Cold Earth

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘I’d like to talk about the time your sister disappeared, Jono. Could you cast your mind back to then?’ A pause. ‘It was a while ago, I know, but let’s go through the details again.’

  A mumbled response.

  ‘Anything – however trivial – might help us find Alison’s killer. You do want to do that?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It was 2002: you in the army, Britney Spears at the top of the charts. Alison at the height of her fame in that drama on TV.’

  ‘I remember like it was yesterday. Good times.’

  ‘Brilliant, Jono!’ Willow felt as if she’d caught him now. In his mind he was fifteen years younger, still with a purpose and a famous sister. Contacts and parties when he was home on leave. ‘What might have happened, do you think, to make Alison run away and give it all up?’

  ‘She was pretty messed up.’

  ‘Man trouble?’

  ‘Oh, she could never keep a decent man. Always wanted more than they could give. And she never took to the good ones. It was always the losers, the druggies and the wasters. The older ones who reminded her of Dad. Or the exciting ones who promised her the world.’

  Willow was about to ask another question when Jono spoke again, and she could tell that he was back with his sister, sharing the glamour and the heartache. The stories spilled out. Details he’d probably forgotten for years. Names and places and the parties they’d been to, the meals they’d eaten. No need for Willow to ask leading questions, to tease out the facts. The recorded conversation might be used in a future court case, so she had to be careful. All the same, she felt in total control of the exchange.

  Twenty minutes later Sandy knocked quietly and looked in, but seeing that she was still talking, he went away again. At last, when she could think of nothing else to ask and the man at the end of the line had fallen silent, she thanked Teal and told him they were done. The assistant governor came onto the line again.

  ‘I hope that was useful.’

  She assumed he’d been in the room all the time, listening in. ‘Terrifically. All confidential at this stage, of course.’

  ‘Oh, absolutely. You can trust me.’

  ‘I’m sure that I can.’

  There was a pause. Willow was impatient to end the call so that she could consider the implications of the conversation with Teal, but the man spoke again.

  ‘Perhaps we could meet up next time I’m in Shetland.’ He sounded nervous, almost as if he was inviting her out on a date. Perhaps he was. She imagined it would be hard to meet many women in his profession, and birdwatching seemed to be a predominantly male activity.

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘I probably won’t be here when you next visit. I don’t actually belong here.’ Replacing the receiver, she thought that was true. Whatever Jimmy Perez decided, she would never truly belong in Shetland.

  She found Sandy in the ops room, staring out of the window down at the street below. The traffic was heavy; it was just after five and this was the nearest Lerwick got to a rush hour. The rain made everything look slick and shiny in the headlights. He turned back to face her. ‘Well?’

  ‘Listen to the call yourself. I want to know what you think.’ She paused and came to a sudden decision. ‘I’m going out. I’ve just tried to get Jimmy on the phone, but there’s no reply: no reception on his mobile and he’s not answering the landline in his house. He was picking up Cassie from school, but he should be home by now.’

  ‘So you’re going south?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, already almost out of the room. ‘I’m going south.’

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Kevin Hay dropped Perez and Cassie right outside their door. He’d talked Cassie through the vehicle’s controls and let her switch on the indicators on the drive back from Gilsetter. She was squeezed between the two men on the front bench seat and Perez didn’t speak at all. There was no mention of the murders until the Land Rover had stopped and Kevin had let Cassie out of the driver’s door to run inside. Then the two men were alone, standing in the drizzle on either side of the van.

  ‘I wasn’t very civil last time we met, Jimmy. I’m sorry.’

  ‘No problem. It’s a stressful time for everyone.’ Perez was in a hurry to join Cassie; he didn’t like her being alone even for a few minutes, and this was no place for a useful conversation. ‘Thanks for the lift.’ He turned away to walk to the house.

  ‘Jimmy!’ Perez looked back and Kevin Hay continued, ‘These killings have nothing to do with my family. We all make mistakes, but we’re good people.’

  Perez wasn’t sure how to answer that, so he just raised his hand in farewell. Inside, he saw there were missed calls from Willow on his mobile and his landline, but when he tried to call her there was no reply. He felt a moment of relief. He still wasn’t sure what he would tell her. Perhaps they could work out a compromise, a way of staying close without disrupting Cassie’s life. But he thought Willow wasn’t a woman who would be comfortable with compromise. Besides, he wanted more than that.

  He made scrambled eggs for Cassie’s supper and then realized he was hungry and made more for himself. The dark outside was dense now, the remaining daylight had long gone and there was no moon. But still he stared out of the window down the valley towards Tain and Gilsetter. Partly because it was what he’d been doing all day and had become a habit, partly out of a kind of superstition. If he stopped looking, something dreadful might happen. The cluster of lights must come from Gilsetter, from the polytunnels and the house itself. They were familiar, a part of the night-time landscape. He wondered what was happening there, pictured Jane and Kevin at the kitchen table, discussing the case. Making plans. Inventing excuses for themselves or their sons.

  He dragged his attention back to the child, bathed her and prepared her for bed. Cassie seemed to pick up on his mood and was quiet and a little subdued, making no protest when he said it was time for her to go to sleep. He went back to his seat by the window and noticed that it was still raining. He could hear that the ditch running past the house where Magnus Tait had once lived was full. It crossed his mind that perhaps he and Cassie should move away for a while and stay with friends in Lerwick, in case the hill was still unstable and likely to slide again. But he couldn’t bear the thought of the disruption to both their routines.

  When he was sure Cassie was asleep he went outside to put rubbish in the bin by the track. The lights in Gilsetter remained, but now there was another light a little way to the south. At first Perez thought it might come from a stationary car on the main road, but it wasn’t a usual place for a vehicle to park. The light taunted him. He couldn’t ignore it and kept staring, trying to fix it in his mental map. It didn’t shift. He went back inside and phoned Willow again and still there was no response. On impulse he picked up the phone once more and called Maggie, the friend who usually cared for Cassie after school.

  ‘Sorry to be a pain, but is there any chance you could babysit? It’s a work thing. I shouldn’t be long, and Cassie’s in bed.’

  ‘No bother, Jimmy, and be as long as you like. I’ll be there in ten minutes.’ Her voice was comforting and normal and made him believe he was overreacting.

  By the time Maggie had arrived, though, he’d convinced himself that the light was in Tain. Where else could it be? There were no other houses in that part of Ravenswick. The only other building was the manse, and that was east of Gilsetter. The school was further north. When his neighbour tapped at the door, he had his boots and waterproofs on and his car keys in his hand. Outside, he changed his mind about driving. It was only quarter of an hour’s walk down the hill and he didn’t want to warn whoever was in the ruined croft of his presence.

  It was muggy and unseasonably mild. The low cloud seemed to hold in the smoke from the settlement’s open fires and the smell of peat mixed with the compost scent of damp vegetation. He almost ran down the bank to the road, crossed it and looked over the valley towards the coast. His eyes had adjusted to the murk. Occasionally c
ars passed behind him. The Gilsetter lights were clear from here and spilled outside onto the sycamores that surrounded Tain. The trees were bare now and Perez could see quite clearly that there was a light inside the ruins. Not the same constant brightness of the glow in Gilsetter, but uneven, flickering. A candle or a torch.

  He walked more slowly. There was no vehicle parked at the end of the short track. Whoever was inside Tain had walked, like him. The light was in the space that had once been the bedroom and was still relatively intact. Perez slid closer, then moved round to the side of the house that faced the sea, treading carefully because there was still debris underfoot, shattered crockery and smashed furniture. There was no glass in the window here and he could hear at once that there were two people inside. This was a conversation between a man and a woman.

  ‘You haven’t been staying here?’ Jane Hay’s voice was strained and tense, but she was reining in her emotions and trying to keep calm. ‘What’s been going on?’

  Perez shifted position so that he could see inside. The mother and son were standing, uplit by a candle which had been stuck onto a saucer and placed on a plain wooden chair. Jane had a torch in her hand, but that had been switched off.

  ‘No,’ Andy said. ‘I haven’t been staying here.’ He seemed lost inside a big parka, and in the candlelight looked even thinner than Perez remembered. Skeletal. Perez could see the bones in the boy’s face and in the long fingers that never seemed to rest. The piercings near his eyebrow glittered. ‘I told you. I was staying with a friend.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come and see me at home tonight?’ She was trying not to sound accusing, but the words came out as a cry. ‘Why all this drama and mystery?’

  There was a moment of silence. Because he’s a young man, Perez thought. And because he’s always been attracted to melodrama.

  ‘I couldn’t face Dad.’ Andy looked directly at her. ‘I needed to talk to you first.’

  ‘Your father isn’t even at home.’ She was growing impatient now. ‘He took Jimmy Perez and his daughter home and then went straight to the Henderson house to watch the footie. There’s a Scotland game.’

  The ordinary, banal words seemed almost to offend Andy. Perez thought again that he preferred the tension and the high drama.

  ‘So why don’t we just go back to Gilsetter?’ Jane went on. ‘You can explain everything to me in the warm.’

  ‘I used to come here.’

  ‘I know you used to come here. You came with me to see Minnie Laurenson. She had a tin of toffees and home-made fudge and she told you stories.’ Perez saw that Jane was smiling. It was probably easier for her to think of Andy as a small boy, eager to please. She didn’t know what to make of the angry young man.

  ‘No!’ He sounded frustrated now. ‘I mean I came to Tain recently. While Alis was living here.’

  ‘Alis?’

  ‘Alison,’ he said. ‘Alison Teal.’

  Of course. Perez should have known all along. Kevin Hay hadn’t been Alison’s client. The regular visitor to Tain, paying Tom Rogerson with his father’s stolen debit card, had been Andy. Not Kevin. Andy, the boy teased for his lack of sexual experience and his attraction to older women, would have been easy prey. Hay must have guessed why the payment had been made in his name and was protecting his son. Perhaps he believed that Andy had killed the woman. And perhaps, Perez thought as the idea chased around his head, perhaps that made sense.

  Jane seemed to be following the same logic. ‘Did you kill the woman?’

  ‘No!’ The boy was screaming. ‘I loved her.’

  Again there was a moment of silence.

  ‘She was a prostitute,’ Jane said. ‘You do know that?’

  And how did you know? A wild guess? Been listening to the same rumours as Craig Henderson? Or did Kevin tell you?

  ‘Of course I knew. She wouldn’t have had sex with someone like me if I hadn’t paid her. But it didn’t matter. She made me happy.’ He looked round the filthy room. ‘She made this place seem special. And she did like me.’ A pause. ‘I brought her a kitten from the farm to keep her company. She was going to cook me a meal on Valentine’s Day.’

  ‘Did your father know what you were up to?’ The woman’s voice was even now.

  ‘Not at the time.’ The boy’s bony fingers continued to move. Perez couldn’t stop staring at them, flexing and twisting as if they had a life of their own. ‘I think he followed me down one night, but he couldn’t see what was going on. He worked it out later, when the police started asking about the money.’

  ‘So after they were both dead?’

  ‘Of course after they were dead!’ Andy was howling now. ‘You can’t think Dad would commit murder?’

  ‘Of course not.’ But Perez could tell that the woman had considered the possibility. ‘Where have you been staying, Andy?’ Her voice was quiet. ‘Where have you been running away to, the nights you didn’t come home?’

  For a moment Perez thought the boy would refuse to answer, that like a petulant child he would stand in the flickering candlelight with his mouth clamped shut. But Andy shrugged and began to speak. The answer wasn’t unexpected, but it triggered a shift in perception for Perez, an entirely new way of looking at the investigation. He remembered why the bad weather on the day of Rogerson’s disappearance was so important. He moved away from his hiding place and through the hole in the wall where once the back door had been.

  Jane and Andy stared at him in horror, as if he was an apparition, and then they both began to speak at once. At the same time he must have chanced upon a patch of mobile reception, because his phone started to go wild with electronic sound.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Willow drove south out of Lerwick. The roads were quieter now and she scarcely passed any traffic. There was a light in Jimmy Perez’s house and she was tempted to stop, but after a moment’s hesitation she continued on her way. He might have personal reasons for not answering her calls, and she had too much pride to turn up unannounced on his doorstep. She slowed down to avoid a jogger in a high-vis jacket running north. Willow wondered at the dedication that drove people to exercise in weather like this and at this time of night. She checked the clock on the hire-car dashboard. It was only seven. Not so late after all, although it had been dark for hours.

  The building appeared before she was quite expecting it. Her headlights swept across it and it appeared as a solid black shadow. She had decided against a clandestine approach. She wouldn’t be able to hide the car and, besides, she was only here to ask questions. There was no need to make a big issue of the visit. The building was unlit, as far as she could see. Perhaps she’d misjudged her timing and had made her dramatic chase south for nothing. She could have called ahead and saved herself a wasted journey. All the same, she got out of the car and knocked at the door. Silence. She turned the handle and it opened. That struck her as odd. Shetlanders might not usually lock the doors even of their work places, but there had been two murders within a few miles of this place.

  ‘Hello! Anyone at home?’

  She walked further inside. It had the air of a place that had been left recently. There was a kettle, warm to the touch. In the office a file left open on the desk, and the PC on standby. The occupier could be home any minute, but Willow thought she would have some warning. There hadn’t been a car parked outside and she’d see the headlights coming down the track, hear the engine noise. The office faced out towards the road. Willow would have time to move back to the other room and pretend that she was just waiting out of the weather. She’d left on the hall light and could see well enough just from that. A light in the office would show that she’d been snooping.

  She opened the desk drawers one by one, not entirely sure what she was searching for. In the top drawer there was the same self-help book that they’d found among Alison’s possessions; she recognized the title and the publisher’s name. Sandy Sechrest, the owner of Tain, worked as an editor for the company in New York City. Willow was pondering the si
gnificance of this – excited, because in a small way it confirmed her theory – when she was aware of a change in the atmosphere. A slight draught. Somewhere a door had been opened. She turned quickly, preparing to leave, but she was too late. There was already someone else in the room, blocking the exit. Willow was about to smile apologetically and mumble an excuse; she felt embarrassed, but not in any danger. Then there was a brief moment of bewilderment and everything went black.

  When Willow woke, she was outside. Her face felt wet: blood from the wound on her temple mixed with a gentle drizzle, and the damp was soaking through the back of her jeans. She was wearing the waterproof jacket she’d had on when she’d been hit, and that was keeping the top of her body dry. She shifted slightly and the pain in her head was so severe that she wanted to scream. She didn’t scream. That pride again, but also an instinct for survival because somewhere close by there was the sound of footsteps. Willow heard the suction of boots lifted out of mud and the splash of surface water. She knew she was in no state to take on her attacker, so she lay still.

  Strong arms grabbed her under her shoulders and began to drag her along the ground. Willow tried to distract herself from the pain. She could do this. It was why she got up before work every morning and practised the discipline of yoga. She could keep her breathing even, control her muscles and force herself to relax. Her attacker had to believe that she was still unconscious, that she posed no danger. Willow imagined coming to the scene as the first officer present. Her heels would be making tracks in the mud, and any competent detective or CSI would work out what had happened here. The killer was panicking and getting careless. The movement stopped and Willow’s upper body was dropped on the ground. This time there was no need for pretence. The pain was so intolerable that she slipped back into unconsciousness.