Chapter Thirty-Three

  IT WAS EARLY AFTERNOON AND PEREZ was back in the police station. He’d needed more coffee and food, and knew he was doing nothing useful at the locus. He sent Ellie there to take his place.

  ‘You’re in charge. No reason to get back to me unless you need to.’

  She grinned and seemed to blossom in front of him.

  He’d downloaded the Johnson television series from iPlayer and was watching it with Phil, drinking takeaway coffee from the Archive cafe and eating a sandwich. He still couldn’t quite believe in the coincidence of all three crime scenes appearing in the show, and he wanted to check for himself that Rutherford had been right, and no other ancient site had featured.

  He had to admit that the professor had been a convincing performer. The viewers would have believed that he was the expert in the field, and that it was down to his skill that the runes on the story stones had been interpreted. Certainly, it would never occur to them that the man had only stayed on Westray a couple of times before making the film. He spoke fluently, with only a trace of arrogance, and anyone watching would be quite certain that nobody else could have been as knowledgeable as him. He came across as likeable, a bit of a rogue, and he peppered the history with personal stories about his time on the island, first as a student and then as an academic.

  ‘There were some wild parties. I’m not sure we would have got away with anything like that these days.’ A little chuckle, as if he regretted the old freedoms.

  Perez wondered what Willow would make of that, and again the spark of an idea floated into his head.

  Rutherford had been right. The three episodes based on Orkney had featured Westray, Maeshowe and Stenness, including a brief piece shot with Brodgar in the background. Perez didn’t bother to watch the films based in Shetland. By then, he’d had enough of Johnson’s strutting, the carefully windblown hair and the patronizing air.

  ‘Man,’ Phil said, when the screen went blank, ‘have you ever seen anyone so sure of himself?’

  Perez was about to answer when his phone rang. Willow, her voice a little breathless.

  ‘I’ve found Barbara.’

  For a moment he didn’t reply. He could hardly believe what she was telling him. ‘Alive?’

  ‘Oh yes, very alive.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘St Margaret’s Hope. You and Ellie guessed she might be there. She was going to get on the two-thirty ferry to Caithness, when she heard on the news that Tony was dead. She was in her car crying her eyes out when I found her – the ferry sailed without her. She’s still here. I’ve just left her in my car for a couple of minutes to make the call. I can see her. She’s not going anywhere.’

  ‘Do you believe her? You don’t think she killed her husband?’

  ‘Oh, I believe that. I’m not sure about anything else. She could have been involved in the other two murders, couldn’t she? As Johnson’s accomplice. I’ll bring her in. Leave their car here, secure. You can send someone down for it.’

  Perez was going to tell Willow to take care, to ask if she needed someone to come to South Ronaldsay, so she wouldn’t be on her own with the woman who might, despite what Willow had said, have recently killed her husband. But in the end, he thought better of it. The spark of his idea was growing a little brighter – and he trusted Willow’s judgement. She knew what she was doing.

  He decided, when Barbara walked into the police station, that they’d both been right. He couldn’t see this as a woman who’d killed her husband. Not in cold blood. Not leaving him overnight in the middle of a stone circle. She was a mess. Her eyes were red with crying. She was still rubbing them with her knuckles as she came through the door. She’d been wearing make-up when she’d set off for the ferry, but the mascara and shadow had smudged all over her cheeks. The confident extrovert had disappeared, along with the loud voice and the sense of entitlement. She’d clung on to Willow’s arm as they made their way from the car park, as if she’d get lost without the detective, as if she wouldn’t be able to stand straight without support. Either she was a consummate actor, or she was devastated by her husband’s death. Perez knew he could be too sympathetic, too easily taken in by a good sob story, but he believed that Barbara was grieving.

  While he understood her anger and her pain, now he needed answers quickly. The woman was the best way to find out who’d killed Archie Stout, George Riley and Tony Johnson. And though he knew it shouldn’t matter, she was the best way to stop the pressure that was piling up from Glasgow, from the officers who were judging him and his team from the comfort of their offices and homes.

  He took her into the room where they interviewed vulnerable victims and witnesses. He wanted to make her as relaxed as possible so she would talk. It had a carpet and soft chairs. A coffee table with a box of tissues on top. A couple of cheesy prints on the wall. He’d taken down the image of the Stones of Stenness at sunset. Willow followed them in.

  Barbara pulled her hands away from her face. ‘Can I see him?’

  Perez remembered that Vaila had asked exactly the same question. Another bereaved woman.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘But we can arrange it for you later.’

  Willow was sitting next to Barbara. Perez had taken a chair opposite them both.

  ‘Why did you leave Westray in such a rush?’ He tried to keep his voice gentle and unhurried as he nodded towards Willow. ‘You knew that Chief Inspector Reeves here wanted to talk to you both.’

  ‘We needed to get home quickly. Tony had work commitments.’

  ‘That’s not quite true, is it?’ Willow could have been chiding a child for an unimportant fib. ‘You’d stolen some notebooks from the heritage centre. You were running away before their absence was discovered.’

  ‘But that did relate to Tony’s work!’

  Perez thought Barbara had convinced herself that they’d done nothing wrong. She’d created a narrative in which she and her husband were the good guys, misunderstood.

  And, he thought, don’t we all do that at times?

  Barbara was still speaking now, earnest, desperate to persuade them. ‘Tony had used that material for his research paper. He had every right to it.’

  ‘But it wasn’t his research, was it?’ Perez decided it was time to challenge her. ‘And he’d failed to credit Magnus Stout for all the work. He took the glory for himself.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that!’ Barbara leaned forward until her face was so close to Perez’s that he could smell the perfume she must have used that morning. Preparing herself for the meeting with her husband. Preparing to run away. ‘Tony talked to Magnus and asked his permission. Magnus was delighted that his research had changed the wider world’s perception of the archaeology of Orkney and Westray in particular. Tony had asked Magnus if he could have the notebooks, and Magnus had agreed. But he was getting old, and he couldn’t find them immediately, and then the promise must have slipped from his mind. Tony reminded him a few times, but Magnus was caught up with other things – the farm and his family – and he never got round to sending them.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Perez suggested gently, ‘Magnus wanted the notebooks to stay in Westray. He might not have enjoyed being pressured to hand them over. If he hadn’t wanted any kind of fuss, he might just have held on to them.’

  ‘Oh no!’ Barbara seemed shocked by the suggestion. ‘I don’t think that was it at all.’

  ‘Then he died,’ Perez went on as if she hadn’t spoken, ‘and Archie found the notebooks in Nistaben. He showed them to George Riley. He confronted your husband and accused him of plagiarism and fraud. Riley threatened to make Magnus’s role in the story stones translation public, and to accuse your husband of stealing the research.’

  ‘It was ridiculous!’ Barbara was almost back to her old self, shrill and certain. The loyal wife fighting for her husband’s good name. Or fighting for herself? Knowing, perhaps, that she’d be implicated too, that the lovely arty friends who came to her home for supper or drinks would pick up the scandal on social media and begin to keep their distance. ‘It would have ruined Tony’s reputation, just as he’d been commissioned to work on a new series for the BBC.’

  ‘So,’ Perez said, ‘Tony arranged to meet Archie to discuss it all, to persuade him to hand over the notebooks.’

  Barbara nodded. She glanced at Willow, as if hoping for her support. ‘Magnus had already promised that Tony should have them, you see. Tony wanted to explain. He arranged to meet Archie to discuss it, to set the record straight.’

  ‘Why did they meet at the site at Noltland? It was poor weather for a conversation outdoors.’

  Barbara shrugged. ‘Tony didn’t want other people interfering.’ A pause. ‘It seemed appropriate to us, and not too far from Pierowall. They met in the golf club car park and walked to the site from there.’

  ‘Did Archie drive there? He didn’t walk?’

  ‘No. His car was there before we were. He seemed impatient, as if he’d been waiting for some time.’ She paused for a moment, choosing her words so they would understand. ‘We’d had the meeting all planned to create the right atmosphere. The storm that night came out of nothing, but Tony decided to go ahead anyway with what we’d arranged.’

  It seemed to Perez that the whole set-up had been like a piece of theatre. Maybe the scene-setting had been Barbara’s idea. He could imagine her directing the encounter, with Tony imagining himself in front of the camera again. He’d obviously always enjoyed that. The preening. The showing off.

  Willow came in with a question then:

  ‘Were you there with them at the meeting? Did you see what happened?’

  Barbara shook her head. ‘I drove with Tony to the golf club, but I sat in the car, waiting. Tony went out alone.’ A pause. ‘I left on the headlights for a few minutes and saw them walk away together. Just shadows, blown by the wind, down the path to the sea.’

  ‘That still seems odd to me, to be out there in the wild weather.’

  ‘It hadn’t started raining then. That came later.’ Barbara paused for a moment. ‘Besides, we thought Archie might understand things better if Tony took him to the Noltland site and explained how much it had revealed about Westray’s history. The man was a layman, not a historian, not even an amateur like his father. We wanted to capture his imagination and show him how important Westray was to a knowledge of the period.’

  ‘But Archie couldn’t be persuaded. He’d spoken to George Riley, who’d already decided that your husband was a plagiarist and was determined to expose him.’ Perez was still trying to picture the meeting between the men: Johnson insisting that Archie get out of his car and walk towards the sea, through the storm, in torchlight. Why had Archie gone along with it? Perhaps he was in the mood for a confrontation and Vaila had said he’d always been exhilarated by a storm. He’d gone along with the plan because he was excited by the drama. The evening in the bar with his friends could wait. It fitted the character of the man.

  Perez looked across the table at Barbara. He had to push the woman to the truth.

  ‘All afternoon Archie had been around the island, in old folks’ houses, having a dram wherever he went,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t drunk or unsteady, but the alcohol would have made him unreasonable, a little aggressive. It could take him that way. I think Tony had already lifted the story stones from the centre. He wanted to prove how much he knew about them, that he was entirely familiar with every mark made on the back of each stone. But Archie wouldn’t listen. He didn’t give your husband a chance to explain. He was never very interested in detail. He insisted that the work was Magnus’s and that he should have proper credit.’

  ‘As you said, Archie had met George Riley earlier in the day.’ Barbara was bitter. ‘And then I think they met again just before we caught up with Stout at the golf club. They’d wound each other up. Archie wouldn’t be reasonable.’

  ‘So,’ Perez spoke very quietly now, ‘that night at Noltland, your husband lost his temper and killed Archie. Archie must have turned his back on Tony, walked away from him, heading back to his car to drive to Pierowall, the warmth and the craic. Tony would have hated that. He wasn’t used to being ignored. He came up behind him and hit him. A moment of rage. Almost understandable.’

  ‘No!’ Barbara was beside herself. These tears were of frustration, not grief. ‘They argued. But Tony kept his temper. It was Archie who flew into a rage. He set off back to the golf club and his car. He said that he had other more important things on his mind. He couldn’t waste time on Tony’s lies. I saw him! The rain had started by then, and there was a flash of lightning that lit up the scene. Archie Stout was alive when he left Tony. I saw him run across the car park, his big coat flapping in the wind, and he was still sitting in his car when we drove away.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s true, is it?’ Perez said. ‘Archie Stout’s vehicle was back outside the hotel the following morning. If he was killed at Noltland after Tony left him, how can it have got there?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ The woman was almost screaming. ‘But I promise that he was still alive when we last saw him.’

  ‘What time did this meeting near the dig take place?’ Willow came in again, her voice low, reasonable. ‘Was it before or after your dinner with the Angels?’

  ‘Just after.’

  ‘So Vaila had already got to the bar. News was already out that Archie was missing. You and Tony knew that people were looking for him, because you were still at the Angels’ when Vaila called them.’ Willow paused for a moment. ‘When did Tony make this arrangement to meet Archie?’ Outside the window the light was fading. She reached back and switched on a lamp on a shelf behind her. There was a soft light that made the space more intimate. A place for therapy not interrogation.

  Barbara leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes for a moment. Suddenly the woman seemed overcome with exhaustion. Perez was worried that she might even fall asleep. But she answered, her voice flat. She wanted this over too.

  ‘That was earlier in the day. Tony was anxious. He might have seemed very sure of himself, but it was all a front. That morning, he couldn’t settle. I had emails to send for work and, in the end, I suggested that he go out for a walk. He saw Archie go into Rosalie Greeman’s house and waited in the road for him to come out. He tried to talk to Archie then, but the man said he was too busy and refused to engage. According to Tony, he seemed upset. That was when Tony suggested meeting at the old excavation. “For old times’ sake.” I don’t think Archie liked it, but he agreed. We planned the detail later in the afternoon.’

  ‘How did you get into the heritage centre to pick up the story stones?’

  ‘Evelyn gave us her key. Tony told her we wanted to do a little research. We pulled the door locked behind us.’

  Perez supposed that was when Fiona had seen the light in the heritage centre window. He was trying to make sense of this. He needed to create a real timeline of that day. He’d been given information by so many people that he couldn’t keep track.

  Barbara was still talking. ‘Even if Vaila hadn’t phoned the Angels to say she couldn’t find Archie, we’d planned to leave Hillhead early. Tony had asked a colleague to phone him, so we’d have an excuse.’

  So that was the phone call that Tom and Evelyn Angel had described. Perez and Barbara sat for a moment staring at each other. In the corridor outside someone was whistling ‘Silent Night’. It was perfectly in tune.

  Willow took up the questions. ‘Let’s move on to the day of the carol concert in Kirkwall. You came out with the others on the ferry from Westray. I was at the concert, but I didn’t see you in the cathedral, though you implied that you had been.’

  ‘No,’ Barbara said. ‘We just thought we fancied a change, a trip in to the mainland. It had all got a bit fraught in Westray after Archie died. We wanted a change of scene.’ A pause. ‘I’m not sure why I lied about having been in the cathedral. I suppose it seemed a bit pathetic to say we’d come to town because we fancied a trip out when everyone else was having a deep and meaningful experience in the service.’ There was that sneer in her voice again, as if really, she thought everyone else was pathetic.

  ‘What did you do in Kirkwall?’

  ‘A bit of shopping. A few bits and pieces to take back as gifts for the family. A cocktail or three.’

  ‘A meal?’

  ‘Yes. We managed an early supper at the Storehouse.’

  ‘What about lunch?’ Perez asked.

  ‘Oh, I never bother much with lunch and we’d had a full breakfast at the hotel.’

  ‘But Tony did have lunch. On his own in the Archive cafe.’

  Barbara seemed nearly to lose control again. ‘Someone’s stabbed my husband and killed him. There have been three murders in your beautiful islands. And you’re interested in our eating habits?’

  ‘This was the day that George Riley was killed.’ Perez’s voice was icy. ‘He was hit by the second story stone that you’ve already admitted was in your husband’s possession when he met Archie Stout on Westray. So yes, I’m very interested in your movements that day.’

  ‘Tony didn’t have either of the story stones by then!’ She was wide awake now, shouting so loudly that her voice sounded hoarse. ‘He left them at Noltland with Archie. He’d been upset by the encounter, and anyway why would he bother to carry the stones back with him. He’d had them to set the scene, to make Archie realize how much effort he’d put into making Westray famous. That obviously hadn’t worked.’

  ‘Only one stone was there when I found Archie’s body,’ Perez said. ‘It was covered in blood and bone, and it had been used to bludgeon the man to death.’

  ‘That wasn’t Tony!’

  ‘Are you sure, Mrs Johnson?’ Willow said quietly. ‘You weren’t there. Can you really be sure?’

  Barbara stared at her. ‘Of course I’m sure. Tony was pissed off. He’d been out in the cold and the wind, when he could have been in the bar. He’d failed to persuade Stout. His reputation was in danger. But I saw the man come back to his car. Besides, there was no blood on my husband’s hands. Literally or metaphorically. And there would have been, wouldn’t there, if he’d battered Archie? On his hands and his clothes.’