Thin Air: (Shetland book 6) (29 page)

He blinked quickly, dragged his attention back to the kitchen at Springfield and tried to describe the exhibition to Willow and Sandy. ‘Monica Leaze made this painting of a child. White dress and white ribbons. Just like everyone describes Peerie Lizzie.’

‘So you think she saw the ghost too? And painted her?’ Willow leaned forward across the table and her long hair brushed his arm. He tried not to jerk his hand away.

That hadn’t been the way he’d been thinking, but he considered the idea. ‘Maybe. I suppose it’s one explanation.’

‘And Eleanor had tracked Monica down and arranged to meet her when she was coming north?’

‘I think they must have met at some point,’ he said. His mind was racing, chasing wild notions that refused to be pinned down.

‘Eleanor must have had a busy afternoon the day of the party.’ Willow sounded unconvinced. ‘Vaila Arthur turned up to tell her story into the recorder; we think Charles Hillier might have tried to catch up with her at some point, either during the day or later in the evening; and now you decide that Eleanor and Monica had a meeting too. Just in the couple of hours that her friends took to walk along the cliff path. And knowing that they could come back at any time. It would only take a sudden rain squall to send them back to the house.’

They sat for a moment in silence.

‘Maybe the party wasn’t Eleanor Longstaff’s first trip to Shetland.’ This was Sandy, nervous that he might be making a fool of himself, looking up from his mug. ‘I mean she was always travelling on business, wasn’t she? So why couldn’t she have come here? If she’d thought her husband would laugh at her for believing in Peerie Lizzie, she could have pretended she was in Brussels . . .’ he paused, struggling to think of another suitable destination, ‘. . . or New York. Their only contact would be by mobile phone and the calls could come from anywhere.’

Another silence. Now that the words were spoken, Perez thought how obvious this was.

‘Sandy Wilson, you’re a bloody genius, and when this is all over I’m going to take you out and get you pissed.’ Willow was laughing. ‘Contact the ferry terminal and the airport. Let’s see if we can track down if, and when, Eleanor arrived. She’d most likely have flown from London via Aberdeen to save time, and she’d have needed photo ID even for domestic flights, so she’d have used her own name. Then we track her movements. Who did she meet when she was here? And why have none of the buggers come forward when they heard about her death?’ She stood up.

Perez thought he’d never seen her so excited. ‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to Yell to track down the mysterious Monica. And you’re coming too.’

They knew it would be a rush to get there and back that evening. The last ferry north to Unst on a Friday night was always busy, so they’d want to avoid that. It would be full of kids who’d been to parties or down to friends in Lerwick. Couples who’d made the trek south for the sort of dinner out they’d not get in the North Isles. And late in the evening there’d be fewer ferries. The last thing they’d need would be to be stuck in Yell, or having to leave the car there and come back as foot passengers. And if Monica split her time between London and Shetland there was no guarantee she’d be there.

‘Perhaps we’re better leaving it until the morning,’ Perez said. The only contact they had for Monica Leaze was at the gallery, and it was possible that nobody was there at this time. Of course Sandy should be able to track down a home address for them before they arrived in Yell. Mary Lomax would probably know. But Perez hated the idea of turning up at the artist’s house, breathless and ill prepared. She was crucial to the investigation, and she was famous. It seemed the worst kind of rudeness to barge in on a Friday night.

‘We don’t have time to wait,’ Willow said. ‘It has to be this evening.’ He knew she was desperate to move the case forward before the soothmoothers left the islands. He saw that there would be no reasoning with her.

Still, in the car at the ferry terminal in Belmont he had another go at persuading her to put off the visit until the following day. ‘Perhaps we should speak to Polly and Caroline first. Eleanor might have spoken to them about Monica. Or she might have dropped a hint that this wasn’t her first trip north.’

But now he saw that Willow was caught up in the moment of the chase. She was enjoying the frantic drive to the pier, and the sense of movement was a reaction to the frustration of sitting in Springfield House running through the details of the case in her head. Perez thought again that she was obsessed by the passing of time; this was her attempt to stop the clock.

‘We can’t piss about, Jimmy. This might be our breakthrough.’ Her eyes were gleaming. She was like a skua about to dive on an injured lamb.

By the time they arrived in Yell, Sandy had an address for them. Monica Leaze lived in Cullivoe, not too far from where the ferry came in. They turned off the main road and ahead of them the evening sky was red like flames, as if the sea was on fire. Everything was still. The banks on each side of the road were wild with flowers and grasses, the colours intense in the strange evening light. Willow was driving; she was too tense and fidgety to be a passenger.

When they found the house it was undistinguished, grey and small, a little ugly. There was no land attached, apart from a small square garden at the front, separated from the neighbour’s by a slatted wooden fence. There were other, newer homes along the same road. A couple were squat bungalows and the rest were Norwegian kit houses in coloured wood. Willow pulled the car into a passing place and they climbed out. Outside Monica’s front door stood a couple of terracotta pots, one containing mint and the other rosemary, but the lawn was overgrown. Willow opened the gate and knocked at the door.

No reply. Looking through the window, Perez thought the living room was too tidy. There was a Sunday paper neatly folded on a small table, but from the headline he could tell that it was at least a fortnight old. The cushions were piled symmetrically on the couch. It was oddly impersonal. No indication that an artist had lived here. No drawings on the wall. No paints. He stepped back a couple of paces and looked at the roof. There were Velux windows cut into the tiles, so perhaps Monica worked in the room in the attic.

An elderly woman was bringing in washing next door. She stood with a plastic basket at her feet, folding the clothes, but her eyes were fixed on the visitors. At last curiosity got too much for her and she came up to the fence. ‘Can I help you?’ She was all bone. Her face seemed to have been sculpted by the weather.

‘We’re looking for Monica Leaze.’

‘Nobody’s there. I haven’t seen her for a couple of weeks. She comes and goes, though. It’s more like a holiday place for her. I’m told she still has a house in London.’

Perez approached her. She’d probably respond better to his voice than to Willow’s. ‘Do you look after the place when she’s away?’

‘She never asked.’ Perez sensed there was no love lost between the neighbours. Had Monica, tense and anxious and used to the anonymity of the city, resented the intrusion of a bored, elderly woman? ‘Who are you?’

‘We’re police,’ he said. ‘Investigating the murders in Meoness.’

Her attitude changed at once to a manic excitement. ‘Come in, come in. You’ll take a cup of tea.’ And they found themselves in her kitchen. The kettle already humming and a plate of home-made flapjacks on a plate. Her payment for a story that would be retold by telephone to family and friends as soon as they left:
You’ll never guess who was in my house this evening.

‘How long has Monica lived next door?’ Perez was asking the questions. Willow was standing with her back to the window, trying to contain her impatience.

‘She moved in about a year ago. She doesn’t own it. It’s rented from Johnny Jamieson in Lerwick, who bought it for holiday lets. I used to go in and clean for him once a week after the visitors left. He didn’t pay much, but it helped out with the pension.’

Perhaps this was part of her resentment. With next door turned into a permanent rental, she’d lost her little job. She was continuing her story. ‘I called round on her first day there, in case I could help at all. You know what it’s like when you first move in – you can’t find anything. She didn’t even invite me across the threshold.’

‘Does she rent it ready furnished?’ That might explain the bland sofa and the bare walls.

‘Yes, and that seemed kind of strange. If she was planning to live here full-time you’d think she’d want her own belongings. She didn’t have much stuff at all. A couple of suitcases and a box with all her paints.’ The woman sniffed. ‘She calls herself an artist.’

‘So you went round to see her,’ Perez said. ‘Can you tell us what she’s like?’

‘Kind of nervy. Skinny and a smoker. Dresses younger than she really is. All flowers and bright patterns.’

‘Is it just her living there?’ Willow interrupted. Perez saw her glance at the clock on the wall. ‘No man or family?’

‘I think she had a bairn here a couple of times. Young. Maybe a grandchild. But not living here fulltime.’

‘Boy or a girl?’ Perez asked

The woman glared. ‘How would I know? I don’t snoop. I just saw them playing outside once.’

‘But you might have some idea.’ He smiled at her.

‘I think it was a lassie. Though once she had a couple of lads to play with her too. They might have been local, because they didn’t stay the night.’

‘Can you remember when you last saw Monica? The exact date would be very helpful.’ Perez again, coaxing her as if he was a favourite nephew.

‘Exactly a week ago,’ the woman said at last. ‘So she hasn’t been away as long as I thought.’

The day before the hamefarin’
. Perez wondered if that had any significance.

‘She might have been around since then, though,’ the woman went on. ‘I’ve been away at my daughter’s down in Brae, so I wouldn’t know.’ A sniff. ‘Not that Monica’s bothered to cut the grass, if she has been there.’

‘I suppose she locks her house when she goes out,’ Perez said.

‘I’m sure she does. She’s never once asked any of the neighbours inside. I offered to go in occasionally when she was away, just to air the place, but she refused. “I value my privacy, Annie.” It made me wonder at times what she has to hide in there.’ The woman gave a theatrical shudder.

‘Only we’re a bit anxious about her,’ Perez said. ‘As she’s not been seen for a while. It would put our minds at rest if we could take a look inside. And we’d prefer not to break a window to get in.’

‘No need for that.’ Annie gave a wide smile and paused for dramatic effect. She got to her feet. ‘I’ve still got a key, from when I was cleaning for Johnny Jamieson. The woman might have been mad about security, but I doubt if she got round to changing the locks. Not even Monica would be that paranoid.’

She reached out and took a key from a hook on the dresser and held it out to them triumphantly.

Chapter Thirty-Five

They stood outside Monica’s house. Willow felt she already had an image of the woman in her mind: she’d be one of those people whose restlessness seems to generate impulsive action and creativity. When Willow was a child, Lottie, her mother, had been like that, fizzing with energy, firing up the family with her schemes, leaving them in turn exhilarated and exhausted. She’d worked in silver and enamel, made rings and bangles to sell at the local arts centre, but her whole life had been a piece of performance theatre. On a whim Lottie had invited a coachload of tourists into the commune for dinner and had thrown together a meal for them in minutes. She’d needed a larger audience than the regular members of the Balranald community could provide. Now she was elderly and infirm, burnt-out and in her husband’s shadow.

Perez had persuaded Annie, the next-door neighbour, to stay in her own house and keep a lookout for them. ‘We wouldn’t want to shock Monica, if she were to turn up and find strangers in her home.’ He’d given her one of his special smiles and a card with his mobile number on it. Now the woman was glued to the window with the card in one hand and her phone in the other, feeling an essential part of the investigation. Willow wondered again what his magic was, how he managed to win people over. Perhaps it was something as simple as kindness. She would have been more brutal and would have told the woman to keep out of the way.

The key turned easily in the lock and they stood in a kitchen that had been updated as cheaply as possible, with chipboard worktops coated in a mock-granite plastic veneer. A Formica table had been folded against one wall. On the floor wood-effect laminate. Willow had already pulled on a pair of gloves and opened the fridge. An unopened bottle of supermarket Chablis, a packet of butter and half a dozen eggs. Which pretty well mirrored the contents of her own fridge, even when she was living at home. But she had a Sainsbury’s just down the road and could shop every day.

‘Looks as if she’s cleared out most of the perishable things. Must have planned to be away for a while.’

The bin had been emptied. In the larder there were shelves of tins, olive oil, packets of pasta and rice, but there were no vegetables in the rack standing below the shelves. Monica was an organized woman, who hadn’t left in a hurry. Perez stood in the middle of the room and seemed to be sniffing the atmosphere.

The living room was small and square. There was a post-war utility dining table, polished but scratched, again folded against one wall, a sofa and a television. An electric fire stood in what had once been an open fireplace. A postcard showing a picture of the Tower of London stood on the mantelpiece next to a bright-green china frog. Perez turned the postcard over to look at the message on the back and held it out for Willow to read.

See you soon
, followed by a line of kisses. No name. The postmark was blurred. The address was M. Leaze c/o North Light Gallery, Yell. Willow wondered if that meant Monica was attempting to keep her home address secret. Various reasons suggested themselves: a bitter divorce had resulted in an abusive husband stalking her; debt; a desire for space and privacy.