by Ann Cleeves
There was a light on in Fran's house. Perez didn't stop, though he had a fantasy about what it would be like inside. Very warm. The mother and the little girl curled up together in the big chair which sat by the fire, reading a picture book together. The child would be sweet-smelling after her bath, her hair still damp, the mother relaxed at last, almost asleep. He thought, That's what I want. Then almost immediately after, But would it be enough?
He was still considering this as he drove down the Ravenswick road, and he passed Hillhead without noticing if Magnus was around. Euan's car was parked outside the big house, but there was no sign of life, the enormous windows were blank and uncovered. When he rang the bell at first there was no response. He thought some acquaintances must have come to collect the teacher, to take him away from all the memories of his daughter. He must, after all, have some friends at the school.
Then a light appeared at the back of the house Perez saw it through the glass as a wedge through an open door -
and there were footsteps, slow, old footsteps. Then the front door opened.
'I'm sorry to disturb you,' Perez said. 'Could I have a word?'
Euan stood for a moment, blinking as if he didn't recognize the inspector, or as if he'd just woken and wasn't quite sure where he was. Then he made an effort to pull himself together and when he spoke he was as courteous as always.
'Come in: he said. 'I'm sorry to have kept you waiting!
'Did I wake you?'
'Not exactly. I find it difficult to sleep. A sort of day dream, perhaps, reliving old times, trying to capture something of her, while there's still a flavour of her in the house. It's real, you know. A perfume. The shampoo she used, I think. Something else I can't pin down. I know it won't last for long.' He turned and led the way into the house. Perez followed.
They ended up in the kitchen, though this wasn't where Euan had been sitting. He switched on lights, filled the kettle, made an effort to pull himself back to the present. 'Are you all right in here?'
The kitchen was a workplace, modern, lots of stainless steel and marble. There wouldn't be many memories of Catherine here, little for Perez to contaminate with his questions.
'Of course.' Without waiting to be asked, Perez sat on one of the tall chrome stools by a workbench.
'Coffee?'
'Please.'
'Have you come with information,' Euan asked. 'Or questions?'
'Questions, mostly. We won't have any details from the post mortem until tomorrow.'
'I'm glad she's going south on the ferry,' Euan said. 'She loved the boat and never really enjoyed flying.' He looked up. 'What a foolish thing to say.'
'I don't think so. I prefer the ferry too, going to sleep in one place, waking up somewhere different. It makes you realize how far away from anything we are.'
'I thought she'd be safe here. I did think it was different.' He turned away sharply to make coffee. 'Now, what questions do you have?'
'The officer who searched her room found a handbag, but we've still not found Catherine's house keys. Was it usual for her to go out without them?'
'I'm not sure. I always lock the house. Habit, I suppose. Perhaps she was more careless about it.'
'I've been at school all day, talking to the staff and the students. I spoke to a boy called Jonathan Gale. He gave Catherine a lift home on Hogmanay. Do you know him?'
'I don't teach him, but I know of him. A bright English lad. He's been to the house once or twice. I always thought he had a soft spot for Catherine. You don't think he killed her?'
'Not at all. Just checking out his story.' He paused. 'Does the name Robert Isbister mean anything to you?'
Euan frowned. 'No, should it? There are Isbisters in school, but no Robert, I think.'
'It's probably nothing: Perez said. 'He's older than Catherine, but someone she might have bumped into at parties. I saw him drive up the road just now. I wondered if he'd come to visit you.'
'Some colleagues came earlier in the day. They were very kind, brought food, a casserole of some description. I suppose I should eat it sometime. But since then, no, I've had no visitors.'
He still hadn't taken a seat. He'd poured the coffee and was drinking his where he stood. Perez could tell he was desperate to have the house to himself again, before the elusive scent of his daughter faded altogether.
'That's all then,' he said. 'I'll come back tomorrow when we have some news from the pathologist. Do you have any questions for me?'
He wasn't expecting anything. He thought Euan would see him gratefully and quickly to the door. But the teacher paused, his mug in his hand. 'The old man at Hillhead . . !
'Yes!
'People are saying that he was responsible. That it wasn't the first time. That he'd killed before. . !
'There were rumours. He was never charged, let alone convicted!
'When I first heard it hardly seemed to matter. Catherine's not alive any more. What else is there to care about?
But if it's true, it means that Catherine's death could have been avoided! He looked directly at Perez. Through the spectacles his eyes seemed unnaturally large, staring. 'I would find that unforgivable!
Then carefully he set down his mug and showed Perez to the door.
Perez was sitting in his car, thinking about that, when his phone rang. It was Sandy Wilson from the Incident Room. 'We've had a call from Fran Hunter, that wife who found the body! Wife? When does a woman stop being a girl and become a wife?
'What did she have to say?'
'I don't know. She wouldn't talk to the chap from Inverness who was manning the phone. She'll only speak to you!
Perez ignored the snigger in Sandy's voice. It was automatic, meant nothing. 'When did she ring?'
'Ten minutes ago. She said she'd be in all evening! 'I'm in Ravenswick now. I'll call on my way home!
He knocked quietly because he thought Cassie might be in bed, but she was still up, just as he'd imagined in dressing gown and slippers, sitting at the table. She was drinking hot chocolate and there was a mushroom-coloured moustache on her upper lip. Fran had looked out of the window before opening the door to him.
All over Shetland people would be doing that. Here more than anywhere, he thought, that poem by John Donne they'd had to read in school, was true. One person's death affected them all, made then see the world differently. And perhaps that wasn't a bad thing. Why should they be protected? What made them special?
'I wasn't expecting you just yet: Fran said. 'I hope you didn't rush over here on a wild goose chase. It's probably not important. . . Look, can you wait just a minute, while I sort Cassie out?'
He sat in the big chair, where he'd imagined her sitting. She brought him a glass of red wine, which he knew he should refuse, but didn't, and a slice of cheese and spinach flan. 'I don't suppose you'v e had a chance to eat,' she said, not making a big deal of it.
He heard the two of them chatting, in the bathroom, and singing a silly rhyme about a fox in a box, then the murmured words of a story, which were too soft for him to make out.
'Sorry about that! Suddenly she was behind him and she'd poured her own glass of wine. He realized he'd probably dozed off.
'You wanted to talk to me!
He stood to give up the chair, but she shook her head and sat on the floor, looking into the fire, so he couldn't see her face.
'It's probably nothing. You probably already have the information!
'Tell me anyway!
'Cassie stayed with her father last night. I went to collect her this afternoon! She hesitated. 'I know where Catherine was the night before I saw her get off the bus with Magnus Tait.
Duncan told me!
'He hasn't been in touch,' Perez said, noncommittally, 'not as far as I know!
'He wouldn't. He'd see it as an inconvenience. Having to go into Lerwick, maybe make a statement. That's what he's like. Always busy. Always hustling!
'We've only put out a general request for information so far,' Perez said. 'There'
ll be a big press conference tomorrow. Everything takes much longer to organize than people realize!
'She was at a party at the Haa. One of Duncan's open houses. Half of Shetland will have been there. You'll be able to confirm it.'
Perez had been to Duncan's parties. They were legendary. No invitations, nothing formal ever. Word would get out. A do at the Haa tonight. The parties never got going until late. When the bars started to think about closing, then you'd get a taxi, or a friend not quite as pissed as everyone else, and drive up the island. You never knew who you were going to see there. Often musicians.
Duncan liked to encourage local talent. That was how he described it, though Perez was never sure what the kids with their fiddles and guitars got out of the event beside a hangover and a sense that they'd brushed against celebrity. Because occasionally you'd bump into a minor star as you passed round Duncan's bottle of Highland Park.
An actor on holiday, or a politician up for some conference, a small time director or producer only the arty set had ever heard of. Duncan liked to encourage the arty set. And sophistication.
Perhaps that's what the kids felt they got out of it. The guests dressed differently, talked about different things.
It wasn't like going to a dance in the village hall.
'Did Duncan say who she was with?'
'He didn't seem to know. I think he was even more out of it than usual. He'd had a row with Celia!
Celia Isbister. Robert's mother. That was the way things worked in Shetland. It wasn't necessarily significant.
People were related in complicated and intimate ways. Coincidence couldn't be allowed to appear sinister.
'Do you know if Robert was there?'
'I don't know. Duncan didn't say. Quite often he was! Her voice was dry, slightly hostile.
'You don't like him!
'He's a spoilt rich kid. Hardly his fault, I suppose! 'Not a kid any longer!
'Shame he still acts like one! She turned round, brushing Perez's knee with her shoulder. 'Look, take no notice. I hardly have an unbiased view of that family. His mother wrecked my marriage. At least, Duncan wrecked it. She was complicit. Only it seems she's had enough. She's walked out too. Gone back to Michael full-time. Convenient, just before Up Helly Aa.
She'll be there to support him in front of the cameras. Everyone will say what a lovely family they are. Duncan's on his own again. Poor, lonely Duncan!
For the first time he thought she must have started drinking before he'd got there.
'Did Catherine ever mention knowing him?' 'Robert? No!
'And Duncan?'
'No, but then she wouldn't, would she? She must have known he was my ex. Even new to the place, she'd have picked up that bit of gossip. And you can't imagine Duncan would have had a fling with Catherine? She was only a child!
But as she spoke he saw that she was considering the possibility and not dismissing it out of hand. Perhaps she'd considered it before.
'Can you tell me anything else about the party? Did Duncan mention any of the other guests?'
'No. But I had the impression he was in such a state about Celia, that Posh and Becks could have wandered in and he'd not have taken any notice. Not like him at all!
Perez stood up reluctantly. Different circumstances and he'd have stayed to share the rest of the bottle with her, suggested that they might go out sometime. The film club. She was an arty woman. It might be the sort of thing she'd like. By the end of the week, knowing him, he'd probably have told her he loved her. It was probably just as well that she was involved in a murder case and he couldn't even kiss her on the cheek as he walked out.
Chapter Twenty-One
Magnus sat upright in his chair and listened. He couldn't see outside the house. That was his own doing.
During the day there had been people looking in and by the afternoon he hadn't been able to bear it. The first caller had been a young policeman asking for his boots.
'What boots?'
He hadn't understood. Was it a trick to stop him going out?
'The boots you were wearing when you saw the girl: the man said. 'You told Inspector Perez you crossed the field and saw her!
'Aye!
'We need them. 'To compare with the footprints we found!
Still Magnus didn't really understand, but he'd pointed to the boots, which were standing on a piece of sacking in the porch. The policeman had stooped, lifted them into a plastic bag and carried them away.
Soon after there'd been another sharp knock. Magnus had opened the door, expecting more police, but it had been a woman from a newspaper with a notebook, talking so quick - clack, clack, clack - that he couldn't make out what she was saying. She'd scared him with her squawking voice, her pointed nose pushing into his face, the pen she poked towards his chest. After that he didn't answer to their banging. He sat at the table pretending to read an old magazine which had been lying around since his mother had died. Why had he kept it? He thought once there had been a reason, but he couldn't remember now.
They'd seen him through the window, peering at an angle to make him out and rapping on the glass to catch his attention, scaring the raven in its cage. That was when he acted. He flattened out a couple of boxes and nailed the cardboard over the window. Now nobody could see in, but he couldn't see out and that made him feel like a prisoner already. He couldn't tell what the weather was doing, or if the coastguard team had finished walking over the hill. It must be dark. He could tell that from the time on his mother's clock.
In his head there were still people waiting for him outside the house, waiting to shout filth and push their faces right against the glass and their shoulders to the door. He hadn't heard anyone outside for some time, but they could be there, silent, waiting to surprise him, like the monsters in a nightmare he'd had as a boy.
After Agnes died, the nightmares became worse. In his dreams he'd seen her, pale and thin as she'd been when the whooping cough turned to pneumonia and they finally took her to the hospital. Spitting out blood when she coughed. Arms and legs white and bony so they reminded him of a sheep's bones, when the carcass has been left out in the weather and picked over by animals and birds.
But in his dreams she was still at Hillhead, doing the things she always did, helping his mother with the cooking - peeling tatties or baking, milking the cow that they'd had then in the byre by the house, squatting beside the animal, pulling and squeezing the teats, murmuring a little song to herself as she worked. And all the time getting thinner, so at the end of the dream, just before he woke up sweating, all that was left of her was her smile caked in blood and her slanting grey eyes.
Now, sitting in his mother's chair, watching the hands of her clock, those nightmares returned. The people he imagined waiting outside weren't strangers. He had a vision of his sister, banging on the window, rattling the door, surprised that it was locked.
He stood up and poured himself a tumbler of whisky. His hands were shaking. He was going daft, sitting here. Anyone would be the same, locked in a room with no view out, just waiting for the police to take him. He shook his head to clear it of the foolishness, and tried to remember Agnes as she was when she was well. He'd always been ungainly and slow, but she was dainty as a bird, flying across the fields on the short cut to school, her hair streaming behind her. 'Look at your sister,' his mother would say, trying to shame him. 'She's younger than you and she doesn't break everything she touches. She's not a big, clumsy fool. Why can't you be more like her?'
He pictured her in the schoolyard skipping. 'Two other girls were holding the ends of a long rope and Agnes had been jumping, not chanting the rhyme, but frowning in concentration, counting the steps in her head. He'd watched, proud of her, so proud that the grin had spread across his face and had stayed there all day. She'd been wearing a cotton print dress, faded from too much washing and so short now that when she jumped you could almost see her knickers.
Had Catriona been one for skipping? It bothered him that he couldn't be c
ertain. He'd seen her sometimes in the schoolyard, when he'd found reason to walk down to the shore, to pull out a useful piece of driftwood, some netting or a barrel. Mostly she'd been standing, surrounded by two or three of her chums, chatting and giggling. Those had been different times, he thought. It wasn't like when he and Agnes were children. When Catriona was growing up, she had television in the house and there'd been catalogues to buy modern clothes from. There'd been more to play with than an old piece of rope.
The oil had come to the islands and there'd been money for computers and fancy games and the teachers had taken the children on trips south. Once there'd been a school trip to Edinburgh. A couple of the mothers had gone, all dressed up for the adventure, and Mrs Henry, the teacher, standing there with her sheet of paper when the bus came to take them to the airport, ticking them all off, though surely she must know them all. Catriona had loved the city. She'd talked about it for days when she got home.
She came up to Hillhead specially to tell Mary Tait about it and he'd broken off from his work to listen. He'd never left Shetland and asked so many questions - about the buses and the big shops and what like it was to travel on a train - that Catriona had laughed at him and said one day he should go to Edinburgh. It was only an hour on the plane.
The next time she'd come to Hillhead was the day she disappeared. It had been dreadful weather, an awful wind for the season, not cold, but fierce, blowing from the south west. And her mother had sent her out and she'd been bored, so she'd landed up here, teasing and tormenting, wicked as if the wind had got inside her and made her flighty and wild.
But he didn't want to think of that day. He didn't want to think of the peat bank and the pile of rock on the hill.
It would bring the nightmares back.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Roy Taylor had called the meeting for mid-morning, not first light. He'd hoped to have some feedback from the pathologist by then, though he knew he was pushing it and now it was ten-thirty and he was still waiting. He'd asked Billy Morton to ring him from Aberdeen as soon as he had anything useful to report. They had the crime scene investigator's report at least. Nothing back from the lab yet. That took bloody days, even fast-tracked.