Red Bones

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘But he was in his house the whole of the evening of Mima’s death, watching television. Your mother confirmed it.’

  ‘Of course she did. She’d lie for us all.’

  Perez smiled. ‘So she would. What’s the next wild idea?’

  ‘Could the killer have mistaken Mima for Hattie? They were both small and slight and Mima was wearing Hattie’s coat. Mima was out in the field next to the dig – Hattie would have had more reason to be there.’

  ‘It’s something I’ve thought about,’ Perez said. ‘But what reason could your father have for killing Hattie?’

  ‘None at all. He hardly knew her. Another crazy idea.’

  ‘Pretty crazy.’ But Perez thought Sandy wasn’t doing badly. The ideas the man had come up with had floated around in his head too. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Nah,’ Sandy said. ‘That was about as far as I got.’ He gave a self-deprecating grin. ‘Not much of a detective, huh? Maybe I should give up policing and take up crofting after all.’

  ‘I think perhaps you’re overreacting about the sale of your grandmother’s home. Hardly surprising. You were very fond of her.’

  ‘Things aren’t right at home,’ Sandy said suddenly. ‘I hate it.’

  ‘Joseph and Evelyn are under a lot of strain. Things will sort themselves out when this is all over.’

  ‘Will it ever all be over?’ Sandy was almost sober now, but gloomy. ‘I’m not sure how anyone on Whalsay will cope if we don’t find out what happened.’

  ‘They’ll cope if they have to,’ Perez said. He thought the islanders had suffered worse than this. The fracturing of a community during the fifteenth century. The huge storm that had killed half the male population of Whalsay at the end of the nineteenth century, when boats out to the fishing had capsized under freak waves. The murder of the young Norwegian from the Shetland Bus during the war. ‘But I want to know. Not for them but for me.’ He looked at Sandy. ‘What are your plans for the rest of the night?’

  Sandy shrugged. ‘I was going to stay in town but I’ll only carry on drinking. Maybe I’ll get home.’

  ‘It’s still early. We’ll get a ferry. I’ll give you a lift back.’ Perez looked at the man. ‘That is if you’re sure you’re OK to go home?’

  ‘Aye,’ Sandy said. ‘You’re right. I’ve been a fool. My father’s not a murderer.’

  Perez was going to say Sandy hadn’t been a fool at all, but that wasn’t what the man wanted to hear.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Sandy stumbled down the road towards Setter. Perez had offered to take him right up to the house, but Sandy thought he’d put his boss out quite enough tonight. He’d already made a fool of himself. It was a dark, damp night, much like the one when he’d found Mima. He ignored the picture of the woman’s body, hardly more than a pile of cloth-covered bones lying in the rain, that forced its way into his head, tried to concentrate instead on avoiding the pot-holes and not falling flat on his face in the mud.

  As he rounded the bend in the track he saw there was a light in the house. Had he left it on? He didn’t see that he could have done: it had been early afternoon when he’d gone down the island to the Pier House. And this wasn’t the white glow of the strip light in Mima’s kitchen, with its plastic case greasy and filled with dead flies. This was flickering and red.

  Sandy broke into a run and he was already wheezing when he got to the house. He opened the door and the heat hit him, scorching his face. There was thick smoke that stung his eyes and made him choke. He tried to push his brain into gear, to remember the training he’d been given in fighting fire. The blaze had started in the kitchen and still hadn’t taken hold of the rest of the house. It was licking up the paint on the cupboards and the wooden panels under the window were alight. There was a towel on the table and he threw it over the flame on the cupboard, smothering the fire, hitting out the air from it. He filled the washing-up bowl with water and threw it over the flames by the window. There was a hissing, but the wood was still burning. He filled the bowl again. This time the fire was doused. He was left heaving for breath, his heart pounding.

  He heard a nose outside. A strange kind of cry, like an animal in pain. He stood at the door and looked out. Anger stopped him feeling frightened. Anger and stupidity.

  ‘Who is it?’ he yelled. ‘What the fuck are you doing out there?’ He wanted to hit someone, to smash in the face whoever had desecrated his grandmother’s home.

  A figure moved out of the shadow of the cowshed. His father stood in front of him. He looked small and old. For the first time Sandy saw how like Mima Joseph was physically. The same small frame and wiry strength.

  ‘Did you see him?’ Sandy demanded. ‘Did you see who did this?’

  Joseph didn’t speak.

  ‘You stay here,’ Sandy said. ‘The fire hasn’t long started and there wasn’t a car. I might catch him.’

  ‘It was me.’

  Something in his father’s voice stopped Sandy short. He’d started to move down the track, but now he turned back.

  ‘What are you saying?’ Sandy was still wearing his jacket and felt bulky, huge even, looking out at his father.

  ‘I set fire to your grandmother’s house.’

  They stared at each other. Sandy knew he should make sense of this, but he couldn’t. Even when he was sober as a judge he would never make sense of it. The drizzle had stopped and there was a faint fat moon showing through the mist.

  ‘I don’t want to go inside,’ Sandy said. ‘Not with the kitchen the way it is.’ He walked round to the back of the house, past the dig to the dyke looking over the loch. The moonlight was reflected on the water. He didn’t look behind him but he knew his father was following. They leaned against the dyke to talk, not looking at each other.

  Sandy had questioned suspects in his time. It was a part of the job he enjoyed. When he was taking statements from offenders or witnesses he was the boss, in control. It wasn’t like that for much of his life. Now he wished his father would take the lead, but Joseph just stood there in silence.

  ‘Why would you do that?’ Sandy asked at last, not loud, not in his bossy police voice, but with a kind of desperation. ‘Why would you set fire to your own house?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t face anyone else living here.’

  ‘Is this to do with that Norwegian?’ A sudden idea. If he weren’t still a bit pissed Sandy didn’t think he’d have had the nerve to bring the subject up.

  ‘What do you know about him?’

  ‘I know that your father found him in bed with your mother, took him outside and shot him.’

  ‘There isn’t much else to know,’ Joseph said, and then, in a quiet voice. ‘And I’m not even sure that story’s true.’

  But Sandy wasn’t ready to listen to that. ‘How did you find out about it?’ he demanded. ‘Did Mima tell you when you were a boy?’ He wondered what it would be like to discover that your father was a murderer. How would Mima pass on that bit of information? Would she tell it as a bedtime story along with the tales of the trows?

  ‘She didn’t tell me at all.’

  ‘Who did then?’

  ‘It was always going to come out,’ Joseph said. Sandy shot a look at him. The moonlight turned his beard and his hair to silver. ‘You can’t keep a good story like that a secret on a place like this. It was while I was at school. The little school here in Whalsay. There was a scrap. You know how boys are. Andrew Clouston came out with it then. A fit of temper, a way of hurting me. He was never much of a fighter when he was young. He was a good bit older than me but a coward. He must have got the tale from his father, old Andy. I ran straight out of the schoolyard to ask Mother if it was true.’ Joseph paused. ‘She was out here, planting neeps, her skirt hitched up and big boots on her feet. I’d been running and I was red, my face all covered with tears and snot. “Why didn’t you tell me my dad was a murderer?” I shouted it out at her. She straightened her back and looked at me. “I’m not sure that he was.”’


  Joseph looked up at Sandy. ‘I was angry. As angry as you are now. I started screaming at her, asking what she meant. She stayed very calm. “They took the man away,” she said. “I was never certain what happened to him and your father would never discuss it. I hoped they took him across to Lunna, maybe beat him up a bit. I never knew he was dead. Even when the stories started. I should have told you. But I hoped you wouldn’t have to find out.”’ And she carried on shaking the seed down the row, her shoulders bent and her eyes on the soil.’

  ‘Did she ever talk to you about it properly?’

  ‘Later that evening. She’d had a couple of drams. She talked about the Norwegian: “They called him Per. I never knew his second name. He was tall and blond and he treated me kindly. Your father was an exciting man, but he was never kind to me.” That was what she said.’

  ‘Where did they bury him?’ Sandy asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I told you, she didn’t even know he was dead. We didn’t discuss it.’

  ‘You must have thought about it.’

  The mist had cleared even more and now there were just a few threads of cloud flying in front of the moon. It was so light it felt like the simmer dim of a midsummer night.

  ‘When I was a teenager I got it into my head that the Norwegian could have been my father,’ Joseph said. ‘I heard things about my real dad I didn’t like so much. There were stories he beat Mima up. But the Norwegian couldn’t have been my father. The dates don’t work. I wasn’t born in the war.’

  And you look so like Jerry, Sandy thought, remembering the photo that stood in Setter. You couldn’t be anyone else’s child.

  ‘Do you think your father was drowned at sea?’ Sandy asked. The question came into his head unbidden.

  Now Joseph turned. ‘That’s what I was always told,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t understand why you have to get rid of Setter,’ Sandy said. Was he being stupid? Too thick to understand? ‘Why now? When you were so set against selling it, when you hate the idea so much that you’re prepared to set fire to it, to get the insurance instead of selling it on?’ Because it seemed to Sandy that money must come into it somehow. Money was always important in Whalsay.

  ‘That’s not my story to tell,’ Joseph said. ‘You’ll have to ask your mother about that. Now come home. You can’t stay in Setter the state that it’s in.’

  ‘I’ll tell Mother it was me,’ Sandy said. ‘A chip pan. She knows I was drinking.’

  Joseph didn’t say anything. He put his arm around his son’s shoulder and they walked together back to Utra.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Sandy had to suffer a lecture from Evelyn the next morning about the evils of drinking and frying chips in the middle of the night. ‘You could have been killed. You could have burned the house to the ground!’ He thought about his father and made a pretence of looking contrite.

  He hadn’t slept well. The amount he’d had to drink, you’d have thought he’d be out like a light, but ideas had been churning round in his head all night. He’d tried to rerun the conversation with his father. The earlier part of the evening he remembered fine: drinking in the bars in Lerwick, his arm round the shoulders of that fat lassie, the one married to the soothmoother who worked in the canning factory. Then turning up like a fool on Perez’s doorstep. He’d been pretty sober by the time they got back to Whalsay. At least, he thought he had been. But the details of finding the fire, standing with Joseph in the moonlight by the loch, all that seemed harder to pin down. It was as if he’d dreamed it all. Perhaps he didn’t want to remember the way his father had been last night.

  Evelyn put a bacon sandwich and a mug of coffee in front of him. Joseph was already out; he’d been gone when Sandy got up.

  ‘Will you not sit down and have some breakfast with me?’ he asked. His mother was busy with three things at once as usual. She buzzed round the kitchen like a bluebottle trapped in a jar.

  ‘I had my breakfast hours ago.’

  ‘Then just sit down and have a coffee!’

  She looked at him strangely but she did as he said.

  ‘Why has my father changed his mind about selling Setter?’

  ‘He realized it made sense. What would he want with an old house?’ Sandy recognized the tone. She was all bluster and bravado, like some teenage lad who’d stolen a car and driven it into a ditch.

  Sandy shook his head. ‘He loves the place. He grew up there. He doesn’t want it full of strangers.’

  ‘That’s sentiment,’ Evelyn said. ‘You can’t eat sentiment.’

  ‘He said you’d tell me what this was all about.’

  She paused for a beat, stared at him sadly for a moment. ‘Oh Sandy, you’re the last person I could tell.’

  It was as if she’d slapped him in the face.

  The phone rang then and his mother went to answer it. She came back frowning. ‘That was your Auntie Jackie. She wants to know if you could go up to the big house. Andrew’s fidgeting to talk to you, she says.’

  ‘Aye. Why not? I’ll walk over.’ He knew he was a coward but he couldn’t wait to get out of the house.

  Walking up the track to the Clouston place, he did feel better. There was a wheatear bouncing along the stone wall and skylarks singing in the field beyond. He found Jackie in the kitchen. The table was full of clutter – bags of flour, sugar and oats, tins of syrup and treacle. ‘You look busy. Is this for something special?’

  ‘Evelyn’s asked me to do some baking for her grand do in the hall,’ Jackie said. ‘I thought I’d make a start today. Anna’s helping me out.’ Then Sandy saw that Anna Clouston was there too, sitting in the corner. She was breastfeeding the baby. You couldn’t see exactly what was going on because she was wearing a loose jumper, but he felt embarrassed just the same, felt his face colour. He turned away.

  ‘As you see,’ Anna said, ‘I’m not helping very much at the moment.’

  ‘I’ve told her she should give the bairn a bottle.’ Jackie began to beat together a lump of butter and some sugar. ‘He might start to sleep at night. He’s probably starving.’

  ‘He’s fine,’ Anna said. ‘He won’t be a baby for long. I don’t mind a bit of disturbance for a while. I don’t mind putting myself out for my child.’ The implication was clear: she thought Jackie was selfish.

  Sandy thought this was how women fought. With civilized words carrying poison.

  ‘Where’s Andrew?’ Because it had come to him that the room seemed quite different and that was because of his uncle’s absence. Andrew usually sat in his chair by the stove, a permanent fixture, like the shiny American fridge and the china dog on the dresser. Huge and imposing, he seldom spoke but somehow made his presence felt.

  ‘He’s in the lounge. We’re having one of the bedrooms decorated and I’ve asked him to clear out some junk. He’s found some photos and thought you might be interested. Go on through.’

  Andrew was sitting in one of the big armchairs with his back to the view. There was a pile of photograph albums on the coffee table in front of him. He looked up when he heard Sandy come into the room and smiled. He didn’t speak. Sandy found it hard to imagine him as a boy, scrapping with Joseph in the school playground. He had fought with words too, Sandy thought. Like the women battling in the kitchen over a baby barely a month old.

  ‘You remember Jerry,’ Sandy said. ‘My grandfather, Jerry Wilson.’

  Andrew screwed up his face in concentration. ‘I don’t remember so much these days.’ The words came out as a series of stutters.

  Sandy looked at him. He thought the lack of memory could be kind of convenient. ‘But you told me the story about him. About him killing the Norwegian man during the war.’

  Andrew frowned and nodded.

  ‘How did he die?’ He’d asked Joseph the same question but had no real answer.

  ‘He was killed in an accident at sea. He was out fishing with my father. There was a storm. A freak wave that turned the boat over. He was drowned.’
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  ‘But your father was saved.’

  ‘He was a stronger swimmer and he got hold of the upturned boat. He tried to hold on to Jerry Wilson, but he lost his grip.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s true? It wasn’t just another of the island stories? You know how that happens. People make things up. Like the stories you told about my grandfather being a murderer.’

  There was a moment while they stared at each other. Sandy could hear the gulls on the roof and the sheep on the grass by the shore.

  ‘This isn’t a made-up story,’ Andrew said. ‘I was there when your grandfather died.’

  ‘You would have been a child!’

  ‘I was ten years old. Old enough to go fishing with my father. We just had the small boat then.’

  ‘How did you survive when my grandfather didn’t?’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ Andrew fixed him with his blue, staring eyes. ‘My father couldn’t save the both of us. He chose to save me. You can’t blame him for that.’

  And Sandy supposed that was true. A man was always going to save his son ahead of his friend.

  ‘Was Jerry’s body ever washed up?’

  ‘Not here. Not that I heard.’

  ‘I wondered if his remains had been buried at Setter.’ Sandy had been thinking about that in the night. It was one explanation for his father’s reluctance to let the place go.

  Andrew looked up at him. ‘No, I never heard anything like that.’

  ‘Shall we look at these photos then?’

  ‘Aye, why not?’

  But Sandy was still haunted by thoughts of the past, of buried secrets. ‘Did you ever hear what they did with the dead Norwegian?’

  Andrew didn’t respond.

  ‘The Norwegian who came over with the Bus,’ Sandy said. He found himself becoming frustrated again by Andrew’s slowness. He wondered how Jackie and Ronald managed to keep so patient. ‘Mima’s lover. What happened to him?’