Rhona Laing closed the door gently behind Jimmy Perez and stood for a moment, leaning against it, as if blocking the way to other unwelcome intruders. Then she went upstairs and stood, hidden by the curtain like some nosy Shetland wife, to watch him walk back down the bank. Only when she saw his car drive up the hill towards Bixter did it feel as if she was breathing again.
Has it come to this? That I hide in my house like a common criminal?
Her plans for the day – to take out the boat with a picnic, to explore the voe and to moor up at a little beach for lunch – now seemed impossible. She had once represented a client with agoraphobia, and although she’d been professional throughout the court proceedings, her impulse had been to shake the woman. What was wrong with this person? Was it such a huge step to open the front door and walk out onto the pavement? Now, for the first time, Rhona Laing began to understand the irrational fear of the space outside one’s home. The stranger’s face. The unfriendly buildings. The threatening landscape. It would be easy to curl up in her chair with her back to the window. To drink tea or whisky. To shut out the world.
But to start down that path would be the worst possible mistake. Rhona could see that. And if she were in the house she’d be trapped, at the mercy of telephone calls and people knocking at her door. Perez might come back. Willow Reeves with her wild, untidy hair and her staring eyes might turn up with questions. Rhona thought she could mislead Perez, but the woman from the Hebrides would be harder to deceive. She couldn’t face it.
So she went into the kitchen and finished preparing a packed lunch. She cut the sandwiches with a good, sharp knife so that the edges were neat and wrapped them in foil. She put fruit and biscuits into a bag and made a flask of coffee, poured milk into a little jar that she kept for the purpose. Pulled her oilskins from the cupboard under the stairs and went to her bedroom for a spare jersey, because in Shetland the weather could change in a second. And then she left the house, locking it behind her, and walked swiftly down to the marina, keeping her eyes on the path. She had a sense that only on the water could she come to terms with what had happened. The water was where she felt safe. It felt as if she was running away forever.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Perez found the Belshaws’ home immediately. It had been built in the last ten years, one of the wooden Scandinavian kit-houses that had suddenly appeared all over Shetland. Theirs was painted pale blue, almost grey, two storeys and a wooden deck at the front facing towards Aith. It looked as if it should have a sauna at the bottom of the garden, but instead there was a swing and a climbing frame, a couple of plastic toy cars, a trampoline surrounded by a net. Behind, in the shelter of the house, he glimpsed a small vegetable patch, the rich soil newly dug.
Perez knocked at the door and Andy Belshaw answered immediately. He was wearing jogging trousers and a rugby shirt, carpet slippers on his feet. He looked pasty and tired.
‘I thought you might turn up,’ he said. ‘I heard about John on Radio Orkney. A dreadful business. Come away in.’ Perez thought he’d already picked up something of the Shetland accent.
‘You didn’t hear about it until this morning?’
‘No,’ Belshaw said. ‘We switched the phone off last night because Lucy was ill. I checked for messages when I heard the radio piece. We’d had a couple of calls, people letting us know what had happened.’
He led Perez into the kitchen. It seemed that Belshaw had been in the middle of stacking the dishwasher. There was no indication, here at least, that he’d been working. No laptop. Everywhere signs that this was a family home. Drawings on the fridge door, a pile of children’s clothes stacked on an ironing board in the corner. In a basket in the corner, knitting needles and some skeins of wool.
‘Is that why you’re at home today?’ Perez asked. ‘Because of John’s murder? I know you were close friends. I could understand if you were too upset to go in.’
‘We were very close. But no, my daughter’s still not well. Tonsillitis. It’s hard for the school to get a replacement for Jen at the last minute, and easy enough for me to work here. We’d fixed all that up last night. I’m glad, though. I wouldn’t want to be onsite this morning. I couldn’t concentrate.’ He shut the door of the dishwasher and switched on the kettle.
‘Have the press been onto you about it?’
‘No, why would they?’ A slight frown to suggest that he was puzzled by the question. Perez was unconvinced. Henderson might not have worked directly for the terminal, but he’d been employed by the Harbour Authority piloting within Sullom Voe. Belshaw must have realized that eventually the terminal would get a mention in the media and it was his role to manage that information. Surely he’d have prepared a statement. And surely, in this situation, a sick child wouldn’t keep him away from the site.
‘I was thinking it was quite a coincidence,’ Perez said. ‘Two murders, both in North Mainland. Jerry Markham was visiting the terminal the afternoon he died, and John Henderson was based with the Harbour Authority, just across the voe from you.’
There was a silence broken by the click of the kettle switching itself off. Belshaw stared out of the window.
‘And you think the press will make the connection?’ he said at last. ‘What a nightmare! The environmental campaigners will have a field day. There’s nothing they like better than a juicy conspiracy theory.’
‘I’m making the connection.’ Perez raised his voice. ‘The fact that two men are dead is more important to me than the oil terminal getting a bit of bad publicity.’
There was another silence. Perez could just make out the faint hum of a children’s song somewhere in the house. He thought the sick daughter must be watching television in her room and wondered how old she was. Absent-mindedly Belshaw spooned instant coffee into two mugs.
‘Look,’ Perez said, ‘is there anything going on at the terminal that I should know about?’ He felt his temper fraying, could feel the strands of control splitting like pieces of rope. His depression manifested itself in anger.
‘What sort of thing?’
‘You tell me! Dodgy investments, backhanders to contractors, people playing fast and loose with health and safety? Best to let me know, so we can clear this up quickly. The press will find out anyway. And if you don’t cooperate now, you could find yourself charged with obstruction.’
‘What are you saying, Inspector?’ Belshaw seemed even paler, and as he set the mug on the table in front of Perez his hand was shaking.
‘I’m saying that Markham was sniffing round Sullom Voe on the afternoon he died for a better reason than the details of the expansion of the site for gas. He could have got that from a press release and a quick phone call. So what was he doing there? Really?’
‘Really? I don’t know any more than you do.’ Belshaw was almost shouting. Righteous indignation or panic? Perez couldn’t tell. ‘You know that I work for BP and have absolutely nothing to do with the gas terminal. Besides, renewables versus fossil fuels has been covered a few times before. Of course I asked him if there was anything else he might be interested in. But, honestly, he just seemed to be going through the motions. He asked all the right questions, but it seemed to me that he didn’t really care. I thought he’d been sent there by his editor.’
Belshaw stood with his hands flat on the table, his face flushed.
A child called from upstairs. ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ She’d heard the shouting through the open door and was scared. Belshaw said nothing. He filled a tumbler with juice from the fridge and left the room. Perez heard murmured voices as Belshaw reassured the girl. Perez stood up and prowled around the kitchen, noticed that from the window there was a bird’s-eye view of the marina. If the weather had been clear on the afternoon of Markham’s death, there would have been a good view of the killer lifting the body into the yoal. Belshaw must have come back very quietly, because Perez was suddenly aware that the man was standing behind him.