Thin Air: (Shetland book 6) (23 page)

‘What should I do?’ David asked. It was as if he was a stranger in his own home. Perez thought the roles had reversed now. The police officers were in charge of the place and David was more like a guest. ‘I want to help.’

‘We’d be really glad of some coffee, if you’re up to making it.’

David looked grateful to have something specific to do and disappeared towards the kitchen. Perez sent Sandy to the beach to relieve Willow. Hillier’s death must be linked to Eleanor Longstaff’s, and he wanted to speak to the group at Sletts before news of the tragedy leaked out. But he knew better than to go without speaking to Willow first. The only time they’d really fallen out on an earlier case was when he followed his own line of investigation. And the previous evening he’d pushed his luck by talking to George without her permission. He stood by the front door and watched Sandy’s progress across the beach, then waited as Willow walked towards him. He saw her as if for the first time, the long, tangled hair and the easy stride, and thought she looked more like a Viking than most Shetlanders. He could imagine her rowing a longboat with the strength of a man. The thought made him smile and the image stayed with him until she reached him.

‘Jimmy, do tell me there’s a reason why you’re looking so happy, because I don’t have a clue where we should go from here.’

He shook his head and could feel himself blushing. ‘I was thinking we should go and talk to the folk at Sletts before the news of Hillier’s death is generally known. I’d like to see their reaction when they hear of it.’

‘Could we get Lowrie and Caroline there too, do you think? They seem to have avoided our questions until now, and we can’t rule them out of Eleanor’s murder just because they were celebrating their marriage on the night of her death.’

‘I could phone them,’ he said. ‘And it might be worth contacting the English people too to warn them that we’re on the way. We don’t want them deciding this is their day for a trip into Lerwick.’

‘You do that, Jimmy. But tell them we’ll be there in an hour. I haven’t had breakfast yet and I don’t work well on an empty stomach.’

When they arrived at the holiday house all the friends were there, taking up the chairs in the living room, so Perez had to drag two garden seats in from the deck. Caroline was sitting on the arm of Lowrie’s chair.

‘This is very mysterious, Inspector.’

He wondered if anything would penetrate her skin of efficient good humour. He couldn’t imagine her ever crying, for example. Had something in her past led to her forming this protective shell or was it a feature of her age and class?

‘There’s been another death.’ They’d all been looking to Perez for an explanation and when Willow spoke they stared at her, surprised. He watched them, but the shock seemed real.

‘Who?’ It was Polly Gilmour, as pale as a ghost herself, Perez thought.

‘A hotelier called Charles Hillier.’

Perez thought he saw the woman flash a glance at Longstaff. ‘You knew him?’ he said.

There was a pause before Polly answered. ‘We had a . . .’ Another pause. ‘An encounter yesterday.’

‘What happened?’ Willow leaned forward. They were similar in age and she could have been an old friend from university, encouraging gossip.

‘I’d wandered into that derelict house on the way to the hall. Just nosy, I suppose, to see what it looked like inside. And Mr Hillier turned up to ask what I was doing there.’

‘As if it was any business of his!’ Longstaff seemed to have aged since Perez had first met him; to have turned into one of those angry, red-faced middle-aged men with a short fuse and a tendency to fall victim to a heart attack.

‘You were there too, Mr Longstaff?’ Willow again, keeping it calm and cool.

‘I was driving past and I saw them in the house, just shadows in my headlights. A woman’s been murdered here, and it looked as if Hillier was keeping her there against her will. Of course I was going to check that Polly was OK. She should never have been wandering around on her own.’ He looked at Marcus. Accusing:
You should be taking better care of your woman.

‘And was Mr Hillier being unreasonable?’ Willow again.

Polly shook her head. ‘He was just being weird. I probably shouldn’t have been there, but I wasn’t doing any harm and he seemed to overreact big-style. Then Ian turned up and things started getting a bit fraught, so we just left.’ She hesitated. ‘Hillier said there was some connection between the house and the ghost that Eleanor claimed to have seen.’ She turned to Lowrie. ‘Did you know anything about that?’

Lowrie shrugged. ‘The croft house was in our family,’ he said. ‘The lass looking after Lizzie Geldard lived there. Then my grandfather built our house on a bit of the land, and later Vaila and her man built their new place next door, and the old house was just left to ruin. It was a shame. I thought Vaila’s husband might renovate and extend the old place, but I suppose it would have cost more in the end than starting from scratch.’ He hesitated. ‘And there’s always been a kind of superstition about the building. Maybe they thought it would be bad luck to tear it down.’

‘Is it ever used?’ Willow asked.

‘Maybe for storage, but probably not even for that now, it’s such a damp old place.’

Perez thought Polly was about to speak again, but she turned towards the window and said nothing.

‘What did you do last night when you got back here?’ Willow asked.

‘I cooked supper,’ Polly said. ‘There was heaps, so we phoned Lowrie and Caroline and asked them to join us. It was good to get together to remember Eleanor. Somehow she seems to have got lost in all this.’

‘And then?’

‘Then the others wanted to go out. I stayed here.’ She paused and smiled at Ian. ‘Ian was worried about me, but I felt quite safe. There are locks on the doors and my mobile has reception. I promised I’d phone if anything worried me. We’ve all been shut in together since Eleanor died and I longed for some time on my own.’

‘Where did the rest of you go?’

‘To the bar at Springfield House.’ Lowrie took up the story. ‘Ian had been round to our place in the afternoon and we’d had a few beers. I thought it might be good for him to have some company. Then after dinner I could see that he wanted to carry on drinking, so I suggested going to the bar. I didn’t like the idea of him being in his room on his own with a bottle of whisky. I mean Polly and Marcus have been fantastic, but being here in Sletts must just remind Ian of Eleanor. There’s sometimes music at Springfield House on a Thursday night, and I thought the noise and the people might help release the tension for a while.’

‘And did it?’ Perez remembered the days after Fran’s death. He’d felt like drinking himself unconscious, but he never had. Too guilty. He hadn’t felt he deserved to escape the pain.

‘Yeah,’ Ian said. ‘But I’ve got a bloody awful hangover this morning.’

‘How long did you stay in the bar?’

Ian shrugged and looked at Caroline. ‘You drove us home. When was that?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Caroline turned to Perez. ‘It was getting light again. Maybe two o’clock.’

‘Were you in the bar with the men?’

‘I stopped for one drink,’ she said. ‘Then I saw that it was going to turn into a session, so I came back to Meoness in our car and told Lowrie to give me a ring when they wanted to be collected.’ She paused. ‘It was obviously going to be a boys’ night out and I had the feeling that I’d be in the way.’

‘You didn’t come back to Sletts to keep Polly company?’ That seemed odd to Perez, if the two women were such good friends.

‘No. I wanted to speak to the solicitor handling the sale of our house. He’s an old friend and I knew he wouldn’t mind me calling late. Now that we’ve made the decision to come north we want to get things moving as soon as possible.’ Caroline hesitated. ‘I’ve already handed in my notice to the university, and Lowrie’s told his employer that he’ll be leaving soon. It’s a little bit scary that we won’t have any real income for a while. We need to be planning our new life.’

Perez had the uncharitable thought that Caroline seemed to be viewing her friend’s death as an interruption to her business plans. ‘Were George and Grusche at home?’

‘Are you asking me to provide an alibi, Inspector?’ The question was sharp and angry.

‘I’m just trying to get a picture of everyone’s movements.’

‘Grusche was at a book group in Baltasound. I’m sure her friends will corroborate her story. George was working outside, I think.’

Perez directed his next question to the men.

‘When you were at Springfield did you see Charles Hillier?’

Lowrie shook his head. ‘The owners hardly ever come into the bar. It’s managed by a local guy, a pal of mine. Ian told me that he’d run up against Charles, but I didn’t think there was any danger that they’d meet there.’

‘Did any of you leave the bar for any length of time?’ The question came from Willow. ‘Of course we’ll be talking to the other drinkers.’

‘By that time I was so pissed I could hardly stand,’ Ian said. ‘I didn’t think much of the local band – the folk thing doesn’t really do it for me – and I might have gone out to escape the music, but I don’t remember anything about it.’

‘I left for about half an hour,’ Marcus said. ‘It would have been around eleven. I phoned Polly. I wanted to make sure she was OK. She said she was fine, just going to bed and not to make too much noise when I came in. Then I phoned my mother. I hadn’t been in touch for a few days and we chatted for quite a time.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘You know mothers.’

‘If you were in the garden at Springfield you’d have had a view down to the shore,’ Perez said. ‘Did you see anything? Hear anything?’

Marcus gave a little laugh. ‘The fog had come in again. It was eerie. There was a foghorn somewhere in the distance. Moaning like the seals we saw earlier in the day. But no, I didn’t see anything.’

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Before they’d arrived at Sletts, Willow had discussed tactics with Perez. ‘See if you can get Lowrie on his own afterwards, Jimmy. Talk to him about Eleanor. She must have asked him about Peerie Lizzie before she arrived for the party. Why hasn’t he told us? Some last-minute fling with his first love before he tied the knot, do you think? Seems to me Eleanor would have been up for that. It would have amused her.’

Now they were all trooping out of the holiday house and Perez wasn’t sure how he would manage to separate Lowrie from Caroline. The woman was so forceful and competent that she intimidated him. But it seemed she had plans of her own: a trip to a gallery in Yell to look at some pieces for the new house. ‘Are you OK to walk home, Lowrie? If I take the car now, I should be back before supper.’ So in the end it was quite straightforward and Perez joined Lowrie as he set off along the beach towards Voxter, his parents’ croft.

‘This is a terrible business, Jimmy.’

‘Worse for you, perhaps. You were very close to Eleanor at one time, I think.’ Perez remembered Lowrie, red-faced and distraught after finding the woman’s body.

‘Has my mother been gossiping to you?’ The tide was on the ebb now and the sand was hard where they were walking. It was hard to tell what Lowrie made of Grusche’s interference. Or what he made of Eleanor’s death after the first dramatic reaction.

‘As Marcus said, you know what mothers are like.’
My mother wants me home too. She’d like me and Cassie in a croft in Fair Isle, where she can keep us safe.

‘I fancied myself in love with Eleanor when we were at university,’ Lowrie said. ‘It seems like a kind of madness now. But I was young and homesick and I’d never met anyone quite like her. She was like some exotic creature from another planet. For the first six months in Durham she filled all my dreams.’

‘What happened?’

‘She slept with me a couple of times for fun and then moved on to more interesting men. Men with more style and influence.’ Lowrie stopped suddenly and looked out to the horizon. ‘She said that I was very sweet, but she was ready for a grown-up.’

‘A bit harsh.’ Perez kept his voice light. He didn’t want to make too much of this and frighten the man into clamming up. ‘But you stayed friends?’

‘I adored her. Better to stay friends than to lose contact altogether, I thought. One day she might need me, and I’d come rushing to the rescue like a knight on a white charger and she’d realize that I was the man for her all along. Then I came to my senses and saw that living with her would be a nightmare.’

‘Ian managed it, though, did he?’

Lowrie hesitated. ‘Ian’s a very different kind of man.’

‘In what way?’ Perez was genuinely interested. He thought that of all the incomers Ian was the person he understood least.

‘He’s very certain. There are no doubts with Ian. Once he knows where he stands on an issue there’s no moving him.’ Lowrie slowed in his walk and turned to Perez. ‘He was like that when he decided that Eleanor was ill and needed to be in hospital. The rest of us couldn’t see it. We knew she’d hate it.’ He paused. ‘I went to see her in there. I didn’t tell the others, but I just slipped in on my own after work. It looked pleasant enough, like a kind of hotel, but she was so miserable. It was making her more crazy than losing the baby. I told her she should leave. She was a voluntary patient. There was nothing to stop her.’

‘And did she take your advice?’

‘Yes. She signed herself out the next day.’

‘What did Ian make of that?’

‘I didn’t tell him I had anything to do with it.’ Lowrie grinned briefly. ‘Too much of a coward. Ian has a lousy temper. I’m not sure what Nell said to him.’

‘Did you see her on her own after that?’

There was a pause. Perez wondered if Lowrie was preparing to lie. ‘Once,’ he said at last. ‘Ian was working away and I went to her house. She seemed better. She thanked me for giving her the confidence to leave the hospital. I asked how Ian had taken it and she said he’d realized she wasn’t ill, just sad. And she’d decided not to get so hung up on the baby thing.
Maybe it’s just nature telling me I’d be a crap mother. I’ve got a wonderful man and that should be enough
.’

‘Did you believe it would be enough for her?’ Perez asked.