‘You haven’t heard of any strangers around? Maybe one of the houses on the way to Middleton has started taking paying guests?’
She shook her head. ‘Not that I’ve heard.’ She cracked one of the eggs against the bowl and used both thumbs to pull the shell apart. ‘It couldn’t have been Peter Wilding? He’s the man who’s taken over Willy’s house. He’s an Englishman.’
‘Martin would have recognized him. He met my stranger last night.’
‘Then I can’t help you.’
‘Have you had any visitors into the shop in the last few days?’
‘A few. A group of young Australians at the beginning of the week wanting cold drinks. And there was a tour bus yesterday. It stopped at the Herring House so folk could have coffee. Most of them walked down here afterwards to stretch their legs, buy postcards and sweeties. But they were all elderly people. How old is your man?’
‘Not that old. Forty. Forty-five.’
‘Not old at all then.’ Another egg went into the bowl. She sifted a spoonful of flour on top, folded it in carefully.
Perez waited until she’d finished before asking, ‘Where did Alice get the clown’s mask?’
‘Why do you need to know, Jimmy? Do you want to get one for Fran Hunter’s lass?’ A faint mischievous smile, hoping to make him react again.
‘No, not that.’ He paused, then thought there was no harm in telling her. Word would get out soon enough.
‘The dead man was wearing something like it.’
She stood quite still, the bowl under one arm, the spoon in her other hand. Perhaps she had the picture in her head of a man she didn’t know, the kiddies’ mask around his head. ‘I didn’t buy that thing for Alice.’
‘Neither did Martin.’
‘It must have been Dawn then. If you like I’ll talk to the child. See if she remembers. If you think it’s important . . .’
He shrugged. ‘It might help us identify him. There’s not much else to go on.’
He was thinking that he might ask Dawn about the mask. She’d know more about it than Alice. He was intrigued by the coincidence and was tempted to drive to Middleton to talk to her. But he couldn’t justify the time. He wanted an incident room ready and waiting when the Inverness boys got in. He didn’t want them thinking the Shetland team couldn’t handle a serious crime. Last time they were here the thing had dragged on too long. Besides, he didn’t want to make such a big deal of the man and the mask. If he turned up at the school and pulled Dawn out of her class, he’d have rumours spreading throughout the islands. He remembered the last murder they’d had in Shetland, the fear that seemed to freeze the community and change it into a quite different place. This was different. This was a stranger. But he didn’t want that icy panic to take over again.
‘If Alice can’t help, maybe you could mention it to Dawn,’ he said.
‘I will.’
‘And I don’t want news of this getting out just yet. I’d like to inform the relatives first.’ If we can ever find them.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll not tell anyone and I’ll ask Dawn to keep it to herself.’ She spoke with a quiet assumption that her request would be honoured. Perez couldn’t imagine Fran being as compliant with his mother’s wishes. She’d had a successful career before she moved to Shetland. Her confidence had taken a bit of a knock recently, but she still knew her own mind. Fran and my mother, he thought. How will that work?
Aggie set down the mixing bowl and walked with him to the door. He realized for the first time that she was anxious for him to be gone.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Perhaps this is difficult for you. The way Andrew died . . . I should have realized.’
She gave him a long, hard stare. ‘My husband’s death was an accident. Not like this at all.’
‘Of course.’ He could feel his face become red, turned away quickly and walked out.
Back in the street he heard the distant sound of a foghorn. Here the sun was still shining and he thought at first they were testing it. Sometimes they did that and it always shocked him, hearing the great booming noise in full sunlight. Then out to sea he saw the thick bank of mist. It was just below the horizon but it was rolling closer. Further south it must already have hit the land.
Sandy had strung the tape around the hut. Blue and white. POLICE. DO NOT ENTER. There was a police car parked, blocking off any vehicular access to the jetty. Now Perez could send Sandy back to Lerwick. It was just a matter of saving the scene from any further contamination before the CSI arrived. He wondered if Sandy had thought to tell the doctors that the CSI would need their shoes, and maybe their clothes for comparison. It was his fault; he should have reminded him.
He was halfway along the road when his phone rang. Morag, one of his team. He’d set her to book places on the last plane for the Inverness team.
‘What’s it like there with you?’
‘Sorry?’ Was she being polite? Passing the time of day? Did she have no sense of urgency?
‘I’ve just had Sumburgh on the phone. They’ve got thick fog.’
‘Any chance of it lifting this afternoon?’
‘I’ve just been on to Dave Wheeler.’ Dave was the met. man who lived in Fair Isle. He took all the weather readings for the shipping forecast. ‘Highly unlikely, he says. And the airport say they’re not expecting any more planes in or out today.’
Perez switched off his phone and stood for a moment. The sun was already covered in a milky haze. So the team from Inverness wouldn’t be in today. If the fog stayed down and they had to get the ferry tomorrow evening they wouldn’t arrive until seven o’clock the following morning. He was in charge. It was his investigation. He’d thought it was what he always wanted.
His phone rang again. ‘Jimmy. It’s Roy Taylor here. From Inverness.’
So, not his case at all.
‘This is how I want you to play it until we arrive.’
Chapter Eleven
Singling neeps was the sort of job you could only do if your mind was somewhere else. It hurt your back, and thinning out the tiny turnip plants took no concentration or thought. It was mindless. The worst thing was when you looked up, thinking that by now you must have nearly finished, done half the field at least, you’d see you’d hardly started and there were rows and rows still left ahead of you.
When they’d been boys, Kenny and Lawrence had played games to make it less boring. Had races, working down the rows next to each other. Lawrence always won. He was faster at most things than Kenny. But not so thorough. Kenny’s rows were always tidier, the plants evenly spaced, so he hadn’t minded Lawrence winning. Though it would have been nice to be first once in a while.
Today, while he was working in the field, Kenny found himself thinking quite a lot about when they were children. The games they’d all played together. Perhaps that was to take his mind off the sight of the body swinging from the roof of his hut, the hut he’d built with Lawrence. He wondered if he’d think of the dead man every time he went in there to get his boat ready.
He’d begun with the neeps as soon as Perez had gone and now it was time to stop for lunch, but he had that compulsion to carry on, at least until he’d come to the end of the row. So he pushed the hoe backwards and forwards down the line and remembered what it had been like here nearly fifty years ago. When he’d been a peerie boy, all scabbed knees and snotty nose, blushing like a girl whenever anyone spoke to him.