Chapter Thirty-Seven
When he arrived back at the police station after speaking to Kathryn Rogerson, Perez found Willow watching the recording of her interview with Jonathan Teal. She was hunched over the desk in a small room, her hair falling over her shoulders. He remembered stroking her neck the evening before, rubbing the tension from it. Without a word he pulled up a chair so that he was sitting beside her. She pressed a button to replay it and her voice filled the space.
All the way back to Lerwick he’d wondered if he should speak to her about the night they’d spent in the house in Ravenswick. Apologize maybe, though she’d not been a passive partner. I’m sorry, that’s not usually the way I behave when I invite a woman into my home. Then he’d thought perhaps it might be the way she did behave, if the opportunity arose. Sex without strings. Nothing wrong with that after all, between consenting adults. Perhaps there was no need for either of them to speak about it and she’d think he was making a fuss about nothing, if he did. He heard Fran’s voice in his head again: Jimmy Perez, you’re probably the nicest guy in the world, but you do worry far too much.
However, and this was the big deal, the cruncher: he wanted the strings. Not some work fling or one-night stand. He’d never seen the attraction in those – he was so arrogant that he felt he deserved better. Or he was too naively romantic. Now he knew that he wanted Willow as part of his life. If he’d been free and without responsibility, he’d have found a way to make it work. He’d sorted out that much, on the drive back from Ravenswick. And what did that say about his commitment to care for Cassie? How could he possibly consider bringing another woman into her life when his stepdaughter was still so young? Fran had entrusted the girl to him. It would seem like the worst kind of betrayal.
He still wasn’t sure how to play it, when he went into the office and found Willow watching Jono Teal again on the screen. She turned and smiled at him.
‘Jimmy Perez, I thought you were avoiding me.’
‘Maybe I have been.’
Suddenly she pressed the button again and Teal was frozen on the screen, his face turned to the camera, his mouth still open. ‘I want you to know that I don’t go to bed with all my colleagues. No pressure, but I just wanted to tell you that I don’t take that sort of thing lightly.’
He looked at Willow carefully, thinking for a moment that she was still teasing him, but she was just waiting for his response. ‘Nor do I,’ he said.
She threw back her head and laughed. ‘Jimmy Perez, don’t you think I don’t know that? You’ve never done anything lightly. You’re the most serious man I’ve ever met.’
‘It’s complicated,’ he said.
‘I know. Guilt and responsibility, and all those grown-up emotions that I probably don’t understand. You need time to sort yourself out.’ Suddenly she was serious herself. ‘I can wait, Jimmy. For a little while at least.’ Then she switched on the screen again, so he could watch the interview from the beginning.
Soon afterwards they moved to the ops room. Sandy came in from the High School, drenched and miserable, but with a bag of cakes bought from the shop in the street. The cakes were almost dry, because he’d been holding them under his coat, and they gave a little cheer when they saw he had not forgotten them.
‘Oh God, I’m so sorry, Sandy,’ Perez said. ‘I should have phoned to arrange to pick you up on my way back from Ravenswick. I just had other stuff on my mind.’
Willow caught his eye and started to giggle. Sandy was hanging his coat on the radiator, so he didn’t notice.
‘Where do we go from here?’ Willow took charge, focused again on the case. ‘From what Alison’s brother told us, it’s clear that we were right: she and Rogerson were organizing sex workers in the islands. I’m guessing they were mostly targeting the guys in the floatels and in the hotel at Sullom, but islanders seem to have signed up as clients too.’
‘Does that mean we’re looking at a killer who wanted to shut down the whole operation?’ Sandy was eating a chocolate brownie and the words were muffled.
‘Did your mother never tell you not to speak with your mouth full?’ But Perez thought the man had a point. ‘So who are we looking at? Some religious nut who hates the idea of prostitution? An aggrieved partner of one of the men using the service?’
‘It seems we have one of those conveniently close to both crime scenes,’ Willow said.
‘Jane Hay?’
Willow nodded. ‘We know that Kevin paid Rogerson. Alison Teal was living practically on his doorstep and there must have been some activity in the place, but he claimed not even to know that Tain was occupied. That suggests to me that he was covering up something. I’d bet he was one of the clients. If Jane found out, that would give her motive for both murders, and there’s nobody with a better opportunity.’
‘I’m not sure.’ Perez thought of the Jane Hay he knew. She’d been a friend of Fran’s. Not a close friend, but Fran would call into the farmhouse for coffee, if she was painting out that way. She’d been Simon Agnew’s friend too, and Perez wondered what Fran would have made of her neighbours’ involvement in the case. Fran had described Jane as calm: You get the sense that she could survive anything with equanimity. That didn’t sound like the sort of woman who would kill two people, however badly her husband had behaved.
Then he remembered what Kathryn had said of her father. ‘Was it something shameful, Jimmy? So shameful that someone would want to kill him?’ Shame worked in all sorts of ways, and maybe there were things in Jane’s past that Rogerson or Teal had discovered. Something she’d kill to keep hidden. Then he thought he was straying into Agnew territory and this was a question for a psychologist, not a cop.
‘What did you get from the High School, Sandy?’ Willow asked. ‘Did any of the teachers mention the boys’ mother?’
‘No, only to say that she has ambitions for Michael to go away to college, but he wants to stay and work on the farm.’ Sandy looked guilty. ‘But I didn’t think to ask about the parents. I was talking to them about the sons. Sorry.’
‘Anything interesting?’
‘Not really. Andy was the bright one. Sparky, arty, a bit cheeky, but with the charm to get away with it. I wondered if he might have fancied his English teacher. She was one of those women who like to be admired. Maybe she only went into teaching because she had a captive audience. You could see she wouldn’t discourage the attention, even from one of her students.’ Sandy paused to slurp his tea.
‘And Michael?’ Perez couldn’t really see where this was going, except to provide a bit more background to the Hay family, but he was even more convinced that the four individuals at the farm should be at the centre of the investigation.
Sandy shrugged. ‘The teacher I spoke to didn’t have much to say about him, except that he was one of those kids who don’t stand out. Not terribly bright, but not needing special help.’ He looked up and grinned. ‘A bit like I was at school, maybe. I don’t get the sense that the brothers were very close. They had one scrap in the playground, in Andy’s last year. Nobody could work out exactly what triggered it, but it seems to have been teasing about a woman that got out of hand.’ He paused. ‘And Sally Martin, Andy’s teacher, shed a bit of light on what that argument in the street could have been about. Apparently Rogerson was leading calls in the council to cut arts funding. All the kids in the Youth Theatre were protesting about it.’