He’d been fascinated by the paintings, and while Fran caught up with her friends he’d stared at them. He’d decided they were like the photographs of crime scenes. Each piece held a narrative, a history of the room’s owner. Then he’d come to the portrait of the child and he hadn’t known what to make of it. At first sight it was a child from a different era. Dark hair twisted into loose ringlets and tied with white ribbons. A white dress. But the girl had a contemporary face. Knowing. A smile that might have been mischievous or complicit. Perez had stood and looked at it for a long time, and despite his reluctance to talk about art with Fran’s friends – he was always anxious that he would show himself up in front of them – he’d sought out Monica to ask her about the painting. But Monica was standing with a glass in her hand, flushed and talkative, laughing a little too loudly, and he knew this wasn’t a good time. So despite telling Willow that they’d chatted for a while, there’d been no real conversation. He’d stood on the edge of the crowd, listening, while she talked about her inspiration: ‘I glory in the commonplace made weird.’
Instead the gallery owner had come up to him. Perez had met him once at a similar occasion, when Fran had turned out again to support one of her colleagues.
‘What do you think of them?’ The owner frowned.
‘I like them.’
‘I don’t think they’ll do well here. We sell mostly to tourists, and these are too urban. Or suburban perhaps. I’ll keep a few pieces, though. Leaze is a big name after all. And the portrait of the girl. At first glance that’s a traditional work and it might appeal to a grandparent. Something a bit odd about her, though, don’t you think? Disturbing.’
Perez had agreed that there was. Then the evening was over and they’d driven to get the last ferry to Shetland mainland. And three months later Fran was dead. It occurred to him now, in a moment of complete madness, that the painting – so like the image of Peerie Lizzie described by the Sletts women – had somehow foreshadowed the tragedy.
He blinked quickly, dragged his attention back to the kitchen at Springfield and tried to describe the exhibition to Willow and Sandy. ‘Monica Leaze made this painting of a child. White dress and white ribbons. Just like everyone describes Peerie Lizzie.’
‘So you think she saw the ghost too? And painted her?’ Willow leaned forward across the table and her long hair brushed his arm. He tried not to jerk his hand away.
That hadn’t been the way he’d been thinking, but he considered the idea. ‘Maybe. I suppose it’s one explanation.’
‘And Eleanor had tracked Monica down and arranged to meet her when she was coming north?’
‘I think they must have met at some point,’ he said. His mind was racing, chasing wild notions that refused to be pinned down.
‘Eleanor must have had a busy afternoon the day of the party.’ Willow sounded unconvinced. ‘Vaila Arthur turned up to tell her story into the recorder; we think Charles Hillier might have tried to catch up with her at some point, either during the day or later in the evening; and now you decide that Eleanor and Monica had a meeting too. Just in the couple of hours that her friends took to walk along the cliff path. And knowing that they could come back at any time. It would only take a sudden rain squall to send them back to the house.’
They sat for a moment in silence.
‘Maybe the party wasn’t Eleanor Longstaff’s first trip to Shetland.’ This was Sandy, nervous that he might be making a fool of himself, looking up from his mug. ‘I mean she was always travelling on business, wasn’t she? So why couldn’t she have come here? If she’d thought her husband would laugh at her for believing in Peerie Lizzie, she could have pretended she was in Brussels…’ he paused, struggling to think of another suitable destination, ‘… or New York. Their only contact would be by mobile phone and the calls could come from anywhere.’
Another silence. Now that the words were spoken, Perez thought how obvious this was.
‘Sandy Wilson, you’re a bloody genius, and when this is all over I’m going to take you out and get you pissed.’ Willow was laughing. ‘Contact the ferry terminal and the airport. Let’s see if we can track down if, and when, Eleanor arrived. She’d most likely have flown from London via Aberdeen to save time, and she’d have needed photo ID even for domestic flights, so she’d have used her own name. Then we track her movements. Who did she meet when she was here? And why have none of the buggers come forward when they heard about her death?’ She stood up.
Perez thought he’d never seen her so excited. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to Yell to track down the mysterious Monica. And you’re coming too.’
They knew it would be a rush to get there and back that evening. The last ferry north to Unst on a Friday night was always busy, so they’d want to avoid that. It would be full of kids who’d been to parties or down to friends in Lerwick. Couples who’d made the trek south for the sort of dinner out they’d not get in the North Isles. And late in the evening there’d be fewer ferries. The last thing they’d need would be to be stuck in Yell, or having to leave the car there and come back as foot passengers. And if Monica split her time between London and Shetland there was no guarantee she’d be there.
‘Perhaps we’re better leaving it until the morning,’ Perez said. The only contact they had for Monica Leaze was at the gallery, and it was possible that nobody was there at this time. Of course Sandy should be able to track down a home address for them before they arrived in Yell. Mary Lomax would probably know. But Perez hated the idea of turning up at the artist’s house, breathless and ill prepared. She was crucial to the investigation, and she was famous. It seemed the worst kind of rudeness to barge in on a Friday night.
‘We don’t have time to wait,’ Willow said. ‘It has to be this evening.’ He knew she was desperate to move the case forward before the soothmoothers left the islands. He saw that there would be no reasoning with her.
Still, in the car at the ferry terminal in Belmont he had another go at persuading her to put off the visit until the following day. ‘Perhaps we should speak to Polly and Caroline first. Eleanor might have spoken to them about Monica. Or she might have dropped a hint that this wasn’t her first trip north.’
But now he saw that Willow was caught up in the moment of the chase. She was enjoying the frantic drive to the pier, and the sense of movement was a reaction to the frustration of sitting in Springfield House running through the details of the case in her head. Perez thought again that she was obsessed by the passing of time; this was her attempt to stop the clock.
‘We can’t piss about, Jimmy. This might be our breakthrough.’ Her eyes were gleaming. She was like a skua about to dive on an injured lamb.
By the time they arrived in Yell, Sandy had an address for them. Monica Leaze lived in Cullivoe, not too far from where the ferry came in. They turned off the main road and ahead of them the evening sky was red like flames, as if the sea was on fire. Everything was still. The banks on each side of the road were wild with flowers and grasses, the colours intense in the strange evening light. Willow was driving; she was too tense and fidgety to be a passenger.
When they found the house it was undistinguished, grey and small, a little ugly. There was no land attached, apart from a small square garden at the front, separated from the neighbour’s by a slatted wooden fence. There were other, newer homes along the same road. A couple were squat bungalows and the rest were Norwegian kit houses in coloured wood. Willow pulled the car into a passing place and they climbed out. Outside Monica’s front door stood a couple of terracotta pots, one containing mint and the other rosemary, but the lawn was overgrown. Willow opened the gate and knocked at the door.