‘I just remembered that I hadn’t looked in the small drawer under the chair.’ Perez was dark-eyed and dishevelled. It was as if he hadn’t slept at all.
Willow thought this was how he’d been the first time they’d met: exhausted and preoccupied. At least now the preoccupation seemed to be with the investigation. ‘And at last we have a name,’ she said. She wanted to add a few words of congratulations. Well done, Jimmy! But she knew him well enough to realize he’d bristle at that and find the tone patronizing.
Perez turned the photo face-down and they all looked at the signature on the back. It was clear, almost childish. Alison Teal.
‘Alis.’ Willow looked round the table. ‘The letter Sandy found in the box in Tain must have been to Alison, not Alissandra. A weird coincidence.’
Perez turned the photo back so that the image stared out at them. ‘It looks like one of those publicity shots that marketing departments send out to fans. There’s nothing personal about this. Not even something bland like: To Magnus with very best wishes. What do we think? Was she a singer? Actor?’
‘I kind of recognize her.’ Sandy screwed up his face. When he concentrated he looked like a small boy.
‘How would Magnus get the photo of a pop star?’ Willow knew she’d have nothing to contribute to this discussion. In the commune, popular culture had been despised. She’d tried to get into rock music and soap operas as a form of rebellion, but the indoctrination had been too deep. ‘And why?’
‘He only got a television about a year ago,’ Perez said, ‘and this photo is a lot older than that.’
‘She was Dolly Jasper.’ Sandy was jubilant that the memory had surfaced. ‘The maid in that TV drama set in a big house in the country in Victorian times. You know the kind.’ He looked round at them. ‘It was on a Sunday night. My parents loved it. I was only a kid; it must have been nearly twenty years ago.’
‘So perhaps Magnus got to see the TV show.’ Perez spoke slowly, but he was fully engaged now. Willow could see the ideas sparking in his head. ‘Maybe at Minnie Laurenson’s house – Tain, where all this started. Minnie kept in touch with the old man even when the rest of Ravenswick left him to himself. I can imagine a regular invitation: Sunday tea and then an evening in front of the telly. It would have been a treat for Magnus.’
‘And you’re saying he fancied the actress and sent away for a photo?’ Willow was sceptical. She could imagine the lonely old man becoming attracted to a pretty young actress. Obsessed even. People had considered Magnus simple. But she couldn’t see him being sufficiently organized to find the address of the TV production company and write to them.
‘Maybe. He liked objects that reminded him of people he’d taken to,’ Perez said. ‘There was no harm in it.’
Willow wasn’t sure about that. It didn’t seem healthy, a lonely old man drooling over the glossy photo of a pretty young woman.
‘She came to Shetland!’ It was Sandy again, almost beside himself with excitement. ‘It was a big story. Maybe you were away south working then, Jimmy, or you’d surely have remembered it. The actress who played Dolly suddenly disappeared. There was a media campaign to find her. She’d been depressed and there was stuff in the media about drugs. The first thought was that she’d gone back to rehab somewhere, but she’d just run away to Shetland. When they found her she said she’d chosen Shetland after seeing it on a map. It looked so far to the north that it seemed like an escape. No other reason. Just that she was feeling low and wanted to run away. She drove to Aberdeen, left her car there and came up on the ferry.’
Willow thought that sounded a bit like the Agatha Christie disappearance; she did have a taste for popular fiction and had read about Christie vanishing, before turning up in a hotel in Harrogate some time later. ‘Was it just a publicity stunt?’
‘I don’t think so. One of the diners in the Ravenswick Hotel recognized her. Otherwise nobody would have known who she was. She spent all day on her own, out walking.’
‘So she’d come to Ravenswick.’ Perez was writing on the whiteboard now, frantically making connections before he lost their thread. ‘She might have come across Tain on one of her wanders through the countryside. She might even have met Minnie and Magnus.’
‘Was this last trip a return visit, do you think?’ Willow was following his train of thought. ‘For a similar reason. There was another crisis in her life and she saw Shetland as her sanctuary again. It could explain why she travelled under an assumed identity. Even if she’s not as famous as she was in the rest of the UK, a Shetlander might recognize her name.’
‘And the desperate call to Simon Agnew at Befriending Shetland fits in with her having some form of emotional turmoil or breakdown.’
‘We still need to know how she got hold of the keys to Tain.’ Willow felt a wave of optimism, now that their victim had an identity. Not only because it meant a shift in gear for the investigation, but because it might give Perez a more reasoned perspective on the case. A minor soap star with psychiatric problems was less entrancing, surely, than a mysterious dark-eyed stranger.
‘Someone in Shetland must have known her real identity and must have been protecting her.’ Perez was scribbling on the whiteboard again.
‘Tom Rogerson?’
‘He seems the obvious person. He has the reputation as a lady’s man and he had access to the keys.’
‘Would he have written the letter to Alis, do you think? The letter that Sandy found?’
There was a moment of complete silence in the room while Perez considered the question. ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘Maybe it’s best to keep an open mind.’
‘Magnus? Could he have written it before his stroke?’
This time Perez answered more quickly. ‘I know Magnus’s writing and I don’t think it’s his. We have the notebooks, though, and we can get them checked.’
Sandy reached out for the last chocolate biscuit. Willow thought he’d been eyeing it up for some time, waiting to see if anyone else wanted it, but now his arm shot out quickly, like the tongue of a fat snake. ‘So what are the plans for today?’
Willow got in before Perez. ‘We find out what Alison Teal had been doing since she last turned up in Shetland. I want to know everything about her. Work, family life, medical history. And Jimmy and I are going to visit a lawyer.’
It was Sunday, so the solicitors’ office in Commercial Street would be shut. Perez and Willow were still in the ops room; Sandy had returned to his office. ‘How do you want to play this?’ Willow wandered around the big table collecting rubbish and taking it to the bin, piling up cups. She was restless and couldn’t keep still. ‘You know the man, and I’ve never met him. Should we phone him first to warn him that we’re coming?’ She came to a stop and watched Perez.
‘I’m not sure,’ he said at last. There was a silence while he thought the idea through and then he chose his words. ‘Tom’s a committee man. A councillor. He has influence in the islands. Best to follow procedure, show some respect.’ Another pause. ‘Besides, he’s kind of slippery. I don’t think anyone really understands him, except maybe his family.’ Perez looked out of the window, before speaking again. ‘I know his daughter. Kathryn. She works at the Ravenswick school. She teaches Cassie.’
Willow thought that was another complication. It was always that way in a Shetland investigation; within the islands there was a web of relationships, personal and professional, blurred. Perez would feel awkward upsetting the Rogersons, because their daughter cared for his beloved Cassie. He wouldn’t let that get in the way of his work, but he’d be aware of it, over-compensating at times.