‘Of course.’ Willow nodded gravely. There was a brief pause. ‘Did your son know the Fiscal, Ms Laing?’
‘No!’ Maria gave that crazy laugh again, the one that made Sandy want to run from the room. ‘Why would he? Unless he interviewed her when he was a reporter here. He might have met her then. But that was years ago.’ She got to her feet. ‘Are we finished here? I don’t sleep well. I get tired easily.’
Willow remained where she was. ‘Just one more question.’
Maria remained standing and looked down on them. ‘What is it?’ Sandy thought her voice did sound very tired.
‘Did you know that your son has a new girlfriend?’
‘No!’ The retort was too loud and surprised them all.
‘Her name is Annabel Grey and she lives in London.’ She paused for a beat. ‘Apparently.’
Maria recovered herself quickly. She straightened her jacket and sat down again. ‘I’m sure,’ she said, ‘that Jerry would have told me in his own time if he’d found someone special. Perhaps that’s why he’d made the effort to come home. He wanted to tell us personally, not by phone. He’d know that we’d be delighted.’
‘Would you?’
‘Of course. We only wanted him to be happy.’
They were early at Sumburgh airport and the plane was a little delayed, so they sat, drinking tea, waiting for Markham’s girlfriend to arrive.
‘What did you make of Maria?’ Willow Reeves looked smarter today, Sandy thought. Maybe she’d had time to iron her skirt in the hotel bedroom, and she’d coiled her hair into a twist at the back of her head and fixed it with a comb.
‘She seemed kind of crazy,’ he said. ‘But she’s just lost her son.’
‘Could she have killed Henderson, do you think?’ Willow asked. ‘In revenge for Jerry?’
‘If she’d thought Henderson had killed her son? Yes, I do.’ Sandy shivered slightly. A kind of disgust at the thought. Before Willow could answer, through the window beyond the baggage belt they saw that the plane had arrived. They stood up to cross the hall and meet Jerry Markham’s new woman.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Annabel Grey wasn’t alone.
Standing beside Sandy, watching the passengers walk across the airstrip to the terminal, Willow tried to guess which of these women was Markham’s girlfriend. Sandy had said she sounded very young. There was a small dark girl in a duffel coat and striped scarf, but she was waving to her waiting parents even before she came into the building. Not her then. Nor the smart lass in the trouser suit carrying a briefcase, who headed straight for the car-hire desk. Willow thought that she and Sandy should have prepared a card with Grey’s name on it and should have stood there like the taxi drivers collecting the gas contractors.
In the end Markham’s girlfriend approached them. She came straight towards them after coming down the narrow corridor from the tarmac – no bag to collect, just a small rucksack over her shoulder. And beside her walked a tall, distinguished man. Grey-haired, tanned from a winter holiday in the sun. Or skiing. Willow thought he might be a skier. He carried a leather holdall.
‘You must be Sandy.’ The woman spoke as if he was the only one that mattered, as if Willow was quite invisible.
And Sandy blushed and muttered that he was. He’d become a schoolboy again because this woman was startlingly beautiful, film-star lovely. Tall and blonde with a wide mouth and a slender body, and Sandy wasn’t sure how to respond to her at all. Her eyes were red from crying.
‘I’m Annabel Grey.’ She held out her hand. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it was clear, an actress’s voice, and Willow expected everyone in the airport to turn and listen to her, was surprised to look round and see that there was no reaction. ‘And this is my father.’
‘Richard Grey.’ He held out a hand. The voice defined him. Public school, Willow thought. Then Oxbridge. He’s a politician. Or an actor. No, a lawyer. Because that was the impression he gave, walking beside his student daughter. That he was there as her advocate rather than as her father.
Annabel was wearing city clothes: a floral knee-length dress, black tights, black pumps and only a short grey jacket to keep out the Shetland cold. In London perhaps summer had already arrived.
Willow introduced herself. ‘I’m the Senior Investigating Officer in the case.’ Needing some recognition from this woman who seemed bent on ignoring her. Despite herself, the inspector resented the effect the visitor was having on Sandy Wilson.
‘So you’re in charge?’ Annabel said. ‘You’ll find out who killed Jerry and the other man?’
There was, Willow thought, something childlike about her directness. No guile or pretence.
‘Yes,’ Willow said. ‘I will.’
The woman stared at her for a moment before giving a brief, approving nod. ‘You see, Dad. I said it was right to come.’
They drove to the police station in silence. Willow switched up the heating in the car, worried that the girl would be cold, and found herself almost nodding off; she’d never been able to think clearly in the heat. Sandy, driving, was still tongue-tied and awe-struck. Willow sat beside him in the passenger seat, leaving father and daughter to take their places in the back. The woman, poised and apparently unemotional now, despite the sign of earlier tears, looked out of the window at the passing landscape. She spoke just once when they passed a brown tourist sign pointing to the Ravenswick Hotel.
‘Isn’t that where Jerry grew up, where his parents live?’
Sandy slowed the car so that she could see the grand house and the walled garden, but Annabel Grey made no further comment on the place. ‘What a lovely setting!’ the father said. He put his arm around his daughter’s shoulders and pulled her to him.
Willow thought Jerry’s women had this in common: a lack of hysteria, a dignity in grief. Evie Watt hadn’t cried either, when she’d learned of John Henderson’s death. Not in public at least.
She took Annabel and Richard Grey into her office, the office that had belonged to Jimmy Perez, not to the interview room. That was hard and impersonal. It didn’t smell of offenders, but still the ghosts of the addicts and the drunks somehow lingered there. And perhaps because she was using his space, she asked Jimmy, not Sandy, to sit in on the discussion. Sandy would find it hard to get beyond the woman’s beauty. Perez was still so caught up in his own loss that he would scarcely notice it.
Annabel Grey was determined to tell her own story in her own way. She opened the conversation as soon as she took a seat.
‘I want to see Jerry. Would that be possible, do you think?’
‘His body’s not here.’ Perez answered before Willow could reply. ‘It’s gone to Aberdeen for the postmortem.’ He paused. ‘The pathologist there is very good. Very respectful.’
It was clear that the woman was disappointed, shocked even. It wasn’t what she’d been expecting.
‘You see, sweetheart. I said that was how it would be.’ Richard Grey patted his daughter’s hand as it lay on the table. He looked up at Willow. ‘I’m a barrister. Not in criminal practice, but I do have some understanding of the procedures.’ The charming smile that was also a warning: Don’t mess with me. Willow gave herself a mental pat on the back for guessing his profession, before thinking that this was an added complication she didn’t need.
‘I loved him.’ For the first time Annabel’s voice broke a little, but there was still the childish intonation. They sat in silence for a moment. Willow thought Perez might offer a word of sympathy, but when he spoke it was a question, blunt and matter-of-fact.
‘Where did you meet Jerry Markham?’