‘I got a holiday job at the Ravenswick Hotel,’ she said. ‘I was thrilled to pieces. I’d looked at other waitressing jobs, but Peter and Maria paid well and I liked them. And I could live in.’
‘You didn’t want to spend your last summer in Shetland on Fetlar with your folks?’
‘I knew it wouldn’t be my last summer in Shetland,’ she said. ‘I always knew this would be my permanent home. I suppose I was ready for some independence. An adventure.’
It wasn’t much of an adventure, Perez thought. Other kids might pick grapes in Europe or go backpacking across Africa, but Evie had settled for a job in a Shetland mainland hotel. Perhaps she guessed what he was thinking, because she grinned. ‘I was a home bird,’ she said. ‘I hated living in the hostel at school, so really the Ravenswick job was a big deal. I felt very grown-up.’
‘Was Jerry Markham living at home then?’
‘He had a flat in Lerwick because he was working on the Shetland Times, but he spent two or three nights a week in the hotel. He was an only child. I thought he was being kind, coming home to spend time with his parents, but it was probably the free food and drink that brought him back to the hotel. He never paid for anything while he was there.’ Evie poured more coffee into Perez’s mug.
‘How did the two of you get together?’ Perez asked.
‘I fancied him rotten from the first time I met him.’ She smiled again. ‘I was a late starter when it came to the lads. I didn’t have a boyfriend at school. Jerry was older than me, a graduate, with a good job. He seemed to know everything – about films and books and music. I never thought that we might go out together. He was a fantasy. So sophisticated! I dreamed about him, blushed every time he came close to me. I suppose he realized and decided he’d have a bit of fun with me.’
‘Perhaps he liked you,’ Perez said. ‘There’d be lots of girls in Shetland he could have fun with.’
She shot him a grateful glance. ‘Aye, maybe.’ She paused. ‘There was a bit of a do for the staff at the hotel. The chef’s birthday party. After hours, when the bar had closed to the visitors. The energy you have when you’re young! I knew I’d have to be up at six to serve the breakfasts, but still I stayed up drinking most of the night.’
Perez smiled. Evie Watt still seemed very young to him. But he didn’t want to interrupt the story.
‘I don’t remember much about it,’ she went on. ‘I wasn’t used to the drink and I was on the spirits with the other lasses. Peter and Maria were there at the beginning, but they soon went off to bed and left the rest of us to it. At some point Jerry suggested a walk in the garden, just the two of us. Suddenly we’d left all the noise behind. It was a beautiful morning in late June and it was just getting light.’ She turned to Perez. ‘I do remember him kissing me and thinking I’d never be so happy again.’
‘Did you get pregnant that night?’
She shook her head and gave a self-mocking laugh. ‘I was a good girl, Inspector. I’d never sleep with a man on a first date. And Jerry didn’t push it. Not then. For some reason he didn’t want his parents to know we were going out, but he treated me like a real girlfriend. On my days off we’d meet in town and then we’d drive in his car, exploring the islands, heading off down small tracks just to see what was at the end of them. We first made love on one of those trips. In a tiny cove, with cliffs all around. You could only reach it at low water, and the tide came in and stranded us there. I hadn’t planned to have sex with him and we didn’t take precautions. Crazy! I can’t even blame drink that time. It was the sun and the excitement. Romance, I suppose. And I was very naive. I didn’t think I was likely to get pregnant the first time. Later we were more careful, but by then it was too late.’
They sat for a moment in silence. Perez was pleased that she still had happy memories of that summer.
‘I was back home and packing for university when I took the pregnancy test. Already heartbroken because Jerry had made it clear that he didn’t expect the relationship to last once I was at university: “You don’t want to be tied down before you get there.” My mother found me crying in my bedroom. My father was furious and phoned Peter Markham, demanding to know what sort of establishment he was running in Ravenswick, and how his son intended to fulfil his obligations to me.’ She glanced up. ‘All very Victorian, and hugely embarrassing to a seventeen-year-old, but I’d always been a Daddy’s girl. I suppose my attitude was just as old-fashioned. I thought Jerry should stand by me. I didn’t expect marriage, but he disappeared south as soon as the fuss blew up, leaving me to face everything on my own. That’s when I could have killed him.’
She got to her feet and was rinsing the mugs at the sink when she next spoke, her back to Perez.
‘I lost the baby. I’d decided to keep it and had geared up to face the world as a mother, and then it disappeared. There was real grief, of course, but I felt cheated too. No need for the dramatic gesture after all.’ She paused. ‘Jerry had never wanted to be tied down by a teenage girlfriend from the sticks. That was why he dumped me. It was nothing about me having freedom at uni, or even about the baby. He wanted to go south to make his fortune without any complications in his life.’
‘Have you been in contact since?’
‘I sent a couple of snivelling emails after I lost the baby. I thought perhaps he’d consider seeing me again. That he’d feel sorry for me. How pathetic was that! Using a dead baby to get him back! He didn’t reply.’
Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. ‘And now you’re about to be married,’ Perez said.
Her face lit up. ‘Yes. To John Henderson. He’s a pilot up at Sullom Voe. A widower. His wife died of cancer five years ago. I’ve known him since I was a peerie lass – he was a friend of my father’s, and though he’s not quite of the same generation, he seemed very old then. I’d have laughed out loud if you’d told me I’d be engaged to him.’
‘How did the relationship start?’ Thinking: My love and I met over a dead body in a snowy field in the dark days of winter.
‘Through the kirk at first. Then John’s interested in green energy and came to a couple of meetings that I organized at work. He’s a kind man. Kindness can be very sexy, don’t you think?’
Perez nodded.
‘It was an old-fashioned courtship,’ Evie said. ‘My friends laughed at the way John treated me. They couldn’t believe that we didn’t move in together. But I loved it. Like I said, I’m an old-fashioned girl.’
‘Did he know Jerry Markham was around and trying to get in touch with you?’ Perez kept his voice light. Shetland was a small place, and it was probably a coincidence that Markham had visited the terminal just over the voe from Henderson’s workplace just before he died. Probably.
‘I thought I’d better warn him,’ Evie said. ‘I didn’t want the two of them just bumping into each other. John is angry about the way Jerry treated me. He would never have treated a woman that way.’ Suddenly she realized the implication of what she was saying. ‘But he’s a good man. Gentle. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. John Henderson’s not your killer, Inspector.’
Chapter Fifteen
Perez arrived to pick up Cassie from the Haa at six o’clock, just the time they’d agreed. Fran’s ex-husband, Duncan, had her waiting for him and Perez sensed that the man was relieved the weekend was over. Duncan loved his daughter more in the abstract than in reality. He had too many other demands on his time to give her the attention she needed, and now that she had become a solemn and withdrawn child he didn’t know quite what to do with her. He would have been more comfortable with a boy, robust and active. But Duncan’s occasional lover Celia was much older than him and he would have no other children.