Perez didn’t answer directly. ‘She’s a very private woman,’ he said carefully. ‘And you can imagine how that goes down here. We love to stick our noses into other folk’s business. I can see how she’d feel very awkward, an inquiry coming that close to home.’
‘Was it really a coincidence?’ Willow asked. ‘The body being found in the yoal just outside her house. Why didn’t the murderer leave Markham where he was killed? Rowing is the only activity Rhona Laing shares with the community. People would know she’d keep an eye on the boat, that she’d most likely be the person to find the corpse.’
‘You think it was a kind of message?’ Perez wasn’t sure what he made of that. He’d never been one for conspiracy theories and weird signals. But if he’d considered weird theories and ideas last October in Fair Isle, Fran might still be alive. Now, maybe, he should be a bit more open-minded.
‘Probably not!’ Willow grinned at him. ‘You think I’m being daft, don’t you?’
‘I think it wouldn’t do any harm to check if there’s ever been a connection between Markham and the Fiscal. We’d do the same thing for any other witness. She might have come across him when she was a lawyer in Edinburgh. She’s only been here for a few years.’
‘I’ll get one of my team in Inverness to do the digging,’ Willow said. ‘There’s a lad who’s a wizard at that kind of thing. Sit him in front of a screen all day and he’s happy.’ She got to her feet. It took one supple movement, not a scramble. Perez thought if she weren’t so tall, she could be a dancer or a gymnast. ‘We should get back to the station and make some calls. I need to find out if anyone was in the museum yesterday afternoon. They might have seen the car being dropped off there. I mean it was daylight and it was an unusual vehicle. Maybe you could take that on, Sandy? Again it’s more a job for a local.’
Sandy nodded. He seemed half-asleep in his chair. ‘No problem. I’ll get on to it first thing. I’m surprised we haven’t heard more about the car already. Folk will know that we’d be interested.’
‘From what you’ve told me, that’s the odd thing about this case.’ It came to Perez that this was astonishing. Different from any other investigation he’d ever known. ‘Nobody saw anything. Not the car turning up at Vatnagarth or the body being put in the yoal. It’s as if the killer was invisible.’ He looked at them to make sure they understood. ‘You know what it’s like here. You think that Shetland’s a big and empty place, but cut a peat bank five miles from the road and someone will have seen you do it. This murderer is clever. Or very lucky.’
‘There was a thick fog in North Mainland,’ Sandy said. ‘The sort of fog you’d lose your way in. That’s why nothing was seen.’
‘Lucky then,’ Perez said. But he wasn’t sure he believed in that sort of luck after all.
Willow said they’d make their own way back to the station. ‘The exercise will do us good, and it’ll help me get a feel for the place. I don’t really understand a street map until I’ve walked it.’
When they’d gone the house seemed very quiet. Perez took the mugs into the kitchen and boiled a kettle so there was hot water to wash them up. He opened the window in the living room to let some air into the place. It soon smelled damp when it wasn’t lived in. Then he ran over in his mind what Willow had said about the Fiscal. Rhona Laing wasn’t an easy woman, he had to admit that. But surely she was honest. He’d have bet his last pound on her integrity. It was two strong women marking out their territory, he thought. That was what was going on there.
Driving back to Ravenswick, he realized that the wind had dropped. He stopped in the supermarket on the edge of town to buy food, and the surface of Clickimin Loch was still. His new hunger felt like a betrayal, but he found that he was ravenous again and stocked up on bread, fruit and eggs, plus a big vacuum packet of ground coffee. Then he remembered that Cassie would be home the next afternoon and he went round the shelves again for treats for her. Healthy treats of which Fran would have approved. Duncan, her father, always filled her with junk when she was staying at the Haa. He didn’t want to care for her full-time, but bought her affection with sweets and presents when he did see her.
At home the light on his phone was flashing to show that he had a message. It was from Peter Markham, asking if there was any news on the investigation. ‘Please get in touch if you hear anything.’
Perez played the message a couple of times, disturbed by the tone and the edge of desperation in the voice. Of course Peter would want to know what had happened to his son. But why did he sound quite so scared?
Chapter Twelve
Sandy walked Willow Reeves to her hotel before he went home to his flat. It was already dark and the public bar was noisy. They had to walk past the open door to get to reception and he felt he should apologize for the loud men, swearing and joking, out drinking on a Saturday night, but she seemed unbothered. The hotel Morag had picked was right on the water, not far from Perez’s house. From the bedrooms it was sometimes possible to see killer whales in the Sound. Sandy told her that, aware again that he sounded like a tour leader.
‘Sleep well,’ he said. He’d waited until she’d checked in. He’d been brought up to be well mannered where women were concerned. Part of him still found it a little strange that a woman should head up the Serious Crime Squad or be Procurator Fiscal. He didn’t think it was wrong, but it would take him a while to get used to it.
‘No worries about that,’ she said. ‘I always sleep well.’ And she disappeared up the dark staircase, her heavy holdall on her shoulder. He’d offered to carry it in to the hotel for her, but she’d stared at him as if he were mad.
The next morning she was in the police station before he was. She’d tied back her hair, but it still looked untidy and she was wearing the same shapeless jumper. She looked up from the desk they’d found for her in the small office that Perez had once used. A mug full of something that smelled herbal and looked like piss stood on her desk.
‘I’ve tracked down Markham’s mobile-phone provider,’ she said. ‘I got his number from his parents. There seems to be some problem – maybe he recently got a new number – but they’re trying to find it for me. It’s too early for news from Aberdeen on the postmortem.’
‘I’m going to head out to Vatnagarth,’ Sandy said. ‘I checked the council website and the museum’s open this morning.’ He always preferred to be out of the office. Here, he had the sense that people were looking over his shoulder, judging his work.
‘Sure,’ Willow said. ‘Whatever you think.’ Her attention had already been caught again by the screen in front of her.
In the copse of sycamores there seemed to be birds everywhere and the sun was bright as he approached the museum. A people-carrier was parked outside, but Markham’s car had been removed. It would be taken south to Aberdeen on the ferry. The crime-scene tape had disappeared too and there was no sign that the police had ever been interested in the place.
There was smoke coming out of the chimney, so everything smelled of peat. The door was open and he walked into the tiny space that separated the but-end of the house from the ben. To his left another door led into a living room. The window was so small and the walls were so thick that there was very little light. He struggled to make out if anyone was there. Then he saw a large woman wearing a skirt that looked like sackcloth and a knitted jacket. The sort of clothes he’d seen in photos in his grandmother’s house, so he wasn’t sure for a moment if she was real or a kind of manikin. She was sitting on a Shetland chair close to the range. He felt that he was stepping back in time, into one of his grandmother’s photos. Then the woman moved; she was feeding carded fleece into a spinning wheel.