He couldn’t take his eyes off her face, the sight and shape of it were swimming in front of him. He realized he was about to faint and leaned forward, forcing himself to stay conscious. He turned away, then had to look back to check it wasn’t some awful nightmare. He couldn’t phone Perez until he was certain. Then he went back to the house to call the inspector’s mobile.
Perez answered immediately, but when Sandy explained in a stuttering sort of way what he’d found, there was a complete silence.
‘Jimmy, are you there?’ Sandy felt the panic taking over. He couldn’t deal with this on his own.
And when Perez did reply his voice was so strange that Sandy could hardly recognize it.
‘I was at Setter last night,’ Perez said. ‘I looked across the site, but not in the trenches. I should have found her.’
‘There would be nothing you could do.’
‘I persuaded myself that she’d gone out on the ferry,’ Perez said. ‘I should have been more careful, brought people out to do a proper search. She shouldn’t have had to be there on her own all night.’
‘She would have been dead by then,’ Sandy said, and again: ‘There would be nothing you could do.’ It seemed odd to him that he had to reassure his boss. Usually Perez knew what to do in every situation; he was the calm one in the office, never flustered and never emotional. ‘Will you come over? Or is there someone I should call?’
‘You’ll need to get a doctor to pronounce her dead.’
‘Oh, she’s dead,’ Sandy said. ‘I’m quite sure of that.’
‘All the same,’ Perez said. ‘We need it official. You know how it works.’
‘I’ll get Brian Marshall. He’ll be discreet.’
‘I’m on my way then.’ Just from the way the inspector spoke those words Sandy knew Perez was blaming himself for Hattie’s death and he always would. He wished Perez didn’t have to see the white face in the shadow of the trench, the long, deep cuts to the white inner arms, the blood that looked like tar. He would like to protect his boss from that sight.
While they waited for the doctor to arrive, they stood by the edge of the pit that Sandy now thought of as Hattie’s grave. Perez was in control again, quite professional.
‘I recognize the knife,’ he said.
‘Does it belong to the girl?’ Sandy had assumed that it did. Surely if you were going to kill yourself you would use an implement familiar to you. You wouldn’t drag a stranger into your suicide by using someone else’s knife.
‘No, it’s Berglund’s.’
‘He must have left it here on the site,’ Sandy said. ‘They put all the equipment in the shed close to the house overnight.’
‘For the time being we treat this as a suspicious death,’ Perez said. ‘Keep everyone out. And I want the knife fingerprinted.’
‘But she killed herself.’ Sandy thought that was obvious: the posed position, the slit wrists. This was an overwrought lassie with a vivid imagination and a taste for the dramatic.
‘We treat it as suspicious death.’ This time Perez’s voice was loud and firm. Sandy thought it was the guilt getting to him. Hattie had asked the inspector for help and now he felt he’d let her down. Sandy couldn’t think of anything to say to make things better.
Perez looked up at him. ‘How would she know to cut herself in that particular way? Most suicides fail because they make tentative slashes across the wrists.’
‘I don’t know,’ Sandy said, almost losing his patience. ‘She was a bright lass. She’d look it up. There are probably sites on the internet.’
There was a moment of silence then Perez turned away from the trench. ‘Your father was here last night,’ he said. ‘He was at Setter. That was one of the reasons I didn’t stick around. He looked upset.’
Sandy didn’t answer that either. He knew his father would never hurt anyone and that Perez was feeling so bad about the girl’s suicide that he was looking for someone else to blame.
Chapter Twenty-four
The Fiscal was wearing a soft suede jacket and a cashmere sweater in pale green. She’d put on wellingtons before coming on to the archaeological site, folding her trousers carefully into them so they wouldn’t be creased when she came to take off the boots. The three of them looked down at the girl in the trench. Perez could hardly think straight; ideas and pictures were dancing round his head. He struggled to hold himself together in front of the Fiscal. He’d had to notify her formally of another suspicious death, but he wished he’d had more time before she turned up. He hadn’t thought she’d be here on the first ferry.
‘Have we had a doctor to declare life extinct?’ the Fiscal asked. She carried a hardback notebook and a slim silver ballpoint. Throughout the discussion she was making notes.
‘Aye.’ Sandy got in first in his eagerness to gain her approval. ‘Brian Marshall came along earlier.’
‘Did he hazard an opinion as to cause of death?’
‘Everything consistent with suicide.’ Sandy again.
‘But he said there’d need to be a p-m. before we could come to a real decision.’ Perez almost felt that he was defending Hattie. This grotesque show, so tasteless and flamboyant, didn’t seem her style at all.
‘I don’t suppose he could tell us anything about the time of death?’
‘Nothing that helps,’ Perez said. ‘We know she was last seen at about four o’clock. I’d arranged to meet Hattie at six in the Bod and she didn’t turn up. That could mean she was already dead by then, but not necessarily. Sophie was working here until about four-thirty and claims not to have seen her.’
‘Where was she seen at four o’clock?’
‘On the footpath close to the shore.’ Perez was finding it easier to think straight now. If he could just focus on the facts he might see this through without making an idiot of himself. ‘I phoned round all the Lindby folk last night. Anna Clouston saw her making her way back towards the Bod. Hattie and her boss had been walking along the beach before that. He was congratulating her on making a significant find at the Setter dig, but he also told her that her assistant had resigned. She’d found Hattie difficult to work with and she’d decided to ditch archaeology anyway. I have the impression Sophie doesn’t need to work for a living and this wasn’t much more than a passing fad.’
‘So the assumption is that the woman killed herself after some sort of disagreement with her boss.’
‘I don’t think there was a disagreement. Berglund passed on the news of Sophie’s resignation. Hattie didn’t seem too unhappy about working the site alone.’
‘All the same . . .’ the Fiscal broke off and looked up from her notebook for a moment. ‘You say she had a history of mental illness?’
‘According to the mother when I spoke to her last night.’
‘There must have been an implied criticism in Sophie’s decision to leave, don’t you think? Sophie obviously didn’t enjoy working with Hattie. That would have been hurtful to a sensitive young woman.’
‘Perhaps.’ Perez hoped she could tell by the tone of his voice that he didn’t agree.