‘It took me a long time to work it out. The logistics, I mean. By then, you were staying in town in the Kirkwall Hotel. How could you get out to Maeshowe? You don’t have many friends, do you? None that might help by arranging a lift. I could understand how you might escape from the hotel without your mother noticing. She was grieving, lost in a world of her own, and the doctor had given her something to dull the pain. Besides, Iain was playing games in the room next to hers. She heard him talking and she believed you were there, chatting with him, but he was talking to his gaming friends and not to you.’

  Lawrie continued to stare into space.

  ‘What did you tell Iain?’ Perez asked, genuinely curious. ‘Where did you tell him you were going?’

  Now Lawrie did look directly at the detective. ‘I told him I was meeting a lass,’ he said. He gave a little smile that might have been a smirk, but that Perez hoped was almost wistful, as if Lawrie would have loved nothing better than having a girl to meet. Someone to care for and not to abuse. ‘Iain said he’d cover for me if our mother asked where I was.’

  Perez paused for a moment to clear his thoughts.

  ‘You couldn’t risk taking your mother’s car – you were underage and without a licence – and a witness saw Mr Riley arrive in the car park alone, meaning he hadn’t given you a lift. So how did you get there to meet him?’

  He didn’t expect Lawrie to answer the question and went on almost immediately. ‘There’s a bus stop opposite the Maeshowe car park and the same witness also saw the bus pull up there, and a passenger get out.’

  This was why Belinda the dog-walker had called him at home on Christmas Eve.

  ‘Someone got out,’ she’d said in her loud, almost-drunk voice. ‘I couldn’t see who it was. There was nobody waiting at the stop, so that wasn’t why the bus pulled over. No, I couldn’t describe the person. I was driving back to town.’

  But Perez didn’t need to tell Lawrie that, and he knew they’d be able to track down the driver and any other passengers if they needed to. Someone would have recognized the boy. Orkney was that sort of place.

  ‘Why don’t you tell us what happened?’ Perez repeated, his voice gentle again, almost fatherly.

  Now, it seemed, Lawrie was prepared to speak.

  ‘I thought he’d worked out that I’d killed Dad. And anyway, it was kind of his fault. If he hadn’t interfered, if he hadn’t talked to my father that day on the island, then I wouldn’t have had to kill him.’ The words spilled out, gushing like water from a pressure hose. He was a child again, making excuses for an action that could never be excused.

  Perez looked across the table. ‘You went to Maeshowe intending to kill Mr Riley. You had the second story stone with you. The one that your father had been holding.’

  Now Lawrie sat upright, almost proud, as he spat out his bile. ‘I thought if I used that to hit him, you’d believe that Westray history had something to do with the killings. I’m not as stupid as everyone thinks. You fell for it, didn’t you? And anyway, what right did Riley have, with his fancy ways, living with his fancy man, coming to Orkney and telling me how to live my life?’

  Sitting beside the boy, Tom Angel stared at Perez, horrified, still white and stony. In this moment, he saw his grandson as a monster, not as a child to be loved and protected.

  ‘Why don’t you talk me through it, Lawrie?’ Perez’s voice was as gentle as ever. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘He was there waiting for me at the entrance to the chamber. He had a key, and he opened the gate. He went in first. You have to bend low to get in through the tunnel that leads into it. All the time he was talking. About the history of the place. An Orkney place. As if he knew everything there was to know about it, and he had to give me a lecture. As if I hadn’t been born here. As if the islands didn’t belong to me much more than to him. I was close behind him and just as he was going to put on the light inside, I hit him. He hadn’t expected anything.’

  ‘He was trying to be kind,’ Perez said.

  ‘When has kindness got a man anywhere?’ Lawrie screamed out the words. It was if he was parroting them, that they were some kind of tenet of faith, learned from a twisted guru. Perez thought he’d probably stolen the phrase from one of his favourite manosphere Internet sites.

  This time Perez didn’t answer. He wanted to tell the boy that it was possible to be both kind and strong, but he knew that Lawrie wouldn’t accept that. Not here and not yet. Besides, time was moving, and he wanted to be home. He needed a long bath to wash away the day and to spend time with his family.

  ‘Why didn’t you leave him where he was? Why shove him into one of the smaller chambers?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ This time it came out as a mutter. ‘I wanted to hide him away. I couldn’t bear to see him.’

  Maybe, Perez thought, you couldn’t bear what you’d done to him. He hoped that was the case. That in that moment the boy had felt some revulsion, some guilt.

  ‘And Tony Johnson? Why did he have to die?’

  ‘He was a horrible man. He was trying to blackmail me.’

  ‘He wanted you to give permission for him to use your grandfather’s research?’

  ‘Aye. Someone else coming to the islands to take what was ours.’ Lawrie’s voice was bitter, as if he was the victim here, as if again the killing was justified.

  ‘I presume he saw you at Noltland that night when you killed your father.’

  ‘I told you that already. He walked right past me after he’d had that row with my father.’

  ‘And he saved up the information, knowing it might be useful, instead of coming to us and telling us what he knew.’ Perez was talking almost to himself. He turned back to Lawrie.

  ‘He phoned you on your hotel bedroom’s telephone extension after your mother refused to discuss Magnus’s research with him. He thought you could sign the letter, confirming the research was his. Magnus’s grandson. Why did you arrange to meet him at the Stones of Stenness?’

  ‘It seemed kind of appropriate.’ The same bravado was coming out in Lawrie’s words now. Tom Angel, still as marble, couldn’t look at the boy.

  ‘Did you get the bus again?’

  ‘Aye, a later one. I waited until Iain was asleep.’

  ‘And back into town?’

  Lawrie nodded. ‘The last bus back from Stenness. It was full of partygoers and drunks. I had my hood up all the way. I didn’t think anyone would notice me.’

  Perez thought this was all he needed. He couldn’t stand this any more. He had the confession. The details could wait for the following day. The knife that had stabbed Johnson was probably Lawrie’s. Used to cut twine on the farm, or gut fish when he was out on one of the creel boats. Now he was charged they could take the boy’s DNA.

  Outside it was black. The building was very quiet. Perez ended the interview for the recording and explained that Lawrie would be held in custody. They all stood up. Tom Angel seemed as relieved as he was that the thing was over. He couldn’t look at his grandson. As they were leaving the room, Lawrie called after Perez:

  ‘Uncle Jimmy. Will I be able to see Mum?’ Now he was a boy again, waking up from a nightmare and crying out for his mother in the dark.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  VAILA WAS SITTING IN THE MORE comfortable of the interview rooms, the place where Perez had spoken to Barbara Johnson. That seemed like weeks ago. The duty officer had put her there when she’d turned up. He hadn’t known what else to do with her. Vaila sat, curled up in one of the easy chairs, looking as small as a young girl. Or a frail old woman.

  ‘Lawrie would like to see you,’ Perez said.

  She shook her head violently. ‘I can’t face him. Not yet. But I have to know, Jimmy. I have to know what’s happened.’

  ‘Lawrie has confessed,’ Perez said, ‘to killing Archie and the two others.’

  She stared at him. Her eyes were wide. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Perhaps it was too much for her to take in and she couldn’t think at all.

  ‘That’s a good thing,’ he went on. His voice was very quiet and gentle, and outside he could hear some drunk singing ‘Flowers of Scotland’. ‘It means there’ll be no major trial. Nothing for the press to sink their teeth into and paw over.’

  ‘You are sure that he’s a killer, Jimmy? It’s not some story he’s made up in his head just to be famous?’

  ‘I am quite sure.’ A pause. ‘Did he want to be famous?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not that. But maybe he wanted to be noticed more. Archie dragged the attention of everyone in a room towards him, and Iain was so quick and clever, and folk admired his musical talent so much. Lawrie was a good-looking lad and as strong as his father, but maybe he felt he was being overlooked.’ Her eyes wandered around the room as if she’d only just noticed where she was. ‘Why didn’t you warn me, Jimmy, that you were going to arrest him?’ The words came out as a cry, an accusation. ‘Why do it there in front of everyone?’

  ‘We suspected that Lawrie might be involved, but we didn’t know until the game had started.’ Perez thought this wasn’t the time to go into details: the phone call from Belinda Thorne on Christmas Eve and then the conversation with Lawrie’s head teacher. Vaila could have all the explanation she needed when the shock was less. Tom could take her through the interview and confession.

  ‘Lawrie was never an easy boy,’ Vaila said. ‘He was always kind of stubborn. He struggled to make friends and I could never tell what he was thinking. But this! I spoke to my father while you took a break. Is it true, Jimmy? That he was getting the lasses at school to take crude photos of themselves, then blackmailing them? And all the porn he’d been watching. We never knew about that. Whatever Archie was like, he would have put a stop to that.’

  Perez remembered an incident at a Westray party, soon after they’d moved to Orkney. He’d seen Archie, drunk, staggering up to Willow and trying to touch her breasts. Willow had dealt with it herself, hadn’t even seen that Perez had noticed the incident. She’d never mentioned it to him, and he hadn’t wanted to act the protector or to be seen to overreact, be thought prim and pompous. He’d even wondered briefly if Willow might have been flattered and had put Archie’s behaviour down to a middle-aged man who’d never really grown up, pissed, acting out his adolescent fantasies. Nothing to spoil a friendship for. Now he felt angry with himself for letting it go. Had Lawrie been in the room too? Had he seen what had happened?

  ‘Lawrie was always kind to James,’ he said. ‘Perhaps he found it easier to relate to younger children.’

  ‘Was he?’ Vaila’s face brightened very briefly. ‘Aye, he was, and he was no trouble in the school in Westray . . .’ A pause. ‘Maybe we should never have sent him out to the hostel. But we went away to the grammar school, and it did us no harm. Island kids grow up knowing that’s how it’ll likely be.’

  ‘You can’t blame yourselves.’ Though of course Vaila would blame herself for as long as she lived.

  ‘What will happen to him?’

  ‘He’s killed three people,’ Perez said, because it wasn’t only Vaila who had been bereaved, and the victims and their families deserved to be remembered too. ‘He’ll be away for a long time. But it’s good that he’s told us what happened. The court will take that into consideration. And his age.’

  Vaila nodded, as if it was what she’d been expecting. ‘I feel that I’m as guilty as he is. I should have known what he was doing. I could have saved two other men.’

  ‘This wasn’t your fault, Vaila,’ Perez said again, but the words sounded hollow. They sat for a moment in silence. ‘Will you see him now?’

  He couldn’t predict what her response might be.

  She swung her legs round and got to her feet. ‘Aye, I’ll see him.’ A pause. ‘I suppose he’s still my boy.’

  Chapter Forty-Three

  WHEN PEREZ ARRIVED HOME, THE HOUSE was quiet. He sat for a moment in the car, putting himself in the right frame of mind to meet his family, and thought of the note that he’d left for Willow at the start of this, just before he’d rushed off to Westray in the middle of a storm. That felt an age ago. So much had changed since then. He’d lost his oldest friend, three men had died, and a screwed-up boy had been charged with murder. Perez felt himself unravelling, just as he had when he was stranded on Fair Isle and Fran had been killed in the middle of another violent storm, the blade of the knife caught in a flash of blue lightning. That image haunted him at times too. All this was too close to home, and memories were colliding. He wasn’t sure he could face it any more. In the islands, everything was too close to home.

  Then the door opened, and Willow came out to greet him. She must have heard the vehicle on the drive. She stood in the doorway, the light behind her. A familiar silhouette. He climbed out of the car, and they stood together.

  ‘You okay, Jimmy?’

  ‘Aye.’ He was now.

  ‘James is dozing in front of the telly. It’ll be a nightmare to get him to bed when it’s time, but he’s shattered. Come away in. I’ll get the dinner on.’

  Perez went upstairs, showered and changed out of his work clothes, another attempt to switch his brain away from the job.

  Then before he could get downstairs, the house was full of noise and laughter. James had realized that his father was home. He rushed up to greet him, buzzing with the events of the day. There were presents to open and a meal to eat, and that distracted James from his tales of Lawrie’s heroism. Perez and Willow weren’t sure how they’d tackle that subject. It certainly wasn’t something to be discussed this evening.

  Instead, they talked about what they might do the following day when Miles would come to visit. James, it seemed, had fallen for Miles too:

  ‘He’s very funny! And he can do magic tricks. He pulled a sweetie out of my ear.’

  ‘Yes, he’s a great guy.’ Perez wondered if Miles would ever understand how reckless George had been, ignoring the rules around safeguarding, believing that he was some sort of knight in shining armour, charging in to rescue Lawrie from himself, and the two girls involved from future torment and abuse. But, Perez thought, Miles must have spent his career working with flawed characters and would have been clear-eyed about Riley. He’d known George’s faults, but he loved him anyway.

  The meal and the presents and the stories all took a long time, and for James, staying up so late was an adventure in itself.

  At last, the boy went to bed. Despite the sugar and the excitement, he fell asleep immediately and the adults were left to themselves. They sat in front of the dying fire, Perez with a dram and Willow with camomile tea. Each staring at the embers, lost in their own thoughts.

  Perez couldn’t imagine what Vaila might be going through. He’d always thought that the worst thing in the world was to lose a child. But to have a child who had killed three people. Surely that would be more bitter.

  ‘Do you think Vaila suspected that Lawrie was capable of murder?’ Willow could have been reading his mind.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe she had an itch of suspicion but didn’t want to believe. She took the boys away from Westray as soon as she could. Perhaps she thought that was a way of keeping hold of Lawrie, of keeping people safe.’

  ‘What would you do if you thought James had committed something so terrible?’

  ‘He won’t!’ Perez was sure about that. ‘We’ll make sure he won’t do anything of the sort.’

  Willow didn’t answer for a while. ‘I’m not sure it’s that easy. Vaila and Archie were good parents, in their own way. He grew up in a place that most people would consider idyllic. I never thought of Lawrie as being overly macho or unpleasant in any way at all.’

  There was another period of silence. Then, because this seemed like a time of confession, he said: ‘Earlier, sitting in the car, I wasn’t sure I could do this any longer. It’s too hard.’

  He knew she’d understand what he meant by that – the case, working in a small community, policing people he knew.

  He looked directly at her. ‘I was thinking I’d resign.’

  ‘And now?’ she said.

  He shrugged. ‘Honestly? I don’t think I’m fit for anything else. And someone has to do it, don’t they? Somebody has to pick up the pieces when things fall apart.’

  She smiled, as if it was the answer that she’d been expecting.

  About the Author

  Ann Cleeves is the author of more than thirty-five critically acclaimed novels, and in 2017 was awarded the highest accolade in crime writing, the CWA Diamond Dagger. She is the creator of popular detectives Vera Stanhope, Jimmy Perez and Matthew Venn, who can be found on television in ITV’s Vera, BBC One’s Shetland and ITV’s The Long Call respectively. The TV series and the books they are based on have become international sensations, capturing the minds of millions worldwide. Ann worked as a probation officer, bird observatory cook and auxiliary coastguard before she started writing. She is a member of ‘Murder Squad’, working with other British northern writers to promote crime fiction. Ann also spends her time advocating for reading to improve health and wellbeing and supporting access to books. In 2021, her Reading for Wellbeing project launched with local authorities across the North East. In 2022, she was awarded an OBE for her services to reading and libraries. She lives in Northumberland.

  BY ANN CLEEVES

  The Sleeping and the Dead Burial of Ghosts

  The Killing Stones

  The George and Molly Palmer-Jones series

  A Bird in the Hand Come Death and High Water

  Murder in Paradise A Prey to Murder

  Another Man’s Poison Sea Fever

  The Mill on the Shore High Island Blues

  The Inspector Ramsay series

  A Lesson in Dying Murder in My Backyard

  A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy Killjoy

  The Healers The Baby-Snatcher