by Ann Cleeves
Anna thought Ronald was going to object. She saw him tense within Jackie’s embrace, then wriggle free from her. But in the end the habit of fulfilling Jackie’s expectations was too strong for him to refuse. Entering into the spirit of the occasion, he wrapped the bottle in a white napkin to stop it slipping in his hand, twisted the top and gave his mother a brief grin, more like a grimace, when it made a louder pop than he was expecting. But he wouldn’t accept a glass when she was pouring it out.
‘You’ll have a beer, then? Your father never liked this stuff. All the more for you and me, Anna, eh?’
‘I’m not drinking,’ Ronald said. ‘Not after what happened last night.’
Jackie was going to push the matter, but stopped herself just in time. Anna saw the effort that took. The older woman turned away and took a can of Coke from the fridge, handed it to her son.
‘Let’s not talk about that,’ Jackie said. ‘Not tonight. This is supposed to be a party.’ She poured herself another glass of champagne and led them into the dining room.
They didn’t talk about Mima again until they started the pudding, and then it was Jackie who raised the subject. Anna had found herself enjoying the meal. The wine had relaxed her. She must even have become a little drunk, because she realized she was laughing too loudly at a joke Jackie had made. That would never do. She put her hand over her glass when Ronald next offered the bottle to her. Perhaps everything will work out, she thought. Perhaps I can make it work. Jackie too had been drinking heavily throughout. Her face was flushed with the cooking and the responsibility of encouraging them to enjoy themselves.
‘She won’t be missed, you know.’
‘What do you mean?’ Ronald was poised with a spoon in one hand.
Jackie looked up at him. ‘Mima Wilson. She could be a dreadful old gossip. And it was an accident. You mustn’t blame yourself.’
‘Don’t say that.’ Ronald’s voice was steady.
There was a pause while Jackie composed herself. ‘No, you’re right. We mustn’t speak ill of the dead.’ She flashed a look across the table to Anna. We’ll humour the boy. He’s upset.
Since the stroke Andrew had spoken with difficulty. Sometimes it took him a long time to work out the words in his head and then to get his tongue round them. Occasionally a whole sentence came out at once, surprising his audience and himself. That happened now.
‘She was a good-looking woman,’ he said. ‘When she was younger.’ Then seeing them all staring at him, he added: ‘Jemima Wilson. I’m talking about Jemima Wilson.’ He retreated into a shocked silence.
‘Oh aye, she was bonny,’ Jackie said bitterly. ‘And didn’t she know it. When she was middle-aged she was flirting with men half her age.’
Anna wondered if Andrew had been one of Mima’s younger men. There was an awkward silence.
‘I always liked her,’ Ronald said quietly. ‘When we were bairns she told great stories.’
‘Oh, the bairns liked her right enough. They were round her place like bees at a honeypot.’ Jackie seemed about to continue but stopped short.
There was a moment of silence. Perhaps they were all replaying their memories of Mima.
Andrew coughed, then came out with another of his surprise sentences. ‘A man died because of Jemima Wilson.’ He looked around the table to make sure they were listening. It seemed to Anna that he was desperate they should believe him. ‘A man died because of her .’
Satisfied that he had their attention, he added; ‘Well, now she’s gone to join that husband of hers. They were two of a kind. A match made in heaven.’ A pause and a strange choking laugh. ‘Or in hell.’
Chapter Thirteen
As he drove carefully off the ferry at Laxo, Perez had a momentary stab of shame. He shouldn’t be so delighted to have escaped Whalsay and Sandy’s family and the upset that always follows unexpected death. Grief he could deal with. What he found more difficult to handle were the selfish reactions, inevitable but distasteful, that came in its aftermath. The first was greed, because even if the deceased person weren’t wealthy there would usually be something to squabble over. Then came guilt, because greed seems inappropriate after the death of a loved one and because relationships, especially between family members, aren’t perfect. At least one of Mima’s survivors would have thought at some time, I wish you were dead. Not really meaning it perhaps, but thinking it all the same. Now the thought would have come back to haunt them.
He drove south down Shetland mainland towards Lerwick with the radio on. Fran said his concern for the people he met through work was a sort of arrogance. ‘I love the fact you care about them, but you’re not a priest after all. Let people take responsibility for their own pain. Why do you think you can help them when their own friends can’t?’ Now he tried to take her advice, to forget Sandy’s grey, exhausted face and the tension in Evelyn’s back as she bent over the stove. Instead he sang along, very loudly, to the Proclaimers. The mist lifted a little as he approached the town and there were streaks of pale sunlight reflected from the dock as he drove past the ferry terminal.
He decided he would go home for lunch. He felt a need to talk to Fran and Cassie and he couldn’t do that from the office with its noise and interruptions. He lived in a narrow, old house built right on the waterfront, so you could see the high-water mark on its outside wall. By now the mist had cleared sufficiently for the island of Bressay to be visible. It was the warmest day of the spring so far and he opened the living-room window to let in the sound of the gulls and the tide, the salt-laden air.
He was missing Fran more than he thought he would. He hadn’t told her, of course. She would despise it and think it was a sign of his easy emotion. Whenever he phoned she was full of the people she’d met, the shows she’d seen, the galleries she’d visited. Sometimes he worried that she wouldn’t want to come back. It occurred to him now that the Whalsay women he’d met had that in common with Fran. Sandy’s cousin and father were content with life on the islands, but Evelyn and Anna looked at the world outside and wanted more. It seemed to him that in their demands for change they might spoil the place they claimed to love.
He’d bought a second-hand filter-coffee machine at one of last summer’s Sunday teas. He folded the filter paper and spooned in the coffee, waited for the delicious smell as the coffee dripped through. Fran envied his ability to drink strong black coffee all day and still sleep at night. He realized she was in his head whatever else he was doing, a backdrop to all his other thoughts.
He dialled the number of her parents’ house, but there was no answer and he replaced the receiver when the answering service clicked in. He didn’t like the idea of them picking up his message and listening to his stumbled words in an accent that must be all but unintelligible to them.
It had become an obsession that he should ask Fran to marry him. The idea had come to him as a fleeting whimsy the summer before, but now it had returned and wouldn’t let him go. If he suggested that they live together he knew she would agree at once. They’d known each other for more than a year and he spent as much time in her house at Ravenswick as he did in his own place. She’d said recently, making a joke of it but obviously wanting to test his reaction, ‘If we sold both homes we’d be able to buy somewhere with a bit more space.’ He’d been non-committal and he knew she’d been disappointed but too proud to let on.
He had no moral objection to their living together and he couldn’t care less what people – even his parents – thought, but still he was haunted by the idea of marriage. It was to do with permanence and stability; he knew that Fran wanted another child and he was terrified of being the cause of a fragmented family. There was a less noble motivation too. Fran had married Duncan, hadn’t she? If she refused Perez, wouldn’t that mean she loved him less than Hunter, with his affairs and his wild parties? Perez was tortured by the possibility of rejection, but couldn’t let the idea go.
He poured another mug of coffee then called Fran’s mobile. He wanted to talk to
her and was willing to put up with a background noise of laughter and traffic. She answered almost immediately.
‘Jimmy? How lovely to hear you.’
‘Is it convenient?’ Why did he always sound so formal when he spoke to her on the phone? He might have been talking to one of his colleagues.
‘Brilliant timing. We’ve come to an exhibition at the Natural History Museum. Mum and Dad have taken Cassie off to look at dinosaurs and I’ve sneaked off to grab a decent cup of coffee.’ He could imagine her face lit up with enthusiasm, wondered what she was wearing. He’d like to picture that too. Would she think it weird if he asked her?
‘I’m at home,’ he said. ‘I’ve sneaked off for a quick coffee too. And I wanted to talk to you in peace.’
‘I wish I was there.’
Come home then. Get on the first flight from Heathrow to Aberdeen and I’ll book you on to the last Loganair. You could be back this evening.
Because that was racing through his mind and he was thinking about the practicalities of the plan – he supposed she would need to pack her bags, so after all there wouldn’t be time – he realized suddenly that there was a silence between them. She was waiting for a reply. ‘You don’t know,’ he said, ‘how much I miss you.’
In his head the haunting, ludicrous chant. Marry me. Marry me. Marry me. She would despise him and think him sentimental all over again.
‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘It won’t be long. Less than a week now.’
‘I was worried that you might be enjoying yourself so much in the city that you wouldn’t want to come home.’
‘Oh God no, Jimmy. Never think that. I can’t wait to get home.’
Then his stomach tipped like it did in a storm on the Good Shepherd and he felt sixteen again and in love for the first time. But that had to be enough for him, because Cassie and her grandparents arrived and Cassie demanded to speak to him, to tell him everything she’d learned about Tyrannosaurus Rex.
In the office the talk was all about the death of Sandy’s grandmother and speculation about how the accident might have happened.
‘I was at school with Ronald Clouston,’ one said. ‘He was always sort of absent-minded, but you’d have thought he’d be more careful around guns. He never was one of the really wild boys.’
‘According to Sandy he liked a drink.’
Perez listened to the conversation and wondered how long it would be before people forgot that Ronald Clouston had shot Mima Wilson on a foggy night in Whalsay. The rumours would follow the man round for years, wherever he went; even if no criminal charge were brought the story would stay with him until he died.
To avoid getting drawn into the gossip, he picked up the phone and set up a meeting with the Procurator Fiscal. Before going over to her office he jotted down some notes on a scrap of paper. He still wasn’t sure what angle she would take. He didn’t want to make light of the accident, of Ronald’s folly in going out with a gun in the fog after having taken a few drinks. But he hoped he’d be able to persuade her it was reckless, not criminal.
He found it hard to explain the role of the Fiscal to English colleagues. Even Fran couldn’t grasp it: ‘But what does she do?’ Perez always said she was a cross between a magistrate and a prosecuting lawyer, but Fran didn’t even get that. All she understood was that the Fiscal was his boss.
Rhona Laing, the new fiscal, was a cool fiftysomething with a cutting tongue and a designer wardrobe, which seemed completely out of place in Shetland. Rumour had it that she flew south to Edinburgh every month to visit her hairdresser. Perez never believed Shetland stories, but he could almost believe the blonde hair was natural and the way it was cut took ten years off her age. Her passion was sailing. She’d come to Shetland on a yacht from Orkney and fallen in love with the islands. In an unguarded moment at the opening of the new museum, she’d told him that from the sea Shetland looked like paradise. He’d wanted to ask what she thought it seemed like from the land, but by then she’d been swept away to meet more distinguished guests. She lived alone in an old schoolhouse near the marina in Aith, and managed to keep her past and her present entirely private. All that anyone knew about her was that she owned a catamaran, the biggest and most expensive sailing vessel in the islands.
Perez didn’t know quite what to make of her. She was efficient and organized, but rather ruthless, he always thought. There were rumours in the islands that she had political ambitions. She would like to be a Member of the Scottish Parliament. Certainly, he thought, she would like the power.
She got up from her desk when he came into the room and they sat in easy chairs across a small table. A moment later her assistant brought in coffee.
‘You’re here about Jemima Wilson.’ She poured the coffee, turned her flawless face to him.
‘It looks like one of those unfortunate accidents. A man out for rabbits with a torch after dark. He couldn’t have known the elderly woman would be wandering round outside. We still don’t know why she was there.’
‘Lamping for rabbits is illegal,’ she said.
‘Aye, but everyone does it, and we’ve never yet taken anyone to court.’
There was a moment of silence. He could hear the tapping of a computer keyboard in an outer office. A phone rang.
‘When I first moved here I was asked to give a talk to a group in Bressay,’ she said. ‘I asked the organizer what people would think of having a Fiscal who was a Lowland Scot and a woman. He paused for a while and then he said, “Folk won’t consider you to be the enemy.” Another pause. “No,” he said. “Rabbits are the enemy.”’ She looked up and smiled. ‘He was only half joking.’
‘So you won’t be popular if you prosecute.’
‘For lamping, no. A death is a different matter. There is the question of recklessness.’ She was wearing a cream trouser suit. Now she crossed her legs at the ankles and he saw the slim flat shoes that matched in colour exactly. ‘To be reckless, Mr Clouston must have considered it a possibility that Mrs Wilson would be outside her house that late at night.’
‘Mima was known for keeping indoors after dark,’ Perez said.
‘In that case I don’t see that we have a crime here.’ She looked up at him and smiled. ‘What do you think, inspector?’
‘I certainly don’t see Clouston as a criminal.’
‘But?’ She gave a frown, not of impatience exactly, more of surprise. She had thought her decision on the matter to his satisfaction as much as hers.
‘He claims not to have been shooting over Mima Wilson’s land.’ Perez wished she hadn’t picked up on his hesitation, the slight emphasis on the man’s name. After all he’d got what he’d come for.
‘A natural response, surely. He must have been devastated to discover what he’d done. In similar circumstances we’d all want to avoid the guilt, to persuade ourselves we weren’t responsible.’
‘Perhaps.’
She looked at him. It was hard to imagine this immaculate woman managing her boat single-handed in a force-eight gale, though he was aware of the strength of character that allowed her to enjoy the experience. ‘Tell me what’s troubling you, Jimmy. Off the record.’
‘I wish I knew what Mima Wilson was doing outside in that weather. And I’d be happier if Ronald Clouston admitted to shooting over her land.’
‘What are you saying, Jimmy? That someone else killed the woman?’ Somewhere in her voice he picked up a hint of sarcasm, almost of derision, but there was no sign of that in her face.
‘Clouston says he was out on his own last night. He’s not trying to lay the blame elsewhere.’
‘So if someone else did kill Jemima Wilson, it wasn’t an accident. Is that what you’re saying, Jimmy? You can’t seriously expect me to open a murder investigation just on the slight possibility that Clouston didn’t fire close to the house. You know how much that would cost the taxpayer.’
Now that the words were spoken Perez realized that the possibility of a conspiracy had been at the back of his mind since
he’d first seen the scene of the shooting. He’d dismissed it as ridiculous, melodramatic. ‘I can’t see why anyone would want to kill her,’ he said. ‘She’s Sandy Wilson’s grandmother. She’s lived in Whalsay all her life. A bit of a character by all accounts, but not a natural victim. I only have reservations because I don’t understand how the accident happened.’
The Fiscal paused, sipped her coffee. ‘We are sure that it was Clouston’s gun that killed her?’
‘With a shotgun it’s impossible to tell. It’s not like a rifle, where each weapon leaves an individual trace on the bullet. We’ll track down the ammunition used, but my guess is that everyone on Whalsay will use the same when they’re out after rabbits.’
She leaned back in her chair. Despite the expensive make-up he saw the fine lines on her forehead, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.
‘I don’t have enough here to put it down as anything other than accidental death,’ she said at last. ‘Anything else would cause unnecessary distress to the deceased woman’s family and the sort of hysteria in the community that doesn’t help anyone. I couldn’t justify it.’
He nodded. There was no other decision she could have taken.
‘We’re agreed that we won’t charge Clouston? It wouldn’t be popular in the community.’
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘We’re agreed about that.’
‘As for your reservations about the details of the shooting, I understand them. Perhaps the best course of action would be a discreet inquiry. Nothing formal at this stage. We’d have a post-mortem anyway in a death of this kind. Let’s see what you turn up in the next week or so. Keep me informed.’ A clever decision, he thought. She was covering her back. If Mima’s death did turn out to be murder, she would be able to show that she hadn’t dismissed the idea out of hand.