Shetland 05: Dead Water (37 page)

He almost ran up the steep wooden stairs to the attic. He couldn’t find a switch on the sloping wall and turned on a standard lamp. It threw odd shadows in the room, made the colours rich and exotic. Still no sign of the Fiscal. Against the wall were some of Agnes’s canvases. Paintings she’d been working on in the last stage of her illness. On one wall there was a sketch that Perez hadn’t noticed on his first visit, and he only saw it now because the lamp shone directly onto it. He recognized it immediately as a drawing of the painting that hung in Rhona’s bedroom in the Old Schoolhouse. The large seascape. Had Henderson given it to Rhona after Agnes died? A parting gift? It seemed quite out of character for the man he thought he’d come to understand. Again, he thought this case was much more complicated than he’d realized. But there was no time to consider that now.

Outside, the drizzle had turned to rain. It flattened his hair and ran down his collar, but he hardly noticed. It was a weird thought that a few miles up the road the world was continuing as normal. People chatting about the weather and last night’s television, sitting in living rooms and kitchens, getting bored and drinking coffee. Out here, and in Jimmy Perez’s head, it was hard to believe that anything would be normal again. In his head there was a picture of Evie Watt, looking young and bonny, smiling. Then Evie Watt as a scarecrow in a make-believe wedding dress. His phone went. Reception was dreadful and he struggled to make out the words. He walked back up the hill until he found a spot where the call became clearer and spoke for a few minutes, then switched the phone off and almost ran down the road towards the pier.

His was still the only car there. No sound at all except for water. The rain on the stone pier and the tide slapping against the harbour wall, so high that it almost washed over the top. It seemed that even the fishing boat had disappeared. Maybe the boys were at home now, sharing a beer. He walked on along the track towards the old salmon hatchery, to the building that would become an electricity substation when Evie’s grand scheme was played out. It had turned to mud and he slithered and tripped in one place. Shining his torch towards his feet, he saw at least two sets of footprints. But no car tracks. Even in this weather it would be possible to get a four-wheel-drive vehicle down here, but there was no sign of that having happened.

As he approached the old hatchery he sensed he wasn’t alone. There were voices. He supposed they were coming from inside the building. He’d reached it without realizing and switched off his torch immediately, hoping the light hadn’t shone through a crack in the door, through the crumbling stones. He couldn’t make out the words. The walls of the building were thick. Then there was silence, so he wondered if he’d imagined the sound, if his depression had created the voices and they were inside his head and not out there in the real world.

He stood where he was, incapable of moving or of coming to a decision. He must look ridiculous, standing here in the wet. Impotent. And suddenly he experienced the rage he’d felt when Fran had been killed, the desire to make someone – anyone – pay. A blind, confusing anger.

‘What are you doing here, Jimmy?’ The voice was like an echo of the voice in his head. There was the same bewilderment and the same madness. For an instant Jimmy didn’t respond because he thought he was imagining the question, just as he’d thought he’d imagined the voices in the shed.

The boat
, he thought.
Not boys out after creels. Of course the killer came by boat.
A stab of sanity.

The voice persisted. ‘Why don’t you just walk away, Jimmy? Back to your car and the real world. You know what it’s like to need justice done.’ Besides the weird feelings of disconnection, Perez experienced a sense of triumph, because he recognized the voice and realized he’d been right about the identity of the killer. He was still good at this business. His brain was working.

He found it impossible to pinpoint the direction from which the voice was coming. And for a moment he was tempted. What business was this of his, after all? He could get in his car and drive to Duncan Hunter’s house, which was only a couple of miles away as the crow flew. He could sweep Cassie into his arms and take her home with him and first thing in the morning they could get a plane south. He even began planning where they should go. To see Fran’s parents, of course. They were lovely people and always eager to see their granddaughter. He imagined the warm welcome there would be. Hot chocolate for Cassie and tea for him. Toast and honey.

Then he heard another sound, a moan stifled by the weather. He thought it must come from the hatchery, but it was impossible to tell. He shouted. ‘Where are you?’ and felt the sound of his voice vibrate around the place, washed away by the rain.

‘This won’t look like murder.’ The killer’s voice was reasonable. ‘This will be put down as an accident at sea. You know how many ships have been lost out here on the Rumble. You know what the tide would do to a body in this water.’

And suddenly Perez’s mind cleared and thoughts were firing into his brain, fast and sharp. It was adrenaline perhaps. A need to survive. Not for himself, but because he had an obligation to Fran’s child. The killer would have left the building and would be standing between him and his car; the invitation to walk away was a trap. Of course Perez wouldn’t be allowed to leave here alive. Not now that he knew the identity of the murderer.

‘Rhona Laing is a fine sailor,’ Perez said. ‘Nobody will believe in an accident. Not in calm weather like this.’

‘Suicide then.’ The killer was dismissive. ‘Why not? Even better because folk will think she killed Markham and Henderson.’

Another silence. Perez strained to pick up the slightest noise. A footstep or a clearing of the throat that would mark the presence of the murderer. This was a horrifying version of Blind Man’s Bluff. But the ground was so soft that boots would make no noise. Perez kept as still as he could. The tide must be on the turn, because the water washed against the pier now and not over it. The sound was quite different. It sucked on the shingle on the beach.

Then he heard the cry again, this time louder. A woman’s voice, reminding him again of Fran by the edge of the pool in Fair Isle. And, very close to him, the faint rustle of a waterproof jacket. He held his breath. No rational thought now. The killer couldn’t see him and had no idea that Perez was so near. Another sound. Wheezing. Perez launched himself towards the sound and pulled the killer to the ground, had his arm around the man’s neck, could feel his hair against his own face and the man’s skin, the hardness of bone and teeth through his own cheek. Perez tightened his grip and felt the man grow weaker.

Then suddenly everything was light. Blinding, so that Perez had to shut his eyes. Only two fierce torches, but still after the thick darkness the white light was shocking. And that was when he heard Willow’s voice.

‘That’s enough, Jimmy. We’ll take over now.’ And, when he kept his grip around the man’s neck, ‘Let him go, Jimmy. That’s enough.’

Chapter Forty-Six

‘So,’ Sandy said. ‘How did you know that Evie’s father killed Markham and Henderson?’

It was a full day later and they were in Perez’s house in Ravenswick. A fire in the grate and another bottle of Willow Reeves’s Hebridean whisky on the table.

‘I didn’t
know
,’ Perez said. ‘Not until I saw him there at the pier at Hvidahus.’
But I never trusted him. People who are certain have always scared me.
‘I thought he would do anything to make his daughter happy.’ He paused. Confession wasn’t his style, but he thought they deserved an explanation. ‘It came to me when I drove into Ravenswick one evening and saw Cassie looking out of the window of our friends’ house. She was looking out for me. I thought then that I’d kill to keep her safe.’ He turned away, embarrassed, before continuing. ‘Francis loved Evie. She was more important to him than his son, who wasn’t interested in returning to the islands. She represented the future of Shetland to him. One day she would take over his business, live in his house in Fetlar. He’d become kind of obsessed with her. A danger when you’re a parent. Sometimes you have to let your kids live their own lives. You have to risk them getting hurt. But I thought Francis might be proud to think that he’d killed to save her pain.’

There was a silence in the room.

‘And he had a terrible temper,’ Perez went on. ‘Maria confirmed that, didn’t she, Sandy? I wanted you to ask her about Francis coming to the hotel when he found out that Evie was pregnant. She’d told me that he’d been foaming at the mouth with rage, but that’s the sort of thing people say. I needed to know if it was true.’

‘It was your third question for her,’ Sandy said. ‘Maria said Francis was wild, raving. He hit Peter and gave him a black eye. She’d wanted to make a formal complaint, but Peter wouldn’t hear of it.’

‘Francis couldn’t stand the idea that Henderson’s affair with the Fiscal might be made public,’ Perez said. ‘But he was much more bothered that Markham would tell Evie about it and spoil her wedding than with any notion of public shame. As Francis saw it, the man had already ruined his daughter’s life once. And Markham threatened to tell Evie everything. He thought it would be the right thing to do, that Evie deserved to understand that John wasn’t as perfect as she assumed him to be. The idea of it drove Francis mad. He was delighted that Evie was marrying the man everyone thought they knew: John Henderson, man of religion and the closest thing to a saint there is in the islands. John Henderson who’d nursed his dying wife. Imagine the scandal there’d be if folk found out that he’d been slipping off on Friday nights to have recreational sex with a stuck-up soothmoother. And how would Evie feel about it? Francis thought she’d be so devastated that she’d cancel the wedding. And, without John’s support, she’d never return to Fetlar and take over the family business. It would be the end of his world.’

The peats in the fire shifted and smoked.

‘There had always been rumours that Rhona Laing had a secret lover,’ Perez went on. ‘A dark stranger who arrived by boat and disappeared again before first light. It wasn’t quite like that, but the storytellers almost got it right. And we know that Ms Laing wasn’t squeamish about adultery. She’d had a relationship with Richard Grey after all. Then Agnes died, and the affair with Henderson ended and Markham went off to London, and the Fiscal must have thought it was all over and forgotten.’

‘I don’t understand where Markham came into it in the first place.’ Willow reached out and took a slug of whisky.

‘Markham knew.’ Perez thought Markham hadn’t been the only one in the islands to guess about the affair. But he’d been the only person to exploit the knowledge. ‘It must have been while he was still working at the
Shetland Times
. He blackmailed John and Rhona. He was a horrible man in those days. I’d guess it was the Fiscal who paid up. That’s how Markham could afford that fancy red car. Everyone thought it was a gift from his parents.’

‘But that was years ago.’ Sandy was drinking beer, not whisky. He’d be the one to drive Willow Reeves back to her hotel at the end of the night. ‘Why couldn’t they all just let things be?’

‘Because Markham was a changed man,’ Willow said. ‘Isn’t that right, Jimmy? He fell in love and got religion all at the same time. A heady mix.’

Perez thought that Markham’s conversion, his determination to be a good man, had led to two murders.

‘I think he really had changed. Or he believed that he had. Maria sent him the cutting from the
Shetland Times
, which announced Evie’s engagement to John Henderson.’ Perez wondered what would have happened if Markham had never seen the announcement. Perhaps he’d have stood at the font in the smart Hampstead church while the holy water was dribbled over his head, then gone on to marry Annabel Grey and live happily ever after.

He lifted a peat from the bucket by the hearth and threw it onto the fire. ‘Perhaps Markham still felt guilty about extorting money from the Fiscal and about the way he’d treated Evie. And he didn’t want Evie to be hurt again by a man who had betrayed his dying wife. We know that Markham talked about betrayal to Annabel. In any event, Markham came north in an attempt to put things right. To be honest. He planned to tell his parents about Annabel too, I think. He would have done it the night he died. But mostly it was about coming to terms with his past, making himself feel better.’

They sat for a moment in silence. A car with a faulty exhaust was driving down the road towards the jetty. Perez knew the sound – it belonged to his neighbour. The fire smoked a little.

‘That seems very self-centred,’ Willow said. ‘Didn’t he think of the effect that would have on the people involved?’

Perez looked up at her. ‘Probably not,’ he said. ‘Maybe Markham was still a selfish man. And aren’t we all a little self-centred?’

There was another comfortable silence, before Perez continued speaking.

‘On his first night at home, Markham told his mother that he wouldn’t need her cash any more. That wasn’t because he was planning blackmail, or because he was marrying into money. It was to show her that he was different. At last he was starting to grow up. Mark Walsh’s invitation to the Hvidahus action group gave him the excuse he needed to be here, and I think he had decided that the friction over the new energies really might make a decent story. He asked Peter to set up an appointment at Sullom Voe and arranged to meet Reg Gilbert. Vicki Hewitt found Markham’s camera in Francis Watt’s office; it contained pictures of Sullom Voe with the new gas terminal.’ Perez paused. ‘Mark Walsh told Watt that the great Jerry Markham was coming to his meeting. Francis had always supported their opposition group, but that was the last thing he wanted. He’d disagreed with Evie over the scheme in private, but the last thing he wanted was Markham to rubbish it in public. It would have seemed like another assault on his daughter.’

‘There was nothing to rubbish,’ Willow said. ‘The accountants have been over the Power of Water books and can’t find a penny out of place.’