Chapter Six

  ELLIE WAS WAITING FOR HER IN the lounge reserved for hotel guests. She’d changed into jeans and a big hand-knitted sweater and was flicking through her phone. The room was otherwise empty.

  ‘Where are the other residents?’ Willow asked. Because Ellie was experienced. She’d have found that out before coming here to relax.

  ‘The old guy is in the bar with the locals. Maybe wanting the authentic island experience.’ Ellie’s voice was a little mocking. ‘The couple’s having dinner in the restaurant.’ A pause. ‘Do you want to talk to them now?’

  Willow shook her head. ‘They’ve had all day to perfect their story, if that was what they wanted to do. And they’re not going anywhere. According to Bill, they’re here until after Christmas and there are no ferries or planes until mid-morning tomorrow. Let’s eat first. And if they’re still around, we can always see them later.’

  Annie MacBride came in then. Willow wondered if she’d been listening, waiting for a good moment to take their order. ‘Can we eat in here, Annie? The veggie special for me.’ Willow had rejected most of the commune’s weirder ideas, but still couldn’t bring herself to eat meat.

  Ellie seemed to be relieved about the prospect of food. ‘And haddock and chips for me.’

  ‘Of course you can eat in here. I thought you’d want a little privacy.’ Annie hesitated. ‘Is it right they’ve taken Archie south for a post-mortem?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Willow said. ‘Vaila will see him tomorrow and then he’ll go to Aberdeen on the NorthLink. Dr Grieve will be looking after him.’

  ‘But he’ll be back in Westray to be buried.’ That wasn’t a question. ‘When the time is right. He’ll rest in the graveyard next to the shore and his friends will dig the grave for him. The way it was done for his father. The Stouts have always followed the Fair Isle tradition.’ Annie nodded towards the bar. ‘They’ve been talking about it.’

  ‘Of course. But I can’t tell you yet when the body will be released.’

  Annie frowned. ‘His brother will want to come from Canada. It would be good for him to have a date.’

  Willow nodded but said nothing.

  After they’d eaten, she led Ellie into the bar, curious to listen in to the talk there, and to meet the older visitor, though she didn’t have the energy or concentration for even an informal interview. She ordered drinks from Bill and took them to the table in the corner where Ellie was sitting. With their backs to the wall, they had a view of the whole room. The conversation had paused briefly when they came in and everyone stared, but then continued, the voices lower and a little self-conscious.

  The hotel resident was obvious. He sat separately at a table furthest away from the fire. He was writing in a notebook. His binoculars stood on the table beside him, although it had been dark for hours. Willow had spent time in Jimmy Perez’s home of Fair Isle, a magnet for birders, and had come to understand the passion.

  The heat and the background buzz made her feel very tired. She’d been late off the ferry the night before and it had been a long day. She wanted to talk to Jimmy and check that their son was well and asleep.

  She got to her feet and went to the table where the man, Godfrey Lansdown, was sitting. She introduced herself, aware that the locals were eavesdropping and would already know, fine well, who she was and what she was doing there.

  ‘You’ll have heard that a local man was killed here, either in the early hours of today or yesterday evening. You’ll understand that we need to talk to everyone. As you’re staying in the hotel, and we are too, would it be convenient if we spoke in the morning?’

  ‘Of course.’ Lansdown was grey and wiry, his voice a little anxious. Perhaps that was his nature. He must wear boots when out on the island, but now he was in highly polished brogues. Willow thought there was something of the tortoise about him. It was the way his face was thrust forward, the wrinkled neck. ‘I breakfast early. The days are so short that I like to be out as soon as it gets light.’

  Willow arranged to meet him in the residents’ lounge in the morning once he’d eaten, and he made his apologies and left. The exit seemed unplanned. The conversation appeared to have thrown him. He moved deliberately across the room, looking down at his feet, and the image of the tortoise returned.

  She left the bar then and made her way through the restaurant on her way to the stairs and her room. A couple was still sitting at a table, the only diners left. They’d finished eating, but some coffee cups and glasses remained. An empty bottle of wine was upturned in a bucket. It appeared that they’d moved on to whisky to go with the coffee. In contrast to Lansdown, the couple seemed entirely relaxed. They too were English, but of the confident, educated variety. They would feel no need to scuttle away to their room.

  They sat opposite each other, and for a while seemed not to notice she was there. They were speaking very quietly, something intimate that she couldn’t hear. She felt that she was intruding. The woman gave a throaty chuckle, then looked up and saw Willow.

  ‘Oh hello, we’re quite finished if you’d like to clear the table.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t work here. I suspect all the staff have gone home and Annie will be busy in the bar.’

  Amused, Willow introduced herself. The woman laughed again. ‘Oh dear, now I feel like a terrible fool.’ There was no sign of embarrassment though and no apology. ‘We’re the Johnsons, Tony and Barbara.’ She didn’t ask Willow to sit down.

  ‘I’m investigating the sudden death of one of the islanders. I’ll have to ask you some questions. I won’t interrupt you now, but if you could be free after breakfast. Perhaps at nine o’clock.’

  ‘Could you make it a little later?’ This was the man. He had a voice like some of the politicians with whom Willow was forced to work, charming but entitled. ‘We are on holiday after all.’

  Willow agreed to make it nine-thirty and left them still talking across the cluttered table.

  In her room, she opened the curtains and looked out at the night. When she phoned Jimmy, he answered at once. They spoke of their son, and then a little about work and their plans for the following day.

  ‘I looked round Nistaben this evening,’ Willow said. ‘They’ve had lots of work done on the farm. Any idea where the money came from to do all the upgrades?’

  ‘Magnus, Archie’s father, was a grafter, full of ideas for the island. He had his own creel boat and bought into a couple of Westray ventures. He came across as a gentle, dreamy soul, but he was a good businessman too. Archie would have inherited much of that. Money was never a problem for the family.’ Perez paused. ‘I have a feeling that Archie owned a part-share of the Pierowall Hotel too. Magnus bought into it when it was struggling after the financial crash.’

  ‘Something else to check out tomorrow.’ Money had never meant much to Willow, but she knew it could be a powerful motive.

  They said goodnight. There were no declarations of love. Perez might be emotionally incontinent, but there was nothing showy about him. Unlike Archie Stout, his feelings were deep and hidden, and for that, Willow was grateful.

  Chapter Seven

  PEREZ ENDED THE CALL FROM WILLOW and went into his boy’s room to check that James was still covered by the quilt. It was a cold night. He stood for a moment looking down at the child, listening to the breathing, and felt the weight of paternal responsibility. Willow had taken to motherhood easily, almost recklessly. She’d teased him for his anxiety and told stories of her childhood in the commune. She described it as benign neglect. Or freedom. Children were resilient, she said. They usually survived. He should worry less. He could hear her words in his head and found himself grinning. Really, he knew, she was as protective of their son as he was.

  James had been born in this house. Perez and Cassie had moved in with Willow at the same stage of pregnancy as she was now. She’d opted for a home birth despite his anxieties, and Perez had been astounded by the whole loud and messy and joyous process. The exuberant physicality of it.

  ‘Let’s have lots of bairns!’ he’d said, caught up with the excitement of the experience, when the midwives had left and they were lying together, quiet now, the baby suckling.

  Willow had rolled her eyes. ‘You are joking. I’m not going through that again anytime soon.’

  Downstairs Perez made coffee, poured himself a dram and took it into the living room to sit again by the fire. This was the most comfortable place he’d ever lived. While occasionally he missed his house in Lerwick, the Lodeberrie, with its roots in the water, this substantial former manse felt like home. It was odd, he thought, that they’d chosen to live in the only land-locked parish in Orkney. They’d both grown up close to the sea and perhaps this was another way of making a start that was new to them both.

  They’d shared parenting of James from the beginning. Willow’s work, supervising policing throughout the Scottish islands, took her away for extended periods. He was Orkney based and had loved getting to know his new patch. Cassie had settled well into the grammar school and her accent was already morphing into Orcadian. So far, she was riding out her teenage years without too much drama. The hop north to Shetland to visit her biological father on the ferry or the twin prop plane was no longer an adventure. She loved her new brother and was looking forward to another sibling. All seemed calm and well. Perez had climbed out of the depression that had sucked him in after Fran had been killed.

  But now Archie was dead, and he could sense his mood starting to shift again. There was the old fear of incompetence, the old image of a wave of disaster on a watery horizon, waiting to swamp him.

  Furiously, he began to plan work for the following day, but he couldn’t focus and in the end, he took himself to bed.

  He slept better than he expected and woke next morning to another clear and unusually still day. James was awake and playing with his toys in the adjoining room, not yet bored enough to rouse his father. Perez got up and went in.

  ‘Time for us both to get ready. Let’s show Mum we can manage by ourselves.’

  They made their way downstairs to the kitchen. It was a nursery day. Since she’d started maternity leave, Willow had taken on full responsibility for James, and it took Perez a moment to remember the routine of breakfast and then to find the boy’s outdoor clothes.

  ‘Where is Mum?’

  ‘She’ll be home soon,’ Perez said, and hoped that was true. ‘Or we’ll go and find her, eh?’

  How things had changed since he was a boy! He suspected his father had never changed a nappy in his life, though his mother had been fully involved with life on the croft, and on top of that had baked and cleaned and knitted. Some years her Fair Isle patterned jerseys and gloves and scarves, sold to fancy shops in London, had contributed more to the family’s income than the lambs sent for slaughter.

  In the police station, after safely delivering James to the nursery, he tried again to focus on work, on the detail that might lead to a successful outcome of the investigation. It was easier here, but half of his mind was on Westray with Willow. His first call was to Orkney’s archaeologist, a man called Paul Rutherford. Perez had met him occasionally, when members of the public came across ancient bones and believed them to be more modern, sinister. Paul could call on the right people to date them. Sometimes, Perez thought, Orkney was founded on the bones of the long dead. He made an appointment to call on the man later in the day.

  He met Vaila outside the new Balfour Hospital. She looked out of place here in the town, with cars going past on the main road out of Kirkwall, and the bustle of people heading into the building. He wondered if she’d stay on Westray. It would be hard work farming Nistaben on her own, even with Lawrie to help and her parents to support her. Perhaps she’d move in to the Orkney mainland, where the boys could come home every night from school, and she could find a different kind of job. A new life. Something artistic and fulfilling. He and Willow could help her settle.

  Immediately, he heard Willow’s words in his head, exasperated and affectionate: ‘Jimmy man, you can’t fix the problems of the world. Who do you think you are?’

  Dr Grieve was waiting for them inside the hospital. Nobody else was there. Thoughtful as ever, perhaps he’d sent the mortuary assistant out for a break. Perez wasn’t sure whether Vaila would want him in the room with her, but at the door she clung to his arm, and he walked in with her, more friend now, he supposed, than cop. The pathologist pulled back the sheet, so only the face was visible, then retreated to a corner of the room.

  For a moment, Perez didn’t look down at the body. It seemed like an intrusion, almost self-indulgent. They were here for Vaila, not for him to say his goodbyes to his friend, but the hold on his arm tightened and he didn’t feel he could pull away. So he looked down at the man, and saw him motionless for perhaps the first time. Archie had never been still even as a child. He’d pulled faces and every emotion had shown on his face. Of course, this looked like Archie – there were the generous features, a little too big, and the sandy Viking hair and beard – but there was no sense of the man he knew. Little sign either, because of the way the doctor had placed him, of the trauma to his skull. He had certainly been hit from behind.

  Vaila was crying now. Perez didn’t hear any sound, but he could feel the convulsions as little tensions on his arm. He turned to look at her and saw the tears on her face. Grieve came forward with a box of tissues. She wiped her eyes, pulled away from Perez and bent to kiss her husband’s forehead.

  ‘Would you like some time alone with him?’

  She nodded ‘Just a couple of minutes.’ The men left the room, and stood awkwardly waiting, the door open so they could see inside.

  ‘We have his clothes, and everything that was on him.’ Grieves spoke in a whisper. ‘They’re with the crime scene team.’

  ‘Did you see anything unusual?’

  The pathologist was about to speak, but Vaila turned away from the body to join them.

  ‘We’ll look after him,’ Grieve said, ‘and get him back to you as soon as we can.’

  Perez took Vaila for coffee. There was a place that he and Willow liked, which would be quiet on a winter’s morning even this close to Christmas. But the decorated tree in the corner and the cheery seasonal background music seemed to mock them. After asking her what she’d like, and if she needed anything to eat, he waited for her to speak.

  ‘I didn’t sleep,’ she said at last. ‘I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to sleep again.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do? Anything you or the boys need?’

  ‘Just find out what happened, Jimmy. I go over and over the possibilities in my head, and I can’t tell what’s true. It’s like a story on a loop, small details flying around in my head. It’s driving me crazy.’

  ‘I’ll have to ask you to tell the story again. And the small details will be important. We’ll need to take a formal statement in the police station. Phil Bain will do that. I’m too close.’ A pause. ‘And I’m grieving too.’

  She nodded to show she understood.

  ‘Did Archie still own a share in the Pierowall Hotel?’ Perez was remembering his conversation with Willow the night before. It seemed a safe topic of conversation, not too emotional for Vaila or for him.

  But Vaila tensed. ‘Why? What have folk been saying?’

  ‘Nothing at all. It’s just me being a cop. Being curious.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Jimmy. I’m sensitive about everything just now.’ She drank the last of her coffee. ‘Bill and Annie wanted to buy Archie out, but he wasn’t having any of it. You know how stubborn he could be.’

  ‘Like a mule when the mood took him.’

  ‘Bill said they were working all the hours God sent and Archie was contributing nothing.’ Vaila stared at the shoppers on the pavement outside. ‘Archie said they’d have lost the place altogether if Magnus hadn’t stepped in. It would have sorted itself out in the end, but it had caused some bad feeling.’

  ‘Why wasn’t Archie prepared to sell?’

  Vaila shrugged. ‘He said it was for the boys. Lawrie was a natural-born farmer, but he couldn’t imagine Iain driving a tractor all day. He might make a good landlord though and would be full of ideas to pull in more visitors.’

  ‘And now the share in the hotel comes to you?’

  ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘I suppose it does. But it hardly seems important now.’ She looked across the table at Perez. ‘Let’s do that statement now, shall we? Get it over with, so I can go home to my boys.’

  Perez had phoned Phil Bain and told him to be ready, so there’d be no hanging around for her. While the interview was taking place, he sat at his desk, unable to concentrate on the work in front of him, then phoned Willow. She didn’t answer and he left her a message about the MacBrides wanting to buy out Archie’s share of the hotel.

  He heard voices in the corridor outside his office. Phil Bain and Vaila must have finished. It seemed to have taken such a short time. He worried that Phil might not have asked the right questions or listened carefully enough to Vaila’s answers. He wished he’d taken the statement himself, and the control freak in him wanted to read it before letting her leave the station in case there were gaps or inconsistencies. But she was keen to get back to Westray, and that wouldn’t be fair to her or to Phil. Instead, he saw Vaila out of the building, and stood there with her. She hesitated for a moment before heading off.

  ‘I’m not sure I want to go home now,’ she said. ‘Archie and I had known each other since we were kids in the little school there. The whole place is full of him.’ She looked up at him. ‘How did you manage after Fran died?’

  ‘I didn’t very well. I had to hold everything together for Cassie, I suppose. Or at least to pretend that I was holding it together. It took a lot of time. It’s trite, but grief can’t be hurried. And even now I get swamped by it. It’s like a wave with the tide behind it breaking over my head. I sometimes feel that I’m drowning.’