Perez wondered what Anna had made of that. But he just nodded. ‘Can we go through into the other room? Enjoy the view now the windows are so clean?’
‘Aye,’ she said. ‘Why not? I usually sit in the kitchen, but you go through and I’ll bring the coffee in to you.’
It was a big square room the width of half the house. There was a marble fireplace and the furniture was large and shiny: two sofas covered in grey satin, a highly polished sideboard and a couple of gleaming occasional tables, a gilt-framed mirror on the mantelpiece. The photographs were posed and covered in glass. There was one of Jackie and Andrew’s wedding, Andrew looking very grand in a morning suit, a giant standing next to his little wife. There was a shot of the house when it was first built, Ronald’s official school photos. The room seemed cold and impersonal. Perez wondered how often it was used. He sat on a chair looking out through the long window. He could see the whole of the southern point of the island, from the new bungalow where Anna and Ronald lived, along the boulder beach to Setter where Hattie’s body had been found.
Jackie bustled in with a tray: the best china, milk in a jug and real coffee in a pot, a plate with homemade biscuits. What else did she do besides baking and housework? He thought she must get bored here in the giant show-house. Did looking after her husband take up all her time?
She seemed to guess what he was thinking. ‘When we built the new house, I thought I might take in paying guests. Not so much for the money but because I’d enjoy the company, meeting folks from all over the world. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so big.’
‘Sounds like a good plan. Especially with Anna running the workshops. It would save her having to put people up in the Pier House or in the bungalow.’
‘Aye well, Andrew doesn’t like the idea. Not now. Since the stroke anything out of his usual routine upsets him. He couldn’t face meeting strangers.’ She shook her head, dismissing the dreams she’d had once.
Perez poured coffee, waiting a moment to enjoy the smell. ‘Did you see Hattie James yesterday?’
‘No. I didn’t really know her. We weren’t on visiting terms. Evelyn took it on herself to look after the lasses, but that’s the sort of woman she is. She has to poke her nose in everywhere, especially when money’s involved. She’s not the saint everyone makes her out to be.’
‘How would money be involved?’ He was genuinely curious.
‘They’d surely get a fee for the dig at Setter.’ He sensed there was something more she wanted to say, but she snapped her mouth shut.
Perez left the subject alone. He thought he should defend Sandy’s mother, but really how much did he know about the woman, except that she was hospitable? He found the bickering between the cousins depressing. Suddenly he was back in Fair Isle, at a Sunday-school lesson in the hall, him a child of seven or eight, listening to a gentle, elderly woman talking about a love of money being the root of all evil. ‘The love of money, you see. Not the money itself. It’s when money takes over our lives that things start to go so badly wrong.’ Is that what’s happening here? he thought. It’s not the wealth itself that’s soured relationships between these two families. It’s the bitterness and envy that surrounds it.
‘So the lasses from the dig never came in here?’
‘No. Once we used to have grand parties and invite most of the island. We ’d push back the furniture; someone would start playing music. Grand times. Then the house would be full of young people. Ronald would bring in his friends from the High School and all the boys from the boats would come along with their wives and kiddies. Andrew was a great one with the accordion. There’d be songs and dancing. But Andrew can’t deal with big numbers of visitors these days. He finds it a strain just with the family.’
‘Of course.’ Perez helped himself to more coffee. ‘You must miss the old times.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You’d never guess how much.’
She looked down towards her son’s bungalow. Perez thought her head was full of fiddle music, memories of parties and laughter. Had she expected Anna to take on her role as hostess and party giver? Was she disappointed in the daughter-in-law who seemed more interested in building a business than having a good time?
‘Hattie and her boss went for a walk along the shore here yesterday afternoon,’ he said. ‘You have a great view from the house. Maybe you saw them?’
‘Andrew wasn’t so good yesterday. Sometimes he gets an idea in his head and he can’t let it go. He worries away at it and it drives him crazy. I had to call Ronald in to calm him down.’
‘What was it that troubled him?’
‘It was the accident with Mima. Something about the shooting took him back to when he was young. He’s a good few years older than me and he can remember Mima’s husband. Andrew’s father worked with Jerry Wilson building little inshore boats to go out to Norway on the Shetland Bus. The boats they made were used by the Norwegian resistance and agents in the field. It was a long time ago. Mima’s man died years ago, not so long after the war ended, when I was a very young bairn, so what could he have to do with the accident? But sometimes that’s the way Andrew’s mind works. Things that happened when he was a peerie boy seem more real than what went on yesterday.’
‘So you didn’t get the chance to look at the view of the shore? You won’t have noticed Hattie and Paul Berglund out here?’
She flashed him a smile. ‘Yesterday I didn’t get the chance to go to the toilet without Andrew standing at the bottom of the stairs and asking where I was. Ronald managed to calm him down a bit when he got here. He’s good with his father, more patient than I am.’
‘Perhaps you saw her later, when she was on her own.’
‘No,’ Jackie said. ‘I didn’t see her at all.’
‘But you saw the Fiscal come in this morning? I noticed you with the others.’
‘I saw the crowd gathering when I was upstairs making the bed. I went down to Setter to see what was going on. Pure nosiness. That was the first I heard the girl was dead. I couldn’t stay long. Andrew was in the house on his own.’ She looked up at him. ‘How did the lassie die?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said gently. ‘It’s not something I can discuss.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you can.’ She paused. ‘They’re saying it was suicide.’
‘Really, at this point we don’t know.’
‘What must her parents be going through?’ Jackie said. ‘We ’d do anything to protect our children but we can’t save them from themselves.’ She smiled at him. ‘Do you have children, inspector?’
He shook his head automatically. But surely I do. Cassie feels like my daughter. How would I feel if she was so desperate that she jumped into a hole in the ground and slit her wrists?
Chapter Twenty-seven
Sandy was surprised when Perez was at Sumburgh Airport to meet him. He’d left his car there and he could have driven north fine by himself. After a few beers and a meal in the hotel in London he’d slept like a baby until his alarm clock had woken him and in the morning the city hadn’t seemed quite so daunting or closed in.
It helped that he had something physical to bring back to Perez in the form of Hattie’s letters and the SIM card from her mother’s phone. He’d made some notes about the conversation too, but he didn’t trust himself much with words. At least he wasn’t coming back empty-handed.
In the plane he’d looked out for the first sight of Sumburgh Head and landing there he felt relief at being back safely without having messed up in any dramatic way. Then he saw Perez waiting for him in the terminal, leaning against the wall by the car rental desk, and he felt nervous all over again.