The Fiscal paused, sipped her coffee. ‘We are sure that it was Clouston’s gun that killed her?’
‘With a shotgun it’s impossible to tell. It’s not like a rifle, where each weapon leaves an individual trace on the bullet. We’ll track down the ammunition used, but my guess is that everyone on Whalsay will use the same when they’re out after rabbits.’
She leaned back in her chair. Despite the expensive make-up he saw the fine lines on her forehead, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.
‘I don’t have enough here to put it down as anything other than accidental death,’ she said at last. ‘Anything else would cause unnecessary distress to the deceased woman’s family and the sort of hysteria in the community that doesn’t help anyone. I couldn’t justify it.’
He nodded. There was no other decision she could have taken.
‘We’re agreed that we won’t charge Clouston? It wouldn’t be popular in the community.’
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘We’re agreed about that.’
‘As for your reservations about the details of the shooting, I understand them. Perhaps the best course of action would be a discreet inquiry. Nothing formal at this stage. We’d have a post-mortem anyway in a death of this kind. Let’s see what you turn up in the next week or so. Keep me informed.’ A clever decision, he thought. She was covering her back. If Mima’s death did turn out to be murder, she would be able to show that she hadn’t dismissed the idea out of hand.
He nodded again. She hadn’t been in Shetland long enough to understand that discretion in a matter like this was almost impossible. There was no privacy. Nothing went unnoticed. She’d set him on a course of action that he’d be unable to fulfil to her satisfaction. And he’d lacked the courage to tell her.
At the door he paused, remembering another detail.
‘A skull was found on Setter land a couple of weeks ago. Val Turner reported it to Sandy. He did tell you?’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Do you think that’s relevant?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s old,’ he said. ‘Just a fragment of skull. Part of an archaeological dig. A coincidence.’
Chapter Fourteen
Sandy woke from a deep sleep. He heard the sheep outside and smelled baking and immediately realized that he wasn’t in the cramped and messy flat in Lerwick, but at home at Utra croft in Lindby. His mother baked most days, even when she and Joseph were alone in the house. Having Sandy there gave her an excuse. He lay for a moment looking around the familiar room. His mother had tidied it after he’d left, taken his posters off the walls, removed the dartboard, put up fresh wallpaper and different curtains. He’d remembered to get rid of the stash of pornography, hidden under the bed since he was a teenager, before he’d allowed her into the place, smiled despite himself at the memory of his smuggling the pile of magazines out of the house in a couple of Somerfield carrier bags. How pathetic was that! She always made him feel like a fourteen-year-old. Now the room was clean and anonymous and even the smell was different. Evelyn had decided that this was where the baby would sleep whenever Amelia and Michael came to stay from Edinburgh. It wasn’t his space any more. He looked at his bedside clock. Eight o’clock.
If he had a day off in Lerwick he’d be straight back to sleep, but in Whalsay it was different. His mother was here, with her expectations and her judgement and her baking. You’d think he was still a peerie boy the way he cared what she thought of him. He wondered if he’d ever escape her.
He stretched and stumbled towards the bathroom, but already his mother had heard him.
‘Sandy! The kettle’s just boiled. Will I make you some tea?’ She’d never got it into her head that he preferred coffee in the morning.
‘Not yet. I’m going in the shower.’ His voice was more aggressive than it needed to be. Their relationship was made up of these tiny stands for independence; he was certain she never noticed them and that made the exchanges even more frustrating. Standing under the new power shower, he wondered about his father’s relationship with Mima. Had he felt the same resentment when Mima called on him to kill her hens when they stopped laying? Sandy thought it hadn’t been the same at all. Joseph had loved Mima and delighted in her company. They had laughed at the same jokes. Sandy was sure Joseph told Mima things he’d never have confided to his wife. Sandy had spent his life finding ways of not talking to his mother about anything important.
In the kitchen he felt the same mix of irritation and affection. Evelyn was standing at the table rolling out pastry, the sleeves of her sweatshirt rolled to her elbows. She’d be making a fruit pie because she knew it was his favourite. She had so much energy. Maybe she felt trapped here on the island. Maybe she’d sacrificed all her own ambitions to be here, bringing up her two boys, keeping the family together while Joseph was working for Duncan Hunter. It couldn’t have been easy for her struggling over the finances, watching Jackie Clouston and the other fishing wives with so much money that they didn’t know how to spend it, knowing that if she’d been born into a different family, or married into one, she’d have been wealthy too. He knew there were times when she brooded about it.
‘There’s tea made,’ she said. Then with a frown, remembering, ‘Or would you prefer coffee? I can easily do that. The kettle’s not long boiled.’
‘Tea’s fine.’
He poured the tea and helped himself to a bowl of cereal, found a clear corner of the table.
‘Would you be able to phone that nice Inspector Perez today, sort out when we can fix a day for the funeral?’
So Michael can arrange to get up here, he thought. So she can show her fine eldest son off to the whole island, with his fancy suit and his hand-made shoes. And it occurred to him then that his relationship with his mother was troubled because she cared so much more for Michael than she did for him. I’m jealous, he thought, astounded. That’s what all this is about. How could I have been so dumb that I didn’t realize?
‘Perez might come to Whalsay,’ he said. ‘It depends what the Fiscal said.’
‘You mean he could be here to arrest Ronald?’
Sandy shrugged. She didn’t have to sound so pleased at the prospect. But she’s jealous too, he thought. Jealous of Jackie and the flash house on the hill and the new BMW every year and the trips to Bergen on the boat. After Andrew’s illness you’d have thought she’d have realized there was nothing to be jealous about, but she just couldn’t help herself. She doesn’t really want Ronald prosecuted, she only wants Jackie’s nose put out of joint.
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘He’s gone over to Setter. That cow still needs milking and the hens and the cat need feeding.’
‘I’ll wander over. See if he needs a hand.’
He thought she was going to say something to stop him. Perhaps she wished the two of them got on as well as Sandy did with his father. But she stopped herself. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘The rain’s stopped and the mist has lifted. It’s a fine day for a walk.’
By the time he reached Setter, his father had finished with the animals. Sandy found him standing in the kitchen. He waited in the doorway and looked in. His father looked lost in thought and it seemed like an intrusion to blunder in, but he felt kind of foolish just waiting outside. At last Joseph saw him.
‘It’s hard to think of this place without her,’ the older man said. ‘I keep thinking she’ll come up behind me, full of mischief and gossip.’