By now Willow had arrived at the lay-by. Vicki Hewitt, the CSI, and Sandy Wilson were both wearing scene-suits. The blue-and-white tape twisted and pulled at the fastenings in the wind. Willow stood outside the cordon and shouted in to them.
‘So, Vicki, is this our crime scene, do you think?’
The woman looked up and grinned. ‘Hey! Give me a chance. I don’t work miracles in my spare time.’
Willow knew she should be patient, but in her head time passed, ticking like a metronome. Soon her boss would decide that she’d had long enough and would fly in himself to take on the case, like a lone sheriff to save the day. She yelled that she’d see them back in Lerwick for the evening briefing and got into her car. She tried Perez’s phone again and this time it rang out. Perez answered, but the signal was weak and she could hardly hear him.
‘I’ll be on the ferry from Yell soon. If you can meet me at Toft in half an hour we can talk then.’ In the background she heard engine noise and gulls. She wondered what he’d been up to and felt a small stab of anger. Did he think he had the right to play private detective and ignore her completely? But she was curious and knew she’d do exactly what he said. She looked at her map and headed north again.
On the road towards Sullom Voe terminal she saw the stuffed images of Evie Watt and John Henderson, the life-size photos still intact on the faces despite the weather, held around the heads with thin elastic. Evie’s had slipped a bit and the straw was spilling out of the pillowcase. Willow remembered that there’d been a discussion of Evie’s hen party in the bar at Voe and thought the same friends must have made the models for a laugh. Willow wondered briefly who she’d invite to her hen party, then decided the question was academic: she wasn’t the marrying kind.
She’d slowed down to look at the dummies dressed up in the wedding finery and was about to continue when something made her change her mind. Instead she pulled her car onto the verge, got out and walked back to look at them more closely. She was interested to know what Evie’s fiancé looked like and she still had twenty minutes before she’d arranged to meet Jimmy Perez. Walking through the long grass, she saw there were irises and marsh marigolds in the ditch. Not in flower yet, but in a few weeks they’d look magnificent. She wouldn’t see them because she’d be long gone by then, the murderer in custody. She hoped. Getting closer, she thought the hen-party lasses had gone to a lot of trouble. Real shoes on the feet. A frilly white dress on the girl model. But on the other – not a suit as she’d expected, but navy-blue trousers and jacket. On the jacket a red-and-white lapel badge. The male dummy, which had previously been propped up on the bank, had slipped and was lying in longer grass. It was only as she looked down at it that she saw real hands and, behind the photographic mask, real skin, real hair.
A moment of panic. This was too close to a horror movie, to childhood fairy stories of a puppet coming to life. She couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Then she lifted the mask gently with the end of her pen, stretching the elastic that fixed it in place. The face beneath it coincided exactly with the glossy picture on the photograph. John Henderson was lying dead beside the figure of his bride-to-be.
Chapter Twenty-One
Willow stood by the side of the road and made phone calls. To Sandy Wilson, asking him to bring Vicki Hewitt along as soon as possible, keeping her voice even, betraying none of her earlier panic.
‘And what’s happened?’ Sandy Wilson sounding out of his depth.
‘John Henderson’s dead. And someone stuck a photo over his face. So not an accident, and not suicide. Unless he put on the mask before stabbing himself in the chest.’
‘Right.’
But Willow thought it wasn’t right. This was planned and horrible and running out of control.
Next call was to Jimmy Perez, who was already at Toft where the roll-on, roll-off ferry from Yell had arrived at the Shetland mainland. Another explanation. This time the response wasn’t a question, but a statement. ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’ And the thought brought her comfort. Suddenly she wished she’d asked Perez to interview Henderson over the weekend. Even ill and depressed, Perez would have got more out of the man than Sandy had. And now it was too late. It was an error of judgement that she knew she’d come to regret over the coming days.
Perez arrived first. He stayed on the road with his shoulders hunched into his jacket and didn’t even ask to look at the body. Following procedure to the letter, or because he couldn’t face staring at a dead man? Willow couldn’t decide. She couldn’t tell how close to the edge he was. She wished they could get very drunk together; then she might find the nerve to ask all the questions that were bubbling into her mind.
‘Somebody should tell Evie Watt,’ he said. ‘Before the news gets out. You know what this place is like. There are no secrets here.’
Except the identity of a murderer.
‘Will you do it?’ she asked. Only as the words came out did she realize how crass that was, but they’d been spoken and it was too late to take them back. And if Perez was working, he should be up to the job.
There was a silence. ‘I’m not sure if I’m the right person.’
They stared at each other. Like dogs. Or lovers having their first row, neither wanting to set a precedent by backing down first.
‘I was thinking I should take a look at Henderson’s house,’ he said at last. ‘Hard to tell, but I wouldn’t have thought the man was killed here by the road. It would be too great a risk. There’s no fog this time.’
‘Where did he live?’ Willow asked. She’d seen the address written down, but again she felt hindered by her lack of knowledge of the geography of Shetland. And undermined by having a colleague who knew the place and its people better than she ever would.
‘Hvidahus, on the east side, not far away. It’s a newish bungalow. Henderson built it when his wife was first ill.’ Perez looked up at her. ‘And we should talk to the harbour master. Those are work clothes. Henderson was either getting ready for his shift at Sullom Voe or he’d just finished. It’d help fix the time of death to know when he was working.
They stared at each other again, and this time it was Willow who broke the silence. ‘Wait till Sandy gets here and I’ll come with you to Henderson’s place. I want to see where he lived. In the meantime, see if you can get the harbour master on the phone.’
Perez nodded and walked away from her to make the call.
Willow made the final phone call on her mental list: to Rhona Laing. A polite and distant male voice said that the Fiscal wasn’t available. When pressed, the man said that she had taken a couple of days’ leave. He was her assistant. Perhaps he could help?
Sandy Wilson and Vicki Hewitt turned up and then it was like any murder investigation. The same routine and the same questions: questions Willow knew the CSI would refuse to answer with any certainty.
‘Cause of death?’
‘Looks like a stab wound, as you said on the phone. I’d guess he was killed elsewhere, though.’
‘How long has he been dead?’ Again Willow found it impossible to be still. All those days in the big barn in the commune – the daily meditation, lying on her back, staring at the beams in the ceiling, learning to relax her body and focus her mind. All that for nothing here, when she should be calm, and every nerve and muscle tensed and twanged and she hopped from foot to foot like a kid needing a wee.
Vicki looked up and grinned briefly, gave the old and practised response. ‘Tell me when he was last seen and I’ll let you know. Between then and when you found him. Otherwise, wait for the pathologist. He’ll tell you what the man last had to eat.’