Too Good to Be True (2 page)

‘Can I help you?’ He was small and wiry, with teeth that were too big for his mouth.

‘I just came to see where Anna lived,’ Jimmy said.

‘Did you know her?’

‘Not exactly. I’ve been asked to find out why she died.’

‘Are you a cop?’

‘Yes,’ Jimmy said. Because after all, that was the truth.

‘Poor young thing. The women in this village are all bitches. They go to church on a Sunday, but that didn’t stop them making the lass’s life a misery with their gossip and
their lies.’

‘You don’t happen to have a key?’ Perez nodded towards the small, tidy house.

‘Aye. I was the one who found her body.’

‘Maybe you could tell me how that happened,’ Perez said.

‘I told the other police.’ For the first time the old man seemed suspicious about Jimmy’s role in the case.

‘I know. I’m just checking that nothing’s been missed.’

They sat in the neighbour’s tiny living room in front of an open fire. The man offered tea but Perez shook his head.

‘Did she own the house?’ Perez asked.

The man shook his head. ‘She rented it. One of the doctors bought it when it came on the market a few years ago. A kind of investment, I guess. A young couple had it for a few years and
then Anna moved in with her kid.’

‘What was the name of the doctor?’ Perez asked, but he thought he already knew.

‘Tom King.’ Another thing Sarah had failed to tell him: that her husband had been Anna Blackwell’s landlord.

‘I’ve lived here for years,’ the man said. ‘I love the place. But the way they treated Anna made me feel sick. I’m not sure I can stay.’

‘How did you find her body?’

‘Anna’s daughter Lucy had been at a friend’s for the night, at a farm just up the hill. When the friend’s mother, Gail Kerr, dropped her home they couldn’t get Anna
to open the door. I told them to wait here and I let myself in. Anna had given me a key when she first moved in. For emergencies, she said. Well, that was an emergency.’ He stared into the
fire.

‘Where was Anna?’

‘Where the police found her, of course. I called them from the house. There should be a record of that.’ He looked at Perez. ‘You
are
a cop?’

‘Yes.’ Perez took out his ID card and the man nodded.

‘She was sitting in the living room,’ he said. ‘Slumped over the table next to an empty wine bottle and a glass.’

‘Just one glass?’

‘Aye.’

‘What about the pills? Was there a medicine bottle?’

‘Not that I saw. But I just wanted to call 999 and see if we could save her.’

‘Of course.’ Perez got to his feet. ‘Can you let me have that key?’

The man remained where he was for a moment. ‘I had to come back here and make up a story for the lassie, Anna’s little girl. I told her that her mother was ill. I didn’t have
the heart to say that she was already dead.’

Then he went to get the key.

Anna’s house was sad. Perez could see the story of her growing depression in it. She must have painted the kitchen when she first arrived, he thought – it was
bright yellow. Tom might be the landlord, but he was boring and he wouldn’t have chosen anything so colourful.

As Jimmy walked around, he noticed the floors were sticky and there was dust on the bookshelves. It looked as if Anna had given up on the place. Only a bunch of flowers on the
living-room windowsill showed any sign of hope. They were drooping and brown, but they would have been alive on the night that she’d died.

Nobody had been in to clean up since her death. The wine bottle had gone and the glass was on the kitchen counter. The police must have put it with the other mucky pots that stood there waiting
to be washed up. Perez could imagine the woman sitting here, alone. He could believe that she’d killed herself. He decided he’d tell Sarah to take no notice of the gossips. This was not
a murder after all.

In the living room there was a file on the table where Anna had been sitting when she died. Perez pulled on gloves and looked inside. There were lesson plans and notes about each of the children
in her class written in neat, round handwriting. Even if she’d been ill, Anna had cared a lot about her job.

He walked upstairs. The child’s bedroom had been emptied of most of her clothes. A doll lay on the bed. Perez hoped that a loved soft toy had been taken into care with her.

He looked into Anna’s room, then went inside and opened the curtains and the window to let in some clean, cold air. The room was untidy. There was a pile of clothes on a chair and make-up
on the pine dressing table. Along with the lipstick and perfume, Perez spotted an empty plastic bottle which had once contained Anna’s pills.

He tried to picture what might have happened on the night of her death. She’d been drinking. Had she roused herself to walk upstairs? Had it been a sudden impulse to take the pills in the
bedroom? Why would she then go back to her chair downstairs? It seemed a little odd.

If Anna had planned to die, wouldn’t she lie on the bed? A final sleep. When Fran, the love of his life, had died he’d thought of killing himself, and had imagined how good it would
be to go to sleep and never wake up. But he’d had their daughter Cassie to look after.

And Anna had had Lucy, he thought, so perhaps it wasn’t suicide after all. He kept changing his mind about what might have happened here. By the bed there was a photo of a woman and a
girl. Anna and Lucy. They both had dark curly hair and dark eyes. Both of them were laughing.

Perez looked at the dressing table again. Along with the clutter of make-up there was a scrap of paper. He’d missed it before because his attention had been caught by the pill bottle. The
police must have been so certain Anna had killed herself that they hadn’t done a proper search of the house. Or perhaps the paper had meant nothing to them.

It was a note written in pencil. It looked as if it had been written in a hurry.

It was in the same handwriting as he’d seen in the file downstairs. The 10th was the day before Anna’s body had been found. The day she was supposed to have killed herself. Perez
read the note again. These didn’t sound like the words of a depressed woman. They were almost hopeful, looking forward. Like the flowers in the pretty vase in the living room.

But if Anna had written the note to confirm a meeting, what was it still doing in her bedroom? Had she never sent it? And if someone had been in this house drinking wine with Anna on that
evening, why had they never come forward to the police?

He went back to the kitchen and looked in the cupboards. Anna had only brought the basics with her. This could be a student house. There were a few mismatched bowls and plates, some cutlery in a
tray. Most of her stuff was still dirty on the counter. Perez was tempted to wash it up. In the cupboard there was one clean glass. It still had a white thread of cotton inside from the tea towel,
so it had been dried quite recently.

He stood looking at it and pictured again the evening of Anna’s death. Perhaps there had been a visitor, someone who’d had a glass of wine with Anna? Someone who had taken the
trouble to wash up the glass and put it away before leaving the house. And that definitely suggested not suicide – but murder.

Anna’s elderly neighbour must have been looking out for Jimmy Perez leaving her house, because he came to his door and shouted across.

‘Everything all right?’

Perhaps everyone in this village was nosy.

‘Yes,’ Jimmy said. ‘I’m surprised the landlord’s not been in to clear the place for the next tenant.’

‘Maybe the doctor and his wife thought it wouldn’t look good if they were too hasty. Perhaps they’re showing the lass a bit of respect at last, even if it’s too
late.’

‘Maybe.’ Perez paused. ‘The local police must have asked if you were at home the evening that Anna died?’

‘I’m always at home,’ the man said. ‘Once it gets dark, at least.’

‘You didn’t happen to notice if Anna had a visitor?’ Perez leaned on the little wall that separated the man’s garden from the pavement.

‘The police asked me that too.’

‘And what did you tell them?’ Perez tried to keep his patience.

‘That I didn’t see anyone.’

Perez sensed that the man had more to say. ‘But perhaps you heard a car?’

‘Not a car. I didn’t tell the other policemen because I wasn’t sure and they were in such a rush, but I thought I heard voices through the joining wall. It could have been the
television, though Anna didn’t watch much TV. Music was more her thing.’

‘The voices must have been loud for you to have heard them through the wall,’ Perez said.

‘Nah, these houses were put up in a rush just after the war. No sound-proofing at all.’

‘So you could hear what was said?’ Perez found that he was holding his breath, waiting for an answer.

‘Nah, nothing like that. Just a murmur of voices. Nobody was shouting, and like I said, it could just have been the telly.’ The old man stamped his feet to show that he was feeling
the cold and disappeared inside.

It was still only mid-morning. It must be playtime at the school, Perez thought, because he could hear the children’s voices again. He didn’t want to go back to the
hotel and to Elspeth’s questions, but he felt a need for strong coffee and a chance to think in peace.

On the main street there was a cafe. It must be warm inside because the windows were steamed up and from the pavement he couldn’t see anything at all. He pushed open the door and walked
into a small room almost full of women. They had taken over two of the tables and baby buggies were crammed into any spare space. Perez took the one remaining table by the window. The women seemed
not to notice him and carried on with their gossip.

A young waitress came to take his order. Perez wiped a patch in the mist on the window so he could see into the street, but it soon steamed up again. He tried to order his thoughts about the
Anna Blackwell case but the young mothers’ voices intruded.

‘I feel dreadful,’ one of the women said. ‘I didn’t want to sign that petition to get rid of Miss Blackwell in the first place, but Sarah
is
chair of governors and
she’s always in the school. I thought her reasons for thinking Anna was no good must be real.’

There was a moment of silence. ‘Well, we didn’t know then that Tom and Anna were such . . .’ There was another pause . . . ‘friends.’

‘You can see why Sarah would have wanted her out of the village.’

Perez had always thought there was a lot of gossip in Shetland, but he had rarely heard anything there that was quite as toxic as this. He could understand for the first time why Sarah was so
upset that she had called for his help. It must be a nightmare to face this malice wherever she went.

The talking continued. ‘Do we know for certain that Tom and Anna were lovers? Gail, you knew Anna better than anyone. Lucy stayed at your house the night it all happened.’

So this was Gail Kerr, the woman from the farm who’d had Anna’s daughter for the sleepover. She was stocky, a bit older than the others, and she didn’t seem to have a baby with
her. She was wearing an anorak over a scruffy sweater. The others seemed to have made more of an effort with their appearances. Some were rather glamorous, shiny and made-up. They could have been
in a fancy restaurant instead of a scruffy cafe.

‘Well, my brother Sandy saw them walking together through the woods,’ said Gail, resting her elbows on the table. ‘He said they were so wrapped up in each other that a bomb
could have dropped and they wouldn’t have noticed.’

The waitress brought Jimmy’s coffee. It was hardly warm and didn’t taste of anything.

‘But you don’t really think he killed her?’ the first woman said. ‘Not Tom! He’s a doctor. A kind man. He looked after my mother when she had cancer and he
couldn’t have been more caring.’

‘It’s just too much of a coincidence.’ It was Gail again. ‘Something weird was going on there. If the Kings didn’t kill her, they drove her to suicide.’

Jimmy Perez couldn’t stand any more of their unkindness. He drank his coffee in one go, paid the bill and went outside.

Next to the cafe an estate agents’ office was advertising houses to let. On impulse Perez went inside. A middle-aged woman in a suit looked up from her computer
screen.

He showed his ID. ‘Do you manage a property owned by Doctor King?’

‘The house in Woodburn Close? Yes, that’s one of ours.’

‘I’m making inquiries about the most recent tenant,’ he said. ‘Anna Blackwell.’

The estate agent turned round in her chair to give him her full attention. ‘She was the woman who died.’

‘That’s right,’ Perez said. ‘I assume she had to provide a deposit before she moved in? Someone had to vouch for her?’

‘No . . .’ The woman paused. ‘It was a more informal arrangement.’

‘In what way informal?’

‘I understood that she was a friend of Doctor King’s. He said there was no need for her to pay in advance. He could vouch for her.’

Perez considered this. How had Tom King met the young teacher before she moved to Stonebridge? A thought leapt into his head. Was it possible, even, that he was the father of her child?

‘Do you have a previous address for Miss Blackwell?’

The woman turned back to the keyboard. ‘Yes, we do have that, I think, because we had to send out a contract before she moved in.’ She hit a button and a printer began to whir. She
handed a sheet of paper to Perez.

The address was in Berwick, just south of the border, in England.

‘I believe that was her parents’ address,’ the estate agent said. ‘Miss Blackwell had been at university in Edinburgh and had just finished her degree. She suggested the
Berwick address would be the best one to use.’

Perez wondered why Anna’s parents hadn’t come forward to take care of their granddaughter, Lucy, after her mother’s death. He’d assumed that there was no close family. It
seemed very sad that the grandparents had allowed the little girl to be sent off to be cared for by strangers. Perhaps Anna’s parents were old-fashioned and didn’t approve of a child
born out of marriage.