefarin’.’ Willow thought the garrulous Vaila was about to launch into a series of school reminiscences, and interrupted before she had the chance. Sandy would be too polite to stop her in mid-stream. ‘Did you meet Eleanor Longstaff there?’

  ‘Yes, but I’d met her before that. It was supposed to be secret, but now she’s dead that’s not important, is it?’

  ‘When did you first meet her?’ Sandy made another attempt to control the conversation.

  ‘That afternoon. The afternoon of the party. It was all arranged by phone. I went up to Sletts. She said that would be better, because if her friends came back from their walk we could make an excuse about why I was there. If she came here it would be more difficult to explain where she’d been.’

  ‘Why was she so keen to talk to you?’ Again Sandy asked the question.

  ‘Because of Peerie Lizzie, of course. Eleanor was making a film about her, and we were going to be in it. We were going to get paid. An appearance fee, she said.’ Vaila paused. ‘Do you think it’ll still be made? Neil was a bit shy about it, but I was dead excited about being on the telly. It wasn’t just the money . . .’

  ‘Why was it so important to keep the meeting secret?’ Willow looked outside. She thought the fog might be clearing. There were denser shadows in the distance that might have been the Meoness community hall and the Malcolmsons’ croft house.

  ‘Eleanor said her friends wouldn’t understand. Because she really believed the story and her husband wasn’t the sort to accept that it might be true. So that afternoon I went to Sletts and I told her what happened. How I saw the lassie and then I fell pregnant, and we’d been trying for years. We were planning on another round of IVF, but in the end we didn’t need to.’

  Willow thought Vaila must be in her early thirties, but she still spoke like an excitable schoolgirl, the words tumbling out without thought. Vaila paused for a moment to catch her breath and then continued talking. ‘I thought Eleanor was hoping to see Lizzie herself. You could tell that she wanted a bairn. Later, at the party in the hall, she was all over the baby.’

  ‘So you went to Sletts that afternoon,’ Sandy said. Perhaps all this talk of babies was making him uncomfortable. ‘And Eleanor was expecting you.’

  ‘Nothing much happened,’ Vaila said. ‘There were no cameras or anything, but Eleanor had this little recorder and asked me to speak into it. To tell the tale of when I saw Peerie Lizzie. She said it was better than her taking notes.’

  Willow shot a look at Sandy, but he seemed so focused on keeping Vaila on track that he appeared not to understand the importance of the information. No recorder had been found in the search of the holiday home.

  ‘And what was the tale?’

  ‘Well.’ The woman settled back in her chair as if she were about to tell a bedtime story to a child. ‘It was a misty sort of day much like this, but a bit earlier in the year. February and late afternoon, so it was already getting a bit dark. I work as a classroom assistant in the school in Meoness, only I’m on maternity leave just now, and I was on my way home. Then there she was on the track in front of me. A girl of about ten, all dressed in white. Kind of old-fashioned, you know, with white ribbons in her hair. And she danced. Like she was performing just for me. Like it was a sort of sign. Then she disappeared into the fog. I shouted and ran up the track after her, but I didn’t see her again.’

  Willow was sceptical. ‘Couldn’t it just have been an island girl dressed up? Things look so weird in the fog.’

  ‘I know all the kids in this part of Unst and I didn’t recognize her. But it was more than that. I knew she wasn’t real and that something important was happening to me. It was a kind of religious experience. And she just vanished in front of my eyes.’

  Willow knew there could be a number of explanations for the disappearing child, but she didn’t say anything. If she challenged Vaila too hard, she might be offended and clam up. She’d convinced herself that she’d seen an apparition. Willow had met people in the commune who’d believed that trees had spirits, and that a guru from Wolverhampton would save the known universe; she hadn’t been able to persuade them that their ideas were irrational, either.

  The woman went on, ‘Besides, there was no fog the next time I saw her.’

  ‘You saw her again?’

  ‘That was late July. One of the still, sunny evenings you get sometimes in the summer. I’d spent the evening down with Grusche and George. He’s a relative, a kind of uncle, and when Neil’s working away I sometimes go down to see them. I’m not good with my own company. It was such a fine evening that I took the path along the beach to get home and I saw the lassie again. This time she was quite a way off, just a silhouette up by the standing stone on the headland. I dashed back to George’s house because I wanted someone else to see her. They’d all made fun of me when I said that I’d seen her in the mist. But when we got on the shore and looked up towards the stone there was nothing to be seen.’

  ‘And that was what you told Eleanor Longstaff?’ It was impossible to tell from Sandy’s voice whether he believed every word or thought it was a load of nonsense.

  ‘Yes. I spoke it all into her little machine, and then she replayed the first bit to make sure it had recorded properly.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She asked whether my husband believed me,’ Vaila said. ‘And I told her that my Neil wasn’t the sort to believe in ghosts, but he knew I wasn’t making it up, so he kind of went along with it.’ A beat. ‘He’s a plumber.’ As if that explained everything.

  ‘Did you see what Eleanor did with the machine when she’d finished?’ Sandy’s voice was calm and easy. Willow thought he was brighter than he always made out. ‘She wouldn’t want it left where all her friends might see it. If she was trying to keep your meeting secret.’

  Vaila screwed up her face in an effort to concentrate. ‘I think she just put it in her pocket. She was wearing a knitted jacket over jeans, and the jacket had a patch pocket. I think she stuck it in there.

  Sandy glanced across at Willow and she gave him a nod of approval. He always needed to be encouraged.

  ‘But that wasn’t the end of the story.’ Vaila was beaming and Willow thought again how young she seemed. ‘And not the important part really. It was about a month later that I found out I was pregnant! So it must have been Lizzie, mustn’t it?’ She looked round at them for confirmation as if the logic were inescapable.

  Sandy and Willow looked at each other, but said nothing. On cue the baby began to cry and Vaila went into the porch and gathered her into her arms.

  They drove to the end of the track near the footpath that led to the murder scene and sat in the car watching the mist shifting, so that the cliffs in the distance began to appear.

  ‘A bit of a coincidence that Eleanor claimed to have seen the girl on the afternoon that Vaila was telling her story.’ Will
ow wiped the condensation from the inside of the windscreen with a mucky handkerchief.

  ‘Wishful thinking? She was desperate to get pregnant, so she convinced herself that some random girl was a ghost?’

  ‘Maybe, but it seems more calculated than that to me.’ And Willow wasn’t sure if a woman of Eleanor’s background would be so impressionable, however desperate she was for a baby. ‘I wish I knew what game she was playing.’

  ‘Is it relevant that her body was found where Vaila saw the girl?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s certainly an odd coincidence.’ Willow paused. ‘I wish I knew what had happened to that digital recorder. Vicki Hewitt did a thorough search of Sletts before she left and she wouldn’t miss something like that.’

  ‘I thought ghosts were supposed to be scary,’ Sandy said. ‘Vaila Arthur didn’t give you the impression that she was frightened. Maybe it’s because we’ve all grown up with stories of the trowes, so we take weird things in our stride.’

  ‘Trowes?’

  He shifted in his seat. ‘Little men who live under the ground. They can lure you down to their halls with fine music and, when you wake up, you find that you’ve lost a hundred years.’ A pause. ‘Nobody believes it, of course. It’s just stories for bairns.’

  ‘Naturally.’ She kept her voice serious. ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘Talk to those English folk and find out if they have any idea why Eleanor might have kept her research secret?’ He sounded as if he didn’t like the idea much.

  ‘I suppose we should.’ She wondered why she was as reluctant as Sandy to talk to the people at Sletts. She turned in her seat. ‘Did you believe Vaila? Did she see her ghost?’

  He paused for a moment. ‘I’m with her husband. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I don’t think she was making it up. Not deliberately. She was desperate for a baby and she saw what she wanted to see.’

  Chapter Twenty

  In the house on the shore at Meoness, Polly thought she was unravelling just as she’d suspected Eleanor of doing when anger and depression at the loss of a child had made her so low. It was the fog closing them in, and the sense that they were all trapped. Her nerves were fraying and she was finding it impossible to sleep, even when she took pills. She was haunted by the light nights and by the horror of all that had happened. She couldn’t understand why the men didn’t make more fuss about the possibility of their leaving. Now she was desperate to return to London, to busy streets and colour, to daily newspapers that arrived on time and regular visits to the gym. To the comfort and routine of the Sentiman Library.

  They sat in Sletts, looking occasionally out at the grey world beyond their window. The detectives had returned their laptops and phones and the men both seemed to be engrossed in the screens. Marcus was planning a trip for another rich client who was obsessed with climbing Kilimanjaro before he died, and she supposed that Ian was working too. He was checking his emails and suddenly turned into the room, frowning. ‘All these ghouls sending messages about how sorry they are that Eleanor’s dead. It’s nonsense, of course. They just want to be part of the drama. She’d upset half of them, and the other half were embarrassed when she had the miscarriage.’

  Polly thought that was probably true. She was trying to read, but couldn’t concentrate and sneaked a look at Marcus’s screen. He was putting together information for his client and there were images of lush vegetation and stunning views from his previous trips to Tanzania. She wondered again what this man who was so well travelled and attractive could have seen in her. Now he was leaning back and had his feet on the rungs of a dining chair. He was wearing the sandals he’d had on when they first met, and his feet were brown, long and bony. She longed to reach out and stroke them, but realized how insensitive that would be when Ian must be coming to terms with the idea that he’d never have physical contact with Eleanor again.

  Marcus had burst into her life like a being from a different planet. She’d booked the trip to Morocco in the middle of the winter. An impulse when she’d been with Caroline and Eleanor one night, and their lives had seemed so much more exciting than hers. It had been just before Eleanor had lost the child and her friend had been full of fun and mischief: ‘Go on, Pol! What have you got to lose?’ One click of the mouse sent her credit-card details into the ether, and a fortnight later she’d arrived at Agadir airport and there was Marcus, holding a card with her name on it, leaning against a pillar and grinning in a way that was ironic and welcoming at the same time. I’m just playing at this tour-leading shit, but I’ll make sure that you have a good time. And he did. The other members of the party were elderly Germans who went to bed at eight-thirty every evening and spoke little English. In the warm evenings she and Marcus explored the walled city of Taroudant and watched the swifts soaring overhead, and it felt quite natural when he put his arm around her shoulders on the way back to the hotel. She was dazzled by the place and the man. And by the fact that she’d had the courage to respond to him. Her boyfriends at college had been shy and earnest and she’d always imagined that she’d end up with someone like that, an academic or a research scientist who spent his working life in a lab coat. Not an adventurer with brown, bony feet who wandered the world. Someone who’d been to public school and who’d grown up in a grand country house.

  She’d returned to England at the end of the holiday with no expectations of seeing him again. This was a holiday fling and she’d be grateful for the memories. She imagined telling the girls about Marcus and showing them her photos. ‘This is the night we stayed in the Berber village. Here we are on a trek through the mountains.’ He’d bought her earrings in a souk and waited while she had henna painted on her hands. ‘So that you don’t forget me.’ As if she ever would. At his request she’d entered her mobile number into his phone, but she’d put his asking down to a form of politeness. Or the collection of trophies. Perhaps he had a list of numbers of the women with whom he’d slept when he was leading his tours.

  He’d phoned two days later. ‘That’s spooky,’ she’d said, making every effort to keep the excitement from her voice, ‘I was just thinking about you.’ And that was quite true, but it would have been so whenever he’d called. She couldn’t stop thinking about him.

  ‘Would you like to meet up?’ His voice had faded away at the end of the sentence and it had occurred to her for the first time that he might be nervous too, that phoning his customers out of the blue for a date wasn’t his usual way of operating.

  ‘Yes.’ Because what else was there to say; and he’d told her one night, sitting outside in the warm darkness, that he loved the fact that she never wasted words.

  And a few weeks later he was practically living in her flat when he was in England, and she became used to him kissing her goodbye in the early mornings, and returning from work occasionally to find that his rucksack was parked just inside the door and he was sitting on the little balcony outside her flat, his brown feet on the rail, drinking tea or beer. He’d jump up to greet her and begin asking her about her work. Only when he’d listened to her tedious stories of eccentric researchers into rural English myths would he begin his travellers’ tales.

  She’d thought at first that he might be with her for her money, the security of a London crash pad when he was in the UK. She had no confidence in her ability to attract a man. Her parents had died one after the other within six months, leaving her the house in Manchester, so she had some savings as well as the flat in London. His tours were pricey, but he wasn’t travelling continuously and sometimes he only had a couple of clients. They provided a way for him to see the world, but would never make his fortune. Then he’d taken her to see his mother and she’d seen that money probably wasn’t an issue. There were paintings on the wall worth more than her parents’ suburban home.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Marcus said, amused, when she asked one day what he saw in her. ‘What will it take me to persuade you that you’re a wonderful woman? I’ve never met anyone so compassionate and wise
. You’re just fishing for compliments. There are women you play with, and women you settle down with. I want to be with you for the long term.’

  When she’d suggested that he might like to come with her to Shetland she wasn’t sure what his response would be. He’d have to take a couple of weeks off work, and in the summer he sometimes organized lucrative day-trips for American visitors to the UK, but he’d agreed without hesitation. Now, holed up in this house, she longed to have him to herself. She felt cheated because she’d imagined the stay in Shetland would be a romantic time for them. That was why Marcus had brought his own car, so that they could explore on their own, find empty beaches for picnics, ancient historical sites. She’d even had the wild fantasy that he might propose to her. Instead they were locked up in this place on the beach, haunted by the memory of Eleanor, shut in by the weather and the hill where her body had been found. It rose behind the house and its shadow was always with them.

  The knock on the door surprised them all. The fog was so dense that it was hard to believe any world existed outside the house. Ian got to his feet and flung open the door. Two police officers. Not the dark detective this time, but the tall, untidy woman and Wilson, the younger man. Without a word Ian stood aside to let them in. Marcus put his feet on the floor and stood up. The officers’ clothes and hair were covered with fine droplets of water, so they looked grey too, as if they’d brought the drizzle in with them.

  ‘I’ll make some coffee,’ Polly said. ‘Would you like some?’ And she escaped into the kitchen before they could reply.

  When she returned to the living room the officers had taken off their jackets and looked more human, though the woman’s wild hair made Polly think of a mermaid from a kid’s story book. There was an awkward silence and she realized they’d been waiting for her before they started any meaningful conversation.