They sat for a moment in silence. The breeze had dropped and outside it was quite still and silent.
‘Do we know if Alison had a partner?’ Perez said. ‘Or even if she’d married?’
‘You’re hoping she had some romance in her life?’ Sometimes, Willow thought, Perez was the soppiest man in the world. ‘I did ask Genevieve. She said she couldn’t imagine Alison settling down. “She was always rather a wild child, darling. There was usually some poor bloke in tow. Or, rather, some rich bloke. She went in for sugar daddies. But commitment very definitely wasn’t her thing.”’
There was a moment of silence.
‘So where do we go from here?’ Willow looked at them, spread out around the table, surrounded by empty plates and scraps of food. They were like a family, she thought, with herself and Perez as the parents and Vicki and Sandy as the kids. It felt a responsibility.
‘The first priority is to speak to Tom Rogerson,’ Perez said. ‘He misled us about knowing Alison, he had access to the keys at Tain and his car fits the description of the vehicle that collected her from Brae.’
‘What time does his plane get in from Orkney tomorrow?’
‘He’s booked on the early evening flight.’
‘Should we meet that?’ Willow thought again that she and Perez were like grown-ups, this time taking decisions that were beyond the responsibility of the kids. ‘Or let him get home and visit him there later?’
Perez took a while to consider. He never rushed a decision. ‘Maybe it would be safest to meet the flight. I’d hate to lose him. If Taylor tells him we’ve been to the office, he might be jumpy.’
‘Hard to lose a suspect in Shetland.’
‘Maybe.’ He gave her one of his slow smiles. ‘But there are lots of islands. Lots of places to hide. I’d be more worried that he might destroy evidence that we could use later. He could be keeping stuff at home.’
‘Where his wife could find it? If we think Tom was having an affair with Alison Teal, would that be likely?’
Another pause. ‘Mavis, his wife, strikes me as a woman who would prefer not to know what her husband gets up to. I don’t think she’d go sneaking through his things.’
Willow ran through the evidence they had against Rogerson. There was nothing concrete. Nothing at all that they could present to a court. ‘I’d love to find a definite connection between him and Alison Teal.’
Perez pulled a plastic evidence bag from his pocket. Inside was the note he’d retrieved from the bin in the solicitor’s office. ‘I thought we’d get this off to a handwriting expert, along with a page from Magnus Tait’s notebook, and see if we can find a match with the letter Sandy found in Tain. Rogerson’s writing looks like a match to me.’
‘You think Tom was her lover?’ Willow couldn’t quite see how that played out now. ‘But according to the article, Tom recognized Alison in the hotel and the next day she flew back to London. She doesn’t talk about seeing him again.’
Perez shrugged. ‘People lie. And they make up good stories to cover their tracks.’
Another silence. Sandy and Vicki were listening, but they made no attempt to interrupt. Willow spoke next.
‘Do you think it’s safe to let Rogerson come back on his own from Orkney? There’s nothing to stop him getting a flight south.’
‘I don’t think he’ll run away from Shetland,’ Perez said. ‘He’s got too much to lose here. He likes the power and authority of being a councillor. Rogerson’s a classic big fish in a small pool. I think that’s why he came home in the first place.’
‘So we wait for him at the airport?’
‘I think so.’ Perez had already thought this through. ‘His car’s there. I checked. So nobody will be coming to collect him. Let’s make it informal.’
‘And what do you have planned for us for the rest of the day, Inspector?’ Sometimes she couldn’t help reminding him that she was supposed to be heading up the investigation.
He grinned. ‘Well, that would be your decision of course, Ma’am.’
‘But?’
‘We carry on the great work that Sandy started. We need more information about Alison Teal – her recent work record and details about her mental health. Any problems with addiction.’
Sandy raised a hand, breaking into the conversation, a reminder that the two senior officers weren’t alone in the room. ‘Could she have been dealing? That might explain the money. She’d have the contacts through her parents.’
‘Not very likely, surely.’ That was Perez. Willow wondered if he was still wedded to the idea of the woman he’d romanticized, when they knew nothing about her. He didn’t want her to be a high-end drugs dealer.
‘I’m not sure,’ Willow said. ‘We certainly can’t rule anything out. That’s an interesting possibility, Sandy. And you know drugs come into the islands, Jimmy. All those single young men on the rigs and in the floatels. A ready market.’
Perez nodded, but she could tell he still wasn’t convinced.
‘Anything else urgent for the morning?’
‘I’m going to dig out a photo of Rogerson,’ he said. ‘The Shetland Times will have dozens. He’s on the front page most weeks. Sandy, you can take it up to Brae and show the lad in the Co-op, see if he recognizes him as the man with Alison in Mareel. It’s a while ago, but you said he had a good visual memory. It would be something else to face Rogerson with, when we see him tomorrow evening.’
The men left then and Vicki went up to her room to pack. She planned to take the first flight out in the morning. Willow collected together the plates and mugs and stacked them by the dishwasher, then started up the stairs. On the first landing a door was open. It led into a small room looking over the garden. The room was decorated in yellow and white and there was a white cot, with a mobile of the moon and the stars hanging over it.
Chapter Twenty
Jane woke the following morning to a clear, cold day. Even from her bed she could sense the change in the weather. There was no noise of wind and rain and the room was cold. She knew it was early. The council workers hadn’t started moving the remaining silt from the road above the house, so there was no background rumble of diggers and tractors. Kevin wasn’t in bed with her. She was a light sleeper, but she hadn’t heard him get up. He must have made a special effort not to wake her or he’d made his way out a long time ago, when she was sleeping most deeply. She had a moment of unease – that sense again that since the landslide everything had changed. It was winter and there was no reason for him to be up before it was light.
She got out of bed, wrapped herself in her dressing gown and looked out of the window. In the moonlight she saw there was a heavy frost. The ruins of the house at Tain had been turned from black to white, so the scene looked like a photographic negative. There was no sign of Kevin in the kitchen; his boots had gone from the rack in the porch, so he must be outside. She put on the kettle to make tea and thought the landslide hadn’t only changed things for her, but for her husband too. He’d put on a good show for the boys the day before. There’d been the same weekend rituals: beer and football and too much to eat. But she thought it had been an effort and he was sliding away from her, just as she was growing apart from him.
On impulse she left her tea where it was and went upstairs to get dressed. Michael was stirring, but it was a while yet before he needed to get the bus into school. She pulled on jeans and a heavy sweater, found her boots and coat in the porch and went outside. The cold was shocking. It stung her skin. The light from the kitchen window showed footprints in the frost crossing the grass towards the boundary with the Tain land. What attraction could the place have for Kevin and for Andy? What kept pulling them back there?