Neither of them answered.

  ‘Where were you when your husband was having lunch in Kirkwall, Mrs Johnson?’ Perez asked at last. ‘We know you took your car with you on the ferry that day. Did you go out for a drive? Explore a little?’

  She shook her head. ‘We did go for a drive – only out to Orphir, it was a beautiful day – but that was just after we first arrived in Kirkwall.’

  ‘What were you doing while your husband was eating lunch? You still haven’t explained.’

  ‘What is this fixation with Tony’s lunch? I was shopping. Tony hates it. Hated it. I love it. So we split up. No big deal. No drama.’

  ‘And then you split up again yesterday,’ Willow said. ‘According to a witness, you and your husband were arguing in the ferry on the way out of Westray. Is that why you were driving to St Margaret’s Hope on your own? You’d decided you couldn’t live with him any longer?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then perhaps you could explain.’

  Barbara didn’t answer for a moment.

  ‘Mrs Johnson?’

  ‘Tony thought he’d come up with a plan to get the Stout family on side. All it would take would be for Vaila to explain that he’d collaborated with Magnus. That the notebooks might be in the old man’s writing, but that he’d been scribing for Tony. That the work was all his.’

  ‘But that wasn’t true, was it?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t all true, but honestly, I think Tony had come to believe his own story. He was feeling cheated and betrayed.’ A pause. ‘I wasn’t sure about him going to Vaila. She’d just lost her husband. She might see it as the most dreadful intrusion. But Tony thought he had a way to persuade her. I’m not sure why.’

  ‘Your husband had stolen the notebooks the night before you left. I’d been in the centre to look at them, but he came in later. He persuaded Tom and Evelyn to bring their key to the Pierowall Hotel.’

  She nodded. ‘We had the notebooks, but Tony knew there’d probably be a digital record. Having the books wasn’t enough. He wanted Vaila to write him a letter of support.’ She looked up at them both. ‘He was hoping to persuade George’s partner to be on his side too.’

  ‘Did he go to visit Miles?’

  ‘I think so. He got a taxi to Finstown. The last time I spoke to him, the mobile reception was so poor that I wasn’t quite clear what he was saying. We’d decided we’d be less likely to be found if we weren’t together. We knew that running away from Westray would make us look guilty. So we split up. I found an Airbnb in Deerness. I never met the landlady. She just gave me the code to the key box.’ She paused. ‘I gathered from that last call that Vaila had refused to talk to Tony, so he was going to try George’s partner. George was the person who’d stirred up all the trouble against him.’

  ‘Where was Tony planning to stay last night?’

  ‘I don’t know. He said earlier that he’d found somewhere, but the line went dead before he could give me the details. I couldn’t get through to him again.’ She looked across at Perez, horrified. ‘I suppose he was already dead. We’d planned to meet in St Margaret’s Hope for the two-thirty ferry. He’d get a taxi down. We’d board separately in case they were looking out for us as a couple. We knew we didn’t need photo ID. Then, driving across the barriers, I was listening to the news on my car radio. I heard that he was dead.’

  ‘Didn’t you think that running away would only make you look more guilty?’ This question came from Perez. He couldn’t quite reconcile the attempt to escape with the intelligent couple, who’d believed they could persuade the world that Johnson was an expert and not a plagiarist.

  Barbara hesitated before she spoke. ‘We panicked,’ she said. ‘We just wanted to leave it all behind us and go home.’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  THEY LET BARBARA GO. IT SEEMED there was nothing more she could tell them. Nothing more, at least, that she was willing to say.

  The owner of the Airbnb in Deerness hadn’t seen her but had confirmed that someone had been in the place.

  ‘Oh yes, she definitely stayed there. The bed’s been slept in, and the kettle was still warm when I got in to clean this morning.’

  ‘Can you tell what time she arrived?’

  ‘I can’t do that. I live close by, but I was in Kirkwall with my father all night. A family party. A neighbour might have seen her car.’

  Perez sent an officer to check, but even before he reported back, they both agreed that they had no reason to hold on to Barbara any longer.

  While they were talking to the woman, Phil had received a call to say that Johnson had booked into the pub in Stenness the night of his death. He passed on the message as soon as the interview was over.

  ‘Ellie went across to the hotel to check the story. Johnson arrived by taxi, checked in, had a meal, but then he said he was going out again. To see the stones in the moonlight. The landlady thought that was pretty weird, because the sky was a bit cloudy. She didn’t come back to the pub until this afternoon, so she didn’t connect her absent guest with the body. Johnson had given her a different name.’

  Willow rang round to find somewhere for Barbara to stay. After her outburst during the interview, the woman had become calm and compliant. Numb. The only place with vacancies was the Kirkwall Hotel.

  ‘Vaila and her boys are staying there. Will you be okay being in the same place?’

  ‘Why not? I won’t see them. I’ll be staying in my room. I can’t face the world.’ Barbara looked up at Willow. ‘I just feel exhausted. I want to sleep and pretend that none of this has happened.’

  In the hotel lobby, she stood, blank-faced, while Willow made arrangements with reception. The only rooms left were small, not yet renovated, and Willow showed her into the cell-like space, with a single bed and a scratched dark wood wardrobe, a tiny bathroom with a stained sink. Barbara scarcely seemed to notice. She drew the curtains and lay on the bed, her back to Willow, who left without a word.

  Willow had phoned Vaila from the police station, saying she wanted to update her on the case, and warning her that Barbara Johnson was staying in the same place too.

  ‘I’m sorry, but we have nowhere else for her to stay. You’ll have heard that her husband’s dead. I don’t think she’ll be leaving her room though.’

  She called the woman again now to say that she was in the hotel. It was still early evening, but the bar was already full of Christmas Eve revellers, the noise spilling out into the lobby. Vaila appeared from the lift in a down coat, so big that it seemed to swamp her. She’d always been a small woman, but now she appeared wizened, tiny.

  ‘Do you mind if we go out?’ she said. ‘This place is starting to feel like a prison.’

  ‘What are your plans? Will you go back to Westray?’

  Vaila nodded. ‘I wasn’t sure that I could face the island and the house again, but now I’m longing for it. For the space and my own bed. Westray folk. Once the Ba’ is over, and all the speeches about Archie are finished, we’ll head back. I’d go tomorrow evening or on Boxing Day if the ferries were running, but I’ll be on the first boat on the twenty-seventh. We’ll have done what’s expected of us. We’ve been hiding for long enough.’ She looked at Willow. ‘I can’t wait for tomorrow to be over. The performance.’

  ‘How are the boys?’

  ‘I don’t know. I try to speak to them. But teenage boys are bad about talking. In real life anyway. They seem as well as I could hope.’

  As they walked out to the street, there was a gust of wind that blew Willow’s hair across her face. She pulled it back, tied it in a rough knot. ‘Where shall we go?’

  ‘Are you okay if we just walk? It’s not so cold now and I need the air.’

  ‘Sure.’ Willow waited until they’d crossed the road to the harbour. A group of young women paraded ahead of them. They had tinsel in their hair and wore very short skirts and very tall heels. There was a lot of leopard print. ‘You’d already heard about Tony Johnson on the news?’

  ‘Aye. He tried to talk to me yesterday. He came to the hotel.’ They stopped to watch a fishing boat pull up to the jetty. ‘I wouldn’t see him. I thought he might have been the person who killed Archie and George. Besides, he’d cheated Archie’s father. It was an outrage that he was bothering me.’

  ‘You should have contacted us. We’d have talked to him.’ And maybe, Willow thought, we’d have saved his life.

  Vaila shrugged. ‘Aye, perhaps I should. But just now, everything seems too much bother. I just wanted him to go away and leave me in peace.’

  ‘There’s a possibility that he did kill those men,’ Willow said. ‘The cause of death in this latest murder is a little different.’

  ‘That would be some coincidence, surely! Two killers in a place like Orkney.’

  ‘I’m not saying the deaths aren’t linked. Johnson’s death might have been a revenge killing.’

  ‘You think I killed Johnson because he murdered my husband?’ Vaila stopped walking and turned towards Willow. The small, pointed face stared out from the billowing hood. She shook her head, very slowly, as if the detective were crazy.

  Willow shook her head. ‘Not just you. Other people have been bereaved. It’s a possibility we have to consider. As a theory.’

  ‘When did he die?’

  Willow and Perez had talked about this. ‘Late yesterday evening. Certainly after dark.’ Because before that there would have been people exploring the Stones of Stenness. And there would have been locals walking their dogs.

  ‘Well then, we were all in last night. We had an early supper in the restaurant, then the boys were in their room. It’s a twin and they’re in together. We have connecting rooms and I heard them through the wall. They were watching some film on the telly, or maybe playing a game.’ Vaila paused for a moment. ‘They were still awake at midnight when I shouted at them to go to sleep.’

  ‘Could they hear you?’

  ‘You really think that I sneaked out late at night, drove to Stenness to meet a man I disliked and was scared of, and killed him?’ Vaila gave a hard little laugh.

  ‘As I said, it doesn’t matter what I think. I need to ask these questions. It doesn’t mean I don’t believe you. It’s important that I follow the process. You must understand.’

  ‘I suppose I must, but it’s a strange, shitty kind of work you do.’

  They’d been walking west away from the bars and the restaurants towards the industrial estate and had reached the little nature reserve on the edge of the town. A loch and wetland. During the day, there’d be geese and swans on the deep water and wading birds at the muddy edges. The ice had all melted and a breeze chopped the reflected street lights into tiny images.

  ‘Did Johnson tell you why he wanted to see you?’

  ‘Oh yes, he was quite open about it, just in that phone call. You’d maybe say that he was desperate. He seemed crazy. Obsessed. He wanted me to write a letter saying that Magnus had given him permission to use his research. In fact, he’d already written the letter. He just wanted me to come down to sign it. He said I’d regret it if I didn’t agree. It sounded like a sort of threat. He was still talking but I ended the call. He tried phoning again, but I didn’t answer.’

  Willow didn’t speak for a moment. She was processing the information, wondering how this might be relevant. Why had Johnson thought Vaila would be so open to persuasion? That overweening arrogance maybe.

  ‘Did he have your mobile number?’

  ‘No, thank God. He was using the hotel phone extension. I called down to reception and told them that I didn’t want to speak to him, so they shouldn’t put him through if he called or turned up again.’ She stood for a moment, looking out at the loch. ‘I don’t give a shit about all that stuff – the archaeology and the research that Magnus did – but Archie did care. He can’t fight any more, so I must fight for him. And if Johnson killed him, then I’m glad that the man’s dead. It’s what he deserved.’

  Willow walked back to the hotel with her, chatted briefly to the lass at reception to check Vaila’s story, then went to collect James. It was Christmas Eve and she wanted to spend a little time with her son.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  PEREZ DROVE TO FINSTOWN AGAIN, TO the grand stone house where George Riley had lived with the love of his life. There was that strange, grey dusk of a midwinter early evening, and the road he knew so well seemed almost unfamiliar. The car’s headlights hit shapes that for a moment he failed to recognize: the corners of drystone walls, a looming barn, a sheep wandering along the verge. He could be in a different place altogether.

  During the short drive, his mind was racing. He’d already dismissed Miles as the killer of Archie Stout. He had no motive, and there was no evidence that he’d been on Westray the night of the murder. Despite any problems the couple might have had, Perez didn’t believe that the man had killed George. He’d been distraught when he’d heard of his partner’s death. But if Miles had believed Johnson had murdered George Riley, then it wasn’t a struggle to picture him killing the professor out of revenge. A cold kind of fury. The motive was sufficiently strong. Miles had adored George. The men had started a new phase in their lives together, and Miles might feel that he had nothing to lose now, that he hated the thought of life without the man who had adored him. Miles would be organized, ruthless. In addition, he’d despised Johnson as a man. He’d thought him a liar and a cheat. Perez couldn’t imagine him feeling any sort of sentiment about the professor’s death.

  Perez had liked Miles, his dignity and his honesty, but now he could see him as a realistic suspect for the professor’s murder.

  There were no lights on in the house, though the external lamp in its ornate Victorian frame lit up the front of the building. Perez knocked at the door but there was no reply. He looked through the tall window into the grand living room and could see that it was tidy, the piano lid down, the grate cleared of ash. If Miles had been drinking there the night after George had died, as Perez had suspected, he’d thrown away all the evidence now. Perez knocked again before walking round to the rear of the house and the kitchen. The back door was unlocked, and he pushed it open, anxious about what he might find.

  He anticipated not another murder, but a body all the same. If he’d killed Johnson, Miles might feel that he had nothing left to live for. He would leave his home in good order, and a note explaining his suicide. He was that sort of man.

  Perez was about to move further into the house when he remembered his first visit; then he’d been thinking of George as a suspect rather than a victim. Now that the frost had gone, the ground would be easier to work, and he could picture Miles out in the walled kitchen garden, digging obsessively even after the light had faded. He closed the door quickly, not wanting to be caught intruding, and made his way through the arched gate.

  He felt a moment of relief, the draining of anxiety, when he realized that Miles was there. It was as Perez had suspected. There were fairy lights strung along the high wall – one of George’s fantastical ideas surely – and in their glimmer he saw the man, forking over one of the beds, preparing it for spring planting. He must have been at it for most of the day, working backwards from the wall closest to the house, because there were yards of fine tilth in front of him. He’d taken off his jacket and hung it on one of the apple tree’s branches. Even in this shadowy light, Perez could tell that he was sweating.

  Miles stuck the fork into the ground and turned away to reach into his jacket pocket for a handkerchief as Perez stood in the archway, but the man must have heard the opening of the gate because he looked round.

  ‘Good timing,’ he said. ‘I was ready for a break. Besides, it’s dark as hell and I can’t see what I’m doing. I told myself I should finish the whole bed before I stopped, but now I have an excuse.’ He wiped his forehead with the white cloth. ‘I hope you’ll have a beer with me, even if you are on duty. I’ve promised myself that I’ll not drink alone any more, and I really could do with one now.’

  ‘Maybe just a small one.’ Perez thought there were occasions when rules needed to be broken.

  ‘Do you have any information for me?’

  They were back at the kitchen table, shoes off. Miles had washed his hands at the large enamel sink. There was a strip of spotlights on the ceiling. They reflected from the work surfaces and seemed very bright, cruel, after the gloom outside. Perez’s beer had been opened but he’d only taken a sip from it.

  ‘You haven’t heard the news today?’

  ‘No. I’ve been in the garden since breakfast. It’s all that keeps me sane. There’s something about the rhythm of digging that’s calming. It’s not at all demanding, but it takes a little concentration. I hope the physical activity will help me to sleep.’ And he did seem calm. It was hard to imagine him now as a ruthless killer. But the rumours were that he’d been some sort of spy, and Perez supposed that a spy would be adept at dissembling.

  ‘Did Anthony Johnson get in touch with you yesterday?’

  Miles set down his can.

  ‘Yes. He turned up here at the house. No advance phone call. No shame at all about barging in on my grief. No pretended words of condolence. I recognized him. George had made me watch his programme on the television. George swore all the way through it, so I couldn’t hear a word, but I could see the images. I couldn’t believe it when I opened the door to him.’ Miles looked up at Perez. ‘It was like the Devil turning up at one’s home. A Devil in walking boots, an anorak and a tweed cap. The man was crazy. Obsessed. He was ranting about George and how his lies had ruined Johnson’s life. His life. All he was in danger of losing was his reputation. I’d lost my partner. My reason for living.’

  ‘What did he want you to do? Precisely.’

  ‘He wanted me to stop George’s book from being published. As if I would or could. It’s in the hands of the publisher now. Johnson said I should tell the world that George had made a mistake. That his research was his own, that Magnus had done some of the groundwork, but Johnson had made the links, had interpreted all the material, that he was the real genius behind the story stones.’