‘What about the other people in the valley?’ Perez asked. ‘Did Bella employ them too?’
‘Edith came in occasionally when there was a big party, but not so often. She never really got on with Bella. She’d had two children very close together and though they were a bit older by then she still had her hands full with them. And Kenny’s father was still living. He was a demanding old man.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘Well of course Bella paid Lawrence and Kenny to work on the Herring House. It was one of those jobs we thought would never get finished. When she bought the building first we all decided she was mad. It was just a shell with a rusty corrugated-iron roof, nowhere near the size it is now. They almost built it from new, just using the old stone and some of the old timber. And now look how lovely it is, with the gallery and the restaurant.’
‘The restaurant’s a recent feature,’ Martin said. ‘It only opened five years ago.’
‘What about the gallery?’ Perez asked. ‘When was that completed?’
‘The boys worked on it in stages,’ Aggie said. ‘Because they could only do bits and pieces in the evenings. Kenny had the croft and Lawrence was doing building for other folks in the day. Folks who were willing to pay. It was almost finished when Lawrence left the island. We decided he waited until it was done before he went. He couldn’t bear to leave it half finished.’
‘Did he tell you he was going?’
‘No, but I wasn’t surprised when he went. He’d been kind of restless all that summer.’
‘That was the hot summer, the summer Bella had her house parties.’
‘That would have been the one. Kenny had some work away for part of it. He wasn’t around so much. But Lawrence was there. Bella would invite him as a guest to the parties.’
‘What did he make of it all?’
‘He behaved like a great court jester, playing to the gallery. I hated to see it. He was a good man but he had a sort of short fuse on him. He should have carried himself with a bit more dignity. He believed all those fancy artists and writers thought he was such a clever, witty fellow, but they were laughing at him behind his back. Calling him a clown.’
‘You sound as if you were very fond of him, Aggie.’
She blushed. Very suddenly, so he felt as if he’d hit her with his words, marked her face.
‘I didn’t mind him playing the fool. Better that than when he lost his temper. Besides, he didn’t try so hard for me as he did for the soothmoothers.’
‘Were you ever more than friends, Aggie?’
He thought she would blush again, but she answered with great dignity. ‘We were friends. Nothing more than that. All that showing off wouldn’t have suited me, and I was married to Andrew.’ Then she paused. ‘I always felt a little bit sorry for Kenny. He was the one playing second fiddle. He was the quiet one, the dark horse; Lawrence was full of laughter and sunshine, all show.’ She looked up at him. ‘Take no notice of me. I’m just being foolish.’
But that summer Kenny was in Fair Isle, Perez thought. A boat or plane ride away.
‘Tell me, Aggie, did Roddy spend much time in Biddista then? He’d only have been a boy. How old? Five? Six? At school in Lerwick during the week, but he’d maybe come to visit at the weekends.’
‘Most weekends. And sometimes during the week too. He could twist Bella round his little finger even then. “I’ve got a tummy ache, Auntie. I can’t go to school.” And there was one period when Alec was away in the hospital and he went to the school in Middleton. Aye, he was always in the Manse, getting under my feet when I was trying to get things ready for the people who were staying.’
‘Do you remember any of the visitors, Aggie? Any of the men who came up from the south to stay with Bella?’
‘I never really met them,’ she said. ‘They were so loud and full of opinions I wouldn’t have known what to say to them.’
‘You never met any of them again?’
‘How would I do that?’
‘Two of them came back,’ Perez said. ‘Peter Wilding was one. He lives in the house next door. He uses the post office. He hasn’t changed so much. Did you never recognize him?’
‘No,’ Aggie said very quickly. ‘How would I remember him after all this time?’
‘And he never said anything to you? Not a hint about the old times?’
‘Nothing. He’d certainly not mind me, after all. I’d be pouring the drinks and clearing plates. Would you remember the face of a waitress who served you in a restaurant fifteen years ago?’
‘No,’ Perez admitted. ‘Probably not.’
‘Who was the other man who came back?’ Martin broke into the conversation abruptly. It was hard now to believe that he was a man famous for his jokes, for laughing at his father’s funeral.
‘That was Jeremy Booth, the man who was found hanged in the hut on the jetty. He was here that summer too.’
Chapter Forty-three
Perez left the house and stood in the street. It was very quiet. The wind had dropped with the full tide. A family of eider duck floated on the water near the shore. He walked back past the Herring House. There was a path that led that way up towards the hill and back down to Skoles. It would save him having to pass Wilding’s place; he couldn’t face being a subject of the writer’s voyeurism tonight. But perhaps Wilding wasn’t at home. Perhaps he was in Buness, supervising some work to his new house. Perez thought Fran could be there too, discussing flooring and wallpaper, and the idea gave him a chill of unease. Then he thought she wouldn’t be so foolish. Not until the investigation was over.
He walked out on to the open hill to the sound of skylark and curlew and into a raw orange light. It must already be late in the evening, because the huge ball of the sun was dipping towards the cliff-edge. There too, silhouetted, was the figure of a man, unrecognizable at this distance. A gothic figure against the setting sun.
Although he couldn’t make out the man’s features, had to squint against the light to make him out at all, Perez knew who it was. He wasn’t prepared for the encounter. Things had moved more quickly than he’d expected. He was tempted to turn away, to wait for Taylor, who might have evidence. But the man was right at the edge of the cliff, on the narrow bridge of rock between the Pit o’ Biddista and the sea. Perez thought the hot summer fifteen years before had resulted in enough loss. He’d allowed Jeremy Booth to run away from him to his death after the Herring House party, and was still troubled by a nagging guilt. How much worse would that be if he made no effort to stop this man jumping?
He walked quickly over the grass, swearing under his breath when he twisted his ankle on a clump of heather. As he approached the cliff-edge, the sound of the seabirds got louder and the orange light stronger, so his head seemed filled with the noise and the light and he couldn’t think clearly at all.
Kenny Thomson didn’t hear Perez approaching. Perez thought the man was so wrapped up in his own thoughts that if Perez had been accompanied by the whole Up Helly Aa marching band, he still wouldn’t have noticed. Kenny stood very close to the cliff-edge, with the Pit at his back. Perez called to him.
‘Come away, Kenny. Come here where I can talk to you.’
The man turned slowly.
‘I’m fine where I am. And I’ve nothing to say.’
‘I can’t shout at you across all this space, man. Not about this. Not about Lawrence.’
Kenny turned again, so once more he was facing the sea.
Perez inched closer, felt his stomach tilt and turn. Now he could see the waves breaking on the outlying stacks. The sound of the water seemed to take a long time to reach him. He had an image of Roddy’s body, smashed in the Pit. He stumbled, and although he was still yards from the edge his heart seemed to stop. A pebble, loosened by his foot, rolled and bounced down the rock until it was lost in the spray at the bottom.