‘No. Only the most recent one.’ Of course, Sandy thought, I should have looked at the letters. Perez would have stayed up all night reading them, worrying at them. He wouldn’t have got pissed on expensive lager in the hotel bar and fallen into a drunken sleep. In the plane on the way home Sandy had read a glossy men’s magazine with a topless model on the cover; he hadn’t really given a thought to the case.
But Perez made no comment. ‘What was your impression of Gwen James?’
‘Like you said, she felt guilty. She’d done what she thought was the best for her daughter.’ Sandy found himself wanting to show Gwen in a good light. ‘She didn’t want to intrude on Hattie’s life but you could tell she cared about her. I mean, work obviously takes up a lot of her time but that didn’t stop her worrying.’
‘Does she think Hattie killed herself?’
‘She says that Hattie talked about wishing she was dead when she was very depressed but she’d never attempted suicide. And she doesn’t think Hattie was so depressed at the moment. All winter in the university she’d been positive, looking forward to getting back to work in Whalsay. The last letter seemed to be about plans for the future. It was only the phone call that really worried her.’
‘And we can listen to that?’
‘Yes, I’ve brought back the SIM card.’ Sandy had checked his pocket at least a dozen times to make sure it was still there. Now he took it out and gave it to Perez, pleased to be relieved of the responsibility. ‘I said she could have it back once we’ve finished with it. It’s the only record she has of Hattie’s voice.’
‘Of course. You did well to persuade her to let you have it.’
They’d finished their coffee. Sandy had the impression that there was something else Perez wanted to say. They sat for a moment in silence.
‘Should we go then?’ he said at last. He’d never had Perez’s patience.
Again there was a moment of hesitation. It came to Sandy that Perez was as reluctant to go back to Whalsay as he was. It was the muddle that made things difficult. Should they treat the deaths as crimes or not? We re they on the island as part of the community or as investigating officers? The Fiscal would only support them if it suited her and at the moment she was keener on pleasing the politicians.
‘Aye,’ Perez said. ‘We can’t sit here and drink coffee all day.’
Sandy was going to say that Perez was lucky. At least he didn’t have the funeral of the decade to live through on the following morning. Then he thought that might sound childish and ungrateful and it didn’t tie in with his new adult image. And it might sound disrespectful to Mima too. He was proud that he was learning when to keep his mouth shut.
Sandy had expected Perez to come all the way back to Whalsay with him but the inspector asked to be dropped at his house in Lerwick. He said he didn’t need to be in Whalsay; he had other work to do and he should let the Fiscal know how the interview had gone with Gwen James. He’d come back to the island when there was word on the date of the bones.
In Utra, Sandy’s mother hardly seemed to notice he’d returned. Michael and his family were due in on the last plane from Edinburgh. Sandy had thought she’d be full of things to say about Hattie, but the girl’s death seemed to have slipped from Evelyn’s consciousness, pushed out by essentials like what the baby might eat for breakfast and whether Amelia could possibly cope with towels that didn’t match the bedlinen. Sandy was surprised that the whole family would make the trip from Edinburgh to Whalsay. He wondered what his sister-in-law hoped to get out of the trip. Did she think Mima had anything worth leaving?
Joseph had made himself scarce too. Evelyn said he was in Setter making sure the Rayburn was lit and the house fit for Sandy to stay in.
‘I’ll go and see if he needs a hand.’ Sandy had bought a bottle of single malt at Heathrow. He tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket and walked down the track towards Setter. The weather was fine and still. He thought in London it would never matter what the weather was like and which way the wind was blowing.
Joseph was squatting in front of the Rayburn. The fire had gone out. He was plaiting twisted pages of newspaper and laying kindling on top of it. He heard Sandy come in and smiled when he saw who it was.
‘There’s a pile of peats in the yard. You’ll not go cold at least.’
Sandy took the bottle from his jacket with the air of a conjuror. ‘You’ll take a dram.’
‘Aye well, maybe a small one. Can’t go back drunk with Michael and his wife about to arrive. What would your mother say?’
They smiled conspiratorially.
‘Well,’ Sandy said, ‘if it gets too much for you over the next day or two you can always hide away here.’
Joseph put a match to the paper and the kindling flared and caught. He set a peat on top of it, then another. The smell of peatsmoke filled the room, caught Sandy’s throat and reminded him so vividly of Mima that he had to blink to be sure she wasn’t there too.
Sandy turned away and brought two tumblers from the cupboard on the wall, rubbed the dust away with a tea-towel hanging on the range, poured out the whisky. His father shut the Rayburn door. They clinked glasses, a silent toast to Mima, and settled to drink.
‘Did you hear they’d found some more old bones after Mother dug up the skull?’ Sandy thought his father would surely know. He never seemed to be listening to gossip, but he had Mima’s genius for sniffing out what was going on in the island. ‘They could belong to an ancestor of ours. What do you think?’
‘I think they should stop digging up the Setter land.’ The voice was hard, quite unlike Joseph’s. Sandy looked up, shocked. He’d never heard his father talk like that before, even when he was a boy and he’d misbehaved. Joseph continued: ‘I think if they hadn’t been mucking around here my mother would still be alive.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Two deaths in a week,’ Joseph said. ‘When was the last time anyone died from anything other than natural causes on Whalsay?’
Sandy wasn’t sure his father was expecting a reply, said nothing.
‘Well?’ Joseph demanded.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’ve been trying to think,’ Joseph said. ‘My father was lost at sea. That was more than fifty years ago. I can’t mind any accidents since then. And now two people dead in a week. I never liked the idea of strangers rooting around in the ground and I wasn’t the only person in the island to feel that way. Mima was an old woman but she wasn’t ready to die. The English lass was a child. Now you say they’ve dug up a pile of bones.’
‘Not a pile,’ Sandy said. ‘And old bones. Likely hundreds of years old.’
‘I don’t care. I’ll go and see that Paul Berglund tomorrow morning before the funeral. I’ll tell him I want them to leave. I don’t care what arrangement he made with Mima. This is my land now. It shouldn’t be disturbed.’
Sandy sat, feeling the heat come off the Rayburn and the whisky in his throat, wondering what he could say to make his father less miserable. It wasn’t like him to be superstitious. Why hadn’t he realized his father was so upset? Joseph would never let on what he was feeling, but Sandy should have known Mima’s death would have hurt him more than he was showing.
‘I’ll speak to Berglund,’ he said at last. ‘You’ll have enough to do tomorrow.’
‘Your mother won’t like it.’ Sandy expected another sly conspiratorial smile, but Joseph was quite serious. ‘You know she has plans for this place.’
‘A fancy museum, with her in charge,’ Sandy said. ‘Aye well, she’ll have to find herself another project, something else to fill her time.’