‘Can I help you?’
Edith Thomson had come up behind him. She wore black trousers and a blue cotton blouse and seemed to him very neat and professional. He saw that she didn’t know him. The voice was polite but rather distant. He held out his hand.
‘Jimmy Perez. It’s about the murder in Biddista.’
‘Of course. Jimmy.’ Now she could place him she relaxed a little. This wasn’t a work-related visit. He wasn’t a relative or a social worker. ‘Is it definitely murder then?’
‘We’re treating the death as suspicious.’
‘Poor Kenny,’ she said. ‘He was so upset when he found the body. And then he got it into his head that it might be Lawrence.’
She, it seemed, didn’t share her husband’s distress. Perez could tell she would answer his questions briskly and efficiently, but he’d never found the direct approach very helpful. People gave away more if they were allowed space to lead the conversation. It was possible then to get a glimpse of their preoccupations and the subjects they hoped to avoid.
‘This must be an interesting place to work,’ he said. ‘These people have so many stories.’
‘We’re trying to record them. Keep the tapes in the museum. Life here is changing so quickly.’
‘Isn’t that Willy in there? I knew him to say hi to at one time, when he lived in Biddista and worked on the roads, but he seemed not to recognize me.’
‘On his bad days he doesn’t recognize anyone,’ she said. ‘He’s full of stories too, but sometimes they’re just a muddle. We can’t make head or tail of them and he gets so frustrated. He has Alzheimer’s. It developed very quickly. Such a shame. He was always a lively man and even when he first moved into sheltered housing he could manage most things for himself.’
‘Could I talk to him later?’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘He’d be glad of the company.’
‘I just need to ask you a few questions first.’
‘Of course. Come through to my office. Coffee?’
The office was as neat and efficient as she was. A beech desk with a PC, clear and uncluttered, a tall filing cabinet. On the wall a planner marked with coloured stars. He wondered how she and Kenny got on together. Did he resent her career, the full days away from the croft? She probably earned more than her husband did. Did she try to organize him as she did her staff? There was a filter-coffee machine on a small table in a corner, a Pyrex jug half full keeping hot. She poured him a mug.
‘Tell me about the night the man died,’ he said.
‘I don’t know exactly when that was. Was it just before Kenny found him?’
‘We assume it was the night of the Herring House party. If not that evening it would have been early the next morning.’
‘I have nothing to tell you. I can’t help you. I didn’t go to the party.’ She sat behind her desk, her hands in her lap; not obstructive, interested, but lacking the excitement that most people seemed to feel when they were involved in a murder inquiry.
‘But you have a good view down to the shore from your house. Perhaps you saw someone leaving the party?’
‘I was in the garden,’ she said. ‘Each year I think I’ll get away with growing a great crop of vegetables, then there’s a west wind and the salt ruins them all. But still I’m optimistic and I weed and water. You can’t see the Herring House from there. Later I had some work to catch up with. I have an office in the spare bedroom. If I did all my paperwork while I was here, I’d never have time to spend with our clients. It’s at the back of the house. You can’t see much but the hill from there.’
‘Kenny thought he saw someone running up the track towards the Manse.’
‘Then I’m sure he did. He’s not one for making things up. And he was on the hill. He’d have a good view from there.’
‘Why do you think Lawrence left home so suddenly?’
The sudden change of tack caught her off guard. She frowned slightly. ‘Kenny said the dead man couldn’t be Lawrence.’
‘I know. I’m interested. It seems so dramatic. To leave like that without any warning and never get back in touch.’
‘He was a great one for the drama,’ she said. ‘The grand gesture. Then after a while, I suppose it would be hard to come back. He’d feel so foolish.’
‘Do you have any idea why he went?’
‘Kenny thought it was all about Bella,’ she said, frowning. ‘I suppose that could have been it. But he was never the most stable sort of man. Did you ever meet him?’
Perez shook his head. ‘I don’t think I did. Were Lawrence and Bella having a relationship?’
‘I’m not sure. She was always an attractive woman. A bit wilful, but men seemed not to mind that. Maybe Lawrence had hopes and Bella strung him along. She loved having admirers.’ Edith paused, looked up at Perez with a grin. ‘I think she still does.’
Perez considered. ‘Does Bella have an admirer at the moment?’
Edith shrugged. ‘How would I know? She’s too grand for us now.’
‘You’d have heard though.’ Perez was quite certain about that. Even if Bella didn’t mix socially with the Biddista folk now, she’d be the subject of talk. And if Edith was too proud to gossip, she’d hear the news, from the staff in the care centre, the clients she worked with, from the relatives.
‘There was some gossip about her and that writer. Peter Wilding. He followed her up here, they say. Rented Willy’s old house just to be close to her.’ She looked at him again to gauge his reaction. ‘It seems a creepy kind of thing to do to me. I wouldn’t want a stranger tracking me down.’
‘Do they say what she thought of that?’
‘She liked the fact that he went to all the bother,’ she said. She sat for a moment in silence, thinking. ‘I’m not sure Bella could ever do a real relationship. It would get in the way of the one thing that’s most important to her.’
‘What’s that?’
She gave a brief mischievous smile. ‘Bella Sinclair. Her work. Her reputation.’
‘Where does Roddy fit into that?’
‘He makes her feel good about herself. And he does her reputation no harm at all either.’
‘Do you not like him then?’
‘Is this relevant to your inquiry?’
‘Probably not. But I’m interested in your opinion.’
‘Everything’s come too easy to him,’ she said. ‘Looks, talent, money. I don’t think that’s good for a young boy. He flaunted all he had in front of our kids. But maybe I’m just jealous. Kenny and me, we had to work for everything we have.’
‘Kenny told me Roddy went out with your daughter a couple of times.’
‘Roddy always has to have a woman in tow. Just like Lawrence in that respect. Someone prettier came along and he dropped her. That made me angry.’
‘He lost his father when he was still a child. And his mother too, in a way.’ He’s lonely, Perez thought. He’s portrayed as a golden boy, but he has no real friends.
She considered for a moment. ‘That’s true,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know Alec very well. He’d already left Biddista when I married Kenny. But you’re right. Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on Roddy.’
‘He spent a lot of time in Biddista when his father was ill. He’d have been around the same age as your children. You say he showed off to them. Did they know each other well when they were younger? Even before he took up with your daughter?’