No reply. Looking through the window, Perez thought the living room was too tidy. There was a Sunday paper neatly folded on a small table, but from the headline he could tell that it was at least a fortnight old. The cushions were piled symmetrically on the couch. It was oddly impersonal. No indication that an artist had lived here. No drawings on the wall. No paints. He stepped back a couple of paces and looked at the roof. There were Velux windows cut into the tiles, so perhaps Monica worked in the room in the attic.
An elderly woman was bringing in washing next door. She stood with a plastic basket at her feet, folding the clothes, but her eyes were fixed on the visitors. At last curiosity got too much for her and she came up to the fence. ‘Can I help you?’ She was all bone. Her face seemed to have been sculpted by the weather.
‘We’re looking for Monica Leaze.’
‘Nobody’s there. I haven’t seen her for a couple of weeks. She comes and goes, though. It’s more like a holiday place for her. I’m told she still has a house in London.’
Perez approached her. She’d probably respond better to his voice than to Willow’s. ‘Do you look after the place when she’s away?’
‘She never asked.’ Perez sensed there was no love lost between the neighbours. Had Monica, tense and anxious and used to the anonymity of the city, resented the intrusion of a bored, elderly woman? ‘Who are you?’
‘We’re police,’ he said. ‘Investigating the murders in Meoness.’
Her attitude changed at once to a manic excitement. ‘Come in, come in. You’ll take a cup of tea.’ And they found themselves in her kitchen. The kettle already humming and a plate of home-made flapjacks on a plate. Her payment for a story that would be retold by telephone to family and friends as soon as they left: You’ll never guess who was in my house this evening.
‘How long has Monica lived next door?’ Perez was asking the questions. Willow was standing with her back to the window, trying to contain her impatience.
‘She moved in about a year ago. She doesn’t own it. It’s rented from Johnny Jamieson in Lerwick, who bought it for holiday lets. I used to go in and clean for him once a week after the visitors left. He didn’t pay much, but it helped out with the pension.’
Perhaps this was part of her resentment. With next door turned into a permanent rental, she’d lost her little job. She was continuing her story. ‘I called round on her first day there, in case I could help at all. You know what it’s like when you first move in – you can’t find anything. She didn’t even invite me across the threshold.’
‘Does she rent it ready furnished?’ That might explain the bland sofa and the bare walls.
‘Yes, and that seemed kind of strange. If she was planning to live here full-time you’d think she’d want her own belongings. She didn’t have much stuff at all. A couple of suitcases and a box with all her paints.’ The woman sniffed. ‘She calls herself an artist.’
‘So you went round to see her,’ Perez said. ‘Can you tell us what she’s like?’
‘Kind of nervy. Skinny and a smoker. Dresses younger than she really is. All flowers and bright patterns.’
‘Is it just her living there?’ Willow interrupted. Perez saw her glance at the clock on the wall. ‘No man or family?’
‘I think she had a bairn here a couple of times. Young. Maybe a grandchild. But not living here fulltime.’
‘Boy or a girl?’ Perez asked
The woman glared. ‘How would I know? I don’t snoop. I just saw them playing outside once.’
‘But you might have some idea.’ He smiled at her.
‘I think it was a lassie. Though once she had a couple of lads to play with her too. They might have been local, because they didn’t stay the night.’
‘Can you remember when you last saw Monica? The exact date would be very helpful.’ Perez again, coaxing her as if he was a favourite nephew.
‘Exactly a week ago,’ the woman said at last. ‘So she hasn’t been away as long as I thought.’
The day before the hamefarin’. Perez wondered if that had any significance.
‘She might have been around since then, though,’ the woman went on. ‘I’ve been away at my daughter’s down in Brae, so I wouldn’t know.’ A sniff. ‘Not that Monica’s bothered to cut the grass, if she has been there.’
‘I suppose she locks her house when she goes out,’ Perez said.
‘I’m sure she does. She’s never once asked any of the neighbours inside. I offered to go in occasionally when she was away, just to air the place, but she refused. “I value my privacy, Annie.” It made me wonder at times what she has to hide in there.’ The woman gave a theatrical shudder.
‘Only we’re a bit anxious about her,’ Perez said. ‘As she’s not been seen for a while. It would put our minds at rest if we could take a look inside. And we’d prefer not to break a window to get in.’
‘No need for that.’ Annie gave a wide smile and paused for dramatic effect. She got to her feet. ‘I’ve still got a key, from when I was cleaning for Johnny Jamieson. The woman might have been mad about security, but I doubt if she got round to changing the locks. Not even Monica would be that paranoid.’
She reached out and took a key from a hook on the dresser and held it out to them triumphantly.
Chapter Thirty-Five
They stood outside Monica’s house. Willow felt she already had an image of the woman in her mind: she’d be one of those people whose restlessness seems to generate impulsive action and creativity. When Willow was a child, Lottie, her mother, had been like that, fizzing with energy, firing up the family with her schemes, leaving them in turn exhilarated and exhausted. She’d worked in silver and enamel, made rings and bangles to sell at the local arts centre, but her whole life had been a piece of performance theatre. On a whim Lottie had invited a coachload of tourists into the commune for dinner and had thrown together a meal for them in minutes. She’d needed a larger audience than the regular members of the Balranald community could provide. Now she was elderly and infirm, burnt-out and in her husband’s shadow.
Perez had persuaded Annie, the next-door neighbour, to stay in her own house and keep a lookout for them. ‘We wouldn’t want to shock Monica, if she were to turn up and find strangers in her home.’ He’d given her one of his special smiles and a card with his mobile number on it. Now the woman was glued to the window with the card in one hand and her phone in the other, feeling an essential part of the investigation. Willow wondered again what his magic was, how he managed to win people over. Perhaps it was something as simple as kindness. She would have been more brutal and would have told the woman to keep out of the way.
The key turned easily in the lock and they stood in a kitchen that had been updated as cheaply as possible, with chipboard worktops coated in a mock-granite plastic veneer. A Formica table had been folded against one wall. On the floor wood-effect laminate. Willow had already pulled on a pair of gloves and opened the fridge. An unopened bottle of supermarket Chablis, a packet of butter and half a dozen eggs. Which pretty well mirrored the contents of her own fridge, even when she was living at home. But she had a Sainsbury’s just down the road and could shop every day.
‘Looks as if she’s cleared out most of the perishable things. Must have planned to be away for a while.’
The bin had been emptied. In the larder there were shelves of tins, olive oil, packets of pasta and rice, but there were no vegetables in the rack standing below the shelves. Monica was an organized woman, who hadn’t left in a hurry. Perez stood in the middle of the room and seemed to be sniffing the atmosphere.
The living room was small and square. There was a post-war utility dining table, polished but scratched, again folded against one wall, a sofa and a television. An electric fire stood in what had once been an open fireplace. A postcard showing a picture of the Tower of London stood on the mantelpiece next to a bright-green china frog. Perez turned the postcard over to look at the message on the back and held it out for Willow to read.