‘What made you change your mind? You said you didn’t want strangers walking all over it.’
‘It’s my house,’ Joseph said. ‘I can do what I like with it.’
‘I ken that fine. But something’s made you change your mind. What’s happened?’ Then came the same question and this time he hoped his father would give him the truth: ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
As he spoke, Sandy was still further up the hill than his father and looking down at him. Joseph wasn’t an old man; he was wiry and strong. But from this perspective suddenly he seemed small.
‘No,’ Joseph said at last. ‘There’s nothing you can do to help.’
Chapter Thirty-seven
Perez spent most of the day in the office, glad of the routine, the familiar paperwork. He spoke to a local historian who’d written a book on the Shetland Bus, and put in a call to the Norwegian Embassy. Later he had a meeting with the Fiscal. They drank tea in her office, discussed depression and date rape as they sipped Earl Grey and nibbled shortbread biscuits. The horrors of her work never seemed to affect her.
‘Well, I think we can put the girl’s death down to suicide now,’ the Fiscal said. ‘She must have been under considerable stress, working with a man who had once assaulted her. She even used his knife to kill herself. That works for me as a final communication, to him and to us. She held him responsible for her misery. And now you say she discussed the rape with her colleague just before she disappeared; that confirms our original decision.’
Perez could see it would make life easier for Rhona Laing if they could tidy away Hattie’s death like that. Two tragedies on Whalsay, one accident, one suicide, only connected in that Mima’s death had made Hattie feel lonelier and even more depressed.
He sat for a moment in silence. The Fiscal waited. She hadn’t been in Shetland long, but she was used to his ways and she was a patient woman when she had to be. Eventually though she’d had enough.
‘Well? Don’t you agree?’
‘I think there was more to it than that. I don’t understand why she should phone me if she intended to kill herself. There was something she wanted to tell me, something about Mima’s killing.’
‘You believe she was murdered?’ There was something close to ridicule in the Fiscal’s question.
‘Almost certainly.’
‘Are you sure emotion isn’t getting in the way here, Jimmy? Guilt, perhaps, because you didn’t do a proper search of Setter when you had the chance?’
‘I believe both women were killed,’ he said. ‘I just can’t prove it yet.’
‘I can’t dither over a decision for much longer,’ she said.
‘No.’
‘How long do you need?’ Dithering was bad for a politician’s reputation, but so was making the wrong call on a suspicious death. She set her cup carefully on its saucer. ‘How long do you need, Jimmy? I can’t keep the case open indefinitely.’
‘Somebody knows what’s been going on there,’ he said. ‘Not just the murderer. In one of the houses in Whalsay a friend or a relative is keeping a secret. It’s that sort of place.’
‘So, how long, Jimmy? I really can’t give you more than a few days.’
‘I hope,’ he said, ‘that’s all I need.’
‘You have a suspect in mind?’
He nodded but he didn’t speak. She looked at him with curiosity but didn’t press the point. At this stage she didn’t want to know.
‘If I don’t have something by the end of next week, we call Hattie’s death as suicide. I can’t turn it into an accident, however kind that would be for her mother. Then we can get through the inquest and release the girl’s body back to her family.’
He nodded again, but he was already preoccupied. He needed proof. He didn’t have time for long conversations, for allowing the truth to emerge over time. He worked well that way, was much more patient than the Fiscal. But now he’d have to make things happen. He had to precipitate a crisis. He wasn’t sure how he could do that without putting other Whalsay folk at risk.
On his way home he stopped at the Co-op for food, but walking down the aisles he was still thinking of the case. The case and Fran, who was always with him.
The problem with the Whalsay investigation was that so much was going on there. It was hard to unpick the actual causes and connections. Like Fair Isle knitting, he thought. Four different coloured threads, tangled together in the working to make a pattern. It was difficult to follow the line of each yarn, to decide how much impact each colour had on the overall effect.
In the house, he poured a glass of wine, fried a salmon steak quickly on each side, drained spinach and potatoes. Shit, he thought, I forgot to buy a lemon.
He’d finished the meal without really tasting it when there was a knock on his door. He put his plate to soak in the sink before going to answer it. Walking down the hall there was a moment of excitement when he imagined that perhaps Fran had come home a few days early. Would he find her there, standing in the street, looking up at his window, stamping her feet impatiently, waiting for him to answer? He pictured her wrapped in her jacket against the drizzle, the blue scarf with the silver threads tied at her throat. But it wasn’t Fran. It was Sandy, leaning against the frame, obviously drunk and desperate to talk. Perez stood aside to let him in.
He was apologetic in the snivelling way that drunks are – if they don’t become violent. ‘I’m sorry, Jimmy, I’ve let you down. But I couldn’t stand it there, I had to get out.’ After that he became incoherent. He was red in the face and his nose was running. Perez sat him in the living room and made him coffee.
‘Where have you been?’ Perez’s immediate fear was that Sandy had been shooting his mouth off in a bar in town, telling all the world about events in Whalsay. It was only eight o’clock. When had he started drinking?
‘In The Lounge with a few of the boys.’ He must have been sufficiently aware to see the alarm in Perez’s face. ‘But I didn’t talk about the case, Jimmy. I wouldn’t do that!’ He slurped the coffee, pulled a face as he burned his tongue. ‘I just made out I was fed up being stuck out there with my folks, that I was glad to be back in town. You can’t blame me for having a few drinks.’
‘What’s happened at home?’ Because something must have happened, Perez could tell that. Sandy had been calm enough when he’d got back after the trip to London. He’d done well there. He’d proved the Fiscal wrong.
Sandy set down his mug and put his head in his hands. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what’s going on.’
‘What time did you leave Whalsay?’ Perez thought if he kept to the facts, Sandy might drop the drama and come up with a rational explanation.
‘This afternoon. I had a pint in the Pier House and I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop at the one drink. You know how it is sometimes. I couldn’t get pissed in there. Davy Henderson was coming into Lerwick so I got a lift down with him. I phoned up a few of the boys.’ He looked up at Perez, belligerent and defensive at the same time. ‘I’m on leave. I can do what I like.’
‘Do your parents know where you are?’
‘I haven’t told them.’
‘For Christ’s sake, man, there’ve been two deaths on the island. They’ll be frantic. Give them a ring and at least let them know you’re safe.’
‘Mother will have been on the phone to Cedric, trying to track me down. He’ll have told her I went out on the ferry.’ He was sulky as a child.
‘That’s not good enough and you know it.’
‘Look, I don’t care! This is all their fault.’
Perez looked at him. Earlier in the week he’d thought Sandy had matured. The man had dealt with Gwen James with sensitivity, come back with more information about Hattie than Perez had expected. Now he was like a toddler throwing a tantrum over a lost toy, blaming his parents for his misery.