Red Bones

by Ann Cleeves

  Perez continued. ‘They’d buried the Norwegian at Setter, in that bit of land where nothing much grew and had only ever been seen as rough grazing. Mima never knew that. She wasn’t even sure the Norwegian was dead. Neither did she know about the money, though I think Jerry held out the promise of wealth in the future. ‘One day we’ll all be rich. Then you’ll have a fine house and fine clothes and you’ll travel the world.’ The plan must have been that when the war was over and the Norwegian was forgotten they’d begin to spend it. But Jerry never got to see his share. He was drowned.’ Perez looked up, forced Ronald to meet his eye. ‘Did Andrew describe how that happened? He was only ten but he was there and he saw it all.’

  At last Ronald spoke. ‘They were out in a small boat. There was a freak storm and Jerry was washed overboard. My grandfather had to choose between saving his friend or his son.’ The words came out like a lesson learned at school.

  Perez leaned across the table, so his face was close to Ronald’s. ‘But really,’ he said. ‘What really happened?’

  Ronald could no longer pretend not to care. ‘They were fighting over the money. Jerry Wilson started it. My grandfather pushed out at him and he fell. My father saw Jerry drown. He was ten years old. He watched him sinking under the waves. But when he started to cry, my grandfather told him not to be a baby. “It was him or us, Andrew. Do you understand that? You’re not to tell a soul. Do you want to see me locked up for murder?”’

  ‘And suddenly the Cloustons were wealthy,’ Perez said. ‘What was it? A trip to Bergen to buy a new boat? Then another that was a bit bigger. But your grandfather was clever. Everything invested, nothing too sudden or too showy. There were rumours about where the money had come from, but the island put it down to luck and thrift. And the great work he’d done during the war for the navy with the Bus. Then Andrew inherited and perhaps he managed to persuade himself that the family good fortune all came about through hard work. He was better than Joseph Wilson, who went off labouring for Duncan Hunter and spent his weekends scratching a living on the croft. He bought Cassandra and you were set up for life. Until two young women started digging in the ground . . .’

  ‘Mima thought it was her Norwegian lover that they’d dug up,’ Ronald said. ‘She thought it was his skull that they’d found.’

  And perhaps one of the bones did belong to him, Perez thought. The fourth fragment that didn’t match the others. He rested his head on his hand. ‘Then she remembered the stories Jerry had told her about his hoard of foreign cash and perhaps she went back over the years and thought of the big new boat, one of Cassandra’s predecessors, that the Cloustons had bought in the fifties. Norwegian built. Perhaps she just had questions. And she wanted money too, not for herself, but for Joseph. Evelyn had got into debt and Mima wanted to help the family out. She thought the Wilsons finally deserved their share. Is that how it happened?’

  Ronald nodded.

  ‘For the tape machine please!’ Sharp and brusque, because for an instant Perez had again caught himself feeling some sympathy for the man and had to remind himself how Hattie had looked in that trench.

  ‘Yes, that was what happened.’

  ‘But it wasn’t your idea to kill her?’

  ‘It was the last thing on my mind! I’d just had a son. Do you understand how that feels, to hold your child in your arms, to see your wife giving birth? Nothing mattered more than that . . .’

  ‘Are you telling me you killed Mima for the sake of your child?’ Perez’s voice was so cold and hard that Morag, who had known him since they were at school together, stared at him, frightened too. Later in the canteen she would say it was like a stranger speaking.

  ‘No! Not that!’

  ‘Then explain, please. Tell me why you killed a defenceless old woman.’

  ‘She’d gone to the big house to talk to my father . . .’

  ‘Was your mother there?’ The interruption came sharp like a slap.

  ‘She was in the house, but Father sent her out of the kitchen. She didn’t know what the conversation was about. My father told Mima he couldn’t give her money. His capital was all tied up in the Cassandra. And even if he wanted to sell her it wouldn’t be his decision; there were the other share-holders. Mima said that in that case she’d have a word with her grandson.’

  ‘Meaning Sandy, because he worked for the police?’

  Ronald nodded again. This time Perez didn’t ask him to speak for the machine. He had more pressing questions. ‘And Andrew asked you to deal with the matter? To make sure that Mima didn’t cause you any more problems? For the sake of the family.’

  Ronald shut his mouth tight and refused to speak.

  ‘Tell me what happened the night Mima died,’ Perez said. ‘Take me through the events of that evening, please.’

  ‘The baby had been awake for most of the night,’ Ronald said. His face suddenly seemed very flushed and although it wasn’t hot in the room he’d started to sweat. ‘He had colic and made a sort of high-pitched squeal, like some kind of animal, a piglet maybe. You couldn’t sleep through it even if you tried. Anna was tense. Patient enough with the baby, but shouting at me every chance she had. I decided to go into Lerwick to the library and the supermarket. I thought I’d be better with a break from the bungalow. I got an earlier ferry back than I was expecting and called in to the big house on my way home. My father had had a phone call from Mima. Sandy had come to the island and she’d asked him to visit. Andrew was in a terrible state.’

  ‘So you offered to sort the matter out for him.’

  ‘Something had to be done!’ Ronald said, his voice unnaturally loud. ‘My father was making himself ill and scaring my mother. I said I’d go to see Mima, persuade her to be reasonable, offer her something.’ There was a silence. Perez waited for him to continue. Ronald went on, more calmly. ‘Back in the bungalow, I had dinner with Anna. Then she started having a go at me. About my drinking and the baby. I just couldn’t stand it. I had to get out of there. I said I was going after the rabbits.’

  ‘But you went to Setter.’

  ‘I was going to shoot rabbits,’ Ronald said. ‘Nothing was planned. But I kept going over and over it in my mind. What would happen if Mima started to rake up the past? So I went to see her.’

  Again Perez remained silent. The lawyer stared at the inspector as if she wanted the questions to continue, so the interview would be over more quickly. Her hands fluttered nervously in her lap.

  ‘It was foggy. I saw the lights on in Setter and I could hear her television even through the closed door. I knocked and waited. She came to answer and I could smell she’d been drinking. Mima always liked a dram. “So Andrew’s sent his bairn to do his dirty work.” That was what she said. Then she pulled on a yellow jacket and pushed past me into the garden. “Come and see where they buried my lover,” she said. “It’ll all come to light once the bones have been tested.” Then she stamped ahead of me round the side of the house and towards the field. It was so easy. She was still talking and I couldn’t bear the sound of complaining any more. I let her walk a distance away from me. She turned to see why I wasn’t following. I lifted up my gun and I shot her.’ He put his head in his hands, almost as if he was covering his ears, and stared into the distance, towards the high window, where it was starting to get light. ‘Once the noise of the shot had faded it was beautifully quiet. No more talking. On the way home I took a couple of rabbits, so I wouldn’t have to explain to Anna why I’d come back empty-handed.’

  ‘What about Hattie?’ Perez asked. ‘Did she really have to die? And like that?’

  ‘She guessed, worked it out in the days after Mima died,’ Ronald said. ‘Not all of it, but that the family was involved. She heard Mima talking on the telephone to my father about the bones. And we had to get her off that land. She was obsessed about the dig. While she was alive she would never leave it alone and some time the Norwegian’s body would be found. Then it would all come out. They’d identify him and remember the money,
the kroner sealed in the tobacco tins.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t be the rich Cloustons of Whalsay any more.’

  Ronald looked away, and continued to speak. ‘Hattie heard Mima talk to Andrew on the phone. She heard them arguing. It never occurred to her that I had anything to do with the old lady’s murder. I’d been to the university in the south. I’d been civilized by my contact with the academics, I read books and knew about history. She bumped into me after she’d had her meeting with her boss: “Can we talk Ronald? I wanted to let you know that I’ve phoned Inspector Perez. I know your father’s an ill man, but really I think he might have shot Mima. I just wanted to warn you . . .”’

  ‘Give me the details, please. How did you kill her?’

  ‘I walked with her back to Setter. I pretended to be interested. “So you think there might be a more recent body buried here alongside the ancient one?” Then she turned away from me and I hit her on the back of the head with a round smooth stone.’

  ‘Not hard enough to break the skin,’ Perez said. ‘But it knocked her out. I understand. That gave you the opportunity to fake her suicide. Why did you slit her wrists with Paul Berglund’s knife?’

  ‘Is that who it belonged to?’ Ronald looked back at the inspector, surprised. ‘I didn’t realize. It was there and it did the job.’

  The matter-of-fact words made Perez feel suddenly sick. He leaned forward towards the man again. ‘How could you do it to her?’

  Ronald considered, then took the question literally. ‘I’m used to blood. Gutting fish. Killing beasts. The girl was unconscious by then. It had to look like suicide.’ He was struck by a sudden thought. ‘You got Cedric to phone me tonight. And you made up the story of a witness. Anna told me about that when she got home from the party. Cedric was never there at all that afternoon.’

  No, Perez thought. But he was involved all the same, in a roundabout way. His father had worked with the Shetland Bus too. It had made sense for them to use Cedric to bait the trap, to say that he wanted his share of the money.

  ‘Two people were dead,’ he said. ‘We had to make it stop.’

  He stood up and looked again out of the window. It was a beautiful morning. There was sunlight on the water.

  Chapter Forty-five

  That evening they met up at Fran’s house in Ravens-wick. She’d cooked a meal and when it was over they sat around the table in the kitchen, drinking wine and talking. The dishes had been cleared but there was still a plate of cheese and a bowl of red grapes, like a still-life study, in front of them. It was late because Fran had wanted to get Cassie to bed first. Perez could tell that Sandy was nervous. This wasn’t the sort of social event he usually went in for. He drank less than they did, although Perez had already suggested he could get a taxi back to town. He didn’t want to make a fool of himself. All the same he was pleased to have been invited. Perez could tell that.

  ‘How’s Anna?’ Fran asked as soon as Sandy came in. He had stayed the night in Whalsay, taking statements.

  ‘In shock, of course. She’s going south to stay with her parents until she’s come to terms with what’s happened. She talks about coming back to Shetland but I don’t think she ever will. She tried very hard to fit in, but she was never really cut out to be a Shetland wife.’

  ‘What about me?’ Fran asked with a little laugh. ‘Am I cut out to be a Shetland wife?’

  Perez knew what she was doing. Sandy had believed Ronald to be his friend. He still saw the Whalsay deaths as a personal betrayal. Fran was trying to lighten the mood. There was no more to her question than that.

  ‘Oh, you!’ Sandy said. ‘You’d fit in fine wherever you lived.’

  ‘Will Andrew and Jackie be charged?’ Fran reached out for a grape, cut another wedge of cheese.

  ‘Not Jackie,’ Perez said. ‘If she guessed that Ronald was involved in some way, she didn’t really know. And we’ve no evidence to suggest that she understood where the original source of wealth came from.’

  ‘If we go back far enough all the rich families in the UK got their money in a dubious fashion,’ Fran said. ‘The spoils of war, off the backs of the poor.’

  Perez smiled but said nothing. After a few drinks she often believed herself to be a champion of the people.

  Sandy shifted in his chair. ‘But surely we should have enough to charge Andrew? We know he was involved. He tried to focus our attention away from Setter by telling me they threw the Norwegian’s body into the sea. If we exhume Per’s body, get the forensic accountants to look at Andrew’s business records over the years, we should have enough to satisfy the Fiscal.’

  Perez realized that Sandy was more comfortable believing Andrew to be a murderer than he was thinking of Ronald in that way. Sandy had been deceived by his old friend and they’d both been taken in by Ronald’s fine acting.

  ‘Aye,’ Perez said. ‘Maybe.’ He knew how long the investigation would take and he doubted whether Andrew would still be alive at the end of it. Maybe living in the giant house on the hill, with a heartbroken wife who’d lost her son to prison and her grandchild to his relatives in the south, would be punishment enough.

  He looked down towards the lighthouse at Raven Head. It was very clear tonight. He thought there might be a frost, the last cold spell before the summer. Suddenly he remembered Paul Berglund. He turned to Sandy, smiling. ‘Berglund’s grandmother is Swedish, not Norwegian. Not any relation to Mima’s lover. A horrible man, but not a murderer.’

  ‘So I was wrong again,’ Sandy said. He seemed more relaxed, more himself. Perez saw that his glass was empty. He tipped some wine into it and poured himself another glass too. It seemed hours since he’d slept and it was only caffeine and alcohol that were keeping him going.

  ‘Bones in the land,’ Sandy said, half asleep now. ‘Skeletons in a cupboard.’ They sat for a moment in silence, then Sandy got out his mobile to call a taxi and Fran stood up to make coffee.

  When they went outside to see Sandy off Perez gasped with the cold. There was a moon and the sea was silver. The beam from the lighthouse on Raven Head swept across the fields between the beach and Fran’s house. It was hypnotic, he felt he could stand here for hours just watching it. He forced himself to look up at the sky instead. There were no streetlights here and the stars were clear and sharp. Fran stood in front of him and he put her arms around his waist. Even through his thick jacket he could feel her body pressed against his.

  Sandy’s taxi drove off, but still they stood there.

  ‘My friends in the city can never understand what this is like,’ Fran said. ‘I explain: no light pollution, no sound, but they can’t conceive it.’

  ‘You’ll have to invite them up and show them.’

  She turned towards him. At first her face was in shadow, then she tipped up her head so the moonlight caught her eyes.

  ‘I was thinking,’ she said, ‘that we could ask them to the wedding.’

  Praise for the Shetland series

  RED BONES

  ‘Ann Cleeves’ fellow crime fiction practitioners (from Colin Dexter to Peter Robinson) have been lining up to sing her praises, and it’s unlikely that there will be any blip in that chorus of praise on the evidence of Red Bones, which is quite as assured and entertaining as its predecessors’

  Barry Forshaw

  ‘On an island shrouded in mist, amid a community with secrets, a visiting archaeologist uncovers mysterious human remains . . . This award-winning writer weaves an intriguing, chilling web’

  Best Magazine

  WHITE NIGHTS

  ‘Decades-old amorous betrayals resurface in a plot that makes much of the tension between incomers and islanders. Ann Cleeves’ intriguing mystery is tangentially energized by the “simmer dim”’

  Financial Times

  ‘Cleeves deftly paints in the personalities and their relationships, as the police inquiries disrupt the close-knit community. It’s a good, character-led mystery, which displays the art of storytelling without recourse to
slash and grab’

  Sunday Telegraph

  ‘This is wonderful . . . Part of the wonder of this book is the domestic detail that becomes iconic within the novel . . . This is a very good author. This is an author that bears criticism’

  Radio Four’s ‘Front Row’

  RAVEN BLACK

  ‘Raven Black breaks the conventional mould of British crime-writing, while retaining the traditional virtues of strong narrative and careful plotting’

  Independent

  ‘Beautifully constructed . . . a lively and surprising addition to a genre that once seemed moribund’

  Times Literary Supplement

  ‘Raven Black shows what a fine writer Cleeves is . . . an accomplished and thoughtful book’

  Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Ann’s characterization is worthy of the best writers in the field . . . Rarely has a sense of place been so evocatively conveyed in a crime novel’

  Daily Express

  ‘A fine and sinister psychological novel in the Barbara Vine style. Cleeves is part of a new generation of superior British writers who put refreshing new spins and twist on the old forms’

  Globe and Mail

  RED BONES

  Ann Cleeves worked as a probation officer, bird observatory cook and auxiliary coastguard before she started writing. She now promotes reading for Kirklees Libraries and as Harrogate Crime-Writing Festival’s reader in residence, and is also a member of ‘Murder Squad’, working with other northern writers to promote crime fiction. In 2006 Ann was awarded the Duncan Lawrie Dagger for Best Crime Novel, for Raven Black. Ann lives in North Tyneside. Red Bones is the third novel in the Shetland series following from Raven Black and White Nights. The fourth, Blue Lightning is available now.