Chapter Seventeen
They went for lunch at the Pier House Hotel. Fish and chips served in the bar, blessedly free of smoke since the ban. Perez had been surprised at how law-abiding Shetlanders had been when the smoking ban came in. Especially on the outer islands where there was little danger of being caught by the police. On the smaller isles few people even bothered with MoTs or vehicle licences. He remembered as a boy the police flying in to Fair Isle after a birdwatcher had fallen to his death from the cliff. As the plane came in to land all the cars on the place were driven into barns or hidden by tarpaulin. By contrast this law was generally observed.
‘Will my grandmother’s body be released for the funeral now?’ Sandy was halfway through his second pint. His resolution to give up strong drink hadn’t lasted long. Perez had ordered coffee and was surprised at how good it was.
‘Aye, I don’t see why not.’
‘Only my mother wants to start making the arrangements. My brother will need to come up from the south. He doesn’t like dragging himself up here but he can hardly get out of visiting at a time like this.’
‘Do the two of you not get on?’
Sandy shrugged. ‘I was always closer to Ronald when we were bairns. Michael was my mother’s favourite. Maybe I was jealous.’
Perez wasn’t sure what response to make to this. Sandy didn’t usually show so much insight.
‘It
is
all over?’ Sandy went on. ‘I mean the case.’
Again Perez thought Sandy was being uncharacteristically perceptive. ‘The Fiscal doesn’t see any case to answer.’
‘It’s just you were a long time with Ronald this morning. I mean, it doesn’t take half an hour to tell a man he won’t be prosecuted.’
‘I want to be sure in my own mind that it was an accident,’ Perez said.
‘You’re saying Ronald meant to shoot her?’ The words had come out as an outraged shriek. Sandy looked around him and was relieved to see that the bar was empty. Even Jean from Glasgow had disappeared into the kitchen.
‘I’m saying there are problems with his version of events.’
‘He’s not a liar,’ Sandy said. ‘Never has been.’
‘Have you seen much of him since you left home?’
‘Not so much. It’s not like when you’re at school, is it? We each have our own lives to lead. But he wouldn’t have shot Mima. Not on purpose. She was as much a grandmother to him as she was to me.’
Perez hesitated, reluctant to put into words the idea that had taken root in his mind and had been growing since the conversation with the Fiscal. He looked around to check that the bar was still empty and kept his voice low: ‘Someone else could have shot Mima. Put the blame on Ronald.’
‘That’s what Rhona Laing thinks?’ Sandy seemed astonished.
‘She’s not prepared to dismiss the idea out of hand. It’s one explanation for the facts, for Mima being outside on a night like that, for Ronald’s certainty that he wasn’t shooting over the Setter land. But she doesn’t want any sort of fuss made.’
‘In case she upsets her friends in high places.’ Everyone in Shetland knew about Rhona Laing’s political ambitions.
‘Aye. Something like that.’ Perez paused. ‘You said Mima asked you to call in the next time you were in Whalsay. Did she give you any idea what she wanted to discuss?’
‘No.’ Sandy looked up at him. ‘You think she realized she was in danger?’
‘I’m just considering possibilities.’
‘What will you do about it?’
For a moment Perez thought. What in fact could he do? He could only afford a limited time in Whalsay and from his office in Lerwick he had no chance of getting any sort of sense of what was going on here. It might only be a short ferry ride from Shetland mainland but this was an enclosed community and it took an insider to understand what was going on.
‘Do you have any leave to take?’ Perez knew Sandy always had leave. He was famous for it. He managed to carve out time for himself from his official working day and always complained at the end of his leave year that he still had holiday to take.
‘Aye, a few days.’ Sandy was suspicious. They’d had arguments about this before. Perez on the warpath. ‘If you’ve been out on the piss and wake up with such a hangover that you can’t face work, take it as holiday. Don’t invent imaginary dental appointments.’
‘Maybe now would be a good time to use them up. Stay here. Help your mother sort out the funeral. Ask a few questions . . .’ Perez looked at Sandy, just checking that he understood what Perez was asking.
‘But I’m involved,’ Sandy said. ‘They’re all family. You said yourself I should have got out as soon as the investigation started.’
‘This isn’t an investigation,’ Perez said. ‘You’re making informal enquiries. Mima was your grandmother. It’s hardly surprising that you’re interested in how she died. But be discreet. The Fiscal was absolutely clear about that.’
‘The Fiscal asked me to follow this up?’ Sandy stared back. The Fiscal had never been particularly complimentary about his abilities as a detective.
Perez was saved the necessity of lying, because they were interrupted by the arrival of two young women. He recognized one as the archaeologist who’d turned up, distressed, at the Wilson house. The other was taller, stronger, with long corn-coloured hair, a wide mouth, freckles. She was talking, almost dragging Hattie behind her into the bar.
‘Come on. A find like that, we can take a bit of time off to celebrate.’
‘After what happened to Mima, I don’t feel much like celebrating.’ Hattie seemed even thinner. ‘Anyway we should keep this quiet. We don’t want treasure hunters turning up at the site hoping to make their fortune.’
‘This is Shetland. Do you really think you’re going to keep this a secret? And Mima would have been
so
excited. It was always what she wanted, wasn’t it? For us to find something really spectacular on her land. Besides, we have to eat, don’t we? I feel as if I’ve been living off sandwiches for months. You can’t work a dig on an empty stomach.’
‘I thought Paul bought you a meal in Lerwick yesterday.’
‘Only a bowl of soup in the museum coffee bar before his meeting with Val at the Amenity Trust. I fancy a huge steak. So rare it’s almost breathing.’ Sophie saw Sandy, waved at him, grinned. ‘And a mountain of chips.’ She pulled her sweater over her head. Her T-shirt rode up at the back, revealing a firm brown torso. The legend on the shirt read:
Archaeologists Do It In Holes
. ‘Hi, Sandy. Is it OK if we come and sit with you?’
Sandy had been staring at Sophie with a stunned fascination, now he looked at Perez.
‘Why not?’ Perez said. The curiosity was kicking in again, though he found Hattie more interesting than her friend. ‘Can I get you both a drink?’
‘Oh please.’ Sophie gave a shiver of anticipation. Perez thought he’d never met anyone quite so physical. Like a small child she communicated her thoughts through her body. ‘A large red wine.’ Then, sensing her friend’s disapproval, ‘Don’t look at me like that, Hat. It’s not as if we can get much done this afternoon. Really we need to wait for guidance from Paul and he won’t be here until tomorrow. And you must feel like celebrating. It’s what you’ve been dreaming of since the project started.’
‘What’s happened?’ Perez thought he’d have to continue the conversation. No good leaving it to Sandy, who was still staring, his mouth half open. Sophie was wearing a sleeveless vest with a scoop neck showing a lot of cleavage. Soon he’d be drooling.
‘Go on, Hat, you tell him. It’s your find.’
‘Let me get you a drink first.’ Perez stood up.
He thought Hattie would refuse. He sensed a real tension between her and her colleague. He couldn’t understand why Hattie had come. But at last she gave a quick smile. ‘All right then. Beer. A half. Sophie’s right: we are celebrating and Mima
would
have been excited.’ She sat on the bench seat and unlaced her boots, slipped them off so she was sitting in her stockinged feet. She pulled her feet underneath her and looked, Perez thought, like a trow, one of the mythical small men he’d heard stories about since he was a child.
When he returned with the drinks and Sophie had ordered food, Perez repeated his question. ‘So, what’s happened?’
Hattie took a deep breath. ‘I can hardly believe it. We ’ve been hoping that the dwelling on Mima’s land would turn out to be something grander than a croft and maybe we’ve found the proof. Look, let me put it in context . . .’ She leaned forward. ‘In the fifteenth century Shetland was a strong member of the Hanseatic League, a trading partnership, but there was a problem. The merchants in the islands were mostly German incomers. As the trading policy became more isolationist, the Germans left and there was nobody to take on that role. My thesis is that some of the more important Shetlanders became traders in their own right. There’s evidence that happened in Shetland mainland, but nothing so far here in Whalsay.’
She paused and looked at Perez to check that he was following. He nodded. Her voice was very precise, almost as if she was presenting to an academic audience. Perhaps she didn’t know how to speak to anyone else.
‘The remains of the building at Setter are bigger than you’d expect for a croft, but there could be reasons for that. Perhaps there were extensive outbuildings, a workshop. The foundation stone we’ve found is even, dressed, it’s not the rough boulders you’d expect to make up the wall of a croft, but that hasn’t provided the proof I was looking for. Today though we made a find that would suggest the inhabitants were much wealthier than they’d have been as crofters. This is a big deal. For me at least. I mean it kind of proves my theory. It makes the whole project worthwhile.’ She gave a sudden wide smile that lit up her whole face. ‘It means I can get funding to extend the project. We should be able to do a full-scale dig over a number of years.’
‘So what did you find?’ Sandy managed to drag his attention from Sophie’s body.
‘Silver coins. Half a dozen of them. Beautiful and quite intact. I came across one by chance and the others soon after. It’s likely that the floor would have been made of wood, rather than beaten soil, though of course there’s no trace of that now. We can’t tell how the coins got left there. Maybe they slipped through the cracks in the floor and into the hole in the foundation. Maybe they were hidden there. We might find more.’ Hattie took another breath. ‘Two silver coins of the same age were found during a dig at Wilsness, Dunrossness, in Shetland mainland. In the dunes close to the airport. Those coins confirmed the interpretation of that building as a merchant’s house. I’m hoping that this find will do the same for me.’
‘Where are the coins now?’
‘We’ve taken them to Evelyn. She’s locked them up in a drawer in her desk. Val Turner, the Shetland archaeologist, will come in later and Paul Berglund will be in too.’
The little Glaswegian came out with food for Hattie and Sophie. Perez watched Sophie slice her steak with complete focus. He thought she was like a man. She didn’t like to concentrate on more than one thing at a time. But now she’d started Hattie was happy to continue talking. ‘We’ll get an expert to look at them of course. I mean they could be more modern, but they look like right to me and Sophie thought so too as soon as she saw them. We ’re both familiar with the Wilsness coins. But we do need Paul’s advice about what we should do next.’ She stopped abruptly and forked a tiny piece of lasagne into her mouth, frowned as she chewed.
‘When’s Mr Berglund coming in?’
‘Professor Bergland,’ Hattie corrected him. ‘Tomorrow or perhaps the next day. He’d hardly got home when he got our call. He needs a bit of time to sort things out at home. He’s got a young family.’ Perez thought she seemed subdued. Did she resent her supervisor coming in and taking over her project? Or the fact that he hadn’t left immediately to return to Whalsay?
‘Are these coins worth anything?’ Sandy asked.
‘They’re invaluable.’
‘But if I was to try and sell them on the open market?’
‘You mean money?’ Hattie seemed startled by the question.
‘Aye, money.’ Sandy looked at her as if he was tempted to add,
What else would I mean?
‘I don’t know. If they were sold at auction to a collector perhaps they would.’
She seemed uncertain; the whole concept of private collection and trading in artefacts was strange to her. Perez felt a rush of sympathy. She seemed too frail and innocent to be living alone here in Whalsay. Sophie the Sloane Ranger was no sort of guardian. How would Hattie survive in the big world outside? He wanted to ask if she kept in touch with her parents. He imagined a protective mother who’d had to find the courage to let her daughter go, but who had sleepless nights about her, who held her breath every time the phone went in case there’d been a disaster. Because somewhere in Hattie’s history there must be illness or tragedy, he thought. No one got that haunted look if they’d had a happy childhood.
Curiosity led him to form a question about her family in his head.
Your parents must be very proud of you. Will they get a chance to visit the islands?
Then he heard Fran’s voice, had a very clear picture of her tipping her head to one side, a half-smile, her nose slightly wrinkled as it was when she meant to tease.
What business is it of yours, Jimmy Perez? You’re a policeman, not a psychotherapist. Let the poor child alone.
