High Island Blues

by Ann Cleeves

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered

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  Contents

  Ann Cleeves

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Ann Cleeves

  High Island Blues

  Ann Cleeves is the author behind ITV’s VERA and BBC One’s SHETLAND. She has written over twenty-five novels, and is the creator of detectives Vera Stanhope and Jimmy Perez – characters loved both on screen and in print. Her books have now sold over one million copies 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. In 2006 Ann was awarded the Duncan Lawrie Dagger (CWA Gold Dagger) for Best Crime Novel, for Raven Black, the first book in her Shetland series. In 2012 she was inducted into the CWA Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame. Ann lives in North Tyneside.

  There is a small town on the Upper Texas Coast called High

  Island. The Houston Audubon Society has two sanctuaries

  and birdwatchers visit the area from all over the world. There

  is no Oaklands Hotel and all the characters in the book are

  fictitious.

  Chapter One

  Cecily had wanted George there at nine, had insisted on it, so he had left home in the dark. It was impossible to argue with Cecily. In the end he had time to kill and he took the last ten miles slowly, driving down straight lanes between potato fields. Miles away across the flat land a line of poplars broke the horizon, shadows in the gloom. There was an icy drizzle. When he came to a village there were still lights on in the red brick houses and a group of children, shrouded in hoods and scarfs, waiting for the school bus stood miserably in the doorway of Fred’s Mini Mart. He passed battery chicken sheds, an immense glasshouse, a sugar beet processing plant. The agricultural heart of England, he thought, with depression. The heart of the agricultural industry, at least.

  There was a second, identical village. A bridge over the canal and then the turning so overgrown that he almost missed it. No sign. Lady Cecily Jessop did not need to advertise her presence. No gate. An attempt had been made to fill the pot-holes with gravel and he had an image of Cecily herself with a wheelbarrow and shovel doing the work. It wouldn’t have surprised him. She had told him once that she disliked employing menials. This was not, he thought, through any liberal notion of social justice, but out of meanness. Why pay someone to perform a task one could easily perform oneself?

  Why then, he wondered, is she prepared to pay me?

  The summons had come two days before by fax. It was written in the third person as if she were royalty: ‘Lady Cecily Jessop wishes to consult Mr Palmer-Jones professionally. She would be grateful if he could attend The Deuchars at 9 a. m. on March 5th.’ The formality had been broken by a handwritten note on the bottom: ‘I’m bloody busy at the moment, so don’t be late!’

  He had tried to contact her for more details but she was too busy, it seemed, to answer the telephone.

  Molly had been affronted by the rudeness of the fax and by the fact that she had not been invited.

  ‘Ignore it,’ she said. ‘If she wants us to work for her badly enough she’ll be in touch again. And you can tell her we’re a partnership. We make joint decisions about the cases we take on!’

  George, however, had been unable to ignore the fax. Since his retirement from the Home Office he had been asked to serve on environmental working parties and committees. He had met Cecily Jessop at these meetings and had been impressed by her tenacity and her ability to drink whisky by the tumblerful and still talk sense. She was a celebrity and he was flattered, despite himself, that she had called on him for help. He was curious to see what she wanted of him.

  She called the house ‘the mouldering heap’, though he knew she felt an affection for it. Why else would she stay on? She had no close relatives and could have sold it without causing offence. She wasn’t the type to feel any obligations to maintain the ancestral home. Maintenance came low on her list of priorities. ‘It’ll see me out,’ she said as it crumbled about her. He had visited her there before and thought she was like a squatter, making the best of the discomfort. It was another example of her meanness. She was a wealthy woman but she preferred to camp out in one room, with a tin bucket to catch drips from the ceiling.

  There was no reply from the grand door under the pillared portico, though he heard the bell echo inside. He had expected none. Cecily disliked casual callers. He found her in the kitchen drinking rum in hot milk and smoking a pipe. She had left her wellingtons at the door and wore hand-knitted woollen socks with holes in the toes, a pleated tweed skirt and a sweater with a Fair Isle pattern which George supposed had been knitted by Vanessa. Vanessa had been her friend and companion since they had met as girls during the war. Vanessa had stuck by Cecily through her two divorces and her drinking. It was Vanessa who brought a semblance of order to the house. ‘My housekeeper’ Cecily called her, and Vanessa accepted that without a fuss though George doubted that it was a paid position.

  ‘Rum, George?’ Cecily said. ‘You need something to keep out the cold. It might be March but it’s bloody freezing.’

  ‘No thank you, Cecily,’ George said politely. ‘Coffee will be fine.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘Suit yourself.’ Then, with a sergeant major’s roar, ‘ Nessie, come and make George a coffee.’ There was a pause and she added, ‘There’s a dear.’

  She was seventy, but fit and formidable. Very tall. Very thin. And still working, as she made clear to everyone she met. She might have left the university but there was no retirement for her. No sliding quietly into her grave while the bastards fucked up the planet. She’d been a delegate at the Rio summit meeting and she was still collating data for her work on bird migration and environmental damage. One room at the Deuchars had been made reliably waterproof and there she kept her computer. She had never learned to use it but employed a sixth-former, the son of one of her farm labourers, to come in every Sunday to work the magic. The figures which spilled from the printer she knew how to use and she still produced papers which made the scientific world take notice. The latest was on the decrea
se of bird migrants from sub-Saharan Africa.

  ‘I’ll have to go out again in a minute,’ she said. ‘I’m working a constant effort ringing site for the BTO. You’ve got to show willing, haven’t you?’ She raised her voice and shouted again: ‘Come on Nessie, we haven’t got all day.’

  ‘Perhaps I could put the kettle on,’ George said, ‘while you tell me what this is all about.’

  ‘Extortion, George,’ she said darkly. ‘ That’s what this is about.’

  She got to her feet and padded across the tiled floor to a dresser so riddled with woodworm that it was surprising it stood up. From a china toast-rack she took a letter, still in its envelope, and set it on the table before him. It was addressed by printed label to Hubert Warrender MP at his home address. George recognized the name. Warrender was a junior environment minister.

  ‘Bertie’s an old chum of mine,’ Cecily said. ‘He mentioned it in passing: “See you’ve got a finger in another pie, Cec. I can’t even open my mail without bumping into you.” I couldn’t think what he was talking about so he passed the thing on.’

  It was a letter soliciting support for a new charity – the Wildlife Partnership. The Partnership had worked successfully in the States for some time, buying land, especially in threatened areas of Central and South America. Now it was extending its operation to Europe. Many natural history groups in Britain and the United States had already made donations and famous British naturalists had added their support to the venture. There followed a list of names including that of Lady Cecily Jessop. Also in the envelope was a brochure with photos of the rain forest and of fetching Brazilian children.

  ‘Bertie gave them a hundred quid,’ she said. ‘Soft bugger.’

  ‘By cheque?’ asked George. ‘ Made out to the Partnership?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘He telephoned in a credit card donation. The only address is a Post Office box number.’

  ‘I take it you hadn’t given permission for your name to be used,’ George said.

  ‘I’ve never even heard of them.’

  ‘Are you sure there wasn’t a letter, asking perhaps for you to get in touch with them if you had any objection? It could have been overlooked as junk mail.’

  ‘I’m not a fool George, and I read everything that comes to this house addressed to me.’

  ‘Have you complained to the charity?’

  ‘I’ve tried,’ she said. ‘But is doesn’t seem that easy. I phoned the telephone number. It’s answered by some inarticulate youth who only seems programmed to accept donations. I asked to speak to his employer but I was told he was on his own in the office. When I asked where the office was I was told he wasn’t at liberty to say.’ She mimicked a West Country accent: ‘I’m sorry madam but we haven’t got the facility to welcome personal callers,’ and then continued, ‘He’d obviously been told to say that. He was too dim to dream it up for himself.’

  She looked at her watch.

  ‘Sorry, George,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to make that coffee later. Come into the garden with me to check the nets.’

  Outside, the rain had stopped, but droplets of water still clung to the fine mesh net strung between two poles in the bushes. A song thrush was caught in one of the shelves in the net. She extracted it carefully and took it to a wooden shed where she kept her ringing pliers and scales.

  ‘They probably think I’m dead,’ she said, ‘so there’s no danger in using my name. Or so gaga that I won’t complain.’

  ‘I don’t see,’ George said, as she released the thrush and watched it fly away into the gloom, ‘what you want me to do about it. I imagine that a solicitor’s letter to the PO box the charity is using would stop it using your name again.’

  ‘But that wouldn’t stop them operating, George, would it? And I smell something fishy. Find out, for instance, if they’re a real charity.’

  ‘If they’re not,’ he said, ‘that would be a serious fraud. A matter for the police.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said impatiently, ‘I don’t want the police involved at this stage. For all I know the Wildlife Partnership is well meaning but disorganized. Doing good work. I just want to find out who’s behind it.’

  ‘There’s no hidden agenda here, is there?’ he said suddenly, suspicious, ‘something you’re not telling me?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Her anger seemed real enough. ‘I want to hire you George if that’s not too much trouble for you. I understand that it’s the sort of thing you do for a living.’

  ‘I work with my wife,’ he said. ‘I’d have to consult her.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ she insisted. ‘You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t intend to take the case.’

  ‘It’ll take time. It won’t be cheap.’

  ‘I can afford it,’ she said extravagantly. ‘Besides, we’re friends, aren’t we George? I’ll expect a discount.’

  It was late afternoon and the drizzle had turned to heavy rain. The office window was covered in condensation and the fumes from the portable Calor gas heater caught at Jason’s throat. He was licking envelopes which made him feel sick and light-headed. The telephone rang.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ he said brightly. There had been training in telephone manner in the course he had taken at school, when they’d decided he wasn’t clever enough for A levels. ‘ This is the Wildlife Partnership. How may I help you?’

  ‘Hi, Jason!’ He recognized the voice immediately. It was his boss. Unconsciously he slicked back the hair already thick with gel. He found the American drawl unbelievably romantic. He’d always liked the pictures. ‘How’s it going, hon?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘ You know.’

  ‘A bit slow, huh?’

  ‘A bit,’ he admitted reluctantly. This was his first job. He wanted to make it a success and he wanted to please the caller. After all, promises had been made at his interview. ‘You could be in at the start of something big Jason. Who knows? If our charity captures the imagination of the British people we might like you to come to our Houston headquarters for training. Even to visit our refuges in Central and South America. Would you be prepared to travel to Texas, Jason?’

  So he had put up with the boredom. He had filled envelopes and answered the telephone. He had written down credit card numbers and answered the punters’ queries, following the information his boss had written down for him. The questions seldom varied from the prepared script and now he had the answers off-pat: “ We were founded in response to the Rio summit meeting and have the support of all the major environmental charities. At present we have two reserves, one in Brazil and one in Costa Rica. Plans are under way to purchase a third. We employ local staff wherever possible.’

  ‘We’ve got a problem Jason.’ The American voice was smooth, reassuring. He waited for it to continue.

  ‘We’ll have to close down the office for a while. I’d like to tell you Jason, just how much we’ve valued your work over the past couple of months. We’ll be in touch when we need your help again.’

  It was only after he replaced the receiver that he realized he’d been given the sack. And that he hadn’t been paid for his last week’s work.

  Chapter Two

  The three of them met at a Mexican place on Highway 290, the road west out of Houston. Mick had suggested it. He was the local. Rob had arrived in town that day. He worked for a travel company and had a group of British birdwatchers in tow. He’d dumped them at the Marriott Hotel, telling them they needed to rest after the flight. One night there then on to High Island for some serious birding. Oliver was the only one on holiday and he’d come over specially for this reunion.

  The restaurant was a tin shack surrounded by seedy clapboard houses. It was busy and they waited on the porch for a table, drinking frozen margaritas, eyeing each other up. This was the first time they’d been together for twenty years.

  There were just the three of them. That was what they had agreed. No wives. No kids. Not this first time. The place was noisy. Inside, about a dozen parties were going on. Co
nversation was difficult and not only because of the noise.

  ‘So,’ Oliver said, ‘we made it. The great reunion. Really, I never thought we would. Not the three of us.’

  He looked very cool in a white shirt and white linen trousers. Very much the Englishman on holiday. Middle age suited him though his hair was quite grey.

  ‘If anyone was likely to dip out I’d have thought it would be you,’ Rob said. He’d just come back from the Middle East, leading one of the first groups of tourists into Jordan from Israel. He’d picked up some bug and lost a lot of weight, so he looked thin and haunted, as brown and gaunt as a Bedouin. And that was the pattern of the relationship already established again. Rob and Oliver. Antagonistic sparring partners, opposites in every way. But closer than brothers, Mick thought, with a trace of the old envy, when the chips were down.

  It was Rob who’d sat up all night with Oliver twenty years ago, when the phone call came from Julia to the motel on the way to High Island. Rob who’d been almost weeping with frustration: ‘For Christ’s sake don’t do it Ollie. Not for her. She’s not worth it.’

  And when that night was over and Oliver was determined to do the honourable thing it was Rob who supported him through it. He stood as the best man in the smart little church and kissed the bride affectionately for the photos. Mick hadn’t been there – he’d already moved to Houston by then – but they’d sent him the photos. Julia wore white, a high-bodied, fall-skirted number which was fashionable at the time. It would have been appropriate even if she hadn’t been five months’ pregnant.

  Rob’s thoughts must have been drifting in the same direction because he asked suddenly: ‘ How is Julia?’ It was a malicious question. He guessed that Julia was the last person Oliver wanted to talk about.

  ‘Oh. Busy. You know.’ Oliver stared out from the porch at a couple of kids playing in the darkening street. They had only managed one child, the important one, the one who had tied him to Julia. Sally, the love of his life, nineteen now and wanting to be an actress.