Then Rhona Laing’s bedroom, and for a moment curiosity overcame his anxiety. On the wall there was a huge painting of the sea. Everything in monotone, black and grey. A storm. Clouds and sea and spray. It wasn’t like anything Fran had ever painted, but he knew that Fran would have loved it. He heard her speaking to him. Look, Jimmy, isn’t this a painting you could just jump into?
Dragging his attention away from the picture he saw a double bed, either not slept in or made up as soon as Rhona had got out of it this morning. The duvet cover and pillowcases were white, made of heavy cotton. There were two large wardrobes and a chest of drawers. The wardrobes were full of clothes and it would have been impossible for him to tell if anything was missing. He moved on.
Now there was just one room left: the office. The door was ajar and he stood in the corridor for a moment and looked in. No body. He felt relief, immediately followed by irritation. Where was she then? Had she run away south, leaving her staff and colleagues to fret about her? Surely that wasn’t Rhona’s style. She might make a dignified retreat, but not a rushed escape on an overnight ferry. He walked into the office. It had a view over the garden. Still it was raining outside, soft and relentless.
He switched on her computer. It had been on standby, so there was no need for a password. Had she been surprised here then? By a visitor or a phone call that had made her hurry off, without coming back to her office. He thought in normal circumstances she would have switched off her computer if she were going out. Though she’d been troubled recently, and perhaps the open door and the live computer were just signs of her anxiety. The idea of prying into the Fiscal’s emails was too much for him. He couldn’t do that yet. Not until there was evidence that she was in real danger or that somehow she was involved in these murders.
He stood, unsure what his next move should be. A plane went overhead on its way to Scatsta and it seemed very low, the engine noise very loud. Visibility must be improving then. He decided to go to the marina and see if her boat was still there. He knew that the water was where she felt safe and happy.
Turning away from the desk he stopped for a moment. On the top of the in-tray was the familiar postcard. He flipped it over with a pencil. Nothing written there, not even an address. There were two possibilities: that the Fiscal had taken the card from Jerry Markham’s briefcase when she’d found his body, or that the killer had delivered it to her. A message, just as the card left at the roadside shrine for John Henderson had been a message.
Chapter Forty-Two
When Willow returned to the police station Perez was back in position in the incident room, sitting at his place at the corner of the conference table. It was as if he’d never left. He was wading through a pile of newspaper cuttings.
‘Did you track down the elusive Ms Laing?’
He shook his head.
‘Anything wrong, do you think?’ There were times, she thought, when she wanted to shake Inspector Jimmy Perez. She didn’t care that the woman he’d loved had been murdered. She wanted him to communicate with her as if she were another human being.
‘I’m not sure.’ Now he looked up from the cuttings and frowned. ‘And I’m not sure what I should do next. The door to her house was unlocked.’
Willow thought of her childhood in Uist. ‘That’s not unusual, is it? In a place like this.’
‘Maybe not.’ A pause. ‘I think she might be out on the water. If she was troubled, that would be what she’d do. And I can’t see her fancy boat in the marina.’
‘So that’s OK then, isn’t it? She’ll just come home when she’s hungry or it gets dark. She’s playing hookie from work, but we’ve all done that at one time or another.’
‘Aye, perhaps. I’d be happier if I could speak to her, though.’
‘You’ve tried her mobile?’ Willow wondered how she’d come to be involved in this conversation. She needed the team to be checking out the consortium of investors in the water-power project. She felt as if Perez was sucking out all her energy.
‘I got her personal number from Heather in the Fiscal’s office. No reply.’ Perez paused again. ‘There was one of those postcards on her desk. Nothing written on the back.’
That caught her off-guard. ‘What do you want to do, Jimmy?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Not yet. Like you say, we’ll wait until it gets dark. She should be home by then.’
Willow was struck by another thought. ‘This boat of hers, could it travel long distances?’
He looked up at her. ‘Aye. A Contessa 26 was sailed round the world in the Eighties. Single-handed, by a teenage lass.’
‘Has she done a runner then, Jimmy? Should we be alerting the coastguard?’
‘No need for that yet.’
But she thought he didn’t sound very sure.
Willow stood by the whiteboard and led them through the visit to the tidal-energy site. ‘I made Joe Sinclair take us back to his office so that we could get a list of investors from him.’
She’d already printed off enough copies for everyone in the room to have one, and she handed them round. ‘More than 200 people in Shetland put money into the project. They bought shares and contributed anything from £200 to £2,000 each. Investors included Evie Watt, John Henderson and Rhona Laing. Peter and Maria Markham are also on the list, so I think we can assume that Jerry knew all about it. The philosophy was that this should be a community venture, and that everyone who believed in it and could afford to should have a stake in the scheme.’
She paused and looked round the room. ‘Of course this might be coincidence. But I think we can put together a credible theory here. If Jerry discovered some financial malpractice, then we might finally have found the new and exciting story that brought him to Shetland. That would explain why he agreed to go to the Save Hvidahus meeting – he’d want the action group to give him more ammunition. You can imagine the possible headlines – Green energy not so clean after all - and the embarrassment that might cause to the people involved. They call the project Power of Water, and it’s considered a flagship scheme for renewable energy. I’ve already got a team of forensic accountants on the case, but if we discover that a substantial percentage of the invested cash disappeared into one individual’s pocket, I’d say we have a motive for murder.’ She paused for breath. ‘Markham’s decision to attend the meeting of the opposition group fits in with the theory.’
Across the table Sandy raised his hand, frowning.
‘Yes, Sandy?’
‘So you think Markham was killed to stop the story getting out?’
‘It’s a possibility, isn’t it? He was murdered on his way to a meeting where he might have shared the information he’d gained.’ She was starting to lose patience. She’d expected them all to be as excited as she was by the idea. Perez hardly seemed to be listening. His attention was still focused on the newspaper cuttings spread on the table in front of him. ‘Jimmy, what do you think?’
He looked up slowly. ‘You’ll find Fran’s name on the list,’ he said. ‘Fran Hunter. She invested £500 in Power of Water. Her contribution to saving the planet, she said.’ He paused and seemed to choose his words carefully. ‘Just because all our witnesses and suspects invested in the scheme, we can’t assume that’s what led to the killing. That many investors and a population this small, most households in the islands are probably linked to the project.’
Well, thanks very much for your contribution, Inspector Perez.
‘All the same,’ she said brightly. ‘It’s worth following up, don’t you think?’