Red Bones

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘Of course. What other explanation is there?’

  He didn’t answer directly. ‘I’ve got a picnic,’ he said. ‘Let’s go up the island and have a bit of a walk.’

  Again she stared at him as if he was a madman.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said, though he wasn’t quite sure why she might need reassuring. ‘I just want to go somewhere we won’t be disturbed or overheard.’

  They parked near the golf clubhouse. Again the weather was unusually mild: a gusty breeze blew startling white clouds and there were moments of bright sunlight. There were no other cars there and the golf course seemed deserted. They walked right to the end of the island and sat on rocks looking out to the Skerries, the inhabited island which stood very clear on the horizon.

  ‘I’ve lived all my life in Shetland and I’ve never been there,’ Perez said. He handed her one of the cans of beer and spread the food on a flat rock. A red-throated diver flew over their heads calling. Last time I heard that sound, Perez thought, was just before Hattie’s body was found. Although he knew it was superstition, he felt uneasy. What terrible thing would happen now? He turned his attention back to the Skerries. ‘Maybe I should pay a visit one day.’

  Sophie tugged on the ring pull of the can. ‘What is all this about?’ she said. ‘What do you want from me?’ She was wearing shorts again and the big boots, a loose sweater with holes in the elbows. No bra, he thought. She leaned forward with her arms on her knees.

  ‘What do you think of Paul Berglund?’ Perez asked.

  He pulled apart a crusty roll and cut a piece of cheese off the block of Orkney cheddar with his penknife, handed the makeshift sandwich to her.

  ‘I’ve always found Paul OK,’ she said. ‘He’s been all right to me.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. You could have a worse boss. He can be a good laugh.’

  ‘What about Hattie?’ He broke off a piece of chocolate and put it in his mouth. He thought she sounded defensive. ‘Was he all right to her?’

  Sophie didn’t reply. A gull swooped down, scavenging for bits of food. A curlew shouted in the distance.

  He went on. ‘Did Hattie tell you about Paul? Maybe warn you about him? Did she think the two of you were getting close and want you to know how he’d treated her?’

  She stared out to the islands on the horizon. ‘Paul hasn’t done anything wrong,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t have.’

  ‘Did he tell you that?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Something made Hattie kill herself,’ Perez said. ‘If that’s what happened, she used his knife to do it.’

  She turned away from him. ‘I hate it here,’ she said. ‘Everyone knowing each other’s business. At first it was OK. Different from anywhere else I’ve ever lived. The boys from the boats were good fun, they know how to party. Now I can’t stand it. Once the fog rolls in you feel as if the world outside doesn’t matter at all. People here lose any sense of proportion. Tiny incidents that happened years ago fester and take over their lives.’

  ‘What incidents?’

  She shook her head in frustration that he didn’t immediately understand.

  ‘There’s nothing specific. Just a feeling that the islanders can never break free from their history. That they have no free will. Or that they won’t allow themselves any.’

  ‘Go home then,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to stop you. Just leave me your address.’

  She’d pulled out a piece of heather and was tearing the tiny dead flowers off the stalk one by one. Perez thought it might take more than a night of clubbing and drinking to make her feel happy again.

  ‘Did Hattie talk to you before she died?’ he asked.

  She turned, startled. ‘Of course she talked to me.’

  ‘So you got on OK?’

  A brief hesitation. ‘Boarding school’s great practice for this sort of work,’ she said. ‘You have to muck in together.’

  He wasn’t sure that was a real answer. I went to boarding school, he thought. If you can call the hostel at the Anderson High School a boarding school. I’m not sure it taught me much.

  ‘Did she talk about Paul Berglund?’ he asked. ‘About what happened when they worked together before?’

  ‘Paul says it’s all rubbish. She just had a teenage crush.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Was it true then, all that stuff about Paul?’ Sophie looked at him; her eyes seemed huge. ‘You could never tell with Hattie. Sometimes I thought she was mad. She came up with such odd ideas.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Sophie shook her head, unwilling to be specific. ‘I don’t know. She just let her imagination run away with her .’

  ‘But she did talk to you about Paul?’

  ‘Yes, she thought he was hitting on me. She was warning me off. I told her I was a big girl and I could look after myself.’

  ‘I think she was telling the truth about Paul,’ Perez said. ‘But there’s no evidence and he’ll never be charged, if that’s what’s concerning you. I just need to hear what she told you.’

  Sophie finished the beer and crushed the can with her fist. She told her story looking out to sea in a flat, unemotional voice. Throughout, there was no eye contact.

  ‘It was at the end of her first year at university. She’d already had some sort of stress-related illness after A levels. I guess she was that sort of person. An obsessive. Then in the summer vacation she worked as a volunteer on a dig in the south.’

  She paused but Perez said nothing. He knew all this, but Sophie had to tell the tale in her own words.

  She continued: ‘That was where Hattie met Paul. She fell for him. I mean absolutely head over heels. She admitted that to me. He was married but when’s that ever stopped anyone?’

  Now Perez did interject. ‘Did she know he was married?’

  ‘Maybe not. She was so naïve, it probably never occurred to her. He must have been flattered. She was young, bright, quirky. He took her out a couple of times. Enjoyed her company but wanted more. Men do always want more . . .’ She paused again and continued to stare into the distance. Perez wished he knew what she was thinking about. ‘One evening, they both got drunk. He invited her into his room for coffee. She went, expecting coffee, maybe a kiss and a cuddle. Like I said, she was very naïve. Paul expected more than that.’

  ‘He raped her,’ Perez said.

  ‘No!’ she said and now she did turn towards him, shocked. ‘Not rape. That sounds horrible.’

  ‘Rape is horrible.’

  ‘They were both drunk. He misread the signals. She never actually told him to stop. Not really. Not so he understood.’

  And perhaps that was true, Perez thought. Hattie had so little confidence. After a while perhaps she had just given in and let the man do what he wanted, too scared to shout and make a fuss. And afterwards she’d blamed herself instead of him. And the anger had eaten away at her and made her ill. Had it turned to paranoia here in Whalsay? Had she been scared it would happen again? Did she imagine him watching her, waiting for his moment? But everyone said she’d been happy until Mima’s death. It didn’t quite make sense.

  He didn’t want Sophie to think he was blaming her. He looked out at the water too, at the reflected sunlight shifting with the movement of the waves and the windblown shadows.

  ‘Are you having a relationship with Berglund?’

  ‘No!’

  Perez had an image of the two archaeologists as he’d seen them the day before, standing together outside the Pier House after Mima’s funeral, both dressed in black. Berglund had put his arm around Sophie’s shoulders, but she’d resisted and walked away. He thought she was telling the truth. He stood up, starting to feel cold. Despite the brightness of the light there was still a chill in the rock where they sat.

  ‘Have you discussed her allegations with Paul?’

  ‘I couldn’t help it. It was while we were in the kirk before Mima’s funeral. We got there early. Everything was
so solemn and dreary. I couldn’t just sit there in silence. We were the first people there. There was nobody to overhear. And I had to know what he had to say for himself.’

  ‘What did he have to say?’

  ‘He laughed it off, said she was a screwed-up kid with a serious crush on him and she didn’t know what she wanted.’ She hesitated. ‘Then he warned me off: “Don’t go spreading rumours about me, Sophie. I’ve got a lot to lose.”’

  ‘Do you think Hattie discussed it with him when they had their meeting?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Sophie’s attention seemed to be wandering now, or perhaps she was feeling the cold as much as he was. ‘Paul didn’t say anything about that to me.’

  Did he warn Hattie off too? Perez thought. Or did he take more drastic action to stop her talking? As he’d said, he had a lot to lose.

  ‘Do you think Hattie killed herself?’ The question came out unplanned, but he found that he’d caught his breath while he waited for the answer.

  ‘Of course,’ she answered, looking at him as if he were a little mad. ‘What else could have happened? Though . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’d have thought she’d have left a note. She was always writing. It was the best way she communicated, how she made sense of things.’

  He knew he should find Sandy and that the Fiscal would be waiting to hear from him, but despite the cold now he was reluctant to move. He thought Sophie had more to tell him, that he’d mishandled the situation. He hadn’t asked the right question. But Sophie had grown impatient. She got to her feet too and strode across the cropped grass of the hill back towards the car, past the loch where the clouds were reflected in the water and where soon the diver would build its nest. He was left to follow.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  When Sandy came back to the house after letting the hens out and collecting the eggs, Perez was waiting for him. The door was unlocked, but Perez was standing outside as if he had all the time in the world.

  ‘Your car’s still here,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think you’d be gone long.’

  Sandy thought Mima would have enjoyed having these visitors to Setter. She’d have taken to Jimmy Perez, poured whisky for him and told him her stories. Today the inspector was the one with the stories to tell.

  ‘Let’s stay outside,’ Perez said. ‘Make the most of the weather.’ So they walked down past the site of the dig with its tape and its poles and its mound of earth, to the dyke that marked the end of Setter land. Perez wondered again what would happen to the site now. Would the trenches be filled in and the spoil heap flattened? Would the land then remain undisturbed for ever? He talked about Paul Berglund and Hattie James and what had happened when they worked together on another dig in Sussex.

  ‘Do you believe what the psychiatric nurse said?’ Sandy wasn’t sure what he thought of the incident. Rape to him was a city crime, a stranger attacking a woman after dark in some alley. Two people having sex in a hotel room was something different. But he knew Perez well enough not to say so.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It doesn’t really give Berglund a motive for killing Mima though, does it?’

  ‘Unless Mima had found out what he’d done,’ Perez said. ‘She might have threatened to go public. Or she could have tried to persuade Hattie to tell us. You said Mima liked the girl and that they were close. She was a strong independent woman. Hattie might have confided in her. Berglund could lose his job even if it never came to court.’

  ‘I don’t really see it,’ Sandy said. He thought Perez always made things more complicated than they really were. ‘He wouldn’t be daft enough to use his own knife.’

  Beyond the dyke there was one fat old ewe with rheumy eyes, chewing on the long grass, and two tiny lambs, still unsteady on their feet.

  ‘What did you make of our conversation with Andrew?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Sandy said. He still didn’t like to commit himself in front of Perez. The inspector was used to working on serious crimes with bright men from the south, not inexperienced local cops like him.

  ‘Did Mima ever mention meeting a Norwegian man during the war?’

  ‘No, and it’s just the sort of story she’d have enjoyed telling. Kind of saucy and dramatic.’ Sandy wasn’t sure he believed any of it. Andrew’s memory was unreliable and some days the words weren’t very clear.

  ‘According to Andrew she never knew the man had been killed,’ Perez said. ‘But she must have been aware of the rumours that were going round. Cedric told me one version and there were probably others. Maybe she didn’t want to make herself the subject of gossip. No more than she already was.’

  ‘You can’t think that something that happened all that time ago has anything to do with an old woman being shot on Whalsay today?’ Sandy thought Perez was mad to be distracted so much by the past.

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘I was wondering . . .’ Sandy paused. He didn’t want to make a fool of himself.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Berglund. Is that a Norwegian name?’

  ‘Scandinavian, certainly.’

  ‘Another coincidence, do you think?’

  ‘You’re thinking he could be a relative, a grandson maybe, who’s come in after revenge?’ Perez was amused but not altogether dismissive.

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps not revenge, but information. He could have been asking questions and stirred things up.’

  ‘It’s worth checking,’ Perez said. ‘I’ll do that when I’m back in the office. I’m going home this afternoon. I can’t really justify staying another day and the Fiscal needs to know what’s going on. You know what she’s like.’

  ‘Will you tell her everything? About my grandmother and the Norwegian?’

  ‘Of course. She’s very discreet, you know, whatever we think of her. She has to be.’

  Sandy shot a quick look at Perez to see if he was mocking him, but he seemed quite serious. ‘I just don’t like the idea of it,’ he said. ‘Folk talking about my family in that way.’ He turned and began to walk back to the house. He was wondering what Joseph would make of it. Or had he always known what had happened sixty years before? Perhaps he should talk to his father before word got out.

  As they approached the house, a car drew up and Ronald Clouston climbed out. He hadn’t noticed them and when he did he seemed startled. Like a great awkward schoolboy caught out in mischief. Sandy thought perhaps Ronald had hoped to speak to him alone.

  ‘Aye, aye,’ Sandy said. His father’s greeting. ‘Are you coming in? I have to get to Utra in a while to see Michael off, but not just now.’

  ‘No.’ Ronald stood with his hand on the car door as if he was ready to make a get away. ‘I can see you’re busy.’

  ‘I’m just going,’ Perez said.

  ‘No,’ Ronald said again. ‘I’ll get off. I’ve got things to do.’ He got into the car and drove away.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Perez asked.

  ‘Folk get kind of shy when the police are about.’ Sandy wished Perez hadn’t been there. Maybe he’d give Ronald a call later and find out what he’d come for. He could tell that Ronald had wanted to talk to him and had lost his nerve at the last minute. He turned to his boss. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Can you bear to stay in Whalsay for a little while?’

  ‘Aye, I suppose so. I’d like to get home soon though.’

  ‘I’m hoping we’ll have it all cleared up in the next few days.’

  Sandy wondered if Perez had any real reason for saying that or if it was wishful thinking. He repeated his question. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Do you think you could get Sophie to talk to you? She spent all that time with Hattie. She might know something that doesn’t seem at all important to her. You’re more her age and she knows you socially.’

  ‘I can try.’ Sandy had a sudden vision of how it would be if he got Sophie to talk, if he discovered a fact that moved the case forward. How pleased and proud Perez
would be! ‘I’ll go to the Bod this evening, maybe take her to the Pier House for a drink.’

  ‘I wondered if she has a relationship with Berglund. She says not, though, and I don’t know why she should lie, unless she’s worried about getting him into trouble.’

  Sandy was tempted then to talk to Perez about his anxiety about his parents, but he decided that was his problem. If he discussed it with Perez it would become official and until he was sure what he was dealing with there was no question of that.

  At Utra they were all just about ready to leave for the airport. Michael’s big hire car was packed with luggage and Amelia was standing in the yard, obviously impatient to be off. She was wearing very tight jeans, a jersey with a scooped neck, a little jacket. Michael was fixing the baby into her seat in the back.

  Evelyn came hurrying out of the house. ‘There you are,’ she said. ‘Amelia was just thinking we should leave without saying goodbye to you. I told her there was plenty of time. Sumburgh’s not like those big airports in the south where it takes an hour to check in.’

  Sandy couldn’t tell whether Evelyn was more irritated by him or by her daughter-in-law.

  ‘Well, I’m here now.’

  Michael turned round. He took Sandy in his arms, gave him a great bear-hug. ‘Now you’re the great traveller and you can find your way to London on your own, there’s no excuse for not visiting.’

  ‘I will,’ Sandy said.

  Amelia was already in the passenger seat. As the cars drove off she waved to Sandy. A little flutter of the hand, as if she were a film star, or the Queen. Sandy waited until both cars were well on their way to Symbister before he went into the house.

  Inside there were signs of the hurry there’d been in getting Michael’s family ready to leave. The washing-up had been done, of course – Evelyn would never leave the house with dirty pans in the sink, but they were still piled on the draining board and not dried. There were crumbs on the floor and the waste bin was full.

  Now he was here, Sandy wasn’t sure what he was looking for. He sat down at the table and forced himself to think clearly. He needed reassurance, that was all. He couldn’t understand how his parents had managed to renovate the house on their limited income. He wanted to check that they weren’t in debt. That had been his nightmare: that they’d borrowed foolishly to allow his mother to compete with the pelagic fishing families. He knew the stress that came from owing money. He was crap about finance and in the end he’d cut up his credit card because he couldn’t face the monthly bills; he still remembered the tightness in the pit of his stomach when he’d realized how much he owed.