‘Welcome,’ the woman said. ‘Come in.’ He had the sense that he’d seen her before, very recently, but he couldn’t quite remember where. ‘Look around at whatever you like and give me a shout if you have any questions. There’s a booklet on the table.’
‘I’m not a tourist.’ He was offended. ‘I’m investigating Jerry Markham’s murder. His car was found parked outside the museum yesterday.’
She paused in her spinning and set down the fleece. ‘I heard. What a dreadful thing!’
‘And you are?’
‘Jennifer Belshaw. Jen.’
Then he remembered where he’d seen her. She’d been one of the women in the hennie bus on Friday night. They’d been talking about her in the bar in Voe when he and Willow had stopped there for lunch the day before. The name rang another bell. ‘Any relation of Andy Belshaw?’
‘Aye,’ she said. ‘He’s my husband. Why?’
Jerry Markham visited him at Sullom Voe just before he was killed.’
‘Well, I’ve never met Mr Markham,’ she said frostily. ‘As far as I’m aware. I certainly had nothing to do with his death.’
‘But his car was found outside the place where you work.’
She laughed. ‘I don’t work here. I’m a volunteer. I do this for fun. And I’m only in this morning because my friend was delayed. I’ll be away to cook Sunday lunch for my family once she turns up.’
‘Would anyone have been here on Friday evening?’ He thought it was a long shot. He could think of more exciting places to be on a Friday night than a damp croft-house miles from anywhere.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘There were people here all day. We hire out the barn to community groups. In the morning a readers’ group, in the late afternoon a tea dance for the over-60s’ club.’ She looked up at him. ‘I play the fiddle, and I was here for that. Then in the evening a meeting to discuss the new tidal-energy scheme at Hvidahus.’
‘You weren’t here for the meeting?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not my kind of thing. Besides, it was my friend’s hennie. I couldn’t miss that.’
‘What about your husband?’
She laughed again. ‘No way! He works in Sullom and sees renewable energy as a sort of witchcraft. He was in Brae at the sports centre. He runs a kids’ football team.’ She’d started spinning again and seemed completely relaxed.
‘Can you give me contact details for the tidal-energy group?’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Talk to Joe Sinclair and he’ll tell you who was there.’ She jotted down a number on a scrap of paper.
Returning to his car, he felt he’d conducted the interview poorly and that when she’d started laughing, she’d been laughing at him.
Everyone in Shetland knew Joe Sinclair. He was born and bred a Shetlander, but had gone to sea and worked his way up to being master of a giant container ship, sailing out of Singapore. Then he’d come home and for the last ten years he’d been harbour master at Sullom Voe. Sinclair had fingers in many pies and friends in high places. Sandy phoned him at home. One of his daughters answered, and when he came to the phone Sinclair sounded rested and relaxed. A man in late middle age enjoying a weekend with his family.
‘I wasn’t at Vatnagarth,’ he said. ‘I’m involved with Power of Water, on the steering group, but that would have been the opposition meeting last night and they’d certainly not have invited me along.’ He gave a little chuckle.
‘The opposition?’ Sandy was already out of his depth.
‘A small band of busybodies. They think we’ll ruin the environment around Hvidahus by having a substation there to collect the power. Most of them are incomers, though Francis Watt stirs them up from time to time with his talk of corruption and conspiracies. You’ll have seen his column in the Shetland Times.’ In the background Sandy could hear Sinclair’s teenage daughters laughing.
‘Who would have been at the meeting on Friday?’
‘A guy called Mark Walsh would have set it up. He worked as an accountant for some multinational in the south before taking early retirement and heading here for the good life. They bought the big house in Hvidahus and he sees the tidal-energy scheme as a threat to his investment. The wife’s pleasant enough, but there’s nothing Walsh likes better than causing mischief. I’m not sure that the good life suits him after all.’
Mark and Sue Walsh lived in a whitewashed house at the end of a track right by the pier at Hvidahus. It seemed to Sandy to be very grand. There were pictures on the walls and books everywhere and the garden was landscaped with flowers. The couple welcomed him into the kitchen, as if they didn’t get many visitors and were pleased to see him. The woman chatted while the husband made coffee. They’d visited Shetland on holiday since they were students and had decided to move north when her husband took early retirement. They’d fallen in love with the house and its views as soon as they’d seen it. It was too big for them, but they’d decided it would make a classy B&B. This would be their first season as a business and already they were fully booked for July and August. She smiled. ‘My husband doesn’t really do retirement.’
Sandy drank the coffee, which was a bit strong for his taste.
‘I understand that you were at Vatnagarth on Friday evening. A meeting?’
‘The Save Hvidahus Action Group,’ Mark Walsh said. ‘We moved to Shetland because it’s so unspoilt. The last wilderness in the UK. Of course we believe in green energy, but not at the expense of the natural environment. Look at the dreadful new wind farm! It’s time to call a halt to these major developments.’
Sandy didn’t ask Walsh to explain further. He thought anything that would provide Shetland with cheaper fuel would be a good thing. ‘Did either of you see a red Alfa Romeo in the car park when you left?’
‘No, and we would certainly have noticed. There were only six of us and the place was empty when we left.’
‘What time was that?’ Sandy stirred more sugar into his coffee.
‘Early. About eight o’clock. There didn’t seem much point continuing, when Jerry Markham didn’t turn up.’ Walsh looked up. ‘I was furious at the time, but of course I realize now that he was dead.’
‘You were expecting Jerry Markham to be at your meeting?’ Sandy tried not to sound too surprised.
‘Of course. I thought that was why you were here this morning.’ Walsh continued talking very slowly, as if to a small child or a foreigner. Sandy, who had already taken an intense dislike to the man, felt like hitting him. ‘I wrote to Markham, suggesting that this was a story worth investigating. As he was a Shetlander. He said he was planning to visit his parents anyway, so he’d come along to the meeting. Of course he didn’t show.’
‘I saw Jerry Markham on Friday,’ Sue Walsh interrupted. ‘At about eleven in the morning.’ She looked at her husband. ‘You’d looked him up on the Internet, so I recognized him from his photo.’
‘You didn’t tell me you’d seen him.’ Mark sounded affronted.
‘No? It must have slipped my mind.’
‘Where did you see Markham?’ Sandy sensed the beginning of an argument.
‘In the coffee shop of the Bonhoga Gallery. We’d like original Shetland art in the guest bedrooms and there was an exhibition of student work. I thought I might pick up one or two pieces cheaply.’
Sandy thought about that. The Bonhoga Gallery was in Weisdale on the west side of the island. What had Markham been doing there?
‘He was with someone,’ Sue went on. ‘The place was quiet. The sun appeared briefly and I took my coffee to one of the tables outside, so I couldn’t hear what they were saying. But it looked as if they were having an argument. Or if not an argument, then a disagreement.’