by Ann Cleeves
Daniel looked at her. Willow could tell he was wondering if she was mocking him. In the end, he ignored the comment. ‘She did have real style, you know. She made all her own clothes, not using bought patterns, but her own designs. I thought she was wasted working for the Moncrieffs, dealing with their brats and cleaning up their mess. I thought she should go to art school.’
‘Was that what Emma wanted?’
‘I think she liked the idea of it, but she lacked the confidence.’
Willow considered that. She’d hoped Daniel Fleming would bring Emma Shearer to life for her, but the young woman seemed even more enigmatic. It still felt as if Emma had no personality or character of her own. She became what other people wanted her to be; she reflected back their dreams and desires. Did that indicate a lack of confidence? Perhaps. Or someone who was supremely manipulative.
‘Did you have a physical relationship?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t what she wanted.’ He paused. ‘It was a kind of intense friendship. Passionate, but we never made love.’
‘Idealized?’ Willow thought the act itself would probably have disappointed. Nothing could live up to his expectations.
‘I suppose so. I suppose I idealized her. It didn’t seem like that at the time.’
Willow heard footsteps on gravel. They’d brought in all available officers in Shetland to help with the search of the house and it seemed they were moving outside. They trooped past the window.
Daniel appeared not to notice them and he was speaking again. ‘It seems a bit ridiculous now. A kind of madness. I have everything I need here – a wife who loves and understands me, two children, a beautiful home. Why would I consider putting all that at risk for a fantasy? But at the time Emma seemed the most real, the truest thing in my life. I would have been prepared to give up everything for her.’
‘Did you kill her? Because she refused to be a part of that fantasy?’
‘No,’ he said. His voice was calm. ‘I was mad for a while, but I was never that crazy. And the infatuation had passed by the time she died. Things were starting to settle down, to get back to normal. I could see a future for myself again. Most of the locals in Deltaness dislike the house that we’ve built here. They would rather we’d put up a Scandinavian kit-building, or just left Dennis Gear’s house as it was. But some Shetlanders love it. I’ve had enquiries and I’m thinking of setting up my own practice again. Nothing too stressful. One design at a time – bespoke buildings for people who appreciate what I’m trying to do. I haven’t spoken to Helena about it yet, but it’s been in my mind for a while, and I think she’ll support me.’ He looked up and there was another smile. ‘Perhaps we can even think about employing someone to help with the children. But it won’t be a young woman like Emma. I won’t be losing my mind again.’
‘Did your wife know about the relationship?’
‘No!’ he said, shocked. ‘No! I only told her this morning.’
‘And Emma wouldn’t have said anything to Helena?’ Willow imagined the younger woman dropping hints, gloating, enjoying the power she had over the man. How would a wife react to that?
‘No!’ Daniel said again, but this time he sounded less certain.
‘Do you have any idea who might have wanted her dead?’
There was a moment of silence, filled, as always here, by the sound of gulls and sheep.
‘I didn’t know much about her life away from me,’ Daniel said. ‘She talked occasionally about work – how the children could be difficult. Belle and Robert weren’t very helpful. They spoilt the kids and then got annoyed when they were demanding and disobedient. But Emma wouldn’t leave. I don’t know what was keeping her in Shetland. At the beginning, I was deluded and persuaded myself that I was the reason she stayed, but I see now that it can’t have been that. She’d been living there for years before I became a part of her life.’
‘Another man?’
‘Perhaps. When she broke off all contact with me, she said something about needing to find friends of her own age.’
Willow thought back to the conversation she’d had with Perez in the car about the case. ‘I understand she was seeing someone called Riddell.’
‘Magnie Riddell. Yes, I’d heard that rumour too. I was the person who gave his name to the inspector. The gossip in this place spreads like wild fire.’
‘Do you know him?’ Willow imagined the gossip there’d be when Shetlanders discovered that she was pregnant. Would they consider her a scarlet woman, that she’d led Jimmy Perez on, so she could have a child before she was too old? And is that what I’ve done? Maybe, subconsciously.
‘Not well,’ Daniel said. ‘I’ve met him a few times at village dos. His mother and his aunt live here too. I know of him. I’ve heard the talk.’
‘And what are people saying about him?’
‘That he went a bit wild when his parents split up. His mother had ambitions for him. College, a job with the council. That wasn’t what Magnie wanted. He moved away from home and got a flat of his own in Lerwick. He was on drugs, apparently. He couldn’t hold down a job. There was a fight in a bar. He appeared in court and got put on some sort of community-service order. One of the conditions was that he move out of town and stay with his mother.’
So, he was someone else who needed saving. Emma seemed to go for that kind of man. What did that say about her?
‘He’s a very good-looking lad,’ Daniel said. ‘I can understand why all the girls are after him.’
Willow had been scribbling notes throughout the conversation and now she put down her pen. There was something about Daniel Fleming that she found smug and self-centred, and in her present mood she thought she’d spent enough time with him. She needed time to assess his relationship with the victim, and she wanted to re-join her team to see what they’d found in their search of the house.
‘There’s something else,’ Daniel said. ‘It’s probably not important.
‘Yes?’ Willow tried to contain her impatience.
‘Someone’s made a bench by the loch of Suksetter on the other side of the hill. It’s a memorial to Dennis Gear. At least his name is carved into it, and I’ve seen fresh flowers there. If you think the two deaths are linked in some way – because of the hanging and the anonymous drawings – we wondered if it might be significant.’
Willow scribbled another note and stood up. There was the sound of footsteps on gravel again. This time they were made by one person running. A moment later, Sandy Wilson knocked at the door and threw it open, tried and failed not to sound excited. ‘Could I have a word, Boss?’
‘Just a minute, Sandy. We’re nearly finished here.’ She shook Daniel’s hand and went outside with him. She watched him go back to the house, his creation. Looking down into the valley, she saw Perez’s car making its way up the track, and far in the distance three figures walking along the shore from Deltaness. They must be Helena and her children on their way back from school.
It occurred to her that from this vantage point she could see everything that went on in the community, even as far as the trees that surrounded the big house where Belle and Robert Moncrieff lived. It would be a great place for a gossip to live. And yet, of all the people who lived in Deltaness, the Flemings probably didn’t care what their neighbours were up to. They were used to an anonymous life in the city. In her jaundiced mood, she thought Daniel Fleming probably didn’t care about anything but himself.
‘What have you got for me, Sandy?’ Turning away, so she wasn’t watching the progress of Perez’s car up the track.
‘I think it’s the dead woman’s handbag. We haven’t touched it, of course, but it would be a bit of a coincidence if it belonged to anyone else.’
‘And you let Jimmy know? I see he’s on his way.’
‘Yeah, you were tied up with Fleming and I thought . . .’
‘You were quite right, Sandy, it could be important.’ And besides, Perez will always be the person you turn to first. ‘So where did you
find it?’
‘There’s a building at the bottom of the field, close to the shore. It was in there.’
Willow followed Sandy round the house. This part of the garden, sloping away from the house towards the coast, was clearly the realm of the children. The grass had been roughly cut and hardy bushes had once been planted along the boundary wall to provide a windbreak, but there had been no attempt to grow flowers or vegetables. A wooden climbing frame had been built and a trampoline had been tethered to the ground with ropes and large rocks to stop it blowing away. Beyond the wall, a field uneven with cotton-grass and bog fell away to the coast. A few sheep grazed there. A stile had been built over the wall and the grass was flattened into a footpath on the other side.
‘This is all Hesti land,’ Sandy said, ‘but when Gear stopped crofting, he let it out for grazing. The arrangement still stands.’ He was already on his way down the footpath, but Willow stopped at the top of the stile to look down at the sea. This was the very north of the long, shallow bay that stretched along the settlement of Deltaness. The hill at the back of the Flemings’ house curved into a headland that provided some shelter for this part of the shore. There were high, sheer cliffs and, even from here, she could hear the seabirds calling.
The path took them to another wall and another stile, this one leading onto a patch of wind-blown grass. There was no shingle bank here to separate land from sea, but a flat pebble beach, where a rough jetty had been built. A pile of lobster pots stood on the grass.
‘Dennis Gear kept a boat here,’ Sandy said, ‘but he sold it when things got tough. He couldn’t have got much for it.’
Willow remembered that Sandy had been called out to Gear’s suicide. On the grass beside the lobster pots a shed had been built. It had stone walls and an upturned yoal for the roof. That took Willow back to her first investigation in Shetland: a traditionally built boat, known in the islands as a yoal, had been found drifting in Aith marina with a dead man inside. This one would never have stayed afloat. Willow could see how the planks were warped and gapped. It had been covered with tar now, to make the building weatherproof. There was one window, dusty and covered with cobwebs, and a plank door.
Willow pulled on a scene-suit. Vicki Hewitt was inside, but she moved away to let them in. ‘I could do with a break and some fresh air.’ Her voice was strange through the mask. ‘There are fingerprints in the place, though. A number of different individuals. And yeah, I know. We’ll get them checked as soon as we can.’
Inside, the building smelled of wood, tar and damp. The floor was made of beaten earth. On one wall there was a shelf with tins of nails and screws, fish hooks and coils of rope.
‘Could the rope that was used to string up Emma have come from here?’ But Willow had already turned away from the wall with the shelves, her attention caught by the rest of the space. Here the floor was covered by a rug. There was a low, long sofa made from a row of fish boxes, the seat and the back formed by cushions with red-velvet covers. A larger crate was turned into a coffee table and on it stood a candle stuck with wax onto a saucer. The place had the feel of a child’s den, except that this had obviously been used by adults. A couple of empty wine bottles stood in one corner. In pride of place on the table, next to the candle, was the handbag.
Willow could see why Sandy had thought it might belong to Emma. It was rather glamorous, in an expensive, understated way. Not Helena’s style at all, and certainly not something they might have picked up in a charity shop for Ellie to play with. This was shiny patent leather, black and sleek.
Willow pulled her head back and straightened. ‘Let’s let Vicki get on with things, shall we? When she’s done, we’ll have a look inside the bag and see what it can tell us about the mysterious Emma.’
Walking back towards the house, past the children’s playthings, she half-expected to see the dark figure of Jimmy Perez loping over the grass towards her. After all, his car had been on the track when they set off towards the jetty. But there was no sign of Perez. Instead she noticed a movement in an upstairs window and saw Daniel Fleming staring down at them.
Chapter Nineteen
Magnie worked the early shift at the waste-to-power plant. He watched the giant claw lift household rubbish into the furnace, keeping an eye on the instruments that kept the system running, to provide hot water for half of Lerwick, the schools and the hospital. But he worked like a robot, ignoring the banter and noise all around him. He thought this was a job you could do in your sleep, once you got used to the smell. At clocking-off time, he got his stuff from his locker and hung about until everyone else had gone. He didn’t want to answer his colleagues’ questions about the murder in Deltaness. They didn’t know of his connection with Emma, but they were curious. It had been the subject of gossip during the breaks.
‘You live there, don’t you, Magnie? Give us the low-down. What was she like? Did she kill herself, like Dennis Gear?’
For the first time since he’d moved back to live with his mother, Magnie felt the need for something to take the edge off his pain. He was tempted to go into town and find one of his old pals. They’d hole up in the Thule bar and drink themselves stupid, then go back to a room somewhere and he’d smoke weed until he could dream that nothing mattered. That Emma had not mattered. But the robot in him led him to his van, made him start the engine and begin the drive home. That took less thought and less effort than making his way into Lerwick and tracking down a friend. He’d been awake for most of the night and felt edgy, sandy-eyed through lack of sleep and too much caffeine at work.
Coming into Deltaness, he arrived at Ness House. He couldn’t face his mother just yet and pulled the van into a lay-by opposite the entrance to the garden. The trees blocked his view of the ground floor, but he could see the windows of Emma’s room in the roof above the branches and he tried to conjure up the only time he’d been there. He’d re-created the scene in his head many times, embellishing it, adding touches from the porn he watched when his mother was out of the house, turning the memory into an everyman fantasy. Now, he thought the memory was spoilt, had perhaps been spoilt before the picture of her body swinging from the beam in the Flemings’ byre had been branded into his imagination. It had been tainted by another image, that of Emma’s face lit by the flames of the bonfire as she watched Christopher Fleming, his hands over his ears, his eyes shut, while the crowd yelled at him.
Chapter Twenty
The team sat around the desk in Helena’s studio. Perez had asked the designer’s permission to use it as a base while they were working at the house. He’d expected some resistance; this was her place of work and she had a living to earn. But she’d been relaxed about the idea: ‘Of course, Jimmy. Anything to help get this sorted out quickly.’ The woman had seemed stronger, more confident. Standing at the top of the track, Perez had watched her walk back from school with her children. She’d placed herself between them, their school bags over her shoulder, so she could hold each of their hands. She was swinging their arms in some sort of game. As they got closer he could tell that they were all laughing.
Now the handbag stood in the middle of the desk. Helena had confirmed that it didn’t belong to her or to Ellie, though she had recognized the designer’s name.
‘Very flash,’ she’d said. ‘That wouldn’t have come cheap.’
‘Do you think Daniel might have bought it for Emma?’ The question had come from Willow.
Helena had frowned for a moment. ‘No. That wouldn’t have been his style at all.’
Perez hadn’t been sure if she’d meant the bag or the gesture.
James Grieve had gone to Lerwick to catch the ferry back to Aberdeen. The same ferry that was taking Emma south, so that the pathologist could carry out a post-mortem. Vicki Hewitt, the CSI, was still working in the shed by the shore. Perez had gone to see it for himself. Christopher had tried to follow him across the field, suddenly full of questions, not about Emma and the murder but about Vicki and what she might be doing there,
about fingerprints and DNA.
‘Mum says she’s a CSI. Is that right?’
Perez had sent him home. Willow had described the place as a love nest: ‘I bet Emma and Daniel met there. He didn’t tell us anything about that.’ It didn’t seem right that the boy should see inside, even if Vicki had finished her work.
Now, there were only the three of them, the old team. Sandy, Willow and Perez. Sandy must have sensed the tension between his senior officers because he was awkward, talking too much. He’d checked out Magnie Riddell’s record and spoken to the officer supervising the order.
‘I remember the case now, don’t you, Jimmy? One of those lads who just seems to lose his way in the last few years of school. Bored and not academic. And at the same time his parents were going through a very public separation. They were a bit of a laughing stock. His father was something high up in the kirk and fell for that Latvian lass working at the Kveldsro Hotel. Margaret must have been mortified. They had to sell their grand house in Voe and she moved back to Deltaness. Everyone was talking about it behind their backs. Enjoying the story, because they’d both been a bit pompous. But the lad must have hated it.’
‘I was planning to talk to him this evening,’ Perez said. ‘I’d like you to be there, Sandy. It sounds as if you’ve got the background covered. Willow can take your car back to Lerwick and I’ll give you a lift home.’
Willow shot Perez a look, but he turned away and reached out to open the bag. He was wearing gloves, but he could feel the quality of the workmanship through their thin skin.
‘How could Emma have afforded that?’ Willow said. ‘I assume she didn’t get paid much, as a mother’s help.’
‘Margaret Riddell said Magnie bought her expensive presents.’ Perez looked inside. The contents were ordered – there was no tangle of used tissue, half-finished lipstick, loose change, the detritus found in most women’s bags. ‘Perhaps this was one of them. We still have to rule out Daniel Fleming, though – we only have Helena’s word that it wouldn’t have come from him.’
