She flinched at the sharpness in his words.
‘I expect I can find you something,’ she said.
She didn’t invite him in, but he followed her into the restaurant and through into the kitchen. He thought she seemed at home there. ‘Do you help Martin out often?’
‘If he’s busy. Preparations for events.’
‘Did you help out before the opening of Miss Sinclair’s exhibition?’
‘Just arranging tables in the afternoon. Folding napkins, that sort of thing. Not on the night. I used to help Bella when she had parties at the Manse, but always behind the scenes.’
He thought she would be too timid to serve the public. ‘What were the parties like?’ he asked. ‘I guess they’d be grand affairs.’
‘You could never tell.’ She gave a little smile. ‘Sometimes I’d turn up expecting champagne and canapés and they’d all be eating beans on toast round the kitchen table. I’m not sure what her guests made of it.’
‘Do you remember any of the guests?’
‘No, not after all this time. The big parties stopped long ago.’ But she spoke so quickly that he wasn’t sure he believed her.
‘Did everyone from Biddista go too?’
‘Mostly it was the men who got the invites,’ she said. ‘Alec, of course, when he was well enough. He was Bella’s brother. And Kenny, though he wasn’t so keen. And Lawrence. Bella always preferred the company of men.’
‘Tell me what it was like,’ he said, ‘growing up in a place like this. I just can’t get my head round it. Everyone knowing your business.’
‘Oh, we all hang on to our little bit of privacy. It’s the only way we keep sane.’
She seemed embarrassed then to have spoken so freely and opened the door of the big fridge. ‘I could do a round of cheese and a round of ham. Maybe some pâté if you’d like it.’
‘Can you make it a couple of each? There are a few of us.’
‘I thought you’d finished up on the hill.’ She was slicing bread and stopped, the knife poised, watching for his answer.
‘Not quite,’ he said easily. Then added, just to see her reaction, ‘Something’s come up.’
‘Why?’ she asked quickly. ‘What have you found?’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t discuss the investigation with anyone.’ He tried to smile reassuringly. She was so anxious, he wanted to put her at her ease, even though he’d provoked the response. He could feel the tension in her like an infection which he was already catching. ‘Is there anything you think we should know?’
She bent her head over the sandwiches, so he couldn’t see her face. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course not. We just want it to be over.’
He wondered if he should push it, imagined again the whole valley in a conspiracy of silence. But she seemed so closed off from him that he didn’t think it would be any use.
She made a flask of tea and another of coffee and wrapped the sandwiches in foil and cut half a fruit cake from a tin. She wouldn’t take any money. ‘I’m sure Bella would want me to help you.’
She stood at the door of the gallery and watched him walk up the road, as if she wanted to be sure that he’d really gone.
By the time he got back to the hill a large piece of jawbone had been found. This fragment had two teeth attached. But the climbers said they’d only just started. Perez was on the phone to track down a generator and lights. They thought they’d be at it well into the night.
Chapter Thirty-seven
When Perez arrived at the house in Ravenswick it was half-past midnight, but Fran was still up. She’d said that she would be. There’d been a brief guarded phone call with Taylor listening in. He was on the hill and his mobile reception was dreadful, so her words kept breaking up.
‘I need to talk to you,’ she’d said. ‘It doesn’t matter how late it is. I’ve been to see Bella. It’s important.’
She would have told him over the phone what was troubling her, but Perez didn’t want that. He was focused now on the climbers sifting through debris and he didn’t want to prolong the conversation. Taylor was critical enough as it was. He was right: Perez should have organized a more thorough search of the cliff and the cave when Roddy’s body was found. This wasn’t the time for a personal conversation.
When he got to her place, she was sitting at the table reading. The house was quiet. No music. He watched her through the window, one side of her face caught in the glow of a table lamp. She must have heard his car as a background noise in her head, but she continued to read, frowning with concentration, her attention held by the words on the page. She only turned when he tapped at the door and walked in. Then she stood up and put her arms around his neck and pulled him to her.
‘You’re cold,’ she said. ‘The water’s hot if you want a bath.’
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t talk earlier.’ On the way back he’d wondered what she could want to talk about. It sounded ominous. ‘We need to talk.’ Sarah had said that when she’d told him she was leaving him. It had come as a complete shock. Perhaps he should have seen it coming, but it had never occurred to him. He’d known she was sad, but had thought it was the miscarriage. She would need time to get over that. He needed time himself to come to terms with it. He hadn’t realized he was the problem.
‘It’s about the case,’ Fran said now. ‘I think it could be important.’
He felt relief, followed by irritation. He’d hoped he could forget the case for the night.
‘I went to see Bella. She thinks she knew Jeremy Booth after all.’
‘She recognized the name?’
‘Perhaps that was partly it. I think it’s more that she’s been hiding in the past. Escaping from Roddy’s death by living in her memories. She remembered seeing him. Her memory will be very visual, and although he’d changed a lot something about his face came back to her.’
‘Where did she know him from?’
‘Shetland. Biddista. One summer she seems to have run a sort of artists’ commune in the Manse. He turned up and stayed. I don’t think she can remember how she came to invite him, only that he was there. And that he was an actor with a fondness for practical jokes.’
‘When was that?’
‘About fifteen years ago. That was what she said, but she was very vague about the details.’
‘Why would he have wanted to spoil the opening of her exhibition after all this time? Does she know?’
‘He’d told her he was in love with her, apparently! But she hadn’t heard from him since then. She said she didn’t recognize him on the night of the exhibition.’
‘Are you sure? It seems a bit odd, memories of that summer only coming back to her now.’
‘Bella is a bit odd, don’t you think? Especially now, with Roddy gone. She told me she’d put that summer out of her mind – I suppose because it was when Lawrence left. I’m not sure. I think she’s reliving happier times now – when Roddy was a child – and former glories. All those men besotted with her. It’s an escape from the grief.’
‘But nobody else in Biddista remembers Booth.’
‘It was fifteen years ago. That summer strange people were coming and going to the Manse all the time. I’d have been astonished if anyone had recognized him.’
He was surprised that he didn’t feel more tired. Driving to her house, his mind had been clear, as if the evening was just beginning, as if he’d just finished a normal day’s work. ‘Would you mind if I had a drink?’ he asked.
‘Of course. What would you like? Wine, beer whisky?’