Thin Air: (Shetland book 6) (27 page)

George thought back to the time when Lowrie was young. He’d never been a boy for shouting and chasing. Whenever George remembered him he was sitting at the kitchen table, doing his school work. He’d always been fascinated by numbers and had shouted for Grusche to give him sums to do, just in his head, as if the quiz was the best kind of game there was. Sometimes when George came home from the lighthouse he felt like an outsider in his own house, because Lowrie and Grusche understood each other so well. They shared silly jokes that George couldn’t understand. Then Grusche had told him that Lowrie had got his love of numbers from his father. ‘I was always stupid about maths,’ she’d said. ‘He certainly didn’t get that from me.’ And that had made George feel better. Proud.

He shifted his gaze to Voxter. Caroline was in the garden, carrying a small wicker basket. She opened the door into the hen house and, though George was too far away to see, when she came out again he thought that the basket must now hold a few eggs. He wasn’t sure what he made of his new daughter-in-law. Grusche said she was a clever woman and that she’d be good for Lowrie. George was just pleased that his son hadn’t married Eleanor, with her long, dark hair and her secret witch’s smile. He thought now it was a good thing that the woman was dead. She wouldn’t be able to trouble the boy again.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Sandy met Louisa Laurence outside the school. She walked through the yard carrying a smart briefcase and an armful of exercise books. A small red car was parked in the road outside and she stopped there when she saw Sandy.

‘I’m afraid I have a few more questions.’ He had the sense that she was in a hurry and his voice was apologetic.

‘I can’t stop now, Sandy. The carer leaves at five and my mother gets into such a panic if she’s left on her own for too long.’ She’d already tipped the books into the passenger seat of the car.

‘Could I follow you down?’ He could tell there was no point trying to talk to her here. Even if she stayed long enough for him to ask a question, she wouldn’t concentrate on the answer. ‘We could chat at your house. Once you’ve settled your mother.’

She paused for a moment and then she smiled. ‘Why not, Sandy? I could use some adult company.’

Louisa’s parents had retired to Yell when they sold their grocery shop in Lerwick’s Commercial Street. Sandy seemed to remember that Louisa’s mother, Mavis Laurence, had been born and brought up there, and that was why they made the move. The house had probably been specially built for them at the time, and he imagined it would have been the couple’s pride and joy. It was a neat square bungalow with white render and a grey-tiled roof. The front door was locked.

‘Sometimes she wanders,’ Louisa said. ‘It’s a worry.’

Sandy followed her in, the pile of books in his arms.

The woman sat in an armchair looking out of the window over a tidy little garden and towards Unst in the distance. She’d been strong and fierce when Sandy had known her, running the business and acting as host in one of the halls at Up Helly Aa. Her husband had been a fine singer, Sandy remembered, and religious, but not in a strict or a hard way. Mavis Laurence had lost weight. She must have been middle-aged when Louisa had arrived, but now she looked very old and frail. Older, surely, than her years. A walking frame stood in front of her. She turned towards Louisa and gave a wonderful smile. ‘Where have you been? I was just about to send your father out to look for you.’

‘Father’s not here any more, Mum. And I’ve just come back from work. This is Sandy. Do you remember him? Sandy, one of the Wilson boys from Whalsay.’

The woman turned towards him, her eyes kind of smeared and vague. ‘Is this the young rascal that broke your heart? Your father threatened to beat his arse.’

Louisa blushed suddenly and deeply, and Sandy felt a stab of guilt and pain. He hadn’t realized. He’d been so careless with his girlfriends when he’d been a young man, and now he was single and it served him right.

‘You’re confused, Mum,’ Louisa said, giving a little laugh to hide her awkwardness. ‘You’re thinking of someone else. I was going to make Sandy a cup of tea. Would you like some? And maybe a piece of that ginger cake that we made together last night.’

Mavis clapped her hands as if she were a very young girl. Sandy sat with her while Louisa went into the kitchen to make tea. A sort of penance, and because he knew that Louisa would want him to.

‘Your grandmother was Mima Wilson,’ Mavis said. ‘My mother knew her. She was wild too in her time.’ Then she lapsed into silence. There was a bird table in the garden and feeders hung from it. She seemed to take great delight in watching the small birds come to take the seed.

‘I used to come into your shop,’ Sandy said. ‘When Mima brought me to town for the day. I’d choose a bag of sweeties to take back on the bus.’

She looked at him as if she’d forgotten he was in the room. ‘All the bairns came in for their sweeties.’

Then Louisa came back in again with a tea tray and slices of cake. She put a napkin over her mother’s lap and cut the cake into small pieces so that she could eat it easily. Mavis ate a few squares and then seemed to drift off to sleep.

‘So what questions do you have for me, Sandy?’ Louisa seemed to have recovered her composure. She was sitting on the floor by her mother’s side, her mug and plate on a small coffee table within easy reach.

‘How do you cope with this?’ He nodded towards the elderly woman. ‘The stress of it. Every day.’

‘We get on very well usually. Mother’s in fine form today. Mischievous. As you noticed.’

‘But with your work too. And all on your own. At school and here.’ Sandy couldn’t imagine what that could be like. Turning up to work every day and not finding colleagues and friends to chat with.

For a moment she didn’t answer. ‘It’s easier than being in Edinburgh and worrying all the time about what was going on here.’ Another pause. ‘And I owe her, Sandy. Big-style.’ She looked out of the window and he thought she was out of practice at making conversation with grown-ups. Then he realized that she intended to confide in him. ‘I was adopted. Mum and Dad were middle-aged when they took me on. Not because they were desperate for a child. I don’t think Mum was ever especially maternal. But because they heard about me through the kirk – about my mother being in a bad way in Aberdeen and not being able to care for me. And they took me into their home and loved me as if I were their own.’

‘They wouldn’t expect anything in return,’ Sandy said.

‘Of course they wouldn’t, but it’s a small way that I can pay them back for their love and their kindness. Do you see that?’

He nodded, but thought he’d never be able to give up his life for an old woman who hardly seemed to notice he was there. He’d end up resenting the demands she placed on him.

‘So are you going to ask me those questions, Sandy?’ Her voice was slightly impatient and he thought she was already regretting giving so much of herself away. When they were at school together she had never let on that she was adopted, even when the lads made fun of her older parents and the way they ran the shop.

‘Peerie Lizzie’s song,’ he said. ‘You know the tune written by Marty Thomson. Have the kids in your school learned it?’

‘I haven’t taught it to them. But then I don’t teach music, and they might have learned it before I arrived at the school.’ She was still sitting on the floor and looked up at him. ‘Why is it important?’

‘It probably isn’t, but that old story of Lizzie seems to weave its way through the inquiry.’ He knew he couldn’t be specific, but still he valued her opinion. ‘You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?’

She laughed. He was glad to see it; he had the sense that she didn’t laugh very often. ‘Not the sort that walk through walls. But maybe I think that sometimes the past comes back to haunt us.’ She paused and he knew better than to speak. He’d learned some tricks from Jimmy Perez. Louisa went on. ‘Last year I was contacted by a social worker. My birth mother was trying to get in touch with me.’

‘Did you meet her?’

‘Once. But she was very needy. Still an addict, after all these years. Thinking that, with my good job and my settled life, I could help her get straight.’

Or fund her habit
, Sandy thought.

‘And I only have so much to give, Sandy. I had to make a choice. Between my birth mother and the mother who took me on thirty years ago.’

‘You made the right decision.’ He wished he could tell Louisa how much he admired her, but it was all he could think of to say.

‘I’m sure I did, but it doesn’t stop me thinking about the other woman occasionally.’ She got to her feet. Obviously she’d decided it was time for him to go. ‘This was the easy choice. Running away north to be in my comfort zone. It feels a bit cowardly.’

‘You made the right decision.’ He repeated the words slowly, hoping that she might believe him this time.

‘Is this all you came for, Sandy? To ask me about a children’s song. You could have done that over the phone.’

‘I was glad of the excuse to spend some time with you,’ he said. ‘And pleased to escape from the investigation for a while.’

There was another awkward silence, broken by the sound of Mavis’s gentle snoring. He glanced out to the garden to see if her birds were still feeding on the table, but the mist had come in again and it was hard to make out anything other than grey shapes that looked more like bats than birds. Louisa walked with him to his car. There was a chill in the air and he thought some years there was no real summer at all.

‘Does the name Monica mean anything to you?’ he asked suddenly. ‘It’s cropped up in our inquiries. Maybe a character involved in the Peerie Lizzie legend in some way.’

Louisa shook her head. ‘It doesn’t sound like a local name,’ she said. ‘Not a traditional name certainly. I don’t think anyone living in the islands at the time of Peerie Lizzie would be called that. Though I have a feeling that I might have heard it recently.’

‘Will you get in touch if you remember where that might have been?’

‘Of course, Sandy. You gave me your number when you were last at the school. I’ll phone you if anything comes to mind.’

They stood without speaking again, frozen by a sudden embarrassment. ‘I should go back,’ Louisa said, ‘just in case my mother wakes up.’

Sandy leaned forward and kissed her cheek. He thought he must look like one of the garden birds pecking at seed. ‘Thank you. It was kind of you to see me. After I was horrid to you all those years ago. I’m sorry about that.’

She gave a laugh, very natural and giggly like a schoolgirl’s. ‘Don’t flatter yourself, Sandy Wilson. It was never you that my father threatened to thrash for breaking my heart. It was Billy Leask. I told you that my mother gets confused.’

This time he was the one who was blushing. He got into his car and was just about to close the door when she said. ‘Come back, Sandy. Whenever you need a break from your work. And don’t go back to Lerwick without coming to say goodbye.’

Waiting for the ferry to Unst, he wondered what Jimmy Perez would make of his disappearing to Yell without telling anyone or asking permission. Then he thought that Jimmy would probably understand.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Willow and Perez were alone in the kitchen of Springfield House. Sandy had left a message to say that he was going to Yell to check with the teacher if any of the local kids had learned Peerie Lizzie’s song as a party piece.

‘I’ve heard back from an old colleague who works for the Met,’ Willow said. ‘He’s been digging around into the financial affairs of Bright Star.’

‘And?’

‘You were right. Eleanor’s company was on the brink of failure. It was only the ghost commission that persuaded the banks to give her some slack.’

‘So she had that stress,’ Perez said, ‘as well as the loss of the baby.’

Willow didn’t know how to reply to that. He always made her feel that she was cold, lacking in compassion. She wanted to talk to Perez about the case, not feel pity for a woman she’d never met. She was thinking about time, how it was slipping away from them, and her concern that at the end of the weekend they’d be forced to leave Unst and set up base in Lerwick. Then there wouldn’t be the same focus or concentration on the investigation. It would be a kind of failure. She’d just started trying to explain when David Gordon came in from the garden. He mumbled something that she could hardly make out: that he would take a tray to his room and wouldn’t see them again that evening. He stood just inside the room and seemed set to grab a sandwich and run. There were smears of mud on his forehead and a rip in his checked shirt. The distinguished former academic had disappeared.

‘Come in,’ Willow said. ‘I was just going to make some tea.’

‘Is there any news?’ Now David’s voice was clearer – demanding, almost aggressive. ‘Do you know who killed Charles?’ He’d taken off his wellingtons at the door and wore thick white socks. He padded towards them and sat down at the table.

Willow didn’t reply directly. ‘Are you up to answering a few questions?’

‘If it’ll help.’

‘We found a digital recorder in the office. It had belonged to Eleanor and we know that it was in her possession on the day of the party. Any idea how it got from Sletts to Springfield?’

‘None. Unless Charles found it somewhere. It certainly has nothing to do with me.’ He looked up at her. ‘Could the woman have dropped it on the island?’

Like her phone
. Willow couldn’t believe that. Eleanor wandering round Unst and dropping things wherever she went. Too much of a coincidence. ‘I suppose it’s possible.’ She poured tea and went to join him at the table. Perez was leaning against the bench. She thought again that he had the knack of making himself invisible. ‘More likely, don’t you think, that the two of them met up.’
Our two victims. Charles and Eleanor. Where did they meet, and what could they have had to say to each other?

‘Charles had already told you that he never set up a meeting.’

‘And you told us that you thought Charles was making plans, keeping secrets from you.’ Willow’s voice was sharp. She wanted to jolt David Gordon into a response. ‘Perhaps he was keeping secrets from us too, telling lies, and he and Eleanor got together on the afternoon of the hamefarin’. Are you sure she didn’t come here? She had use of a car and it’s not so far from Sletts.’