‘Those were old bones,’ Perez said. ‘Older than that.’ But are they? he thought. I don’t really know that. Sixty years is a long time. Would we be able to tell the difference? Wo uldn’t bones from a body buried during the war look just the same as ones buried hundreds of years ago?
‘There you are then,’ Cedric said, suddenly becoming jovial. ‘Like I said, they were all just stories.’
‘How did Jerry Wilson die?’ Perez asked.
‘At sea. A fishing accident. He was taken in a freak storm. Mima was heartbroken. They’d been sweethearts since they were children.’ Cedric paused again. ‘She was wild even as a child. Setter was her house, not Jerry’s. She lived there as a bairn with her grandmother. Her parents both died when she was quite young. Jerry moved in with them when they got married, and when the grandmother passed away they had the place to themselves. It caused some jealousy. Two young people with their own croft. Mima was never liked on the island, especially by the women. She never made any effort to fit in. Things were different then: folk had to work together to make any sort of living. The men went out to the fishing and the women were left to do most of the work on the crofts. Mima was strong and fit – she could cast peat and scythe hay as well as a man – but she was never what they’d call now a team player. If she didn’t feel much like working she’d stay at home in front of the fire.’ Cedric stopped to pour himself a cup of coffee from the pot on Perez’s table.
‘Then when Jerry was drowned and she was single again she was a threat to all the island wives. She was a bonny young girl with her own house and her own land and they were scared their husbands would run off with her. She was still in love with Jerry though – with his memory, at least. She had plenty of offers but she never married again. She enjoyed her independence too much for that.’
‘I’m surprised so many people turned out for her funeral if she wasn’t so well liked.’
‘Oh,’ Cedric said, ‘folk wouldn’t want to miss it. She was a kind of celebrity in her day. And the young ones all liked her. It was her own generation who had the problems.’
‘How did she get on with Evelyn?’
Cedric shot him a sharp look under the hooded lids. ‘Let’s say they never exactly saw eye to eye. After Jerry was drowned Joseph was all Mima had. She used to call him her peerie man. She wasn’t going to take kindly to anyone who stole him away. Mima should have married again. She didn’t have the temperament of a single woman.’
‘Were you one of the ones to propose to her?’
Cedric laughed again. ‘I knew better than to ask her. She’d have thought I was a poor thing after her Jerry. Everyone in Shetland knew he was a handsome man.’
‘Do you think the things that happened all those years ago could have any bearing on Mima’s death?’
‘Of course not,’ Cedric said. ‘How could it?’
Perez looked at him, not sure if he really meant what he said, but Cedric turned away and walked back into the kitchen.
Mark Evans, the psychiatric nurse, said he needed to be sure Perez was who he claimed to be: ‘Mrs James is in the public eye. I don’t want her hassled by a load of reporters. You do understand?’ He had a soft, slow voice and an accent unfamiliar to Perez. Rural. Perez wondered if he’d grown up on a farm; that would give them a point of contact, but he didn’t feel he could ask. Instead he gave the man the number of the police station in Lerwick. ‘They’ll confirm my mobile number.’
Then he waited, looking out over the harbour, for his phone to ring again. After the deserted feeling of the day before, the place was back to normal. There were cars queuing for the ferry and a couple of fishermen were getting a small trawler ready to go out to sea. He supposed Jerry Wilson’s Norwegian friend had sailed a boat of a similar size to Norway.
His phone rang, interrupting daydreams of wartime adventures, grey seas and huge waves. He’d never been physically brave and he didn’t think he’d have had the courage to volunteer for the Shetland Bus.
‘I was so sorry to hear that Hattie’s dead,’ Mark said. ‘I remember her well.’
‘I wondered if she’d been in touch with you recently, but Mrs James said not.’
‘No. She might have contacted another professional though. Her GP should have records. Even when she was ill she was unusually self-aware. I think she’d have realized she needed help. If she was so desperate that she committed suicide.’
Perez picked up an uncertainty in his voice. ‘Were you surprised to hear she’d killed herself?’
‘I was. She was a very intelligent young woman. I thought she’d taken on board the strategies for coping with her depression. And she understood that medication would help her. She never refused to take it. Was there an event that distressed her, something very serious that provoked the suicide attempt?’
‘Not that we know.’ Perez paused. ‘We’ve not ruled out the possibility of other causes of death. I’m looking into the matter for the Procurator Fiscal. I’m grateful that you’ve taken the time to talk to me.’
‘I thought you should know that four years ago Hattie was a victim of a criminal assault,’ Evans said. ‘It might not be relevant, but it seemed important to tell you.’
‘We have no record of that.’ As he spoke Perez hoped that was true. They had checked Hattie’s name against the criminal records. That was standard procedure but if she’d been a victim would that fact have come to light?
‘She never reported the matter to the police,’ Evans said.
‘Why not?’
‘A number of reasons. She’d suffered a severe bout of depression a couple of years earlier. There had been occasions of psychosis. She didn’t think she’d be believed. Perhaps she even felt she was responsible. She wouldn’t even talk to her mother about it.’
In his quiet, reassuring voice Evans described the incident, as he understood it had taken place. He was clearly angry. When he’d finished, Perez could understand why.
‘You realize there’s no proof,’ he said. ‘They might not have got a prosecution even then.’
‘I do realize that,’ Evans said. ‘I probably shouldn’t have told you. It’s very unprofessional. I couldn’t discuss it with Mrs James. I just wanted you to know. After all, Hattie’s not here to tell you herself.’
Chapter Thirty-two
Sandy woke early. He was lying in Mima’s high double bed. His mother had given him clean sheets to put on it, but the blankets had belonged to Mima. They smelled of peatsmoke and damp like the rest of the house. The sheet was wrinkled uncomfortably underneath him. He’d never quite got the hang of making beds the old-fashioned way. He liked fitted sheets and a duvet.
On the wall in front of him there was a photograph he hadn’t noticed before. Two women walking down a dirt track. It was taken on Whalsay but before any of the roads had been made up. On their backs they had the rush baskets or kishies that were used for carrying peat and they were so full that he could see the peat piled behind their shoulders. They were wearing old-fashioned bonnets and skirts below their knees, heavy boots. And as they walked they were knitting; the wool was held in apron pockets, their elbows were close to their bodies. They smiled towards the camera, poised for a moment, but you could tell the needles would begin clacking again as soon as the shot was over. Sandy wondered if they were knitting just for the fun of it, or because raising peat was boring, or because they were so busy that this was the only time there was in the day to provide clothes for their children. Or if they did it to make money. It was the sort of thing his mother might do, Sandy thought. Not exactly like the women in the old photo, but working at several things at once, because Evelyn liked to be active and because she needed to hold the family together.