White Nights (8 page)

Yet Martin had a reputation for good humour. Even at the old man’s funeral, he’d been heard cracking a joke with one of his friends. There were people who’d disapproved of that; others thought he was putting on a brave face. The story would be linked to him for ever. It defined him: Martin Williamson, the man who laughed at his father’s funeral. ‘He’s always been a bit of a clown,’ his mother was quoted as saying when the complaints got back to her. Apparently, the comment had been made quite without judgement.

Aggie Williamson had her name over the shop door and lived in the house attached. The same rumour-mongers who gossiped about old man Williamson’s drowning explained her sudden affluence, the ability to buy the business, as the result of the payout from the insurance company after her husband’s death. She’d grown up in Biddista and had always wanted to return there. She’d never settled in Scalloway or in the hotel. She was a quiet and withdrawn woman and the noise of the hotel’s public bar, the stress of facing strangers who came to holiday there, had unsettled her. She could scarcely make much of a living from the Biddista business, but the Royal Mail paid her a little, and anyway she preferred it when the shop was empty. Then she sat on the high stool next to the post office and read romantic novels set in the past.

Martin lived in the house set in the middle of the terrace with his wife Dawn and his young daughter. He helped his mother out when he wasn’t working in the Herring House. He had ambitions to open his own restaurant.

All this Perez knew, although his dealings with the family had been limited. He wondered occasionally how it must be to live in a community where the back stories to people’s lives remained untold. Exhilarating, he thought. It could be possible to reinvent yourself with every encounter. But it might be flat and a little cold too. Biddista had even fewer people than Fair Isle, where he grew up. He thought the folk here would make sure they had some secrets to keep to themselves. Nobody liked to think their neighbours knew everything about them.

He realized that he must look very odd, just standing
there, deep in thought, and roused himself. The shop was gloomy. The only light came from the open door. In the shadow he saw a small child playing on the floor, a box of toys beside her. In her arms she held a knitted toy, a strange animal with elongated limbs and a snout. She held it round the middle and bounced it along the floor as if it was dancing. Martin looked at him over the counter, saw him staring at the toy and laughed.

‘Don’t ask what it is. Alice took a fancy to it at a sale of work and now we can’t get it off her, even to wash it.’ He grinned. ‘Twice in two days: what brings you to Biddista again so soon?’

Perez ignored the question. ‘I thought you ran the café in the Herring House. Aren’t you there today?’

‘The gallery’s not open on a Tuesday. I give my mother a bit of a break by standing in here.’

Perez walked around the shelves, pulling off chocolate bars and crisps. No salt and vinegar. Would cheese and onion do? Sandy could be picky about his food. I can’t believe that I’m really worrying about this, Perez thought, that I’m just about to start a murder investigation and I’m bothered by Sandy’s choice of a snack lunch. He landed up at the counter, took his wallet out of his back pocket. ‘That man who was at the gallery last night,’ he said. ‘You saw he was a bit upset. Did you recognize him?’

Martin shook his head. ‘He looked like a visitor to me.’ He began to ring up Perez’s purchases on the till.

‘I left him in the kitchen with you. What made him run off suddenly like that?’

Martin looked up, a packet of crisps still in his hand. ‘Hey, it was nothing to do with me. I was still
working on the buffet. Waste of time in the end, half of it was uneaten. They didn’t get as many people as they were expecting. Bella was furious.’

‘So what happened? Did he just get up and walk out without a word?’

‘I don’t know what happened. I carried a tray of food out to set on the trestle at the back of the gallery. When I got back to the kitchen he’d gone. Maybe he just sorted himself out and went home.’

‘No,’ Perez said. He saw that the girl was engrossed in her game, but still lowered his voice. ‘He didn’t do that. He’s still there in Kenny Thomson’s hut. He’s dead. Hanging from one of the rafters.’

Martin’s mouth stretched into the beginning of an embarrassed laugh.

‘You’re joking?’

‘No,’ Perez said. ‘Why would I joke about something like that? Kenny found him. He hasn’t said anything to you?’ He found it hard to believe that this was news to Martin. A place like Biddista, information escaped, seeped into general knowledge without any effort. ‘Didn’t you wonder what Sandy and the doctors were doing out there?’

‘I’ve been in here since the shop opened. Nursing a bit of a hangover.’

‘Why would you think I was joking?’ How tasteless would that be? he thought. Like claiming a death in the family had caused an art exhibition to cancel its opening.

‘Well, I mean, it’s a shock. Did he kill himself?’ Suddenly Martin lifted his daughter into his arms. He looked out of the doorway, down to the hut and Sandy,
who was still sitting on the harbour wall. ‘Why would he go into Kenny’s hut to kill himself?’

‘Was Kenny the only person to use it?’

‘No, we just call it that because he built it. Everyone living in Biddista can leave their gear there. Kenny, me, the new chap who’s moved into the house at the end of the row, Bella, Roddy.’

‘Who’s the new chap?’

‘He’s from England. A writer. Peter Wilding. Here to finish a book, he said. Willy, who used to live in that house, moved into sheltered housing last year and Wilding moved in. I’d never heard of him but he obviously does all right at it if he can afford to take the summer out. He doesn’t seem to do much writing. Mostly he’s sitting at his upstairs window, staring out over the water. Maybe waiting for inspiration, huh?’

The girl struggled to be released from his grip and ran back to her toys.

‘Does Wilding have a boat?’ Perez asked.

‘No. I asked him out when I was going with Kenny once, just to be friendly. But a bit of a breeze blew up and it made him kind of nervous. I think he felt ill. I don’t think he’d go out again.’

‘Why does he need to get into the hut then?’

‘He asked if he could leave a couple of boxes of his things there. Willy’s house is very small.’

‘If he’s from England maybe there’s a connection with the dead man.’

‘They can’t have been friends though. A strange kind of friendship at least, to see someone you know upset and do nothing to help him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Wilding was at the party at the Herring House last
night. Bella invited him. She likes famous people. He was there when the stranger had that turn. If he’d known him he surely would have said so then.’ Then Perez remembered Bella mentioning the man, only she’d described him as a collector.

‘You can’t think of anyone else round here who might have been putting up the dead man? We can’t find a car.’

‘No one around Biddista takes in paying guests.’

‘What time did you leave the Herring House?’

‘It was probably about eleven before I’d finished clearing up.’

‘I understand Roddy Sinclair kept you company.’

‘We had a few drinks. There were plenty of bottles open. It would have been a waste not to finish a couple of them.’ Martin grinned. Is he really like some carefree child? Perez thought. Is it true that he wasn’t even moved by his father’s death?

‘He invited you back to the Manse to carry on with the party?’

‘He said he’d promised Bella he’d stop drinking on his own. I think she worries about him. He gets a bit wild sometimes. Last time he was home she suggested he go somewhere to dry out.’

‘Did he?’

‘Of course not. He’s young. He drinks a lot. He’s only different from any other Shetland boy his age because he has more money. He’ll grow out of it.’

‘You didn’t go with Roddy to the Manse?’

‘No, I knew I’d be there all night. He started to make a bit of a noise as we left the gallery. Dawn has to be up early for work and I knew she’d not appreciate the racket. That brought me to my senses.’

‘Was anyone around?’

‘Nobody.’

‘Any lights in the houses?’

‘I’m not sure. This time of the year when it’s not so dark out, you don’t really notice.’ He paused. ‘I think Wilding was back sitting at his upstairs window looking out.’

‘Can you remember when he left the party?’

‘Sorry. I was in and out of the kitchen all evening. People seemed to disappear quite quickly after the chap caused the scene. Roddy played a couple of numbers then everyone drifted off. I guess Wilding went then.’

‘Do you know anything about this?’ Perez slipped the flyer cancelling the exhibition on to the counter.

Martin read it, frowning. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Who died? Bella didn’t say anything about cancelling to me.’

‘Nobody died,’ Perez said.
Only an Englishman dressed in black
. ‘It seems to have been some sort of practical joke. Or someone wanting to wreck the opening. These were all over Lerwick yesterday.’

‘It’s pathetic.’ For the first time in the conversation Martin seemed serious. Intense.

‘What is?’

‘People being so jealous of Bella. Because she’s good at what she does and makes money from it.’

‘Do you have anyone specific in mind?’

Before Martin could answer, the child turned back from the toybox to face them.

‘Look at me!’ She was wearing a clown’s mask. Her hair, caught in the elastic, stuck up around it. The mask was identical to the one the stranger was still
wearing as he hung in the jetty hut waiting for the crime-scene investigator from Inverness. Perez felt his stomach flip as it had earlier that day. With a flight of fancy he thought the mask stopped the child looking human. It was as if someone had stolen her soul.

But Martin only laughed. ‘Hey, Alice,’ he said. ‘Where did you get that? It’s really freaky.’

The girl giggled and ran out of the shop into the sunshine without answering.

The child ran into her grandmother’s house, leaving the door ajar after her. Her mother wouldn’t be at home. Perez knew that, as he knew all the other things about the family, the information gathered without any effort on his part, over the years. Dawn Williamson was a teacher at Middleton, the nearest primary school. Martin and Aggie looked after the girl between them while she was at work. Dawn was an incomer, so his understanding of her background was a little sketchy. She’d already moved to Shetland, was already teaching in the school when she took up with Martin.

Perez took the carrier bag of food back to Sandy, left it on the harbour wall beside him and crossed the road again before the man discovered his requests hadn’t been exactly met. He stood on the pavement outside Aggie’s house and knocked at the door. He liked Aggie. He’d returned to Shetland just in time to be involved with her husband’s accident. He’d taken a statement from her, had respected her calm, the way she refused to speak badly of the dead man.

Aggie let him in. She recognized him at once.

‘Jimmy Perez, what are you doing in Biddista?’ There was a trace of nervousness in her voice.
Wherever you were in the world, a policeman on your doorstep meant trouble. When he didn’t answer, she went on, ‘Well, come away in. You’ll tell me in your own good time.’

He couldn’t think that he’d seen Aggie since her husband’s funeral, but she’d not changed – a trim, slight woman now in her early sixties. Standing at the square table, covered in patterned oilcloth, she was preparing for baking. In front of her stood a set of scales, a china bowl, a bag of flour and another of sugar, three eggs loose on a saucer, a wooden spoon. He could have been in his mother’s kitchen in Fair Isle. She had a mixing bowl of exactly the same pale yellow. Aggie had been greasing a baking tray with a margarine wrapper. Alice had run ahead of him and was sitting on a tall stool drinking juice from a plastic beaker. The clown’s mask had been pushed back from her face but still rested on top of her head.

Aggie wiped her hands on a dishcloth. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘you’ll take a cup of tea while you’re here.’ She pushed the kettle on to the hotplate of the Rayburn. The first trace of surprise at seeing him on the doorstep had disappeared. But then nothing seemed to shock her. She hadn’t been shocked when her husband walked off the dock into the water.

He looked over to the granddaughter and she realized he didn’t want to talk in front of the child.

‘Come away, Alice,’ she said. ‘A lovely day like this, you don’t want to be stuck indoors. There’ll be time enough for that when you start school. Outside with you.’ She opened the kitchen door and chivvied her into a long, narrow garden. They watched her climb on to a wooden swing, still holding the woollen toy in
one hand so she had to grasp one of its limbs and the rope together. The rope looked like something you might see on a ship. Like the rope forming the noose around the Englishman’s neck.

‘There’s a dead man in Kenny’s hut,’ Perez said. Again he didn’t think this could be news to her. She’d have seen Sandy sitting on the wall all morning. Surely she’d have gone out to ask him what he was doing there. But if it was old information, she wasn’t letting on.

She’d already started beating the sugar and margarine and looked up sharply.

‘Not Kenny? No, of course, it can’t be Kenny. He walked past the house a little while ago. Fast, as if he didn’t want to speak. Who then?’

‘An Englishman,’ Perez said. ‘A stranger. He was at Bella Sinclair’s party last night, but nobody seemed to know him.’

‘How did he die?’ she asked.

‘We don’t have all the details yet. He’s hanging from one of the rafters.’ He paused. ‘You weren’t there, at Bella’s party.’

Not a question, and she picked up on that. ‘But you were? I’d heard you’d become friendly with Duncan Hunter’s wife.’

‘She’s not his wife any more, Aggie.’ Why had he felt the need to say that? He was annoyed that he’d reacted to the comment. Perhaps it was because she made him think of his mother, and he’d always needed to justify himself to
her
.