Chapter Twenty-seven
Sandy was surprised when Perez was at Sumburgh Airport to meet him. He’d left his car there and he could have driven north fine by himself. After a few beers and a meal in the hotel in London he’d slept like a baby until his alarm clock had woken him and in the morning the city hadn’t seemed quite so daunting or closed in.
It helped that he had something physical to bring back to Perez in the form of Hattie’s letters and the SIM card from her mother’s phone. He’d made some notes about the conversation too, but he didn’t trust himself much with words. At least he wasn’t coming back empty-handed.
In the plane he’d looked out for the first sight of Sumburgh Head and landing there he felt relief at being back safely without having messed up in any dramatic way. Then he saw Perez waiting for him in the terminal, leaning against the wall by the car rental desk, and he felt nervous all over again.
‘What’s happened?’ His first thought was that Gwen James had been on the phone to complain about him. Sandy wasn’t sure what he might have done wrong, but that had never stopped him getting into bother. Then he worried about his family.
‘Nothing.’ Perez grinned. ‘I was just curious to hear how you’d got on. I got a lift down from Val Turner. We had a meeting in Lerwick. She’s flying south for a day for a conference.’
‘What did you have to talk to her about?’
‘I wanted to ask her about these bones the girls have been digging up at Setter. Everyone’s assumed that they were hundreds of years old, but we don’t really know that’s the case. If they were more modern we’d look at the recent deaths in quite a different way. Three bodies in the same bit of land. Even the Fiscal would have to accept that was more than a coincidence.’
‘What did Val say? If the body was recent, surely there’d be more than a few bones left.’
‘I suppose so. It doesn’t make sense. It’s probably coincidence. It just seems odd. Both women had a connection with Setter and there’s evidence of another burial there too . . .’ His voice tailed off and he shrugged. ‘Take no notice. I’m probably making too much of it.’
Sandy thought Perez would never have talked to him like that a few months ago, never have taken him into his confidence. There was a moment of the same sort of panic he’d felt before setting off to London. How could he live up to these new expectations? ‘There were always strange stories about Setter,’ he said tentatively.
‘What sort of stories?’ Perez looked up sharply.
Now Sandy wished he’d kept his mouth shut because he didn’t really know, not the details. He half remembered tales of ghosts and the dead walking at night.
‘Some folk didn’t like to go out there after dark. Old folk. It’s all forgotten now.’
‘Would your mother know the stories?’
Sandy shrugged.
Even if she did, she wouldn’t tell you. She’d be frightened of looking foolish.
He changed the conversation. ‘So what did Val say about the bones?’
‘She thought they must be ancient. Another theory down the drain. But she’s fast-tracked them for testing and she’ll let me know as soon as she can.’
The airport was quiet and they sat drinking coffee at one of the tables outside the shop.
‘Have you read all the letters?’ Perez was watching an elderly couple in conversation with the guy at the checkin desk. Sandy followed his gaze. They were holding hands. Gross, he thought. At their age they should keep that sort of thing for their own home.
‘No. Only the most recent one.’
Of course
, Sandy thought,
I should have looked at the letters. Perez would have stayed up all night reading them, worrying at them. He wouldn’t have got pissed on expensive lager in the hotel bar and fallen into a drunken sleep.
In the plane on the way home Sandy had read a glossy men’s magazine with a topless model on the cover; he hadn’t really given a thought to the case.
But Perez made no comment. ‘What was your impression of Gwen James?’
‘Like you said, she felt guilty. She’d done what she thought was the best for her daughter.’ Sandy found himself wanting to show Gwen in a good light. ‘She didn’t want to intrude on Hattie’s life but you could tell she cared about her. I mean, work obviously takes up a lot of her time but that didn’t stop her worrying.’
‘Does she think Hattie killed herself?’
‘She says that Hattie talked about wishing she was dead when she was very depressed but she’d never attempted suicide. And she doesn’t think Hattie was so depressed at the moment. All winter in the university she’d been positive, looking forward to getting back to work in Whalsay. The last letter seemed to be about plans for the future. It was only the phone call that really worried her.’
‘And we can listen to that?’
‘Yes, I’ve brought back the SIM card.’ Sandy had checked his pocket at least a dozen times to make sure it was still there. Now he took it out and gave it to Perez, pleased to be relieved of the responsibility. ‘I said she could have it back once we’ve finished with it. It’s the only record she has of Hattie’s voice.’
‘Of course. You did well to persuade her to let you have it.’
They’d finished their coffee. Sandy had the impression that there was something else Perez wanted to say. They sat for a moment in silence.
‘Should we go then?’ he said at last. He’d never had Perez’s patience.
Again there was a moment of hesitation. It came to Sandy that Perez was as reluctant to go back to Whalsay as he was. It was the muddle that made things difficult. Should they treat the deaths as crimes or not? We re they on the island as part of the community or as investigating officers? The Fiscal would only support them if it suited her and at the moment she was keener on pleasing the politicians.
‘Aye,’ Perez said. ‘We can’t sit here and drink coffee all day.’
Sandy was going to say that Perez was lucky. At least he didn’t have the funeral of the decade to live through on the following morning. Then he thought that might sound childish and ungrateful and it didn’t tie in with his new adult image. And it might sound disrespectful to Mima too. He was proud that he was learning when to keep his mouth shut.
Sandy had expected Perez to come all the way back to Whalsay with him but the inspector asked to be dropped at his house in Lerwick. He said he didn’t need to be in Whalsay; he had other work to do and he should let the Fiscal know how the interview had gone with Gwen James. He’d come back to the island when there was word on the date of the bones.
In Utra, Sandy’s mother hardly seemed to notice he’d returned. Michael and his family were due in on the last plane from Edinburgh. Sandy had thought she’d be full of things to say about Hattie, but the girl’s death seemed to have slipped from Evelyn’s consciousness, pushed out by essentials like what the baby might eat for breakfast and whether Amelia could possibly cope with towels that didn’t match the bedlinen. Sandy was surprised that the whole family would make the trip from Edinburgh to Whalsay. He wondered what his sister-in-law hoped to get out of the trip. Did she think Mima had anything worth leaving?
Joseph had made himself scarce too. Evelyn said he was in Setter making sure the Rayburn was lit and the house fit for Sandy to stay in.
‘I’ll go and see if he needs a hand.’ Sandy had bought a bottle of single malt at Heathrow. He tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket and walked down the track towards Setter. The weather was fine and still. He thought in London it would never matter what the weather was like and which way the wind was blowing.
Joseph was squatting in front of the Rayburn. The fire had gone out. He was plaiting twisted pages of newspaper and laying kindling on top of it. He heard Sandy come in and smiled when he saw who it was.
‘There’s a pile of peats in the yard. You’ll not go cold at least.’
Sandy took the bottle from his jacket with the air of a conjuror. ‘You’ll take a dram.’
‘Aye well, maybe a small one. Can’t go back drunk with Michael and his wife about to arrive. What would your mother say?’
They smiled conspiratorially.
‘Well,’ Sandy said, ‘if it gets too much for you over the next day or two you can always hide away here.’
Joseph put a match to the paper and the kindling flared and caught. He set a peat on top of it, then another. The smell of peatsmoke filled the room, caught Sandy’s throat and reminded him so vividly of Mima that he had to blink to be sure she wasn’t there too.
Sandy turned away and brought two tumblers from the cupboard on the wall, rubbed the dust away with a tea-towel hanging on the range, poured out the whisky. His father shut the Rayburn door. They clinked glasses, a silent toast to Mima, and settled to drink.
‘Did you hear they’d found some more old bones after Mother dug up the skull?’ Sandy thought his father would surely know. He never seemed to be listening to gossip, but he had Mima’s genius for sniffing out what was going on in the island. ‘They could belong to an ancestor of ours. What do you think?’
‘I think they should stop digging up the Setter land.’ The voice was hard, quite unlike Joseph’s. Sandy looked up, shocked. He’d never heard his father talk like that before, even when he was a boy and he’d misbehaved. Joseph continued: ‘I think if they hadn’t been mucking around here my mother would still be alive.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Two deaths in a week,’ Joseph said. ‘When was the last time anyone died from anything other than natural causes on Whalsay?’
Sandy wasn’t sure his father was expecting a reply, said nothing.
‘Well?’ Joseph demanded.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’ve been trying to think,’ Joseph said. ‘My father was lost at sea. That was more than fifty years ago. I can’t mind any accidents since then. And now two people dead in a week. I never liked the idea of strangers rooting around in the ground and I wasn’t the only person in the island to feel that way. Mima was an old woman but she wasn’t ready to die. The English lass was a child. Now you say they’ve dug up a pile of bones.’
‘Not a pile,’ Sandy said. ‘And old bones. Likely hundreds of years old.’
‘I don’t care. I’ll go and see that Paul Berglund tomorrow morning before the funeral. I’ll tell him I want them to leave. I don’t care what arrangement he made with Mima. This is my land now. It shouldn’t be disturbed.’
Sandy sat, feeling the heat come off the Rayburn and the whisky in his throat, wondering what he could say to make his father less miserable. It wasn’t like him to be superstitious. Why hadn’t he realized his father was so upset? Joseph would never let on what he was feeling, but Sandy should have known Mima’s death would have hurt him more than he was showing.
‘I’ll speak to Berglund,’ he said at last. ‘You’ll have enough to do tomorrow.’
‘Your mother won’t like it.’ Sandy expected another sly conspiratorial smile, but Joseph was quite serious. ‘You know she has plans for this place.’
‘A fancy museum, with her in charge,’ Sandy said. ‘Aye well, she’ll have to find herself another project, something else to fill her time.’
‘It hasn’t been easy for her, living with me. I was a poor sort of catch as a husband. We never had as much money as the other families in Lindby.’ Joseph reached out and poured himself another dram. Michael and the Edinburgh wife were forgotten. ‘You should be easier on her. She hated it when we couldn’t give you things the bairns from the fishing families had.’
‘You’ve always looked after her well enough,’ Sandy said. ‘We never went short.’ Outside it was already starting to get dark; it was still early in the year and the sun was low in the sky.
‘That was down to her more than me. She was a magician with money, always had a way to make it stretch.’ Despite the warmth still left in the day, Joseph reached his hands out towards the range. His face was a shadow.
‘What do you plan to do with Setter?’ Sandy asked. As he did with Perez, he felt his relationship with his father was different from how it had been in the past, more equal. He was being taken more seriously. And he thought if he could bring his father back to practical matters the man might be more his old self. ‘I wondered if you’d consider moving back here.’
‘Oh I don’t think I could do that!’
‘Why not?’
‘You can never go back. Never relive your life.’ Joseph drained his glass, paused. ‘I wondered if you’d want Setter. I always thought I’d make a good crofter out of you. You’ve got a way with the beasts.’
‘No!’ Sandy realized he sounded horrified and that his father would be offended, but he could think of nothing worse. To live where his mother could always find him, to have his life the subject of island speculation, his girlfriends scrutinized. To have his skills always measured against those of his father. ‘I have thought about it,’ he said. ‘But it wouldn’t work. I’ve got my job. I love it.’ As soon as the words were spoken he knew they were true.
‘Of course,’ Joseph said. ‘It was a stupid thought.’
‘I’ll see Berglund in the morning, tell him we want the place to ourselves for a while.’
‘Aye, you do that.’ Joseph got up. He walked towards the sink to rinse his glass under the tap.
‘Leave it,’ Sandy said. ‘I’ll see to it later.’ He stood too. They faced each other. There was a moment of silence.
‘We’d best get back,’ Joseph said at last. ‘Your brother should be here soon. Evelyn will be sending out a search party.’
