The shop was empty and Aggie sat reading, just as she always did if she was on her own. She was surprised to see him.
‘Kenny. What can I do for you?’ They’d known each other since they were babies and yet she always kept her distance from him. A certain formality. Had she been that way even when she was a child?
‘I fancied something tasty for my dinner,’ he said. ‘Edith buys all the healthy food. Today I thought I’d like something a bit different.’
‘Comfort eating,’ she said, and smiled.
He knew then that she’d been thinking exactly the same thing as him about the bones the police had found.
She looked at her watch. ‘There’ll be no one else in the shop now. Why don’t you come next door with me? I could do you sausage, egg and chips. Would that suit you?’
The invitation shocked him. She’d come to Skoles when they’d had a bit of a party at Christmas or New Year, but she’d never invited them into her house. Aggie and Edith had got on well enough when they were young, but the women had never been great friends, at least not since Lawrence had gone. Lawrence had seemed to hold the whole of Biddista together.
‘I’d like that very much,’ Kenny said. ‘If it’s not too much trouble.’
‘Not at all.’ She smiled, and he saw that she had quite a pretty face. ‘I like comfort food myself.’
She brought up the subject of Lawrence while she was cooking the chips. She cooked them the old-fashioned way, with oil in a big pan and a basket, so there was the noise of them frying. She had her back to him, so it was hard to tell what she was thinking. The sausages were in a frying pan and they smelled very good. She’d made him a big mug of tea as soon as they got into the kitchen and he sat with his boots off at the table, drinking it. He was just thinking it was a pity she’d never remarried when she started speaking.
‘Have the police been in touch with you?’
‘About the bones in the Pit? No. I phoned Jimmy Perez this morning but he was out.’
‘You think it’s Lawrence?’
‘I think it was too much of a coincidence for it not to be.’
‘I suppose they’ll be able to tell,’ she said. ‘All those things you read about. Forensics.’
‘I just want to know,’ he said.
She cracked three eggs on the side of the pan and added them to the sausages, lifted the chip basket so it rested just above the oil, then turned round to him.
‘I felt that way when Andrew drowned,’ she said. ‘But sometimes I think hope is better.’
‘Do you remember that summer when Lawrence disappeared?’ he asked. ‘I wasn’t here. I was away in Fair Isle, working.’
She took two plates from the warming oven at the bottom of the Rayburn, carefully lifted out the eggs – two for him and one for her – and the sausages, then shook the oil from the chips and tipped them on to the plates.
‘I wasn’t here then. I was in Scalloway.’ She pushed a knife and fork across the table to him. He couldn’t tell what she made of the question. He didn’t know what she was thinking at all. ‘Eat up while it’s hot.’
‘But you’d hear what was going on. What were folks saying?’
‘Just what they’ve been saying ever since. That he asked Bella Sinclair to marry him and she turned him down, so he took a great temper on him and left the islands.’ She picked up a chip with her fingers and blew on it before putting it into her mouth. Then she frowned. ‘He did have a temper, Kenny. You know he did. You remember when we were children, him scrapping in the schoolyard. The teacher having to pull the boys apart. He always had to be the best, the strongest. Always in competition, even with you.’
Kenny thought of the two of them racing to finish singling the neeps. Lawrence was the quickest, but his own rows were the neater. He wasn’t sure there was much of a competition, but it was true that Lawrence always wanted to win.
‘You never heard anything else? That he’d picked a fight over work? Fallen out with anyone?’
It occurred to Kenny that he might have to apologize to Bella when all this was over. Perhaps she’d had nothing to do with his brother’s disappearance after all.
‘No,’ Aggie said. ‘I heard nothing like that.’
Chapter Forty
Back in the house, Kenny sat in his chair in the kitchen and dozed. He wasn’t used to eating such a big meal at lunchtime. The telephone woke him with a start. He rushed into the hall, thinking it would be Jimmy Perez, but it was Edith. He looked at his watch and saw that it was three o’clock.
‘Are you OK, Kenny? Is there any news?’
He felt guilty then. He should have phoned her. She’d have been worrying about him all afternoon.
‘No news,’ he said. ‘But I’m fine.’ He didn’t tell her about the big fried meal Aggie had cooked for him. He’d enjoyed the meal so much that it seemed like a guilty secret. He knew Aggie wouldn’t tell anyone about it.
‘Do you still want to come over?’
‘Yes,’ he said. He didn’t feel panicky any more, but the lunch with Aggie had given him a taste for company.
When he walked into the care centre through the big double doors and saw the people sitting in the sunny room, dozing or chatting, he thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to end his days here. He would be with people he knew, people he’d grown up with. He waved to Willy, who sat a little apart from the others, staring out of the window. Willy waved back at him with a great silly grin, and Kenny gestured with his hand to show that he’d come back to chat to him later.
Edith came out into the hall to greet him. He thought what a nuisance he must be to her, more like a child at times than her man.
‘Come into the office,’ she said. ‘I’ve asked Sandra to make us some tea.’
He sat in the easy chair on the other side of her desk. He thought this was where people would sit when there was a problem with a relative she was looking after. Maybe even if a client had died. He supposed she would arrange for tea to be brought then. She would pour it out for them, from the china teapot which sat there on its tray. She thinks the bones belong to Lawrence too, he thought. She’s treating me like a grieving relative.
‘I wish Perez would phone and let me know what’s going on,’ he said.
She reached out and squeezed his hand. ‘Maybe he doesn’t want to talk to you until he has information. It can’t be easy identifying a body from a few scraps of bone.’
Kenny considered this. Sometimes he watched police shows on the television. In those shows test results seemed to come back within hours. But those programmes weren’t set in Shetland. Perhaps there was no one here competent to do the tests. The samples would have to be sent south and that would take time.
He sipped from the cup, which seemed very fragile in his big hand. There was a plate with little square biscuits covered in sugar. He took one and dipped it into the tea. It tasted of coconut.
‘Do you remember anything of that time Lawrence disappeared?’ he asked.
She poured tea for herself. ‘I’ve been trying to think ever since you phoned. Bella had a heap of people in the Manse. Sometimes Willy took them out fishing. They’d come back and build a fire on the beach to cook the fish. They all drank too much. Lawrence spent quite a lot of time with them. You know how he liked a party.’
Kenny nodded.
‘I was so busy then,’ she said. ‘With the children and your father and trying to keep things tidy on the croft. You were in Fair Isle. It wasn’t easy.’
‘I shouldn’t have gone,’ he said. ‘I see that now.’
She gave a little laugh. ‘We needed the money. Don’t you remember all the plans we had? And it was worth the work, wasn’t it? We have a lovely home now.’
Kenny thought he would give up the lovely home to have been in Biddista when Lawrence disappeared. He’d gone to Fair Isle with Edith’s encouragement. She’d wanted their children to have the things her parents had never been able to afford for her.