Thin Air: (Shetland book 6)

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘David.’ Still the water came. He was wearing wellingtons and the water had started to spill inside the boots. ‘Come here. You’ll catch your death.’ She didn’t approach him because she wasn’t going to risk wet clothes until there was no alternative, even in midsummer, and he was so distraught that she worried she might spook him, so that he’d walk away from her and deliberately drown.

  He turned slowly and, for the first time, seemed to see that she was there.

  ‘Come away from the water, David.’ No response. ‘Do you want to talk?’

  He gave a deep breath, half-sob and half-agreement, and walked towards her. On the sand, under the Meoness community hall and just above the tideline, someone had built a bonfire, perhaps in preparation for a beach party. A pile of driftwood and dry garden clippings from shrubs and bushes, some rotten fence posts.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any matches.’ Whoever had built the fire would be hopping mad if they used the wood, but she didn’t want to take Gordon back to Sletts, where Caroline would be waiting, and he needed to get warm.

  He felt in his pocket. ‘This was Charlie’s spare jacket. I thought I’d feel closer to him wearing it. Quite ridiculous!’ He pulled out a lighter.

  She lit the scrub at the base of the fire and it flamed immediately. They sat on the powdery sand and stared into it. ‘What on earth do you think you were doing?’

  ‘I lied to you about the night of Eleanor Longstaff’s murder,’ David said. ‘Charles was here in Meoness when she died. I followed him.’ He turned and the orange glow from the fire caught his face. ‘Do you think he killed her? I’ve been going over and over it in my mind. It might explain why somebody wanted him dead.’

  ‘What reason would he have for murdering Eleanor?’

  David looked into the fire. ‘Money,’ he said. ‘We both knew that the business was on the brink of disaster, and neither of us was prepared to admit it.’

  ‘You think somebody paid him to kill Eleanor Longstaff?’ She couldn’t keep the incredulity from her voice. The thought of the ex-magician as a paid hitman seemed ludicrous.

  ‘No! At least I don’t think so.’ David stretched out his hands towards the flames. ‘But I’m going crazy. While I was in the garden this afternoon I was going over it all in my head. I’m ready to believe almost anything.’ He paused for a beat. ‘Charles was here on the night of the hamefarin’ and he lied to me. Why would he do that?’

  She couldn’t give him an answer, but could see that he wouldn’t rest until he got one. ‘What did he do? What makes you think he was caught up in all this?’

  David leaned forward. His damp jeans were steaming in the heat and his face was flushed. ‘Charles had been behaving oddly for weeks. There’d been mysterious phone calls and sudden trips to Lerwick. When I asked him what was going on, he said he was investigating a project that might provide extra income for the business. He’d tell me when everything was settled.’ He paused again. ‘That night we’d decided that we wouldn’t go to Lowrie’s hamefarin’ and I went to bed early. Then I heard Charles go out, the engine of his car starting. I followed him to the Meoness hall in my own car. He parked there, but he didn’t go inside. He walked up the road a little way and met someone. It looked as if they’d arranged to meet.’

  ‘Did you see the person?’

  ‘It was a woman. That was a relief of a sort. I suppose I’d imagined that he’d found someone else. Another man. I didn’t see any detail. There wasn’t much light and I was worried about getting too close.’ David paused. ‘The last thing I wanted was for Charles to think I was spying on him.’

  ‘Could it have been Eleanor Longstaff? Tall and dark.’

  ‘She was certainly dark-haired. I’m not sure about anything else.’ David was calmer now and focused on getting the facts right. ‘They spoke for a minute and then they walked down here to the beach. They seemed very easy with each other, looking out over the water. Then other people came out of the hall – I suppose a dance had finished and everyone wanted fresh air or a cigarette – and I left. I didn’t want to be seen and dragged in to the party.’

  ‘Did Charles leave at the same time?’ Willow was trying to work out a time-line for this. Even if Eleanor was Hillier’s companion on the beach, it didn’t turn him into a murderer. She was still alive to go back to Sletts with the others, to sit on the deck and drink more wine.

  ‘No, when I left they were still talking.’

  ‘What did you do when you got home?’

  ‘I went back to bed. As I say, the last thing I wanted was for Charles to know I’d been following him.’ David took off his wellingtons and wrung out his socks. His pale bare feet looked pink and fleshy in the firelight. A piece of pitch pine fell into the hottest part of the blaze and sparks floated upwards.

  ‘What time did he get back?’

  The fire had taken Willow back to parties on the beach close to Balranald. Sometimes the whole commune had been there; middle-aged hippies sang the folk songs of their youth to acoustic guitars. Sometimes it was the wild boys of the island, steaming with drink because they were bored out of their skulls and that was the only excitement they could get.

  David was taking a long time to reply and she prompted him. ‘Were you asleep when he got in?’

  This time the answer was immediate. ‘Of course not! But I pretended to be. I was scared that he might be planning to run away, that stress about the business had finally pushed him over the edge. I kept looking at the clock and wondering what could have happened to him. I told myself he’d just have joined the party, had too much to drink and would be walking home. But I couldn’t quite believe that. Then I thought maybe he’d had an accident, and I imagined him lying at the bottom of a cliff somewhere. Eventually I heard his car. I almost wept with relief.’ He turned to her. ‘This must seem so foolish to you. An overreaction. But it was the first real relationship of my life. I was desperate not to lose him.’

  ‘What time did he get in?’

  ‘Ten to three. I looked at the bedside clock when he pulled into the courtyard.’

  So that would have been after Eleanor had sent her email to Polly. She might even have been dead by then. Looking out to sea, Willow saw that the mist had almost cleared. ‘Did he give you any explanation for why he was so late?’

  ‘I’ve told you: I pretended to be asleep. And I really was tired by then. It was the worry – heading out after him to Meoness when I was already shattered. Besides, we had guests staying and I knew I’d have to be up early to make breakfast. It wasn’t the time for a meaningful discussion.’

  ‘Did you talk to him about it in the morning?’

  David shook his head. ‘If Charles had secrets, I wanted him to share them when he was ready. I didn’t want to pry.’

  Which was all very well, Willow thought. All very adult and civilized. But it didn’t really help her track down the killer. ‘And Charles didn’t give any hint that he’d been out that night, or what he might have seen or done?’

  ‘No.’ David hesitated. ‘He seemed excited, pleased with himself. And then Sandy phoned with news of Eleanor’s death and to ask if your team could stay at Springfield House. I took the call and said we had space. All I was thinking of was the money and how useful it would be.’

  ‘How did Charles react when you told him that one of the hamefarin’ guests had been murdered?’

  ‘It was as if he couldn’t believe it. He asked me to repeat what I knew and pressed me for details that I couldn’t give. Then he was on the phone to Grusche, in case she knew more about it. He’s always been a gossip and I thought he was excited about Springfield being the base for a murder investigation, but I think there was more to it than that. He was desperate for information.’ David turned his face away from the fire and towards her. ‘Charles didn’t kill Eleanor Longstaff, Chief Inspector. The news of her death came as a surprise to him.’

  Willow thought that was probably true. But she also thought Charles had seen something w
hen he was out in Meoness that night, something that seemed important in the light of Eleanor’s death. And that knowledge had probably killed him.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Perez sent Sandy and Willow outside to search for Polly, but though he went to the door to see them out he remained inside the house. He was thinking of Polly, anxious and fraught, desperate. Caroline had moved to the window and was staring at the beach, as if her friend might suddenly appear through the mist. For a while Perez said nothing. He was glad of the chance to think. Then he moved further into the room and took a seat by the wood-burner.

  ‘I have a question,’ he said. Caroline turned back to face him, startled. Perhaps she thought he’d gone out with the others. ‘You saw Eleanor with another man in a restaurant in Bloomsbury. Who else did you tell about that?’

  ‘I only talked to Eleanor about it.’ Caroline’s voice was clear and certain. ‘I don’t really do gossip. I have enough to think about without that.’

  There was a brief silence. Perez supposed he should be panicking and out searching with the others, but in this room he felt quite calm. The worst thing in the world that could happen to him had already occurred when Fran died. He thought he wouldn’t panic ever again. Unless someone threatened Cassie, and now he couldn’t let himself think about that happening. ‘That’s not entirely true, is it? For instance, you told your husband that you’d seen Eleanor with the man.’

  ‘Lowrie doesn’t count.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘We share everything.’

  Really? I don’t think I shared everything with Fran.

  ‘But he might have spoken to someone else,’ Perez said. ‘His friend Ian, for example. Perhaps he’d think it was his duty to tell his friend that his wife was seeing someone else. Lowrie knew what Eleanor was like, after all. She’d messed him around big-style when he was a student. Perhaps he saw an opportunity to get his revenge.’

  The silence stretched, so he thought she might be considering the matter seriously, but when Caroline spoke her voice was dismissive. ‘Lowrie got over being dumped by Eleanor years ago. We were students. That’s how students behave. He’s with me now. I was happy enough when we were just living together, and he was the one who wanted the wedding and the hamefarin’. He wanted to be married to me.’ She tapped the palm of her hand on the windowsill to make her point. ‘Honestly. He’s the one who cares so much about family.’

  Perez thought about that. About all these complicated families. About Lowrie, who’d threatened to kill himself over a dark and exotic woman from the south. And about Polly, who had nobody but the man and the friends who’d come with her to Shetland. He was still thinking when he got to his feet and left the house without speaking to Caroline again. He stood outside, just where the track began, and listened. Nothing. He waited for his ears to tune into the tiny sounds all around him. He still had Caroline’s hard English voice in his head, and it took him a while to hear through the silence. The first sound to emerge was water. Always in Shetland there was the background noise of water on the shore or falling as rain. During the day you could usually hear sheep too. And wind, but tonight there was no wind at all.

  His phone buzzed, shattering his attempt to listen properly. He moved further up the track. Despite what Caroline had said about despising gossip, he wouldn’t put it past her to eavesdrop through the door.

  It was Mary Lomax and her words were tumbling over themselves, so for a minute he couldn’t make out what she was telling him. Then she became more coherent and explained that David Gordon had run away and she didn’t know where he’d gone. Perez thought this was a complication he could do without: all these people wandering around in the dark, all tense and jumpy. But there was no point blaming the police officer, and he cut into her apologies.

  ‘I’d like you to do something for me, Mary. Make a few phone calls. I know it’s late, but I think these folk will be awake. This is what I’d like to know.’ He spoke carefully and sensed that she was steadying on the other end of the phone. ‘There’s no need to ring me back. Just send me a text with your answer. Is that OK?’

  As he switched off his mobile he thought he could hear children singing, but the tune faded away immediately and it could have been his imagination, or a strange echo from the phone.

  Then he was still, waiting for his eyes and ears to adjust again, as he tried to put himself in the footsteps of the killer.

  He climbed the bank behind the house to the overgrown bones of the farmstead close to the loch where Eleanor’s body had been found. He’d seen George Malcolmson standing here when he and Willow had gone to look inside Utra. From there Perez thought he’d get a sense of the space all around and, when the sun rose, he’d have a view north along the shore. As he watched he saw flames. Someone had lit a bonfire on the beach, probably to celebrate midsummer and the tilting of the year towards winter. Sparks were shooting into the sky like fireworks or an emergency flare. Perhaps people who had been eating in the boat club had decided they would carry on partying. The thought reassured him. If there were other people around, then there was surely less danger of another murder.

  His phone buzzed. A text from Mary with the answer to his questions. The words seemed domestic and normal in this wild setting.

  Then he heard footsteps. Heavy. Someone wearing boots on the rocky path. Perez moved into the corner formed by two walls so that his silhouette wouldn’t show up against the lightening sky. There were still occasional flagstones on the floor, with cotton grass growing between them. He crouched in the corner and waited, feeling slightly ridiculous, reverting to childhood and hide-and-seek with his cousins. Around him suddenly there was movement. It was as if the wall was alive and shifting. There was a murmuring, the softness of wings against the air. Storm-petrels, bat-like and gentle-eyed, which had nested in cracks in the wall, were flying out towards the sea.

  The footsteps got closer and now Perez saw torchlight. Very faint, as if the battery was low. No other sound. No one was shouting out for Polly. If this was a searcher, then perhaps they’d lost heart. Perhaps. Still there wasn’t enough light to make a positive identification.

  Standing in the shadow, Perez was thinking about all the people he’d met since he’d come to Unst the week before, and in his head he saw them moving around as if they were actors on a giant stage. But now he’d lost control of their moves. He knew they were scattered around Meoness, on the cliffs and the shore, but didn’t have precise positions for them and that made him nervous. He was a director whose players were taking no notice of him. He’d lost control of the action.

  The figure moved on down the path towards the settlement of Meoness and paused briefly to look over the loch, where Eleanor had been lying in her smart silk dress, pointing the torch around the grassy banks as if looking for something specific. It was impossible to tell if the walker was male or female, but they were fit and moved easily down the steep path. Perez waited for a while, indecisive. He still thought Polly might come this way. The fog had cleared above him and, in the last of the darkness, the sky was suddenly filled with stars. He saw the Milky Way as defined points of light and all the space made him feel giddy, made him forget for a moment what he was doing there. Then he came to his senses and followed the figure further down the path.

  On the road leading towards the Meoness community hall the torch was switched off. Perez found it more difficult to track the person then. If they stopped in the shadow, he might get too close and he didn’t want to give away the fact that he was following. Utra, the house where Sarah Malcolmson had grown up, appeared as an indistinct silhouette beside the track. Perez stopped and listened. Nothing. Now the footsteps were so far ahead that he could no longer hear them. There was another moment of indecision. Should he run on and try to catch up, or go inside? Polly was the most important person in all this. He still wasn’t sure whom he’d been following. This place was central in the Peerie Lizzie story, and Polly might have been attracted inside for another look. He pushed open the door.r />
  In the old house the darkness felt viscous, like melted tar. Perez imagined that he would have to wade through it to get beyond the lintel. He turned on his torch and walked past the scullery to the bigger room and a smell of damp and decay. He was distracted, remembering his last visit to the house and the feral cat that had shocked Willow, the way her arm had felt under his hand, how the touch had been like an electric shock all the way to his shoulder. Then they’d both been disturbed and he thought they hadn’t searched the place properly. He was torn, aware that the figure he’d been following would soon be lost to him altogether, but curious. Something here had pulled in Polly Gilmour and Charles Hillier. He shone his torch into the corners. The room seemed quite bare. He opened the stove, which stood in one corner. A piece of half-burnt peat. Then as he was leaving he saw, caught on a sharp corner of the metal stove, a scrap of cloth. White. Like the dress worn by Peerie Lizzie every time she’d appeared. The dress, at least, was real and not imagined. In the dust on the floor he saw two long, thin rectangular shapes. Something had been placed here. Or lain here.

  In the distance there was the sound of a car engine. Perez went outside, saw the headlights just before they were switched off and thought he could place them in Meoness with some accuracy. He ran down the track and away from the ruined house. As he was running his phone rang. He slowed to take it from his pocket, but continued walking fast.

  ‘Jimmy!’ Sandy had his panicky I’m out of my depth voice. ‘I’m just on my way back to Sletts and I heard a scream.’

  ‘From inside the house?’ He didn’t need to ask which house. He knew now where the focus of the investigation should have been from the start.

  ‘I’m not quite sure. From near the house at least.’

  ‘I’m on my way.’ He paused. ‘Sandy, don’t go inside. Wait for me.’