by Ann Cleeves
The voice was a woman’s, but there was no other way to determine gender. She was dressed in a white suit, hood and mask. As if she were an alien, or as if the barn and its surroundings were radioactive, toxic.
‘Just hang on.’ She took off the mask and the hood, and Helena saw a long tangle of straw-coloured hair, a wide mouth, freckles. ‘My name’s Willow Reeves. I’m Senior Investigating Officer.’
Helena had thought Jimmy Perez was that, but decided it would be rude to say so. ‘I was wondering if you’d all like some coffee.’ She could hear men’s voices in the barn, so she realized there must be at least two more of them.
‘I’m not drinking coffee at the moment, but tea would be fab. And the two in there are caffeine addicts.’ Willow smiled, but Helena thought she looked exhausted. What must it be like to spend your life working with other people’s tragedies? ‘We’re nearly finished. The undertaker will be along to take away Miss Shearer’s body soon, but there will be other intrusions, I’m afraid. Would you allow us to do a search of your house? If you invite us in it’ll be quicker, save us the need for a warrant.’ The detective’s tone was conversational, almost apologetic. She might have been inviting herself to dinner. ‘You might prefer to be out while we’re doing that.’
‘Could you get it done today? While the children are still at school? This has been upsetting enough for them.’ Helena imagined how horrified Christopher would be if he had to see strangers inside the house, going through his things.
‘I don’t see why not. Vicki Hewitt, our crime-scene manager, has just landed in Sumburgh and she’s on her way now. At least they can make a start today.’
‘You think our house is a crime scene?’
‘A young woman has been killed and her body was found on your property. We should have started looking last night, but Inspector Perez didn’t want your son disturbed.’ Another smile to soften the words. ‘Besides, it’s a nightmare getting our people into the islands. We wouldn’t have been able to do much until the flights started this morning anyway.’
Helena found Daniel in the kitchen. They’d gone to bed together, but there’d been no real contact. They hadn’t talked. He seemed to fall asleep immediately, but she suspected he was pretending, to avoid confrontation. She’d been restless, had drifted off for a couple of hours and then woken at dawn, suddenly, knowing she’d been in the middle of a nightmare but with no memory of the details.
‘I’ve just spoken to the person in charge of the investigation. It’s a woman. She flew in from Inverness this morning. She seemed kind enough, but you wouldn’t want to stand in her way.’ Helena switched on the kettle, wondered if she’d make do with instant coffee for the men in the byre, then thought she’d give them the real thing. Irrationally, she wanted them to like her.
‘What happened to the bloke that was here last night?’ Daniel’s antipathy to the detective was obvious.
‘Jimmy Perez? I don’t know. I suppose there are leads they have to follow.’ She reached into a cupboard for a teapot. ‘They want to search the house. I asked them to do it now, while the kids are at school. I think they want us out of the way.’
‘What do they think they’re going to find here?’ Daniel was angry now. She could feel the tension in him again, as she had when Perez had been interviewing them. Distant and icy. She’d always imagined depressed people as soft and weak, sitting in corners and crying all day; she hadn’t expected these sudden outbursts of temper. Because she saw now that Daniel was depressed. He was so different from the man she’d married.
‘I don’t know! Evidence that Emma has been in the house. Fingerprints. They’ll probably want to look at our phones and computers to see how much contact we’ve had with her.’
He was still, frozen.
‘What will they find, Daniel? I’d rather you told me than I find out from them.’
‘You know she’s been in the house. I explained that she brought the Moncrieff children to play after school sometimes. What’s suspicious in that?’
‘Where in the house, Daniel? Will they find evidence that she’s been in the bedroom? Our bedroom?’ Helena wanted to scream recriminations at him: After all I’ve done for you! I’m keeping this family together, while you wander round taking pretty pictures. You can’t even load the dishwasher. And you fall for some woman hardly out of school, with no education, because she tells you a hard-luck story. And because she’s got a nice bum. Hearing in her head how petty and ridiculous she was being, knowing that she was blowing the small irritations of domestic life out of all proportion, but somehow not being able to stop them mattering.
‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘Then tell me what it was like. We’ll go out. Walk. All the way up to the cafe at Henwick, and by the time we get back to pick up the kids I want to know everything. You know, I do want to understand.’
He nodded and walked away. She made coffee and tea and carried it outside, left it just outside the scene tape and shouted into the barn that it was there. Willow Reeves appeared from behind the house. Now she’d taken off the rest of the white suit. She had a mobile phone in her hand and it seemed she’d been making calls. She waved the phone at Helena. ‘You’ve got good signal up here. I wasn’t expecting it.’
‘It comes and goes,’ Helena said. ‘Daniel and I are going out. We’ll walk north to Henwick and be back in time to collect the children from school. The house is unlocked. Help yourself to more coffee and tea.’
‘How old are the children?’
‘Christopher’s eleven and Ellie’s seven.’ Helena wondered why the detective was taking an interest in the kids. Why would she need these details? It felt like an intrusion.
‘Enjoy your walk.’ Willow Reeves turned away.
They headed up the hill behind the house. It was hard striding over heather and through bog and the slope was steep, so there was no chance to talk. Helena was glad of the exercise, the pull on her muscles and the sun on her face. She felt a quick moment of joy, which came close to gloating: At least I’m alive. Immediately afterwards there was survivor’s guilt: What right have I to feel this good, when a young woman’s dead?
Daniel spent more time on the hill and he was fitter than she was and she found herself struggling to keep up. She wondered if this was how he felt now, in comparison to her: a little inadequate and in her shadow. He’d always been the successful one, the winner of prizes. Since the house was completed, he’d taken a back seat. There’d be few projects as big as this in Shetland and he’d decided to try something new. Photography, or a book about the islands perhaps – about the art that it had inspired. She’d had the limelight, and she’d basked in it, hadn’t she? The new opportunities, the photos with celebrities. No wonder he’d felt jealous and resentful. She’d probably have been the same. As she plodded after him, fighting for breath, she thought envy was the most destructive of emotions. It ate away at your guts and your brain and it stopped you thinking straight. Envy and jealousy.
At the top, they stopped. A huge pile of driftwood, empty fish boxes and pallets stood on the crest of the hill and close to the edge of the cliff, which was high and sheer here. They’d watched it grow over the previous weeks, brought there by tractor and quad bike from the other side where the slope was gentler. On midsummer’s eve at midnight it would be lit, along with other beacons along the coast, a chain of light to mark the solstice. There would be a party. The children were already excited.
Daniel took off his jacket and spread it on the heather, so they could sit in comfort. They were forced to sit very close together. The house was spread below them, a child’s toy from this distance, with plastic vehicles and plastic figures. There seemed to be more people, a lot of activity. Helena found it hard to believe that the scene below had anything to do with her. It no longer looked like their home. She couldn’t remember the last time she and Daniel had been alone together away from the house.
‘Was it a mistake?’ she ask
ed. ‘Coming to Shetland?’
‘No!’ His response was immediate. ‘Look at all this. I couldn’t go back to the city.’ There was a pause. ‘We’ve made mistakes, though. And we’ve been unlucky. The old man killing himself on our property. We couldn’t have done anything about that.’
Helena wondered about that. Perhaps they could have been kinder, invited Dennis Gear to see the house once it had been finished, made him feel he still had a place in it. They’d known his family had lived there for generations. He’d turned up once, some pretext about collecting tools from the byre. She’d been in the middle of cooking tea for the kids and she’d been waiting for an important phone call from the US. She hadn’t been rude exactly, but she’d been impatient to see the old man go; she’d kept him on the doorstep while they’d been talking, not invited him in.
‘Maybe we could buy in some childcare for the kids,’ Daniel said. ‘Not every night, but a couple of evenings a week and occasional weekends. So we have more time together.’
‘A nanny like Emma? Someone young and beautiful.’ The words came out before she had time to think about them, hard and spiteful.
He looked as if she’d hit him. ‘I’m sorry. It was just a thought. To give us a bit of breathing time, so we can enjoy all this.’
‘No, I’m sorry.’ She reached out and took his hand, squeezed it. ‘Tell me about her.’
Still holding her hand, he stood up and pulled her to her feet. ‘Not here,’ he said. ‘Not in view of all that.’ He nodded down towards the house. ‘Let’s walk on for a bit.’
They crossed the back of the hill and walked down towards the long sweep of Suksetter, the pebble beach where Daniel spent hours, watching otters. He’d become entranced by them. She supposed that he wanted to show her the animals, but instead of heading for the shore he took her a little way inland. The land here was very low, separated from the shore by dunes and irregular fields where sheep grazed; there was a series of freshwater lochans, with iris and marsh marigolds at the fringes, everywhere the call of lapwings and oystercatchers. A breeze blew the flowers and nothing seemed fixed. Everything was moving: feather, reed, water. Helena felt as if she’d stepped into an Impressionist painting of blurred lines and splashes of colour. Hesti, with its police officers and forensic scientists, could have been on a different planet.
Someone had built a basic bench, just a plank on a couple of big flat stones, close to the largest loch. Scratched into the wood was Dennis Gear’s name. Then ‘RIP’ and the years of his birth and his death. So, after all, Helena thought, there was no escape.
‘I only saw it when I came here a couple of weeks ago,’ Daniel said. ‘It’s a memorial to him. Sometimes there are flowers. Always fresh.’
They looked down – both of them, it seemed, unwilling to sit on the name etched into the wood. Daniel took off his jacket again and they rested on that, looking out at the water. Daniel pulled a couple of bars of chocolate from his jacket pocket and offered one to her.
‘We should tell the police about this,’ Helena said. ‘It’s probably not important, but they should know that someone’s trying to keep his memory alive.’
‘I don’t know. I want as little to do with them as possible.’ His face was set, stubborn.
‘This is a murder inquiry, Daniel. And at the very least it might draw attention away from us for a while.’
It occurred to her then that that was what he was trying to do, by bringing her to the loch and showing her the tribute to Dennis Gear. He was trying to distract her, to stop her asking awkward questions about Emma Shearer.
‘Whoever made it must be fit! It’s quite a walk from the end of our track.’
Daniel shook his head. ‘You can drive in from Henwick and park just behind the dunes. Most people who come to look for the otters do that.’
‘Did you ever bring Emma here?’ She realized that she was shouting, but she was worried the words would get blown away by the breeze.
He was still looking out over the loch, following the path of a group of waders flying low over the water.
‘Look at me, Daniel. I want to understand.’
He turned slowly towards her.
‘I mean, I really can’t quite see it. This isn’t really the place for kitten heels and a dirndl skirt.’ Because humour had always held them together and although this was pretty pathetic, it was all she could manage. ‘Or did Emma have designer wellies?’
He gave a quick, sharp smile and she saw that at least they were communicating. ‘I brought her in the car. She could manage the path up from the dunes.’
‘Why here?’
‘Because it’s private,’ he said. ‘Nobody comes much midweek.’
‘Were you having an affair? Is that what you’re telling me?’ Helena felt quite calm now, because at least they were talking. Daniel was facing her and he’d lost that icy, frozen stare that shut her out completely.
‘No!’ Now he was the person shouting. ‘No.’ A pause and then came the confession. The admission of betrayal. ‘I wanted to, but she wouldn’t. We kissed a couple of times. Nothing more.’
‘So, she was a prick-tease?’ Helena wanted to hurt him. ‘She took the adoration and the car rides into the country, but she gave nothing back.’
‘I don’t think she could.’ He stood up suddenly.
She followed him and they began to walk back towards the shore. Suddenly she realized that she was starving. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten properly, and if they didn’t get to the cafe at Henwick for lunch soon, they wouldn’t get back to pick up the kids. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Emma was damaged. She wouldn’t talk about it much. She said she didn’t deserve affection.’
Helena was tempted to mock him. And you believed her? The gallant Daniel Fleming rode up on his charger to make everything better. But she didn’t mock, because that was what had drawn her to Daniel. The fact that he was gallant and honourable, in an old-fashioned way, as well as being very, very sexy.
‘She didn’t make any demands,’ he said suddenly. ‘She didn’t want anything from me. Just my company.’
They came to the path that ran along the shore. Helena could see the cafe, a battered Portakabin, at the end of the bay, and was distracted for a moment by the thought of sausage, egg and chips with lots of ketchup and a hunk of home-made bread.
‘She sounds quite a screwed-up kid.’ Helena liked the fact that she could be patronizing about Emma. She thought she’d almost stopped hating her. And she wasn’t here any more, was she? She couldn’t fuck up their lives when she was dead. Their boots crunched on the shingle. Daniel didn’t say anything, but he didn’t pull away from her. She took his hand. ‘What will the police find on your phone and computer?’
‘Emails and texts.’ Another pause. ‘Lots of emails and texts. For a while I was obsessed with her.’
‘What will they say, these emails and texts?’
He took a moment to reply. She caught all the background sounds: waves breaking gently, wading birds calling, sheep. ‘That I loved her. That I would struggle to live without her.’
She stopped in her tracks. It was as if she’d never move again. Had Daniel ever said things like that to her? Not for years. Not since the children had arrived and they’d had more to think about than their own pleasure and their own feelings. He must have sensed her anger.
‘It was a sort of illness, Helly.’ His pet name for her. She hadn’t heard that for years, either. ‘I can see that now. I thought she could save me.’
But I’ve been the one to save you! Always! Since we were students together, I was the one who kept you sane. I protected you from the stress and the worry, all the domestic crap. Until we moved here and I got a life of my own.
‘How did it end?’ She stopped and faced him. ‘It did end?’
‘Yes,’ he said bleakly. ‘It did end.’
‘When?’
‘About three weeks ago.’ She thought he’d probably be able to give the e
xact date if she pushed him. The exact time. ‘I met Emma at school and asked if she wanted to bring the kids back to play. She said it wouldn’t be a good idea. People were already talking. “Don’t get in touch again, Danny.” That’s what she called me. “You’ve been lovely, but it’d be a bit weird if we kept on seeing each other. It’s about time I started mixing with boys of my own age.” That was the last time we had any sort of conversation.’ He paused. ‘It was as if she wanted to hurt me.’
‘And that was the night the kids found you crying in the bedroom.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I thought my world had come to an end.’
‘But it hadn’t. You survived. And we’ll survive this.’ Helena thought she was doing what she always did in a crisis. She was taking charge. Reassuring. But this time she wasn’t sure she meant any of it. Daniel’s world might not have come to an end, but perhaps hers had.
He was walking on ahead of her towards the cafe. He must have realized that she wasn’t following, because he stopped and turned to face her. He smiled. ‘You are an amazing woman.’ Then: ‘What do you think I should do now?’
In her cold, detached mood, she wondered if the flattery was premeditated, just a way of getting her back onside, but the habit of taking control was too strong for her to question it now. ‘We’ll have lunch. A very large lunch. Then we’ll walk back. I’ll go to school and collect the kids, and you’ll ask to speak to the detective in charge and you’ll tell her everything.’
Daniel nodded, compliant, waited until she’d caught up with him and put his arm around her shoulder. She tried not to shrug him away.
Standing in the playground, squinting against the bright sunlight, Helena was aware that the waiting parents were watching, but she wasn’t frightened. There was no panic. Daniel had gone into the house to find Willow Reeves. The body of the woman had been taken away. Life had been as bad as it could get, but whatever happened now, she would survive it. She was back in control.