Thin Air: (Shetland book 6)

by Ann Cleeves

  Willow was tempted to ask what the book group had been reading. She was feeling light-headed and a little giddy. She’d believed that Grusche was a dignified and intelligent woman. She hadn’t recognized the obsession that had gripped her.

  But Grusche was still talking. ‘Hillier was waiting for me on the sand. The mist was coming in again. It wasn’t hard to dispose of him.’ Then she snapped her lips shut. ‘I’m not talking any more, Jimmy. Not to you, and not in this place. I know my rights. You can take me to Lerwick now, and Lowrie will find me a lawyer. Lowrie will look after me.’

  Chapter Forty-Six

  ‘I still don’t understand why the Malcolmson woman went after Polly Gilmour,’ Sandy said. ‘And that stuff about Peerie Lizzie. Was the lassie on the sand just a figment of the English folk’s imagination?’

  They’d stopped in the North Light Gallery for lunch on their way south through Yell. Willow’s idea. Perez would have preferred to go straight back to Lerwick so that he could be home when Cassie came back from school. The painting of the girl in the white dress was still hanging on the gallery’s wall. Catherine Breton was in her glass bubble making pots. The gallery with its cafe was unusually quiet. It was a breezy day, with the wind blowing cloud-shaped shadows across the water outside and loose sand against the windows.

  He was about to answer when the door opened and a woman walked in. Perez thought Willow had been expecting her, that this was a pre-arranged meeting. The newcomer stood just inside the door, then approached them. She was wearing a bright-red coat, heavy brown boots and carried the smell of cigarettes with her.

  ‘I went to the police station this morning as soon as the ferry came in.’ Monica Leaze had the same nervous energy that Perez remembered from the launch of her exhibition. The same wiry hair and chestnut eyes. ‘They told me to talk to you here.’

  ‘So now we’re in a position to explain to Sandy about the ghost.’ Willow’s voice was light until she turned to the artist. Then she was fiercer than Perez had ever seen her. ‘If we’d understood earlier that you were involved, we might have prevented Hillier’s death.’

  ‘Of course I should have come before.’ Monica was playing with a napkin on the table, folding it into smaller and smaller squares. ‘But when I left Shetland I didn’t know Eleanor had died, only that she was missing, and that was always part of the plan.’ She turned to stare out of the window. A waitress brought coffee without her noticing. ‘It started out as a bit of a hoot, and a way to get Nell out of a financial mess. Nobody was really supposed to get hurt.’

  ‘Perhaps you could talk us through what happened.’ Perez thought he knew most of it, but Sandy was sitting on the other side of the table looking bewildered. The man had worked well on this investigation and his own version of the real Peerie Lizzie story was probably close to the truth. He deserved some answers to the make-believe one. ‘You met here in Shetland a couple of weeks ago. You and three others.’

  ‘Well, I’d known Eleanor for ages. We moved in the same arty circles, I suppose – my husband’s a director. I hadn’t come across Charles or Lowrie before. We came together that day; we were Nell’s team, her secret weapon. The four of us had lunch in the Hay’s Dock. It seemed like great fun at the time, a bit of a party, as if we were on some kind of secret mission.’ Monica paused. ‘That was the last time I saw Eleanor. Lowrie and Eleanor had flown in on separate planes, very cloak-and-dagger – Lowrie from Edinburgh and Eleanor from Glasgow, though they both started off in London. I was already here in Yell and Charles Hiller gave me a lift down to Lerwick.’

  ‘And what was the meeting about?’

  ‘To arrange the scam, of course: the Peerie Lizzie haunting. Nell needed her documentary about ghosts to be a big success. The company, Bright Star, had been leaking money – there’d been a couple of poor shows, and Eleanor was distracted when she lost the baby. Not on top of her game. This was the last chance to avoid bankruptcy. She wasn’t prepared to take any chances.’

  ‘And you?’ Perez asked. ‘What would you get out of it?’

  She seemed startled for a moment, as if the answer was so obvious that it needed no explanation. ‘Fun,’ she said. ‘Like I said. And Nell was a mate who needed help. Besides . . .’ She paused again.

  ‘You glory in the commonplace made weird,’ Perez said.

  ‘Yeah. Something like that.’ She gave him a strange look. ‘I suppose I was thinking about it almost like a piece of art.’

  ‘So you manufactured a ghost.’

  ‘Not to mislead the television audience,’ Monica said sharply. ‘Eleanor would never have stooped to that. She was honest about her work and took it seriously. But to show how educated and rational people might become suggestible in certain situations. She wanted to persuade her friends of the reality of Peerie Lizzie and use their experience as an example in her documentary.’

  ‘Why did she involve Hillier and Lowrie?’ Willow stood up and stretched. The gallery ceiling was so low that she almost touched it. There was a sudden shower and the rain hit the window hard, like stones. The room became very dark.

  ‘Eleanor always liked a gang,’ Monica said. ‘Especially a gang of admirers. But there were practical reasons too. Lowrie knew the layout of the land. He’d grown up in Unst. Hillier’s partner had researched the background to the Peerie Lizzie story and Charles could throw in the details that might make it seem authentic. Besides, he’d been a stage magician. He had skills that we could use.’

  Hillier would have loved that, Perez thought. And the chance to appear on television again.

  ‘And you?’ Willow asked. ‘What was your role?’

  ‘I was the set designer and the theatrical assistant. When we met for lunch I brought along some drawings. One was of Eleanor looking like Ophelia in her bridesmaid’s dress – you found that in my house in Cullivoe. We weren’t sure how we’d use them, and it was all very cheesy.’ A pause. ‘But mostly I was there because I could provide the ghost.’

  ‘Your granddaughter.’

  ‘Grace, yes. Her mother finds her a tricky child and I don’t think London suits her. She’s got too much energy. She spends some of her time here with me.’

  Perez was looking at the painting of the girl on the gallery wall.

  ‘That’s my daughter,’ Monica said, ‘but the resemblance is uncanny. It’s a while since I’ve seen that and I hadn’t realized quite how alike they look, now that Grace is getting older.’

  I can see how Polly was so disturbed by it, Perez thought. How she started to question her sanity.

  ‘You got Grace to record Peerie Lizzie’s song,’ he said. ‘But of course it didn’t sound right. She’s spent a lot of time in Shetland, but she hasn’t picked up the accent yet.’ He paused. ‘She and the Arthur boys were singing it the night Polly was lost in the fog and must have freaked her out big-style.’

  ‘When I went south, Grace wanted to stay with Jen Arthur and the boys and I thought another week off school wouldn’t do her any harm. Jen was happy to have her, and it’s an education in itself, isn’t it, living in Shetland? I didn’t know then that Eleanor had been killed and there was a murderer on Unst.’

  ‘It must have been in the papers in the south,’ Sandy said. ‘Once Hillier was killed too. Why wait until today to get in touch?’

  Monica still looked out at the grey water. ‘I was scared. If you knew I was there the night Eleanor was killed – if you found my painting – you might accuse me of murder.’

  ‘Not if you were innocent,’ Sandy said. ‘You’d have nothing to fear, if you told us the truth.’

  She turned back to face him. Her words shot towards him like the rain on the window. ‘Really? When I was a student I was assaulted by a lecturer. I went to the police that time. They believed a respectable lecturer over an unconventional art student and threatened that I could be charged with wasting police time if I didn’t withdraw the allegation. I wasn’t prepared to take the risk now.’

  The room went very quiet
. Behind the counter the coffee machine hissed.

  ‘Let’s go back to that meeting at the Hay’s Dock,’ Perez said. ‘Did you take photographs afterwards?’

  ‘Yes, Eleanor wanted some publicity images that we could release to the media before the show.’ Monica looked up. ‘She was already planning features in the broadsheets. How four metropolitan thirty-somethings believed that they’d seen a ghost.’

  ‘And one of the pictures was of her and Lowrie?’

  ‘Yes, Lowrie asked if he could have it. I emailed it to him. Why? Is it important?’

  Perez didn’t answer. This was the photo that Lowrie had been staring at when Grusche went into his room before the party. The photo that had triggered Eleanor’s murder. ‘Tell me what happened the night of the party.’

  ‘Grace and I went into Unst on the ferry.’

  ‘You were seen by the Meoness teacher.’ Sandy seemed to wake briefly, then to settle back with his arms on the table. They’d all been awake all night. He looked like a nursery child ready to take a nap.

  Monica ignored the interruption. ‘We left our car at the hall. There were so many vehicles parked there that nobody would notice. Then we camped out in the old house, Utra. Lowrie had told us we could use it, and Grace got changed there. For her it was just a game. Staying up late. Putting on a party frock. Dancing on the beach. She’s like all the women in our family – given to exhibitionist tendencies. I met Charles on the beach. We had a smoke and watched the performance. Afterwards Grace and I lit a fire and rolled out our sleeping bags on the floor, just waiting until it was time for the first ferry to Yell. Early the next morning I dropped Grace at Jen’s and drove on south.’

  ‘Polly thought she saw the girl on the beach and in the house at other times.’ It was Sandy again. Perez could tell that he thought this artist, with her paintings of dead women, her camping out all night in a ruined house, wasn’t fit to have care of a child.

  Monica shrugged. She seemed fidgety and uncomfortable. Perhaps Sandy reminded her of the cops she’d met in the Met. Perhaps she just wanted to go outside to smoke. ‘Maybe Jen took her and the boys to play at their father’s house. He lives with his new wife in Spindrift, that hideous bungalow in Meoness. They’ve been divorced for a while, but it’s all quite amicable. The boys like to see the new baby.’

  Or maybe, Perez thought, Polly conjured her own ghosts out of the air. She’d been told that her lover was having an affair with an older woman and she was emotionally frail to start with. He could imagine that she might be haunted by dreams and demons.

  ‘Who sent the email saying the group wouldn’t find Eleanor alive?’ Willow broke into his thoughts.

  ‘The plan was for Eleanor to write it, and for me to take her phone and find somewhere with a good signal to send it,’ Monica said. ‘Grace was fast asleep, so I slipped out of Utra and sent the message. We’d arranged that I’d leave the phone in the planticrub, where Eleanor could pick it up later.’

  ‘And then Eleanor was supposed to disappear?’

  Monica nodded. ‘Charles was waiting with his car. He was going to take her back to Springfield House. There was a small room waiting for her.’

  But Eleanor kept being interrupted. First by Polly, who’d joined her straight after the men went to bed. Then by Grusche. And in the end Hillier went back to the hotel alone. When Eleanor’s body was discovered, he remembered seeing Grusche coming back from the cliffs alone and knew who must have killed her.

  Monica was on her feet. ‘I’m going to fetch Grace and take her home. I thought this was a good place for her to spend part of the year, but I think perhaps London is safer after all.’ At the door she stopped and turned back to Perez. ‘Don’t I know you?’

  ‘I met you here,’ he said. ‘At a party for the opening of your exhibition.’ He paused. ‘My partner was an artist. Fran Hunter.’ He was pleased with himself because the words came easily.

  Monica nodded as if she recognized the name and then she left.

  Later they ended up in Lerwick, in the house by the water that Perez hadn’t quite got round to letting out. He’d arranged for Cassie to stay one more night with her father. Perez wasn’t sure exactly what time it was. Or even what day. He’d be glad to be back in Ravenswick with just Cassie’s chat as the background to his thoughts, and the routine of getting her to school and himself to work to keep him straight. But now they were drinking coffee, and Willow had managed to find an unopened bottle of single malt from the top of her bag. There were fulmars sailing past the window and no trace here in the town of fog. And then he saw the Hjatland, the big ferry to Aberdeen, pass down the Sound and so he knew it was just past seven o’clock in the evening. In twelve hours the three visitors from Sletts would be back on the Scottish mainland. He wondered how things would be between Polly and Marcus. Would the man give up his glamorous older woman, and would the timid librarian be able to forgive him? She seemed to have a knack of seeing the world as she wanted it to be. He thought it would be easier for Ian Longstaff to come to terms with his wife’s murder now that there was some resolution.

  ‘That scheme of Eleanor’s seems an awful lot of bother to have gone to.’ Willow was sitting on the floor and her long hair fell over her knees.

  ‘She was desperate,’ Perez said. ‘As Monica said, her company was on the verge of bankruptcy. She needed something new and dramatic to make the show a hit. Persuading a group of graduates that they’d seen the ghost of a child who’d died in 1930 would do that. And maybe Eleanor saw the hoax as a kind of retribution. She thought that Ian had been unfair in the way he treated her after losing the baby.’

  ‘They must have had a weird kind of relationship.’ Sandy seemed dreamy and lost in thought. By now the lack of sleep was catching up with them all. Perhaps he was thinking about his Unst school teacher and planning another meeting with her.

  ‘It makes a kind of sense to me,’ Willow said. ‘They both liked a drama – the fights, the falling out, the reconciliation. I can understand how Eleanor would have enjoyed the challenge of convincing Ian that something supernatural was happening in Unst. She’d be able to mock him for the rest of their life together. And her whole existence was a theatrical production, so she’d have relished setting up something like this.’ She paused. ‘In her documentary I guess she wanted to prove that we need to believe in something other than the everyday world, to show that we’re looking for an explanation for random events. It doesn’t seem too daft, as theories go. Folk were always turning up at my parents’ commune searching for answers.’

  Perez thought this story had started with a deception and it was all about illusion and distorted perception. Strange shadows and half-spoken lies. ‘I was never convinced when Lowrie said Eleanor hadn’t discussed the project with him. That defied belief. She knew he’d do whatever she asked him to. He was Eleanor’s champion, her knight in shining armour, charging to the rescue of her failing company.’

  Willow reached out and poured herself another dram. For all that she was lanky and awkward to look at, Perez thought there was a grace about the way she moved. He looked at the water again. The Hjatland was already out of his line of sight.

  ‘Why didn’t Lowrie tell us all about the hoax, when Eleanor’s body was found? There was no reason to keep it secret after that.’ It was Sandy again, full of common sense.

  ‘Because Grusche persuaded him that it would be a mistake and his involvement might turn him into a suspect. He wasn’t exactly in the right frame of mind to make a rational decision. Bullied into marrying Caroline. Convinced by two strong women that his future lay in Shetland. And imagine the shock of finding Eleanor dead! The love of his life. His adolescent sweetheart. He’d grown up doing exactly what his mother wanted him to. This wasn’t going to be the time when he’d stand up to her.’

  ‘Do you think he guessed that Grusche was a killer?’

  Perez hesitated. It was something he’d been thinking about since they’d first interviewed the woman. ‘Maybe.
Deep down. But it wasn’t something he could afford to admit to himself.’

  ‘I still don’t quite understand what happened last night. All that unnecessary melodrama.’ Willow was lying flat on the floor now, and fibres from Perez’s shabby carpet had clung to her sweater. ‘Why did Grusche attack Polly? Where on earth did that come from?’

  ‘Lowrie had been convinced by his mother that the Peerie Lizzie scam must be kept secret at all costs. Grace was often knocking around in Meoness and it was freaking Polly out. The poor woman was really starting to believe in ghosts. And of course the girl was at the dinner in the boat club with Vaila and Neil and his boys. Polly must have thought she was going mad by that point, especially as Grace was in the dress she’d worn on the beach.’ Perez paused and pulled together the time-line in his head. ‘Grusche phoned Lowrie to offer them a lift back from the boat club, so that they wouldn’t have to walk in the fog. The sight of Grace was already making him jumpy and he told Grusche that she was there.’

  Perez spoke slowly, explaining the events to himself as well as his audience. ‘The sight of the girl in the same room as Polly would have sent Lowrie into a panic. What shall I do? What will happen if Polly sees the girl, and Grace tells her everything? The police will want to know why I’ve been lying to them. And there might have been recriminations too: I should have gone to Jimmy Perez right at the start. I should have explained. Implying that it all this was his mother’s fault. And still Grusche would have been strong and reassuring: “Don’t worry, son. Leave it to me. I’ll sort it out.” Then Lowrie made another phone call to Voxter, after Polly went missing, and the tension increased. Grusche would have heard the fear in her son’s voice. “Polly’s disappeared. She chased after Grace. She just phoned Marcus to tell him what she was doing, that she’s seen Peerie Lizzie.” And again Grusche would have reassured him. She’d always looked after him and she would always provide the answers.’