See you soon, followed by a line of kisses. No name. The postmark was blurred. The address was M. Leaze c/o North Light Gallery, Yell. Willow wondered if that meant Monica was attempting to keep her home address secret. Various reasons suggested themselves: a bitter divorce had resulted in an abusive husband stalking her; debt; a desire for space and privacy.
On the sofa a line of red plush cushions had been arranged in meticulous order. The carpet was nasty and nylon. Willow wondered how an artist could live here, even on a temporary basis, and said as much to Perez.
He didn’t answer immediately and, when he did, she wasn’t sure that she understood him. ‘I think this is just the sort of room that her art came from. She said she gloried in the commonplace made weird. And it is kind of weird, isn’t it?’
On the other side of a narrow hall – more laminate flooring and an ornate gilt mirror – were the bedrooms. The landlord had obviously been determined to squeeze as many people as possible into the house, so there were twin beds in the larger room and a single in the boxroom at the back. Willow thought they had probably been furnished entirely from charity shops. Perez opened the wardrobe in the big room. It was empty.
‘We’ll contact the landlord tomorrow and see if she’s given notice. It looks as if she might have done a runner.’ Though Willow thought that if she was planning to leave a place she’d have drunk the Chablis first.
In the boxroom the bed hadn’t been made up. Grey blankets were folded on a bentwood chair. There was no room for any other furniture. The wooden stairs to the loft were so steep that they were almost like a ladder. Willow went first and Perez followed. She was aware of him climbing behind her and could hear his gentle breathing. At the top she paused, with a sudden sensation of anticipation, fear even. The image of another body flashed into her mind. She pictured Monica Leaze, who was obviously tied into this case and had so much to tell them, lying dead on the attic floor.
But she knew she was being ridiculous. There was no stink of decay, no sign of a forced entry into the house. She hauled herself to her feet and looked around her. Here, for the first time, there was a sense that the artist had put her own stamp on the place. The floorboards were bare. No attempt had been made to sand or varnish them and in places there were splashes of paint. A big scrubbed pine table stood under one of the sloping windows and beside it there was an easel. From the window the view was out over a low-lying meadow to the water. There were no paints or brushes, and no cupboard where they might be stored. Monica must have packed them all away and taken them with her.
But she had left the easel. Perez had followed Willow into the room and was standing looking at it, his first point of reference. A piece of thick cream paper had been clipped to the easel and on it Monica had been making a pencil drawing. A woman lying on her back in a long, flowing dress. The background shaded. It was a sketch of Eleanor Longstaff lying dead in the loch at Meoness.
Chapter Thirty-Six
In Sletts, Polly was packing. She was pleased to be in the bedroom away from Ian, who had already started drinking again. She supposed she should be tolerant, because a bereaved husband ought to be allowed to grieve in his own way, but his pent-up fury was becoming unbearable. And she wished that he didn’t drink so heavily. It made him unpredictable and morose.
Her mother had been a Methodist and had disapproved of alcohol altogether. Polly worried occasionally that she was morphing into her mother, becoming middle-aged and anxious before her time. Sometimes Eleanor had teased her for being staid. ‘Pol, just relax, won’t you. You’re still young!’ Polly wondered how she’d cope without Eleanor to make her laugh, to tempt her to try new experiences. Would she turn into everyone’s stereotype of a librarian, dull and officious? Then she thought that she had Marcus to bring adventure into her life, so perhaps there was still hope for her. She’d miss Eleanor’s company, but recently the three friends had become more distant. Perhaps she’d already reached a new phase in her life.
When they were younger they’d been so close. Polly remembered the late-night conversations, the three friends squashed, half-sitting, half-lying, into a single hall-of-residence bed, a duvet tucked around them against the chill Durham night, drinking tea or chocolate or vodka, depending on the occasion. Then it had been a matter of honour that they had no secrets. They’d talked about all their dreams and fears in detail. Exposing their souls and their petty anxieties.
Now she was astonished at how far they’d drifted apart, how little of their personal lives they’d shared recently. Perhaps that had started with the move to London. London had demanded a gloss of sophistication and pretence. With their smarter clothes and their new friends, they’d developed different personas; suddenly they were competent, witty and self-sufficient. But now she thought that Eleanor and Caroline had always been actors, fitting into new situations in order to survive and excel. Perhaps they’d been performing as much in the draughty university bedroom as in the smart wine bars that had become their natural home in the city. It was likely that Polly, for whom the university experience had been a kind of magic, making her feel that she belonged with people of her own age for the first time, had simply been naive.
On the bed Polly laid out the bridesmaid’s dress she’d worn to the hamefarin’, folded it carefully and put it in the suitcase. She supposed that Eleanor’s dress would be kept as evidence, and in the end it would be destroyed. She looked out of the window. It was early evening and the fog was drifting in from the water again, blurring the horizon so that it was impossible to see where the sky ended and the sea began. In the room next door she heard the men’s voices. Marcus was being a saint. He hardly knew Ian, but he was supporting him, calming him, allowing him to talk. Allowing him to drink and to rant. Polly took a shirt from the wardrobe and folded that too.
She’d almost finished when Caroline and Lowrie arrived. She heard the door and their voices, wonderfully normal, and her mood lifted. The following day at this time she’d be on the boat south. Then she and Marcus would be alone in their own car for the drive to London. They could forget about Ian and dead people. Eleanor would have left Shetland without a second thought, in their situation. Polly had a tendency to be too introspective, and shutting herself away in her room wasn’t helping. She opened the door and went out to greet her friends.
They were dressed almost as if it was winter, in anoraks and boots, and Lowrie carried a rucksack that clunked with bottles when he set it on the floor.
‘You can’t spend your last night in Shetland tucked away in here brooding,’ Caroline said. Classic Caroline, prefect and social worker rolled into one. ‘We’ve got a plan.’
It seemed that a friend of Lowrie’s was a chef and he’d come across from Lerwick to set up a pop-up restaurant for the night in the boat club, in a settlement just down the coast. ‘A couple of miles’ walk to get us hungry,’ Caroline said. ‘Then great Shetland food, some good wine, and we’ll roll back before it gets too late. What do you think?’
Polly thought that whatever they made of the plan, the rest of them would go along with it. Caroline in this mood was unstoppable. And although they teased her for being bossy, actually they were usually glad to have someone to make decisions for them. Without her they would dither and nothing would get done.