White Nights (10 page)

‘Aggie,’ he said. ‘Is anything wrong?’ They had known each other for all that time, but still she had never come into his house uninvited. Even as a child, when she’d wanted to play with them, she’d hung around outside waiting for them to join her. She’d never knocked on the door. Bella and Alec would
just have burst in, sat at the table, assumed that the milk and biscuits were for them too.

‘That policeman came by,’ Aggie said. ‘Perez. He told me there was a body in the hut.’

‘I know. I found the man.’ He preferred to think of him as a man rather than a body. Had she just come to gossip? It seemed unlike her. Usually in places like Biddista the shop was the place for gossip, but Aggie never encouraged it. She sat behind the counter. Her book would be face down, but you could tell she was waiting to get back to it. She still seemed preoccupied by the story, indifferent to the rumours being spread.

‘Do you have no idea who he is?’ she asked.

‘I couldn’t see his face,’ Kenny said. ‘It was covered with a mask. A clown’s mask.’

‘Jimmy Perez said that too.’ She paused, fixed him with her eyes. ‘It couldn’t have been Lawrence?’

She waited for Kenny to consider the possibility, watched for a reaction, and when none came she went on. ‘Martin described him to me. He saw him alive. Might have been the last person to see him alive. I just couldn’t help thinking . . .’

‘The dead man is English,’ Kenny said. ‘He spoke with an English accent. Perez told me.’

‘Lawrence has been away for a long time. He might speak differently now.’

‘You’re talking as if you want it to be Lawrence,’ he said.

‘No!’

‘I would have recognized him,’ Kenny said stubbornly. ‘Even without seeing his face.’

‘Would you? Really? How long is it since he’s been
here? Years. Certainly he left before Alice was born and I can’t mind any visits.’

Kenny tried to fix a picture of his brother in his mind. To see his height, the proportions of his body. He thought of the man he’d seen the night before loping down the track. Could that have been Lawrence?

‘When’s the last time you heard from him?’ Aggie asked.

Kenny knew exactly, but he wasn’t going to tell Aggie. He wasn’t going to admit that Lawrence cared so little for him that there’d been nothing but a second-hand message left with Bella. ‘Lawrence says he’s going away again. He told me to tell you.’ Kenny hadn’t even been there to say goodbye when his brother left. Perhaps Lawrence had chosen the moment especially. He’d known that Kenny would persuade him to stay.

‘The man in the hut isn’t Lawrence,’ he said.

He thought she would say more to convince him that it might be, but she suddenly gave up the fight.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You’re right. I’m being foolish. I don’t know what’s been wrong with me to day. My head’s full of all kinds of fancies. You would know your own brother.’ She paused. ‘After the policeman left I even wondered for a moment if it might be Andrew. They didn’t find his body until weeks after he fell. The tide was so strong, the coastguard said he must have been taken out to open water. I thought maybe he survived after all. For all those weeks I kept hoping. There was some chance he’d survived, swum ashore somewhere, taken himself away to sober up.
Even when the body was washed up, it could have been anyone.’

‘Andrew’s dead,’ Kenny said.

‘I know. It’s my imagination. I think, What if . . . and then I’m carried along by the possibility. The story.’ She gave a little smile. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come.’

‘Have some tea while you’re here.’ Now, he felt sorry for her, living all on her own. She had no one to take her to bed on stolen afternoons.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I just shut up the post office and ran up here. I need to get back. I might have customers waiting.’

‘It’s the time of year,’ he said. ‘The light nights. It makes us all go a little bit mad.’

Roy Taylor was head of the Inverness team. He’d be the senior investigating officer once he arrived. Perez had worked with him before and they’d become friends of a sort. Not close friends. Perez knew nothing about his private life, didn’t even know if he was married. But they’d come to an understanding about the case they were working on.

Now, listening to Taylor’s impatience, Perez was irritated. He didn’t need telling that the priority was to get an ID on the victim. He’d only officially
been
a victim for half an hour, for Christ’s sake. Sandy should have arrived in Lerwick now. He’d be on the phone, chatting to the lasses in the NorthLink office at Holmsgarth, checking with Loganair on the BA bookings. It was the sort of work Sandy liked and was good at, routine and not too demanding. Perez was confident they’d have a name by the end of the day. At this point there was little else they could do. He knew that Taylor’s impatience had little to do with his handling of the case. He’d be frustrated because he was still in Inverness, because he hadn’t set out for Aberdeen the minute he got the call. If the weather had changed just a little earlier, if they hadn’t banked on getting the last plane into Sumburgh, they’d have
been able to reach the ferry before it sailed and at least they’d be in Lerwick at seven the next morning. Taylor was a man who liked to be in control. Perez could imagine him, angry with himself and taking it out on the rest of the team.

Perez was hungry now too. Fran had woken when he got up, made mumbled offers of toast and fruit, but he was already late for work by then. He was tempted to head back for town, thought of bacon sandwiches, fish and chips. Something warm and greasy and filling. But for completeness’ sake he thought he should talk to Peter Wilding, the Englishman who had taken on Willy Jamieson’s house. He could tell Taylor that he’d spoken to everyone who lived in Biddista then. Taylor wouldn’t be able to pull him up on that.

Wilding was sitting in the upstairs window, looking out, just as Martin had described. The fog had made the day so gloomy that he’d switched on a light in the room. Perez could only see him when he reached the end of the terrace and even then the view wasn’t so good. He thought the man had been watching him all along, from the moment he’d pulled up in his car. He’d have watched Perez go to Skoles and to the Manse, seen him in the shop and in Aggie’s house. It seemed odd to him that a man should take so much interest in the trivia of everyday life. In Perez’s experience, women were the nosy ones. Why would this Englishman care what the people of Biddista got up to? But Wilding’s curiosity might be useful. There was a real possibility that he’d seen the stranger.

The writer must just have seen Perez as a silhouette coming out of the mist. Why is he still sitting there, Perez thought, when there’s nothing to see? As
soon as he knocked on the door, Wilding left his place at the window. Perez heard footsteps on wooden floorboards, a key turning in the lock. The door must have warped because it stuck against the frame. Did the locked door mean the man hadn’t been out yet that day? Or that security was a habit brought up from the south?

He recognized Wilding as soon as he came to the door as the dark man who’d been talking to Fran at the gallery. He was tall, rather good-looking, Perez saw now. He was wearing a striped collarless cotton shirt and jeans, canvas shoes. The writer smiled. He didn’t speak but waited for his visitor to explain himself. Perez found the silence disconcerting.

Perez supposed he should show his warrant card, but couldn’t quite remember what he’d done with it and introduced himself instead. ‘I wonder if I could ask you a few questions.’

‘Oh, please do. Any excuse to stop staring at a blank laptop screen.’ It was a rich voice, as if he was constantly amused by a private joke. Perez had imagined a writer with a deadline to meet as brooding, self-absorbed, but now there was no hint of that. The man stood aside. ‘I noticed that there’s been some activity on the jetty. Is it about that, I wonder?’ Perez remained silent. ‘Oh well,’ Wilding went on. ‘No doubt you’ll tell me when you’re ready.’ His eyes were so blue that Perez wondered if he was wearing coloured contact lenses. It pleased him to think of Wilding as vain.

Willy Jamieson had been born in this house and lived in it until he’d moved into sheltered housing. He’d scratched a living from fishing and, when he was
younger, from odd bits of work for the council. Perez could remember seeing him by the side of the road sometimes, helping the contractors lay new tarmac. He’d never married, and when he’d moved out the house was in much the same state as the day his parents had moved in. Perez supposed that he’d bought it from the council. Wilding must be the owner now, or be renting it privately. He was hardly a normal council tenant.

Inside the house, Perez could see across a passageway into a small kitchen which held a deep sink with one tap and a Calor gas stove. The table, folded against one wall, looked as if it had been left behind by Willy. There were no fitted cupboards, no washing machine. The only additions were a small fridge, balanced on the workbench, and a coffee grinder. The place had an air of impermanence. A squat. It was as if Wilding were camping out here.

Wilding seemed untroubled that Perez could see the primitive nature of his domestic arrangements and gave another of his smiles. ‘Let’s go upstairs. It’s more civilized there. Can I make you tea? I’m sure Aggie will have offered you tea earlier, but I expect you could use another by now. Or coffee perhaps? Coffee is one of my few luxuries here. I grind the beans every time.’ He spoke slowly and Perez had the sense that he was considering the effect of every word. But perhaps it was just that he’d spent too long on his own in his upstairs room and conversation no longer came easily.

Perez was tempted by the coffee. It would be a long day and he would need something to keep awake and alert.

‘Coffee would be fine.’ He paused. ‘One of my luxuries too.’

‘Ah! Another addict! I can recognize the signs. Splendid. Go in and make yourself at home. The room at the front. I’ll not keep you waiting long.’

He had followed Perez halfway up the stairs, but now he turned and went back to the kitchen, moving very lightly for such a tall man. All his movements were easy and unhurried. It was as if he’d expected a visitor and had planned in advance the words he would use and the way he would move.

As Wilding had said, the workroom was more civilized. The bare, unvarnished floorboards were hidden by a woven rug in the middle of the room. The desk was old, leather-topped and obviously his own. He’d made some makeshift shelves from bricks and planks and they were crammed with books. There was a CD player and a rack of discs. A large unframed canvas hung on one wall. It was of a field of hay, which had been cut and piled into untidy heaps, under a fierce yellow light. Perez thought it might be by Bella Sinclair and felt ridiculously pleased with himself when he approached and saw the signature. He would tell Fran later. He was still staring at it when Wilding came in, pushing the door open with his foot. He was carrying a cafetiere and two mugs on a tray, a box of shop-bought cakes. He had learned the convention of island entertaining. It was considered impossibly rude not to offer a guest something sweet to eat.

‘I don’t have any milk,’ he said, in no way apologetic. ‘But I could run to the shop if you’re desperate.’

‘I drink it black.’

‘Splendid.’ A favourite word. ‘You have the chair,
inspector. I’m quite happy on the floor.’ And he lounged, legs outstretched, still managing to dominate the room.

Perez would have liked a cake, but it seemed they were just there for show. He couldn’t ask for one without seeming greedy. ‘Martin says you’re a writer.’ Perez was interested in the man, his profession. Every witness statement and confession was part fiction, but he couldn’t imagine conjuring a whole story from thin air, couldn’t see where you would start. ‘Do you write under your own name?’

Wilding laughed. ‘Oh yes, inspector, but don’t worry if you’ve never heard of me. Few people have. I write fantasy, an acquired taste.’ He seemed rather pleased that he was unknown. ‘Fortunately I do quite well in the States and Japan.’

Perez thought some comment of congratulation was expected, but wasn’t sure what to say. Instead he sipped his coffee, took a moment to enjoy it.

‘Have you had any visitors recently, Mr Wilding? Friends from the south, perhaps?’

‘No, inspector. I moved here to escape distractions. The last thing I need is people under my feet.’

‘There was an Englishman in Biddista yesterday. You might have seen him.’

‘Nobody came to the house and I was in all day.’

‘But not in the evening. Then you were at the exhibition at the Herring House. As was the Englishman.’

‘And so were you! Of course, I recognize you now. You were there with the attractive young artist. Ms Hunter. A great new talent. Art, I must confess, is another of my luxuries. I love Bella’s work. It was she who inspired my first visit to Shetland. And so I was
delighted to receive an invitation to the opening. There were fewer people than I was expecting. I suppose I’d thought it was going to be more of a local event.’

‘People are very busy in the summer.’ Perez wondered why he felt so defensive. It wasn’t the time to explain that the event had been the subject of a practical joke, but he didn’t want the man thinking there was no interest in Shetland in Fran’s work. ‘Do you remember the man who became a little emotional?’

‘The guy in black? Of course.’ Wilding paused, for the first time dropped the light, affected tone. ‘I felt sorry for him. I’ve suffered from mental-health problems too. I understood his desperation.’

‘You thought his distress was genuine?’

‘Oh I think so, don’t you? It seemed real enough to me.’

Perez didn’t answer.

‘What happened to the man?’ Perez thought Wilding seemed unnaturally concerned about a stranger. ‘Has he been admitted to hospital? Sometimes, for a short while, it’s the only solution with depression.’

‘I’m afraid he’s dead,’ Perez said.

Wilding turned his head away. When he looked back, he’d regained some control, but his voice was still unsteady. ‘The poor man.’