by Ann Cleeves
Perez followed him back to the surgery and stood in the car park until Tom had driven away. He had a sudden sense of being watched and shifted his gaze to the street. Again the strange man was standing at some distance, close to the entrance of the school, and staring at him. It was as if he was desperate to speak to Perez but couldn’t quite find the nerve to approach him.
‘Come here,’ Perez shouted. ‘I might be able to help you.’ But the words just seemed to scare the man and he turned and ran away.
13
The Stranger
Perez chased the man who’d been following him. He was certain that this stranger held the answer to the mystery of Anna Blackwell’s death. The man took a road that Perez hadn’t explored yet. It led quickly out of the village and rose into dense woodland. Perez thought these must be the woods he’d seen at the back of Sarah and Tom’s house. They were conifer trees, planted very close together, and they blocked out most of the light. It was as if night had come early.
The man left the road and took a path through the woods. Perez was fit, but the stranger seemed to run without effort. He knew just where he was going and Perez soon felt lost. He was out of his comfort zone. He was used to Shetland with its open hills and big skies. There were few trees in the islands and he’d never been in a forest as dense and dark as this before. All he could see was a glimpse of a shadow heading into the undergrowth. Then even that was gone and Perez knew that the man had escaped him.
Despite the cold, Perez was sweating after his run. He stood still for a moment and tried to figure out the way back to the road. The little light that was left was fading, and he knew he’d have no chance of finding his way back to the village in the dark. He stumbled through the trees, hoping to see lights from houses or cars.
And all the time his mind was working. He’d figured out who he’d been following. A glimpse of the stranger’s face had shown a family likeness to a person Perez had come to know well. The man must be Sandy Kerr, Gail’s brother. He’d been one of the people in the wedding photo at the farmhouse. This case was all about family secrets, Perez thought. That was why it had been so hard to find out what had been going on, to find out what had led to Anna’s murder.
Perez lost his footing and slid down a steep bank, landing on a hard surface that scraped his hands. Tarmac. At last, and quite by chance, he’d found the road.
Jimmy started breathing more easily, and the panic he’d felt when he was surrounded by trees slowly left him. He just had to follow the road back to Stonebridge and his hotel. He knew that Sandy Kerr lived with his sister. It shouldn’t be hard to find him and see what he had to say. Perez had the feeling that Sandy wanted to explain what had happened to Anna. He was ready to talk.
Perez had walked a few hundred yards when he heard the sound of an engine behind him. He moved to the side of the road. He was tempted to flag down the car and get a lift into the village. Now that he had an idea what might have happened here in Stonebridge, Perez wanted the case finished as soon as possible. He longed to be on the ferry back to Shetland. He was missing his daughter, Cassie, and his house by the water. He could never be truly happy when he was away from the sea.
Perez put out his hand to wave at the car. In Shetland people were used to giving lifts, and in more remote places they always stopped for walkers. Surely it would be the same in a village like Stonebridge, a village that claimed to be friendly?
But the car showed no sign of stopping or even slowing down. Perez thought perhaps the driver hadn’t seen him, and resigned himself to walking back to the hotel. After all, it couldn’t be that far. He stood on the verge to allow the car to pass safely. The road was very narrow here.
Then he saw that instead of passing carefully by, the car was heading straight towards him.
All Perez could see was the glare of headlights as he jumped from the grass bank into the ditch that separated the road from the trees. There was a screech of brakes as the car careered away from him. It all happened so quickly and it was so dark that he couldn’t even make out the type of car. There was no way he could see who the driver was.
Perez stood shaking by the side of the road. He felt angry, not just because the unknown driver had tried to kill him, but because he’d been foolish enough to put himself in danger.
He had Cassie to look after now, and he should be more careful. He’d bruised his leg jumping into the ditch. It was full of snow, his feet were soaking wet, and his hands were still bleeding from the fall onto the road. He thought his dis-comfort served him right and he started limping back to the village.
14
The Confession
At the hotel, Perez managed to get to his room without being seen by the nosy landlady, Elspeth. He would have struggled to explain the torn trousers and the muddy footprints left on the lobby floor. Jimmy jumped into the shower and changed into clean clothes and at last he stopped feeling cold. Then he phoned Robert Anderson, the local cop, with whom he’d worked in Aberdeen.
‘Is there any chance you could get over to Stonebridge this evening?’
‘You think you’ve solved the case for me, do you, Jimmy?’ Anderson’s voice made the question sound like a joke.
Perez answered seriously though. ‘I think so.’
Now Anderson sounded surprised. ‘You’re telling me you’ve got enough evidence to make an arrest?’
‘No physical evidence yet, but I’m sure there’ll be fingerprints on the note I found in Anna’s bedroom.’ Perez paused. ‘Besides, I think the culprit might be ready to confess.’
Then he remembered the car hurtling towards him in the dark forest and he wasn’t so sure.
They arranged for Anderson to join him at the hotel. ‘As soon as you can, Robbie,’ Perez said. ‘Our culprit is desperate now. We don’t want them running away.’
Jimmy didn’t bother looking out of his window when he was waiting for Anderson to arrive. He knew that the watcher would no longer be there.
They drove in Anderson’s car to the Kerrs’ farm. ‘This is my patch, Jimmy,’ Anderson had said when Perez had offered to drive. ‘Besides, look at the state of you, man. You’re in no fit state to be behind a wheel.’
In the farmyard, a blue VW was parked beside Gail’s Land Rover. There were lights on in the house. Perez realised it must be time for the family’s dinner. He wondered if they should have waited until they could be sure Grace would be in bed. He didn’t want to talk to Gail and her brother in front of the little girl.
Gail opened the door to them. ‘Inspector,’ she said. She might have been surprised to see them, but her voice was as cool as it always was. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Is Sandy in?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He’s not long got back from work.’
‘And Grace?’
‘Oh, she’s in her onesie in the living room watching her favourite DVD. That’s her pre-bedtime routine.’ Gail smiled and stood aside to let them in.
Sandy was in the kitchen with the remains of a meal in front of him. It seemed he hadn’t been very hungry. Perez saw straightaway that he was the strange watcher, the man he’d followed into the woods. Sandy shifted in his seat but gave no other sign that he knew the inspector.
‘We have to talk,’ Perez said.
Gail took her place at the table and Anderson joined them. Perez remained standing.
‘What’s going on?’ Gail said. ‘I don’t understand.’
Perez ignored her and directed his question at Sandy. ‘Were you in love with Anna Blackwell, Mr Kerr?’
‘Don’t be stupid, Inspector,’ Gail said. ‘Sandy’s engaged to Emma Watt, who lives in the village. The wedding’s planned for the spring.’
‘Please answer, Mr Kerr.’ Perez kept his voice quiet.
‘I adored Anna,’ Sandy said. ‘I fell for her the moment I saw her.’
‘How did you meet?’
‘I often help out with Grace.’ Sandy was leaning forward across the table. He was eager to explain n
ow. ‘My hours with the forestry aren’t fixed. I picked her up from school one day. Anna had a message for Gail and we chatted for a while.’
‘Were you helping out with Grace on the night that Anna Blackwell died?’ Perez asked.
Sandy shifted in his seat and didn’t answer.
‘Did you look after Grace and Lucy for Gail on the night that Anna died?’ This time the question was louder, more forceful. When there was still no reply, Perez went on. ‘You’d have known Lucy, after all, if you’d been spending time with her mother. Both girls would have been happy to stay with you.’
When Sandy spoke it was almost in a whisper. ‘Yes, I was babysitting that night. Gail said she needed to go out. There was something she needed to sort out, she said. Something urgent. I wanted to tell you.’ His eyes were pleading.
‘That’s why you were waiting outside the hotel?’
Sandy nodded. ‘But then I thought Gail had been so good to me, and she’d just lost her husband. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. How could I accuse her of murder when she’s been through so much?’
Gail started to whimper. The noise wasn’t loud enough to disturb the child in the next room, but it was piercing. It seemed to cut through Perez’s skin to his bone.
He turned to the woman. ‘You set up a meeting with Anna Blackwell and you killed her. And this afternoon you tried to kill me. You were worried your brother would pluck up the courage to tell me what was going on, and you drove straight at me in your Land Rover. You must have had Grace with you. How could you do that?’
Gail didn’t answer. She was sitting with her head in her hands and tears ran down her cheeks.
15
The Conclusion
Inspectors Anderson and Perez sat in the lounge bar of the Stonebridge Hotel. It was late and there were no other drinkers. It occurred to Perez that if the bar was always this empty, the owners were making very little money from the place. But perhaps it was busier in the summer. Then there would be tourists in the village and the bar would be full of talk and laughter.
‘I don’t understand why the Kerr woman killed Anna Blackwell.’ Anderson was staring into his beer. ‘You can’t blame us for missing that one, Jimmy.’
‘She was worried about losing the farm,’ Perez said. ‘Sandy’s wage was all that was keeping the place going. Gail knew that Anna was full of life and ideas. She must have known that the teacher would want to move on after a while. Gail and Grace wouldn’t have been able to stay at the farm without Sandy’s wage to support them.’
‘It doesn’t seem much of a motive.’ Anderson looked up from his glass. ‘And wasn’t Sandy going to move out anyway? I thought he was engaged.’
‘But to a local girl,’ Perez said. ‘Someone Gail knew and liked. Someone who’d probably be happy to move into the farm in the end, and who’d be able to help Gail carry out all the plans John had for the place. Anna was the sort of girl who would have had plans of her own.’
‘All the same . . .’Anderson wasn’t convinced.
‘You have to realise that Gail couldn’t see things clearly. She’d married later than most people and thought she’d found her soulmate. She and John and Grace were the family she’d dreamed of. Then John died.’
To Perez this sounded so like the story of him and his wife Fran and their Cassie that he struggled to keep control. He worried that he might break down. As Gail had done when Anderson arrested her.
‘After realising it must have been Gail who drove towards me in the Land Rover today,’ Perez went on, ‘I wondered if she’d killed her husband in the same way. If he’d had an affair and Gail had killed him out of revenge. But I believe that was just a tragic accident. She loved the bones of him.’
I thought Gail was being so strong, he thought, and all the time grief was eating her away inside. The idea that Sandy might leave her too and she might have to sell the farm that held so many happy memories was enough to tip her over the edge.
‘Talk me through it, Jimmy,’ Anderson said. ‘Tell me what really happened to Anna Blackwell.’
‘The whole thing was planned in advance,’ Perez said. ‘Gail asked Lucy to the farm for a sleepover and suggested that the two women might meet up on the same night. Gail said that Sandy could babysit so she’d be happy to go to Anna’s house. The note that I found was Anna’s reply. She probably sent it home in Grace’s schoolbag.’
‘How did Gail know that Sandy and Anna were having a fling?’ Anderson took a long drink of beer.
‘Sandy told her that he planned to break off his engagement. He explained that he’d fallen for Anna.’ Perez paused and went on to describe how Anna had been killed. ‘On the night of the 10th, Gail left the girls with Sandy and drove into Stonebridge. I think she parked round the corner from the teacher’s house because Anna’s neighbour didn’t see or hear a car.’
Perez imagined the scene. Anna had prepared the house. She might not have felt well enough for a full spring clean, but she’d bought flowers to cheer the place up, and she’d put wine in the fridge to chill. She’d have pictured a friendly chat with the woman who might one day become her sister-in-law.
‘Gail would only have had one glass of wine,’ he said. ‘She’d have explained that she couldn’t drink because she was driving. At one point she went upstairs and crushed the pills she found in Anna’s bedroom into a powder. Everyone in the village knew Anna was taking antidepressants.
‘That was when Gail made her big mistake. The note from Anna was in her pocket and it dropped out on the dressing table. Without the note we would never have been able to prove what had happened.’
Jimmy Perez paused for breath and looked at Anderson, who was listening intently.
‘Gail went back downstairs,’ he continued. ‘Anna would have been quite tipsy at that point. She wasn’t used to drinking. It wouldn’t have been hard for Gail to tip the crushed pills into her wine without Anna noticing. They must have dissolved very quickly. She waited until Anna fell into a deep sleep, then she went into the kitchen, washed out her own glass and put it away. I’m sure you’ll find traces of the drug in the unwashed glass.’
‘Then she drove home,’ Anderson said, ‘as if nothing had happened.’
Perez nodded. ‘The next morning she took Lucy back and seemed as shocked as everyone else that Anna was dead.’
The inspector sipped his beer. ‘Freda, one of the other teachers, had already started the rumours about Anna and Tom. Freda hated the fact that she’d been replaced by a younger woman. Gail spread the gossip so that if you did decide that Anna had been murdered, no one would suspect that she was involved in the killing.’
‘But her brother did suspect,’ Anderson said.
‘He was the only person who knew how badly Gail had been affected by her husband’s death. And he knew how passionate she was about the farm. Sandy heard that I was asking questions and he came to the hotel to talk to me. But he couldn’t quite do it. He couldn’t quite bring himself to accuse his sister of murder.’
Anderson emptied his glass. ‘I suppose I should thank you for clearing the case up for me, Jimmy.’
‘I’m sorry if you felt I was treading on your toes.’
‘Aye well.’ Anderson grinned. ‘Just don’t think of coming to meddle on my patch again. Or I might come up to Shetland to work on one of your cases.’
‘You’d be very welcome, Robbie. Any time.’ Perez smiled back.
‘Are you joking? Ferries and small planes make me feel sick before I step onto them. You’re quite safe, Jimmy. I’ll leave you on your islands in peace.’
16
The Letter
Jimmy Perez left the next morning without saying goodbye to Tom and Sarah King. In a place like Stonebridge, news of Gail’s arrest would soon get out and the gossips would have another target for their chatter. Tom and Sarah would be left in peace.
It was a calm sailing on the ferry, and Perez’s friends brought his daughter, Cassie, to meet the boat when it got into Lerwick aft
er the overnight crossing. He dropped his stepdaughter at school and went into work. Over the next few weeks he was busy with everyday police work in Shetland and he’d almost forgotten the case in Stonebridge when a letter arrived from Sarah.
The envelope contained a photo, and it was this that slipped onto the table first. The picture had been taken in the Kings’ garden. It showed Tom and Sarah and the children wrapped up against the cold on a bright, clear day. There were Christmas lights on the fir trees on each side of the front door.
When Perez looked again he saw that there were three children in the photo, not two. The third child was smaller and she had dark curls and a wide, beaming smile. It was Lucy, Anna’s daughter.
Perez read the letter that went with the photo. It had been written by Sarah.
Thanks so much for all your help. You can’t know what a difference you made to our lives. We’ve had a fab Christmas and that was all down to you. I wanted to tell you that we’ve become Lucy’s guardians and we hope to adopt her. You know I always hoped for a big family and her cousins love her to bits. Now my life’s perfect.
Perez smiled to himself and stuck the photo onto the fridge.
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