‘With his acting?’
She nodded. ‘We always said she’d be a teacher, because she was so good with the young ones.’
‘It was a bit of a coincidence that she ended up teaching here in Ravenswick.’
‘Maybe, but it was always her plan to come home as soon as she could find a job here. She loves Shetland.’ Jane found herself lost in thought again. Kathryn and Andy. She’d thought the relationship had ended when the girl had gone south to university; now she thought they must have kept in touch. She felt strangely hurt that Andy had kept the friendship a secret. She stood up and began to put home-made biscuits in a tin for Jimmy Perez to take away. There was the sound of the tractor in the yard, and then of Kevin stamping his boots on the concrete to get off the worst of the mud. She opened the door into the hall to catch her husband before he took off his waterproofs.
‘Jimmy and Cassie are here. They walked up from the school. Would you be able to give them a lift home?’
He raised his eyebrows: a silent question to ask if there’d been more to the visit than she could say in the detective’s hearing. She shook her head.
‘Sure,’ he said. His voice was loud enough for the pair in the kitchen to hear him and there was something of a performance in it. ‘They certainly wouldn’t want to be out in the dark on a night like this. Such dreadful weather!’ Cassie stuck her head round the door. ‘Now, young lady, are you going to sit beside me in the Land Rover?’
There was a flurry of activity while Jimmy and Cassie hurried to put on their outdoor clothes and then the house was quiet again, except for the sound of water running down the drain in the yard. Jane gathered up the mugs and coffee cups and felt a little lost. Aimless. It had been good to have a child in the house again. Caring for children gave you some sort of purpose. She’d made a shepherd’s pie for tea and it was ready to go into the oven, so there was nothing more to do in the house. She was thinking that it might be worth talking to Kathryn. It would be right to pass on her condolences, and the teacher might have some idea what was troubling her son.
Her mobile was lying on the table. She stared at it, planning in her head what she might say to the teacher, when it rang. The noise seemed very loud and startled her. She picked up the phone.
‘Mum.’ The voice was strained and sounded very young. ‘Mum, it’s me. Andy. I need to talk to you.’
Chapter Forty-Three
Back in the police station, Willow was on the phone to Rogerson’s mobile service provider. ‘I need a call record list for this number. The past month. Immediately.’ The knowledge that she’d cocked up, by not asking them to check it sooner, was making her aggressive.
At the end of the line there was a young man who managed to be patronizing and unhelpful at the same time.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Any calls made into or out of that number last Sunday. You should be able to give me that now.’
‘I’m really sorry.’ Not sounding sorry at all. ‘It won’t be possible. Certainly not immediately.’
At that point Willow lost her temper, demanded to speak to his manager and was eventually promised the information she needed by email within the hour. She was seldom angry and hated the lack of control; she ended the encounter shaking and it took a moment before she was ready to speak to Perez. It was already mid-afternoon and she had the sense of time slipping away. He answered his phone straight away, but the line was crackly. ‘Anything?’
‘I’ve just walked down to collect Cassie from school. Getting stir-crazy in the house.’
‘It seems Kathryn Rogerson and Andy Hay were close at one time.’ Willow tried to explain the relationship between the young people, as Mavis had described it to her.
He didn’t answer immediately and she thought his phone might have lost reception altogether. In the end, when he did speak, it was just one word. ‘Interesting.’ Then the connection was lost and the line was dead.
Sandy seemed to have picked up Willow’s restlessness, because he couldn’t settle, either. He kept sticking his head round her door to see if they’d heard from Rogerson’s mobile provider. He was still triumphant after finding the witness in the airport, and he had a stake in the information. In the end she sent him to make tea, though she was awash with the stuff. All the time she was looking at her watch or staring at the white plastic clock on the office wall. She could hear the minutes tick. Despite the yoga and the mindfulness, she’d never been much good at waiting. She was just about to call the phone company again and was building herself up for another confrontation, when the email came through. Sandy came in with the two mugs of tea and she swivelled the screen so that he could read it at the same time as her.
‘What do you think?’
She thought Sandy must have spent too long in Perez’s company, because he gave the same one-word answer as his boss had done half an hour before. ‘Interesting.’
Willow was on her feet, staring at the mind-map, which was still on the whiteboard. The pattern that had seemed fuzzy and inexplicable now made perfect sense.
‘I need to talk to Alison Teal’s brother in prison. Can you phone them, Sandy? See if you can sort it out?’ Because words and ideas were tumbling through her head and she needed to concentrate to make sense of them. She didn’t need distractions. Besides, Sandy would be good at a task like that. Persistent but polite. She was so wired that she worried she might end up shouting again. ‘I don’t need a video-link this time. Just a phone call will do.’
He nodded and left the room, bewildered, but knowing better than to ask for more details.
He bounded back a quarter of an hour later, grinning. ‘All sorted. If you ring this number in ten minutes, Teal will be in the governor’s office ready to talk to you.’
‘Sandy Wilson, you’re a bloody miracle-worker!’ She could feel the case moving forward now. It was physical, like a rumble beneath her feet, like the soil sliding down the hill during the landslip. Unstoppable.
‘No problem.’ But Sandy was blushing, as delighted as she was. It seemed the assistant governor was a birdwatcher. Obsessed. A regular visitor to Shetland. He’d been happy to help in any way he could, glad of another, informal link to the islands. ‘I’ve promised to take him out for a beer next time he’s up.’
‘I’ll tape the conversation,’ Willow said, ‘so I can play it back to you as soon as we’re done, but I don’t want an audience when I’m talking to him, Sandy. Is that OK? I need to be able to focus.’ She paused. ‘My performance has to be just for Teal.’
Sandy left the room without comment. If he was disappointed, Willow didn’t notice. She was making notes on a scrap of paper on the desk in front of her.
She looked at her watch again, took a deep breath, made the call. The man who answered had an educated southern accent. Warm, interested. He sounded more like an old-fashioned schoolmaster than someone who worked with offenders. Willow created a back-story for him in her head as he introduced himself: he’d be someone who’d been brought up to take responsibility for people less fortunate than himself. His father was a priest, maybe. Or a socialist intellectual. She wondered what his colleagues made of him and hoped he wouldn’t become hardened and cynical. She forced herself to listen to his words.
‘I wish I were in the islands with you.’ His voice was wistful. ‘It’s my favourite place in the world.’ Then he dragged himself back to the present. ‘I have Jonathan with me. I’ll put him on the line.’
Teal sounded even younger than he had on the video-link. Perhaps he had no idea why he’d been dragged to the governor’s office and was scared. Willow took the interview slowly, felt the rhythm of it like a poem and pulled him with her, so eventually he felt the need to answer as he would join in the chorus of a song.