Perez left before the hymn had finished. He knew what it would be like if he stayed: folk would approach, wanting to welcome him into the fold. There’d be invitations back to houses for coffee or lunch. Questions. He’d never been sociable, but these days he found small talk impossible. Outside there was warmth in the sunshine and he stood for a moment and almost allowed himself to enjoy the sensation, before returning to his car. He wasn’t sure now whether his coming to the kirk had been such a good idea. He’d found Evie’s number in the Shetland phone directory, but when he’d called there’d been no response. This had been the nearest place of worship to her home and he’d thought he’d give it a go. Sandy had described Evie as religious, so it was worth a chance.
At home he’d felt restless; he’d agreed with Duncan that he wouldn’t pick up Cassie until after she’d had her tea, and the empty day had stretched ahead of him. Now Perez thought it had been a mistake to come here to find Evie. He hadn’t considered that she might be with her fiancé. He could hardly discuss the woman’s dead lover in front of the new man.
But John Henderson drove off very quickly in a white car, as if he had an appointment to keep. Perez saw him briefly – a man in middle age, very smart in his Sunday suit. Evie waited until all the other people had left, then stood chatting just outside the door of the kirk to the minister, making the final preparations for her wedding day, Perez supposed. She had a round face and dark hair, and though he couldn’t hear what she was saying, she seemed happy. Eventually the minister returned to the building and Evie walked across the grass to the road. There were no cars remaining and Perez assumed that she intended to make her way home on foot. He opened the door and climbed out.
‘Can I give you a lift back to your house?’
Anywhere else such an invitation would be treated with suspicion, but Evie just smiled.
‘No, thanks. It’s such a lovely day and I was looking forward to the walk.’
‘Could I walk with you then?’ Perez had joined her now. She had her back to the sun and he had to squint against the light reflected from the loch. ‘I’m an inspector with the police. We’re investigating Jerry Markham’s death.’
‘I thought I recognized you.’ Her voice was light and there was still a trace of the Fetlar accent. ‘Your picture was in the Shetland Times when your wife died.’
‘My girlfriend,’ Perez said. ‘Though we were engaged. We’d planned to marry.’
‘Oh!’ She was horrified. Her own impending marriage brought the tragedy close to home. ‘I’m so sorry.’
They’d already started walking along the single-track road. A hire car with a couple of tourists came towards them and they climbed onto the verge to let it past.
Perez left his questions about Markham until they’d arrived at her house. It was tiny, a single-storey croft-house, freshly whitewashed. A kitchen with a small table, a sofa against one wall and a portable television; a bedroom and a shower room built onto the back. There was a view down to a pebble beach. She left the door open and the sound of sheep seemed to fill the room.
‘You weren’t tempted by life in the city then?’ Perez knew she’d been to university in Edinburgh and achieved a good law degree, but hadn’t taken the steps needed to become a barrister or solicitor.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I missed the islands every minute I was away.’ It was a dramatic statement, but Perez thought it was probably true. It was hard to imagine her in a busy street jostled by crowds, hemmed in by tall buildings, no view of the sky. Some Shetland kids thrived on the anonymity and the sense of freedom, when they escaped home for the first time. It seemed Evie hadn’t been one of those. ‘I bought this place as soon as I came back. It was dead cheap, hardly more than a wreck. My father helped me do it up.’
‘Where do you work now?’
‘For Shetland Islands Council, in the development unit. We encourage new business into the place. It’s important as the oil reserves run out.’ She switched on the kettle and spooned coffee into a jug. Perez sat on the sofa.
‘You’ll be busy now then,’ he said. ‘This business with the gas coming ashore at Sullom Voe.’
‘That’s not really my area of expertise.’ She poured water onto the coffee and the smell reminded him of Fran, who’d been a coffee snob. ‘I’m more interested in green industries. I think that’s the way forward, especially in a place like Shetland. We could become almost self-sufficient and provide a model for the rest of the world.’
He thought she was an evangelist by temperament.
‘Did Jerry Markham contact you when he was home this time?’ There was a pause and he wondered if she was considering whether she might lie.
‘He tried to contact me,’ she said at last. ‘He left messages on my answer machine here and on my mobile – he must have got that number from friends, because it’s not the one I had when we were together.’
‘Did he phone you at work?’ Perez sipped his coffee. The mug had a bright-blue glaze and he recognized the work of a local potter, a friend of Fran’s. This is how it’ll be, he thought. As long as I live in Shetland, there’ll be no escaping her.
Again there was a brief pause before she answered. ‘No,’ she said.
‘Because he told people he was interested in a story on the oil and natural gas, and I thought he might have hoped you could introduce him to colleagues working on the project. He’d shown interest in the wind farm too, and in tidal power.’
‘He would realize,’ she said stiffly, ‘that I’d have very little interest in helping him in any way at all.’
‘Can you tell me about him?’ Through the window he saw a pair of eider ducks on the water. Perez could hear them and thought they chuntered like a couple of old ladies gossiping.
‘He hurt me,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to be objective.’
‘All the same, it’d be useful. Folk don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but sometimes it’s the failings that make them a target for violence. Can you understand why anyone would want to kill Jerry Markham, for instance?’
‘Oh yes!’ The response was immediate. ‘I’d have killed him myself all those years ago if I’d had the chance. But he ran away south.’
‘Would you mind telling me about it? It’s not the facts I’m interested in as much as the man himself. The only sense I have of him at the moment is that he’s a successful journalist. Was he always ambitious, even when he was working on the Shetland Times?’
‘I suppose he was,’ she said. ‘And perhaps that was what attracted me to him at first, the fact that he was so different from my family. He wanted much more out of life than they did. My parents spent their time trying to preserve the old traditions. My father builds yoals – beautiful boats using the old designs. It takes him months of work; he’s a perfectionist. My mother’s family have always been crofters. Now I’m proud of them both, but then it seemed as if they were living in the past and had no time at all for the future or the world away from Shetland.’
Perez said nothing. He could tell she was ready to talk to him. She just needed the time to get her thoughts in order.
‘I was very young for my age,’ she said. ‘I’d been out at the High School and lived during the week at the hostel, but even while the other kids were going to parties, getting themselves invited to the town students’ houses so that they could go into bars, that had never interested me. I was ambitious too, in my own way. I wanted a place at a good university, to make my parents proud.’
Perez nodded and that was all the prompting she needed to continue.