by Ann Cleeves
Ellen had made griddle scones. He'd stood by the window munching and thinking that the fields around the croft were sheltered enough for barley. If ever he came back, he'd thought, he'd like to return to the days when the farming was more mixed.
And now the matter was more than speculation. Perez could take over Skerry if he wanted to. The National
'Trust for Scotland which owned the island always gave priority to applicants from Fair Isle families. So he'd be forced to face the decision which he'd hoped to put off for a while longer. If he moved back to the island his future would be settled. 'Tradition was still important. His father was skipper of the mail boat. Perez would automatically join the crew and eventually he would become skipper in his father's place. At one time he'd thought that was what he'd wanted the continuity and security of island life. Now that he was faced with the possibility, he wasn't so certain. Wouldn't it bore him rigid?
Perhaps he would think differently if he wasn't in the middle of the most exciting investigation he'd ever worked on. He knew he'd been influenced by the passion of the Inspector from Inverness. It was probably another romantic whim, but tonight it seemed important to be a policeman. Would he feel the same when his workload consisted of petty theft and traffic violations?
His family longed for him to be home though they would never say so. It was his choice, they said. He should do whatever made him happy. They were proud of the work he did. But the pressure was there, subtle and unspoken. He was the last Perez. His sisters had married and were living on the Isle, but he was the only one to carry the name. When he'd told his mother about his separation from Sarah, there'd been one brief unguarded moment and he'd known she'd been thinking,
So. No grandchildren. At least for a while. Sarah must have felt the pressure too. Throughout the pregnancy and after the child was lost.
He carried his drink upstairs. He was in no state to make any rational decision tonight He looked out of the window and closed the curtains. Usually he fell asleep to the sound of water, almost imperceptible, not consciously noticed.
Tonight the sea closest to the shore was still frozen and there was silence, except for the occasional strange creak. He had thought the image of the dead girl, her face pecked by birds, might keep him awake, but he was haunted by the view down Fair Isle from Skerry, sunlight over the South Harbour and cloud-shaped shadows racing over Malcolm's Head.
When he arrived at the station the following morning Taylor was already waiting for him. He called him into one of the meeting rooms and already seemed to know his way about the place. Perez thought he couldn't have had much sleep.
'Just a quick chat,' Taylor said. 'Before we meet the troops. Talk me through what steps you took yesterday, who you met. We know about the old man. Who else did you speak to?'
Perez told him. It felt strange. It had been a long time since he'd answered to another detective.
'I need to get the timetable clear it my mind. The order of events.' Taylor tore a sheet of paper from a flip chart, laid it on the table and started to scribble in thick black marker pen. Perez hoped nobody else would be expected to read it. It was unintelligible.
'The early hours of New Year's Day she and her best mate fetch up at Magnus Tait's place. A sort of dare.
The night of the 3rd she tells her father she's at a party and not to expect her home. Then there's the text on the 4th saying she might stay out again.' He looked up from the paper. 'Didn't he ask where she was? Who was having the party?'
Perez shook his head. 'His wife died not long ago. He still seems to be suffering some sort of depression. I think the girl was allowed to get on with it'
'OK. A place like this, we shouldn't have any trouble finding out Late morning on the 4th and she's catching the bus back home. Tait is on the same bus and asks her in for a cup of tea. He says she leaves his place before it gets dark, but that's the last time anyone admits to seeing her. The next morning, the 5th, her body is found on the hill not far from Hillhead. Is that right?'
'Yes.' He almost said Sir, stopped it just in time.
This was his patch.
'Let's go and see what the rest of them have got for us then.'
Perez had asked Sandy to manage the Incident Room. The constable had an instinct for computers and was good at routine and Perez preferred him in the office, safely out of the way of the public. Sandy was fit for drunken scraps in town on a Friday night, but not for anything requiring more subtlety or tact. He stood now, scratching his bum, waiting for Taylor’s response to the layout of the room, making Perez think of a cub scout waiting for Akela's inspection. That was Sandy's problem. He still thought like a peerie boy.
'Will it do?' He was freckled and eager. 'Of course we've never run an investigation on this scale before.
Not in my time. The PCs are up and running.'
'Fantastic,' Taylor said. 'Really, fantastic.' It was over the top and Perez could tell that his mind was elsewhere, but Sandy was taken in. Here, with an audience, Taylor had lost none of the energy of the night before, but Perez could see blue smudges like bruises under his eyes. Outside it was still dark. Now, the room was lit by desk lamps. There were pools of light and shadows in the corners. Perez was reminded suddenly of a wartime ops room from an old movie. There was the same tension and expectancy.
Taylor was still talking. 'I take it we've got a specified outside line with a number we can give to the public!
'It's just been connected;
'I want it manned 24/7. Someone has the information which will lead to a conviction. I don't want a witness finding the courage to ring, only to get an answerphone. They get through immediately to a real person.
Understood?'
'There'll be lots of folk pointing the finger at Magnus Tait: Sandy Wilson said.
'Pointing the finger's not enough. We're polite but we make it clear we need evidence! Taylor paused for a minute to check that he had their attention. 'I've decided to use the Inverness team to work the phone. They can take it in shifts.
This is a unique situation and we have to be sensitive to it. Our callers might want to stay anonymous. Fat chance of that if there's someone they know answering the calls! He looked quickly round the room. 'Everyone agree?'
The question was a formality. They all knew the decision had already been made. Taylor perched on a desk at the front of the room.
'I take it the body's been moved?'
'It's at the undertaker's. The CSI was happy enough to release it. It'll go south for the post mortem on this evening's boat. Jane Meltham will go with it to be there for the pm!
'What did the girl have on her? A bag, keys, purse?' 'No bag or keys. A purse in her coat pocket. Morag searched her bedroom yesterday and found a small handbag. No keys there either!
'That's weird isn't it? That she didn't take her keys with her. How would she get back into the house?'
'People don't always lock up here. Not unless they're going to be away for a while. Perhaps she did have them, but they dropped out of her pocket when she was killed.'
'I'd like a fingertip search of the fields around the scene. How do we manage that? Do we have to ship in more personnel?'
'In the past we've organized a search through the coastguard: Perez said. 'They made the cliff rescue team available. I'm not sure if it was officially sanctioned . . !
'Bugger official sanctions. We know how long it'll take to get more people up here. A gale or a blizzard and we've lost any evidence which might be there. Can I leave you to sort that? Get them out on the hill as soon as practicable!
'Sure! There was no other possible answer, though
Perez wasn't sure how long it would take to call the team members in.
'Then I want you to go to the schoo1.'
In full flow 'Taylor talked very quickly, the words tripping over themselves. Sometimes he couldn't find the right phrase but continued anyway. 'Ask to speak to all the Sixth year. I don't know. Perhaps a special assembly if you can organize it, somethin
g forma1.
To emphasize how important their help would be. Do it today, while they're still in shock, before they have time to get used to what's happened! He was sitting on the desk in front of them, swinging his legs like a child who couldn't keep still. 'There should be a lot of sympathy for the father. I know, pupils and teachers, they don't always get on. But in a case like this. I mean, for Christ's sake. Give them the number of the special phone line.
Tell them they'll get through to an outsider if they call it, but make it clear they can talk to you if they prefer. That way we're giving them a choice. We want to know where Catherine was the night before she died, who she usually hung out with, boyfriends, wannabe boyfriends! He stopped for breath. There was a brief moment of silence. Looking beyond the SIO Perez saw, through the long window, that the darkness wasn't so dense. Soon it would be light.
There's one lad I want to trace,' Perez said. 'He drove the girls home on New Year's Eve. I know where he lives.
It should be easy enough to find him through the schoo1.'
'What about Magnus Tait?' It was Sandy Wilson. He could never hold his tongue and Taylor’s appreciation of the Incident Room had made him overconfident. 'I mean, if he killed the girl, do we need to bother with all this?'
Taylor jumped down from the desk and swung round to face him. Perez expected an explosion. He had the inspector down as a man who wouldn't suffer fools gladly and there were times when he thought Sandy was the biggest fool in Shetland. But Taylor kept his temper. Perez thought it was taking an effort, but the SIO would know it wouldn't help relationships between Inverness and Lerwick if he ballocked one of the Shetlanders in front of his colleagues.
'We can't close off any options at this stage of the case,' he said evenly. 'You know how it works, Sandy, when you get to court. Some slick lawyer, out to make a name for himself. What other lines of enquiry did you follow, Inspector Taylor? What other actions did you take? Or were you so convinced by my client's guilt that you didn't try to look any further? It's my responsibility to obtain a conviction, not just to get a man in front of a judge. And you didn't even manage that when Catriona Bruce went missing. Someone like Magnus Tait needs careful handling. Do you understand what I'm saying, Sandy?'
Perez thought that hoping for understanding from Sandy Wilson was like waiting for piggies to float over Sumburgh Head, but by now Taylor was carried along by the flow of words and seemed not to notice the lack of response from the constable.
'We keep an eye on Tait. We'll be working on the crime scene for a few days and he lives close by, so that won't be hard. We can do it unobtrusively. If he goes out, we follow him. I don't want another murder.
But overnight I was thinking about what Jimmy said.
You disturbed my sleep Jimmy, but you were right. We explore the other options first. We only bring in the old man when we're absolutely sure!
Great, Perez said to himself. So now it's my responsibility if things go wrong. He thought Taylor was cleverer and much more devious than he'd realized.
Chapter Fifteen
Sally got the bus to school as usual. Waiting for it to arrive, the implication of Catherine's death hit her properly for the first time. Until now the events of the previous day had been like a drama, so exciting and different from everyday life that she hadn't been able to take it in. It had been like watching a video. Soon the film would end and she'd go back to the real world. Now, standing at the bus stop in the dark, her feet frozen already and no one to keep her company she realized this was the real world.
The absence of Catherine was more solid than the presence had ever been. In life Catherine's mood changed every minute. You never knew where you were with her. Death was constant. Sally felt if she reached out her hand she'd be able to touch the hole where once Catherine had been. It would feel hard and shiny like ice.
Sally could have stayed at home if she'd asked. Her mother wouldn't have minded and had almost suggested it.
She'd turned from the cooker, where she was stirring porridge when Sally came down for breakfast.
'Are you OK to go in?' she'd asked, dead sympathetic. It would have only taken Sally to hesitate for a moment for her to add Why not stay at home? I'm sure they'd understand.
But Sally had answered firmly and immediately 'I'd rather be with the others. Take my mind off things!
And her mother had nodded approvingly, thinking probably how brave her daughter was. It was ironic. There'd been hundreds of times when Sally had dreaded school, had dreamed up vague illnesses, headaches and stomach aches. Her mother had never shown the slightest sympathy then. She hadn't understood what it was like to grow up as a teacher's daughter, so there was no escape from school. The piles of exercise books on the shelf in the kitchen, her mother's painstaking writing of lists on the shiny card, all that was a reminder of what would happen when they walked across the yard and into the classroom. The calling of names, the sly pinches, the blank stares. And none of that had changed much when she moved to the high school. The kids were more subtle in their torture, but it was still a nightmare. Not even Catherine had understood that.
'Today her mother had asked if she fancied porridge for breakfast. Would she rather something else? An egg, maybe? When Sally had been bothered that she was putting on weight again and suggested fruit instead of porridge some days for breakfast, her mother had only sniffed and said she wasn't running a restaurant. She hadn't understood the agonies of needing to fit in.
Sally's father had already gone to work by the time she got up. She wasn't sure what he made of Catherine's murder. She never knew what he thought about anything. She thought sometimes that he had a life that none of them knew anything about. It was his way of surviving.
After breakfast her mother had begun to pull on her coat. 'I'll wait with you until your bus arrives. I don't like the thought of you standing out there on your own.'
'Mother, there are police all over the hill.' Because the last thing she wanted was her mother fussing over her, appearing concerned, but prying and poking for information. Robert Isbister took up so much room in Sally's head, it'd be hard not to let something about him slip. She couldn't bear her mother knowing about him. Not yet. Margaret would go on and on about him, about what a waster he was and nothing like his father. Sally could picture her right in her face, mocking and jeering. Sally had never been able to stand up to her mother. She might end up believing some of the things she said. And it was only the dream of being with Robert which kept her going.
So now she was standing by the bend in the road, waiting. Every now and again her mother's head appeared in silhouette at the kitchen window, to check that she hadn't been raped or murdered. She tried to ignore it. Her mind was suddenly filled with memories of Catherine. Although she tried to think of other things - the old romantic fantasies of Robert - pictures of Catherine wouldn't go away. She could see the two of them on New Year's Eve, first of all in Lerwick, then stumbling into Magnus Tait's house. Catherine had been so in command of herself that night, hard and bright and invulnerable.
The caretaker had put salt on the paths leading into the school, turning the snow into a slushy mess, which they carried on their shoes into the corridors. In the fourth year area a bunch of kids sat on the pool table, shoving and giggling. She thought they seemed very young. The radiators were full on and condensation ran down the windows.
The place smelled like a laundry, with all the drying coats and gloves. The first person she met was Lisa, tarty Lisa, whose boobs were so big you wondered how she managed to stand upright.
'Sal,' she said. 'I'm so sorry.'
In school it seemed everyone was still in the phase of considering Catherine's death a drama laid on for their own entertainment. Walking to the house room to dump her coat Sally could hear them whispering in corners, passing on rumours and gossip. It made her sick.
When she pushed open the door there was a brief silence, then suddenly they all crowded round, wanting to talk to her. Even the posse who'd
taken over the table in the middle of the room and were usually too aloof to mix with anyone outside their own crowd. She'd never felt so popular. She'd never had a proper friend at school. Catherine had been the closest to it and Catherine was far too wrapped up in her own concerns to bother much about Sally.
Now she was the centre of attention. They gathered around her, covered her with mumbled commiseration: It must be dreadful.
We know how close you two were. We're really so sorry.
Then came the questions, tentative at first, becoming more excited: Have the police talked to you? Everyone's saying it was Magnus Tait - has he been arrested?
Before, floating around the edge of several groups, not really accepted by any of them, she'd tried too hard.
She'd talked too much, laughed too loud, felt big and clumsy and stupid. Now that they wanted to hear what she had to say words failed her. She stumbled through some answers. And they loved her for that. Lisa put her arm around Sally's shoulder.
'Don't worry,' she said. 'We're all here for you.'
Sally knew that if Catherine had been here, if she'd heard, she'd have stuck two fingers down her throat and pretended to be sick.
Sally was tempted to tell Lisa and all the others that she could see through them. They weren't sorry Catherine was dead at all. Certainly they hadn't particularly liked her when she was alive. Lisa had called her a stuck-up southern cow only last week, when Mr Scott had read out a chunk of her essay on Steinbeck. They were enjoying every minute of this. They weren't in the least sorry that Catherine would never take her place again in the front row for English.
But she didn't say that. She had to survive in school without Catherine. And she was enjoying all the sympathy, the arm around the shoulders, the loving whispers. It didn't matter any more what Catherine thought of them.
Catherine was dead.
A bell rang and they wandered off to first lesson, leaving the posse in the house room gagging for more.
She and Lisa had English and they walked together. Sally hated the English department. It was housed in the oldest part of the school and the high-ceilinged rooms were always freezing. They had to pass a glass case with a load of stuffed birds inside. Catherine had loved those birds. They'd made her laugh. She'd brought in her camera specially to record them, though Sally had never been able to see the joke. Catherine had said the whole English department would make a brilliant set for a Gothic movie.