Cold Earth

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Those murders . . .’ An excitement in her voice, hoping for details that wouldn’t be known to the general public. He remembered that she’d been a terrible gossip.

  ‘I don’t suppose you saw Tom Rogerson on Sunday? He was supposed to be flying off to Orkney, parked his car here, but never arrived. You did know Tom Rogerson?’

  ‘Oh aye. And Mavis, his wife. He led her a merry dance, you ken.’

  The woman’s name came back to him. Susan. He’d never known her surname.

  ‘Were you working on Sunday?’

  ‘Aye, it was another day just like this. Flights cancelled and delayed. Lots of passengers around, just waiting for the visibility to improve. I was rushed off my feet.’ Susan hauled herself onto a stool behind the counter to make her point. She had short, stubby legs and calves shaped like upturned bottles.

  ‘Did you see Tom Rogerson? He was a sociable kind of guy, wasn’t he? He’d be buying coffee for anyone he knew, sitting at one of the tables there, chatting. I doubt if you’d miss him.’ Sandy took a bite of the bacon sandwich. He’d already paid for it and there was no point in letting it get cold.

  ‘I did see him, but he wasn’t here for long. Maybe he thought it wasn’t worth hanging around, because the flights were obviously delayed, and he’d come back later. I saw him chatting to one of the lasses at check-in. He probably wanted to get the latest news on the planes.’

  ‘Did he come into the shop at all?’ Sandy wasn’t sure why he asked that, except that he was trying to picture Rogerson’s movements.

  Susan paused for a moment before answering. ‘Yes, he did come in. The newspapers had arrived in with the first flight and he bought one of the fat London ones. You know what they’re like at weekends. A pile of magazines and adverts tucked inside them.’

  ‘Did he come into the shop before he spoke to the people at check-in or after?’

  She pondered again. Sandy thought it was helpful for him that Susan took such a great interest in people. He would have taken no notice at all in the random movements of the passengers, and he’d be a terrible witness.

  ‘After,’ she said. ‘He went to check-in almost as soon as he came into the terminal. Then he made his phone call and then he came into the shop. I was on the till at the door then, not doing the cafe. We had a very busy patch soon after that, and I didn’t see what happened to him after he’d paid for the newspaper.’

  Sandy was thinking about the phone call. He assumed Perez would have put in a request to Rogerson’s service provider to get a list of his calls, but it might be more urgent to see the details now. There had been no phone on Rogerson’s body, and no mention had been made of one at his house or office, but Mavis would have his personal and business numbers. It should be easy enough to track down the call history.

  ‘Did you hear anything of his phone conversation?’ Because he knew Susan would be interested. She already had Rogerson marked down as a philandering bastard and she’d be looking out for more evidence.

  She shook her head sadly. ‘He was out there in the lounge and I was in here behind the till. I saw him make the call, but there was no way I could have heard a word.’

  Sandy had a sudden thought. ‘Are you sure he made the call out? He wasn’t answering one? You might not have heard it ringing, if the airport was crowded and noisy.’

  She considered the idea. ‘You’re right. I just assumed that he was calling out, but I don’t think I saw him press the buttons. It could have been either.’

  Sandy waited in line to speak to the officials on check-in. He didn’t want any aggro by pushing to the front of the queue, and anyway it wasn’t too long; planes were arriving in from the south now and turning round very quickly. The woman he spoke to was English, young and bright. He showed her his warrant card and he could tell she was impressed. If he’d come across her in the past, he would already be chatting her up with a view to asking her out. Now he concentrated on Tom Rogerson.

  ‘He was booked onto a flight to Orkney on Sunday morning,’ he said, ‘but he never took it.’

  She pressed a few keys on her computer, muttered under her breath because the system was so slow.

  ‘Were you working on Sunday?’ he asked while she waited to retrieve Rogerson’s booking.

  ‘Yes. On the early shift. I finished at two.’

  ‘Maybe you remember talking to him then? He had a kind of flirty way of speaking to the ladies.’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Late middle age? Had hand-luggage only. A small rucksack. Talked like something from that cop show set in the Seventies. Life on Mars.’ Dismissive.

  ‘Aye, that sounds about right.’ Sandy gave her a smile. He thought that since Louisa, he’d changed his style; he felt good about that, a bit superior.

  She looked at the screen in front of her. ‘Rogerson, Thomas. Booked on the ten-thirty flight to Kirkwall. He checked in on time and was told that the flight would be delayed and he should listen out for announcements. Then he came back and said that because of the severe delay, he’d miss his meeting and he might as well cancel. Because he only had hand-luggage there was no problem, but he lost nearly two hundred quid, because the return flight was automatically cancelled too.’

  Sandy tried to think that through. Missing the meeting was obviously a bollocks excuse, because the fishery conference wasn’t going to start until the Monday morning. So what had happened between checking in for his flight and coming to the desk to cancel? Tom Rogerson had spoken to someone on the phone. If they could find out who the caller was, they might know the identity of the killer. Sandy thanked the young woman and moved away from the counter.

  He was about to phone the police station in Lerwick to tell Jimmy Perez what he’d discovered when he remembered that his boss was working at home all day, looking out for comings and goings at the Hays’ farm. He thought it would be just as easy to call in on Jimmy on his way back to town, and that his boss might even provide a spot of lunch.

  But when he arrived at the house in Ravenswick, Perez seemed preoccupied. He was sitting at the window with a pair of binoculars on the sill, staring down towards the valley where the Hays lived. In the distance there was the scar in the hill left behind by the landslide. The ruin of Tain was just out of sight.

  ‘Get back to the station and chase up those phone calls,’ Perez said. ‘You’re right. We need to know who Tom spoke to in the airport that morning. We know he phoned his brother-in-law in Orkney, but that would have been after he changed his plans.’

  ‘Anything happening here?’ Sandy still had hopes of lunch.

  ‘Jane Hay drove north with a passenger. The youngest lad, I think. She could have been taking him to school. Then she turned down towards the headland and I lost sight of her. She wasn’t away long and she’s home again now.’ Perez looked at Sandy. ‘This feels like a serious waste of time.’

  ‘Just give it a day.’ Sandy didn’t know how else to respond. ‘Isn’t that what Willow said?’

  ‘Aye.’ Perez lifted his binoculars and stared out once more. ‘That’s what she said.’

  Sandy was reminded for a moment of the Jimmy Perez who’d lost Fran in a stabbing on Fair Isle. The Jimmy who brooded and snapped and refused to tell anyone what he was thinking. Sandy said goodbye, but he didn’t get any response, so he let himself out of the house and drove back to Lerwick.

  Chapter Forty

  Jimmy Perez sat in the house that he still thought of as Fran’s and saw Sandy drive away. It had been his idea to watch Kevin Hay’s farm for unusual movements, but now he found the lack of activity frustrating. That wasn’t the only reason for his feeling out of sorts. He knew he’d set himself an unreasonable deadline. Willow would be expecting some sort of answer from him at the end of the day and he knew he would have nothing coherent to tell her. He should be giving all his energy and attention to finding a double killer, not becoming angst-ridden about a relationship with a senior colleague.

  The post van stopped ou
tside his house and Davy Sutherland ran up the path with his mail. Perez stooped for the post, glad of the distraction. Three bills and a letter from the council, which he nearly threw into the bin unopened. When he looked more closely he saw it was labelled Confidential and when he opened it, he realized the letter was about the Ravenswick cemetery:

  You will be aware that the recent landslide caused considerable damage. We want to assure everyone that while headstones were overturned and in some cases washed away, your loved ones should not have been disturbed. We need to make a decision about the cemetery’s future and, in view of the possibility of further extreme climate events, the council is considering turning it into a green burial site. If that was the decided option, headstones would not be replaced, but a suitable environmentally friendly way of marking your loved ones’ graves would be explored. We would welcome your comments.

  Perez found himself smiling. Fran would have loved the idea of a green burial site in Ravenswick. She’d be one of the first to volunteer to plant wildflowers and small native trees. He thought he should talk about the idea to Cassie, and again it came to him that this wasn’t the right time to bring a new woman into their lives. Cassie already had enough to deal with. He returned to the letter and saw that Tom Rogerson’s name was at the bottom of it. He must have been one of the councillors who’d come up with the idea, immediately after the landslide. There was no signature of course. The letter must have been drafted, approved and then slowly made its way through the council bureaucracy, to be printed without anyone realizing it might not be appropriate for it to carry Rogerson’s name.

  All the time he’d been keeping half an eye on the valley and the road. The cars were moving steadily, despite the single-lane traffic south of his house. No movement from the Hays. No sign of the eldest son, the one who had given Perez most concern. Was Andy in the house, helping his parents, or had he stayed overnight in Lerwick? Perez ate oatcakes and cheese, still perched at the window, not really hungry.

  Cassie would come out of school at three. A neighbour usually collected her and kept her until Perez had finished work. He thought that today he would go himself. He’d still have the Hays in his sight for most of the way and he couldn’t bear the idea of being trapped in the house any longer. The rain had stopped and the cloud had lifted a little. There might even be sufficient light for Cassie and him to look down at where the cemetery had once been, and he could talk to her about the green burial site. It would be a way for her to think about her mother’s life, her dreams and ideals.

  Cassie was first out into the playground and was delighted to see him, though she tried to be super-cool about it. She moaned a little because he didn’t have the car and they’d have to walk back. ‘You don’t know how hard Miss Rogerson makes us work.’

  ‘How does she seem?’ Usually Kathryn came out into the playground to see the children off the premises, but today the classroom support teacher was there instead.

  ‘OK.’

  He didn’t walk with her up the footpath to the main road and home, but down towards the sea. They would skirt Tain that way, but the sycamores would hide most of the devastation and there was a rise in the land where they could look down at the remains of the cemetery. The afternoons were already getting lighter; there was an hour of the day left. Cassie was chatting about her friends and about the costume she’d need for the end-of-term performance. ‘But Miss Rogerson says you’re not to worry about that. She’ll sort it out for us.’

  ‘That’s very kind of her.’ But now Perez was thinking that Kathryn Rogerson might not be so kind. How could a woman who’d just lost the father she claimed to adore continue working as if nothing at all had happened?

  In the distance Perez could see Kevin Hay working on a big machine, a tractor with a bucket on the front. He was digging a trench that might be a new drainage ditch by the side of a field, heaping the damp black soil in piles to one side. From a distance, the ditch looked like a long grave. The rumble of the machine sounded animal, like a monster from one of Cassie’s stories, but she seemed not to notice it.

  There was a figure standing on the bank, just where Perez had thought he and Cassie would have their conversation about her mother’s headstone. He felt a moment of resentment. Usually there was space enough in Shetland not to be disturbed. As they approached he recognized the figure as Jane Hay. She turned as she heard them.

  ‘You got the letter too,’ she said.

  ‘You had someone buried there?’ He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. Kevin’s family had crofted here for generations.

  ‘Kevin’s grandfather, though his parents looked after his grave.’ She paused. ‘I never knew him. I suppose I’m here for Minnie Laurenson.’

  ‘The old woman who used to live at Tain.’

  She nodded. ‘She didn’t have any family locally and she was the closest thing I had in the islands to my own relative.’ She qualified the words quickly. ‘I mean, Kev’s mother and father were always lovely to me, but it’s not quite the same.’

  Cassie was pulling at his hand, making it clear she wanted to be on her way home. She had no interest in the adult conversation taking place above her head. Perez nodded towards her. ‘I wanted to talk to the bairn about the green burial idea.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll leave you to it. I’m not sure what Minnie would make of it. She was always a great one for tradition.’ A pause. ‘When you’re done, Jimmy, why don’t you bring Cassie into the house? I’ve been baking. We might find her something to keep her going until tea time.’

  He nodded again, thinking that it was good to have an invitation to the Hays’ house. Much better than staring out of his kitchen window into the dark.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Willow was doing her morning yoga when she heard the baby. It was a strange noise, more like a bleat than a cry. Rosie started singing then, and the combined sounds – the mother singing and the baby calling – moved Willow almost to tears. She thought she could understand those sad, lonely women who snatched children from prams outside shops. In the kitchen John was sitting in his dressing gown drinking tea.

  ‘Oh God,’ he said when he saw her. ‘Is it that time? What must you think of us? Are you OK with cereal and toast?’

  ‘I’ll make it.’ She preferred to be in the kitchen on her own. Something about his sleepy, rather smug face made her want to hit him. It was deep and basic playground envy: You’ve got something I want, and I hate you. She knew it was ridiculous, but she couldn’t control it.

  ‘Are you sure?’ He was already on his feet. ‘You know where everything is?’

  ‘Quite sure, and I’ll find it.’

  After breakfast she walked through the drizzle to the police station: up the lane, emerging opposite the library, and then past the town hall. Lerwick had become familiar to her now and some of the passers-by recognized her, gave her a wave. It was early and the place was quiet. Sandy had planned to head straight to the airport and Perez would be in the house in Ravenswick, staring down the valley towards Gilsetter and Tain. She hoped he wasn’t brooding over Fran; she hadn’t intended to give him some sort of ultimatum.

  She spent the morning attempting to lose herself in the details of the investigation and stuck a mind-map on the wall – a contemporary-art extravaganza of different-coloured marker pens, all circles and connections: Alison Teal’s sudden crisis in Simon Agnew’s office linked to the crisis that had first brought her to the islands; Tom Rogerson’s relationship with Alison, with Kevin Hay and with the developers of the smart cabins north of Ravenswick. The second generation – the Hay boys and Kathryn Rogerson – marked in red; the earlier generation – Magnus Tait and Minnie Laurenson – circled in green. Willow was still staring at the map, feeling that she was starting to see a strange inverted pattern, when Sandy came in. He looked at the map briefly, but seemed to dismiss it as the ravings of a lunatic and started to tell her about his trip to Sumburgh. Willow turned away from the wall to listen and felt her theory disso
lve into nothing.

  ‘Rogerson took a phone call while he was waiting for his plane,’ Sandy said. ‘Or made a call out. My witness couldn’t be sure. And suddenly his plans changed and he cancelled his flight.’

  ‘We asked Kathryn for her dad’s mobile number.’ Despite herself, Willow began to see why Sandy was so excited. ‘She didn’t get back to us. We know he had two phones – one for business, and I have that number; and a personal one. I don’t think we’ve ever been given those details.’

  ‘You think the killer took Rogerson’s mobile?’ Sandy was back in bouncy puppy mode. Excitable. He’d let slip that he’d dropped in on Perez, but had given no details.

  Willow shrugged. ‘If so, I doubt we’ll ever find it. Easy enough to chuck it into the tide, if the killer didn’t want anyone to know that they’d called.’ She stood up and picked up her coat. ‘I’m going to talk to Mavis Rogerson. She’ll have Tom’s number.’

  She found Mavis in the big house near the park. She was alone. ‘I sent my sister back to Kirkwall. I couldn’t stand her fussing.’ She stood aside to let Willow into the house.

  ‘We could go out,’ Willow said. ‘Coffee and cake. My treat.’

  ‘Nah.’ Mavis gave a little smile. ‘People just want to tell me how sorry they are for my loss. They didn’t have much good to say about Tom when he was alive. It sticks in my craw now he’s dead. Besides, I’ve been baking.’

  They sat in the kitchen and she switched on the kettle. There were scones cooling on a wire tray on the table. ‘I can’t seem to stop cooking,’ she said. ‘Since you took me out and bought me cake that day. It’s something to do. Kathryn took a batch into school today for the bairns.’

  ‘I wanted to ask you about Tom’s phone numbers. It’s always something we check. I’ve got his work number from his office, but they don’t have his personal one. And he didn’t have his phone with him when we found him.’