There was a moment of silence. ‘Well, we didn’t know then that Tom and Anna were such…’ There was another pause… ‘friends.’
‘You can see why Sarah would have wanted her out of the village.’
Perez had always thought there was a lot of gossip in Shetland, but he had rarely heard anything there that was quite as toxic as this. He could understand for the first time why Sarah was so upset that she had called for his help. It must be a nightmare to face this malice wherever she went.
The talking continued. ‘Do we know for certain that Tom and Anna were lovers? Gail, you knew Anna better than anyone. Lucy stayed at your house the night it all happened.’
So this was Gail Kerr, the woman from the farm who’d had Anna’s daughter for the sleepover. She was stocky, a bit older than the others, and she didn’t seem to have a baby with her. She was wearing an anorak over a scruffy sweater. The others seemed to have made more of an effort with their appearances. Some were rather glamorous, shiny and made-up. They could have been in a fancy restaurant instead of a scruffy cafe.
‘Well, my brother Sandy saw them walking together through the woods,’ said Gail, resting her elbows on the table. ‘He said they were so wrapped up in each other that a bomb could have dropped and they wouldn’t have noticed.’
The waitress brought Jimmy’s coffee. It was hardly warm and didn’t taste of anything.
‘But you don’t really think he killed her?’ the first woman said. ‘Not Tom! He’s a doctor. A kind man. He looked after my mother when she had cancer and he couldn’t have been more caring.’
‘It’s just too much of a coincidence.’ It was Gail again. ‘Something weird was going on there. If the Kings didn’t kill her, they drove her to suicide.’
Jimmy Perez couldn’t stand any more of their unkindness. He drank his coffee in one go, paid the bill and went outside.
Next to the cafe an estate agents’ office was advertising houses to let. On impulse Perez went inside. A middle-aged woman in a suit looked up from her computer screen.
He showed his ID. ‘Do you manage a property owned by Doctor King?’
‘The house in Woodburn Close? Yes, that’s one of ours.’
‘I’m making inquiries about the most recent tenant,’ he said. ‘Anna Blackwell.’
The estate agent turned round in her chair to give him her full attention. ‘She was the woman who died.’
‘That’s right,’ Perez said. ‘I assume she had to provide a deposit before she moved in? Someone had to vouch for her?’
‘No…’ The woman paused. ‘It was a more informal arrangement.’
‘In what way informal?’
‘I understood that she was a friend of Doctor King’s. He said there was no need for her to pay in advance. He could vouch for her.’
Perez considered this. How had Tom King met the young teacher before she moved to Stonebridge? A thought leapt into his head. Was it possible, even, that he was the father of her child?
‘Do you have a previous address for Miss Blackwell?’
The woman turned back to the keyboard. ‘Yes, we do have that, I think, because we had to send out a contract before she moved in.’ She hit a button and a printer began to whir. She handed a sheet of paper to Perez.
The address was in Berwick, just south of the border, in England.
‘I believe that was her parents’ address,’ the estate agent said. ‘Miss Blackwell had been at university in Edinburgh and had just finished her degree. She suggested the Berwick address would be the best one to use.’
Perez wondered why Anna’s parents hadn’t come forward to take care of their granddaughter, Lucy, after her mother’s death. He’d assumed that there was no close family. It seemed very sad that the grandparents had allowed the little girl to be sent off to be cared for by strangers. Perhaps Anna’s parents were old-fashioned and didn’t approve of a child born out of marriage.
Outside in the street, the village was very quiet – there were no children’s voices. Soon it would be lunchtime and they would be out to play again, Perez thought. Stonebridge seemed sad without them.
6 The Farm
Jimmy Perez was thinking that he’d go back to the Stonebridge Hotel for lunch when he saw a woman leaving the cafe where he’d had coffee earlier.
The woman was alone. The other yummy mummies must still be inside talking, he thought. It was Gail, the mother from the farm, and she made her way towards a battered Land Rover parked in the wide main street. He caught up with her just before she opened the Land Rover’s door.
‘Could I have a word?’
She turned round and stared at him. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m a detective. My name’s Jimmy Perez. I’m just checking some details concerning Anna Blackwell’s death.’
‘But she killed herself.’ Gail was still staring. ‘According to the local police the case has been closed.’
Something in her eyes made him ask, ‘Do you think it shouldn’t have been?’
She looked at him carefully. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I can’t stay here and chat. I’ve got to get home for a delivery of feed for my hens. Why don’t you come too and we can talk? I might even find some soup for your lunch. I’ve got to come back to Stonebridge to collect my little girl from school at three o’clock and I can give you a lift back then.’
So Perez climbed in beside her and Gail drove out of the village. It seemed like a sort of escape. He realised how trapped he’d been feeling in the village with its bitchy women and the dark woods all around it.
They took a lane that rose sharply away from the river, and as they rounded a corner there was a view of a whitewashed house at the end of a rough track. ‘I love this place,’ Gail said. ‘I was born here and I can’t imagine living anywhere else.’
She parked the Land Rover in the farmyard. Perez could see sheep on the hill behind the house and hens in a small orchard beside the yard. He thought it looked like a child’s idea of a farm rather than the real thing – it could have come from a picture book. Gail seemed to read his thoughts.
‘It’s only a smallholding really,’ she said. ‘My parents sold off most of the land years ago. Now my brother and I run it almost as a hobby. We’re trying our best to make a go of it. Sandy has a full-time job working for the forestry commission, and that just about keeps us afloat.’
‘What does your husband do?’
There was a moment’s silence and then Gail answered:
‘He died three months ago in a car crash. He had real plans for the place. He thought we should turn some of the buildings into holiday lets. Without him I can’t seem to work up the same passion for the project, but I’ll try to make a go of it as a tribute to him.’
She opened the farmhouse door and led him into a cluttered kitchen. ‘Will you have some soup?’
He nodded and sat at the table. He thought how strong she must be to carry on with her everyday life when her husband had so recently passed away. Perez had been good for nothing for months after Fran had been killed. He’d just brooded.
‘Lucy Blackwell stayed here the night Anna died?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘My daughter Grace is best friends with Lucy. They’re both only children, so it was good that they each had someone to play with. Lucy loved it here. All this space is perfect for children and she enjoyed helping with the animals.’ Gail slid a pan onto the hotplate of the range. ‘Grace is so sad that Lucy’s moved away.’
‘Were you and Anna friends?’
Gail turned away from the stove to face him. ‘Well, we didn’t have a lot in common. Anna was young enough to be my daughter. I was forty when I had Grace. John and I married late. And I’ve lived all my life here, and Anna was English and had moved around. But we got on OK. She was great with the girls and I liked her.’
‘Was she the sort of woman who might have killed herself?’
There was a long pause before Gail answered. ‘I wouldn’t have said so when she arrived in the village last year. She was full of enthusiasm and ideas then. I was pleased that we’d have some-one young and fit to teach the little ones. Freda had been there a long time and she was still teaching in the same way as when she first started in the job. She’d taught lots of the children’s parents.’
‘But later?’
Gail tipped home-made soup into a bowl and set it in front of Perez. ‘Later it all seemed to get too much for Anna. It can’t have been easy dealing with a small child and a full-time job all on her own.’
‘You seem to manage,’ he said.
‘Aye, well, I’m a little bit older and I have lots of friends in the village. Besides, I’m not really on my own. My brother Sandy lives here too.’ Gail looked up from her soup and smiled. ‘But not for much longer, it seems! He’s just got engaged and he’ll be moving into a home of his own.’
‘You’ll miss him,’ Perez said.
Gail grinned again. ‘I will, but he’s marrying a lovely girl and they won’t be living far away. Besides, Grace, my daughter, is great company now.’
There was a knock at the door. ‘That’ll be the feed delivery,’ Gail said. ‘You’ll have to excuse me.’
She went out into the farmyard. Perez wandered around the kitchen. There was a picture of Gail on her wedding day standing next to a giant of a man with a beard. He must be the husband who’d died. They were surrounded in the photo by laughing friends and family.
When Gail returned to the kitchen, it seemed that she’d made up her mind to speak, because she started talking as soon as she came into the room. ‘Did you know that there are lots of rumours about Tom King and Anna?’
‘What sort of rumours?’
‘People are saying that Tom and Anna were lovers. He owns that little house in the village where she lived, after all. And Tom’s wife Sarah took against her as soon as she started at the school. It was as if she wanted to get rid of Anna as soon as she arrived.’
‘Do you know who started the rumours?’ Perez pushed away his soup bowl and put his elbows on the table.
‘Who can tell where gossip begins in a place like Stonebridge? The stories are like weeds, they seem to grow out of nowhere and then they spread, so there’s no way of stopping them.’
Gail was silent for a moment. ‘When my husband died in the car crash there were rumours that he’d been drinking. It wasn’t true and it’s dreadfully hurtful at a time when I’m still grieving for him. I don’t know who started that gossip either.’
‘But you think there might have been truth in the story about Tom and Anna?’ Perez remembered Gail talking in the cafe. It had seemed then that she believed the two had been lovers.
Gail shrugged. ‘They’ve been seen together and they seemed very close. Sarah obviously couldn’t stand Anna. Perhaps we’ve all jumped to conclusions, but it seems to make sense.’ She stood up. ‘I’ll get you back to Stonebridge. The kids will be coming out of school soon.’
As they drove through the open countryside and into the village, Perez felt a stab of dread. It was as if he was being taken back to prison after a brief period of home leave.