To pull himself back he began to fire questions at Perez, who was driving.
‘Are you telling me that in a place as small as this no one can put a name to him?’ He knew Perez would resent the tone, but couldn’t help himself.
Perez paused for a moment before answering. ‘We get fifty thousand visitors a year. Many of them have little contact with local people. It’s not that surprising it’s taking a while to trace him.’
‘All the same, someone must have missed him by now. A guesthouse. Hotel.’
Perez didn’t answer. He had this knack of keeping quiet if he had nothing to say. Taylor had never been able to master it.
The cars slowed down and they pulled up next to a small jetty. It looked to Taylor that they were in the middle of nowhere. You couldn’t call it a village. A couple of houses built along the road and that was it. On the way they’d passed the gallery, which was built almost on the beach. It seemed an odd set-up to Taylor. Who would come all this way to look at a few pictures? Perez had roused himself from his silence to explain that that was the last place the victim had been seen alive.
‘I was there,’ he said. ‘At a party to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.’ Taylor thought he had more to say but was waiting for another time, when there was nobody else listening. He reminded himself to ask him about it when they were alone.
He got out of the car to the shrieking seabirds and the smell of seaweed and bird shit. Behind the row of low houses the hill rose steeply. He thought, Why would anyone want to live here? He recognized it from a documentary there’d been about the folk musician Roddy Sinclair. Quite a long sequence had been taken in Biddista; the camera followed him round the place, showed him talking to the crofters, visiting the shop, drinking with his mates. Then it had been back to London and Glasgow, the music and the groupies.
Taylor didn’t go into the hut. From what Perez had said there’d been enough contamination of the scene already. Now they could let the CSI get on with her work. He’d just wanted to get a feel of the place before they started. And he was glad he’d come. He had this sense that everyone in Biddista was staring at him. He could feel the eyes. He didn’t look at the houses to check if there were people staring from the windows; he didn’t have to. He wouldn’t have understood what that was like just from chatting to Perez. This was a place where it was impossible to keep secrets. He couldn’t believe that nobody knew who had killed the man. Perhaps they all knew. Perhaps it was all one huge conspiracy.
He turned back to Perez. ‘Why don’t we leave them to it? Let’s get into Lerwick, just the two of us, and you can fill me in on the details.’ He phrased it as a suggestion, but he knew Perez would have no choice but to agree.
In the car he was aware of the sea to the right of him, but all his concentration was on Perez. ‘You say you were one of the last people to see the victim alive. What was he doing?’
There was one of those pauses. Perez pulled into a passing place to let a woman in a clapped-out van squeeze by.
‘He was weeping.’
Taylor wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. Not that.
‘What do you mean, weeping? What had upset him?’
Another beat of silence. ‘He didn’t know. Or so he claimed.’ And then Perez told his story. About the stranger who caused a scene at some arty-farty do by bursting into tears and then claiming not to know who he was or how he’d got there. Taylor knew better than to interrupt. He was full of questions, but he had to let Perez tell it in his own way.
‘You see why I believed it could be suicide,’ Perez said. ‘Yet I was never quite convinced.’
‘Were you convinced that the guy had really lost his memory?’
Perez considered. Taylor waited. He wanted to shout, It’s a simple question, man. How long does it take to come up with an answer? He could feel the tension of waiting constricting his breathing.
‘No,’ Perez said at last. ‘I never really was.’ And that was good enough for Taylor. Perez might irritate the shit out of him, but he was the best judge of character Taylor knew. He watched men like David Attenborough watched animals.
‘Why pretend?’
This time the answer came more quickly. ‘I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it since I found the body. Maybe he wanted to spoil the opening of the exhibition. But why would a stranger from England want to do that? What could he have against Bella Sinclair or Fran Hunter?’
Taylor recognized the name. ‘Isn’t that the same woman who found Catherine Ross?’
‘Aye.’ There was a small flutter of the eyelids. ‘That’s why I was there. She’s become a sort of friend.’
Anyone else and Taylor would have taken the piss. What sort of friend would that be, then? The sort you sleep with? But he didn’t want to offend Perez. No way could he work here without the man on his side.
Perez changed the subject. ‘It’s possible that the victim tried to stop the opening from happening at all. Someone went round Lerwick giving out flyers which said it had been cancelled. He was wearing a mask like a clown.’
‘But neither of the artists recognized him?’
A silence. ‘So they say.’ Another pause. ‘The flyer said the opening had been cancelled because of a death in the family. Almost as if he’d been predicting his own murder.’
Lerwick wasn’t as grey as Taylor had remembered, but the last time he’d been here had been midwinter. Today the sun was shining and the people weren’t huddled into heavy coats. The light was reflected from the water. Moored in the harbour was a boat kitted out like a theatre. It had a red tarpaulin banner slung over the side advertising the most recent production.
He nodded towards it. ‘That’s new.’
‘No,’ Perez said. ‘It’s been coming for as long as I can remember, but it’s only here in the summer. It travels around the islands. The visitors like it.’
‘God,’ Taylor said. ‘I’m starving.’ He’d had a horrible bun on the plane and it seemed ages ago.
They bought fish and chips and ate from greasy paper looking over the water. Taylor recalled it wasn’t far from here to where Perez lived.
‘You still in the same place?’
Perez nodded.
‘You haven’t moved in with the gorgeous Ms Hunter yet then?’ He knew it was none of his business but he couldn’t help himself. Curiosity, a vital character trait for a cop. He knew he was a tiny bit jealous too.
Perez finished the last of his chips. ‘It’s not like that.’
Taylor was going to ask what it was like, but the business of the dead stranger was more important.
‘Who do you think killed the victim? Someone local?’
‘There are people in Biddista who have things to hide,’ Perez said at last. ‘But it doesn’t have to be murder.’
Taylor nodded. He understood that. The police turn up at the door and there’s always something to feel guilty about. Speeding. Defrauding the taxman. Having it off with the wife’s best friend. The detective picks up the guilt. It’s easy to believe that it’s to do with the current case.
Perez shook out the chip paper and a couple of herring gulls came squawking at his feet. ‘I need to make a call,’ he said. ‘Meant to do it earlier. Kenny Thomson, the guy who found the body, left a message for me.’
He walked a few feet away from Taylor and stood to his back to him, so he couldn’t hear the conversation. He wasn’t sure he’d have understood it anyway. When Perez lapsed into dialect he could have been talking another bloody language. He remembered how he’d felt when his mother had left them and moved to north Wales. There’d been an access order which his father had kicked off about. The arrangement hadn’t lasted long but for nearly a year Taylor had been sent to spend a weekend with her every month. Walking into a shop, everyone staring, everyone speaking a language he couldn’t understand. He knew they’d been talking about him. And about his mother setting up home with the respectable chapel man. Leading him astray. Hussey. A word stolen from the English.