by Ann Cleeves
‘If it came from Magnie, he was a generous boyfriend,’ Willow said.
‘Or he was trying to buy her affection.’
Perez felt into the bag and pulled out a purse. Inside there were sections for credit cards, and a driver’s licence. ‘This was definitely Emma’s bag.’ He showed them the licence, the tiny photograph that could have been anyone; the name: Emma Louise Shearer. ‘She passed her test in Shetland, but she gave the family home in Orkney as her permanent address. Is that significant, do you think? She never intended to settle here?’
‘Well, the job wasn’t going to last forever.’ Willow’s voice was suddenly sharp. ‘The kids would grow up eventually and Emma wouldn’t be needed.’
‘I suppose so. And I think Belle’s getting a bit old to be planning another.’ Perez regretted the words as soon as they were spoken. He felt out of control, a ventriloquist’s dummy, and that someone else was speaking for him. He and Willow were sending barbs of aggression at each other and it seemed there was nothing either of them could do to stop it.
There was a silence while he avoided looking at the woman by his side. ‘Emma’s credit and debit cards are still here and there’s about thirty pounds in cash. I don’t think we ever saw this as a burglary gone wrong – it’s much too staged – but this proves it.’
The others nodded their agreement and Perez reached in for Emma’s phone. ‘The battery’s flat. Let’s get that sorted, Sandy, and we’ll check out all the recent calls. Let’s see if Daniel Fleming was telling the truth when he said he’d stopped hassling her.’ Willow had described her interview with Fleming when the three of them had first got together. He knew she’d been inclined to believe the man’s story, but Perez wanted to see the evidence. ‘Have we got anything back on Emma’s laptop yet?’
Sandy shook his head. ‘I’ll chase that up when I’ve finished here.’
There was a make-up bag. Every item was clean, lids on, no smears from lipstick or mascara, no powder from eyeshadow. Apart from that, nothing. Perez tipped up the bag to make sure, but there were no scraps of paper, sweet wrappers, supermarket receipts: nothing to suggest that it had been owned by a real human being.
‘Do you think the killer went through it already, before leaving it in the shed?’ Sandy clearly couldn’t believe anyone could be that tidy. Even Louisa, who was neat and ordered in every other way, had a bag that looked like the contents of a waste bin.
Perez shook his head. ‘If there were anything to hide, wouldn’t it be on the phone? And that’s still there.’
‘Perhaps the bag was new,’ Willow said, ‘and it hadn’t had time to get mucky.’
‘Aye, that’s possible, I suppose.’ Perez looked at his watch. ‘Sandy, let’s go and see if the man’s home. He was on the early shift, so he should be back by now. I don’t want to spend all evening here. Maggie’s picked up Cassie after school, but I’d like her to sleep in her own bed tonight. The bairn needs a bit of routine.’
Across the desk, Willow was looking at him. During their conversation in the car, after picking her up from Sumburgh, she’d seemed lost. All the fight had gone out of her. Now she seemed more her old self. Challenging. Fierce.
‘You’ll be tired,’ he said, ‘after the early start this morning. Go to the B&B and ask them to get you some supper. Have an early night.’
She nodded but said nothing.
Magnie Riddell opened the door to them. His mother had obviously warned him that they would be turning up, because he didn’t seem surprised to see them. She was behind him, clattering pots in the kitchen. Perez ignored her. ‘Is there somewhere we can speak in private?’
Magnie took them into the room where Perez had talked to Margaret. A grey cat sat on the back of one of the chairs. It stretched, jumped from the chair and walked slowly out of the room. Magnie shut the door behind it. The television was on, some game show that Perez thought his mother had been watching. Magnie turned it off.
‘You’re here about Emma.’ He was big, a Viking of a man, with white hair that curled around his collar. Perez could imagine him marching in the Jarl’s squad in the Up Helly Aa parade. He’d changed out of his work clothes and smelled of soap and shampoo.
‘My mother said you were here this morning.’ Magnie wasn’t friendly but he wasn’t overtly hostile, just a little wary. Tense.
Perez and Sandy sat in the overstuffed chairs and watched him. Perez nodded at Sandy to begin the conversation. Sandy was closer to Magnie’s age and might be less threatening.
‘We heard you were friendly with Emma, but Margaret tells us the relationship was over.’
‘My mother would have liked it to be over.’ Now there was an edge to Magnie’s voice and Perez could see how he might have drifted into trouble. This was an angry young man, rootless and restless, with something to prove.
‘But it wasn’t?’ Sandy hit just the right tone, implying that parents could be interfering pains and sometimes, of course, you weren’t going to tell them everything.
‘No,’ Magnie said. ‘It wasn’t. We were taking it easy. No rush. And no need for the whole world to know about it.’
‘It’s hard to keep anything secret in a place like Deltaness. I know, I’m from Whalsay. Sneeze – and all the old gossips will be talking. As for any sort of love life . . .’
‘Tell me about it!’
‘But you managed, you and Emma,’ Sandy said. ‘I mean you managed to get together sometimes, without anyone knowing.’
‘Yeah.’ Magnie seemed close to tears and Perez thought he was glad to have the chance to speak about the dead woman. Even if he’d been the one to kill her. Love and hate, other sides of the same coin. His mother wouldn’t want to hear his memories of Emma. In this house, he’d have no chance to grieve. ‘I picked her up sometimes when she’d finished work. I never went right up to the house, but I’d wait on the road and send her a text to say I was there. That was what she wanted. There was a staircase that no one else much used, and she could get out without the family seeing.’ Perez thought Magnie was going to add something more, but he closed his mouth tight.
‘Where did you go for a bit of privacy?’
‘Oh, we managed to find places we could be on our own.’ Magnie shifted in his seat and Perez saw the red flush of a blush creep up his neck. Clearly he was embarrassed by the idea of Sandy probing into his sex life.
Perez was puzzled. Didn’t most young men enjoy boasting about their sexual exploits these days? He’d heard them joking and shouting in the bars in town. There was no reticence or discretion. It struck him then that Magnie was embarrassed for exactly the opposite reason: like Daniel, he’d never made love to Emma and he’d find that hard to admit.
Sandy, though, had already moved on. ‘Did you ever go to the boatshed down by the Hesti jetty? It would be private enough.’
Magnie looked confused. ‘The place that Dennis used to keep his stuff in? No, we never went there.’
‘How did the two of you first get together?’
‘It’s kind of boring, being stuck all the way up here in Northmavine, and the court order stopped me going to town in the evenings. The local kids hang out in the community hall on a Friday night. Sometimes there’s music, sometimes they just stick up a couple of pool tables. No bar, but the kids all have booze hidden away outside. It was something to do, at least a way of getting out of the house. If the weather was fine they might have a bit of a party on the beach.’
‘And that’s where you met Emma? In the community hall?’
He nodded. ‘Sometimes she was there with Martha, the oldest Moncrieff girl; sometimes she came down on her own. I think she felt the need to escape too. It couldn’t have been much fun, living on the job. You’d feel you were always working.’
‘So she came down to the Deltaness Hall and let her hair down?’
‘Not when Martha was there. She was always professional then. But yeah, sometimes.’ Magnie smiled to himself and Perez could see that he was reliving the memory. �
��Sometimes she’d have vodka in her bag, and we’d sit outside and just drink and chat, you know. And Emma was a great dancer. You couldn’t stop looking at her. We had some good nights.’
‘But really it was a youth club. You must have been older than most of the other people there.’
‘A bit, maybe. But like I say, there’s not much to do in Deltaness in the evenings, and a couple of folk of our sort of age drifted down. In the end it became quite a cool place to hang out.’
Perez thought Emma and Magnie would have had something to do with that, with changing the young people’s attitude to the place. They’d have made a stylish couple.
‘Were there any adults supervising?’
‘The hall committee take it in turns to keep an eye. Some of them can’t be bothered to stay all evening. They open up and let us get on with it, then come back later to lock up.’ Magnie looked up. ‘I don’t understand why you want to know about this? What can it have to do with Emma being dead?’
Perez answered before Sandy had a chance to speak. ‘It’s all background. I want to understand her, and it seems you knew her as well as anyone.’ He paused. ‘When did you last see her?’
‘Over a week ago. Down at the hall. The Friday night. Then the weather was so good that the kids went down to the beach and lit a bonfire, listened to some music.’
‘Not since then? Not last weekend?’
Magnie shook his head. ‘Like I said, we were taking it easy. I had some overtime at work.’
‘Were you working on Sunday?’ Perez realized he’d taken over the questioning now, but Sandy seemed happy enough to stand aside for him.
‘No.’ He must have realized where this was leading, but Magnie volunteered no information.
‘What were you doing?’ Perez looked at him. ‘We are asking everyone who knew Emma these questions. It doesn’t mean you’re under suspicion.’
Magnie nodded. ‘I was catching up on my sleep,’ he said. ‘It had been a hard week.’
‘And your mother will confirm that?’
‘My mother will tell you anything she thinks you want to hear.’ The reply was quick and bitter, but then he gave a little shrug. ‘She’s protective. You can’t blame her. I’m all she has now.’ A pause. ‘I was here all morning, but she wasn’t. It was the Sunday teas and she was down at the hall, helping to set up. She’d been baking all week.’
Perez looked at the clock on the wall. Suddenly he just wanted to be back in Fran’s house in Ravenswick with Cassie. ‘Had Emma been scared or anxious in the last few weeks?’
Magnie shook his head. ‘She didn’t seem any different from usual.’
‘Is there anyone who might have wanted to harm her?’
‘Apart from my mother?’ It was an attempt at a joke, and Perez smiled to be kind. ‘No. No one.’
Perez stood up then and it was Sandy who asked, on their way out, ‘Did you give her a fancy handbag as a present?’
Magnie shook his head again. ‘I did give her presents. I earned so much more than she did, and she loved having nice things. But not a handbag.’
Perez would have left it at that, but Sandy persisted. ‘It was big. Shiny leather. Did you see her with something like that?’
‘No. She kept her stuff in a bag that she’d made herself. It was made of fabric, pale pink-and-blue stripes. You’d have never known it was hand-made.’
At last Sandy was ready to leave. They stood briefly in the cramped hall to thank Magnie and shake his hand. Margaret, still in the kitchen, stared at them.
Chapter Twenty-One
Christopher was in his bedroom at the top of the house. When they’d got back from school there’d been people here, strange cars parked outside, the kind of break from routine that usually troubled him. He’d asked his mother what was going on and she said they’d been searching the hill for traces of Emma.
‘For clues?’
She’d given a strange little laugh, though he couldn’t understand what was funny. ‘I suppose so. There’s a Crime Scene Investigator in the old boatshed near the jetty.’
Christopher had wanted to see that. He’d wondered if it would be like the television show, but had suspected it wouldn’t be quite the same. The detective with the dark hair had turned him away and he’d wandered back to his room, disappointed.
Now most of them had gone. He couldn’t see the track down to Deltaness from his room, but he had a view of the yard and the vehicles, and he’d heard the engines starting and seen them move away. Now only one unfamiliar car remained. There were no unrecognizable voices. No noise at all. Even the sea was quiet. He switched on the computer and tried to lose himself in a game.
Today, the magic of the screen didn’t work, though. He was still troubled, not by the break in routine, but by pictures that came into his head, blocking the familiar images on the screen, so he found it impossible to concentrate. This had never happened before. He got to his feet and began to pace backwards and forwards across the bedroom floor, from one window to the other, in an attempt to shake the pictures loose, to send them on their way. It didn’t work. Whatever he did, Emma Shearer was lodged in his head.
He walked quicker and tried to order the images, to control them. He decided to treat them like the Pokémon cards he collected. He liked to place the Pokémon characters in the order in which he’d collected them. He’d lay them out on his floor, shifting them occasionally, angry with himself if he thought he’d got the order wrong. So he allowed the pictures of Emma Shearer to flash through his head and he sorted them chronologically.
His first day at the new school. Emma in the playground. Christopher had been allowed out with the other children then and had seen Emma talking to his father. He’d liked the way she looked. The shape of her. Small and thin, like a kid herself. Not scary. Not then. Standing with her head on one side, having to look up at her father, because he was so much taller. Listening to him, her face concentrated, as if what he was saying was the most interesting thing in the world.
Emma in their garden. Kate and Sam had been there too, playing with Ellie. On the trampoline and the climbing frame. Christopher didn’t really like being outside and had watched them from his room. Part of him jealous because he hadn’t been included in the games, and part of him feeling superior, because they were being so childish. Emma had been lying on one of the white wooden chairs that Mum said reminded her of a deckchair on the Titanic. Dad had brought her a drink. Not tea and not wine. Something in a big glass, with lemon and ice. It had been earlier in the year, sunny, but not very warm, and Dad had tucked a blanket round Emma, so she’d looked even more like a passenger on a big cruise liner. Kate had fallen from the trampoline and Emma had gone to help her. But she hadn’t wanted to go. The picture Christopher remembered was of Emma’s face, as she set aside the glass and the blanket and got to her feet. He tried now to think of a word to describe her expression. Annoyance? That wasn’t quite right. Fury.
He was satisfied that he’d pinned down the way Emma had looked that day, and moved on to the next image. The night of the bonfire. Would he have gone if he’d known Emma would be there? Oh yes! Because he hadn’t been thinking about anything but the flames and what they would feel like, how the sparks would be flying up into the night. The fire had been irresistible. Now, in his bedroom, he felt a sudden urge to fetch matches and paper and create a fire for himself. Then, he hadn’t seen Emma at first. He’d sat at the top of the bank and watched the wild bird shapes of the flames and felt the sharp, stinging heat. Then they’d turned and seen him. Emma had laughed with the rest of them. Her thin face turned towards him, sharp-edged. She’d looked like a bird herself, pecking towards him, mocking.
Christopher stopped for a moment and rocked, backwards and forwards, remembering the way he’d felt, the centre of their attention. He’d wished the fire had spread, that the monster flames had opened their mouths and eaten the people all up.
And that brought him to the last picture, the final card in the pack. Em
ma hanging by a rope in the barn. Their barn. He wondered if he’d caused it, if it had been his fault. Sometimes that happened. He misread signals and got things wrong, caused hurt when he hadn’t meant to. Often he was just being truthful. How could he upset people when he was telling the truth? Mum said he should try to be more tactful. Of course he shouldn’t lie, but there was no need to cause offence if he could help it. Now, he thought again that the truth was that he was glad Emma Shearer was dead. It had been a shock to see her, hanging there. A shock because he’d dreamed of her dying, and it was almost as if his wishes had caused her to be killed. That was what had sent him running down the hill to the hall to fetch Dr Moncrieff. A kind of guilt.
He supposed now that he shouldn’t tell anyone he was pleased Emma was dead. That wouldn’t be tactful; Mum wouldn’t want him speaking the truth in this situation. She wouldn’t want him causing offence. He started walking again, but more slowly now. He felt calmer, that his thoughts were in order. He landed up at the window, looking down towards the sea. He could see the trampoline and, close to the house, the two white wooden loungers where Emma and his father had sat. A woman was standing on the lawn staring out towards the water.
She had very long hair that was tangled and curly. He thought it would be very painful to brush the hair and perhaps that’s why she hadn’t bothered to do so. She wore jeans and trainers and a long, loose jumper. She could have been one of his mother’s artist friends, though the ones who came to stay occasionally from London were usually smarter than that. He’d seen her talking to the detective, though, standing in the yard before he drove off, so he assumed she was part of the police team. Christopher wondered if she would want to speak to him. He thought that would be OK, as long as she came to his bedroom to do it.
But it seemed she’d made up her mind to go. She turned away from the sea and started to make her way round the house to where the car was parked. For a moment, her face was turned towards him and he saw that she’d been crying.
