‘I didn’t know,’ Perez said. ‘Not until I saw him there at the pier at Hvidahus.’ But I never trusted him. People who are certain have always scared me. ‘I thought he would do anything to make his daughter happy.’ He paused. Confession wasn’t his style, but he thought they deserved an explanation. ‘It came to me when I drove into Ravenswick one evening and saw Cassie looking out of the window of our friends’ house. She was looking out for me. I thought then that I’d kill to keep her safe.’ He turned away, embarrassed, before continuing. ‘Francis loved Evie. She was more important to him than his son, who wasn’t interested in returning to the islands. She represented the future of Shetland to him. One day she would take over his business, live in his house in Fetlar. He’d become kind of obsessed with her. A danger when you’re a parent. Sometimes you have to let your kids live their own lives. You have to risk them getting hurt. But I thought Francis might be proud to think that he’d killed to save her pain.’
There was a silence in the room.
‘And he had a terrible temper,’ Perez went on. ‘Maria confirmed that, didn’t she, Sandy? I wanted you to ask her about Francis coming to the hotel when he found out that Evie was pregnant. She’d told me that he’d been foaming at the mouth with rage, but that’s the sort of thing people say. I needed to know if it was true.’
‘It was your third question for her,’ Sandy said. ‘Maria said Francis was wild, raving. He hit Peter and gave him a black eye. She’d wanted to make a formal complaint, but Peter wouldn’t hear of it.’
‘Francis couldn’t stand the idea that Henderson’s affair with the Fiscal might be made public,’ Perez said. ‘But he was much more bothered that Markham would tell Evie about it and spoil her wedding than with any notion of public shame. As Francis saw it, the man had already ruined his daughter’s life once. And Markham threatened to tell Evie everything. He thought it would be the right thing to do, that Evie deserved to understand that John wasn’t as perfect as she assumed him to be. The idea of it drove Francis mad. He was delighted that Evie was marrying the man everyone thought they knew: John Henderson, man of religion and the closest thing to a saint there is in the islands. John Henderson who’d nursed his dying wife. Imagine the scandal there’d be if folk found out that he’d been slipping off on Friday nights to have recreational sex with a stuck-up soothmoother. And how would Evie feel about it? Francis thought she’d be so devastated that she’d cancel the wedding. And, without John’s support, she’d never return to Fetlar and take over the family business. It would be the end of his world.’
The peats in the fire shifted and smoked.
‘There had always been rumours that Rhona Laing had a secret lover,’ Perez went on. ‘A dark stranger who arrived by boat and disappeared again before first light. It wasn’t quite like that, but the storytellers almost got it right. And we know that Ms Laing wasn’t squeamish about adultery. She’d had a relationship with Richard Grey after all. Then Agnes died, and the affair with Henderson ended and Markham went off to London, and the Fiscal must have thought it was all over and forgotten.’
‘I don’t understand where Markham came into it in the first place.’ Willow reached out and took a slug of whisky.
‘Markham knew.’ Perez thought Markham hadn’t been the only one in the islands to guess about the affair. But he’d been the only person to exploit the knowledge. ‘It must have been while he was still working at the Shetland Times. He blackmailed John and Rhona. He was a horrible man in those days. I’d guess it was the Fiscal who paid up. That’s how Markham could afford that fancy red car. Everyone thought it was a gift from his parents.’
‘But that was years ago.’ Sandy was drinking beer, not whisky. He’d be the one to drive Willow Reeves back to her hotel at the end of the night. ‘Why couldn’t they all just let things be?’
‘Because Markham was a changed man,’ Willow said. ‘Isn’t that right, Jimmy? He fell in love and got religion all at the same time. A heady mix.’
Perez thought that Markham’s conversion, his determination to be a good man, had led to two murders.
‘I think he really had changed. Or he believed that he had. Maria sent him the cutting from the Shetland Times, which announced Evie’s engagement to John Henderson.’ Perez wondered what would have happened if Markham had never seen the announcement. Perhaps he’d have stood at the font in the smart Hampstead church while the holy water was dribbled over his head, then gone on to marry Annabel Grey and live happily ever after.
He lifted a peat from the bucket by the hearth and threw it onto the fire. ‘Perhaps Markham still felt guilty about extorting money from the Fiscal and about the way he’d treated Evie. And he didn’t want Evie to be hurt again by a man who had betrayed his dying wife. We know that Markham talked about betrayal to Annabel. In any event, Markham came north in an attempt to put things right. To be honest. He planned to tell his parents about Annabel too, I think. He would have done it the night he died. But mostly it was about coming to terms with his past, making himself feel better.’
They sat for a moment in silence. A car with a faulty exhaust was driving down the road towards the jetty. Perez knew the sound – it belonged to his neighbour. The fire smoked a little.
‘That seems very self-centred,’ Willow said. ‘Didn’t he think of the effect that would have on the people involved?’
Perez looked up at her. ‘Probably not,’ he said. ‘Maybe Markham was still a selfish man. And aren’t we all a little self-centred?’
There was another comfortable silence, before Perez continued speaking.
‘On his first night at home, Markham told his mother that he wouldn’t need her cash any more. That wasn’t because he was planning blackmail, or because he was marrying into money. It was to show her that he was different. At last he was starting to grow up. Mark Walsh’s invitation to the Hvidahus action group gave him the excuse he needed to be here, and I think he had decided that the friction over the new energies really might make a decent story. He asked Peter to set up an appointment at Sullom Voe and arranged to meet Reg Gilbert. Vicki Hewitt found Markham’s camera in Francis Watt’s office; it contained pictures of Sullom Voe with the new gas terminal.’ Perez paused. ‘Mark Walsh told Watt that the great Jerry Markham was coming to his meeting. Francis had always supported their opposition group, but that was the last thing he wanted. He’d disagreed with Evie over the scheme in private, but the last thing he wanted was Markham to rubbish it in public. It would have seemed like another assault on his daughter.’
‘There was nothing to rubbish,’ Willow said. ‘The accountants have been over the Power of Water books and can’t find a penny out of place.’
‘But Francis was convinced that the scheme was rotten at its core,’ Perez said. ‘He told me when I visited him on Fetlar that there hadn’t been a development in Shetland that didn’t have corruption at the heart of it. He really believed the project must be based on council fraud, that there’d be a huge scandal and Evie would suffer. If he’d been less paranoid and trusted his daughter’s judgement more, two men might still be alive. It’s one of the saddest aspects to the case.’
‘In the meantime Markham was trying to get in touch with Evie.’ Willow was in her usual place on the sheepskin rug, as comfortable as a cat, long and sleepy.
‘He phoned her and he left messages on her voice-mail,’ Perez said. ‘And perhaps he gave away enough of his concern for her to guess the gist of what he wanted to say. The night of her hen party something had certainly troubled her.’
‘Who did Markham meet in the Bonhoga?’ Sandy asked. He’d finished his beer. Perez could tell that he’d like another, but didn’t want to ask.