He said nothing.
‘Of course it could have been me,’ she teased. ‘If I’d found out what he’d done. This was my first major exhibition. I had more to lose than Bella did.’
There was a pause. She didn’t think he was going to reply.
‘Of course I know it wasn’t,’ he said lightly. ‘You’re the one person it couldn’t have been – I was with you all night.’ He went up to her and put his hands on her shoulders, pulled her towards him and kissed her forehead. ‘I’ll always remember that evening. Not for the murder – that was work and in time it’ll be an interesting case, nothing more – but because it was the first night I spent with you.’
He rinsed out his mug under the tap and set it carefully on the draining board. She stood at the door and watched him walk to his car. Soppy git, she thought. Then, So he is serious about me, after all. That she found a little scary. She stared out over Raven Head, lost in thought, until he drove away.
Chapter Nineteen
Perez arrived at the school in Middleton at eight-fifteen. He reckoned Dawn should already be there by then, but the kids wouldn’t have arrived. He didn’t want to talk to her in Biddista with Martin in attendance, though he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps because Martin would try to lighten the conversation, would shy away from any serious discussion. Perez knew the teacher by sight but he’d never spoken to her. She hadn’t been a part of the family when Martin’s father drowned.
The school was a low modern building, with a football pitch to one side and a playground to the other. It looked over a narrow inland loch. A bit of a breeze had blown up and the water was whipped into small waves. The children came from the houses scattered over the surrounding hill and from settlements as far as the coast. Like all the Shetland schools Middleton was well maintained and well equipped. The oil had brought problems to some communities but it had its benefits too. Shetland Islands Council had negotiated a good deal with the companies to bring the oil ashore and the income had been channelled into community projects.
There was already a line of cars parked in the yard and the main door was unlocked. No one was in the office and he wandered through to one of the classrooms. A young bearded man was writing on the board.
‘I’m looking for Mrs Williamson.’ Perez hovered at the door. Even this school was much bigger than the room in Fair Isle where he’d sat to do his lessons, but the smell was familiar.
‘Are you one of the dads?’ The man was polite enough, but hardly friendly. Perez wondered what it was about schools that made him uneasy. Maybe all adults felt exactly the same way. Too big and clumsy for a place built for children. He supposed a stranger walking into his working environment would be intimidated too. Then he thought he would love to be a dad. It was something he’d always wanted. He wouldn’t mind then the effort of coming into school, of attending parents’ evenings and nativity plays.
The man had turned from the board and was waiting for him to reply.
‘No,’ Perez said. ‘No, I’m not.’ He was thinking how to explain his presence without causing Dawn problems when he heard footsteps on the corridor behind him and he saw her walking towards them, a mug of what smelled like herbal tea in one hand. She was a little older than Martin, he thought. Early thirties, curly red hair, a wide mouth.
‘Mrs Williamson,’ Perez said. ‘Could I have a word? It’ll not take long.’ He couldn’t tell if she recognized him. Perhaps she thought he was a parent too.
She took him into a classroom and he sat on one of the children’s desks, feeling a moment of wickedness because when he’d been a boy sitting on the desks wasn’t allowed.
‘I’m Jimmy Perez,’ he said. ‘I’m looking into the death of that man in the Biddista hut.’
She nodded as if to say she knew who he was. ‘Is it about that mask that Alice was wearing? Aggie said you were interested in it. Maybe I should have got in touch with you before, save you dragging all the way out here, but I don’t think I’ll be of much help. Is it important?’
He couldn’t think of any reason not to explain. ‘We’re treating the death as suspicious. He was wearing a mask just like the one Alice was wearing. It might help us trace him.’
He saw that he’d shocked her. She seemed suddenly very pale.
‘Can you remember where Alice got the mask?’
‘It was the Middleton Sunday teas,’ she said. ‘I bought it for her there.’
The Sunday teas had become a Shetland institution, almost a tradition, though Perez couldn’t remember anything like that happening when he was a boy. Then, Sunday had just been a time for the kirk and the family. Now local ladies would provide tea and home-bakes in the nearest community hall on Sunday afternoons in the summer. There were always plants for sale and a bring-and-buy stall. It was a place to meet friends and catch up on gossip, and funds would be raised for a good cause.
‘Do you remember who was selling it?’
‘Some lass I didn’t recognize. She must have got them cheap when she was south, because she had a whole load of them. Animals mostly, then there were the clowns. I tried to persuade Alice to go for a cat but she wasn’t having any of it.’
‘Was anyone else from Biddista there that afternoon?’
‘No, we were on our own. Aggie usually comes with us, but she wasn’t feeling well. Martin was working in the Herring House. It was quite nice to spend some time with Alice, just the two of us.’
‘It can’t be easy living so close to your mother-in-law.’ Perez was thinking of his ex-wife Sarah’s mother, a formidably competent woman who ran the Women’s Institute and won prizes for the spaniels she bred. And again he was distracted by thoughts of how Fran would get on with his own mother. Sarah had found her unconventional, rather intimidating. He thought Fran might like her.
Dawn gave a little smile. ‘I should be grateful. I wouldn’t have been able to come back to work full-time if she hadn’t offered to mind Alice. But families are never easy, are they? Aggie thinks I’m bossy and I should be a better wife to her son. She never quite says it, but I know that’s what she’s thinking. Martin laughs it off. He doesn’t see it as a problem. I don’t usually, but it was good for Alice and me to run away to Middleton together.’
‘Was anyone else you recognized there?’
‘Some of the families from school. As I said, nobody else from Biddista. That doesn’t mean they weren’t there later, though. We went in early, just as it opened, and we didn’t stay long.’
Some of the children had arrived in the yard. Through the window Perez watched two boys chasing each other, grabbing hold of each other’s jerseys, rolling over on the ground. Did boys always end up fighting?
‘How did you land up here in Shetland?’ Probably it had nothing to do with the case, but he was always intrigued by the different routes incomers took to the islands.
‘I did my education degree in a college in West Yorkshire. So close to home that I could take my washing back at the weekends. I wanted to see a bit more of the country. When I saw this job advertised, I thought, Why not go for it? I only expected to be here for a couple of years. Now I know I’ll never live anywhere else.’
‘That’ll be down to Martin.’
‘Oh,’ she laughed, ‘I fell for the islands before I fell for him. I’d rented a place in Scalloway when I first moved here. Aggie and Andrew ran the hotel there then and Martin worked in the bar. He made me laugh. We started going out… Before I knew it, I was married with a child on the way.’
‘You look well on it.’
‘I love it all. Teaching in a place like this still has its challenges, but if I think of some of the schools where I did my teaching practice, there’s no comparison. And Martin is pretty much in charge of the café and restaurant at the Herring House. Bella doesn’t interfere too much.’