by Ann Cleeves
The woman only shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Jimmy, I only work a couple of stints in the Red Cross shop these days. I’m sure I haven’t had a customer like your woman.’ Perez wondered what it must be like to have a husband like Tom Rogerson, who was out at meetings most nights, while Mavis herself had little reason to leave this dark and rather claustrophobic house in the winter.
‘We’ve been told the school can open as usual on Monday,’ Kathryn said.
Perez was pleased he wouldn’t have to make the visit to the Rogerson home a regular event. The news made him feel suddenly gracious. He took another mug of tea and congratulated Mavis on her baking, but when he left soon afterwards with Cassie, it was with a sense of freedom. Life was slowly coming back to normal; the following day Cassie had been invited to spend the weekend with some friends. And Willow Reeves would arrive.
Willow phoned soon after he’d put Cassie to bed. He’d lit the fire and the house was warm.
‘I’ve been working all day on your behalf, Inspector.’
‘We think we have a first name for her,’ he said. ‘Alissandra. I’m wondering if she could be American – the owner of the cottage that was destroyed in the landslide.’ Perez wondered why he was so resistant to that idea. Because he’d had a romantic notion about a Spanish beauty who was a stranger to the islands, not a middle-aged American with an aunt who was a Shetlander? Not someone northern, restrained and buttoned up, checking out that her inheritance was safe.
‘Ha! Well, that checks out with what we have!’ Willow sounded triumphant. ‘An Alissandra Sechrest was booked on the ferry at the beginning of January. I assume that she’s your victim. Boat passengers don’t have to show any ID, but it’d be too much of a coincidence if it was a different woman.’
So now they had a name for her. They’d be able to check with Craig Henderson, the last tenant of Tain, if she was the owner of the croft. But again Perez felt slightly disappointed. Sechrest wasn’t a southern European name. He felt his dream of the dead woman slipping away from him; instead she was taking on a completely new identity.
‘She called Befriending Shetland, a counselling charity, the week before she died,’ he said. ‘It seems she was contemplating suicide.’
‘But her death was murder?’
‘According to James Grieve, there’s no doubt about that.’ Perez stretched out his legs towards the fire. ‘And when she was last seen, the day before the landslide, she seemed almost cheerful.’
‘Ah, we can all put on a show when we need to. It doesn’t stop us being desperate inside.’
Perez didn’t know how to answer that. He couldn’t imagine Willow Reeves ever feeling desperate. She was the strongest and most resilient person he’d ever met. ‘I’ll be at the airport to meet you tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We can stop and look at the scene on the way back to Lerwick.’
There was a brief silence at the end of the phone. ‘I’ll look forward to it, Jimmy.’ It was lightly said, but he could tell that she meant it. He was about to answer but the line had already gone dead.
Craig Henderson, Tain’s previous tenant, arrived at Sumburgh from Aberdeen an hour before Willow was scheduled to come in from Inverness. It was a brighter day and the planes were all on time, flying from the east and landing into the wind. Sandy was with Perez, though they’d driven separately to the airport. Sandy had been at school with Craig and gave a wave of recognition as the man sauntered up to the baggage belt. He was brown and fit and his hand-luggage was a smart leather holdall. He’d have looked more at home in Dubai than Sumburgh. Perez watched the encounter between the younger men from a distance. It was civil enough, but he could tell they weren’t bosom pals. Sandy led Craig towards an office they’d borrowed from the airport staff. That was when Perez joined them and introduced himself.
‘So I get the big boss too, do I?’ Craig said. ‘Do they not trust you to do the job yourself, Sandy? Do you need a minder these days? Well, that figures.’ He took a seat by the desk.
The office was near the departure lounge and looked out over the runway. An Eastern Airways charter had just brought in a group of workers for Sullom Voe and they were walking from the plane towards the airport building.
There was a moment of silence, broken by Craig. ‘What’s this about, Sandy? What am I supposed to have done? I’ve been away for six months, so I don’t think you can pin anything on me this time.’ His voice still had a Shetland accent, the tone amused, a little arrogant.
Perez had looked up Henderson’s record. He’d been charged for fighting in a bar in Lerwick, and Sandy had been the arresting officer, so that explained the needle.
‘We’re after a bit of information,’ Sandy said. ‘That’s all.’
‘And it couldn’t have waited for a few hours until I got home, had a shower and a beer.’ Craig looked up suddenly and his voice changed. ‘Has anything happened to one of the family? Has my father taken ill again? He had a heart attack a year ago, but he seems to have been fine since then.’
‘Nothing like that.’ Sandy shook his head. ‘Have you heard about the landslide that blocked the Sumburgh road for a couple of days?’
‘My mother texted me about it, but I only picked up the message when I got to Aberdeen.’
‘The slide went straight through Tain, completely wrecked the house, and we found the body of a woman in the garden. You were the last person to rent the house. We’re still trying to identify the woman and we thought you might be able to help. How did you come to be living there?’
Perez was sitting away from the table and he found his mind wandering. By now Willow should be aboard the plane in Inverness. It should even have taken off. He had to force his attention back into the room.
Craig was speaking. ‘I work away on contract in the Middle East. Six months on and three months off. It suits me just fine. By the end of my leave in Shetland I’m desperate to get back to work. And the money’s good. My folks would be happy for me to spend all my leave with them, but they make me feel like a bairn again. They want to know when I’ll be in for my tea and if I’m going to be back for the night, and there’s always pressure to have me back working for the family business. It kind of cramps my style. So last time I was home I rented the house at Tain. Close enough to get to my mother’s for her to do the laundry, but my own space. You know what I mean?’ A grin to show that he was only being half-serious.
Sandy nodded. ‘How did you come to rent that place in particular? I can’t find any record of it being advertised as being up for let.’
‘Old Magnus Tait told me about it.’
The room fell quiet until Sandy spoke. His voice was soft. ‘Did you hear that Magnus died?’
There was another moment of silence before the man replied. ‘Nah, but he had a stroke right at the end of my last leave, and my mother told me he never really got over it. I’m not surprised. I’ll miss our chats, though.’
‘They were burying Magnus when the landslide hit,’ Sandy said. ‘You know that Tain is just up the hill from the cemetery.’
‘Poor old bugger.’
‘Were you friends?’ Perez asked.
‘I suppose we were, in a way. When I was home last, I saw him struggling to clip his sheep and offered to help. He was an old man. Still strong, but the arthritis had got into his fingers and his wrists and he found it hard to manage. I used to give my grandfather a hand when I was a boy. He had a croft out at Nibon.’ There was a moment of hesitation while Craig seemed to be remembering happy times. ‘Magnus didn’t say much while we were working, but he took me into the house for a dram afterwards. It was just as it must have been a hundred years ago. I felt as if I was stepping back in time. And then he started telling his stories about the old days. Fascinating. It was just like talking to my granddad, when he was alive. My folks aren’t interested in any of that. They just want the new kitchen every couple of years and their holiday to Spain in the summer. Money for a flash, showy car.’ Craig paused again. ‘I’d go round to see Magnus
some evenings. Take a bottle with me. He’d ask about my work abroad and then, after a couple of drams, he’d start with his stories.’
‘And he suggested Tain might be available for rent?’ Perez turned his back on the runway and leaned towards the desk where Sandy and Craig were sitting.
‘He was the same generation as Minnie Laurenson, who used to live there. I remember her. Always dressed in black, with a hooked nose, so she looked like a raven. She seemed ancient even when I was a peerie boy. She died a peerie while ago. She didn’t have any relatives left in Shetland. She’d never married. Tain was empty after she died. Magnus told me it had gone to a niece. Some kind of niece. The daughter of a cousin, maybe. You know what it’s like with Shetlanders, Jimmy. We’re all related, if you dig back far enough. Anyway this woman lived in America and Magnus said she might let me stay there. He could tell I was restless at home and needed my own space. “I lived with my mother for too long,” he said to me. “A man needs a house of his own.”’
‘Did Magnus give you the address of the owner?’
‘Yes, Minnie had written it down for him. She never trusted lawyers, apparently. She asked Magnus to write to the woman in America when she died, to tell her that Tain was hers. He did that and they’d been in touch ever since.’
Was that why she was in Shetland? Perez wondered. Because she knew that Magnus was dying and she wanted to meet him before it was too late. And then perhaps she intended to go to his funeral. But she never made it to the kirk because she was killed.
‘What was her name?’
‘She called herself Sandy. I’m not sure what that was short for. Sandy Sechrest, her name was. I phoned her and asked if I could stay in the place. I told her I’d do it up for her a bit, so at least it would be fit for her to stay in, if she came over. She said if I was prepared to do that, I could have it rent-free. Just pay for any fuel I used. I hadn’t offered the work for any return. But I get bored easily. And when I’m bored, I get into bother.’ He shot another quick grin in Sandy’s direction.
‘Did you ever meet her?’
Craig shook his head. She talked about coming over, but in the end something got in the way. Work, I think.’
‘What did she do for work?’
‘She was a publisher. Based in New York.’
‘Did you ever see a photo?’ Because Perez was struggling to reconcile the dark-eyed woman he’d imagined with a publisher from New York.
‘No! Why would I?’
‘I don’t suppose you know if she was planning to visit Shetland this winter?’
Again Craig shook his head. ‘We only spoke a couple of times on the phone. Once before I moved in, and again just before I left for the Middle East. I did email her a couple of photos, to show her how the work on the house was going.’
‘We’ll need her email address.’
‘No problem.’ Craig took his iPhone out of his shirt pocket and pressed a few buttons, before handing it to Perez. The address was on the screen: [email protected]. ‘I think Mullion is the name of the publishing company, so that’s probably a work email. She didn’t give me a personal one.’
The publisher’s name seemed familiar, but Perez couldn’t quite remember how he knew it. He thought they had the woman pinned down now. Her employer would know whether she’d taken holiday to visit Shetland. But if she’d only been in the islands for a few weeks, how had she managed to become so friendly with local people? There was the man who’d picked her up from the Co-op in Brae, in the car with the Shetland bumper sticker, and the smart man in the suit who’d been drinking with her in the bar in Mareel. These could be the same person, but if so, why hadn’t he come forward to say that he’d known her? There had been publicity all over the islands. It occurred to Perez that if they could identify the man, perhaps they would have found their murderer. The case might not be so complicated after all.
Sandy and Craig had already stood up to go. Perez went with them into the busy terminal and watched them walk outside. For an awkward moment they were crushed together in the revolving door and then they disappeared from view.
Willow’s plane was early. Perez hung back from the scattering of people waiting for relatives to emerge through the narrow door into the arrivals area. She was one of the last passengers to appear and walked out with Vicki Hewitt, the CSI; the two of them were sharing a joke. He couldn’t hear Willow’s laugh from where he was standing, but he saw her throw back her head and turn to her colleague. Her wild hair was loose. She wore blue cord trousers, frayed a little at the bottoms, big boots and an anorak. Perez had taken in all these details within seconds. He couldn’t have described Vicki at all.
Willow caught a glimpse of him and waved and he went to join her at the luggage belt.
‘We should stop meeting like this, Inspector.’ Her accent was mongrel, a mix between gentle Western Isles – she’d grown up in a commune in North Uist – and posh English, inherited from her educated, dropout parents.
He was never sure what to say to her. He couldn’t quite match her lightness of tone and her banter. ‘Welcome back to Shetland.’ He paused. ‘You’ve brought some better weather with you, at least.’
‘I always aim to please, Jimmy. You know that.’
In the car, Willow sat next to him. Vicki was small and slight and used her short legs as an excuse to go in the back. Perez drove away in silence, passing the Sumburgh Hotel and the Jarlshof archaeological site, before pausing at the crossing at the airport perimeter because the lights were flashing.
‘So what have we got so far, Jimmy? Tell me about your mysterious dark woman.’
The approaching plane landed, the lights stopped flashing and Perez drove carefully across the edge of the runway. ‘I’m not sure she’s so mysterious any more. We think she was probably the owner of Tain, the croft where we found her body.’ He described the conversation they’d had with Craig Henderson. ‘I’m assuming the Sandy Sechrest he emailed is the same as the Alis of the letter. One name with two diminutive forms. Her email address is “A dot Sechrest”. It must be the same woman who booked onto the ferry.’
He thought Willow might congratulate him on making a probable identification, but she only nodded in agreement.
‘It’s still very early in the US, even on the East Coast,’ Perez said. ‘I’ll call her employer’s office as soon as we get back to the station. If I email them the drawing of our victim, we should have a confirmed ID by the end of the day.’
There was another silence. Vicki asked a question about the scene.
‘It’s a total mess,’ Perez said. ‘When we first found the body we put her death down as accidental, caused by the landslide, and the fire officer’s first thought was to check that there wasn’t another body in the house. It didn’t occur to any of us that we should be preserving a crime scene. The local farmer was called in to help too, so there are tractor tracks and footprints everywhere. Because the landslip picked up debris on its way through, it’ll be hard to tell which of the objects actually originated at the site.’
‘A challenge then.’ He saw Vicki grinning at him in the driver’s mirror.
‘It’s certainly that.’ He’d come to a queue of traffic ahead of them and slowed down. ‘Only one lane is open from here to beyond the croft. They’re still working to make the hill secure.’
The cloud had rolled back in from the sea, dense, grey and straggly like a carded fleece. He thought Willow had been lucky that her flight managed to land. An hour later and it might have been forced to turn back. The cars inched forward. At last they came to the track cut by the fire service down to Tain and he pulled out of the queue of traffic and parked by the ruined house. Everything was still covered in mud, and below them they could see the path of the landslide right down to the coast, a black scar in the brown winter hillside.
Now there was a persistent drizzle and Willow pulled up her hood. ‘It would have been a lonely place for a woman on her own, even before the damage,’ she said.
> ‘There’s a farm just round the hill beyond those trees. Kevin and Jane Hay live there and they’re friendly-enough people, but they don’t seem to have made any contact with the victim. Jane knew someone was staying there, but assumed it was a holidaymaker. Kevin says he thought it was empty. They never saw a car parked outside, but they wouldn’t, unless they walked right past.’
‘How on earth could she manage here without a car?’
‘She had a friend. A male friend. He picked her up from the Co-op in Brae and was seen drinking wine with her in the bar at Mareel.’
If it was the same man. But surely it was too much of a coincidence to believe that she had two men in tow, after such a short time in the islands. And was this the man who’d written the letter in the box?
‘All the same . . .’ Willow’s face was hidden by the deep hood, but he could tell she found the situation difficult to fathom. ‘If she’d inherited the house, surely there would have been relatives to visit. Otherwise why would she be here? It’s not the best time of year for a holiday. I don’t understand why she wasn’t recognized when you first asked for information. None of it quite makes sense.’
Vicki Hewitt was pulling a scene-suit over her jeans and jacket. She held onto Willow’s shoulder to keep her balance.
‘Do you need that? The scene’s so contaminated anyway?’
‘Old habits die hard. Besides, if we come to court, you might be grateful.’ Vicki straightened. ‘Do you want to leave me here and come back for me later? You’d be two more people to have tramped around, contaminating the place, and I can focus better on my own.’
‘You mean we’d just be in the way!’ Perez found it much easier to be natural with Vicki than with Willow. ‘I’ll get Sandy to come back and work with you, as soon as he’s finished with Craig Henderson’s folks. He’s been through the house already.’
