‘No.’ Willow leaned forward. ‘If it had been about that, Andy would have said so. It would be another opportunity to make a political point. That row in the street was more personal.’
‘Could he have found out that Kevin was seeing Rogerson’s women?’ Perez thought there was a link here about children standing up for their irresponsible parents: Kathryn and Tom, Andy and Kevin. ‘It might explain why Andy’s seemed so twitchy. He might think his father is a killer.’
‘Or he might be a killer himself,’ Willow said. ‘He sounds like a young man given to melodrama. Could he have seen murder as revenge for corrupting his father and betraying his mother?’
‘Isn’t that a bit far-fetched?’ It sounded like one of the gothic films Fran had sometimes enjoyed, late on dark winter nights. Besides, Perez wasn’t sure if the young had that kind of concept of sexual morality.
‘Yeah, I know. It’s clutching at straws. We have so much information now, but I haven’t any sort of feel about who’s responsible.’ Willow looked at Perez. ‘What about you, Jimmy? You know this place. What’s the next move?’
‘There’s still some basic policing. Routine stuff. We haven’t found anyone yet who saw Tom Rogerson after he left his car at the airport. He can’t just have vanished into thin air.’ He paused. ‘Apart from that, I think we have to wait.’
‘For the murderer to make a mistake?’
‘Or to attempt to kill again. We know that the Hays have secrets. Even if one of the family isn’t responsible for the deaths, it’s possible that they know who is. Or have their suspicions. So we wait and we watch them.’
Willow nodded to show that made sense to her. ‘Sandy, you have another go at the airport. Local folk will talk to you. How do you see the watching, Jimmy? It’d be hard to hide any surveillance in a place with so few people and so little cover.’
‘I can see their place from my house.’
‘Ah, so it’s just an excuse for staying home and drinking tea all day?’
He held up his hands in mock surrender. ‘Just give me one day,’ he said. ‘Sometimes waiting is the hardest thing.’
She caught his eye. A flash of understanding. ‘One day. If you’re sure that’s all you need.’
He walked her back to the sheriff’s house. The rain had eased a little. From the bar at the bottom of the lane, fiddle music suddenly spilled out through an open door. Wednesday night, when locals came together to share their music. In the summer it would be packed with visitors, but tonight and this early in the evening the musicians would be playing mostly to themselves.
‘Will you come in for a coffee, Jimmy? I’m sure they’d like to see you.’
He looked at his watch. He still had an hour before he had to be home for Duncan to drop off Cassie. ‘Aye, why not?’ He knew he had a decision to make about their future, but he felt very easy in her company. Whatever he decided, they would still manage to work together.
She unlocked the door and walked into a warm house. There were voices in the basement kitchen. They hadn’t been able to see in from outside because the heavy curtains had been drawn.
‘Hi there, I’ve brought Jimmy in. I hope that’s OK.’ Willow walked ahead of him down the stairs.
Rosie was sitting in the chair by the Aga and her husband was making tea. The place smelled different. Milky.
‘Come in!’ the man said. ‘Come in and meet my son.’
Then Perez saw that the dozing Rosie had a baby in her arms.
‘He was born last night,’ John said. ‘You weren’t here, Willow. We left you a note and some stuff for your breakfast. We’ve only just got back from the hospital.’
‘No,’ Willow said. ‘I didn’t get back. Something came up.’ Perez looked at her to see if that was a private joke, but he could tell that she only had eyes for the child, who was pink and wrinkled and wrapped in a yellow blanket. ‘What will you call him?’
‘We don’t know yet.’ Rosie smiled. ‘We thought we’d wait and see what suited.’
‘But as we can’t call him Prune, which is what he most looks like,’ the man went on, ‘we’d better come up with something else.’ He poured water into a teapot. ‘Will you both have a mug? And a dram to wet the baby’s head?’
‘Don’t you want to be on your own?’ Willow was still looking at the baby. ‘Your first night as a family.’
‘Oh, we’ll have years and years of that.’ Rosie lifted herself onto her feet and handed the child to Willow. ‘Here, have a cuddle while I take myself off for a pee. I might be some time.’ She was wearing baggy pyjamas and huge slippers and shuffled away to the stairs. ‘I can’t do anything at speed.’
‘You should have seen her,’ John said. ‘She was so brave.’
Willow took a seat at the table and sat, with the baby on her knee, while the tea was poured into mugs and the whisky into small glasses.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Jane woke to rain on the window and a sense of dislocation. Perhaps she’d been somewhere else in a dream. There was a moment of panic when she imagined she’d been drinking again; there was a taste in her mouth that reminded her of the self-disgust and failure that had always followed a bender. Then Kevin turned in his sleep and she knew where she was, and that she was still strong and sober. Sober at least. But despite that, there was little relief in the reality and she went back to sleep.
When she woke again, Kevin was out of bed and the light was on. He’d been in the shower and stood with a towel around his waist, his hair wet. He was looking down at her in a way that was almost fatherly. She thought how grateful she should be that he’d stood by her. Other men would have ditched her years before.
‘I was thinking we should get away,’ he said. ‘Have a bit of a holiday, just the two of us. The boys are old enough to leave alone and there’s not much work at this time of year.’ He sat on the bed beside her and she tried to push from her mind the thought that the wet towel would make the sheet damp. ‘Would you like that?’
‘Of course! Where would we go?’
‘Somewhere hot,’ he said. ‘Morocco, maybe. We should have a bit of adventure in our lives.’
She imagined hot sand and a market full of brightly coloured spices. ‘I’d love Morocco. And you’re right – we could use some time on our own.’ Then immediately she wondered how she could consider leaving the boys, if the killer hadn’t been found. If the situation was still unresolved.
‘I’ll go online to see if I can find a last-minute deal.’ He bent and kissed her lightly on the lips. ‘And perhaps when we get back they’ll have found the killer and all this will be over.’ He stood up and pulled on his clothes. She watched him and thought he’d worn better than she had. He still had the body of a young man, could easily be an older brother to her sons. But although she’d been thinking of the murders too, she wished he hadn’t mentioned the killer. It was as if he’d carried a distasteful smell into the bedroom with him.
When she got downstairs she could hear Kevin in the office, tapping away on the computer keyboard, looking for a dream holiday that somehow she couldn’t believe would ever happen. She made a pot of coffee and shouted up the stairs to ask the boys if they’d like breakfast. She’d already decided that she’d do a fry-up as a treat for Kevin, taken bacon out of the fridge and started grilling it in the pan. Michael appeared, dressed for school, apart from his socks. ‘Has Andy already left then? I was hoping he’d give me a lift.’
‘He’s still in bed, I expect.’ But already she felt the familiar sickness in the pit of her stomach. At one time she’d thought she’d known what her eldest son was thinking. They were kindred spirits, weren’t they? Now he drifted between home and Lerwick and she didn’t have a clue what he was up to.
‘I’ve checked. He’s not there.’