‘Accent?’
‘Not local, but I didn’t notice. Not really.’
‘I can tell you’re more a visual person.’ Sandy turned on the flattery again. ‘Can you tell me what she was wearing?’
Peter screwed up his face again, but it seemed he did have a visual memory. ‘A coat. Long and dark blue, and reaching almost to her ankles. Kind of stylish, like you might wear in the city. Not waterproof, like most of the women here would wear. Black boots with a narrow heel. A blue silk scarf.’
‘So office clothes?’
‘Smart, yeah. I couldn’t see what she was wearing underneath the coat.’ He blushed again.
Sandy was thinking that he’d seen a coat like that in the cupboard at Tain. Another confirmation that they had found the right woman.
‘Had you seen her before? I mean, is she a regular customer?’
‘No, not a regular. I’ve seen her before, though.’ Peter had reached into a drawer for a packet of biscuits and dunked one into his coffee. It fell apart before he could get it into his mouth, and soggy crumbs fell back into the mug. He swore under his breath.
‘In the shop?’
‘Nah, in Lerwick. In the bar in Mareel. Upstairs. I was waiting to see a film.’
‘When was this?’ Sandy sipped the coffee as if he had all the time in the world.
‘A week ago. The Friday night. I was going to meet some friends, got there a bit early. Perhaps that’s why I noticed her when she came into the shop the other day; I knew I’d seen her before.’
‘Was she on her own?’
‘No, she was with a bloke,’ Peter said. ‘Smart. Jacket and tie. Not a suit, but he’d made an effort.’
‘You didn’t know him?’ Because Sandy thought the boy would have blurted out a name if he’d had one. He’d want to show off.
Peter shook his head. ‘He was older, you know. He wasn’t someone I’d have gone to school with.’
‘Anything else that might help us trace him?’
‘Sorry.’
Outside the rain had stopped and a faint, milky sunlight filtered through the gloom. Instead of turning back towards Lerwick, Sandy headed towards Sullom Voe and stopped at the new hotel that had been built just outside the village of Brae. Its accommodation was used solely for oil, gas and construction workers and had been full since it had been slotted together like a giant bit of Lego several years before. Sandy had been inside once for the Sunday-lunch carvery. It had felt a bit like going abroad and wandering into another world. There were foreign voices, loud and confident, and even those who spoke English were sharing jokes he couldn’t understand.
Now reception was crowded with men waiting to check out. They stood with their holdalls at their feet, impatient. Sandy supposed they’d been stranded because of the restricted flights and were anxious to get home. He waited until the queue had cleared and then went up to the desk.
‘Do you know this woman?’
Sandy thought he saw a spark of recognition, but the receptionist shook his head. ‘Sorry.’
‘She doesn’t work here?’
‘No, I’m certain about that.’ The man had an accent too. Sandy thought it was probably Eastern European, but his English was just as good as Sandy’s.
‘You know all the staff?’
The receptionist nodded. ‘Most of us live in. Those who aren’t Shetlanders – and she doesn’t look like a local. So if she worked here I would recognize her.’
‘You’ve never seen her as a guest in the bar or the restaurant?’
This time there was a brief hesitation. ‘I don’t think so. She’s not a regular. But lots of people wander through, and I’m stuck on the desk.’
‘She’s kind of striking,’ Sandy said. ‘I think you’d notice.’
Another pause. ‘Sorry, I really don’t think I can help.’
The queue had built up behind Sandy again. He could hear muttered comments and felt intimidated by the oil men’s bulk and hostility. He nodded to the receptionist and walked outside. The cloud had lifted even further, so now he could see down the voe towards the terminal. He thought he’d achieved very little. He had one snippet of fresh information from Peter – that the woman had been in the bar in Mareel a week ago with a smartly dressed man – but they still had no clue what she was doing in Shetland. And they still had no name for her. Sandy knew that Jimmy Perez would be disappointed in him.
Chapter Eight
Jane Hay let herself into the largest of the polytunnels and the familiar smell of compost and vegetation made her feel she was coming home. She’d met Kevin at college in Aberdeen; he’d been doing agriculture, but her subject was horticulture. On their first date he’d taken her hands in his and laughed at the ingrained soil under her thumbnail. Later he’d told her he knew then that she was the girl for him.
Her parents had grown soft fruit, and the plan had always been that she would join the family business once she’d graduated. Her father had been more addicted to drinking than horticulture, even before Jane started at college, and she’d seen herself in the role of saviour. She’d dreamed of returning home with the knowledge and the passion to take on the company and make it profitable again. But her father had died suddenly, when his liver gave up its unequal struggle with the booze, and her mother had sold up immediately without consulting Jane about her plans. That had been the start of Jane’s strange relationship with alcohol. It had covered up her sadness and made her fun to be with. Later it became her secret consolation.
Now she prepared the soil in the polytunnel and thought her father had at least given her this: the ability to work magic with seeds and earth, an understanding of what made things grow. She was planting early potatoes and carrots, for family use. When the rest of Shetland was still dark and grey, in her polythene world spring would have arrived. The boys had preferred frozen chips and baked beans when they were young, but she’d always felt a thrill when she put the first new potatoes on the table. It was warm in the strange plastic bubble and she took off her sweater. Outside, drizzle ran in streaks down the tunnel, clouding the polythene so that she had no sense of the outside world. And all the time she was thinking about the dark-haired woman who’d stayed in Tain.
She hadn’t been entirely honest when she’d spoken to Jimmy Perez that morning. It wasn’t that she’d lied. Lies had come easily to her when she’d been drinking. That was something all alcoholics had in common. They lied to their friends and their families and themselves. They lived in a strange fantasy world of obsession and escape. She tried to be honest these days, though sometimes it was hard with Kevin, who needed more reassurance than her sons did.
Of course I love you. I couldn’t live without you. Of course I’m happy with what we have.
Now she wondered if that was the truth. When the hill had slipped, fracturing their land and cutting it in two, it seemed that her image of herself as wife and mother had shattered too. She began to consider a parallel life away from the islands. How would she have ended up if she hadn’t met Kevin, if he hadn’t fallen wildly in love with a lass from Perth with soil under her thumbnail? She’d known from the beginning that there was no question of him staying in the Scottish mainland with her. He might love her, but not enough to give up the family croft. Would she have become an alcoholic if things had been different? She pushed that thought away quickly. There was nobody to blame for her drinking, not even her father, who’d been as much a victim of the illness as she had been. As she frequently told Rachel, alcoholism was a disease and not a lifestyle choice.
But although she hadn’t lied to Jimmy Perez, she hadn’t told him the whole story. That afternoon, when she’d hurried back from the shore in the dark and seen the woman in Tain, her silhouette against the light, there had been somebody else in the house with the stranger. Jane had seen a shadow on the wall behind the woman. Impossible to make out who was there and, besides, it had only been a glimpse. She could have been mistaken. But later, from her own kitchen window, she’d seen a torch light moving up the path between Tain and their house through the sycamores; and soon afterwards Kevin had come in, his hair damp from the drizzle, looking a little confused and strange.