‘I keep thinking that if I hadn’t stayed for that one last drink I might have been here in time to save her,’ Sandy said. ‘I might have stopped her going outside at all.’ He paused. ‘But I only came in to give me time to sober up before going back to my parents’ house. If I’d gone straight home, I’d have taken the first ferry out this morning and someone else would have found her.’ He paused. ‘She phoned me earlier in the week and asked when I’d next be home. “Call in and have a dram with me, Sandy. It’s a long time since we had a chat.” I should have spent the evening with her instead of going down to the Pier House with the boys.’
‘What was she doing outside at that time of night?’ Perez asked. He tried to imagine what would have taken an elderly woman from the warmth of her fire into a sodden, cold field long after darkness had fallen.
‘There was washing on the line. Maybe she’d gone to fetch it in.’
Perez said nothing. Sandy led him round the house. The laundry was still there, so wet now that it dripped on to the grass beneath it. This was rough grazing rather than garden, though a strip of ground running parallel to the washing line had been dug over for planting. Sandy saw Perez looking at it. ‘My father did that. She’ll have one strip of tatties and another of neeps. He sows a planticrub with cabbage each year for feeding the cow.’
‘There’s no laundry basket,’ Perez said. ‘If she’d come outside to fetch in the washing, what would she put the clothes in?’
Sandy shook his head, as if he couldn’t see how such detail could matter.
‘What’s going on down there?’ Perez nodded towards the trenches at the end of the field.
‘An archaeological dig. A postgraduate student is researching it for her PhD. She’ll be here for the next few months, working on it with her assistant. A couple of lasses. They were here for a few weeks last year and they’ve just arrived back. They’re camping out at the Bod just now. This time of year there aren’t too many people wanting to stay there. There’s a professor who visits every now and again to keep an eye on things. He’s here at the minute, staying at the Pier House Hotel. He came in with them.’
‘We need to speak to him,’ Perez said.
‘I thought you might do. I called in to the Pier House while I was waiting for your ferry. He said he’d meet us here.’
Perez was surprised that Sandy had shown so much initiative, wondered if he should congratulate him or if that would just be patronizing. In the office Sandy was always considered a bit of a joke. Perez had shared the low opinion at times. He was still making up his mind how to respond when a big figure appeared out of the mist, as if Sandy had conjured him up by talking about him. He wore a full-length Barbour jacket and big boots. He was a big man, very blond, with cropped hair. He approached them, hand outstretched. ‘Hello. I’m Paul Berglund. You wanted to talk to me.’
Despite the foreign name, the accent was northern English. It was a hard voice and suited the man. Perez wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting in an academic. Not this large male with his uncompromising speech and the shaved head.
‘Sandy will have explained that there was an accident here last night,’ Perez said. ‘We’d prefer it if your student stays off the site for the day.’
‘No problem. Hattie and Sophie will be here to start soon. I’ll hang on and tell them what happened. Is it OK if I wait in the house? It’s a bit damp out here.’
For a moment Perez hesitated, then he recalled this was an accident, nothing more. It wouldn’t be sensible to get dramatic about it. ‘Is that OK, Sandy?’
Sandy didn’t hesitate. The Whalsay hospitality again. ‘Sure. Why not?’
Berglund turned round and left them alone. Perez felt a little ridiculous because the encounter had been so brief, but just now he had nothing specific to ask the man. If he’d asked about the archaeology he’d have shown his ignorance. Besides, what relevance could the archaeological work have to Mima Wilson’s death? Instead, he directed his questions to Sandy.
‘Have the students found anything?’ Perez was intrigued by the idea of digging for a living. He thought he’d enjoy it. Detailed, meticulous, picking his way through other people’s lives. With the right sort of case it was what he liked most about his work.
Sandy shrugged. ‘I haven’t taken much interest,’ he said. ‘I don’t think there was much. A few bits of pot. Nothing exciting. Though they did find an old skull a couple of weeks ago. Val Turner, the archaeologist from the Amenity Trust, came into the station to report it. She said it wasn’t likely to be suspicious and the Fiscal wasn’t interested.’
Perez thought he remembered talk of that in the canteen.
‘My mother was here when they turned that up.’ Sandy’s voice had brightened at the mention of the skull, but Perez thought it would take treasure to excite Sandy. Gold bars. Jewels. He was still like a boy.
They stood for a moment looking into the hole in the ground, their shoulders hunched against the damp. Like mourners, Perez thought, at an open grave.
Chapter Seven
Ronald Clouston lived in a new house close to the shore. It seemed even bigger than the places Perez had seen from the ferry, a dormer bungalow with a long single-storey extension on one end. They sat outside it for a while in the car while Sandy filled in some of the background to the family.
‘His mother and mine are second cousins,’ he said. He frowned in concentration. ‘Second cousins. Yes, I think that’s right. His father sold him that bit of land. Ronald wanted somewhere to set up house with his new wife. He had the place built a couple of years ago.’ He paused. ‘They’ve just had a baby. That’s one of the reasons I’m in Whalsay. I wanted to bring them a present, my best wishes. You know.’
‘His dad didn’t mind losing the land?’
‘It was only a bit of rough grazing and he was never a farmer.’
‘What does Ronald do for a living?’
‘He’s got a place on his father’s pelagic trawler. The Cassandra. She’s a beauty. Four years old now, but still state-of-the-art.’ It was what Perez had been expecting and fitted in with the image of the hard drinker who went out in the middle of the night shooting. Most of the Whalsay boats were family-owned. Fishing was a tough life and the men let off steam when they came ashore.
‘He was the brainy one at school,’ Sandy went on. ‘Not much good at anything practical, but OK at passing exams. Kind of dreamy, you know. He went off to university, but his father was taken ill and the place came up on the boat. He had to take it. You understand how it works. Maybe he was glad of the excuse to leave and he wouldn’t have got his degree anyway. That’s what my mother says.’
A bit of jealousy there, Perez thought. Or competition between the two cousins, Sandy’s mother and Ronald’s mother, comparing their sons. No one would ever have called Sandy brainy.
‘Is the wife a Shetlander?’
‘No, Anna’s English. They had their wedding here, though, a couple of years ago. All her folks came up for it. It was a grand do.’ Sandy’s eyelids drooped for a minute and he shook himself awake, stared out at the drizzle. Condensation ran down the inside of the windscreen.
Perez thought this was still a huge house for two people and one baby. He wondered where Ronald had met his Anna. There was a history of Shetland men going out to find their wives. During his brief spell at university perhaps. Perez had married an Englishwoman. Sarah, soft and gentle, pretty and fair. But he hadn’t had it in him to be the sort of husband she’d wanted. He’d always been too easily caught up in other folks’ problems. ‘I always come at the bottom of the pile,’ she’d said. ‘After work and your parents, sorting out the neighbour’s delinquent son and the plumber’s cat. You’re drained when you do find time for me. You’ve nothing left to give.’ At the time he’d thought she was talking that way because she’d just been through a miscarriage. Now he could see there was some truth in her words. He couldn’t keep his nose out of other people’s business. He told himself it was about being a good detective, but he’d have been curious even if work weren’t involved.