Red Bones

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘Not a pile,’ Sandy said. ‘And old bones. Likely hundreds of years old.’

  ‘I don’t care. I’ll go and see that Paul Berglund tomorrow morning before the funeral. I’ll tell him I want them to leave. I don’t care what arrangement he made with Mima. This is my land now. It shouldn’t be disturbed.’

  Sandy sat, feeling the heat come off the Rayburn and the whisky in his throat, wondering what he could say to make his father less miserable. It wasn’t like him to be superstitious. Why hadn’t he realized his father was so upset? Joseph would never let on what he was feeling, but Sandy should have known Mima’s death would have hurt him more than he was showing.

  ‘I’ll speak to Berglund,’ he said at last. ‘You’ll have enough to do tomorrow.’

  ‘Your mother won’t like it.’ Sandy expected another sly conspiratorial smile, but Joseph was quite serious. ‘You know she has plans for this place.’

  ‘A fancy museum, with her in charge,’ Sandy said. ‘Aye well, she’ll have to find herself another project, something else to fill her time.’

  ‘It hasn’t been easy for her, living with me. I was a poor sort of catch as a husband. We never had as much money as the other families in Lindby.’ Joseph reached out and poured himself another dram. Michael and the Edinburgh wife were forgotten. ‘You should be easier on her. She hated it when we couldn’t give you things the bairns from the fishing families had.’

  ‘You’ve always looked after her well enough,’ Sandy said. ‘We never went short.’ Outside it was already starting to get dark; it was still early in the year and the sun was low in the sky.

  ‘That was down to her more than me. She was a magician with money, always had a way to make it stretch.’ Despite the warmth still left in the day, Joseph reached his hands out towards the range. His face was a shadow.

  ‘What do you plan to do with Setter?’ Sandy asked. As he did with Perez, he felt his relationship with his father was different from how it had been in the past, more equal. He was being taken more seriously. And he thought if he could bring his father back to practical matters the man might be more his old self. ‘I wondered if you’d consider moving back here.’

  ‘Oh I don’t think I could do that!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You can never go back. Never relive your life.’ Joseph drained his glass, paused. ‘I wondered if you’d want Setter. I always thought I’d make a good crofter out of you. You’ve got a way with the beasts.’

  ‘No!’ Sandy realized he sounded horrified and that his father would be offended, but he could think of nothing worse. To live where his mother could always find him, to have his life the subject of island speculation, his girlfriends scrutinized. To have his skills always measured against those of his father. ‘I have thought about it,’ he said. ‘But it wouldn’t work. I’ve got my job. I love it.’ As soon as the words were spoken he knew they were true.

  ‘Of course,’ Joseph said. ‘It was a stupid thought.’

  ‘I’ll see Berglund in the morning, tell him we want the place to ourselves for a while.’

  ‘Aye, you do that.’ Joseph got up. He walked towards the sink to rinse his glass under the tap.

  ‘Leave it,’ Sandy said. ‘I’ll see to it later.’ He stood too. They faced each other. There was a moment of silence.

  ‘We’d best get back,’ Joseph said at last. ‘Your brother should be here soon. Evelyn will be sending out a search party.’

  They walked together through the dusk to Utra and arrived just as Michael’s hire car appeared at the end of the track. The stars were coming out.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The day before Mima’s funeral, Anna took the afternoon ferry to Lerwick to pick up her dress from the dry-cleaner’s. It had been loose round the waist before she became pregnant and it still fitted now. This was her first trip there with the baby. She felt self-conscious pushing the pram down the street in Lerwick, like she was an impostor, a little girl playing at mummies and daddies. She still didn’t quite believe in her role as mother.

  She was pleased to get out of the house. You’d have thought Ronald would be happy that he wasn’t going to get charged with Mima’s killing, but he seemed more moody than ever. Anna always enjoyed a trip into town and today she decided she’d turn it into a treat, with good coffee and a scone in the Peerie Cafe and a browse around the Shetland Times Bookshop. She was almost feeling like her old self again and the baby had stopped squawking, for this afternoon at least.

  On her way into the cafe she bumped into a woman she’d met at a seminar the year before. Organized by the Shetland Islands Council, it had been for first-time entrepreneurs. Jane was setting up her own computing business. They had coffee together and time passed quickly as they chatted, first about the baby of course, but soon after about plans for their respective businesses. Jane was a southerner too, a little older than Anna, and she’d never had children. She said she found being self-employed very lonely. She was thinking of looking for a partner.

  When Anna had first come up with the idea of the Fibre Workshops she’d considered asking Evelyn to come into partnership with her. She’d thought it would be good to have one of the Whalsay women on her side and Evelyn’s background, her voice and her stories would bring an authentic flavour to the enterprise. But in the end Anna hadn’t wanted to share control of the project with anyone. Evelyn had been disappointed, Anna had been able to tell that, but she’d still been generous in her support. She’d let Anna use her knitting patterns and copy her recipes for the dye. Evelyn had even tried to raise some funds for the business from the Shetland Islands Council. That hadn’t worked out in the end – money was a lot tighter than it used to be, Evelyn said – but it had been kind of her to try.

  Anna didn’t discuss any of this with Jane: she didn’t think the woman would understand that she preferred to work on her own. But at the end of the afternoon they exchanged email addresses and promised to keep in touch.

  When she got home Anna felt almost elated and over supper she talked about the meeting to Ronald.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you had a fine afternoon.’ But she sensed he was preoccupied with his own thoughts. He wasn’t listening to her at all.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Something I can help with?’

  He shook his head without speaking.

  She felt another little stab of impatience. Why wasn’t he stronger and more decisive? She could forgive him almost everything except his weakness.

  On the morning of the funeral she dressed carefully. As soon as she got up she took her dress from its plastic wrapper and laid Ronald’s suit on the bed. He’d disappeared early to the big house after another summons from Jackie. She went to have a bath and saw the suit was still there when she came back to the bedroom. Sitting in front of her dressing-table mirror to fix her make-up, she could see its reflection, reminding her that Ronald was still not home. Soon the neighbour who had offered to mind James would be here. Anna thought it would be embarrassing if Ronald hadn’t appeared before the woman arrived.

  She didn’t usually bother with make-up, but today she wanted to show that she’d made an effort to look good. It was the only way she could face meeting all those people. Besides, her confidence could do with a boost too. She’d felt so lumpy and awkward in the last stages of pregnancy. She glanced at her watch again, although she knew quite well what time it was and wondered when Ronald would get back from his parents’ house. In another half an hour they would have to leave for the kirk. His lateness was making her feel tense. Where was he? She suspected he might have changed his mind about going to Mima’s funeral. I shouldn’t have let him go up to the big house, she thought. I shouldn’t have let him out of my sight. Anger began to bubble inside her. He always managed to let her down.

  She began planning what she should do if he didn’t turn up. Should she go to the funeral alone? Then she heard the front door and felt the usual mix of fury and relief. She looked at her
watch again. They’d just have time to make it.

  He came into the bedroom. He was flushed. She thought he’d run down the hill.

  ‘My father won’t come,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s been in a state all week, but never this bad. My mother won’t leave him.’

  ‘We’ll just have to go on our own then.’ Anna thought this might be a blessing in disguise. She’d rather have Ronald to herself. They’d be more discreet, just the two of them. Much better than turning up mob-handed. Jackie was always fierce in defence of her son and capable of causing a scene. Anna turned to look at him, wondering if he planned to use his father as an excuse not to be at the funeral, but he was already getting undressed.

  ‘Do you think I’ve time for a shower?’

  ‘If you’re quick.’

  Still in front of the mirror, she watched him coming out of the bathroom with the towel wrapped round him. She would have liked to take him into her arms and dry him, but she felt quite shy and instead watched him secretly, pretending to brush her hair. There was a knock on the door and she left him alone and went to let the neighbour in.

  They crossed the spit of sand that attached the land where the kirk had been built to the rest of Whalsay. Theirs was the last of a line of cars. The kirk was packed with people. There were folk here from other communities on the island, from Symbister, Skaw and Isbister as well as from Lindby. Looking for spare seats, Anna saw the blonde girl from the dig and the university professor sitting together; the pews were so full that they were pushed against each other, their shoulders touching. The girl was wearing black jeans and a black V-neck sweater. The story on the island was that her parents were very rich, so Anna thought she could have been able to come up with something more suitable to wear than that. The professor wore a suit and a black tie. At least he’d come prepared.

  Evelyn and Joseph sat in the front seat with Sandy and his brother Michael. Anna had only met Michael once. Evelyn had brought him down to the bungalow when he was visiting, keen to show off the successful son who’d made it big in Edinburgh. Now Anna thought he looked rather strained, his shoulders hunched, his hands clasped as if he was praying. Sandy stared ahead of him like a small boy trying very hard not to cry.

  People had stared when she and Ronald walked in. There were nudges and whispers. Ronald had paused beside her, but she’d taken his hand and they carried on walking, both looking straight ahead of them. They found seats next to an elderly couple she only knew by sight. She often saw them together, casting peat or working the planticrub on the hill close to Setter.

  When the first hymn began Anna found herself crying. She wasn’t in the least musical – she couldn’t hold a tune or play an instrument – but sometimes music touched her in that way. Now, standing in the middle of all these people, the noise swelling around her, she found herself sobbing. Ronald gave her his handkerchief, took her hand in his and stroked the back of it with his thumb. After the first verse Anna told herself she must still be reacting to the hormones and managed to pull herself together. She thought Ronald would find her emotion out of character and rather embarrassing.

  After the service they stood in the graveyard. It was neat and ordered, the grass mown. The sun was still shining and the water surrounded them on three sides. The gannets had returned to the islands after a winter at sea and were diving straight into the bay, looking very white against the grey water. She turned back to the group around the grave and watched the small coffin being lowered into the ground. She found it impossible to imagine that the real Mima was lying inside.

  Her breasts were heavy with milk and she thought about James waiting for her at home. She realized she would be buried here. Her life was all mapped out and nothing would get in her way. She and Ronald would have more children. The children would be baptized in this church and later they would marry here. If there were a daughter, Ronald would walk up the aisle with her to give her away. Anna would become a real Whalsay wife, with a kitchen full of grandchilden.

  People were starting to drift away now. They had been invited back to Utra for tea. Anna knew that the tea would be too much for Ronald and that anyway they probably wouldn’t be welcome. They would go straight home. She would need to feed James. Evelyn left very quickly. Anna knew how she would be, filling kettles, taking the clingfilm off the scones and the cakes, an apron over the Sunday-best dress. Joseph and his sons remained standing next to the grave.

  She was about to take Ronald’s arm and lead him away. She was proud of the way he’d held things together. She knew he’d never wanted to be there and she wondered if she’d been right to insist.

  But without her noticing he’d moved away from her and gone to talk to Joseph and the boys. He held his hand out to Michael. She couldn’t hear what he said. Michael hesitated for a moment, looked at his father and his brother and then took the offered hand. Anna remembered Evelyn telling her that he had become quite religious after his marriage. Amelia’s influence. Perhaps he felt it was his duty to forgive. Then Sandy had his arm around Ronald. Both men seemed to be close to tears. Joseph kept his distance, but didn’t seem hostile.

  ‘It’ll be all right.’ She realized that she’d actually spoken the words under her breath. There was nobody close enough to hear and she repeated them a little louder. This had been a terrible week but they’d got through it. With Mima’s burial out of the way, they’d be able to put the awful events behind them.

  As she waited for Ronald to finish talking to Michael and Sandy, Sophie and Paul Berglund came up to speak to her. It seemed they’d walked to the kirk. Sophie looked so pale and drawn that Anna thought she must be sick. Then she remembered that the girl’s friend had died too. Sitting through the service must have made Hattie’s suicide seem very real. Anna was convinced that the police would decide the death was suicide. What else could they think it would be?

  ‘We wondered if we might have a lift back?’ Berglund said. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘Look, it’s OK.’ Sophie’s hair was blowing about her face. ‘We can walk. We don’t want to put you out. Perhaps you’re going back to Utra.’

  ‘No. We have to get back for the baby. He’ll need feeding.’ Anna thought again how poorly the girl looked. She couldn’t believe Sophie was capable of walking all that way in such a state. Sophie had always been so fit. Anna had recruited her into the Lindby women’s rowing team and the student loved the exercise and got out of the boat after a race beaming, hardly sweating. But Sophie was young. Perhaps she thought it was OK for an old woman to die violently, but not a person of her own age. ‘If you don’t mind waiting till Ronald’s finished talking to the boys we’ll take you back. Where do you want to go? The Bod or the Pier House?’

  ‘The Pier House,’ Berglund said before Sophie could speak. ‘We both feel like a stiff drink.’ He put his arm around Sophie’s shoulder. Anna supposed he could just be comforting her because she’d had such an upsetting few days, but it didn’t seem like that. It seemed more intimate and proprietorial.

  Ronald waved to her and started walking to the car. She would have liked to ask him how he was feeling, what the Wilson men had said, but it was awkward with the strangers there. They drove to Symbister in silence.

  On impulse at the hotel, Anna got out of the car to say goodbye to the visitors. She reached out and put her hand on Sophie’s shoulder.

  ‘Hattie must have been ill,’ she said. ‘Why else would she do something like that? Come in to the bungalow whenever you want to. It would be good to have the company.’

  Sophie nodded. There were tears in her eyes again and she seemed unable to speak. Berglund held her close to him again and led her into the hotel.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Perez wasn’t there for Mima’s funeral. He’d explained his decision to Sandy the day before. ‘It’s not a lack of respect. Please tell Evelyn that. I’ll be thinking about you all. But it’ll be a distraction to have the police there.’

  And
Sandy had nodded, understanding how it would be. There’d be gossip enough over the means of Mima’s dying. Perez’s presence would just give the congregation something else to talk about.

  Instead Perez sat in his room in the Pier House and read Hattie’s letters to her mother. Without any real decision having been made, it seemed he’d taken up residence in the hotel. He’d come back there the evening before after his meeting with the Fiscal. In the morning when he came down to breakfast Jean, the skinny Glaswegian, grinned at him. ‘Still here then?’ Now she knew what he liked: a big pot of very strong coffee, scrambled eggs, brown toast. She’d say, ‘Do you no’ fancy something more substantial this morning?’ But teasing him, not expecting a different order.

  Before starting to read the letters, Perez went into the kitchen to find her and asked if she’d be kind enough to make him some coffee to take into his room. She was on her own; Cedric Irvine would be at the funeral. He could tell the woman would have liked him to stay and chat to her, but he was eager to get back to the letters. She had only been on the island a short time and he didn’t think she could have much to tell him. It occurred to him again that he should talk to Cedric about Mima, but because he’d be at the funeral it would have to wait.

  The letters were kept in chronological order, though Perez didn’t read them that way. Sandy had told him that Gwen James treasured them, that she’d missed Hattie when she went off to college and would have found it easier to keep her daughter at home, protected. Perhaps Perez had misjudged the woman. His parents had thought it was in his best interests to send him away to school in Lerwick at the age of eleven. But really, he thought, they’d had no choice.

  He dipped into the letters in a disorganized, irrational way. He’d read them in order later, but now he wanted a flavour of what Hattie had to say. The first few he came to had been written from a psychiatric hospital. They were short, rather incoherent, written on cheap lined paper, and the handwriting was quite different from the rest of the scripts – sprawling, the words slanting away from the lines. At first it was clear Hattie resented being there. Please, please let me come home. I really don’t need this. I can’t stand it. I want it all to end. Was this the reference Sandy had mentioned to her wishing she were dead? Later in her stay as an in-patient they became more chatty. We all went to the swimming pool in town today. I haven’t been swimming in ages and enjoyed it a lot. The minibus broke down on the way back to the unit. We had to walk back and Mark led us like a bunch of schoolkids along the main road. I almost expected him to tell us to get into pairs and hold hands. As her mood improved her handwriting changed, became tidier, more controlled.