‘Where then?’
‘There’s a coffee shop in the main street in Heswall. It’s open until seven. I’ll see you there in an hour. I’ll tell her I’m meeting my boyfriend.’
The last thing Taylor wanted was to kick his heels in the Wirral for an hour, but there was something so fierce about the demand to meet that he couldn’t refuse.
The girl turned up ten minutes late, looking harassed and drawn. The coffee shop was one of a chain, all brown leather sofas, piped bland music and hissing machines. Taylor stood up to buy her a coffee and when he got back from the counter with her cappuccino she was already deep in conversation with Jebson.
‘Ruth’s been in contact with her father recently,’ Jebson said. ‘That was what she wanted to talk to us about.’
‘Why did he get in touch with you?’ Taylor asked.
‘He didn’t. I found him.’
‘How?’
‘Interact, his theatre company, came to do a gig at school. Drug awareness. You know the sort of thing. He wasn’t there but his name was all over the publicity and there was a phone number. I knew he’d gone into acting, thought it was probably a coincidence, but I gave him a ring anyway. Plucked up courage when I had an afternoon’s study leave and no one was about. I didn’t tell my mother. I knew she’d go ape. She’d just be worried about him pissing me about… And I didn’t want to hurt John, my stepdad. I love him to bits.’
‘What did you say when you phoned?’ Jebson seemed genuinely interested.
‘“I think you might be my father.” Something like that. I thought, Why not go for the direct approach?’
‘Was he pleased to hear from you?’
‘I think it was a shock, but yeah, he said he was pleased. We were on the phone for ages talking. It cost me a fortune – it was my mobile and he never thought to call me back. Classic Dad.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘Oh, you know, it was just catching up. What he’d been doing. Where I was at in school. Plans for the future, that sort of thing.’
‘What were his plans for the future?’ Taylor asked.
‘He said he was going away. To Shetland. He asked if I’d ever been there and I said I hadn’t. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure where it was. I went on to the computer later and looked the islands up. He said they were beautiful. Very bleak but beautiful. He couldn’t wait to go back.’
‘Did he say why he was going?’
‘Basically business, he said. He was going to do some work there. Not really the sort of gig he usually took on, but it would give him a chance to catch up with old friends.’
‘Did he mention the names of the friends?’
‘I don’t think so. If he did I don’t remember.’ She’d been speaking very quickly, answering Taylor’s questions as soon as they were asked, but now she paused. ‘We’d arranged to meet. He was going to come here when he got back. He said he wanted to be a proper father again, to help me follow my dreams.’ She looked up and smiled at them. ‘That was how he spoke, the sort of thing he said. I’d emailed a photo of myself, so he’d know me. And there’s a picture of him on his website. It was weird to see him after all these years of imagining what he’d look like. There’s a resemblance, don’t you think? You’d know I was his daughter.’
She paused. ‘I phoned him at home a few days ago. I thought he should be back by then. Some woman answered.’
They were on their way back to Yorkshire when Taylor took the call from Sandy Wilson, saying there’d been another death. He dropped Jebson in Huddersfield and began the drive north. Excited to be on the move again, but sick that he wasn’t there to take control.
Chapter Thirty
Perez went straight from Fran’s house to collect Taylor from the airport at Sumburgh. It was a gusty, showery day, with brief flashes of sunshine, then the shadows of clouds blown across the flat land around the runways. The water at Grutness was choppy, blown into thousands of little waves which scattered the light, but the wind wasn’t strong enough to cause a delay. He arrived a little early and sat in the terminal building drinking coffee. A group of Japanese tourists waited for the plane.
Perez had stayed in Biddista until Roddy’s body had been lifted out of the Pit on a stretcher. He felt the boy deserved that, and, opening the body bag to look at him, he had the strange sense that for the first time he was seeing Roddy Sinclair in the flesh. Before, it had all been image, glossy and unreal as a magazine advert. By the time he had got to Ravenswick it was four in the morning and as bright as midday. Fran was asleep, must have been disturbed by dreams, because she’d thrown off the covers and lay, naked, on top of the twisted sheet. There was a white blind at the bedroom window and she looked somehow smudged, like one of her own paintings, in the filtered light.
He straightened the sheet and pulled it on top of her, then slid in beside her. It seemed like an unforgivable intrusion, but he didn’t want to wake her and he was exhausted. Her skin was cool and smooth. She stirred and smiled at him, wrapped herself around him. They both slept very deeply and were lying in exactly the same position when the television in the next room woke them. Cassie was singing along to a Saturday-morning children’s programme.
‘You do realize,’ Fran said, ‘that this will be all round Ravenswick School on Monday morning?’
‘I’m sorry, I should have thought.’ He wasn’t sure now what he should have thought. She’d invited him, after all. Did she not want it known that they were seeing each other?
‘Don’t worry. They think I’m a scarlet woman anyway.’ And she pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt and went to make tea.
Later they had pancakes for breakfast, with syrup and chocolate sauce. Cassie, still in her pyjamas, was getting silly and excited because of the novelty of the treat. But all the time he was wishing that he knew exactly what Fran was thinking and that he had some rules to follow. This relationship was so important to him and he didn’t want to get things wrong. Maybe I should ask her to marry me, he thought suddenly. Then at least I’d know where I was. The idea was at once tantalizing and ludicrous, so he found himself grinning. Fran asked him what he was laughing about.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I’m happy. That’s all.’
When Taylor walked into the terminal he seemed surprisingly alive and energetic. He said he’d had a few hours’ sleep in the hotel at Dyce and now what he really wanted was caffeine and carbs and he’d be fit for anything. Perez took him into the Sumburgh Hotel. The bar was quiet; the barman, a gaunt Englishman who’d lived in Shetland for so long that he spoke like a native, was chatting in a low voice to an old man sitting on a tall stool. Taylor ordered a burger and a Coke and when that was finished he couldn’t stop talking. Perez was reminded of Cassie, bouncing around the kitchen in Ravenswick, full of sugar and E numbers.
‘I found Booth’s wife and daughter. Nice lass. She hadn’t seen him since he left, but recently they’d got in touch. The mother didn’t know.’
‘Are we sure the mother hadn’t found out the girl had tracked him down?’ Perez was hesitant. ‘It would be a dramatic way to stop the father having contact with the girl, but I suppose we should consider it.’
Taylor paused for a moment. Thoughts chased each other across his face like the cloud shadows outside.
‘I don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘I hadn’t seen that as a possibility. If the mother was involved she’s a better actor than Booth ever was. She couldn’t have done it personally. She was at home looking after her family.’
‘What else did you learn from the daughter?’
‘That Booth definitely had friends in Shetland. That was what he told the girl. He was mixing business with pleasure, taking the chance to catch up on old friends.’