‘I just think you have to wait,’ Edith said. ‘Perez will get in touch with you as soon as he knows anything. After all these years you can wait a few hours.’
He knew she was right, but he couldn’t face going back to the croft and just sitting there, hoping the phone would ring.
‘I’ll have a talk to Willy, see if I can cheer him up.’
‘You do that. But he’s quite confused today. A bit agitated. Don’t be upset if he doesn’t know you.’
‘Has Wilding been in to see him again?’
She frowned and he remembered how Wilding’s visit to the centre had upset her. ‘Not here, but he could have visited him at the sheltered housing over the weekend.’
‘Do you think I should call in on Wilding, ask him what he wants from the old man?’
‘I’m overreacting, I expect. It’s probably nothing. Just a writer’s curiosity. I’d like to know what he’s up to, but I wouldn’t want you going to see him on your own. Not with everything that’s happened since he arrived. Wait until Martin can go with you.’
‘Wilding’s a weak sort of man. I can’t see him killing anyone.’
‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think it’s the weak ones who are most violent?’
There was a knock at the door. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to go. There’s a meeting. Something I can’t cancel. My boss has come up from Lerwick.’
He leaned across her desk and gave her a peck on the cheek. ‘I’ll see you at home.’
Kenny sat beside Willy in the lounge. The staff were bringing round cups of tea on a trolley, stopping beside each person in turn. Willy already had his, but it sat untouched on the table beside him. His chin was on his chest and his eyes were half closed. It was very warm in the room and Kenny could see why some users of the centre spent all day dozing. He could feel himself nodding off too. He patted Willy’s hand just to wake him, though he didn’t seem properly asleep, just daydreaming. He was surprised at how cold the hand felt.
‘Hi Willy. It’s Kenny. You mind me from Biddista? You taught me everything I know about boats.’
The old man turned very slowly, opened his eyes and smiled.
‘Of course I mind you, man.’
‘I’ve just come to see how you’re feeling.’
‘Not so well. Things are such a muddle in my head these days. Don’t get old, man. There’s no pleasure in it.’
‘We had grand times, didn’t we, Willy? Those summers when you took us all out fishing. There was the group of us. Bella and Alec Sinclair, Aggie Watt, my wife Edith, who looks after you here, and Lawrence and me.’
Willy sat quite still, staring into space with a sort of fierce concentration.
‘You do remember Lawrence, Willy? My brother Lawrence?’
There was a moment while Willy stared into space.
‘He left Shetland,’ Kenny said. ‘We all thought he left Shetland because Bella Sinclair turned him down.’
‘No,’ Willy said firmly. ‘He’s still here.’ He raised a shaking hand to grasp his tea. ‘He didn’t go anywhere.’
‘Where is he?’
But Willy seemed not to have heard the question. ‘He’s a great one for the fishing,’ he said, and he started a story about taking the boat out with a couple of Englishmen. It was all about a big party Bella was holding and how she wanted fish to serve her guests. Willy gutted them for her and took the heads off. He described that in great detail, the gutting of the fish, as if Kenny had never done it for himself. In the end Kenny only listened with half his mind.
‘Was Lawrence there that night?’ he asked in the end. He wanted to get home in case Jimmy called at Skoles.
‘Of course he was. He wanted fish too.’
Willy closed his eyes again, then opened them slowly. ‘That Englishman came to see me,’ he said. ‘Full of questions. But I told him nothing.’
Kenny was going to touch his hand again, to prompt him back to the present, when the mobile in his pocket started to buzz. He fumbled to get it and answered just before the message service cut in. It was Jimmy Perez. Kenny stood up and walked with the phone out into the car park. Willy seemed not to notice his leaving and the other people watched him go without interest. There were a couple of gulls, very noisy, fighting over a scrap of bread, and for a moment he was distracted. Soon he realized there was no real news.
‘I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you.’
‘I heard about the bones you’d found.’
‘I should have come to tell you, Kenny. But we were so late finishing last night I didn’t want to trouble you. And this morning I’ve been working on the case.’
‘Is it Lawrence?’
‘We won’t know for a while.’
There was a pause. Kenny could tell he was going to add something more, but couldn’t help interrupting. ‘Can’t you do something with DNA?’
‘We’d need bone marrow to do a standard DNA test, and because of where the bones were found we don’t have that. There is a tooth and it’s possible that we could get some dentine. But there’s another test. Mitochondrial DNA. It’s passed down the maternal line. It means you and Lawrence would share it.’ Kenny was trying to focus, to take all this in, but found his thoughts swimming. This is what Willy feels like. He can’t keep a hold on what’s happening around him. He forced himself to listen again to what Perez was saying.
‘Could we take a DNA sample from you? Do you understand, Kenny? We need your DNA to identify your brother.’
‘Of course you can. Of course.’ Kenny felt ridiculously pleased that there was something he could do to help.
‘I’ll come in this evening to take a swab. But it might be very late. Or I could send someone else…’
‘Don’t worry, Jimmy. I’d rather you came. I’ll just stay up until you arrive. It doesn’t matter how late you are.’
‘And Kenny, it’s going to take longer than we’d like to get an answer. About two weeks, because it’s not a standard sort of test. I’m sorry.’
Kenny stood for a moment. He was tempted to go back to Willy, to find out what he knew. Then he realized there were other people in Biddista who should be able to tell him.
Chapter Forty-one
When he came back from seeing Wilding in Buness, Perez returned to the station. He phoned the pathologist in Aberdeen to check the situation on identifying the fragment of bone, then called the Thomson house. Nobody was at home. He knew what Kenny would be thinking and when finally he spoke to him on his mobile he could sense how much he needed an answer.
‘I’m sorry, man. I wish I could make it happen more quickly.’ Perez felt helpless because the test was completely out of his control. But all the time he was thinking that really it didn’t matter. He had a sense of events moving quickly, racing away from him. He thought the case would reach a climax before the results of the mitochondrial DNA test were returned.
He found Taylor at the desk he’d taken over in the incident room. He’d just finished a phone call and an A4 pad covered with scribbled notes lay in front of him. Taylor was hunched over them.
‘I’ve been on to Jebson in West Yorkshire to see if they’ve had anything back yet on emails to and from Jeremy Booth. Post too. They had a search team going through the house. The bin hadn’t been put out since he left and they thought they might find a letter.’
‘Anything useful?’
‘No mail. Jebson did come up with an interesting email contact though. A woman called Rita Murphy who runs a theatrical agency. I’ve just been talking to her. Booth was on her books, had been for years. She comes from Liverpool, like me. We hit it off and she’s been dead helpful.’
Taylor took a swig from a can of Coke. Perez thought he must be exhausted, running on caffeine and will power. ‘It seems Booth hadn’t done much through her in the last few years – most of his time was spent running his own business – but Rita said he liked to keep his hand in by doing bits of theatre if it was offered. They kept in touch, anyway. It sounds as if they’d become good mates.’