‘There was some business deal that was taking up a lot of his time,’ Mavis said. ‘He was out some evenings, but he wasn’t with a woman. I could always tell when he’d been with a woman: he’d come back to me and he’d be kind of tender.’
‘Was it legal business?’ Perez asked. ‘Or something to do with the council?’
‘Maybe something to do with the oilies.’ Mavis was wearing a big hand-knitted cardigan, but despite the heat in the room she still seemed to feel cold. She pulled the garment around her. ‘Tom said he couldn’t tell me about it just yet, but it would make us money.’
‘Was money important to Tom?’
‘Not for its own sake,’ Kathryn said. ‘He couldn’t save. But he liked the things it could buy.’
Power? Perez thought. Influence. Women. But he wondered if the deals Tom bragged about were real or if they were fantasies, as were, according to his daughter, his relationships with young and beautiful women.
‘When did you last see Tom?’
‘Early Sunday,’ Mavis said. ‘Then he drove down to Sumburgh to get the morning plane.’
And he had done that. His car had been found in the airport car park. So what had happened between arriving in Sumburgh and checking in for his flight?
‘Who knew that he’d be going to Orkney?’
‘Everyone who reads The Shetland Times.’ Kathryn allowed herself a little smile. ‘There was a big article about the fisheries conference and about how Dad was going to fight for Shetland’s fishermen.’
‘But they wouldn’t know that he was leaving on Sunday morning.’
‘No. Just that he’d be in Orkney for the meeting on Monday morning.’
Perez thought Rogerson must have intended to go to the conference. Otherwise he wouldn’t have driven to Sumburgh and he wouldn’t have encouraged all that publicity. They’d need to question the check-in staff and other passengers. Perhaps there’d been a chance meeting in the airport that had made him change his mind. Or had someone been waiting for him there?
He turned his attention back to the women. ‘What were you up to over the weekend?’ He tried to keep his voice chatty and light.
Mavis stiffened and her voice was suddenly bitter. ‘Do you think I killed him, Jimmy? Because he’d been making a fool of me with other women? I’d have done that years ago, if I’d wanted him dead.’
‘I have to ask, Mavis. You must understand that.’
The women looked at each other. For a moment Perez suspected they were preparing to lie, but perhaps they just wanted to check the accuracy of the details they were about to give.
‘We had breakfast,’ Kathryn said, ‘and then we went to church.’
‘Here in Lerwick?’
‘No, in Ravenswick,’ Kathryn said. ‘We like the minister there.’
So they were in Ravenswick on the Sunday. Perez couldn’t work out the significance of that.
‘And after the service?’
‘We treated ourselves to Sunday lunch in the Ravenswick Hotel.’ Now Kathryn sounded almost defiant. She must understand the implication of Perez’s questions, even if Mavis didn’t. ‘Then later the weather cleared a little and we went for a walk in the hotel gardens. But we didn’t go anywhere near Tain, Jimmy, and we didn’t go to the beach.’
He nodded and waited for her to continue.
‘On Sunday night we were here. Together. I had marking to do, and my mother was watching television in the same room. I arrived at school at about eight this morning. It was icy and I’d allowed time in case there was a tailback from the traffic lights by the landslide. I didn’t see my father. Not over the weekend or this morning. As far as I knew, he was in Orkney.’
Perez stood up. They were back to where they’d started when he’d first met Kathryn in the school, and he didn’t want to be in this overheated room any longer. He left Morag with the women, shut the kitchen door behind him and stepped out into the sunshine.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Willow found the Hays’ farm easily. Perez had pointed it out when they’d driven from the airport and she’d remembered the polytunnels and the solid stone house that seemed a little grand. There was still the ghost of the croft house it had once been, but it had grown over the years and become a comfortable family home, with rooms in the roof and an extension at the front. The attached outbuildings, which had once contained animals or a dairy, were now part of the living space.
There were three people in the kitchen, along with a uniformed officer. It was early afternoon by now, but they looked as if they’d been sitting there since Perez had left. There was a smell of home-made soup, but the bowls must have been cleared away because there was no sign now that they’d eaten lunch. The officer must have recognized her, because he jumped to his feet when she tapped at the door and let herself in. The family turned and stared. Perhaps she didn’t look much like their idea of a police officer. She saw the young man who’d served her and Perez at Mareel and gave him a little smile. ‘Andy, isn’t it? We’ve met.’
He nodded. It looked as if the movement had taken a lot of effort. Willow reached out her hand to his parents. ‘Chief Inspector Willow Reeves. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you some more questions. But we’ll get it over with as soon as possible and let you get on with your lives.’ Because she found it hard to think of these respectable, ordinary individuals in their comfortable house as possible killers. They had too much to lose.
‘Is there a room I could use to chat to you? We’ll do it one at a time, so you’re not all inconvenienced at once.’ She could see that none of them were taken in by that, but she was here for more than a cosy chat around the kitchen table and it wasn’t a bad thing for them to know that this was serious.
‘There’s the office.’ Jane Hay got to her feet. She looked as if she hadn’t slept for a few nights. Willow wondered if the shock of finding a dead man on your land would do that to you or if something else was worrying her. ‘I’ll show you.’
It was a small room that might once have housed animals and led off from a long corridor that stretched the length of the building. Far enough away from the kitchen that no one would be able to eavesdrop. There was a desk with a computer, shelves with reports and gardening books, a chair to go with the desk and another in the corner.
‘Perfect.’
‘Would you like some coffee?’ Jane hovered in the doorway.
‘Fabulous.’ Coffee was Willow’s drug of choice. Her parents had lived caffeine-free lives and it still felt like a guilty pleasure. ‘Do you mind asking Andy to bring it through? I’d like to chat to him first.’
Jane nodded as if that was what she’d been expecting. She was about to say more, to give some excuse or explanation for her son’s behaviour, but seemed to think better of it and walked away.
The boy carried a tray and the smell of the coffee came before him. There was a mug and a little jug of milk and a sugar bowl. A plate of home-made biscuits. All very fancy, but Willow was used to witnesses trying to impress. And this would be the parents’ doing, not his.
‘Are you not having any?’ She reached out for a biscuit and pushed the plate towards him.
He shook his head. ‘We’ve been drinking coffee all morning.’
‘Jimmy Perez said you had something to tell me about Tom Rogerson.’
He looked up sharply. ‘My mother said I should say something, but really it wasn’t a big deal.’ A pause. ‘Nothing for her to make such a fuss about.’
‘All the same, your mother’s right. We hear about stuff anyway, so it’s best if it comes from you.’
Andy paused. ‘We had a row in the street. I’d had too much to drink. Rogerson was an arrogant bastard.’
‘According to Inspector Perez, your father said much the same thing. Was this a family problem, then? Is there some reason why you and your dad had taken against the man?’